While China didn’t make it into this year’s World Cup, there is interest in the tournament and will be ample opportunity to catch the games.

Andrea has an English-language lineup of the scheduled matches to be aired on CCTV 1, 2, and 5 (all with Chinese-language commentary). Virtual China offers a link to sites that will webcast the event.:

There will clearly be a demand during that 24 delay, and it will clearly be met.

Sohu.com and SMGBB.cn, a subsidiary of Shanghai Media Group, have partnered to provide the online 2006 FIFA World Cup for tens of millions of Chinese viewers, if not more. Sohu is also the exclusive online media provider of the Beijing 2008 Olympics (talk about a good place to be), and the 2006 World Cup can be seen as an early dry-run.

And for those in Shanghai, the Shanghaiist notes where you can catch events on a really big screen.:

The Shanghai Film Art Center will be showing some World Cup matches on a 40-square-meter screen, the Shanghai Daily reports. Matches shown will be:

• England vs. Paraguay, June 10, 9 pm
• All quarterfinal matches, June 30, July 1 and July 2, 11 pm and 3 am
• Both semifinal matches, July 5 and July 6, 3 am
• The championship match, July 10, 2 am
• They will be using a digital projector to show CCTV-5’s feed. The theater holds 288 people and 125 tickets (50 yuan each) have already been sold for the England/Paraguay match.

Schedules are subject to revision or hijacking by ‘evil cults.’:

Television signals illegally broadcast by the Falun Gong cult cut into transmissions using the Sino Satellite (SINOSAT) from June 23 to 30, blocking the World Cup finals for viewers in some rural and remote areas in China.

The Radio Administration of the Ministry of Information Industry said on July 8 that the hijacking of nine China Central Television Station (CCTV) channels and 10 provincial TV channels was committed by the overseas cult organization of Falun Gong, manipulated by its ringleader Li Hongzhi.

The hijack severely interfered with the normal broadcast of China’s TV programs and operations of China’s satellite, which violated the basic rules of civil telecommunications and international conventions, jeopardized China’s national security and violated the rights and interests of the public.

The hijack mainly affected television users in rural and remote areas covered by the government scheme of “TV signals to every village.” They were viewing celebrations for the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, the World Cup finals and other major domestic and international news when the illegal signals occurred.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, world cup

Those who thought that the red wine ice cream mentioned in the previous post wasn’t appetizing probably would not enjoy a yogurt soju cocktail.:

I had mentioned before that I had discovered some great soju cocktails at Indio. Since then, I have successfully attempted to recreate them at home, particularly the yogurt soju cocktail.

It is built like a highball, meaning that the ingredients are poured directly into the glass in a certain order with no stirring or shaking.

1 shot of Soju
Fill glass 2/3 full with Drinkable Plain Yogurt
Top with Lemon Lime Soda (Sprite, Chilsung Cider, 7-Up)

I have always had it without ice, but I’m sure ice is a welcome option on a hot day. It’s a very refreshing drink and not as high in alcohol as other highballs. This means you can drink a lot of these and not get dehydrated while having your summer BBQs.

(Via Buhkan Mountain Breakdown)

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, korea, northeast asia, south korea

A Singapore study has discovered that soy sauce is a better antioxidant than red wine.:

BEIJING, June 5 — Dark soya sauce, widely used in East Asia, may prove to be more effective than red wine and vitamin C in combating human cell damage, researchers in Singapore said.

Scientists found that the sauce — derived from fermented soya beans — contains antioxidant properties about 10 times more effective than red wine and 150 times more potent than vitamin C, Singapore’s Straits Times reported Saturday.

Antioxidants — found in red wine, fruits and vegetables — counter the effects of free radicals, unstable atoms which attack human cells and tissues. Free radicals have been linked to the aging process as well as a range of ailments including Parkinson’s disease, cancer and heart disease. The National University of Singapore study also found that the sauce improved blood flow by as much as 50 percent in the hours after consumption.

The original Straits Times article is only available by subscription, so it isn’t immediately clear what volume of soy sauce needs to be equivalent to a glass of red wine. AsiaPundit is a regular consumer of soy sauce, but consuming a full glass of it would be vomit inducing.

That noted, Japanese gourmands should have little trouble selecting a healthy dessert, having access to wine- and soy-flavored ice creams.:

Soy Sauce flavor — Putting the ’scream’ into ‘we all scream for ice cream’
Used in a wide variety of culinary dishes soy sauce is said to be “the flavor of Japan.”

