• SINGAPORE - Would ANYONE Be Homeless By Choice?
  “You had bought a flat directly from the HDB flat 15 years ago, and then you’d later sold it - therefore you cannot rent any flat from the HDB anymore. You’ve been disqualified….To add insult to injury, the government says that actually, you prefer to be homeless.”
• “For any foreigners out there who jump queues in China like so many Chinese peasants, I give you a warning. If you do it in my line, I will call you out, force you to the back of the line.”.
• JAPAN - Address: “Cardboard Box 7, Nishinari Park”
  “I’ve dealt with one court case involving a homeless man in Tokyo, and he kept the registered address of his family outside the city (despite the fact that his family had disowned him). Is that much better? What alternative does a homeless person in Japan have?”
• CHINA/TAIWAN - Chinglish Sightings…
  Would you eat at a restaurant named ‘Turd Baby?’
• CHINA - Sex and manufactured scandal: The Blood Sex Tape
  “Yoqoo seems to be adhereing to Chinese blogger Lao Bai’s now infamous observation; behind every successful website in China is a naked woman.”

• “In this four-part epic, someone in Japan had the wise idea to have three nerds dress as Spiderman and recreate scenes fro Spiderman 2. With the stunts included”
• CHINA - China’s Starbucks-blogger-gate: Hype and reality.
  ” What is really happening is that certain people who are already relatively successful and famous can use the Internet to galvanize public sentiment to bring about change in ways that weren’t possible before.”
• HONG KONG - Sex and English Teaching . . . Hong Kong Tutors Selling Sex Appeal
  “Angela Yiu and Stella Cheng spent weeks meeting with fashion stylists and photographers before deciding on the mini skirts and high heels to wear in their promotion campaign. They’re not models peddling perfume or sports cars. They’re English tutors who earn good money helping secondary school students pass Hong Kong’s grueling exams to get into college.”
• “Marxists.org — a huge archive of Marxist writings and other materials — has been under sustained cyber-attack from hosts in China.”
• CHINA - The tale of the CIA prisoners
  “In 1952, a CIA plane was shot down over China and the two surviving CIA officers spent the next 20 years in Chinese prisons The CIA has never before fully explained the mission of the two men, John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, and the bungling that led to their capture.”
• “Royal Nepal Airlines recently printed a promotional poster with the slogan “Have you seen Nepal?” and a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. The problem, of course, is that Machu Picchu is on the other side of the world in Peru.”
• ASIA - How to Date Asian Women
  The best part of this book is that it analyzes the “10 Erotic Asian Types,” namely: Book Worm; Glamour Girl; Ice Princess; The Geisha Girl; Muse; Little Orphan Girl; Nurturer; School Girl; Super Happy Sex Kitty; Warrior.”

• JAPAN - Forget Disneyland… This place has Ninja’s!
  “If Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are not quite your thing, why not take a tour in a Ninja Village? Togakushi Ninja Village in Nagano prefecture is a destination for children who want to experience a Ninja theme park with shows and historical demonstrations.”
• MALAYSIA - Press fears over Malaysia blogs lawsuit
  “A defamation lawsuit against two Malaysian bloggers by a pro-government daily has alarmed media watchdogs who say it is a landmark assault on Internet free expression.”
• THAILAND - Panda put on lo-carb sex diet
  “A male panda in Thailand has been put on a low-carb diet because he is too heavy to mate with his partner, his caretakers said.”
• MALAYSIA - Southeast Asian Press Alliance Opposes Legal Action Against Bloggers

  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’.”

• INDIA - Celebrity Big Bother
  “So, choosing between the self-appointed superior white guttersnipe who is nothing, has done nothing, and will never have done anything apart from wear her bicycle seat down to the metal, and a hot multi-award winning multi-lingual actress who happens to
• SOUTH KOREA - On Great and Mediocre (S)Hooters
  “the low or no-contact nature of American-style sexual services seems out of place in the Korean context, where anything goes – direct, unregulated sexual content can be had in all types of Korean establishments, possibly for not too much more than the
• CHINA - Chinese Public Health Posters
  “Chinese Public Health Posters of Understanding Human Body, Hygiene Education for Children, Public Health Movement, Prevention of Diseases and Pharmaceutical Advertisements. That’s just a small part of a wide range of media presentations of Chinese Public

