From Sina | translated by Roy | edited by Key

A forum post on the Internet about a “death talk” caused heated discussion, a 17-year-old high school student in Binzhou City (Shandong Province) died suddenly during a talk with his teacher.  It was called “death by talking” (谈话死) on the Internet. The talk lasted only 20 minutes.

Our reporter went to the school at 1:30 p.m. The 2 guards said the leaders were not there, they don’t usually go to work until 3 pm. There were some phone numbers of teachers in charge posted on the door. But the guards stopped us quickly and ripped off the phone numbers when we were trying to call. They told us impatiently, “we don’t know anything, the leaders refuse all interviews, please don’t make trouble”.

At 3:00 p.m. we met the leader, vice-principal Feng in charge of this incident. “We welcome the media and never told the guards to refuse reporters or block the information from students unlike the rumor said on the internet. The guards were just doing their job, tightening security.” Then he told us the whole course of the story:

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The following is a forum post on MOP:

Translated by Jue, edited by Key

Chinese brides account for 72% on average of the foreign wives South Korean men marry. In 2006, tens of thousands South Koreans married foreign women including around over 10 thousand Chinese girls. However, in the same year, only 2,590 Chinese men married Korean women. That means in the transnational marriages between China and South Korea China "exports" 4 times women than it "imports" which is equivalent to sending about 10 thousand Chinese women to South Korea and adding 10 thousand Chinese bachelors. So people often say humorously, in the past China sent those "volunteers" to support the Korea War and now China again sends "an army of women" to assist marriages in South Korea. But, who will come over to support Chinese men?

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From Netease:

In Beijing, a couple who is getting divorced is in a custody battle, instead of fighting to win the custody of their 4 year-old son, they fight to lose it. The mother claimed that she has no ability to raise the child and asked the court to award the custody to the husband. The husband however, said it’s bad for his job to have a kid around and it would be better for the young child to stay with his mother. Two of them then decided to put the whole thing to an end with an auction: the higher bidder can get rid of the child.

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Recently few websites and forums published the information about artificial hymens being popular among Chinese women who want to fake their virginity. These hymens are distributed under the brand of “Joan of Arc”, who is also known by the name “Virgin of Orleans”.

The funny fact is that these hymens are coming packed TWO in a wooden box or paper bag. That’s really weird. Why two? Wouldn’t just one be enough? Well, I’ll leave this question to the consideration of readers and meanwhile will provide the adapted translation of website homepage, distributing this irreplaceable (?) product.

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From: QQ

It’s an quiet ordinary rural Chinese village where people still live in "cave houses", small dwellings built into the side of hills and mountains. But the women in this small village has been doing something extraordinary for more than half a century and it’s not until few days ago that it finally come to the attention of the whole country.

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From Yangzi Evening News | translated by Ivan | edited by Key

Recently, “China’s number one philanthropist” Chen Guangbiao distributed disaster-relief funds to two villages in the earthquake-stricken area in Yingjiang, Yunnan Province, each villages received 200 yuan in cash.   However, the photo of him with the villagers flaunting the donated money afterwards raised a storm of disputes on the Internet.  As for his charitable act being defined as “Violent Charity”, Chen Guangbiao responded on Mar 20, “I think the term ‘Violent Charity’ is quite (good and) appropriate, because the current development of China’s philanthropy needs to be promoted with “Great Violence” ”(Mar 21, Jinghua Times)

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From Mop | translated by Jue | edited by Key

On the afternoon of March 14^th, 10th grade student Zhang Zhipeng from the Third Secondary School of Pucheng, Fujian was scolded and insulted by his homeroom teacher in the teachers’ office because Zhang had been playing with his cell phone in class. Then his parents were called to school by the teacher. Zhang Zhipeng had made apology to the teacher but she didn’t accept it and continued to verbally abuse Zhang. Zhang couldn’t bear the insult and committed suicide by jumping off the building after that. Within ten minutes of the accident, school leaders and teachers turned the other way, only his mother accompanied Zhang for the last ten minutes of his life.

