The Chief ponders plastic surgery in China, favoring the natural look and, moreover, preferring that Asian women look Asian.:

Every two minutes somewhere in China, a woman has cosmetic surgery to give her Western double eyelids. It is now a $3 billion business, divided among 1 million plastic surgery clinics employing 6 million people. Hilariously, Beijing hosted the first “Miss Artificial Beauty” for “manmade beauties” in 2004 - contestants included a transsexual.
The plastic fantastic here is more for investment than personal vanity - what’s going to make you stand out from 1.3 billion other Chinese, to get that job or that husband? Rounder eyes, or a straighter nose, or longer legs (the bones are broken and forced apart by pins. More bone grows to fill the gap, but is hardly strong enough to carry the body’s weight. Ouch!). Then again, every 25 minutes somewhere in China, someone complains that plastic surgery had disfigured them.

In Indonesla, Indcoup argues that Baywatch has been a negative influence.:

They should never have allowed Baywatch to be shown in Asia.
Cos week after week of seeing ultrasexy American beach babes has really affected the Asian psyche, and even resulted in feelings of gross inadequacy given that most Asian women – the Chinese in particular – are not exactly noted for their measurements in the mammary department.
So what happened?
The obvious of course – Asian women started to go in for breast implants in a big way.
Done professionally, this ain’t a problem of course.
But it is when a lot of women who can’t afford high priced breast implants decide to opt for a much cheaper solution.
So what do you have?
Thousands and thousands of young Chinese women maimed by an “amazing gel”:
LI MEI is slim, with hair that falls almost to her waist, and pretty enough to draw looks in the street. But her husband refuses to come near her, and, in any case, her breasts are too painful to be touched.
She is one of hundreds of thousands of Chinese women who wanted bigger breasts and spent several hundred pounds at beauty salons for injections of Ao Mei Ding — or Amazing Gel. But in Mrs Li’s case, such as countless others, the operation went wrong.
The gel has formed hard lumps in her breasts, caused infections and migrated around her body.

We can be thankful that Korea’s top celebrities are setting a positive example with their natural beauty.:

I don’t see how anyone can look at these pictures and say that the woman in the photos have not been under the knife.
To my untouched eyes, the only ones that might be as “pure” as the writer would like to believe are Kim Tae-hee and Song Hae-gyo. You make the call…

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

Reporters Without Borders has condemned China for allegedly blocking Google.com.:

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the current unprecedented level of Internet filtering in China, which means the Google.com search engine can no longer be accessed in most provinces - although the censored Chinese version, Google.cn, is still accessible - and software designed in the United States to get round censorship now only works with great difficulty.

The organisation also deplored the fact that the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June has been used to tighten the vice on Chinese Internet users.
“It was only to be expected that Google.com would be gradually sidelined after the censored version was launched in January,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China. It is deplorable that Chinese Internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content.”
Internet users in many major Chinese cities have had difficulty in connecting to the uncensored international version of Google for the past week. The search engine was totally unaccessible throughout the country on 31 May. The blocking then gradually extended to Google News and Google Mail. So the Chinese public is now reduced to using the censored Chinese versions of these services.

There are problems with Google’s service but these are being massively overstated by RSF.

Google and G-Mail services are still working fine here at AsiaPundit Global Headquarters in Shanghai. There were intermittent outages last week, but there was nothing of the sort that indicated a firewall-level block. Beijing residents had a more prolonged outage, although AP understands that this has largely been resolved. The comments at the Peking Duck indicate no blockage in South China.

AP has also heard, indirectly, confirmation that Beijing was raising the level of its filtering ahead of the June 4th anniversary. Other services such as an overseas hosted POP e-mail account were also inaccessible last week, and general internet service was sluggish.

Still, there was a particular problem with Google. Andrew Lih has done very solid tracking of the problem and . China Web 2.0 Review, meanwhile, notes that Chinese users were frustrated with Google over the inaccessibility of the uncensored site.:

Difficulty in accessing Google: From a week ago, Chinese internet users in north China started to encounter difficulty in accessing Google and other service as Gmail. Will Google.com finally become inaccessible, and all the traffic has to change to Google.cn? On the other hand, Chinese bloggers are discontented with Google China’s official blog, since it did not have any explanation on the issues.

Google won’t say this on its official blog, but for those looking for a simple explanation, this works well:

“Google was inaccessible because the Chinese government is run by a bunch of absolute berks who annually screw up the country’s communications infrastructure to prevent its citizens from being reminded that they are ruled by thugs. Normal service will hopefully resume shortly after June 4.”

