CHINA - Camera Phone and Citizen Journalism

“Today, Hong Kong’s Chinese newspapers are united - they all use the photos taken by ONE MAN on their front pages! I venture to say that it is unprecedented! Leung Siu-kin, a journalism student, happened to witness a train fire. “

JAPAN - Baidu Thinks It Can Play in Japan

” Facing slower growth and increased competition at home, Baidu.com (BIDU), the dominant search engine in China, is making its first foray overseas. On a call with analysts following the company’s announcement of earnings for the fourth quarter, Baidu Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robin Li said the company will spend $15 million trying to replicate its at-home success in Japan this year.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR - Year of Pig signals conflicts before new world order: soothsayers

“”It is anticipated that there will be more international conflicts and disharmony, which will even lead to regional warfare, uprising and unrest, or the overthrow of governments in certain countries,”

SINGAPORE - Tips On Flying With Singapore Airlines

“If you want most of your unreasonable requests to be fulfilled (such as asking for a gin and tonic with triple gin), ask the youngest looking stewardess.”

CHINA - Behind The Reporting On The Case of Chen Liangyu

“Even though a ban might be appearing, the reporters continued to collect information and check out the evidence. This went relatively smoothly. After all, we are a specialized financial newspaper and we are experienced in investigating wealthy tycoons.”

CHINA - Blogger Wang Xiaofeng sticks it to the man

“Wang is not afraid to poke fun at sacred cows or to curse China’s excitable young Internet users. His acerbic style and sense of humor have made him your correspondent’s favorite Chinese blogger. In person, he does not disappoint.”

CHINA - Playing straight sometimes misses bottom line

” “I’m telln’ you. You know what you need to do? Make it 10 times that. But when you come to sell me an ad, give me 50 percent off first of all. Then, give me a massive kickback, and I’m gonna book ads like crazy.” He’s like “That’s the way it works, works, don’t you know?”

CHINA - Beer in Shanghai, part 2: challenge

” I defy the most sophisticated beer taster to tell any of these beers apart from any others in a blind taste test. It would be like picking up a slice of Wonder Bread and guessing whether it came from Orlando or Dubuque.”

THAILAND - The 10 Commandments of Thai love

“The wonderfully caring Ministry of Culture has just launched ‘10 Commandments of Love’ in an attempt to prevent teenagers getting too carried away on Valentine’s Day and getting up to hanky-panky in short-time hotels.”

THAILAND - Valentines curfew to stop teen sex

“A third of Thai teenage girls think Valentine’s Day is an excellent time to lose their virginity, and police in Bangkok are out to stop them. Police in the capital, famous around the world for its fleshpots, will enforce a 10 pm curfew on February 14.”

NORTH KOREA - Could hawkishness help North Korea?

“If the deal yesterday is implemented, then the world will be better off than after 1994, because the Yongbyon reactor and all other facilities will be dismantled, not just frozen. If it isn’t, then that just proves the neocons right - that Kim wasn’t to be trusted.”

“when Awards season comes around, all the rules go flying out the window. It starts when the guy selling pirated discs at the entrance to the subway out of an open suitcase on the sidewalk has a copy of every film that’s been nominated for a Golden Globe. And from then on, I’m able to buy a clear copy of every movie nominated for an award no matter how recently it’s been introduced to theaters. All one has to be able to do is accept the notices scrolling across the screen that say “Property of Rupert Murdoch” or some such thing.”

“n Rajasthan capital Jaipur, Bharatiya Kamgar and Students’ Federation of India, organisations affiliated to the Shiv Sena and CPI-M respectively, said they would “blacken the faces” of those making public displays of affection.”

HONG KONG - China changes, not Hong Kong

“..most urban centers in this part of the world have changed beyond recognition. China is the extreme case; its Mao-era cities were an unnatural, political aberration, like Pyongyang is today. But for organic urban development it would be hard to beat Kuala Lumpur. Bangkok is not far behind and Jakarta, too, has been transformed. Seoul and Taipei have acquired state-of-the-art subway systems. Only Manila has visibly deteriorated.”

NORTH KOREA - US Falls for Phony Fuel-for-Nukes Deal

“At the end of the day, the agreement again proves that notwithstanding its huffing and puffing, the US can be played and tricked and eventually worn down–and beaten–at the bargaining table.”

CHINA - No queue-barging day

“Did anyone see some poor guy at the airport check-in desk get sent peremptorily to the back of the line with a flea in his ear and a muttered “it’s no queue-barging day, didn’t you know?”"