• MALAYSIA - Bloggers sued in Malaysia
  “The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira have jointly taken an order, via an ex-parte injunction obtained in the High Court of Malaya Kuala Lumpur (Civil Suit No. S6-23-3-2007) on January 11, 2007, against this blogger.”
• CHINA - China and political reform
  “Those of us who live in China often hear arguments on why China is not ready for democracy, as we know it in the West. Here is a compendium of eight reasons often bandied about on why democracy is not suitable for China.”
• “South Korea’s chief negotiator has said Seoul could open free trade talks with China and the European Union if negotiations with the United States broke down.”
• CHINA - Despite the Rumors, iPhone is Not for China
  Although you can buy one on Taobao.
• INDIA - Big Brother crashes into politics
  “But the inescapable fact is that a programme which was struggling in the ratings has ended up being discussed on the floor of the Commons, has prompted widespread debate about racism and modern Britain - and most remarkably of all dominated Gordon Brown’s pre-premiership tour of India.”
• MALAYSIA - Bloggers sued in Malaysia… ( 2 )
  “International headlines! This is how the wire agencies look at the law suits against Malaysian bloggers, with some treating it as a test case for this part of the world.”
• ” Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Cisco and others have been getting a lot of heat over the past year for colluding with human rights violations and state censorship in countries like China. Fortunately, three of those four companies have found the wherewithal to do more than just duck and cover.”

• CHINA - Yuan vs. QQ: Virtual World Currency Deflates a Real One?
  “A genuine concern for the Chinese government, which now fears that the QQ is deflating the official yuan. “QQ” is the virtual currency created by Tencent, China’s largest instant messaging platform based in Shenzen.”
• CHINA-JAPAN - Sino-Japanese friendship? Don’t hold your breath.
  “It is undeniable that economic forces are pulling the two countries closer together, but even stronger forces of geo-politics will ensure that they remain at arms length from one another.”
• CHINA - How Did Starbucks Enter The Forbidden City?
  “Whereas CCTV host urges Starbucks to get out of the Forbidden City, Luqiu Luwei, Phoenix TV reporter, asks in her blog: how did Starbucks enter the Forbidden City? “
• FOOD - Internet-activated, news-sensitive rice cooker
  “eRiceCooker, by Annina Rüst, tracks Internet news about genetically modified rice. Whenever there is a new report about GM rice, a quarter cup of rice is dispensed into the cooker. When there’s enough rice for a meal, water is added automatically to the rice and the cooker is switched on.”
• CHINA - CCP Introduces New Censorship Rule
  “The Communist Party has further tightened its grip on the mainland’s increasingly bold media by imposing a pre-censorship rule on coverage of politically sensitive topics, according to sources.”
• “For interesting photos of scenes unique to Japan, do a search for “only in Japan” on Google Image Search. Here’s a sampling o what you’ll find on the top few pages”
• ECONOMIES - 2007 Index of Economic Freedom - few surprises
  “The Heritage Foundation/WSJ 2007 Index of Economic Freedom is out. You’ll see familiar faces on the rankings - both at the top (Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia) and at the bottom (North Korea, Cuba, Libya)”
• CHINA - DeWoskin on mistresses
  “Rachel DeWoskin (pictured), author of Foreign Babes of Beijing, wrote an article for The Times of London about mistresses or er nai in China. It’s a few months old already but worth a read.”
• CHINA - Woman touts mistress life online
  “A Zhen, a Shenzhen-based netizen, became an immediate cyber sensation and the target of censure when she posted an array of threads serializing her life as a mistress (also known as ‘ernai’ in Chinese) on bbs.yeeyoo.com, a website for making friends in southern China’s boomtow.”
• JAPAN - Sony Ericsson Debuts Scent Phone in Japan
  Just a week after the Apple iPhone was unveiled, Sony Ericcson releases its own killer app — “The DoCoMo mobile ’smelly phone’ is the SO703i from Sony Ericsson, which uses scented sheets that produce an aroma when the device is opened.”

