Speaking Pictures

The well-known mobile game "Temple Run" is actually a Chinese game, and the reason is simple: The guy has to keep running to refrain from being caught, because he must have defaced some stone sculpture in some ancient Egyptian temple with graffiti !

Local People in Anning, Kunming, Yunnan Province have to buy surgical face masks with their real names, required by local government bureau. The requirement is connected with the recent protest against a paraxylene (PX) plant planned to be built in the city of Anning, 30 km far away from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province who is well know as a tourist place. Thousands locals, some wearing face-masks, went to the streets objecting to the obscure approval of the project and the potential pollution brought by the PX project. The protest did not change the PX project situation, but the requirement of purchasing face-masks with real names was regarded as a threat and oppression from government bureau. A latest news said that the bureau has reversed the decision due to the public voice; however, it may apply other methods in controlling public opinion.

Although currently Chinese netizens criticizes Ding Jinhao the 15 year old tourist who defaced a stone sculpture in an ancient Egyptian temple with graffiti , he actually is not the most famous name in defacing tourist places. I guess, he may just imitate other vandals in marking. Those vandals who like to deface tourist places includes Jiang Zemin, the ex China President: And Mao Zedong, the first China President: (Picture PSed as the Chinese characters "Ding Jinhao was here" put in)

Soon after Ding Jinhao, the 15 year old Chinese tourist, defaced a stone sculpture in an ancient Egyptian temple with graffiti , a good news is: the marking has been wiped off. However, this news failed to relax us as we can see from the picture: the marking is higher than a normal adult man. Considering Ding is not so tall as Yao Ming the Chinese basketball player, he must have finished his carving with others' help . So vandals in Ding's case must be more than one. This conclusion is not meaningless, I just want to point out that Ding's case is not a single one for Chinese tourists; many Chinese tourists have such an ugly habit of defacing. To eliminate the uncivilized behavior, we have to do more than to scold Ding online .

Ding Jinhao, a 15-year-old Chinese tourist became the storm center of Chinese internet. He irrationally carved "Ding Jinhao was here" in Chinese in the 3500 year old Luxor Temple and defaced the sculpture with graffiti (picture above). The picture disclosed on Sina Weibo aroused a huge anger towards the boy and his family online, some netizens even hacked the homepage of Ding's school and left the words of "I was here" on the first page. This is really humiliating for the whole China, however, I don't want to defend for Ding, but I must say: this is not the first case for Chinese travelers to deface tourist places, Ding just brought his defacing habit abroad, and what the sad is Ding's defacing may not be the last case due to Chinese tourist's lack of respect. The case aroused so big outrage online because it took place in Egypt a foreign country, however, in domestic China, tourists have been used to watching uncivilized " I was here ...

Remember once we discussed People Daily's penis shaped building ? Jimmy Kimmel now talked about it.

Have you ever seen that an official mainstream medium advocates public hatred to the citizen of another country? Hitler's media? Stalin's media? No, Neither of them. Now enters China! Recently, the People.com, official news website, starts a special column named " The Dishonest Americans Series "(the red circle in the picture above) in its US channel. Its purpose is "to present to the audience the dark side of people and things you may experience in America, to help the audience to fully understand America and Americans". Up till now, the column has published 6 reports, covering some unpleasant personal experience on air travel, telecommunication company and personnel outsourcing service. All of the reports are just about everyday life that everyone may come across, home or abroad. Each story comes with English translations. Well, since less and less Chinese believe in the official news media, I just want to advise to the foreigners: don't pay ...

Farmers work at terraced fields in Hunan province, the provenance of much of the rice found to be contaminated by Guangzhou authorities . An official report indicated that almost half the rice sold in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, was contaminated with cadmium, triggering anger from customers all over China who keep concerning the domestic food security issue. Reported by the Wall Street Journal, nearly half of 18 rice samples tested contained excessive levels of cadmium according to Guangzhou Food and Drug Administration. This test demonstrated the serious pollution issues in China: first water, then air, now earth . A heated discussion was aroused soon after the disclosure of the news throughout in Chinese social websites. What the funny is, in response to the Guangzhou rice scandal, the People Daily, governmental media, advised the public to "diversify" their diets in order to avoid eating rice from one region and thus they would greatly reduce ...