NORTH KOREA - Boyish U.S. envoy becomes heartthrob in China

“Little known in his home country, the boyish-looking U.S. assistant secretary of state has become a celebrity in China’s capital and not just for his role as Washington’s chief envoy in talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. .. “He’s so charming and attractive,” said Li Kenna, a desk clerk at the five-star hotel Hill stays at in Beijing. “He sometimes asks me how I am in the mornings,” she said. “He’s one of our nicest guests.”"

CHINA - Chinese netspeak: Now, that’s a different language

“You may have honed your Chinese language skills for years — or, for that matter, you may be a native Chinese — but when you get into a Chinese web forum, you may feel you have stumbled into a bizarre world where every letter is recognizable but the text as a whole reads like Greek.”

CHINA - The Open Letter To Sina.com From The Lawyer-Bloggers

“…while Sina.com’s business has been growing, it lacks business ethics. While providing the space for our blogs, it has also seriously violated our freedom of speech.”

CHINA - Shanghai struggles to build a livable city

“They know me pretty well in this neighborhood, because I like to ride through here a lot,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the growling motor. “What they don’t know,” he adds with a hint of regret,  “is that I’m also the guy who is going to make this way of life disappear.”

CHINA - Video of the Chinese football brawl in England

“Notice the nice flying kicks from Chinese players at around 00:22 and 00:24″

JAPAN - Panderers in Japan

“Japander:n.,& v.t:. 1. a western star who uses his or her fame to make large sums of money in a short time by advertising products in Japan that they would probably never use. ~er (see synecure, prostitute) 2. to make an ass of oneself in Japanese media.

JAPAN - How do free manga make money in a declining manga market?

“Since my last translation of something about the anime industry was something of a hit, I thought I’d do a little pandering an take a look at an emerging free manga in Japan as reported by Weekly Oriental Economy.”

CHINA - Maoist revival in China

“Thirty years after Mao Zedong’s death, nostalgia has taken hold. The Chinese remember the time when he dominated the entire country. The Maoist current has become a real social and political force in the country.”

JAPAN - Review of GAIJIN HANZAI Mag: what’s wrong with it?

“The first impression is one which hardly needs explanation. Crazed faces of killers putting bullet holes in the cover, with classic ethnic profiles (center stage is what appears to be a slitty-eyed member of the Chinese Mafia), with a Jihadist, generic white and black people, and caricatures of both N and S Korean leadership in the very back–all coming to get you, the reader.”

“Deng Xiaoping had this famous quote attributed to him, which goes something like this “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.”… And I realised that this could be easily adapted for our Singaporean context, but with a twist in the meaning. In Singapore, it doesn’t matter if you are black sheep or white sheep, you are all still sheep.”

CHINA - China’s U-23 team brawls with QPR in friendly

“The Team China (China PR’s Olympic U-23 team) friendly match with English League Championship club Queen’s Park Rangers was abandoned after a brawl in the second half. The English club was leading 2-1 at the time. Zheng Tao was knocked unconscious during the fracas and rushed to hospital as was captain Chen Tao.”

INDIA - Indians Buy Organs With Impunity

“Authorities arrest three organ brokers in the state of Tamil Nadu, where hundreds say they’ve illegally sold their organs whil the government turns a blind eye. Scott Carney reports from Chennai,”

“l’ve had to ask a lot of Chinese people about this marriage thing in China, to understand this obsession with marriage in the dawn of one’s life. It is an absolute and pure motivation for life and living in China: to get married and to propogate the blood line.”

PHILIPPINES - How To Spot Fake 5-Peso Coins

“Some enterprising criminals . . . have gone against the grain and proceeded anyway with the production of counterfeit five-peso and ten-peso coins, thinking that most people will not too closely examine the coins they receive. After all, as the Tagalog saying goes, barya lang ‘yan - why bother with mere coins?”

SINGAPORE - The rich little place that the others love to hate

“Despite 40 years of expressing fraternal warmth at meetings of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, the region’s leaders never miss an opportunity to pick a fight with Singapore. “

CHINA - Girls cautiously pole dance their way to fitness

“Treadmills are run-of-the-mill — Luo Lan wants the Chinese masses to pole dance instead.. As manager of Beijing’s first pole dancing school, Luo says she is trying to make exercise fun — and not morally corrupt anyone in a country where this kind of  dancing is associated with seedy bars and sex is still a taboo topic.”

