The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes’ contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.
The ban goes into effect from the moment a competitor signs up with the team, and those who refuse to sign will not be allowed to travel to Beijing. Violators will be sent home immediately.
The clause, in section 4 of the contract, simply states: “[Athletes] are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues.”
It then refers competitors to Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.
What about other countries? The United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia all have announced their athletes will be free to speak about any issue concerning China. Only New Zealand and Belgium have banned athletes from giving political opinions.
A movement has started in Japan to use green lanterns (midori chochin) to signify restaurants here that use domestic ingredients in their food.
Jidori Hirokawa, a chicken dish restaurant in the basement of a building in the Kanda area of Tokyo began hanging midori-chochin, unlike traditional aka-chochin (red lanterns), at the top of the staircase leading to it in April.
The green-paper lantern has a sign reading, “This restaurant supports local produce.” The lantern also is decorated with four black stars on a five-star scale, indicating that at least 80 percent of the ingredients it uses are domestically produced.
Restaurants sporting the midori chochin are rated using a star system from one (50% domestic products) to five (90%).
Sounds nice, but since the entire scheme is based on the honor system, it is probably meaningless as the Japanese food industry has become notorious of late for mislabeling their products. So I guess all this system does is allow people to decide whether they prefer Chinese lies or the domestic kind.
Ah, how I’ve missed him. But former Foreign Minister Taro Aso was back in the news yesterday.
Mr Aso has been away from the limelight for a while, after getting shunted aside during the Prime Ministerial changeover from Shinzo Abe to Yasuo Fukuda last autumn.
But you knew he couldn’t stay quiet for long. He usually has a word or two to say on most subjects, well-judged or otherwise. And he seldom disappoints.
Mr Aso added his voice to the tumult over the poisoned Chinese gyoza scandal, by saying in a speech in Kumamoto yesterday -
“I’ve been saying that Japanese agricultural products are expensive but taste good and are clean and safe,” Aso said. “To be blunt, the agricultural cooperatives should thank China. Great value has been added (to Japanese products).”
Five family members in Ichikawa, Chiba, were taken to hospital suffering from vomiting and diarrhea after they ate the dumplings, while another two women from Chiba and three family members from Takasago, Hyogo Prefecture, also reportedly ate the dumplings.
One of the family members from Ichikawa, a 5-year-old girl, was left unconscious in serious condition, while the other family members fell seriously ill after eating the dumplings, which were sold frozen through a consumer cooperative.
The gyoza were tested by Ichikawa health officials who found the insecticide methamidophos in amounts that far exceeded allowable levels in Japan
I saw a TV report on this story this evening during which a reporter called the company whose factory produced the dumplings. When the reporter asked the woman on the other end of the line for a comment, she became quite irate and said something like, “I don’t know what is being reported in the mass media in Japan so I don’t know what you are talking about.” The news show also said that a company representative told them it was impossible for such a thing to happen with their products.
Xinhua is reporting that the Silk Street Market in Beijing, famous for its cheap knockoffs of international designer goods, has registered the name SILKSTEET as a tradmark and issued a warning to counterfeiters that abusers of the brand will be prosecuted to the full extent of trademark laws.
The first items to bear the SILKSTREET name, displayed on Wednesday, include apparel such as neckties, shirts and scarves, as well as a few household items such as tablecloths. They are marked “quality guaranteed” with a label that tells buyers that “the goods are certified by the Silk Street Market. If any quality problems are found, the market will bear the responsibility of compensation.”
“SILKSTREET products are sold exclusively in the market. Anyone using the brand outside will be held liable,” the Beijing Evening News quoted Wang Zili, general manager of the market, as saying.
It is hoped that establishment of the SILKSTREET brand will become an important step towards protecting intellectual property rights in China.
Danwei is reporting that an “experienced American journalist” (experienced in what is not specified) is looking for white guys who date only Chinese women for an on-the-record chat about their affliction with yellow fever.
Apparently this information is going to be used for a serious article that will be aimed not at making the guys look bad, but rather at presenting a fair and balanced picture of the mixed race dating scene in China.
