"It seems to me that every mainland and Hong Kong exchange event would turn into a mainland losing face event eventually." I stated, holding my microphone in a auditorium filled with around 500 other mainland students participating in a such event.

These hundreds of students were from several mainland universities enjoying their cultural/social/intellectual exchange tour in Hong Kong. The last event on their schedule that day was to watch this award winning documentary, and to have a question and answer session with the director. The documentary was about the very young piano genius. It has showed how proud he is with himself and how different he was from other kids. After the screening dozens of hands were in the air quickly.

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Based on the cover story of Caixin Century magazine’s May 9th issue.

Yang Libing always bring the photo of his first born daughter Yang Ling with him through his years of searching for her. She would be 7 years old by now.

10 months after born, Yang Ling was taken away by officials from local one child policy office. The reason was that the family didn’t pay "social raising fee". Yang had never saw his daughter again.

One day in 2009, Yang and his wife Cao Zhimei was shown a photo of a little girl. Yang knew the moment he looked at the photo that this is his daughter. The photo was taken in the US. Yang’s baby girl is now some American parents’ sweet heart.

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When I took off my shirt in front of the mirror, I was scared by my reflection. Pits carved deep into my skin between my neck and clavicles; my belly was as flat as an exhausted balloon leaving my chest hanging on my body like a pair of high-relief sculpture; and each one of my rib was covered tightly under my skin protruded so hard on my chest that I could count them one by one. I wasn’t in concentration camp or the military, I was just graduated from high school, a high school of hell. Here is just another day there.

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Chinese food is famous for two reason: its extreme deliciousness and its weirdness. The later characteristic has a perfect example, the Wangfujing snack street in downtown Beijing. Just google it or YouTube it and you can find a lot of of videos and photos of foreigners amazed by what Chinese people are eating. You can find skin-piled sparrow, cicada, silk worm, inside-out snake, giant grasshopper, penis of various kind of animals and star fish. You name it. Just think of something you don’t dare to eat and they would probably have it on sale on Wangfujing snack street.

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Public zombie kiss

This took place in a canteen of Jilin University. I don’t know whether this girl was horny or hungry for brain or thirsty for blood.

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Wednesday

Memo of health incidents in 2010

At the end of the year let’s review the shockingly long list of health incidents.Melamine spread to different milk products including milk candy, ice cream and other brand of milk powder. The infective vaccine incident made a big fuss. The food of the year was no doubt sewage oil, which is literally sewage oil.

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Viral time travel commercial

This is a commercial for 7-up. It adopted the style of Japanese cartoon Gag Manga Biyori which involves preposterous plot, non-stop repetitions, and dynamic music. The cartoon, became popular in recent years and was added subtitles and many enthusiastic dub it in many dialects.

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Tuesday Hostage situation in the street caught on camera

A hostage situation was developed in City of Guiyang, Guizhou province. A man was caught stealing a motorcycle by the public  took a young girl hostage with his knife to get away. Eventually the hostage was successfully rescued and the criminal booked. The entire hostage rescue process was captured on camera.

Wednesday Head of Post Office drives drunk, killing 5 children

5 children were hit and killed by a drunk driver. This tragic car accident happened at 319 National Highway, Luoyang city, Henan Province on December 5, 2010.  The driver was “no ordinary person”. He was the county postmaster (head of the post office) Gu Qingyang. Each victim’s family received 230,000 yuan as compensation.

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“China is going to give its own Confucius peace prize just a day before this year’s Nobel prize ceremony”. I read this on one of my friend’s renren status an hour ago. That sounded like a really bad PR campaign. And not like what Chinese authority would usually react to this type of things. Usually it would try to block information and let the fuss die down quietly—many Chinese still don’t know who won the 1989 Nobel peace prize and the 2000 Nobel literature prize. Is Chinese authority so irritated this year by the Nobel peace prize committee awarding the jailed dissident, Liu Xiaobo that it decided to take a whole new approach and start a counter-Nobel-peace-prize prize? By having it right before the Nobel peace prize the public discussion would be raised again and that is the least what authority wants to see.

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I was going to let Asian Games in Guangzhou slide this time. Is there anything interesting about China hosting an international event besides grand opening, traffic jam, badly treated volunteers, uncivilized behaviors, sky rocketing real estate price of wherever they took place, and of course those same old political debates?

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(In Chongqing, an art work named “Car accident is more fierce than the South China Tiger, my dad is Li Gang” appeared on the Foreigner Street in Nanan District. )

On an October night in Hebei University in northern city of Baoding two college girls were struck by a black Volkswagen sedan. The driver, who is a recent college graduate and a Baoding local, tried to escape but was stopped by security guard. Confronting by the guard, he said the line to be the phrase of year 2010 “My dad is Li Gang” who is a deputy police chief.

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(Edited by Key)

Fire broke out at a 28 story apartment building in Shanghai at 2:00 in the afternoon, Nov15 (local time) causing at least 49 deaths. The building was located at Jing An district and was under renovation. According to Xinhua’s report, over 100 were rescued out of the building of 156 households so far.

Well-known Chinese youth opinion leader Han Han happened to be at the scene and he had recorded what happened the whole time.

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This year’s World Cup would not have been as much fun without Paul the Octopus. Now in the Asian games 2010 hosted in Guangzhou , pandas have became the oracles of the game.

Paul was presented with two water tanks containing the same food and each marked with the national flag of the two competing teams. Paul’s choice of which one to eat shows its favor. But how pandas perform their “magic” is different. “Boss” the panda predicted the the first gold medal right by choosing bamboo shoots over apple. No, the food were not the same. No, they were not marked with national flags. It is just assumed that bamboo shoot represents China and apple represents other couturiers. I am not a panda expert but I think it is a common sense that panda eats bamboo.

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I used to introduce Renren.com to my foreign friends simply as “Chinese Facebook” usually with a self mocking smile admitting in my heart that it is just another product of the Chinese ripping off American innovations. Back then I was only using Renren and occasionally visiting Facebook to see my handful of foreign friends’ updates.

My blind admiration for Facebook and contradictorily judgmental view of Renren started to change after I got a chance to study in the US and used Facebook on a daily basis. Months later I found out I prefer Renren than Facebook.

To me, what Facebook can do Renren can do better, and Renren can also do what Facebook can not do.

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