CHINA - Flower Restaurant encourages painting nearly naked models

” Nanjing restaurant that promoted itself by encouraging customers to draw on scantily clad models has stirred controvers among diners The restaurant, which specializes in dishes cooked with fresh flowers, announced that people who ate more than  1,000 yuan ($129) per person in dishes would be allowed to draw roses on the bodies of three models, who wear only facial masks and underwear.”

FENG SHUI - Microsoft’s Bad Feng Shui

“After a NY Times story about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, many folks have been commenting on the tiny size of his offic as seen in the news photo. But what’s even more surprising for folks who believe in the stuff, is how incredibly bad the feng shui is for his office.”

CHINA - Sold on a Stereotype

“In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of making money ‘the Jewish way.’”… “One promises “The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish.”

CHINA - China’s moon plans

“Is China planning to mine the moon? This theory has been floating around for years, and China has officially denied that it plans to dig up helium-3 on the moon.”

HONG KONG - Hong Kong Newspaper Drama Continues

“Sacked editor loses case in labor tribunal against South China Morning Post over claims editor-in-chief fired him for making a joke.”

JAPAN - the Mario-phone that never was

“After the unwarranted hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone, which won’t see the light of day for months yet, we now have a little intrigue over a similarly hybrid phone that never was and never will be.”

SINGAPORE - Singapore bans madonna’s confessions tour DVD

“Madonna’s record breaking Confessions Tour filmed at London’s Wembley Arena during her worldwide sold-out 25-city run in 2006 has been banned in Singapore for her performance on a massive neon cross in a mock-crucifixion.”

SOUTH KOREA - Korean Anti-Semitism

“What has always surprised me in Korea was the very ubiquitousness of anti-Semitic remarks and beliefs I hear from Korean people, another nation that doesn’t really have an obvious reason to have stereotypes about Jews. We’re not talking stereotypes of the Jews as “cheap” or “nerdy” or some superficial stuff you might have picked up in Hollywood films over the years, but some straight-up Protocols of the Elders of Zion, conspiracy-level sneering, leering, and spewing of nearly venomous invective.”

THAILAND - Sorry I’m 25 years late - I got on the wrong bus to go shopping

“It was just a normal shopping trip when Jaeyana Beuraheng bade farewell to her eight children as she left to cross the border into Malaysia. But it would be 25 years before she would find her way home. Now, at the age of 76, she has been reunited with her family and has finally told how her misfortune began when she boarded the wrong bus.”

SINGAPORE - PAP ’sock puppet’ leak a possible PAP ploy

“This is the objective of the counter-insurgents then. It is not to sell the Government message. That is the superficial level. It is to keep everyone separated. It is to introduce suspicion and mistrust into discourse. It is to divide ultimately.”

“I enjoyed this 1941 documentary about the life of a middle-class family in Japan. Released right before Pearl Harbor, this 10-minute film provides an interesting look at the customs, clothing, architecture, culture, and routines of life in Japan 70 years ago.”

NORTH KOREA - Kim Jong-il Wins Peace Prize

“Dear Leader Kim Jong-il wins the Kim Il-sung Prize for promoting world peace and security, according to China News Service “

JAPANB - Os Tan Girls, XP Tan Video

“The OS-tans are an internet phenomenon in Japan where the OS-tan (or OS Girls) are the personification of several Windows operating systems.”

CHINA - Lost in translation: policing unintentionally hilarious Chinese signage

“Stuck in Beijing traffic recently, Mr. Kurtzig noticed workers replacing one of the classics: “Dongda Hospital for Anus and Intestine Disease Beijing.” The new sign: “Hospital of Proctology.” He grabbed his BlackBerry and emailed the news to friends around the globe. Their reactions, he says, were swift, and mostly unfavorable. “Nooooooooooo,” read an email from one friend.”

CHINA - Chinabounder’s back and he’s mad

“Last year a blog named Chinabounder that recounted the foreign blogger’s sexual experiences with Chinese women enraged a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The professor started an Internet manhunt that scared Chinabounder into silence… But now China Bounder is back, and he’s fighting mad.”

CHINA - The Inevitable Collapse of China’s Banks

“Peek behind the Wizard of Oz’s (or Shanghai’s) curtain, and you’ll see that China’s double-digit percentage growth rates are an economic sleight of hand that have come at a price of escalating bad debt and non-performing loans. At the end of 2004, bank debt in China stood at $3.7 trillion — about twice the size of its GDP.”

CHINA - Has Google Failed in China?

