Traveller's Tales - The FEER Blog

Trying to find some decent Chinese food in Vienna, TT stumbled across a local chain called “Mr. Lee” whose marketers seem to have taken sensitivity training from the Spanish Olympic basketball team. Perhaps this is supposed to be an Asian person who has had double eyelid surgery demonstrating what they used to look like?

One little hair is enough to ruin feminine pulchritude…

The United Nations Security Council may be deliberating how to punish North Korea for its recent nuclear test, but meanwhile another arm of the U.N. just gave the hermit kingdom a new honor. On Tuesday, the day after the bomb blast, UNESCO designated Mount Myohyang as a “biosphere reserve.” But as a Scientific American blog noted, biosphere reserves are a dime a dozen in the people’s paradise, due to the lack of economic development. The real purpose of Mount Myohyang is yet another shrine to the Great and Dear Leaders, with nearly 100,000 gifts from the world’s fellow dictators and terrorists.

Even though people get up to some naughty business on Facebook, media reports that Indonesian clerics want to ban the social networking site are misleading, CNN reports. In fact, many Islamic leaders at a confab last week have their own Facebook accounts and use it to keep in touch with the faithful. Not that banning the Web site would likely have much impact anyway — Indonesians are defying fatwas against two other vices: yoga and smoking in public.

Via the Economist’s Gulliver Blog, we learn of the hapless Annice Smoel, who almost followed fellow Australian Schapelle Corby into the slammer. Only in Ms. Smoel’s case, the crime was stealing a “large beer mat” from a Phuket bar, rather than smuggling drugs into Bali. Ms. Smoel is now free after being given a suspended sentence and a small fine. But it seems her real offense was giving the police a hard time. It would behoove Aussies abroad to remember this simple motto:

The former Thai prime minister spends a lot of time on television these days, polishing his public speaking skills. Some of his countrymen remain unimpressed, however, and have cooked up a “Thaksin rap.”

A patient is beaten to death by staff in a Jinan asylum. A common enough story in modern China, and one that would typically see the family silenced one way or another. The difference in this case is the video evidence, and a local television station brave enough to air it.

http://www.youmaker.com/

When a Guangzhou would-be jumper tied up traffic for a couple hours, a senior citizen decided to climb the bridge and give him a push.

In her 1923 book, “Audacious Angles on China,” Elsie McCormick wrote a chapter entitled “Suicide as a Popular Pastime” on the casual attitude toward self-destruction in the celestial kingdom:
“The great trouble is that in the Far East suicide is not regarded as socially gauche. On the contrary, it is considered an eminently satisfactory way of getting the last word in an argument and a doubly effective method of telling one’s mother-in-law where to head in or of expressing displeasure with one’s employer.
“To be sure, the victorious one has no chance to leer triumphantly at his opponent and remark, ‘Curses on you at last! For twenty years I have waited for this moment!’ But then he feels somewhat compensated in the thought that his spirit will have full haunting privileges on a long-term lease, to say nothing of the right to plow and harrow his enemy’s epidermis with a view to raising a crop of goose-flesh.”

This video supposedly of a Shanghai couple fighting over whether to buy a car has become a hit in China, in part because it confirms a certain stereotype of Shanghai ladies. Certainly car dealers in Shanghai should get hazard pay.

A man in Taiwan bought a porno disc entitled “Affairs With Others’ Wives,” only to find his own wife taking a starring role, we learned from the Liberty Times via Australia’s Courier Mail. Worse yet, Mr. Li of Taoyuan recognized his friend, the local butcher, as the other “performer” in the video, apparently made secretly in a motel room. Now Mr. Li is in the dock for stabbing his former friend, which all goes to show that watching pornography really is bad for you.

The phenomenon of Thai women taking the chopper to unfaithful lovers has made Bangkok the world capital of penile reattachment surgery, as we noted previously. According to Thailand’s the Nation newspaper, the latest victim is a 56-year-old Belgian tourist, Eddy Iam De Velde. His surgery brought additional challenges as Mr. De Velde’s lover was old school, using her teeth instead of a knife.

For the last few days, China-hand journalists have been whispering and sending coded emails about the late Zhao Ziyang’s forthcoming memoirs, timed for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Publisher Simon and Schuster struck elaborate embargo agreements with the major media, which apparently have been moved up to 8 p.m. today. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong “Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang,” edited by Bao Pu, Renee Chiang and Adi Ignatius has been on sale in Hong Kong for several days — TT bought a copy at the Dymocks store in Prince’s Building last Sunday. The cloak and dagger business sure made for a great marketing campaign, though.

Update: After this post, Reuters and Time released their stories on the Zhao memoir.