The bigger ostrich = government; the smaller ostriches = people This cartoon is the comment on the event of North Korea seize Chinese fishermen .

Some cartoonist posted online this picture on satirizing that North Korea seized Chinese fishing boat and crew for Ransom.

The 16 fishermen said to be kidnapped by North Koreans North Korea is used to turning to Chinese people after it finds it more difficult to kidnap Japanese. Disclosed by Yu Xuejun in his Sina Weibo on Saturday, some armed North Koreans took his fishing boat and its crew on May 5 in Chinese waters and demanded a ransom of RMB 600,000 (about US $96,774). This is not the first time North Korea kidnap Chinese fishing boats for ransom. Just one year ago, May 8, 2012, North Korea kidnapped a Chinese fishing boat in the name of intruding North Korean waters. Based on the experience, North Korea kidnapped the boat and the crew for the ransom, so even Chinese diplomats has asked North Korea to free the guys, DPRK would not free them until they receive the money. Although China is nominally the only ally of North Korea, North Korea finds it more and more difficult to finance its economy due to its rigid dictatorship. Thus to keep threatening its neighbors, by kidnapping Chinese fish...

Street-side grilled mutton skewers, with chili pepper, is one of the most cherished pleasures in summer in Beijing. It is common to view several people sit together and eat grilled mutton skewers with cold beer. However, municipal officials start to rein in the skewer sellers in the name of decreasing air pollution. City administration officials were stepping up inspections of unlicensed grilling operations around the city, threatening violators with fines up to 5,000 yuan ($815) and possible confiscation of barbecue paraphernalia. It's true the air pollution is a heavy issue in Beijing, and this is the first time officials have used the city’s notorious air pollution as a primary motive in going after the skewer stands. Although some reports prove that the street-side mutton skewers barbecue is the common source of PM2.5, it is still questionable whether other air-pollution-control policy, like decreasing the volume of motor traffic, should have priority. For tho...

News said the fiance of the fallen dead girl Yuan Liya, as discussed before , was jailed in Fengtai Detention Center, in the name of order-breaking and destabilizing . In fact, like many Hollywood movie, I want to speak to the guy: Boy, you're jailed because you know too much .

The red words are a slogan in Chinese and Uighur: Forbid: To pray in public places, To wear the veil (women), To be bearded (Men). Yeah, we must admit that everyone enjoys the freedom of belief in China, as long as you take the government as your god.

What's the most fashionable performance art to do online after the mysterious death of a young woman in a wholesale market in Beijing? To make a commitment that "I would not kill myself, and my possible death must be a homicidal one" . Yuan Liya, a 22-year old girl, fell several stories from the wholesale market building in Beijing on May 3rd. The police at once declared that she committed suicide and invented a new legal word " death of self-fall from height " to describe her death, which on the contrary infuriated her boyfriend and family, and led to their refusal to the conclusion and a rare protest around the building involving hundreds of people. Soon, the rumor that Yuan the girl had been sexually attacked before her death was spreading online, especially on Sina Weibo the twitter-like SNS website. The police also denied this rumor and refused her family's request to check the surveillance videos in the market and pressured them to consent to a...

This is a TIC (This Is China) joke spreading through twitter-like Sina Weibo: Guangzhou is to spend RMB 620 million yuan (about US $100 million) on a Galaxy Graveyard specially only for government officials including soldiers. The staff of the graveyard also confirmed: the prerequisite ( to be served inside ) is that the dead must be a party-member cadre. And then a fake interview posted online: a People's Daily journalist asks an old man his view of the news about the official-dedicated graveyard, "What do you think about that?" the reporter asks. The old man thinks deeply for a minute and then asks, "Will they be buried alive?"

Baidu made its first move in Indonesia as reported . This time it is Baidu's division Hao123, web link portal, who made this first stealthy step. However, this Hao123-sponsored directory site chooses Google rather than Baidu.com (3 out of 5 options) as its search engine, besides, it includes some popular local websites such as Kaskus and Tokobagus  and some social websites such as facebook. I think this is a partly right decision for Baidu to enter the Indonesia market. 1, It's right to make Hao123, rather than the search engine, the first product to enter Indonesia, because Hao123 is much simpler in technique, costing mush less but monetizing much faster. So this may be a right step for Baidu to stand in Indonesia. 2, However, a single directory portal can do little without being backed by the strong search engine power. Here I doubt whether Baidu could support it with good-enough techniques, as it has been used to being protected by Chinese government and is not str...

