The World Baseball Classic rolls on today without the Small Red Machine, the Chinese national team, eliminated Sunday by Beijing Olympic champs South Korea. The Seoul Men slapped around China in a 14-0 rout that had to be called after the top of the seventh inning in accordance with the WBC’s “mercy rule.” As an aside, my favorite sports commentator Mike Francesa said it best last night on his show Mike’d Up that this mercy rule is a “complete joke” and it makes what could otherwise feel like an elite international tournament, feel like a softball tournament. That being said, if there was ever a team, or a continent for that matter, that needed a mercy rule, it’s China and the rest of Asia. The first reason is that you have teams like Japan and Korea, two legit baseball powerhouses playing meek squads like China and Taiwan, and the probability that you’ll have a 14-0 game is much higher than, say, in a Braves-Marlins series. But these type of blowouts could occur in any of these Classic games — especially when you have Cuba in the same pool as South Africa or the Dominican Republic in the same pool as the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands is in the tournament could be the subject of another post. The major reason the mercy rule suits the Asian teams is that all of these countries bring a higher standard of “honor” to international play and view blowouts as the ultimate embarrassment. For instance, in one of the bigger political grudge matches of the tournament, China beat Taiwan 4-1 on Saturday. One day earlier, Taiwan was shut out by the Koreans 9-0. Following the two losses, Taiwanese legislators have called for sweeping reform to the island’s baseball program. Likewise, while China doesn’t, and shouldn’t, think of itself as a baseball power, losing to Japan, the object of national hatred, doesn’t sit too well with its sports authorities. But unlike Taiwan, whose leaders openly blast its own team, China’s preferred response to its baseball failures is to pretend the tournament never happened. For instance, the top story Sunday on the online version of the China Daily sports page isn’t China’s elimination from the Classic, but rather Manchester United’s English Cup win. Fine, Man U is huge in China, but even if you click on the section of the sports page marked “World Events” or “China,” there is no mention of the World Baseball Classic anywhere on those pages. And if you search China’s state news agency Xinhua for “baseball,” the only hit for the Classic is a story from March 4 on Cuba’s national team. China is pretending that its dismal performance at the Classic never happened. Rest assured, if China had made it through pool play to the next round of the Classic, we’d know about it. China went winless in the inaugural Classic in 2006 and has since attempted to make strides in the development of players in the mainland. But as can be seen from China’s brief appearance in the Classic, I’m not sure the world has anything to worry about.

Image: Bleacher Report

So finally, we have a resolution to the international dispute over two Chinese bronze heads that sold last week as part of Yves Saint Laurent’s estate sale. The statues, that Beijing claims were looted from China nearly 150 years ago by foreign aggressors, were sold to a Chinese bidder Cai Mingchao, who paid $40 million for the two pieces. And then, uh, he refused to to pay. Not that he couldn’t afford the pieces, but rather he made a political statement on behalf of his country, that the stolen goods should be returned to China. Cai told the press, “We have stood up and thankfully I was given this opportunity, which I felt was my responsibility. And what I want to stress, is I will not pay for this bid.” What some art dealers are worried about, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, is that this episode will make the items tainted, as future bidders will fear legal action by the Chinese government and thus, the price of the art will be completely driven down. What this episode also taints is the reputation of the Chinese when it comes to Western art sales. Will Christie’s have to worry about this happening every time a Chinese relic goes under the hammer anywhere but China? It’s worth pointing out that the two pieces, a rabbit head and a rat head, were designed by a non-Chinese Jesuit missionary and have been part of a Western collection for over a century. As one art dealer asked, “Should every painting that Rembrandt made be returned to Holland?”

Al-Jazeera has a good video on the scandal:

UPDATE 3/4: The saga of the canceled Oasis shows continues… The Guardian published a story today claiming that China’s canning of the two concerts had nothing to do with Tibet, and everything to do with the finance troubles of the concert promoter. This would not explain why the government would shut down the shows, but the guy actually went on the record with Reuters and admitted to being broke. Check out the Guardian story here.