Swine flu has governments all over the world casting a suspicious eye over their porcine populations. Egypt was one of the first countries to announce a nationwide slaughter. As a mainly Muslim nation, the total pig population in that country is still a relatively modest 300,000. In certain other Muslim countries that number is considerably less, sometimes even zero. Afghanistan’s pig population, the BBC reports, totals one. Khanzir, who was a gift from China back in 2002, has been put in quarantine. Which begs the question: What were the cadres in Beijing thinking? Is this a case of regifting gone horribly wrong?

A Taiwan man settled onto the throne to go about his daily business, until a snake in the toilet bowl took a nibble on his wedding tackle, Reuters reports. Which brings to mind the Chinese saying, “Once bitten by a snake, one is frightened by the rope in the well for ten years.”

A fascinating video from the FT showing its correspondent Jamil Anderlini being punched by plain-clothes police and prevented from interviewing a woman whose child was killed in last year’s earthquake. Then a government official claims no such reports have been received and the region is completely open.

Via Secret China, a handful of rare color photographs of pre-revolution China.

Gao Hongbin, China’s vice minister of agriculture, proclaims, “Foreigners have illness, Chinese people don’t have illness, Chinese pigs even more don’t have illness.” Even a room full of cynical journalists cracked up at that one.
Ah, we’re transported back to the SARS days. It’s China’s standard “mushroom farmer” approach to media management again: Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.

Like everyone else, the Hefners are making a play for the China market. Beijing Boyce has the dope on four Playboy models who will be dancing and bringing a “real taste of L.A.” at the bar Bling.

Here’s a case where counterfeiting really didn’t pay. Israeli oranges are much prized in East Asia for their sweetness, so it’s no surprise that someone in China decided to slap some fake Israeli stickers on locally grown oranges. Where they went badly wrong, however, was shipping the oranges to Iran. Given that Israeli goods are outlawed and relations between the countries is, shall we say, strained, it’s no surprise that the fruit was not a hit with consumers. As the BBC reports, the distribution center selling the oranges was sealed by authorities.

How does a 74-year-old Tennessee alpaca farmer get caught up in a Chinese visa scam? According to Forbes’s Gady Epstein, the snakeheads are getting super creative in their bids to pull a fast one over the greenhorn foreign service officers in America’s Beijing Embassy. Two men posing as potential alpaca buyers conned Wayne England into writing them an invitation letter that helped them get U.S. visas. After telling Mr. England they were injured in a car accident and couldn’t make the trip, the two jetted to California and are now likely working in the underground economy. All of which is made even weirder by the fact that Chinese netizens recently adopted the alpaca as the mascot of anti-censorship resistance –its new nickname “grass mud horse” sounds the same as a well-known profanity. One which we suspect the Beijing visa officers have recently added to their Chinese vocabulary.

The Grauniad reports on an upset reminiscent of the 1976 Judgement of Paris wine tasting, at which Californian winemakers triumphed over the old French vineyards — Japanese single malts have begun to overtake the Scots in tasting competitions, especially a tipple made by Nikka in Yoichi. And here’s why: The Japanese are still using traditional stills fired by coal, underground water filtered through peat, and making their own new oak barrels. Sadly, so many Scottish distilleries have been bought up by luxury conglomerates and turned into industrial-scale operations. But it’s reassuring that the quality of tradition can be tasted, no matter where it’s from. Slainte Mhor and Kampai!

What would happen to Susan Boyle in China? (From b3ta.com, via Shanghaiist)

If you’re living in Bangkok, perhaps the thought has occurred to you that it would nice if your beemer could withstand an AK-47 attack. Well, funnily enough, it recently occurred to a lot of other people too — sales of armored cars have soared 350% over the last four years, according to Deutsche Press. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva recently traded up to a Mercedes S600 Guard, while BMW showed an exquisite sense of timing by launching a “Security Plus” version of the X5 this week.

Via Tofugu, Japanese sushi chef Kawazumi-san has expressed his love for America with a special creation:

Some people never get past the Lego stage. Or in the case of Japan, building beetle robots. (hat tip to imprint talk)

Get your game on for the 2009 China Open minigolf tournament, to be held May 8-10 in Kunming, according to China Sports Today. The beautiful Hello! Haigeng Minigolf course is China’s largest, and naturally is the home course of the national minigolf team. Register before April 25 for the chance to win exciting cash prizes!

Here’s what a renter paying 50,000 yen (US$510) a month can get in Tokyo (if he’s not claustrophobic):

A bit of Nazi cosplay snapped in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park by 7:10 to Tokyo.