• THAILAND - Censorship: Is it working?
  “As of 12:36am, CNN is totally inaccessible from most ISP’s based in Thailand.”
• JAPAN - Two-person teledildonic rig
  “Remember the joke running around the net about remote sexual devices? The things you do to one part are replicated on the other, and so on an so forth? … Purchase the Virtual-Hole from a Japanese company called Segment Inc and you can rest easy.”
• CHINA - Why China may not be an Al Qaeda target..
  :This year’s hottest text message tells of an Arabian Nights-like tale of Osama bin Laden. He calls his terrorist brothers together and warns them: “China is the only country in the world which must certainly never be attacked, as the consequences will be
• “A Chinese journalist investigating the nation’s dangerous coal mining industry was beaten to death in northern China, his paper has said, amid reports a mine boss ordered the attack.”
• CHINA - The Death of a Shanxi Journalist
  “China Trade News reporter Lang Chengchang went to a coal line to conduct interviews and was beaten to death by unident fied th gs. But was Lang Chengchang a real reporter or an extortionist?”
• THAILAND - Thaksin quickly forgets his past
  “Veera Prateepchaikul mocks the shocking call for press freedom from the man who spent years controlling it.”
• CHINA - My Wife, the ‘Foreigner’ in China
  “My wife just got back from three weeks in China. She has lived in the US for five years, and this was her first trip back to China without me in tow. And without me along she discovered a few things that both shocked and dismayed her.”
• “Buying a computer in China is not walking into an immaculate store manned by a grinning, competent staff. Buying a computer in China is to play the game, to be full of suspicion, to take risks, to engage in the battle of wits.”
• ASIA MEDIA - Asia’s Funniest Home Videos—from Intel
  “To reach younger consumers in Asia, businesses are experimenting with unconventional and interactive marketing initiatives. “
• CHINA - Four weeks after quake China’s Internet still crippled
  “Nature has accomplished what the Net nanny never could: It has essentially cut China off from the global Internet.”
• CAMBODIA - Two Journalists arrested for extortion
  “Vang SreyNo, Karaoke actress and singer, filed a complaint with municipal anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection bureau against a man for extortion. She claimed that the man called her to make an appointment in order to show sex video clip that h
• CHINA - Can Journos Blog?
  “Time’s blog in China seems an attempt to move magazine journalism onto a blog basically intact. To borrow from an earlier era, they’re sticking a Mac-formatted floppy into a Tandy machine. Or maybe into a CD drive.”

• CHINA - Manufacturing in Asia - The problem with Made in China
  “China is choking on its success at attracting the world’s factories. That has handed its Asian neighbours a big opportunity”
• CHINA - Shu Yong and the giant breasts
  “Muzimei has released a short video about Shu Yong (舒勇), a Beijing-based artist whose latest exhibit consists entirely of sculptures of gigantic breasts.”
• JAPAN - Natto shortage
  “It seems like the TV program “Aru-Aru” on FujiTV aired last week (January 4th) claiming that Natto helps people lose weigh faster, caused a surge in demand, ending in a national Natto shortage.”

• APPLE CHINA - Sod the iPhone: give us Mac service in China
  “While the hi-tech world is swooning at Steve Jobs’ feet after the dramatic unveiling of Apple’s iPhone, your correspondent is cursing and swearing in front of his Mac keyboard, wishing that Apple’s famous engineers and designers would turn their attention to some very real Mac problems that beset users in China.”
• INDIA - Now India might take ‘action’ against YouTube
  “The Govt. of India lost its marbles again along with a large part of the media in Delhi…. most of the channels started carrying an obscure video from youtube as headline news… they started showing this skinny guy’s youtube video as headline news.”
• TAIWAN - Betelnut girl photos
  “Earlier this week I posted a trailer for an upcoming documentary about beltelnut girls in Taiwan. The producer sent me a link to his Flickr gallery of his photos of betelnet girls.”
• SOUTH KOREA – Podcast: The Marmot Speaks!
  “The man, the myth, the Marmot unplugged. The Marmot’s Hole is surely the most influential and highly-trafficked expat site in the Korean blogosphere. Many an expat read him and his guest authors faithfully, more like a newspaper than anything else.”
• CHINA INTERNET - Why hasn’t Tor been blocked? II
  “A few weeks ago I wondered aloud why Tor hadn’t been blocked, and came to the conclusion that the Chinese government is not concerned with determined users circumventing the GFW for non-threatening purposes, and allows Tor as a backdoor for this reason.”
• Why hasn’t Tor been blocked? III
  “I posted a portion of my last post, Why hasn’t Tor been blocked? II to the or-talk mailing list and received the following response from Roger Dingledine, one of the lead Tor developers.”
• CHINA - What the Chinese Want
  “Foreign Policy Passport have unearthed the top search terms for Baidu’s question service–those “why do …” or “how to …” queries. This is interesting because it directly answers the questions “What do Chinese people want to do?” and “What are Chinese people interested in?”
• PHILIPPINES - The Unofficial List of All Things Wrong With Metro Manila Traffic
  “I love to drive, but I hate our streets. I drive an average of 45 kilometers a day, and consume 14 liters of gas a week. This list summarizes everything that pisses me off about being a driver in Metro Manila.”
• SOUTH KOREA - (MUST WATCH) Dong-A TV goes to Hooters
  ” Th Dong-A Ilbo’s Internet TV unit visits the Apgujeong-dong training ground of Hooters, where Korea’s future Hooters Girls are learning the ropes from experienced American professionals ahead of the Jan. 18 opening of the country’s first Hooters branch.”
• PHILIPPINES - Press freedom: A new interpretation?
  “ONLY individual media practitioners, not media organizations, are covered by the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press…Or so argue lawyers of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo in his motion to dismiss the civil class action suit filed against him by 23 of the 45 journalists he has charged with libel since 2003.”
• THAILAND - Tourism, A Price For You & A Price For Me?
  “.. the prime epitome of double-pricing standards lies with the actual governing authorities themselves.”
• SINGAPORE - Why University Students Do Not Drive Social Change
  “When I was in New York for New Year’s Eve, I met a student at SIPA, Columbia’s public policy school. He used to work in Singapore, and gave an interesting explanation for why social change is slow in the country.”
• “The reports didn’t say, but we can assume the many whorehouses within walking distance of the immoral bubble tea shop were left untouched by authorities.”
• TAIWAN - Michelangelo’s David Has Hernia Operation
  Ouch!