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According to a Guardian reportAs McClatchy reporter Tim Johnson aptly put it in an article Tuesday, Oasis got “Bjorked.” The term refers to the concert fiasco in Shanghai last year when Bjork repeatedly yelled “Free Tibet” during her performance. As a result, the Chinese government has been extra wary of a Western act pulling a similar stunt. And for those of you who know Oasis, those guys are fucking crazy and capable of anything.

The British band was scheduled to perform two shows in early April, one at the Beijing Capital Indoor Arena and one at the Shanghai Grand Stage, as part of the world tour promoting the release of their latest album Dig Out Your Soul. However, according to a statement from the band released Monday, musicians and promoters were informed Saturday that both shows were canceled. Ticket vendors were ordered by the government to cease all sales for the show and reimburse all those who had already purchased tickets.

The reason given for the abrupt cancellation was guitarist Noel Gallagher’s ties to the Free Tibet movement. Here’s part of the band’s statement:

The licensing and immigration process for the two shows had been fully and successfully complied with well before the shows went on sale. The Chinese authorities action in cancelling these shows marks a reversal of their decision regarding the band, which has left both Oasis and the promoters bewildered.

According to the show’s promoters, officials within the Chinese Ministry of Culture only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert on Randall’s Island in New York in 1997, and have now deemed that the band are consequently unsuitable to perform to their fans in the Chinese Republic on 3rd and 5th of April, during its 60th anniversary year.

At this point, when one of these high-profile Western shows in China is scheduled, it is more likely to be canceled than to go on — a shame considering the strides China’s live music scene has made in the last few years. Whereas a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to have a major live act perform in the mainland, as of late these shows, or at least rumors of these shows, have become routine. In the past three years alone, Shanghai has hosted the Rolling Stones, Linkin Park, Eric Clapton, Ziggy Marley and The Roots. For those music fans in Shanghai or Beijing, it would have been nice to add Oasis to this list.

A handsome guy over at the Huffington Post published a post about the mass censorship around Asia during last week’s broadcast of the Oscars. Instead of “you commie homo-loving sons of guns,” to viewers watching on CCTV-6 in the mainland, the subtitles read, “you are all so generous.” Read the post here.

Nothing sweetens an ongoing cultural property dispute like a little blackmail. As I wrote about last week, two bronze heads were plundered from Beijing’s Summer Palace over 150 years ago, and somehow ended up in the possession of Yves Saint Laurent, whose art collection is going under the hammer this week in Paris. China has been pressing the French government and Christie’s auction house not to sell the statues in an effort to reclaim the pieces and bring them back to Beijing. A Chinese cultural preservation group even filed a formal injunction to pull the items from the auction, which was rejected Monday by a Paris court. To rub some salt in China’s wounds, Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s former lover and the conductor of this week’s sale, released a statement Monday offering the statues to China for a price much higher than any money. Berge said:

I am prepared to offer this bronze head to the Chinese straight away. All they have to do is to declare they are going to apply human rights, give the Tibetans back their freedom and agree to accept the Dalai Lama on their territory.

If they do that, I would be very happy to go myself and bring these two Chinese heads to put them in the Summer Palace in Beijing. It’s obviously blackmail but I accept that.”

Pretty ballsy. Because not only is the offer utterly shallow, it will bring even more shame to China for its inability to reclaim its relics. I bet the Beastie Boys, wherever they are, are smiling today.

As Barack Obama took his first step into the international arena today, with his first foreign trip to… um… Canada, and his Secretary of State fresh off a visit to Japan, it’s fitting that we finally get to see what might be the only thing that hasn’t yet been made with Obama’s face on it: sushi. BoingBoing posted photos of the Obama roll from a Japanese website which feature a sushi chef who created a platter in honor of the American president. According to BoingBoing, Obama’s skin is made of small shrimp, his hair of black sesame, and his teeth of fish paste. Here’s what I call, and I’m surprised no one else has called, the Barack Obamaki:

More photos here.