But the dubious choice to add soy sauce to milk and sugar and pack it in a punnet has made the condiment a standout pick to headline the Wackiest World of Japanese Ice Cream and possibly soy, er, soiled ice cream as we know it forever.

Soy sauce ice cream was not a simple choice to lead, though, considering it was competing against such flavors as pit viper, Indian curry, miso ramen and salad.

And it was hard to choose soy sauce over the Pearl of the Orient — Pearl-flavored ice cream.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, japan, singapore

AsiaPundit is pleased to announce the commencement of the new round of Asia Blog Awards. The awards are based on the Japanese financial year, which ends on March 31, and nominations are now open for the April 1-June 30 period, full-year awards are to be based on the quarterly contests.

Details are below, nominations for the below categories can be made on the individual pages linked below until the end of June 16 (Samoan time).

Awards are at present limited to English-language or dual-language sites.

Region/Country Specific Blogs:

• Best China Blog
• Best Hong Kong Blog
• Best India Blog
• Best Indonesia Blog
• Best Japan Blog
• Best Korea Blog
• Best Malaysia Blog
• Best Mekong Blog (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar/Burma)
• Best Mongolian or ‘Stan’ Blog (Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan)
• Best Philippine Blog
• Best Singapore Blog
• Best South Asia Blog (Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet)
• Best Taiwan Blog
• Best Thai Blog
• Best of the Rest (Bhutan, Timor Leste, Brunei etc…)

Non-region specific awards:

• Best Activist Blog
• Best BGLT Blog
• Best Bridge Blog
• Best Business/Economics Blog
• Best Design
• Best Diarist
• Best Essayist
• Best Food Blog
• Best Group Blog
• Best Humor Blog
• Best Original Reporting
• Best Photo Blog
• Best Podcast
• Best Satirist
• Best Sex Blog
• Best Travel Blog
• Best Video Blog

Podcasts, photo and video blogs must be based on original content — which means a site such as Danwei.tv is acceptable but TV in Japan is not (although it is an excellent site).

Some categories may be deleted or combined if they lack a full slate nominations - and some may be added should it be warranted.

Winners will be judged in equal parts on: (a) votes, (b) technorati ranking and (c) judges’ selection.

While judges will naturally have biases, they will hopefully offset imbalances in other areas (such as inevitable cheating in the voting and inflationary blogroll alliances in the Technorati ranks).

The names or sites of the judges will be public.

Judges will be ineligible for nomination. As the awards largely intend on providing exposure to lesser-known sites of merit, we are hopeful that authors of ‘A-list’ sites that tend to dominate such contests will disqualify themselves by being judges.

The contest has been endorsed by previous ABA host Simon who is also serving as a judge (thereby disqualifying Simon World).

Traffic — the most telling and accurate measure of a site’s populatity — may be a consideration in future awards. However, at present, there is no clear or universal way to accurately measure and contrast traffic (sites such as Sitemeter, Statcounter offer results that cannot be compared, while services such as Alexa.com do not work for sites that are not hosted on independent domains).

This is all imperfect and will be tweaked in future events (with transparency, of course).

Most importantly, this is intended to be fun.

Technorati Tags: asia, asia blog awards, east asia, northeast asia, puppy, southeast asia

AsiaPundit is deeply skeptical of most of the ‘news’ published by the FLG’s Epoch Times, however if this is true it would be welcome (even though it would diminish some of the iconic power of the image).:

The “Unknown Rebel” who famously stood up to a column of tanks during the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 is rumored to be living in Taiwan where he reportedly settled in 1993.The “tank man” Wang Weilin has been an adviser on ceramic artifacts and antiques to Taiwan’s National Palace Museum, the Epoch Times quoted a Hong Kong-based professor who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying.

The photograph of Wang standing alone in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989 is perhaps the most famous image from the protests.

The professor told the Epoch Times that Wang, born in Shaoyang in the southern province of Hunan, was the captain of the Mawangduei Archaeology Team of Changsha, Hunan in early June 1989 when he traveled with a union group to Beijing to take part in the pro-democracy demonstrations in the Chinese capital.

According to the unnamed professor, Wang went into hiding in China for three years and seven months after the bloody crackdown. He then reached Hong Kong in early 1993 from where he headed to Taiwan.

(Via Japundit)

Technorati Tags: china, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan

More at Global Voices.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia