Check out what you get when you visit this link for the Google map entry for Lanzhou China. While it should open far east of where it does, the spot in the desert that it actually shows is a little bit strange. Maybe it's a bug in the map?
It sort of looks like a moldy sand-bird.
Zooming out shows that we're not actually looking at Lanzhou, but someplace far west of there. The arrow shows the location of moldy bird.
Can anyone explain what's going on here?
This is weird. China, arguably the world's worst copyright offender seems to be aggressively defending the copyright of their five year plans on wikipedia.
I'm not sure of the motivation behind this, but I thought it was certainly worth a post. Here's a screenshot of the wiki page where the content has been removed:
Here's an interesting post from angrylaowai.com drawing an interesting comparison between the new Shanghai Expo 2010 mascot and a character that many of us know and love from our childhood. Have a look at the mascot on the right and tell me if he think you resembles Gumby (on the left):
What do you think? Is this just another Chinese rip-off? Or is the difference siginifigant enough to make it an original?
I hadn't heard anything about this amazing discovery until now, but apparently it happened back in the early 90s. When 2000 year-old mummies were found in Western China, they were found to have some astonishing characteristics:
But more amazing than the discovery itself was the astonishing fact that the mummies were blond haired and long nosed. In 1993, Victor Mayer a college professor collected DNA from the mummies and his tests verified that the bodies were all of European genetic stock. Ancient Chinese texts from as early as the first millennium BC do mention groups of far-east dwelling caucasian people referred to as the Bai, Yeuzhi, and Tocharians. None, though, fully reveal how or why these people ended up there. Source
This is pretty fascinating. I can't think of any other early examples of Western people showing up in China. Is there anyone out there more versed in Chinese history than myself that know of any others?
If you liked our post a while back about the giant rat caught in China, you're going to especially enjoy this post. In Sichuan province someone has caught a 1.1 meter long giant salamander. It weighs in at a whopping 13.5 kilograms!
Check out the photos. Isn't he cute!
Does anyone else see the irony in this?
Since its April 13 opening, more than 500 visitors, usually in tour groups, have visited [the Jiangsu National Security Education Museum] each day — all of them citizens of the People’s Republic. Although people who look like Westerners are turned away immediately at the door, those who look “clean” and have Chinese features are usually allowed to enter without further checks, Qian said. Source
A post over on Peking Duck raises an interesting question. Will China approve gay marriage before the US does?
There’s something to be said for a society that isn’t blinded by the foaming-at-the-mouth intolerance of the fundamentalist religious groups (Muslims, Jews, Christians, fill in the blank). Granted many Chinese have their own customized blinders - party dogma and a culture that makes it all but impossible to tell your parents you are not getting married. But the new generation of Chinese are amazingly tolerant and they simply don’t possess the wild-eyed ideology to make them fall for such hollow nonsense as gay marriage “threatens the sanctity of traditional marriage.”
I don't think either country will approve gay marriage particularly quickly, but there are some indications in China that there is tolerance for homosexuality in contrast to what one might expect. Remember our post from back in February about lesbians in Beijing posing for wedding pictures? They didn't seem to run into too much trouble. And that's certainly a good sign.
Here's an awesome picture from the Sino-Vietnamese Border. Detian falls (or Ban Gioc Falls in Vietnamese) are located in Daxing County, Chongzuo prefecture in Guangxi Province.
They are the fourth largest falls in the world to lie on a national border, and as such are the subject of some controversy (such is usually the case near any Chinese border).
The Sino-Vietnam War is something that a lot of Chinese people are not fully aware of. And if you're ever talking politics in China (a somewhat tedious pastime to be sure), the Sino-Vietnamese war is something you always want to have in your back pocket when discussing China, America, and war.
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