More than 122,000 people so far signed on the petition webpage to ask the Whitehouse.gov to respond to the case of Zhu Ling being poisoned , and many Chinese netizens take President Obama as Chief Justice of P. R. China and hope he may put pressure on Chinese judicial system to respond to the case of Zhu Ling being poisoned. In addition, some netizens edited Obama's photo and made him look like Bao Zheng , the traditonal symbol of justice. （The image of Bao Zheng in some TV shows） So, Mr. Obama, are you ready for your new job in China?

President Barack Obama is hoped to be named the Chief Justice of the People's Republic of China, as more and more Chinese netizens turn to him in seeking justice after being disappointed by domestic judicial system and censorship. In a petition on whitehouse.gov webpage , more than 100,000 people have signed to ask the US government to "investigate and deport Jasmine Sun (or Sun Wei)" as she was suspected to poison her classmate Zhu Ling with the lethal chemical  thallium in Tsinghua University and made Zhu seriously disabled. The story of Zhu Ling's being poisoned  once again becomes the topic through the internet in China. In short, Zhu Ling, as a Tsinghua University sophomore, was poisoned with the lethal chemical thallium in 1994. Her case was so rare that no doctors knew the real reason of her symptoms before Zhu Ling was poisoned twice with thallium and some of her classmates turned to experts abroad through the newly-built Email system. Zhu Ling's ...

It is reported that some Malaysian students questioned the general election home 2013, which just finished on May 5. Although Malaysia's ruling coalition won a simple majority in the election and would extend its 56-year rule, some people still insisted that some candidates cheated in the vote. Well, but compared to the election in Hong Kong and Mainland China, I have to say Malaysia already did a much better job. Here is the difference:

Read the headline on the front cover of newly published  Time : "Homeland Insecurity - Do we need to sacrifice privacy to be safer?" Well, Chinese people are so familiar with this edited picture on the front cover, because we see the censoring cameras everyday everywhere, like the ones on the below of the picture. So, I am curious: Time , have you paid for the copyright to China?

When you go to China recently, take care of what you eat, especially the meat. In Shanghai and the regions nearby,  Rat Meat  may be sold as lamb, disclosed by the Ministry of Public Security and reported by New York Times . Sixty-three people were arrested and accused of “buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection,” which they doused in gelatin, red pigment and nitrates, and sold as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu Province for about $1.6 million, according to the ministry’s statement. However, the statement aroused more heated questioning to the ministry rather than removed it. Many netizens post online questioning whether it is cost-effective to use the meat of fox and rat to produce mutton. The food is a more and more serious problem in China, wherever the discussion leads to. So here comes the interesting contrast about the meat issue between China and North Korea: In North Korea, you have no meat to eat; while in C...

Deng Zhuodi, the only grandson of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, was named deputy mayor of Pingguo County, Baise, Guangxi Province. Deng Zhuodi, his English name David Zhuo , was a Duke University Law School graduate and later worked in US law firm White & Case LLP. It is said he paid $200,000 to a girl in the same law firm for being suing sexual harassment. It is not a secret that the descendants of the Communist leaders have the fast-pass to power and wealth, which happens everywhere in Chinese society from President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the son of the late Communist party leader Xi Zhongxun, to Deng Zhuodi the newly-named deputy mayor in Guangxi. However, what surprises me is that Deng Zhuodi is actually an American guy. He was born in America, so he has the American passport according to the American laws. Then, is it legal to name a foreign guy to be the mayor in China? Especially someone who was once sued for sexual harassment? Well, is this the first step f...

Look at the two International Workers' Day doodles in the picture. Baidu's doodle is above, and Google's doodle is below. See the difference? Well, I think this is kind of a metaphor: Baidu's doodle implies to build a wall , while Google's doodle implies how to cross over a wall . Since Baidu and Google are two internet websites, the wall could be interpreted as the well-known Great Fire-Wall of China, which is the very reality in China.