The Shanghai auto show this week put the spotlight on the Geely GE, known in China as the “baby Rolls.” Before you dismiss it as yet another knock-off, consider that this Roller has bright red shag carpets, and only one, yes one, seat in the back. Because when the Chinese CEO is in a hurry, he wants sit on a throne and run his toes through the carpet. Much like TT’s bathroom….

Geobiologist Jeff Marlow writes for Wired on the efforts of various nations to get a share of Antarctica’s resources. Becoming a full member of the Antarctic Treaty requires a permanent station, and King George Island is the easiest place to set up. The Chinese announced their arrival in 1985 with an unfortunate gesture: “China’s Chang Cheng Station was inaugurated with a ‘dove of peace’ ritual in which hundreds of Chinese pigeons were released, nearly all of which froze to death within hours.”

The master Bruce Lee deals with his wayward protege Jackie Chan, who has been busy trashing the Chinese race:

Update: The Onion weighs in.
Update: Facebook group advocating sending Jackie to his natural homeland, North Korea.

The BBC reports on a 26-year-old Indian woman’s record-breaking chilli eating. Anandita Dutta Tamuly scarfed down 51 of the world’s hottest peppers, known as “ghost chillis,” which are about 700 times hotter than an ordinary chilli. For once, bully chef Gordon Ramsay was left gob-smacked — and pleading for a glass of water.
While Desi women are standing proud, the BBC’s coverage of the other gender is less likely to be well received: A study found that international size condoms are too big for the majority of Indian men.

Photographs by John Thomson, a well-known Scottish photographic pioneer who travelled throughout China from 1868-72, have gone on display at the Beijing World Art Museum. The BBC presents a slide show of the highlights. The first photograph is of Tung Hsun, then 61 and the president of the Board of Finance. Below is a Thomson photo of Qianmen Avenue from a 1977 collection, “China: The Land and Its People.”

Update: An excellent Torygraph piece on the exhibition.

Today’s papers covered the Hong Kong trial of Indra Ningsih, an Indonesian maid accused of seasoning her employers’ meals with her own bodily secretions in an effort, involving some kind of voodoo, to make them less picky. The case is reminiscent of another notorious poisoning episode, the 1857 Manchu plot to kill the hated English and retake the colony for China. The plan was simple — put arsenic in the bread produced at the Esing Bakery in Wanchai, which supplied bread to the few hundred Europeans in the colony. Fortunately or unfortunately, according to one’s point of view, too much poison was used, so that the victims became sufficiently ill that they didn’t digest a lethal dose. In other words, in both cases the result was that of a violent emetic.

A new memorial video to those who died in the Tiananmen massacre nearly 20 years ago:

The Chinese government is encouraging farmers in Yunnan and elsewhere to grow hemp, Go Kunming tells us. It shouldn’t be hard to get a good crop going. At least as recently as the early 1990s, hemp used to grow wild along the streets of Kunming, leading to the occasional sighting of visiting American college students gleefully hauling large plants back to the dorm — only to find that the weed contained virtually no pharmacological properties.

Adelaide takes away the prize for its disgusting Third-World McDonald’s, according to Adelaide Now. Judge for yourself whether it’s the filthiest fast food joint in the world:

Via Japan Probe, here’s perhaps the oldest photo of Yokohama, way back when it was just a village in 1859. Yomiuri reports that this is one of several newly discovered photographs by Pierre Rossier which will go on display from April 22 at the Yokohama Archives of History.

This week Beijing announced a new $124 billion health care reform package, which consists largely of throwing money at the problem. This particular plan is especially heavy on capital spending, but otherwise is a continuation of policies gathering momentum over the last five or so years, i.e. extending insurance coverage to the urban population and creating a system that can prove at least a modicum of health care to rural residents. This is hardly the worst thing to happen, given the horror stories of the early 2000s. However, it does not set a sound foundation for future development of the health care sector. This is rarely understood by the media, largely because reporters are busy repeating a couple of common misconceptions:

–A health care safety net will lower the savings rate and increase domestic consumption.
It’s often asserted that China’s high savings rate is due to households putting aside money for retirement, education and health care emergencies. If only the government would provide a social safety net providing these services, the high savings rate could be dramatically reduced, right?
Wrong. In fact, Chinese households do not save all that much — as MIT professor Yasheng Huang has written, China’s household savings rate is lower than India’s. The main sources of the high savings rate are the corporate and government sectors of the economy.

