Chinese shenanigans

[Samurai_Jerk]

Just another take on the Viet coffee/tea houses?

Aren't those a California thing?

Totally could be...they didn't have em in Vietnam? (or is that the other way around...brothels that just happen to serve coffee/tea?)

I didn't see any. There are plenty of hostess bars and places similar to girls bars in Saigon and Vung Tau (seemed to be less of that the farther north I went) but the women don't wear bikinis. They either dressed in their street clothes or wore tight dresses. No gogo bars either. Unlike Thailand and the Philippines Vietnam is too conservative to be in your face with that kind of stuff.

[Russell]

Decades-old frozen meat seized in China food scandal

Almost half a billion dollars worth of smuggled frozen meat -- some of it rotting and more than 40 years old -- has been seized in China, reports said Wednesday.

More than 100,000 tonnes of chicken wings, beef and pork worth up to three billion yuan ($483 million) were seized in the nationwide crackdown, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.

"It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," said an official from Hunan province, where 800 tonnes were seized.

Two gangs from the central province were among 14 busted across the country in the operation which concluded earlier this month.

I wonder how they figured out it was more than 40 years old.

Wouldn't they need carbon dating for that?

Or did they use forensic science?!?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Decades-old frozen meat seized in China food scandal

Almost half a billion dollars worth of smuggled frozen meat -- some of it rotting and more than 40 years old -- has been seized in China, reports said Wednesday.

More than 100,000 tonnes of chicken wings, beef and pork worth up to three billion yuan ($483 million) were seized in the nationwide crackdown, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.

"It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," said an official from Hunan province, where 800 tonnes were seized.

Two gangs from the central province were among 14 busted across the country in the operation which concluded earlier this month.

I wonder how they figured out it was more than 40 years old.

Wouldn't they need carbon dating for that?

Or did they use forensic science?!?

The sell-by date on the packages of course.

[Russell]

Decades-old frozen meat seized in China food scandal

Almost half a billion dollars worth of smuggled frozen meat -- some of it rotting and more than 40 years old -- has been seized in China, reports said Wednesday.

More than 100,000 tonnes of chicken wings, beef and pork worth up to three billion yuan ($483 million) were seized in the nationwide crackdown, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.

"It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," said an official from Hunan province, where 800 tonnes were seized.

Two gangs from the central province were among 14 busted across the country in the operation which concluded earlier this month.

I wonder how they figured out it was more than 40 years old.

Wouldn't they need carbon dating for that?

Or did they use forensic science?!?

The sell-by date on the packages of course.

Maybe they were falsified, and the meat was actually 140 years old...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Decades-old frozen meat seized in China food scandal

Almost half a billion dollars worth of smuggled frozen meat -- some of it rotting and more than 40 years old -- has been seized in China, reports said Wednesday.

More than 100,000 tonnes of chicken wings, beef and pork worth up to three billion yuan ($483 million) were seized in the nationwide crackdown, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.

"It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," said an official from Hunan province, where 800 tonnes were seized.

Two gangs from the central province were among 14 busted across the country in the operation which concluded earlier this month.

I wonder how they figured out it was more than 40 years old.

Wouldn't they need carbon dating for that?

Or did they use forensic science?!?

The sell-by date on the packages of course.

Maybe they were falsified, and the meat was actually 140 years old...

In that case it should have been sitting in Japan collecting social security.

[Coligny]

THREAD WINNAR !!!!!

[Russell]

China stock market: Five facts that show how the bubble arose - and why it might be bursting

China’s domestic stock markets have climbed to near-historic heights this year. The bigger of China’s two main stock exchanges, in Shanghai, is up 40 per cent since the start of the year, while the other one, in the southern city of Shenzhen, has risen by more than 90 per cent. But those figures are off from a 12 June peak, raising concerns that the great Chinese stock bubble of 2015 is heading for a dangerous end.

No one knows for sure what will happen next. It’s possible that Chinese stocks are undergoing a slight correction, which will calm everyone down and lead to more sustainable growth, rather than a crash. But it’s also possible that a correction will trigger a stampede for the exits. That could weigh on China’s broader economy, with negative consequences for the rest of the world.

Here are five facts about China’s stock market bubble that help explain why it arose and what might happen.

1. In just 12 months, Chinese markets have created enough value to give every person on Earth almost $900

This is a bubble of epic proportions. In 12 months, Chinese stock markets rose enough to create $6.5trn (£4.1trn) of value. That’s the equivalent of around 70 per cent of China’s GDP in 2013, or about 40 per cent of the total value of the New York Stock Exchange – or enough to pay off Greece’s debt 20 times over.