Even though the official Asian launch date for the Apple iPhone is not until 2008, users of China’s Taobao auction site can already buy the ‘revolutionary’ phone. No wonder Taobao could beat eBay in the China market:

Meanwhile, Boing Boing report that those who cannot wait until June for an iPhone can buy an Apple classic model.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, iphone, northeast asia, apple, taobao

• CHINA - Toddler taught to drink by dad lands in hospital
  ” A four-year-old boy from central China’s Hunan Province, who has been trained by his father to drink alcohol, lost consciousness for 10 hours after drinking 200 milliliters of the strong Chinese spirit baijiu, or white liquor.”
• “Chinese Web portal Sina.com gave major play this morning to a story laying emphasis on the mention of “watchdog journalism” in the official bulletin coming out of a recent session of top discipline inspection officials in China. But that coverage had van
• ASIA INTERNET - Asia leads the world in blog readership
  ” Given the extent to which Chinese Internet users are influenced by blogs according to this Edelman study, journalists covering China are increasingly remiss if they don’t keep an eye on the Chinese blogosphere.”
• KOREA iPHONE: Samsung: “We are not impressed”
  Lee Kun-Hee, Chairman of Samsung, has given his verdict on the iPhone: “Although we are waiting to see how U.S. consumers will react, we are not impressed by its features,’’
• CHINA - China’s al-Qaeda
  “Of course, beyond the fact that a policeman is dead, the Chinese authorities have provided little evidence to support their account of the raid. No pictures of the camp, the seized weapons cache, or the dead and captured “terrorists” have yet been publis
• NORTH KOREA - North Korea Mass Games: Children’s Parade
  “3,000 children under the age of 10 perform a highly choreographed dance routine, while over 15,000 children holding colored placards create the mosaic in the background.”

Confirming AsiaPundit’s own experience in Shanghai, Andrew Lih reports from Beijing that Mainland China’s international internet access is still exceptionally bad.:

International access to the Internet from Beijing has been poor since January 1, and seems to have gotten worse, likely due to folks returning from vacation and swamping existing links. Some friends mentioned that access to their corporate VPNs routed over the public Internet were virtually unusable from Beijing.

Google Mail is inaccessible half the time, or runs too slow to function. Skype is largely unusable. Downloading podcasts takes half a dozen tries through Apple iTunes, requiring a few different VPNs and SSH tunnels. I feel like I’m in the Internet Gulag.

Performance tends to be better in the early morning. I got a few hours of zippy performance from 4:30 am on, but by 7:00 am, the net was slowing again.

Meanwhile, Gemme finds the situation similar in Shanghai:

The Internet in China is still at snail speed and for some weird reason it gets worse in the evening.

Is everybody trying to play games after 18:00? Is the available bandwidth less in the evening to cut cost for China Telecom’s use of satellite back ups or is there another explanation for this?

The news is that it will take until the end of the month to make the great leap back to 2007 but it wouldn’t surprise me if we may linger a bit longer in 1997.

Our own Shanghai experience differs very little. At the office, access is painfully slow during the day. In the evenings access from home is near impossible. We had initially assumed that was because the corporate subscriber service had higher priority than our residential service. But it could be time-of-day related, as Andrew and Gemme suggest.

Several of the services we find vital at home — including Skype and BBC World Service streaming audio — have been almost completely inaccessible since the December 26 earthquake.

Although we have found office access moderately better, it remains unsatisfactory. Basic research takes far longer than it should and in some cases is impossible. And the economic tally of this must be vast. We know of newswires that have been unable to deliver services, merchants who are cut off from customers and have noticed that advertisements are not displaying on sites that are dependent on them.

Certainly, the Taiwan earthquake was an act of God for which China Telecom cannot be held responsible, However the length of time that it has taken to repair Mainland connectivity reeks of sheer incompetence. Apologies and compensation should be offered.