“I am going to buck the trend of most analysts and argue that Google has a huge opportunity in China to retake market share from Baidu if it can get the right management team in place, delegate authority to them, and localize services.”

CHINA - The Mass Incident in Dazhu County

” Finally, here is a mass incident that deserves the n me. You can compare the official version versus the unofficial versio s on blogs and forums (more precisely, as found in the Baidu and Google blogs because the subject is banned.”

INDONESIA - Jakarta floods leave the question: Who is to blame?

“It is impossible to stop the rain. But it is possible to minimize floods, or at least be prepared them. Unfortunately, what (has) happened in Jakarta (is) just the opposite. It (has) long been predicted that major flooding would hit the city. In 1996, it was severely affected, and then, there was a warning such a disaster could happen once every five years. “

The above is taken from the website of the Indonesia Water Partnership and was written, yes, five years ago.

JAPAN - Journal of an American in Japanese prison

“George wrote the journal while spending a few weeks in a Japanese Ryuchijyo (”Prison for people that haven’t yet been convicted of any crime”). In part one, George explained what he did to land in prison (basically, he behaved like a drunk, violent jerk and hurt a cab driver).”

CHINA - The Skyscraper Indicator: Why Now Is Not The Time To Buy

“The “Skyscraper Indicator”, used by Edward Dewey in the 1940s, correlates human optimism to the number of high-rise buildings erected. Simply put, when humans are optimistic, they build toward the sky. Major economic downturns usually follow.”

INDONESIA - Water water everywhere and not a drop of leadership in sight

“The floods in Jakarta seem to be getting worse as bad weather prevails. Latest news reports estimate up to 200,000 people being made homeless. . . Driving around Jakarta, listening to the accounts of others and listening and watching news reports on radio and TV provide an astounding impression to this national disaster: there is nobody really in charge.

MALAYSIA - Dr M nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

“It is now known that four non-governmental organisations in Bosnia and Herzegovina have nominated Dr Mahathir — the most demonised Prime Minister in Malaysian press history — for the Nobel Peace Prize 2007.”

SOUTH KOREA - Freedom From Consumer Slavery

“The Korean government decided to ignore international standardization efforts back in 1998 because it had to 빨리빨리 everything. Gotta have it now, can’t wait, can’t wait. Now that the world, having been on one standard, has moved in a different direction, Korea suddenly finds itself sitting high and dry. And now, Korean sites don’t play well with the rest of the planet.

SINGAPORE - Alert: PAP moves to counter criticism in cyberspace… anonymously

“It’s a shameful day for Singapore in light of the international blogosphere. According to the Straits Times (an intentional leak?), the People’s Action Party (PAP) has members going into Internet forums and blogs to rebut anti-establishment views and to put up postings anonymously.”

CHINA - Saturday PR blog: I’m sorry, the government has killed your story

“Most of the time, self-censorship is the rule. However the propaganda ministry –中宣部– also sends out guidance on sensitive issues to major media. Editors who want to keep their jobs are expected to toe the line.”

“The most interesting thing about China’s newly issued ban is that it implies the country has in recent years been home to a rather sizable market for human sperm, eggs and embryos. And that that market was tainted enough by fraud and general underhandedness that the government felt obliged to step in.”

CHINA - The People’s Investment Company – the early reports

“If Goldman can own a part of a Chinese bank, why can’t China also own a bit of Goldman?”

SINGAPORE - Microsoft Vista almost “SI” in Singapore

“4 in Hokkien slang (SI), one of Singapore’s dialects, sounds like death….That would have given the Feng Shui experts some business to advise Microsoft Singapore on how to ward off that bad luck of encountering the number 4 during the launch. “

SINGAPORE - A Small Kind of Joy

“That day I found out that CY was a Christian. And whenever he locked himself in his office, it meant that he had won a case. Someone had been sentenced to die. And so CY would pray.”

“The “No Pork” podcast URL was forwarded to me some days back. At the time, I refrained from blogging on the matter because I did not want to confer publicity upon such material Events have since overtaken this resolution. Xiaxue posted the podcast on her blog. Her mention of it, in turn, was cited in a Forum letter to the Straits Times. “

CHINA - The heart of an ‘evil’ matter

“Another report came and went this week about the Chinese government’s practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners for transplant with hardly a speck of take-up in the international press.”

WEIRDNESS - The bio-cultural imperialism of Sid Meier’s Civilization

“Kacpar Poblocki’s piece is a lovely cultural-studiesy rant about the Deleuze ‘body without organs’ piece of wet-ware that our bodies become when we exist in the state of “becoming-state”—that is to say, when we play too much Civ.”

