China: reticence: would-be lesbians, corporate executives and urban journalists

Ever wonder why there was no male version of 2004's smash television phenomenon Super Girl? While a lesbian conspiracy might have made for better Communist Party PR positioning than news of yet another great initiative cut down by state censorship, super-adrogynous and super-popular Super Girl winner Li Yuchun‘s queer image did at lot to help turn female homosexuality from a taboo subject into something people, albeit mainly young, idolize and, as seen in a post this past week from Ycul blogger MJ, sometimes even fantasize about:

几年前,我去过一个拉拉聚会.要解释一下,并不是我喜欢女人,那次是和另两个女朋友去的,她们一个是写论文研究这个的,另一个和我一样,是去看热闹的.全场只有我们几个,不属于这个团体,纯是好奇.
当时我有少少的沮丧,因为没有拉拉看上我啦.被男人看上没什么可炫耀的,被女人看上才有成就感!成就感!!!!人活着难道不是为了自我实现麽?拉拉喜欢的要么是很帅很阳光的,要么是很媚的,像我们这种没有特点\没有姿色的,只好做壁花了.
虽然有过女人喜欢我,但完全是因为这个博客,这种喜爱是建立在灵魂领域的,比如某篇文章让她们想起了她们前男友什么的,和肉体无关.可是我多希望有女人喜爱我的肉身,而不只是轻飘飘的灵魂呀.

A few years ago, I went to a dyke party. Let me explain. It's not that I like women; that time I went with two other girlfriends. One of them is doing her dissertation on this and the other, like me, just went to see some excitement. In the whole place there were just the three of us not part of their group, there purely out of curiosity. At the time I was a little discouraged, because no dykes were cruising me. Being cruised by a man is nothing worth bragging about, but being cruised by a woman signifies success! Success!!!! Don't people live for self-fulfillment? Dykes either like very handsome and sunny types, or else very femme and flirty. Nothing special about people like us, no pretty looks. So we just made like wallflowers. Although there have been women who have been into me, but only because of this blog. This kind of affection is built up in the spiritual domain. For example, some posts remind them of their ex-boyfriends or something, nothing to do with flesh. But do I ever wish women would like me for my body and not just my flighty spirit…

这贪婪的欲望居然快要实现了.三年过去了,今晚我接到一个电话,居然来自那个远得已经要忘掉的聚会!一个拉拉要和我约会!我已经被这个消息快震到晕过去!上帝呀!居然有女人能看中我这没有一丝帅气和妖媚的沉重的肉身.不是因为看了我的文章,而且过了那么多年!这说明什么?说明我飘乎的身影一直萦绕在她的心间.不过我也怀疑她可能给所有与会的人都打了电话,但是为了多自我麻醉一会,这个假设在这里不成立.
我第一时间把这个消息告诉粲然,她没有用震惊\骇极\羡慕\流口水表示对我的敬佩,我觉得很不满足.我活了这么多年,第一次能被女人看中,值得纪念的一天!
PS:一直有个疑惑,我觉得同志比异性恋更好找才对,不应该在陌生人中寻觅的.比如我,不可能对一个认识的异性表白,怕丢脸.但对同性应该很容易,尤其是女性之间,怎么表现亲热,勾脖子\亲脸,都不会有人怀疑的,这种日常生活中培养的感情难道不比陌生人更有基础吗?

This kind of greedy desire is actually about to be fulfilled. Tonight, three years on, I get a phone call from someone at that long-forgotten party! One dyke wants to have a date with me! Hearing this I was shocked and about to pass out! My god! There are actually women who see something in this heavy, non-handsome, non-charming body of mine. And not because they read my essays, and still so many years later! What does that tell ya? It tells you that my flirty image has lingered in her heart all this time. Although I suspect that she might have phoned everyone who was at that party, in order to stay a bit clueless, I won't make that assumption here. Right away I told Can Ran the news and without the least bit of astoundment, astonishment, jealousy or drooling, she expressed her envy of me, leaving me unsatisfied. Of all the years I've been alive, it's my first time for a woman to have a crush on me. A day worth remembering!

PS: All along I've had a hunch that queers make for better dating than heterosexuals. People shouldn't look for dates among strangers. I, for example, could never speak openly with someone I know of the opposite sex, would be too afraid of losing face. But it should be quite easy with someone of the same sex, especially between women: expressing intimacy, putting arms around each others’ necks, kissing each other on the face, all wouldn't arouse others’ suspicions. Wouldn't the love fostered in this kind of daily life be more fundamental than that with a stranger?

More on media management and PR spin, MindMeters.com blogger Fang Jun looks at how one spokeswoman from Sohu.com handled questions regarding the major Chinese search engine's profits following this year's World Cup, and links it to the messy showdown between Google and Chinese search engine Baidu in:

“这些是公关数字,不是投资者关系数字。”

“These are PR figures, not investor relations figures.”

搜狐CFO余楚媛在发布财报的分析师电话会议上的回答太强悍了,回答分析师对之前搜狐所说的世界杯收入的具体数字,她回答说:“这些是公关数字,不是投资者关系数字。”
ThinkEquity Partners的迈克尔·张的提问:“我们已在新闻中看到,世界杯相关的营收额达人民币3000万~5000万元。你能详细说明一下吗?换句话说,世界杯的营收对第二季度的贡献有多大?”
搜狐CFO余楚媛回答:“我想,世界杯带来的营收额外增量,我不想给出绝对数字,根据GAAP准则,分摊在第二、三季度的营收额外增量大致是200万美元,分摊在两个季度里,你在新闻中看到的实际上都是非GAAP数字,包括折扣和税费在内的总额,这些是公关数字,不是投资者关系数字。”
因此,在我们今年初签署的框架协议之外的营收额外增量大约是200万美元(基于GAAP会计准则)。
张朝阳: 额外增量(Incremental)的意思是,完全由世界杯产生的广告营收。
公关数字,有特色,哈。
与百度CTO刘建国关于google抄袭百度的说法有得拼:
如果要说抄袭,其实Google也抄袭了我们很多东西。比如相关连锁,我们是拼音连锁可以翻译成汉字,他们后来也学习了。我们有新窗口打开功能他们没有,他们后来也学习了。从这个意义讲,他们也是抄袭。不过我们尊敬Google,觉得搜索业界应该朝着培育市场的方向努力。

Sohu CFO Yu Chuyuan‘s answers in an analysts’ teleconference in which financial reports were issued were too fierce. In response to one analyst's questions regarding the numbers behind Sohu's stated profits during the World Cup, she said, “These are PR figures, not investor relations figures.”
ThinkEquity Partners’ Michael Zhang asked: “We've already seen in the news that World Cup-related earnings have reached between thirty and fifty million RMB. Could you explain that in more detail? Or to put it another way, how big a contribution were World Cup earnings to the second quarter?”

Sohu CFO Yu Chuyuan answered, “While I think the World Cup brought about increased earnings, I don't want to give an exact number. According to GAAP criterion, earnings for shares in the second and third quarters increased by approximately USD two million. The shares in the two quarters, what you saw in the news are in fact non-GAAP figures, including discounts and taxes on the total amount. These are PR figures, not investor relations figures.”

Therefore, aside from the framework agreement signed early this year, extra increased earnings amount to roughly USD two million (based on GAAP accounting criterion).

Zhang Chaoyang: What extra increase means is advertising earnings completely brought by the World Cup.

PR figures, quite special. Ha.

Worth comparing to what Baidu CTO Liu Jianguo had to say about Google copying Baidu:

If we're going to talk about copying, then actually Google has copied many things from us. For example, our respective links. We've made romanized links translatable into Chinese characters, and later they learned this too. We had ‘new window open’ function before they did, and later they learned this too. Speaking of the significance of this, they are also copying. However, we respect Google, and feel that the search engine industry should be working hard to look in the direction of market development.

Several days ago news surfaced of a violent riot between protesting factory workers in the southern Chinese factory-laden city of Dongguan and police. Here is what neighboring Guangzhou-based blogger-journalist X Marden had to say:

纪念的权利

The Right to Commemorate

晚上接报料:东莞桑园工业区亨利美尔敦玩具厂外来工抗议资方超时工作非人待遇发生冲突,多名外来工死亡,几十人被捕和失踪。
我还不知道这位报料者身份,但似乎他已经给我手机打过几次报料电话了,前两次都是深圳外来工遭遇暴力事件。我所能做的,就是把新闻线索提交给珠三角新闻编辑部,只是面对这样血腥的“群体性事件”,记者是否会去现场采访?如今形势之下,报道一般是无法见报的,更糟糕的是,记者在场也会被当作新闻单位违规的例证。
又是东莞,又是血案。东莞似乎是一个火山口,外来工权益遭侵犯的现象严重,这种情况是否还会继续被漠视?
顺便说说,刚好看到本报后天上市的特刊《东莞外来工报告“丰碑”》。说实在,“丰碑”这两个汉字看起来有些刺眼。这个词汇通常被用来形容革命烈士,外来工已经成了“烈士”,但是革命?这是他们奢望却难于被承认的权利。

附录梁文道先生的一篇纪念文章,未删节版。

Tonight I received a news tip: “Clash Has Occured As Migrant Workers At Dongguan Sangyuan Industrial Park Merton Poopack Toy Factory Protest Overtime Work And Inhumane Treatment, Several Migrant Workers Have Died, Several Dozen People Have Been Arrested And Abducted.”

I still don't know the identity of the person who sent me that, but it seems he's already rung my cell phone several times to give me news tips. The last two times were when migrant workers in Shenzhen met with violence. All I can do in response to these bloody “mass incidents” is to pass the scoop onto the Pearl River Delta news editorial department. Will reporters go to the scene to cover it? Under the current situation, the report would pretty much never get printed. The worst part is, journalists at the scene will also be considered examples of news workplaces breaking the rules. Again, Dongguan; again, a bloody case. Dongguan seems like the mouth of a volcano, with the serious phenomenon of migrant laborers’ rights being infringed upon; will this situation just continue to be ignored?

By the way, just happened to see that the day after tomorrow my newspaper will have a special feature ‘Dongguan Migrant Workers Report a “Monument”‘. To tell the truth, these two characters ‘monument’ [丰碑], are glaring to eye. This term is usually used to describe revolutionary martyrs. Migrant workers have already become ‘martyrs’, but revolutionaries? In their wildest wishes, but yet, also their hard-earned right to be recognized as such.

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