As a Mac zealot, AsiaPundit thinks punitive damages should be provided simply for causing us to miss the MacWorld keynote.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, internet

• NORTH HOREA - Fat German Rabbits to Feed Poor: Monster Bunnies For North Korea
  “Szmolinsky, 67, from the eastern town of Eberswalde near Berlin, recalls how the North Korean embassy approached his regional breeding federation and enquired whether it might be willing to sell some rabbits to set up a breeding farm in North Korea. “
• INTERNET FREEDOM - Global Online Freedom Act is re-introduced
  ” It’s back. The Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 has been reintroduced as the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 by U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.”
• JAPAN - Otaku train love
  “Train Man tirelessly chronicled his courtship. On May 9, 2004, the thread exploded when he reported, “I kissed her lightly, but she said, ‘More,’ kissing me 3-4 times.” Overnight, he became Otaku no Kamisama – God of the Geeks.”
• CHINA - Warlord-era Pigs
  “How many pigs were there in China during the warlord era? I came across the wonderful site Strange Maps, and one of their offerings was a 1922 map of world hog production.”
• JAPAN - iPhone turns few heads in Japan
  ““Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs said as he unveiled the iPhone on Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco….But the revolution is already well underway in Japan…
• BANGLADESH - Bangladesh in a state of emergency!
  “Worrying news are coming from Bangladesh. President and the chief of caretaker government Iajuddin Ahmed has declared a state of emergency. “
• CHINA - Sweet ‘n’ sour pork scented and flavored postage stamp
  Question: Will strict vegetarians, as well as those following Kosher or Halal diets, have trouble mailing Chinese New Year cards this year?

• JAPAN - Taro Aso eyes Comic-Book Heros to Help Diplomacy
  “Hideaki Abe from the Asahi Shimbun is reporting that Taro Aso, Japan’s Foreign Ministers is looking at Comic-book heros to influence Japanese diplomacy”
• APPLE - The iPhone in Asia
  ” I think that Apple now has a lot more potential to sell product in the Chinese market. China’s mobile phone market is the world’s largest, and the Chinese I know love fashionable mobile phones like the Motorola RAZR. However, smart phones like the Treo and Blackberry haven’t caught on here (could you even get one if you tried?), but I think that is mostly because they don’t offer features that interest Chinese users that less expensive “dumb” phones don’t already have.”
• CHINA - How will the Olympics affect China?
  “The new rules are meant to signal that China is moving closer to developed countries in the way it handles the media. But unless local governments accept them too, a very different message may be sent.”
• JAPAN - Japan Body Painting Museum
  “Janbopai Museum is a web site devoted to the body paint art in Japan, with many pictures of original works, images of body painting steps, works for magazines, links, foruns, information about body painting and wallpapers.”
• APPLE KOREA - iPhone Korea Guesses
  “Cellphone prices will plummet if this things enters the Korean market uncrippled, because the iPhone is like the sexy girl who just moved in next door and likes to sunbathe in a pink thong and nipple pasties…”
• KOREA-JAPAN - Instant noodle nationalism
  “I talked to XXX today and we talked about the instant ramen guy dying and I asked her if any Korean newspapers mentioned him or his contribution to Korean culture, i.e.) ramyeon. She said no….And then I said that’s probably because Koreans think they invented it too. Just add some kochu and now it’s Korean. So I told her they should do that with the Sea of Japan…pour some kochu on it and now it’s the Korean Sea.”
• JAPAN - Japanese students to take chopstick test
  “A high school in western Japan will require its students to take a 10 minute test using chopsticks to transfer beads, marbles, dice and beans from one plate to another as part of its entrance exam.”
• “Another thing that struck me was how such an innovative product is being launched in the such a mobile backwater like the US. Yes, I know this sounds shocking to hear. But we in Asia have been buying our phones unlocked since we started GSM, “
• THAILAND - Where have all the Thai Bloggers gone?
  Are Thai-focused bloggers more likely to be jailed?
• APPLE iPHONE - The rest of the world welcomes the Apple iPhone
  International bloggers comment on the iPhone, well ahead of the international launch.
• CHINA - Boycott Time’s New China Blog
  “Time starts a China blog and then leaves out the good stuff that makes a blog a blog. It reads like none of its writers have read any other China blogs before starting this one. It has no heart, no voice, no soul. It has nothing to say.”
• CHINA - Read Your ESL Contract
  As our friend Dan Harris at China Law Blog would remind us, NEVER sign a contract that you don’t understand.
• CHINA - Little emperors, the one-child policy and the labor market
  “The one-child policy kids have a hard time adapting to the tough environment and their parents prefer them to work close to home anyway. So there is always an easy way out when they fail…. Of course no one actually says it so bluntly but all employers see a problem with a spoilt generation that wants everything NOW. In less challenging environments in the cities, employers find that the one-child policy generation want what they want when they want it. But they don’t want to do the work that is necessary.”
• CHINA - Apple’s iPhone -Will Chinese people buy it?
  “High resolution touch screens will also mean that writing in Chinese characters or rendering more detailed smaller characters will also be possible.”

