Fashion Police Instructs China’s Police
New rules have come down from China’s Ministry of Public Safety that restrict how fabulous Chinese police officers can look on the job. According to the new fashion and dress code, reported Wednesday by the state newspaper People’s Daily, on duty police officers may not have sideburns, beards, shaved bald heads, long or curly hair, strangely dyed hair and are prohibited from wearing scarves or jewelry or “varnished” nails in public. I haven’t seen too many cops here with curly hair. Furthermore, police officers are not allowed to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol in public and may not enter “entertainment venues” for personal reasons. Basically, Chinese police cannot share any characteristics with Victor Willis, the cop from the Village People. Victor had long curly hair, sideburns, a beard at times, wore scarves and jewelry and smoked and drank. FYI, Victor was the only straight member of the 70s disco group. The Ministry of Public Safety could have saved everyone a lot of time and energy if instead of writing a long boring document, they published a poster of Victor Willis wrote on it, “if you look anything like this guy or wear anything he’s wearing other than the helmet, you are in violation of the new dress and conduct codes for Chinese police officers.” Even more important than the fact that for a brief period in 1979, Willis dressed up as the second sailor for performances of the hit song “In the Navy,” is that police officers are also banned from wearing colored glasses on the job, “unless there is a specific job need or illness of the eye.” Which really sucks for all those Chinese police officers who like to wear pink and blue shades to work and makes it a double whammy for the Shanghai Whoopi Goldberg Look-alike Police Coalition who already will be forced to cut off the dreads. It’s just a shame that China’s police officers, who might be a bit “out there” with their muttonchops and funky hair, will now have to conform to to the traditional Chinese construct of decorum. The new rules take effect later this month.
•Xinhua: No Dyed Hair, No Jewelry, No Smoking in Public, China’s Police Told
It appears that Wikipedia has been unblocked again in the mainland. As Flumesday was the first to report of the previous liberation of Wikipedia in October, these blockings and unblocking of the world’s open-source online encyclopedia just don’t seem all that interesting anymore. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of it. Flickr gets blocked and Wikipedia gets unblocked in the same week. Friday, the always excellent Chinese media site Danwei reported that while the English Wikipedia had been unblocked, the Chinese version was still banned. As we have learned in the past, every time we think that the Chinese government has come to its senses and allowed China’s English speakers access to the Wikipedia site, they end up blocking it again soon after. After the site was unblocked in October, it was blocked again a month later. In 2004, the site was freed for 4 months before getting outlawed again. While the Chinese government still seems to be hanging on to the hope that blocking internet content will preclude the Chinese people from accessing the same information the rest of the world is privy to, what they fail to realize is that the content of Wikipedia is available on a variety of other accessible sites like Answers.com and through anonymous proxy servers on the web. Anyone that has a will to get to Wikipedia, Chinese or English, will find a way to learn about “June 4th” or “Tibet” or any of the other taboo topics in China. And at this point, these bans just seem childish and annoying. So although it is a good thing that the English version of Wikipedia has been unblocked, no one should be optimistic that this will stick. For all of those out there like me who love Wikipedia, and in the last 24 hours I’ve used the site to browse Phil Collins’ discography and investigate whether or not the wife of presidential candidate/actor Fred Thompson is actually a stripper, enjoy it while it lasts.
The New York Yankees became the first Major League Baseball team to sign players from the Chinese Baseball Association when they signed two Chinese teenagers to minor league contracts. The CBA approved the signing of Liu Kai, a 19-year-old lefty pitcher from Guangdong province and Zhang Zhenwang, also 19, a catcher out of Tianjin (whose severely blurry photo is the best one I could find on any Chinese or foreign site). The Yankees will officially welcome the Chinese duo in a July 6th press conference from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Liu spent six seasons playing for the Guangdong Leopards where he was chosen to play on the PRC National Team. Zhang caught for the Tianjin Lions and helped his team win 3 CBL championships in the last 5 years. Zhang represented China in the World Baseball Classic. The players are two of mainland China’s most touted prospects. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told the media Monday, “This is an exciting opportunity for us to integrate Chinese players into the organization.” The Yankees have been aggressively combing the mainland for talent since team executive visited Beijing in January to establish a relationship with the Chinese Baseball Association. The Yankees then invited Chinese players to work out at the Yankees training facilities during spring training. In early July, the two players will report to the Yankees player development facility in quite possibly the worst place for two mainland Chinese to go: Tampa, Florida. Chinese make up about 1% of Tampa’s 300,000 people and the only Chinese food there is found in $6.95 all-you-can-eat buffets.
