After a drawn out face-off with landlords, demolition companies, and government officials, Tim Hilbert’s Texas Roadhouse has finally succumb to bulldozers and torch-weilding crews. After many of the bar and restaurant owners of Super Bar Street were forced out by gangs of club-wielding thugs, Hilbert stuck it out, demanding the $650,000 he invested in the Roadhouse. Both the initial offer of $50,000 and a second offer of almost triple that were denied by Hilbert.

In his pursuit for full compensation, Hilbert lived up to his home state’s ‘Lone Star’ reputation. Aside from the lawyers and consultants to do the beaureacratic battles, he hired a half dozen Chinese out-of-town tough guys to defend the bar from late night demolition crews. Even more brazen, he lead a demonstration in front of Zhongnanhai (central headquarters for the Central People’s Government) which lead to a five hour detention by police.

But for all of Hilbert’s tenacity, it was futile in the face of government mandates and eager demolition crews. After a brigade of various law enforcement officials arrived, movers cleared out the last of Hilbert’s property and demolition crews began tearing down the Roadhouse’s haggard facade.

When asked if he would continue to fight, Hilbert responded: “Absolutely, I’m a Texan.”

Links & Sources:

• Wall Street Journal
• Xianguo

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century will occur this Wednesday and has officially sparked eclipse-fever in eastern China along the Yangtze River Area, which will be the best place to view the event. Starting in the Indian Ocean and passing through India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and China, the eclipse will follow a 3000km path. Nearly 300 million Chinese people will be able to view the total eclipse in cities like Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Shanghai. A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbra, including most of South East Asia.

But according to weather reports, cloudy and rainy weather may cover most of the cities mentioned above. If it does rain, it will make the 6 minute long eclipse almost impossible to see.

Experts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say that this is the longest eclipse to have appeared over China in the last 2,143 years. Usually, an eclipse will appear every 300 years on average and will only last three minutes. The next eclipse will be in 2034 and will only last for 1 minute.

But for those that will make the pilgrimage to Southern China, below is a time table of eclipse viewing times in various cities. For those in Beijing, solar eclipse glasses can be obtained from the Beijing Planetarium or nearby solar equipment outlet. A good alternative is to order on the internet, like taobao.com. Type “日食” in the search frame. For 15 kuai you can buy a solar filter that can be attached to a telescope or camera and solar eclipse glasses are only 5~10 kuai. For purchasing glasses in the planetarium, please contact Mr. Lu through 13901147953 or 51583328.

According to the China Daily, Yang Zhiguo, a 74 year old man and Lanzhou resident went on a car smashing spree last Thursday after becoming fed up with drivers that plowed through red lights. Yang was later joined by two other men and nearby residents gave the men both bricks and water in a show of support. Mr. Yang had planned a whole week of his brick barrage, but the police picked him up on his first day after damaging over thirty cars with bricks.

After a woman in his community was killed last year in the same busy intersection, he became a champion for road safety. He successfully lobbied local police to put a stoplight in the intersection, but he said drivers just ignored it.

A poll of nearly 400,000 Chinese netizens showed that an overwhelming 80 percent of people supported him in his actions.

Each year, some 75,000 people are killed in traffic accidents in China.

Take that, law breaker!

Reminiscent of the “Very Yellow, Very Violent” scandal, a Chinese university student named GaoYe was interviewed on CCTV’s Topics in Focus (焦点访谈) about the recent report about Google.cn containing pornographic (”yellow”) pictures and vulgar content. He criticized Google.cn, saying:

我觉得黄色、淫秽信息在网上的毒害特别大，特别是经过像Google的链接，那种毒害特别大。
就我一个同学吧，他以前就是青少年比较好奇这些东西，他就去点那些黄色网站什么的。然后就搞到那段时间心神不宁，然后后来国家打击黄色网站了，他就没上，那段时间就好了。结果后来他又发现通过Google这些用户比较多的搜索引擎可以打开这些网址，然后又进入了这些黄色网站，Google里面的链接特别多，然后就导致他又反复了。
I think that obscene information on the Internet is extremely poisonous, especially on Google.cn. For instance, I have a classmate, who was like every other youth, very curious about such things. He visited those porn sites and lost his mind in it. Later, the government blocked the porn sites and he could not visit them anymore. He felt better after not having access to those sites. However, he used Google.cn’s search engine and he could open those websites again. After using Google.cn he lost his mind in it again.