• TAIWAN - Betelnut Girl documentary trailer
  “Here’s a trailer for a new documentary called Chew on This: Betelnut Culture in Taiwan.”
• “Travel writer, blogger and occasional Mango Sauce contributor, Carl Parkes, is on extended hiatus in a California prison after beating up an old lady who stole his crossword puzzle.”
• CHINA - Censorship in China meets reality of networked communications
  “The train is out of the station, and it’s too late to stop it now.”
• CHINA - Translations of movie titles
  “Sometimes, movies change their names to be more “socially responsible”. For example, the newest James Bond flickr “Casino Royale” was changed to 《007大战皇家赌场》(”007’s War on(?) the Casino Royale”) so that viewers would not misinterpret it as
• JAPAN - Godzilla Conquers the Globe
  “In 2004 The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture made a very interesting exhibition about Godzilla. Godzilla Conquers the Globe.”
• INDIA - India’s Hottest College Chick Contest
  ““Presenting India’s first ever online beauty contest India’s Hottest College Chick contest! The one of it’s kind all-online beauty contest hunts for the hottest college chick on the campuses nationwide!”
• NORTH KOREA - DPRK ‘Rock for Peace’ Concert Nixed
  “The administrator of Voice of Korea,” Jean-Baptiste Kim, has apparently had an epiphany and will no longer be a mouthpiece for the North Korean government ,,, this sounds the death knoll for the much anticipated “Rock for Peace” concert.”
• “The 15 most important socio-political event of 2006.They are ranked chronologicall rather than by their level of importance. “
• TAIWAN - Unofficial 2006 Taiwan “Punk Scene” Report
  “I’d like to dispel a few myths about “Taiwan punk” that have been perpetuated by people like myself. “
• PHILIPPINES - 2006: The ‘worst year’ for journalists
  “In the Philippines alone, IFJ said 13 journalists died last year, bringing to 49 the number of media practitioners murdered since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001. This number, IFJ reported, surpasses the numbers killed during the

Due to to the severing of undersea cables near Taiwan, much of Asia is currently experiencing a severe loss of internet connectivity.

This site will be on a brief hiatus until internet service improves. While we hope that will happen quickly, reports have indicated that repairs may take as long as three weeks. Most international websites either cannot be accessed from Mainland China or take an excessively long time to load. Access to RSS feeds is also spotty.
The outage is — to various degrees — affecting most of East Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Technorati Tags: east asia

• CHINA - Top Ten Sex-related Incidents In China During 2006
  No further explanation is needed.
• “Their objection is more targeted towards the vulgarized and commercialized Christmas that seems to have overtaken the shopping malls and even the elementary schools, where everyone seems to get festive and kids seem to get into the act without really kno
• ” I like some Christmas songs. … So I get a kick out of hearing these songs sung in Chinese. Thinking that some of you may feel the same way …I decided to put together an album of Chinese Christmas music.”
• PHILIPPINES - Is the Philippine economy hollowing out?
  “These seem to be interesting statistics, except that when we look at the bigger picture we can see that the improvement in the jobless rate is significantly influenced by the fact that there were fewer people joining the labor force.”
• JAPAN - Kentucky Fried Christmas
  “Speaking of Christmas traditions, Japanese consumers partake of millions of fried chicken servings on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, a Yuletide practice that began sometime in the 1970’s courtesy of, not surprisingly, the fried chicken fast food chai
• SOUTH KOREA - Pass on the hookers, win a prize!
  “Only in Korea. In an effort to keep people from buying sex during the holiday season, the Ministry of Gender Equality is promising to hand out movie tickets and a cash prize to companies that can convince their employees to stay out of houses of ill rep