In November 2006, I debuted Flumesday’s U.S. election coverage called “Vote Or Don’t.” The name dually describes American political apathy and the difficulty for expats abroad, especially those like myself who don’t live in a democracy, to go through the process of casting an absentee vote. However, with a mere seven months before the Iowa Caucus, the political season is in full swing, candidates are on the campaign trail and Americans are beginning to chatter about the 2008 election. Likewise, it’s time that I begin to chatter about the 2008 election. Wednesday was a big day for both the Republicans and the Democrats. First, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has renounced the Republican party and declared himself an independent. The Jewish mayor is gearing up to make a bid for the presidency as an independent which means he would be the richest presidential candidate since Ross Perot and the most Jewish candidate since Joe Lieberman. But more importantly, the wait is over, Hillary Clinton has selected her campaign song. Selecting a mainstream presidential campaign song began in ‘84 when Reagan selected Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” The Boss eventually asked Reagan to stop using the song. Then in ‘92, Bill Clinton used “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac. The coolest campaign song came in 2000 when George W. Bush chose Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” If only we had in known in 2000 the extent to which Bush won’t back down. Well Hillary picked about the worst song imaginable– some shitty Celine Dion song called “You and I.” And the Clintons unveiled Hillary’s new campaign song in a web video that spoofed the final scene of “The Sopranos.” They even got Johnny Sack from the show to appear in the video. While most of the pundits are applauding the humorless Hillary for doing something funny, I find the video extremely corny. Have Americans become so dumb that we want to see our potential presidents making funny YouTube videos? In the spirit of the democratic process, here’s the video and you decide.
As of yesterday, the Jinmao Tower is no longer Shanghai’s tallest building. When construction came to a close Sunday on the Shanghai World Financial Center, the unfinished building stood 423.8 meters high, 3 meters taller than the 420.5-meter Jinmao. What does this mean? Well a few things. First, the World Financial Center is now the tallest structure in mainland China. Second, if you count the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur as two separate buildings, the World Financial Center is now the fourth tallest building in the world. Though I suppose it is not quite a building yet. And third, it’s time for the construction to begin of the World Financial Center’s crown jewel, the gaping vagina-like hole at the top of the building. The trapezoid-shaped aperture is said to protect the building from earthquakes. I believe that the hole was designed to keep the Jinmao’s large pointy spire company at the top of the Shanghai skyline. When construction of the new building’s exterior is completed in September 2007, the World Financial Center will stand 492 meters tall, second only to the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan. The Shanghai World Financial Center is scheduled to open in 2009.
George Bush spoke Tuesday at the dedication of Washington’s newest monument: The Victims of Communism Memorial. The what? It sounds like Bush is now in charge of naming the memorials in Washington. And don’t you just want to punch a hole through this photograph? According to Bush, “the memorial in Washington stands as a reminder that freedom is precious and cannot be taken for granted.” Well at least he didn’t use the ceremony to talk about terrorists and September 11th. Wait, scratch that. Bush said in his speech, “Like the communists, the terrorists and radicals who attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims.” Was Bush merely referring to the Cold War communist regimes of the past? Or was he indicting the communist ideology and those governments that exist today that are communist like… say… China. I mean, from China’s perspective, if Bush is bashing the old Soviets, then no big deal, right? Maybe China has nothing to do with this American denouncement of communism. Except for one thing. The memorial itself is 4.2-meter-tall bronze replica of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue carried by Chinese students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Eek. The Chinese government fired shots back late Wednesday calling the monument “an attempt to defame China.” A foreign ministry spokesman wrote on the ministry’s site, “We resent and oppose the U.S. acts and have lodged strong representations with the U.S. side. The U.S. should stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.” He went on to say, “There are political forces in the United States who still think in Cold War terms and seek to provoke conflicts between different ideologies and social systems.” The Victims of Communism Memorial has been in the works for a decade and cost $1 million to complete. Which means China has had ample time to protest the project. In China’s eyes, the U.S. has erected a statue that serves as a constant reminder of China’s most embarrassing moment in recent history. What would America say if China erected a bronzed scene of George W. Bush standing on an aircraft carrier in 2003 with a “Mission Accomplished” sign behind him and an audio loop of him saying, “this is the end of major combat operations in Iraq.”
