[QQ] Direct flight across the Taiwan Strait was completely achieved in 2009. The exchange between Mainland China and Taiwan has entered a new stage. However, not everyone has the opportunity to go to Taiwan, unwilling to be left-out netizens come up with a new way to play. Recently an activity using photographs for cross-strait exchange spreads on the internet. Youth from both side of the strait are learning about each other through these images.

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(Image: Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” album cover, released in November 2008)

When Chinese people write blog articles, their meaning is often subdued and slightly nuanced, they are less willing be to direct and straightforward. Or, even if it seems that they are being direct, they will have hidden meanings embedded in what they say. While some topics are just sensitive no matter what in China, democracy is one of those that might be sensitive or might not, depending on the context. On one hand, for example, Yu Keping, the deputy director of the Central Translation Bureau, wrote an essay (and then a book) entitled “Democracy is a Good Thing” and this article was widely published and praised among Chinese media and officials. On the other hand, Charter 08, a petition advocating democracy in China caused the government to interrogate and threaten many of the petition’s original writers. Hence, most Chinese thinkers choose the more nuanced, indirect route. The following essay is written by a blogger who often discusses democracy:

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[From MOP] A young migrant worker updates a post of his raw, yet I found to be truthful and insightful notes while working at a construction site of soon to be multi-million luxury homes in Sanya, Hainan.

I never speak out. I am a “diving” migrant worker.

(潜水: Diving means lurking here, it is a Chinese internet slang, means someone who reads forum posts but never replies, never expresses their views. It is like underwater diving, never pop their heads out of the water.)

I used to have very low self-esteem, just because I am a migrant worker working at construction sites every day. Maybe it’s because I went to junior college for two years, our manger Yang made me the publicist, so I got the opportunities to take photos.

Migrant worker is the synonym of low-quality in the society. I admit that we are the people living in the lowest level of the society. Even if we were paid attention to, we were seen as the weakest group.

But now I do not feel worthless anymore, in fact we the migrant workers are also human beings, we are proud, all of the high-rise buildings are built up with our blood and sweat; we also are educated, I can write posts; we also know how to live. The reason I write this post is so everyone can know how we build a block of high-rise buildings, and also to show you our lives as migrant workers.

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Nail household; nail house; stubborn nail: (钉子户) A person or household that refuses to relocate due to compensation disagreements when the land is requisitioned for new construction.

The case of Nail household is a common occurrence in China, however this incident is by far the most escalated conflict between residents and the government demolition team. Ms. Fan attempted to defend her house from the demolition squad by throwing home-made fire bombs…

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The word “Loneliness” (寂寞: Jimo) became really popular on the Chinese Internet this year. Especially the phrase “What XXX is XXing is not XXX, it is loneliness” for example “What brother is smoking are not cigarettes, it is loneliness.” “What I am posting here is not a post, it is loneliness” “What I am breathing is not air, it is loneliness”… How did this phrase become popular? One saying has it, in July of this year someone posted a picture of man eating noodles with this sentence “What brother is eating are not noodles, it is loneliness” on Baidu Teiba, soon it spread like a virus just like “Jia Junpeng, go home to eat”, netizens imitated and began a wide variety of loneliness Kuso.

The use of “brother” is generally referring to a “man”, “guy” or a reference to oneself. It is worth noting that the phrase “Don’t be obsessed with brother, brother is only a legend.” is also quite popular now days.

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Ever since the Internet has spread like wildfire in China, people have become famous through the Internet, sometimes unintentionally. In Chinese netizen-speak, this is known as being “red” (more of a reference to fire or vibrance than the usual Communist connotation) which can be translated as being “hot,” or maybe “the rage.” Now that 2009 is coming to an end (also the year where the number of Internet users in China has surpassed the US population), there are various tallies on who the “hottest” Internet celebrities are. It doesn’t seem there has been any sort of official vote yet, but there seems to be a general consensus among all the forums and websites who the “red” people are. I chose 11 that seem to appear in all the lists and show the variety. If you want to see the original Chinese sites, check out this and this.

The point of this post is not to necessarily be an official ranking, but to give you an idea of the grassroots nature of how Internet fame is manifest in China, the disproportionate emphasis placed on pretty girls, and the seemingly complete randomness of who becomes “red.”