• SINGAPORE - ‘Mooching’ your neighbors Wi-Fi is a crime
  The Asian nation aiming to set up the first national Wi-Fi network is also the first nation to charge a person with stealing Wi-Fi signals.
• JAPAN - Why Michael Jackson cancelled his Xmas party in Japan
  “Phenomenal talent but unrelenting freakshow Michael Jackson saw himself back in the news this week when he cancelled a Xmas party that was to be held in Japan. ZAKZAK takes a closer look at what happened”
• “So it looks like YouTube is going another step further in warning Japanese uploaders about the risks of sharing Japanese clips on YouTube. Thankfully, it sounds like it’s just a verbal warning at the moment of uploading which never stopped anyone on th
• CHINA - Blogs and China correspondence - survey results
  “Last month I put out a survey of foreign correspondents who cover China to try and get a sense of how - and whether - blogs are impacting their coverage of China. Many thanks to the 70-plus journalists who took the time to complete at least part of the s
• NORTH KOREA - DPRK Watcher’s (Last Minute) Christmas Shopping Guide
  “Throw your dog a bone - or better yet, throw him this Kim Jong Il chew toy. Don’t have a dog? Chew on it yourself!”
• PHILIPPINES - Gloria Arroyo’s chief spook celebrates lavishly
  “AMID shouts of “Long Live the Emperor,” Armed Forces intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Delfin Bangit threw P500 bills, like they were candy, at the Isafp (Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines) Christmas party held on Wednesday nigh

• HONG KONG - Beware of the leopard
  “One of the better jokes in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is when Arthur Dent is informed that the plans for the (imminent) destruction of Earth were on display for nine months and no-one objected. It seems that the something similar happened with the government’s plan to demolish the Star Ferry Pier.”
• INDIA - Bombayisms
  “Here’s a partial glossary of Bombayisms translated to American English. Some are specific to Bombay and its history of organized crime, most are Indian English, some are by way of UK English.”
• CHINA - Wikipedia in China still ranks high
  “Despite still being widely blocked in China, Wikipedia still ranks high according to China Websites Ranking (中国网站排名). It’s the #1 online encyclopedia, and the #3 overall reference site.”
• CHINA - China jails researcher for 20 years
  “Reporters Without Borders condemned the 20-year prison sentence handed down by the Beijing No. 2 intermediate people’s court yesterday on researcher and media commentator Lu Jianhua for leaking state secrets in a case linked to that of Hong-Kongbased reporter Ching Cheong, who was sentenced in August to five years for “spying.””
• CHINA - Who has it in for China?
  “Global People (环球人物), a magazine under the People’s Daily group, promises to remedy that situation in its latest issue, which profiles the “China attackers” most closely-associated with a number of anti-China positions.”
• CHINA - eBay eJects from China
  “In fact, it’s a comment on the poor value of the eBay brand in China that it had to throw in any cash at all for a minority stake in an unproven joint venture with a second-rate China Internet power.”

• CHINA - Beijing is dirtiest city in Asia
  Ahead of the Olympics, the capital captures the gold for most-polluted air.
• NORTH KOREA - Pyongyang Rock City
  “Kim, a 40-year-old father of three and former correspondent for North Korea’s largest newspaper, Rodong, said 62 bands from 20 countries have signed on so far, but aside from one Norwegian death metal band he’s reluctant to provide any details as yet.”
• The Big Mac poverty index
  “How do you measure poverty? Probably because they have to grab a Big Mac in between filing stories, Reuters reporters have come up with a new metric on poverty. Interesting to know that Indonesia is behind only South Africa and Egypt in this reckoning.”
• JAPAN - Love Hotel Photo Gallery
  A collection of unique hotel rooms from a unique country.
• PHILIPPINES - Newsbreak editors decry Arroyo libel suit
  “FIVE editors of the award-winning fortnightly magazine Newsbreak decried the issuance by a Manila prosecutor yesterday of a resolution approving the filing of libel charges against them in connection with an article on Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of Glor
• CHINA/KOREA - China weighs covert ops to overthrow North Korea’s Kim
  “China has begun drawing up plans to attack North Korea, according to the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter. Hu Jintao, head of the Central Military Commission, has ordered the Chinese military to draw up the attack plan as a move “deliberately m
• CHINA - eBay retreating from China, says self-proclaimed “disgruntled employee”
  “EBay now abandons China and us, the loyal workers….I am one of the many disgruntled Eachnet employee. I have suffered through the incompetence of Ebay leaders for many years. I admit I am greedy. I stay for money. But Ebay has screwed up our Company an
• CHINA - Sex, Prostitutes, Rule of Law, Lines of Power, Unintended Consequences and Bull Connor
  “A morally vapid redneck racist helped advance civil rights in the United States and some dumb power-hungry bureaucrats in Shenzhen may very well end up doing the same thing for China.”
• CHINA -How China is making me into a worse person (#1 in a series)
  ” I realize that, in addition to pulverizing me in a physical sense, this China stint is making me worse as a human being.”