No other stock market has ever grown this much in dollar terms over a 12-month period. Some, however, argue that Chinese stocks have a lot of catching up to do. While the broader Chinese economy has recorded impressive growth rates for years, its stock market had languished since an abrupt crash in 2008, before starting to climb again in 2015.

But others see a more ominous future. A survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch revealed that seven out of 10 global investors agree that China’s equity market is in a bubble.

2. Most Chinese investors do not have a high-school degree

People often say that markets follow the “greater fool” theory – even if a stock is irrationally overvalued, it still might be worth purchasing if there is another fool out there willing to pay a higher price.

That may be the calculus now. As high as valuations are, novice investors keep rushing into the market. Just last week, 1.41 million new investors opened stock accounts, according to the news agency Reuters – a similar number to each of the two weeks before.

The make-up of these new entrants isn’t encouraging. A survey last year showed that two-thirds of Chinese investors haven’t completed high school. Even Chinese farmers are giving up tending their fields in order to tend their stocks.

3. China now has the world’s most volatile stock market outside Greece

After climbing for months, mainland exchanges took investors on a scary dip, falling by more last week than they had since 2008. And the ride for investors in general is getting bumpier. According to Bloomberg data, the market has experienced bigger swings over the past 30 days than any other market except Greece.

4. There’s a disconnect between Chinese stocks and the real economy

The stock bubble may seem all the more strange given that the Chinese economy is not doing that well any more. In the first quarter of 2015, GDP grew at its slowest pace since 2009. Imports, retail sales and investment have also dropped off.

The slowing economy and a supply glut in some cities have also caused prices to slump in the property market, which has long been considered the safe and reliable way for Chinese households to invest. As a result, according to Patrick Chovanec of Silvercrest Asset Management, people have started shifting their money out of property and into the equity market.

5. The bubble is fuelled by borrowing

The other reason for the stock market boom is China’s huge expansion in lending in recent years. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Derek Scissors writes, China’s M2 – a measure of the amount of money sloshing around the economy – was $20trn at the end of 2014, an incredible 70 per cent larger than in the US.

In China, as in the US and UK, monetary expansion was intended to stoke the economy but often instead ended up in the stock market.

The other trend fuelling the Chinese stock market has been a huge increase in the use of margin debt. This has more than tripled in the past year, raising the risk of a stock market crash. In a margin trade, an investor uses some borrowed money from a broker to buy stocks. If the value of a share falls below a certain level, investors will get a margin call to stump up more money. This dynamic means that a dip in prices in China could quickly spark an even bigger sell-off, as investors sell stock to pay their brokers.

Despite these troubling trends, the market could continue to climb in China. As the adage goes, markets can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent.

More

One interesting reader's comment:

Now that the "People's Republic" has converted and enthusiastically embraced the wonders of capitalism, it's only fair that they get to experience its sorrows along with its joys.

[Takechanpoo]

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/korean ... sCatID=338

n_85134_1.jpg

wanna-be or would-be european kebabees wrongly attacked a kimche guy but their minor ishihara politician saied bluntly its no problem coz they both have slanted eyes. on the other hand, in j-internet forums, j-netizens laughed at and talked like other ppls affairs. "we are totally unrelated with this! serves your right fuking chosenjin!! ". in this kind of things, japanese seem to misunderstand the position on the world hierarchy.

[Coligny]

Feeling like Champollion without the rosetta stone right now...

[wagyl]

Careful! That iron-y is hot!

[Samurai_Jerk]

THIS ... IS ... CHINAAAAAAAA

Around 100 foreigners, dressed as Spartan warriors with leather shorts and flowing capes, prompted a swift reaction from Beijing police on Wednesday, the state mouthpiece People’s Daily reports.

The men were apparently hired actors taking part in a publicity stunt for a Beijing-based restaurant called Salad Sweetie. They were meant to be delivering salad lunches to office workers, but the stunt went wrong.

As they marched through the streets of Beijing, crowds gathered around them to comment and take pictures. Photos also showed the men standing in front of office buildings in pyramid formation. Police asked them to disperse.

A handful of the men were then arrested for “disturbing public order,” after they ignored several warnings

[Russell]

These are the secret code words that let you criticize the Chinese government

Be careful of having the water meter checked in your country in this Dama era.

The sentence may sound like nonsense, but in China, it’s Internet code for having the police knocking at your door in this time of heavy government controls.

Just as new words are being added to the English language all the time — the Oxford English Dictionary this year added "twerking" and "sext" — so, too, is Chinese evolving, although for very different reasons.

Chinese netizens are finding all sorts of creative ways to avoid the censors’ filters, coming up with a whole new vocab to talk about sensitive subjects. Many of them require only a slight tweak in tone to sound like something entirely different.

This year, 25 new words or phrases have been added to an unofficial lexicon collating these terms.