–The policies that created the crisis in the 1990s were “market-based” as Xinhua often repeats.
In fact, the strange phenomena of Chinese health care, such as patients having to pay doctors under the table for care, and hospitals overprescribing and overcharging for drugs in order to make ends meet, are the direct result of the free market not being allowed to operate. As China’s most eminent economist, Wu Jinglian, wrote in his 2005 book “Understanding and Interpreting Chinese Economic Reform”:
“The most visible sign of the mismatch between the two reforms [of medical insurance and medical service management] is that over the past years, the practice of allocating medical service resources by the administrative control system as was under the planned economic system has never changed; resources have been highly concentrated in big cities in the form of state-owned hospitals while small and medium cities and vast rural areas have been in severe shortage of resources. At the same time, the entry of domestic private capital and foreign capital has been stringently restricted. The government operates ordinary medical institutions (i.e., nonpublic medical facilities) that are supposed to be business operations, resulting in a great amount of public resources thrown into them without fully meeting their needs. Yet private capital is forbidden to enter the medical service market. Such institutional distortion and restriction on market entry result in a persistent shortage of medical service and therefore increases the cost considerably. In view of such a medical service system, the existing medical insurance plan can only be a high-cost plan with low accessibility for the low-income cohort.”

Stop what you’re doing and read this Japan Times interview with Ichiro Koyama, a Japanese WWII vet. Torturing and killing villagers in China’s Shandong province was hard at first, but then routine. Only one sensitive soul couldn’t bring himself to carry out the orders and committed suicide.

Japan’s police are cracking down on the chikan who stalk their female victims on the subway. Here’s a thrilling report as a team of investigators catch an “up-skirt” photographer red-handed.

Now you can watch a sunset over the Hong Kong skyline anytime here. (Just mouse over the picture.)

Westerners who get tattoos of Chinese characters are generally not too bright, as the good folks at Hanzismatter never tire of recording. For instance, what can one say about a young woman who wants the words for “cheap whore” on her body?

The consolation is that the phenomenon is universal. Now Chinese are reversing the trend, Tim Johnson reports, having nonsensical English and other Western languages inked on their bodies.

Via Shanghaiist, here’s China’s “king of dice,” Wang Zhongbin, a man who could give his inspiration Chow Yun-fat a run for his money. He’s stacking 26 dice in the cup, but can he make them all the same number?

Evan Osnos reports on a new Chinese magazine with one of the greatest names ever: Chutzpah. And it solves one of the great mysteries, how to translate the word: “wusuoguji de danshi—heedless courage and insight.”

From Kaiser Kuo, the Zhao brothers of Tangshan and their F1 car built out of scrap:

Via Korea Economic Reader, a sign of the times in Korea:

The case of Chip Tsao and the offended Filipinas continues to roll along, with Mr. Tsao issuing a groveling apology, saying he “crossed the line” and is “terribly sorry.” (The full text of the offending article “The War at Home” is available here.) Mr. Tsao at first tried to hold to the line that his article was a satire intended to defend the Philippines against Chinese bullying, but Filipinos were having none of it (aside from a few who did get the point). Angry domestic helpers staged an anti-Chip rally in Central Hong Kong, and the Philippine immigration department even blacklisted him from entering the country as an “undesirable alien.”
It’s hardly the first time a writer has tried to use satire to defend a beleagured minority and ended up seeming like the standard-bearer of the very racists he was targeting. Take Bret Harte’s 1870 poem “The Heathen Chinee,” which took aim at anti-Chinese discrimination in California. The poem’s protagonist, Ah Sin, is taken for an easy mark by a couple of card cheats, and then condemned for his oriental cunning when it turns out he is just as good at cheating as the white man. Unfortunately, in the unenlightened racial climate of the time, Harte’s poem was taken by many readers at face value as showing the Chinaman’s “ways that are dark.”
Given the fear of lost jobs that persists in the U.S., one stanza still resonates:

Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,” –
And he went for that heathen Chinee.

Maybe you’re thinking that this is the bottom of the market and it’s time to start buying stocks again? If so, it might behoove you to steer clear of the Hong Kong exchange. You see, local actor Adam Cheng is starring in a new TV series. Every time he has done so in the past, the Hang Seng Index has taken a tumble, to the point that it is known as the “Ding Hai Effect,” named after a character he played in 1993. That time the HSI was down 2,600 points, and in 1994, 1996 and twice in 1997 he was “responsible” for drops of 2,000, 300, 735 and more than 5,000 points. Mr. Cheng has been sued by angry investors and even reportedly pelted with eggs. But he’s not giving up. On March 30 his latest series, “The King of Snooker,” premiered on TVB. And of course the market was down 4.7% on the day.

Funny how the oddest news seems to come up this time of year. Take the fake pandas at the Taipei Zoo, and a Chinese company buying naming rights to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.