· April, 2007

Stories about East Asia from April, 2007

Macau: Gambling Disneyland

  27 April 2007

Onemanbandwith has a post about Macau's recent development, 17% growth in GDP. As the writer said, “for someone to win at the tables, someone else must lose“.

China: Dog Abuse Triggered Internet Debate

  27 April 2007

Josie Liu from China in Transition reported on a recent internet debate (17000 comments) about animal right VS human right. The discussion was triggered off by an incident of burning dogs in Nanjing city.

Japan: Three Days Priest

  27 April 2007

Harvey from Japan Newbie explained the expression of mikka bouzu, three days priest, which is used to describe someone who is unable to stick with something they have started to do.

Myanmar: Respect for Sex Workers

  27 April 2007

Moe Moe urges men to respect sex workers and practice safe sex. “Least men who want to sleep with them can do, is to treat these sex workers with respect and try to have safe sex. Why should they be treated badly just because they are providing you with a...

Japan: Thoughts on the Abe “apology”

  27 April 2007

Japan, Beyond the Tamagawa reminds readers, with respect to recent comments by Prime Minsiter Abe Shinzo about the Comfort Women issue, that Abe “didn't intend [his comments] to raise such a stink. He did say what he personally has said he believed for years. Japan's Imperial Army did not force...

Japan: Reflections on postwar “Child's Play”

  27 April 2007

Debito reproduces a passage from John Dower's famous book “Embracing Defeat” dealing with the games children played in post-WW2 Japan, including “holding a mock black market, playing prostitute and customer, and recreating left-wing political demonstrations.” Debito comments that Dower's account “is something rarely considered in historical accounts: The barometer of...

Korean bloggers on Virgina Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui

  27 April 2007

Since the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, it’s not hard to guess that the South Korea-born shooter, Cho Seung-hui, and what he did are among the hottest issues for Korean bloggers. As the visual shock of the mass murder is fading from the headlines, the angle from which bloggers are viewing the case has been changing.

Japan: Cellphone-operated Remote Control Home System

  26 April 2007

Edo introduced the latest cellphone-operated remote control home system developed by NTT-Neomeit: To control devices, users access a web page via cellphone and select the desired operations. The commands are then sent via the web to a wireless router in the home, which relays signals to an infrared transmitter and...

Japan: Pre-election protest party

  26 April 2007

Amamiya Karin writes in Magazine 9 [Ja] about protest parties held in Koenji last weekend organized by Suginami Ward Assembly candidate Matsumoto Hajime. Although Matsumoto finally lost the election, the party was a great success, featuring live music, dancing, and plenty of stage-diving. Matsumoto, one of the youngest contenders, pushed...

Japan: Chinese-Japanese Rapper Nycca

  26 April 2007

James from Japan Probe introduced a trilingual Rapper Nycca. The post is linked to a youtube video of the singer's self intro and rap in three languages: Japanese, Cantonese and Putonghua.

Taiwan: Youtube Censors anti WTO Protest Video

  26 April 2007

Blasts found out (zh) that Youtube has categorized an anti-WTO protest documentary as not suitable for viewers under 18: “This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community. To view this video, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in...

Hong Kong: Queen's Pier Last Night

  26 April 2007

Plastichk has written a citizen report on the last night of Queen's Pier and criticised the government's refusal to preserve the pier in situ (zh). The Pier is a colonial symbol during the British rule in Hong Kong. There is a on-going citizen campaign to preserve the pier.

China: Seventeen Hates

  26 April 2007

Joel Martinsen from DANWEI has translated Liu Qi's article in Southern Weekly about seventeen practices that he hates most in China.

China: IPR is not a Real issue

  26 April 2007

Andrew has written a good analysis of the Intellectual Property Rights negotiation between U.S and China. The conflict is not so real as IP theft hurts Beijing's state-run media machine and control over internet media: Washington is pushing Beijing into reluctantly doing something it probably wanted to do anyway.

China: Not to Buy Apartment Campaign Ended

  26 April 2007

Zou Tao, a Shenzhen citizen who has launched the “Not to Buy Apartment Campaign”, has sold his property in Shenzhen, returned to his homeland in Hunan and become a peasant. Although many were looking forward for a relaunch of the campaign, Zhang hua however commented that such campaign wouldn't help...

China: Spiderman in Beijing Street?

  26 April 2007

Whether pirated copies of Spiderman III DVD are sold in Beijing Street or just empty boxes? Reuters and Sony have different versions of the story. So Chinese pirates have actually beaten anyone else in selling empty boxes claiming to be Spidey III, thus doing a masterful job of pranking foreign...

Japan: Abe apologizes to US media, not Asian people

  26 April 2007

On the apologies made by Abe in an interview last weekend with Newsweek, Amaki Naoto, a former Japanese diplomat who resigned protesting Japan's involvement in the U.S. attack on Iraq, comments that in apologizing about the Comfort Women issue Abe was “putting aside his political belief” in order simply to...

About our East Asia coverage

Oiwan Lam
Oiwan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.

Mong Palatino
Mong Palatino is the South East Asia editor. Email him story ideas or volunteer to write.