If you are interested in finding out more or in sharing your experiences, drop Danwei a line at: yellowfever@danwei.org.
China’s largest search portal has started up a Japan branch named “Baidu.jp” in an attempt to further expand its global share. Baidu already handles 70% share of search engine traffic in China, and is number three worlwide after Yahoo and Google, which currently dominate in Japan.
Baidu’s aim for the time being is to target users with high IT literacy that use several engines in parallel, for example, using its engine as their “second search engine.” Highlighting Baidu’s search accuracy toward heavy Internet users, the company aims to gradually gain recognition for its search engine.
Refraining from hosting advertisements on the search site for the time being, the company will be devoted to increasing user traffic.
According the a Baidu spokesman, their search engine’s strength lies in its ability to handle Chinese characters.
“In contrast to our rivals that are trying to develop a global standard search algorithm, we give weight to the development of algorithms optimized for local cultures,” [said Robin Li, the company's chairman and CEO]. “I always tell my employees to ‘look at local aspects, not global aspects.’”
Baidu’s search algorithm focuses on analyzing users’ click actions after search results are shown.
“If the algorithm is based on keyword frequency and link popularity, the websites of companies that are good at SEO (search engine optimization) measures will be ranked highest, which are not necessarily the websites that users are after,” Li said.
I wonder how many people in Japan and elsewhere will want to use a search engine from a repressive Communist country, which boasts of its ability to track its users activities. . .
Here is a great idea from China that should be implemented in Japan, the U.S., and just about everywhere else.
In January, more than 8,000 high school teachers sat for the same end-of-term exam that their students did. A teachers scoring less than 80 out of 100 points are disqualified from receiving future rewards and bonuses.
Almost all fortune cookies are made in the United States.
There are no fortune cookies in China.
The origin of the fortune cookie most probably was Japan.
Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United States. But the crisp cookies wrapped around enigmatic sayings have spread around the world. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico, Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies. A surprisingly high number of winning tickets in Brazil’s national lottery in 2004 were traced to lucky numbers from fortune cookies distributed by a Chinese restaurant chain called Chinatown.
But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.
Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone on record saying that the U.S. will abandon Japan in the future to forge stronger ties with China because the two countries worship money.
“The U.S. will gravitate more and more toward China at the expense of Japan as it seeks short-term benefit,” Ishihara, 75, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Jan. 9. “American and Chinese people share a similar value for just money, money, money.”
Japan’s adoption of U.S.-style capitalism has led to a wealth gap between urban and rural areas, he added. The co-author of the 1989 bestseller “The Japan That Can Say No,” also reiterated his view that the country should scrap its security treaty with the U.S. and strengthen its military.
Ishihara also claimed that many of Japan’s current woes are due to embrace of American-style capitalism by former Primer Minister Junichiro Koizumi and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.
“It was Ozawa who created a regional gap,” he said. “Ozawa ruined Japanese farming villages along with small and medium companies.”
Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s push to privatize parts of Japan’s postal system and boost competition were also a mistake, he said.
Only time will tell whether Koizumi’s reforms were good for Japan, but out here in the Tochigi countryside I hear nothing but complaints against the ex-Prime Minister. Many people out in the rural areas feel betrayed by Koizumi’s reforms and harbor deep bitterness against him and the “Koizumi children.”
If you are planning a trip to Shanghai any time soon, you’d better keep your eyes on your belogings, even after you get into a taxi.
Here is a description from The China Daily of a new scam as it was played on a young woman after she got in a taxi to her downtown residence.
About halfway home, the driver received an “urgent call” and told Lei that he would have to drop her off and turn back. He waived her fee, unloaded her luggage and helped her get another taxi.
When she returned home, Lei discovered that her notebook computer had been removed from her luggage and called police.
After a month-long investigation, police determined that the driver had hid somebody in the trunk specifically to steal luggage. Both the driver and the “trunk man” were arrested.