This would be a typical news story if it weren’t for the fact that web-saavy Chinese used 人肉搜索 (Human Flesh Search) to point out that GaoYe is an intern at the CCTV studios. This raises questions about both the integrity of the already dubious CCTV reporting and Human Flesh Searches; Chinese netizens have even made public searches on GaoYe’s girlfriend.

For a full Human Flesh Search on GaoYe, see this Hudong post.

A girl who killed a government official is exempted from criminal punishment.

These last days, ** is huge in China. An ordinary resident and staff at a foot massage center in Hubei province, Miss Deng stabbed a government official to death and wounded another after they sexually harassed and verbally abused her. After the incident, the web exploded with concern and support from Chinese citizens.

On June 16th, the first session of the Badong People’s Court trial of Deng Yujiao concluded that she is to be exempted from criminal punishment. The court ‘s conclusion wass based on the following 3 points:

1. Deng’s behavior was a form of “excessive self-defense”;
2. Deng turned herself in at the authorities (PSB);
3. Deng had limited capability to take legal responsibilities; “According to forensic assessment made jointly by the Hubei People’s Hospital and Wuhan Mental Disease Hospital, Deng has developed a manic-depressive reaction, which deprives her of full capability of taking legal responsibilities.”

After the court hearing she told XinHua News Agency that she was surprised about the judgment and was very satisfied. She thought she would have been penalized harshly because of the murder. She expressed her gratitude to the public, especially netizens, for their concern and support.

This might be a simple case in the West, but could be a precedent to China. The question everyone is asking now is “Without the explosion of public opinion, what would the result of Deng’s case be?

Just this month, the Chinese government has announced that, beginning July 1, a filtering program called Green Dam must be pre-installed in every PC in China before sale on the market. This software is designed to monitor user behavior. If the user types in sex-related or politically sensitive keywords, the software then reports it to authorities. Its slogan is “关爱孩子健康，绿色上网“, or “take care of children’s health, internet surfing goes green”.

This has become a hot topic on the internet in China. One survey from Dayuwang asked “Do you want your computer to be filtered?” Over 86% of the 4346 participants answered no. Obviously, only few people believe it can do something helpful.

Some views from Chinese netizens:
1. People’s right to know is not respected; such a national-wide decision should not be announced less than one month before its implementation;
2. Does it also monitor the personal information? Infringement of privacy?
3. Why is there only one software provider? Why only Green Dam? Does it break the competition law? What is the background of the developer?
4. Are all netizens children? Don’t we have self-discipline?
5. How do western children grow up? Those adult magazines, Playboy and Penthouse can be easily purchased in their nearby supermarket.
6. The government has spent 41.7million RMB (6 million USD) only for buying a year’s annual fee? What if users just re-install the system and un-install the software?
7. Why don’t we have the public hearing?
8. Does the Green Dam over-protect? It is just a normal software: nothing hi-tech about it. It may block some information which is not really sensitive.
9. Is the software able to filter the undesirable content in English/French?
10. Is the software perfect software? Many hackers have already prepared to attack the software or may use it as platform to attack other people’s computer.

Most people believe the government’s initial idea of protecting children from harmful internet information is acceptable, but very doubtful whether this Green Dam project is a proper way to realize this.

More related readings:
Information Week: China ‘Green Dam’ Censorware Called Security Risk
People’s Daily: 今天你被”花季”护航了吗？- Have you been escorted by “HUA Ji Green Dam” today?
UMICH: Technical Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System
Global Voices：China Green Dam PC filtering
The Wall Street Journal: China Squeezes PC Makers
Danwei: Is the Green Dam filter experimenting on computer users?

Once again the 2-day marathon test, Gaokao, has begun tormenting Chinese high-school students across the nation. More than 10 million of China’s youth will be subjected to this gruesome gauntlet that determines the rest of their social and professional life. But just over half will be admitted to universities, where rote learning and standardized tests still dominate. The Gaokao tests everything students learned since kindergarten and can have some serious psycological impacts on testees.

The Gaokao isn’t waterboarding, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would not have been able to survive 183 gaokao’s. Critics point out that the Gaokao can lead to “faintings, increased drop out rates, and increasing rates of teenage depression and suicide.” There have even been cases of doctors prescribing birth control pills to make sure girls are not menstruating during the test. In order to ease the stress of the test, some cities cordon off streets to ease traffic, offer free taxi rides, and cancel noisy construction projects near testing centers.