Ali G. once said, “Yo. Science. What is it all about? Is it good or is it whack?” For Chinese paleontologists who found the remains of giant birdlike dinosaur in Inner Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, science is certainly not whack. The discovery, announced Wednesday in the journal Nature, throws a wrench in the commonly believed evolutionary theory of birds, with which I’m sure all of you are all familiar. Science, which I have always thought was good, teaches us that dinosaurs became smaller as they evolved into birds and that the bigger dinosaurs did not have birdlike characteristics. Well, the fossil demonstrates that this new species, which scientists are referring to as the “Gigantoraptor” or if you’re a stickler for binomial nomenclature, “gigantoraptor elrianensis,” was bigger than scientists believed birdlike dinosaurs ever were. The Big Bird specimen was 26 feet long, 16 feet tall, weighed 3000 pounds and roamed China around 700 million years ago. A New York Times report Wednesday played down the Chinese discovery saying that it teaches us less about dinosaurs and more about birds. And I think they have actual science writers there. However, the Times supports the breakthrough that birds did not evolve quite as we believed they did. Xing Xu, the lead paleontologist of the Chinese Academy of Science team that found the fossil, said that while Big Bird was closer to a bird, it was the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and was 35 times larger and 300 times as heavy as its closest bird relative. Xu said in in the paper on the finding, “This is like having a mouse that is the size of a horse or cow.” Scientists believed that the Gigantoraptor had feathers, though the feathers they were not preserved during the animal’s 700-million-year burial. And while herbivorous dinosaurs have small heads and long necks and carnivorous dinosaurs have sharp claws, the Gigantoraptor had all of these features and thus, it has yet to be determined what this dinosaur ate. What we can determine from this finding is that our knowledge of the dinosaurs remains limited. The fossilized head of the Gigantoraptor is on display in Beijing. Creationists, eat your heart out.
My earliest exposure to Chinese kids came at a time when children’s television was at its finest and Chinese kids on television were rare. It was the mid-80s and as a young curious TV addict, a science program on Nickelodeon transported me to a world in which an old white man was king and a group of Chinese kids with glasses were his subjects. Seriously, it seemed like all the kids on this show were Chinese. Well, I suppose they could have been Japanese or Korean, but I did not know the difference then the way I do now. Mr. Wizard’s World was the third incarnation of a children’s science show featuring Don Herbert, known to the world as Mr. Wizard. The show aired on Nickelodeon from 1983-1990 and aimed to promote science education by filming experiments testing the scientific properties of ordinary everyday events and objects. Mr. Wizard became a household name in 1951 when NBC aired Watch Mr. Wizard, the first American science show aimed at kids and the show that earned Herbert a Peabody Award in 1954. As a kid, I knew of Mr. Wizard’s previous success because my mom would repeatedly bug me while I was watching and tell me “I used to watch this when I was your age.” And I’d be thinking, “who cares Mom, something’s about to explode.” Born in Minnesota in 1917, Mr. Wizard graduated from University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Teacher’s College with a degree in science and English before pursing an acting career. Wizard then served as a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot during World War II. After the war, he began broadcasting a health education series on a Chicago radio station. With the advent of television, Mr. Wizard believed the new medium would allow him to showcase his scientific wizardry for people to see. And the rest was history. Mr. Wizard died Tuesday of bone cancer at his California home. For two generations of children, Mr. Wizard made science into something we could all understand. His family has not confirmed whether Mr. Wizard’s body will be donated to science.
I read this week that TIME Magazine’s “The China Blog” was injured by the Great Firewall of China when on Monday, all three of the blog’s writers posted about the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square “crackdown.” I say injured because the page was not blocked, but rather just maimed. According to a post the next day by Simon Elegant (sweet name), it was “no surprise this happened as all three of us had posts about that large square in the capital city where something happened in 1989. The machinery that blocks is automatic, evidently. Inside China, our blog still doesn’t load right. No pictures and everything else awry.” Though the images don’t load properly and you can’t see the photos accompanying the text, on an uncensored computer, I saw that “The China Blog” ran the most taboo photo in China — the famous “Tankman” photo. They should have known better.
Totally unrelated to the tank image, but funny and somewhat related to this week’s anniversary.