The Daily Yomiuri is reporting that Japan has reached an ageement under which the Japanese government and domestic firms will purchase a part of China’s greenhouse gas emissions quotas in order to reach reduction levels dictated by the Kyoto Protocol
The envisaged scheme is part of the clean development Mechanism (CDM), under which industrialized countries are able to use their own technologies and funds for projects based in developing countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and offset these reductions against their own output.
Under the agreement, Japan would receive the right in return for development projects that it bankrolls in China.
A little Engrish in reverse in the report out of the U.K. that a teenage girl there who had what she thought was her boyfriend’s name tatooed onto her stomach in Chinese characters later found out that the text actually actually was a line of random characters.
The young woman asked the folks at a locak Chinese takeout shop what the letters meant and they told her “supermarket,” but this reportedly is not the case.
[Joanne] Raine, 19, from Firthmoor, Darlington, the tattoo in March 2005 six months after she started going out with Andrew Blenche.
She had wanted to have a tattoo of Roo, Andrew’s nickname.
She went to Skindeep Tattoo Parlour, in High Northgate, Darlington, and chose a capital r, capital o and small o from the wall and paid £80.
Miss Raine said: “They had Chinese symbols on the wall.
“So I picked capital r, capital o and small o, so they were all different.”
Joanne (who is apparently such an idiot that she believes Chinese pictographs are equivalent to alphabetic letters) has since broken up with Roo.
A new movie out of Japan named The Truth About Nanjing attempts to claim that the Nanjing Massacre never happened.
According to Satoru Mizushima, the film’s director, “There is one indisputable fact: there was no massacre at Nanjing. We don’t want our children to grow up thinking Japan is a barbarian country.”
A preview of the highlights of the film, which is backed by ultra-conservatives including Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, included newsreel footage of Japanese Imperial army officers entering Nanjing on horseback while soldiers stand to attention.
“The entry of the Japanese military brought peace and order to the people of the city,” read the subtitles.
Japanese veterans who served in the area at the time were shown denying any large-scale violence against civilians.
The film is based on the writings of Shudo Higashinakano, who asserts that the Nanking Massacre story as invented by Americans and Europeans who were living in Nanjing at the time.
Director Mizushima is also on record claiming that Japanese war criminals martyrs sacrificed to atone for the sins of Japan, making them similar to Jesus Christ.
They resemble Jesus Christ who was nailed to the cross in order to bear the sins of the world. They died bearing all of old Japan’s good and bad parts and headed for the gallows.
Picked this up over at Danwei, which reports that it comes from the “Jinan-based Qilu Evening News, like most evening papers in China, mixes newsier items with ludicrously-overwritten ‘news of the weird’-style reports”. . . Which in a way makes it a lot like JAPUNDIT!
Villager Mr. Chen never imagined that a month after his mother’s death, the cell phone that had been buried with her would still be in use.
The story begins one months ago, with the tragic death of Chen’s mother, who lived in certain village in Anzhuang, Feicheng [Shandong Province]. The entire family was distraught, and as a filial son, Chen bought a monoblock Nokia to bury with her. He made sure the phone was charged, and he installed the phone chip his mother had used while she was alive. This symbolized that he could contact his mother in heaven any time he wished.
But just a few days ago, Chen accidentally dialed his mother’s phone number, which was still stored in his own mobile phone. He heard a busy signal. Thinking he had mis-dialed, he called again, and the line was still busy. But the phone had clearly been buried—at this thought, Chen broke out into a cold sweat. That evening, he lay awake tossing and turning. The more he thought about it the queerer it seemed, so he finally told his wife. After talking it over, the two decided to make an inquiry at the mobile company the following day. They had just asked their question when, to their surprise, something even stranger turned up: the computer showed that the mobile phone had racked up a month’s worth of charges after his mother had died. Man and wife stared speechless at each other and fright seized their hearts. Wracking their brains, they decided to report the matter to the police, and have them figure it out.