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[From NetEase and many others] During President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, a beautiful Chinese girl dressed in black appeared in many photos and videos of the scene with the President. Quickly the photos along with the mystery girl became popular on the Chinese internet. The mysteries identity of the beauty let to her Human Flesh Search. She is Shanghai’s image ambassador, Fan Bingbing’s relative, Yang Lan’s niece and many other speculations roamed on the internet.

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A new system

For most Chinese students, the most harrowing event of their lives is the dreaded gaokao, the exam that has omnipotent powers to determine where they go to college. Unlike college entrance in the U.S., which is determined by a combination of SAT scores, grades, activities, recommendations, China has used the gaokao system since 1977 and has not had drastic changes to the system since then.

Until recently.

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(picture: A polluted eggplant)

[Southern Metropolis Daily] In July and August of this year, the Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution incident caused nationwide concerns. It has been three to months since the incident, chemical plant was permanently closed, the relevant officials were suspended from their positions and affected farmers also received a certain amount of compensation. Recently the photographer went back to Liuyang, to some of the affected areas and shot a set of portraits for the crops. These terminally ill fruits and vegetables tell us the disaster has not yet ended.

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President Obama’s China visit has ended on Nov 18^th, but he left the Chinese people with this funny picture taken during his welcome banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Some say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this picture perhaps it is Obama’s expression that is worth a thousand words. This picture supposedly was posted on the front page of the “Culture Report” newspaper (新文化报) on Nov 18. (But the front page picture on the electronic version was already changed)

Immediately, this photo, spreading through the Chinese BBS sparked many netizens creativity and comical talents. A comedy skit script was written inspired by this photo. The story of Obama meets this young Chinese girl, it turns out that she is the daughter of a woman (the waitress in the picture) he met 10 years ago in China…

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As Chinese youth are exposed to more and more sex via the Internet in China’s rapidly expanding economy, the education system still has to catch up to their newfound curiosity. Even many schools in Beijing have only recently started true sex education classes, and these only usually begin in high school. There is an inconsistency in the way that China is becoming increasingly liberalized in some ways, but not quickly enough in some important ways and the problem of sexual education illuminates this (you can see the progression of abortion rates here). A number of horrific incidents have occurred recently, including a young woman giving birth in a toilet. Here is a recent article in the Slate concerning the lack of sex education in China. The following story provides a detailed description of the reaction of a small town to the incident of a 14-year old girl giving birth with no one ever noticing she was pregnant.

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[NetEase] The afternoon of Novmber 14, in Shenzhen Huaqiang North downtown area, a man wearing a gown looked exactly like Chiang Kai-shek appeared at Huaqiang Norton Commercial Street. He sat on the floor in front of him a cap and some words about begging for peace, begging for creativity, begging for number of clicks, begging for ideas…” attracted numerous curious onlookers to take pictures of him.

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President Obama spoke with several hundred students at the museum of science and technology in Shanghai today where he answered students’ questions in a Town Hall Meeting. However according to this post, some of the “students” who asked the questions were not exactly current students? These fake students were actually university officials?

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If you ever walked through souvenir shops in Beijing this past year, you must have seen the line of “ObaMao” souvenirs – wallets, posters and T-shirts etc. The design is President Barack Obama’s face dressed in Chair Mao’s Red Guards’ cap and uniform. Ever since Barack Obama was elected as the U.S. president over the past year this T-shirt was selling like hot cakes. However Chinese government just banned this product, at least during Obama’s presidential visit in China. The reason was that they fear the T-shirt might offend the U. S. President and cause embarrassment.

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Singles Day or One’s Day or Guang Gun Jie (Chinese: 光棍节 Pin Yin: guāng gùn jié; Wades: kuang kun chieh; literally: bare sticks holiday) is a Chinese pop culture holiday on November 11 for people who are still living the single life.

From Sina By: Zhu-Ran (姝然)  11/11/2009

Starting from this morning, I have been receiving the same text message from my friends: “The Single’s Day is here, little birds are in love, ants moved in together, flies are pregnant, mosquito lost her child, butterflies divorced, caterpillar got re-married, frogs also gave birth, what are you waiting for?” Receipts of such messages finally made me accept the fact that Single’s Day is finally here.

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