Those of you familiar with The Princess Bride probably know the fire swamp scene pretty well. After Westley and Buttercup survive the first two deadly terrors of the fire swamp — the flame spurt and the lightning sand — Westley assures his lady that the third terror, the R.O.U.S.’s (rodents of unusual size), are nothing to worry about because they don’t exist. Then, of course, to all of our surprise, and to the surprise of sick, little Fred Savage and his grandpa, an R.O.U.S. appears and Westley battles the enormous rodent to its death. Well, something sorta similar happened in the city of Fuzhou in South China over the weekend, except he who conquered the rodent was not a good-looking, sword-wielding, giant-defeating hero with a little blond pony-tail. He was a middle-aged Chinese guy named Mr. Xian, who picked up the giant rat after people found it on the street. According to a Telegraph report Wednesday, the rat weighed in at six pounds, has a 12-inch tail and one-inch teeth. The animal is believed to be a Chinese bamboo rat, a species of rodent found in China and Southeast Asia that are so large, they’re sold for meat. According to the story, local Chinese officials plan on borrowing the rodent to examine it and attempt to identify the species for sure… and/or eat it.

Photo: News.163.com

For days now, China has protested the sale of two bronze statues on the block at a Christie’s auction this week in Paris. The two bronzes in question were reportedly looted from the Summer Palace in during the Second Opium War in 1860 and ended up in the hands of the late Yves Saint Laurent. The two pieces, a rabbit head and a rat head, were part of a 12-piece collection of all the zodiac signs that China is desperately trying to retrieve. However, Christie’s is not caving to Chinese pressure and plans to go ahead with the sale of the two bronzes, which according to David Barboza of the New York Times, will be worth over $10 million a piece. From the Times report Monday:

Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer who is helping to organize the lawsuit threatened in France, said he had located a descendant of China’s royal family to serve as plaintiff in the case.

“The Old Summer Palace, which was plundered and burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860, is our nation’s unhealed scar, still bleeding and aching,” Mr. Lui said. “That Christie’s and Pierre Bergé [Yves' former partner] would put them up for auction and refuse to return them to China deeply hurts our nation’s feelings.”

“An unhealed scar, still bleeding and aching?” Really? Perhaps China would be more successful in its cultural property disputes if it didn’t always talk about how “hurt” the “nation’s feelings” are. And instead of whining and trying to halt what sounds like a perfectly legal auction, why doesn’t a Chinese official get his ass on a plane to Paris with a suitcase full of Euros and bid on the bronzes? Lord knows they can afford it.

I don’t speak Cantonese so I have absolutely no idea what she’s saying, but rest assured this, in no way, will interfere with your enjoyment. I would turn your volume down.

Well, to be quite honest, this is pretty much the only thing I could read about a Jackie Chan movie that would make me want to see it. You might be tempted to rebut with, “well what if you heard he and Chris Tucker were doing another Rush Hour?” And to that I would say, “nope.” Because for the most part, and I’m sorry to all my friends in Hong Kong for saying this (don’t really have any), but Jackie Chan sucks. I know he’s a Chinese action hero and is really funny when he speaks English and does those Visa ads with Yao Ming, but his movies suck. And he’s 54 years old. That said, Chan’s latest, Shinjuku Incident, coming out in April, is so gory, says director Derek Yee, that he’s not even bothering with a release in the mainland. And that makes me want to see it. According to the AP:

Yee said the $25 million Chinese-language movie, in which Chan plays a refugee who escapes to Japan and becomes a killer for the mob, has scenes that show characters getting a hand chopped off and pierced with knives.

“We tried to cut the violent scenes to meet the requirements of the Chinese market, but producers I invited to watch that version thought it was incomplete,” he said.

The takeaway from this story isn’t that Jackie Chan sucks, or that his new movie sounds kind of cool. It’s that perhaps Hong Kong directors, who for decades have been watering down their finished products in order to create something suitable for the delicate mainland, may just be giving up on the China market altogether. Why bother anymore, when a film like Shinjuku Incident will have a wide release all over Southeast Asia and Japan? If the mainland Chinese want to be treated like children (who can’t take some knives to the hand), maybe it’s time for the Hong Kong film industry to seriously consider leaving mainland China behind.

Shinjuku Incident comes out in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia on April 2 and in Japan on May 1 and Russian pirated DVD probably right now.