In other Google news, co-founder Sergey Brin has said that the company may have made a mistake with its China service, and has realized that no one in the country uses the censored service.:

Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course. (…)
“We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference,” Brin said. (…)
“Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense,” Brin said. (…)
Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company’s customers in China use the non-censored service.

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

Agagooga has developed a way to make Singapore’s media tolerable.:

Every time the Party, the State and the Government are conflated, drink once.

Every time you see a stupid ST Forum letter about how democracy and Freedom of Speech are bad for Singapore, drink once. If the letter ends with “Majulah Singapura”, drink twice.

Every time you see the archived shot of MM Lee crying, drink once. If it is accompanied with moving music in the background, drink thrice.

Every time a new buzzword is thrown up, drink once. Every time we have a new silly acronym (”SPRING Singapore”), drink twice. Every time a new false dichotomy is introduced (”Stayers” vs “Quitters”; “Heartlanders” vs “Cosmopolitans”), drink thrice.

Every time a Minister says things like “save on one hairdo and use the money for breast screening”, drink once. Every time someone else doesn’t say whether they want tur kwa or not and we get a week long scandal in the media, drink twice.

Every time ministers get a pay rise following xxx years of no pay rise, drink once. Every time the CPF contribution rate is cut, drink twice. Every time the GST rate is raised and income tax for the top brackets cut, drink thrice.

Every time citizens get lectured for being choosy or grumbling, drink once.

Every time someone talks about Asian Values, drink once. Every time someone talks about the decadent West, drink twice. Every time we want to emulate the decadent West, drink thrice.

AsiaPundit’s additions:

• Drink once every time there is mention of making Singapore a (financial, entertainment, artistic, electronics, aviation, good toilet, etc…) ‘hub’
• Reiterating point six, drink thrice every time the top news item pertains to a price increase or decrease related to an acronym (i.e., COE prices have decreased, ERP charges are rising, employers’ CPF contributions have been cut).

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, singapore, southeast asia

In other news, a Chinese railway cop has prevented a boy from winning a Darwin Award.:

Kung fu fan tries to stop train
(China Daily)

A 17-year-old boy surnamed Liang almost died when he tried to use a kung fu movement to stop a running train in Laibin Railway Station in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Tuesday, Nanguo Jinbao reported.

Liang was pushed to safety by a railway policeman just as he was about to be knocked down. Liang jumped down to the tracks and wanted to use Xianglongshibazhang, a famous kung fu posturing described in many swordsman fictions, to stop the running train.

He was taken into custody for breaking railway rules and said he wanted to test whether or not he could use kung fu to stop the train. Liang is a great fan of swordsman fiction and has also learnt martial arts.

(Via Daryl)

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

Americans can be so rude sometimes…

BEIJING (Reuters) - China opposes the “rude interference” of the United States in calling for a full accounting of the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

“The U.S. statement is a groundless criticism and attack on China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao was quoted as saying in a statement.

The State Department issued a statement on Sunday, the 17th anniversary of the pro-democracy protests bloodily put down by Chinese troops, calling for a re-evaluation by China which has branded the protests subversive.

“The U.S. urges China to provide a full accounting of the thousands who were killed, detained, or went missing and of the government role in the massacre,” spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.

China considers the incident history and closed to further questions.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, 8964

After being driven by Islamists to relocate its offices from Jakarta to Denpasar in Bali , Playboy Indonesia has relaunched. And it’s not about objectifying scantily clad women… its about promoting democracy.:

Unlike the first edition, the 160-page second edition contains no paid advertisements. Instead, there are almost entirely blank pages featuring only the Playboy bunny logo in different colors and a short message headlined “Playbill”. The message states: “This blank page is dedicated to our loyal clients who were threatened for placing advertisements in this magazine.” Each message then mentions a product that should have appeared, for example: “This page is owned by a cigarette product” and “This page is owned by a cellular telephone product”.

Arnada writes in the latest editorial that Playboy Indonesia was forced to relocate to the Bali capital of Denpasar because of concerns that staff would be unsafe if the magazine had remained based in Jakarta. “The safety and convenience of our employees comes first. People in Bali are more open to ideas, they are more adaptive,” he wrote.

“What we experienced over the past month… shows the name is an important thing. Our launch in April was marked by enthusiasm, prejudice, fear and various assumptions,” he said.

The editor said that although some legislators have called for the magazine to change its name, publishing Playboy is necessary for Indonesia’s democratic development. “The absence of a growing monopoly of a set of values and views in our beloved country in the end is our final purpose. We believe that is also the target of all of us who live with reason and want to understand the meaning of democracy and a pluralistic society.”

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, indonesia, media, playboy, southeast asia