SOUTH KOREA - ‘Study pill’ abuse

“There are parents who are entering their children into “learning clinics” where the kids are being given the drug MPH, which is normally used to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) because it’s believed that by taking the drug, the kids will be able to study and learn better, which hopefully, will result in higher grades.”

JAPAN - Tarot of the evil mouthless one from Sanrio

“Based on Hello Kitty cartoon characters and Rider-Waite imagery, this deck is as cute as the cover card claims! I am not that familiar with the cartoon, but the meanings are obvious enough to anyone. Cute or not, these would still be very easy to read with. “

“If the police choose to raid their kennel while we are gone and the dog doesn’t have a license, there is nothing they can do to stop them from taking the dog away. Even if our dog is really cute. And he is.”

NORTH KOREA - Weird but wired

“Internet dating is only one of the surprises about the internet in North Korea, a country almost as cut off from the virtual world as it is from the real one. “

INTERNET FREEDOM - Dictatorships get to grips with Web 2.0

“A decade ago, regime opponents in Vietnam or Tunisia were still printing leaflets in their basements and handing them out to fellow militants at clandestine meetings. Independent newspapers were no more than a few hastily-stapled photocopies distributed secretly.”

TRAVEL - Most Dangerous Destinations 2007

“New to our list this year: Sri Lanka, Chad and Lebanon. Lush tropical beauty made Sri Lanka a popular holiday destination, but a ceasefire between the government and the separatist Tamil Tigers broke down last year.”

CHINA - Media Ethics Wanting (II): Towards A Solution

“Both the number of defenders of hong bao and the rising practice of blackmail by the media are evidence that we in the public relations profession in China are up to our necks in a moral and ethical quagmire.  It is time to extract ourselves from this bog.”

JAPAN - Posters of Japanese Labor and Social Movement

“OISR.ORG Poster Exhibition: Images of Japanese Labor and Social Movement in the Post-1945 Japan, is a great on-line exhibition by the Ohara Institute for Social Research. Hundreds of vintage posters of confederations, industry federations and enterprise.”

CHINA - Crisis and opportunity

“Hilarious, then, to discover that it is simply not true. The Chinese word for crisis - wēijī - actually means . . . crisis.”

CHINA - Zhang Jiehai is Enraged

“Remember Zhang Jiehai, a Chinese professor of psychology and member of the Shanghai Academy of Science? Sure you do, he’s the guy who has written such treasures as,: “Look! Look at the Faces of These Ugly Foreign Men!”

“In the restaurant, on the subway, around the company water coolers, the stock market is all people are talking about these days. Sound familiar? It should. The same exact phenomenon preceded the bursting of the last stock market bubble in the West in March 2000 — the difference being the Chinese market is even less regulated and more corrupt, and at the moment really, really expensive.”

CHINA - How to make a core State policy look like it is working

“There is no magic wand in China. Instead, there is a slow-moving army of 70 million-odd cadres and bureaucrats who need to be made to improve the situation. Needless to say, getting them moving is difficult. But there are ways.”

CHINA - When is something newsworthy?

“Don’t listen to everyone’s BS and think that being a journalist is dangerous as hell, that after you’ve written a report on something, there’ll be people waiting in an alley to cap you when you get off work at night, or when you’re  going out with your wife, you get in the car and it blows up with a bang….nothing like that; being a reporter is safe.”

INTERNET FREEDOM - Web giants ask for feds’ help on censorship

“Google, Yahoo and Microsoft representatives on Tuesday implored the U.S. government to help set ground rules for complying with demands by foreign law enforcement agencies for user records or censorship.”

INDIA - Why Dwarfy! What Happened?

“As a special surprise, we present the now legendary comicbook Nagraj vs Shakoora the Magician. Copyright infringements and grammar be dammed!!”

CHINA - Meizu’s M8? Apple lawyers, start your engines

“We’re not sure if the pics above are the result of an engorged, Chinese fanboy fantasy or actual product renderings of Meizu’s rumored M8. We wouldn’t be surprised either way what with China-based Meizu’s history of uh, Apple inspired design.”

Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) said in a January 19, 2007, press release that “SEAPA views with grave concern” a landmark lawsuit filed in Malaysia on January 4. 2007 “by a major news group and its top executives against two bloggers for ‘defamation’ and ‘malicious falsehoods’.”