But this seems to be the best form of stress relief:

Links & Sources

• China’s SAT (via Slate)
• 中国1020万考生　为进理想高校大冲刺

After a slew of apologies from the 23 year-old bong-ripper, Michael Phelps has made a formal apology to his Chinese fans via home-video (below). Definitely a good PR move, the Chinese media has not hammered Phelps too hard, and in some cases indirectly praised him:

Chinese sports stars are still in the habit of thanking leaders and giving self-criticisms to their coaches. Many of these sports stars think that their wealth and their fans have absolutely no relationship. Thinking about that, the Chinese sports market has a long way to go (from Guangzhou Daily).

It seems China is not used to sports stars apologizing to their fans. But Phelps definitely had a motive in his apology. Apparently, the video had been sent directly from Mazda, the Japanese car manufacturer, to various Chinese websites and news outlets. Just last month, Phelps signed an endorsement with Mazda worth over $1 million to promote Mazda cars after his eight-gold-medal performance at the Beijing Olympics last summer. The New York Times writes that “Phelps’s deal with Mazda is said to be the most lucrative sponsorship deal for a foreigner in China.”

But it’s sad that Phelps has to bend to will of Mazda and Kellogg. I have a feeling that if Phelps could say what he really felt to his fans and critics, he would take another route. He would tell people that though he engaged in an illegal activity and will accept the legal consequences, his country is a hypocrite when it comes to drugs. The drug policies in America are totally out of touch with reality. That, if anything, his use of marijuana is another fine example of how an illegal drug like marijuana is not dangerous and had no ill-effects on a world class athlete and all-around good guy. But the world is not ready for a successful, well-adjusted athlete to be a poster boy for pot. Selling cars will always trump the truth.

Links & Sources:

• Boston Herald
• Guangzhou Daily
• New York Times

According to the Beijing News, yesterday’s air was the worst this year. Most likely, it will be the day with the highest concentration of pollutants for the whole year. At about 9pm on the eve of the Lantern Festival, every square meter of air had 810 micrograms of pollutants, though by the end of yesterday it was down to 307, a number that is still far higher than acceptable levels.

Days with this much pollution rank as level 5, the most extreme rating. The last time air pollution reached level 5 was on May 29th of last year.

If you are wondering what exactly you were breathing during the Lantern Festival celebrations, below are excerpts from an academic abstract aptly titled: The air pollution caused by the burning of fireworks during the lantern festival in Beijing.

The effects of the burning of fireworks on air quality in Beijing was firstly assessed from the ambient concentrations of various air pollutants (SO₂, NO₂, PM_2.5, PM₁₀ and chemical components in the particles) during the lantern festival in 2006. Eighteen ions, 20 elements, and black carbon were measured in PM_2.5 and PM₁₀, and the levels of organic carbon could be well estimated from the concentrations of dicarboxylic acids. Primary components of Ba, K, Sr, Cl^-, Pb, Mg and secondary components of C₅H₆O^2-₄, C₃H₂O^2-₄, C₂O^2-₄, C₄H₄O^2-₄, SO^2-₄, NO^-₃ were over five times higher in the lantern days than in the normal days. The firework particles were acidic and of inorganic matter mostly with less amounts of secondary components. Primary aerosols from the burning of fireworks were mainly in the fine mode, while secondary formation of acidic anions mainly took place on the coarse particles

It was found that over 90% of the total mineral aerosol and 98% of Pb, 43% of total carbon, 28% of Zn, 8% of NO^-₃, and 3% of SO^2-₄ in PM_2.5 were from the emissions of fireworks on the lantern night.

This may be useful

Sources & Links:

• Beijing News
• The air pollution caused by the burning of fireworks during the lantern festival in Beijing
• Respro

The City Management Police (城管) have put on display the “certificates” that they confiscated from unlicensed entrepreneurs.  They took more than 1200 of the spoof certificates, which look official but have names like “Pervert Certificate,” “Idiot Certificate,” and all kinds of other clever, though rather vulgar names. The entrepreneur in question told police that he sells over 200 hundred of these certificates to elementary and middle school students per day.

But these certificates can not only be found in Dongcheng (东城), where they were confiscated. They seem to be all over the country and are causing quite an uproar. Though it seems the only way for authorities to censor these certificates is not by going to the source (the factories producing them in large quantities), but by picking on the unlicensed little guy trying to make a living.

Sources and Links:

• The Beijing News
• Rednet.cn
• Northnews.cn