In "Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang," authors Perry Link and Xiao Qiang write that linguistic innovations have helped the Internet seem like a “new, open realm” in a China where plenty of subjects remain taboo.

About half of China’s 1.3 billion people were using the Internet at the end of last year, a statistic from the China Internet Network Information Center quoted in the report. Among them, 198 million are active monthly users of Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, up a phenomenal 38 percent from the previous year.

But Weibo is tightly controlled, and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are blocked.

“Chinese netizens are still speaking in a heavily monitored environment, and so their demands for greater freedom of information and expression often find voice through coded language and metaphors that allow them to avoid outright censorship,” the authors write in the report.

Many of these metaphors describe the government, for obvious reasons, but they are also used to get around prudish censors. One of the most famous Internet puns revolves around a character called the caonima or grass-mud horse, the report says. With slightly different inflections, the words that make up that character's name sound like an insulting profanity that WorldViews will avoid spelling out to protect innocent eyeballs.

Here are some of the terms added to this year’s lexicon.

Your country
你国 (nǐ guó)

Instead of saying “China,” it’s common here just to say “my country” (just as Japanese and Koreans use “my” or “our” country for theirs). But turning the saying on its head, liberal, pro-human rights netizens are using the phrase “your country” to refer to the nationalists running the country.
“Terms like 'your country' separate the Chinese Communist Party from the state, which are often conflated in official rhetoric,” the report says.

Examples from Weibo:

@kongsanduo: The west invented the train, the car, airplane, bike, motorbike, electricity and all the appliances, among other things. Your country invented the hukou [geographically restrictive family registry] system, the one-child policy, fees for choosing a school, limits on car plates, limits on house purchasing, etc. While others invented things to bring convenience to people, your country invented things to restrict people’s freedom!

@Gongcheng: The TV shows in your country finally got out of decades-long rule by your party and became more like those from South Korea.

Check the water meter
抄水表 (chāo shuǐbiǎo)

You don’t want the police knocking at your door in China. That can only spell trouble. So police have taken to posing as meter readers from the water company to trick people into opening their doors. Hence “check the water meter” has become Internet-speak for a house call from the police.

Example: @guhuomaoshaoye: Hello, here is a delivery package for you. Please sign for it. Hello, the water supply company is here to check the water meter. Hello, please hurry up and open the door. We will not hurt you. If you don’t open the door, we will just open fire!

(Death by) hide-and-seek
躲猫猫（死）(duǒ māomāo (sǐ))

There’s a new way of dying in China: death by hide and seek. This euphemism has become shorthand for dying in police custody under suspicious circumstances.

It stems from the explanation offered by prison authorities after farmer Li Qiaoming died while in detention on charges of illegal logging in 2009. The police said Li died of a head injury suffered while playing hide-and-seek with other prisoners. The “hide-and-seek incident” now refers to cover-ups of police brutality.

Examples: @Dong Minghui: There is a place, a magical place where you can die by vomiting, die by having physical abnormalities, die by hide-and-seek, and by all kinds of magical ways. What a magical place. What a magical country!

@Qubo: Sigh! Death by seek-and-hide, death by taking a shower, is not news anymore. When power is not being supervised, it is inevitable that violence associated with official work would occur. No matter who you are, you won’t be able to run away from it if you come across it.

[...]

Kim Fatty III
金三胖 (Jīn Sān Pàng)

A nickname for Kim Jong Un, the rotund leader of North Korea since he succeeded his father, Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011. Chinese netizens began making fun of the third-generation leader of the Kim dynasty, calling him “Kim Fatty III.” Such a pejorative name is unlikely to cause too much dissatisfaction in Beijing, though — Chinese authorities are also far from impressed with the young leader, who has repeatedly rebuffed his country’s patron.

Example: @duoduo: Recently, Kim Fatty III announced at a general meeting that North Korea was going to land on the sun. The audience burst into an uproar: “It is so hot there on the sun, and how could we land there?” Kim Fatty III detected everyone’s confusion and said, “We will go there when it is dark!” The whole audience, stunned by the wit of Kim Fatty III, instantly broke into thunderous and prolonged applause.

@yingzhou laoji: The nuclear weapon issue in North Korea must be solved now. I don’t believe it has the capacity to drop a nuclear bomb on the U.S., even Japan. China is the most threatened. We can’t think of Kim Fatty III, who is extremely arrogant and does not know the immensity of heavy and earth, with the rational thinking of normal people.

Separately, netizens have taken to calling China “West Korea” to refer to the increasingly draconian, North Korean-style controls the authorities have been imposing.

More

West Korea, I like that name.

Now, where would East Korea be?

[Mike Oxlong]

Just beyond the East Sea, of course.