• MALAYSIA - Government signals crackdown on bloggers
  “Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm that Malaysia could introduce repressive legislation on the Internet after Science and Technology Minister, Kong Cho Ha, said the government planned new rules to block its malicious use and prevent bloggers posting news jeopardising social harmony.
• CHINA - Open Season: Foreign Banks Eye China
  A good look into China’s opening of its banking sector.
• CHINA - The sex industry is everywhere but nowhere
  What’s the fastest-growing industry in China? ….anecdotal evidence is the best one can do for a field such as this, but a bet could be placed on the sex industry. Yes, prostitution.”
• XINHUA - Elizabeth Hurley hot bikini pictures
  A photo spread presented by China’s state news agency and credited to chinadaily.com.cn. Although clearly scanned from a lad mag.

One of Asia’s staple food products is a health risk. A commentator for the conservative US site World Net Daily has warned that “a devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals.”:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

A comment AP has received from a friend in Canada debunks the article:

There are a host of things wrong with this article. The assumption that being gay is bad, and should be curtailed. The anecdotal presentation of unnamed scientific studies as fact (cite them, darn it, and check literature reviews for other research). The assumption that sexual preference is connected to hormones. (If it makes penises smaller, it must make men gay!) The logical contradiction provided in his conclusion, when he says some soy is okay. The avoidance of contrary evidence - if soy is more prevalent now than in the past, and causes gayness, then one would expect population studies to show this. Where is “today’s rise in homosexuality” that he talks about? Television sitcoms? Same-sex legislation?

AP had already disregarded the validity of the article due to the use of “devil food’ in the headline. As we are of Irish ethnicity, we reject the idea that Soy milk is the devil when another beverage can make a claim that is much more solid. And this site will not speculate about what high soy content in a national diet may mean for penis size (commentors can fire away).

That said, Rutz — to his credit– does note that there is no risk from the consumption of soy sauce or other products that contain fermented soy. With that, readers can rest assured that neither natto nor stinky tofu will cause shrinkage or impotence (although the associated bad breath may limit attractiveness)..

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, southeast asia

No, China has not yet decided to dump its Treasury bonds… but give it time.

AsiaPundit closely tracks both the Chinese currency and the US dollar. However, we don’t pay nearly as much attention to global prices for base metals. As such, we are a bit late in bringing you details of a global currency meltdown that is so severe that the United States is passing new capital control measures.:

WASHINGTON — People who melt pennies or nickels to profit from the jump in metals prices could face jail time and pay thousands of dollars in fines, according to new rules out Thursday.
Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based on current metals prices, the value of the metal in a nickel is now 6.99 cents, while the penny’s metal is worth 1.12 cents, according to the U.S. Mint.
…
Under the new rules, it is illegal to melt pennies and nickels. It is also illegal to export the coins for melting. Travelers may legally carry up to $5 in 1- and 5-cent coins out of the USA or ship $100 of the coins abroad “for legitimate coinage and numismatic purposes.”

For those who, like ourselves, are deficient in mathematics that means that a US nickel is worth almost 40 percent more melted down than it based on its denomination. Chinese demand for base metals is generally cited as a prime reason for rising prices.

And it is not just the US. This is indeed a global currency meltdown. As this 2003 article notes China has been seeking European coins for melting. Within Asia, there is massive smuggling of the Philippine peso to buyers in China.:

MANILA : With a face value of less than two US cents the humble Philippine one peso coin may be worth next to nothing at home but in metal-hungry China it spells big bucks.

So much so that smuggling of the coins has become something of a growth industry in the Philippines and a major headache for the central bank.

According to local media reports, the coins are sold in China for 1,000 pesos (US$20) per kilogramme and the metal derived from melting them down is used in the manufacture of electronics goods like mobile phones.

As we have not heard any reports of the melting of the Chinese yuan, we assume that either the nickel-plated steel material is worth more in coin rather than base-metal form or that owners of blast furnaces in China are betting on further appreciation of the local currency.

However, if anyone knows differently please comment — AP may yet consider requesting that our employer pay us in coins.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, northeast asia, philippines, money, southeast asia

• KOREA - Diplomats Apparently Allowed to Drive Drunk in Seoul
  “The problem I see with this is that a diplomat would allowed to drive drunk! Not being charged is one thing, but what if they drove off and killed someone? I mean besides a payment of a couple million won to the family of the deceased?”
• THE KOREAS - The World’s Most Expensive Photo-op
  “President Roh understands Kim Jong-il won’t denuclearize or make any major concessions, but that isn’t what a second inter-Korean summit is about. It is all about the photo-op of him toasting Kim Jong-il. I think that would be a fitting legacy for