After they made a report to the Anzhuang station of the Feicheng PSB, an investigation started immediately. From the mobile company they obtained the phone’s call record, which ultimately showed that a certain Mr. Sun, a 62-year-old villager, was the prime suspect in the case. In the face of iron-clad evidence, Sun bowed his head and admitted his guilt. He confessed to the following facts: on the afternoon of 1 November, when Chen was busy with his mother’s funeral, he discovered a monoblock Nokia among the burial effects. Greed was kindled in his heart, and at 11 pm on 14 November, he dug up the grave, stole the mobile phone, and made use of it.
Just about everyone is feeling the pain of higher fuel costs and finding ways to deal with it.
According to a report from Reuters, a crematorium in China has come up with an innovative way to beat the rising cost of oil. . . burn corpses only half way and dump the remains.
Villagers in Hengyang county, in the southern province of Hunan, discovered the practice when an “unbearable stench” started coming from the site, and tried to block a road on Wednesday to stop funeral vehicles from delivering more bodies.
The village sent people to investigate the smell and the South China Morning Post said they saw “crematorium workers putting half-burnt human remains and organs in plastic bags and throwing them into a nearby ditch”.
“As the price of diesel rose, we saw more and more bags thrown out from the crematorium,” the paper quoted Xiao Gaoyi, a village representative and one of the witnesses, as saying.
Check out the saga of Nick Young, an Englishman who published something called The China Development Brief until the Chinese government made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. . . And he did.
This chilling message – and it is a direct quote – was delivered to me in Beijing this summer by an apparently high-ranking Chinese security official who would tell me only his surname: Song. He was, he said, “in charge of watching terrorism and NGOs,” and he was offering me a real, not theoretical, choice. I could become an elite propagandist for China, or I would have to leave the country, where I had lived continuously for 12 years, and would never be allowed back.
On Sept. 26, after spending several weeks in Europe, I returned to Beijing and found that Mr. Song had spoken in earnest. Immigration authorities barred my entry, put me back on the plane to Helsinki, Finland, and canceled my multientry visa.
What was the “deal” that Song offered Young?
Song said he could provide funds to expand our publishing and make it “famous” while helping the world to understand China better. In return, I would have to report directly to him. But, he warned, I should never tell anyone of this conversation, not even my wife. And if I rejected the deal I would be permanently barred.
This is really funny. The first picture shows a couple of Japanese employees fueling a small airplane. Scroll down to see the same action being performed in China. Yes, it’s racist but I don’t care.
That’s the question that customs inspectors in China seem to be asking these days as Shanghai airport inspectors discovered $5,400 worth of illegal Japanese beef hidden in tourist luggage recently.
On Nov. 3, officials discovered luggage filled with 800 kilograms of Japanese beef on a flight from Osaka and 160 kilograms in luggage on a flight from Tokyo as tourists tried to pass customs with their beef bounty.
Just five days later, acting on a tip, airport officials found 26 boxes of Japanese beef weighing 530 kilograms and three boxes of tuna, all hidden in boxes labeled “mechanical parts”.
The Inspection and Quarantine Bureau detained the smugglers and destroyed all the beef, the newspaper said, in accordance with China’s ban on Japanese beef imports due to concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy
The British Olympic Association (BOA) reportedly is forcing the nation’s athletes to sign contracts that effectively ban them from speaking out against human rights abuses in China. 
Ah, how I’ve missed him. But former Foreign Minister Taro Aso was back in the news yesterday.
A little Engrish in reverse 
But just a few days ago, Chen accidentally dialed his mother’s phone number, which was still stored in his own mobile phone. He heard a busy signal. Thinking he had mis-dialed, he called again, and the line was still busy. But the phone had clearly been buried—at this thought, Chen broke out into a cold sweat. That evening, he lay awake tossing and turning. The more he thought about it the queerer it seemed, so he finally told his wife. After talking it over, the two decided to make an inquiry at the mobile company the following day. They had just asked their question when, to their surprise, something even stranger turned up: the computer showed that the mobile phone had racked up a month’s worth of charges after his mother had died. Man and wife stared speechless at each other and fright seized their hearts. Wracking their brains, they decided to report the matter to the police, and have them figure it out. 