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It’s well known that censorship in China stifles many forms of electronic communication and media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Gmail. Now, the New York Times reports that regulations have become even stiffer, ever since the government caught whiffs of plans to organize China-based protests after uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Several virtual-private-network services have been disrupted, and many users of Gmail, Google’s email service which is located in Hong Kong, have been unable to access their accounts for the last several weeks. (According to New York Times) Even cell phone calls are being monitored, according to a caller in Beijing who had quoted Shakespeare’s “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” to his girlfriend and was abruptly disconnected.

Read the New York Times full story here:

China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications

But, is this true?

Can anyone reproduce such experience? Shanghai Scrap actually conducted the fact-checking experiment, and found no disconnected phone calls not only for quoting Shakespeare, but even repeating the word “PROTEST” fiercely into the phone.  And thanks Fons Tuinstra for his post “The false NYT China censorship story”.

(Edited by Key)

From Netease | Translated by Jue | Edited by Key

China News Agency, Beijing March 17^th

Recently, there has been shopping spree for salt in some parts of China due to the growing nuclear crisis in Japan and the rumors that iodized salt will be capable to protect oneself from nuclear radiation, also with the fears that nuclear leaks would affect coastal areas in China and the marine products and salt would also be contaminated.

Therefore on March 17^th, Chinese National Salt Industry Corporation launched emergency response mechanism, requiring local salt industry companies to ensure the supply of salt. Meanwhile, Chinese National Development and Reform Committee issued an urgent notice that local governments must carry out market inspection, resolutely crack down on spreading rumors, malicious hoarding, driving up prices, disrupting the market and other illegal acts, and maintain the market and stabilize commodity prices.

The local governments also attach great importance to this and persuade people of rational consumption and out of rumors believing through various ways. Besides, they also verify there is no evidence of coastal pollution in China.

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Source: MOP

The current catastrophe in Japan is all over the news in China now. It is so predominant that the earthquake in the country’s southern city Yunnan province was eclipsed to some extent. However, behind the attention is Chinese people’s different and mixed attitude toward this tragedy in Japan.

While most people expressing their concern and empathy to the people in Japan in various forms, voice of different opinion are not any weaker.
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From Netease | translated by Roy | edited by Key

A Lamborghini owner hired people to break his Lamborghini Gallardo sports car worth 3 million yuan in front of a lamp store yesterday afternoon in Qingdao. He felt that failed to exercise his consumer rights several times after the car had problems, so he decided to express his dissatisfaction in a extreme way on the International Consumers Rights Day (3/15). The process was put on a BBS and broadcasted live on micro-blogs.

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From Sina | translated by Ivan | edited by Key

On Mar 7, Wang Ping, member of the national committee of CPPCC, director of Chinese National Museum in Beijing, stated that children from rural areas should not be encouraged to enter university, because once they go to university, they would never go back to their hometown, which would be a tragedy. In her opinion, supporting a child to go to university will cause poverty for a family , and because the kid may not be able to find a suitable job or afford a house after graduating from college and also not willing to return home. This is quite unreasonable. (Mar 9, Jinghua Times)

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From Netease:

Zhong Guang Net Beijing reports on March 18, according to Voice of China “Aspect News”, since iPad 2 went on sale last week many scalpers have been buying them madly. A group of Asian scalpers targeted the Apple flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York. They tried every way to go into the store to buy the goods, and then resell them at higher prices locally or sent to China for sale.

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From Netease | Translated by Roy | Edited by Key

A rich merchant in Wenling, Zhejiang held a luxurious funeral for his mother in a local middle school. Classes were suspended and the playground was used. The funeral cost 6 million yuan. The vice-principal of the school has been suspended.

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From MOP | Translated by Daisy | Edited by Key

This post serves no sensational and defiant purpose. Only when we attended the funeral of our fellow student with grief, did we recognize the untruthful report on the internet. We decided to air our grievance…

At about 3 p.m. March 5, Yang Fei, a second year postgraduate student of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics (JXUFE) was struck by a Honda SUV with license plate M23539, just after getting off a bus at the west entrance of JXUFE. She was sent to the hospital and that night she died from sustained injuries. The car accident killed 2 people and wounded 4 others. A restaurant owner who was famous among students of JXUFE died from the collision. The driver who caused the accident, Liao Weiming, was the vice principle of Jiangxi Agricultural University (JXAU).

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