[wagyl]

I would think that by being the East Sea it firmly sets the limits of Korea at the western coast of that sea. In fact, you might even use that to say that the Liancourt Rocks are outside those limits. I wonder if that argument has been used in this debate. So far, I haven't seen anything that would set the boundaries for how childish you are allowed to get.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I would think that by being the East Sea it firmly sets the limits of Korea at the western coast of that sea. In fact, you might even use that to say that the Liancourt Rocks are outside those limits. I wonder if that argument has been used in this debate. So far, I haven't seen anything that would set the boundaries for how childish you are allowed to get.

I don't take sides on the whole Takeshima/Dokdo thing because I don't really give enough of a fuck to look into the claims. I do understand why territory is important though and why neither side wants to back down. However, Korea can eat a big fat dick as far as telling the rest of the world what they should call the Sea of Japan in their own respective languages. I have zero problem with it being called East Sea in Korean and I would call it Donghae when speaking Korea if I actually spoke it. Their childish insistence on pushing all of us to say East Sea automatically makes me want to doubt any other claims they make.

[Russell]

I would think that by being the East Sea it firmly sets the limits of Korea at the western coast of that sea. In fact, you might even use that to say that the Liancourt Rocks are outside those limits. I wonder if that argument has been used in this debate.

Interesting argument.

The alternative, calling it the Japan Sea, is thus in fact equivalent to calling it the East Sea.

Now, if they were really creative, they would call it the Korea Sea or the West Sea...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Is China's 2022 Winter Olympics song too much like 'Frozen's' 'Let It Go'?

Did Disney's fictional snow queen of Arendelle help Beijing win its bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics?

Some Chinese Internet users seem to think so.

They find "The Snow and Ice Dance," one of the 10 official songs Beijing used as a candidate city for the Games, eerily similar to "Let It Go," the worldwide hit belted out by the character Elsa in Disney's animated blockbuster "Frozen."

The allegations of plagiarism first surfaced last weekend in a web story published by leading Chinese business magazine Caijing, but the report has since been taken down. Re-posted versions on numerous other news sites, however, remain online.

Very annoying comparison video:

[Coligny]

I'm no musician...

But the progression of let it go is nothing original...

Go to 7:48 for the teardown

[matsuki]

"孙楠 - 冰雪舞动..." The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement

chai-kneee knock off

[Russell]

Now that the Japanese emperor expresses deep remorse on the 70th anniversary of WW2, the Chinese decided to celebrate with a giant firework...

[Takechanpoo]

before or after the huge explosion....?

i had been doing arubaito in warehouse in tachikawa with chinese guys in my university days.
their favorite phrase was "daijoubu, daijoubu!", "daijobu neee " whenever they made a mistake.
the same kind of incidents would eternally happen as long as they dont change the mentality.

[Salty]

Just wait until they determine that Japan caused the explosion....

[Coligny]

before or after the huge explosion....?

i had been doing arubaito in warehouse in tachikawa with chinese guys in my university days.
their favorite phrase was "daijoubu, daijoubu!", "daijobu neee " whenever they made a mistake.
the same kind of incidents would eternally happen as long as they dont change the mentality.

Hey chimpy, you are still one nukular disaster ahead of them.
(Not counting the nukular misshaps)

[Russell]

before or after the huge explosion....?

i had been doing arubaito in warehouse in tachikawa with chinese guys in my university days.
their favorite phrase was "daijoubu, daijoubu!", "daijobu neee " whenever they made a mistake.
the same kind of incidents would eternally happen as long as they dont change the mentality.

Hey chimpy, you are still one nukular disaster ahead of them.
(Not counting the nukular misshaps)

Let's hope it stays that way.

Seeing how the Chinese fuck up a non-nuclear disaster, I don't want to think how they would fuck up a nuclear one...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Some more videos of that explosion.

Sounds like a Canadian, eh?

I wonder if this guy made it.

[Coligny]

It's ok, the puppy made it...

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-ne ... ly-6274592

image.jpg

image.jpg

They say they will call him "diner"...

[Takechanpoo]

is this real?

ca16570f.jpg

[Wage Slave]

Who is it?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Who is it?

Looks like former president Jiang Zemin. This article would seem to back it up but The Epoch Times is run by Falun Gong. I have read a couple of articles in recent days that have said there's a power struggle going on within the Communist Party and the current president, Xi Jinping, has told Jiang and some others to back off. I'm sure the falling stock market isn't helping matters.

[Wage Slave]

Who is it?

Looks like former president Jiang Zemin. This article would seem to back it up but The Epoch Times is run by Falun Gong. I have read a couple of articles in recent days that have said there's a power struggle going on within the Communist Party and the current president, Xi Jinping, has told the Jiang and some others to back off. I'm sure the falling stock market isn't helping matters.

Thanks.