India’s disinterest in the Olympics is refreshing — why should the pride of a nation be linked to how many medals its athletes win? But it does seem a shame how the country’s marksmen have had their dreams of gold dashed. As Reuters reports, the government long supplied the shooters with ammunition, but a couple years ago suddenly stopped the flow of bullets, which are difficult to import. As a result, the coach is claiming there’s not much point in sending the poorly prepared team to the Beijing games. Contrast that with China’s massive state sports apparatus, which selects young children to undergo years of government-sponsored training. Perhaps India’s athletes should just give up on sports and concentrate on earning a living.
The standard of living in Japan is depressingly low considering its affluence, what with long hours of work, small apartments and high prices. But worst of all may be the fact that by the time they reach middle age, one-third of the population isn’t getting any. According to this report, the Japan Society of Sexual Science found that almost 38% of couples in their 50s are in “sexless marriages,” meaning they haven’t had sex in the last year and don’t expect things to change.
Meanwhile, the Mainichi newspaper is trying to help couples enjoy sex better with this column describing how the shape of the woman’s anatomy favors certain positions. The headline says it all: “When It Comes to Sex Positions, Tight Is Right.”
One of our favorite stores in New York is Maxilla & Mandible, where you can buy many kinds of bones — once including the human variety, although it seems they are not in that business anymore. The traditional source of human bones has long been India, where corpses are fished out of the rivers, or even stolen from graves, the flesh stripped off and then sold on mostly for use in medical schools for learning anatomy. But the Indian authorities have begun cracking down on the ghoulish trade. As this fascinating Wired article details, it’s big business in some parts, given that a skeleton goes for about US$3,000.
A Japanese kid pushes a stranger in front of a train for the heck of it, via Mainichi, with a hat tip to Japundit. He said he wanted to go to prison. Looks like he will get his wish.
We’re not sure whether to treat this as credible, but Sina.com and Xinhuanet are reporting that the Oxford English Dictionary has added one of our favorite Chinese words, å—² or dia, as an import to the English language. The word, which is not found in most Chinese dictionaries, first emerged in Shanghai as an import from English. The word is apparently a transliteration of “dear,” and it means something like “soppy,” i.e. sentimental or silly in a coy or spoiled fashion. First, does anyone have a better translation? And more importantly, has anyone ever seen dia (or the related diaist, diaistic and diaism) used in English?
UPDATE: This appears to be yet another case of Chinese media outlets picking up something meant to be humorous and running it as if it were real news — see the comments on this post. Ironic considering the beating the Western media is taking in China these days for some minor errors in Tibet coverage….
The Japanese male fixation with under-age girls, known as “junior idols,” is disgusting enough, but now the soft-porn makers are turning their attention to Eastern European schoolgirls. According to this Mainichi translation of a Cyzo report, a fetish Web site called Candy Doll is paying girls under 15 to pose provocatively for the pleasure of those “brothers who fancy little white girls.”
The Singapore government has issued a statement of support for China’s handling of the crisis in Tibet. Which puts it in good company with Sudan. (Hat tip to the Time China blog.)
Asia’s wackiest journalist has surfaced again. Benjamin Fulford, apparently once a legitimate hack, is featured on Japundit. Sadly, some in Japan, including the Foreign Correspondents Club of Tokyo, have given credence to his 9/11 conspiracy theories. If only they’d seen one of his videos first.
The Chinese Internet is fostering a growing resentment against Western media and governments for making a fuss over the violence in Tibet, since in China everybody “knows” that Tibetans are treated very well and have only repaid Han “kindness” with murder and looting. As the video below shows, Chinese do have critical faculties when it comes to analyzing media, but unfortunately those who try to exercise those faculties against the government propaganda are silenced. The result is an outpouring of nationalist sentiment that creates a very challenging atmosphere for those who might favor a more moderate approach and dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Much like with the 2005 anti-Japanese rioting, the Chinese leadership will have to form a consensus first if there is to be any change of tack, and that probably won’t happen until they realize Tibet is ungovernable.
A Shanghai hotel came up with a great gimmick to make its window washers more palatable to guests — dressing them in spiderman outfits. As Sina.com reports, the wet-toweled web-crawlers were a big hit.
The evil geniuses at Samsung Economic Research Institute are out to control your mind in order to make you buy more Samsung products. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration. But a recent SERI newsletter highlighted “mind-reading technology” as one of “six promising technologies awaiting government-led development.” The company think tank sees the possibility to “understand thought, intention and emotion through analysis of brain imaging, brain waves and voice.” But scariest of all is the possible application of this technology, including “advertisement/marketing/design.” Let’s see, a giant conglomerate allies with government to develop the ability to read our minds and sell us stuff. Sounds like a plot for a science fiction thriller.
When in Beijing we sometimes like to attend events with the Chinese Culture Club, which typically organizes outings celebrating nice traditional arts, such as calligraphy or pipa music. So we were surprised to see that the CCC has branched out into … guerrilla warfare. On Sunday the China hands led a squad to a military base in the eastern suburbs where there are “war tunnels” from the 1930s. There they tried out a “special military mission” using “real size machine gun (electric bullets).” Feng Cheng, what happened to the classes on Taiqi and Buddhist symbolism?
If you’re like TT, you experience a frisson of fear when going through customs with a few pirate DVD movies. Well, now you should really start to sweat like a Colombian with 50 condoms full of cocaine in your gut. According to the Jakarta Post’s report, the Malaysian authorities have imported two DVD sniffing dogs. Apparently they are trained to home in on the scent of chemicals used in DVD manufacturing. As a countermeasure, we plan to start packing our suitcase with perfumes to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.
The veggie-eating hipsters of the Vegan Social Club of Beijing brought to our attention the Don’t Eat Friends nationwide concert tour, which kicked off with a March 8 bash in the capital. Appropriately enough, the main band is Giant Beanstalk, below.
There’s a smallish migrant laborer encampment near our Beijing apartment which offers a peek into the lives of those who are building the rapidly expanding city. Step inside and you go back in time about 20 years, with the clothing, food and prices of China in the 1980s. We snapped a few pictures of the signs offering jobs, good and services. We doubt there is any cheaper haircut in the capital than in this salon, which is offering a trim for two yuan ($0.28).
At the Jaisalmer railway station last month, TT hired a porter to help move luggage onto the train for the overnight journey back to Delhi. The man wore a brass label on his arm (pictured below) which certified his position as “coolie” — a word derived from the Chinese for hard labor, ku li. That brought to mind other anachronistic terms which persist in India despite the fact that they might be considered demeaning elsewhere. For example, where else in the world do you see classified job advertisements seeking applicants for the position of “peon”? Rather than a feudal title implying life-long servitude, on the subcontinent this is simply a position involving manual labor. A favorite book on our India shelf is “Unparliamentary Expressions,” a compilation of taunts hurled by MPs on the floor of the Lok Sabha and other legislatures, including some lovely archaic derogatory terms. The Queen’s English? Give us the peon’s English any day.
