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.

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

I had seen this guy on TV before, but never really noticed exactly what he did until I came upon Crossing the River (guò hé-过河), a musical skit about a woman reluctantly taking her pint-sized suitor named  Gāo fēng (高峰) across the river. Seriously one of the coolest skits I’ve seen, it is a performance style called èr rén zhuàn (二人转), where a man and a woman sing, dance, and have dialogues (which sometimes get a little racy).

Like the 二人转 skit-style, Pan Changjiang originates from Northeast China and has been called the Mr. Bean of China, though far more verbose. He is multi-talented, having been in several feature films and dozens of skits and music videos. He sings and dances well too. The skit 过河 has a fun song and dance (below) where the woman tests 高峰 on his knowledge of farm life to see whether he is suitable for marriage or not. Pan’s character comes up with witty answers to all of the questions, and finally insulting his questioner.

Other good clips of Pan Changjiang:

双簧 (Super funny clip of 赵本山 and 潘长江)

好人好梦 (Pan Changjiang and his daughter sing a duet)

过河 Original version

过河 Flash version

Kuaiban (快板) is a literary art form accompanied by a rhythm produced by the lyricist himself. Like a beat-boxer and MC all in one, 快板 is Chinese hip hop, not to be confused with the guys walking around in baggy pants with a vague sense of rhythm and poor lyricism.

I watched in absolute amazement as the Kuai Ban master tapped out complex rhythms and recited a story that must have taken ages to commit to memory. The rhythm follows the story line with the nuances and crescendoes of an orchestra, bringing the story to life like modern hip hop rarely does.

From a Western perspective Kuai Ban is mysterious. It doesn’t adhere to any strict time signature, or even tempo for that matter. Each stanza is a different length than the previous and following one. Almost like spoken word, where artists stray from the predictable 4/4 rhythm that we are all so used to, Kuai Ban is free. Rather than starting from a beat, like hip hop does, Kaui Ban is based on the lyrical content and the mood it creates. The rhythm serves as punctuation. It is the period and comma, semicolon even. But it is more than that. It is a display of years of hard work and practice.

Picking up a set of paiban (拍板) for the first time will give you a real sense of respect for the Kuaiban master. For someone that prides themselves in understanding rhythm fairly well, the paiban flopped around like a spastic fish dying in my hands. For now, I will resign myself to being a fan, not a participant.

It has come to the attention to some of the Laonei staff that the new logo, which  is a “内” written in the seal-style of the Qin Dynasty (篆书- zhuàn shū), looks something a prophylactic and/or phallus. Well, we here at Laonei do not condone the use of sexual imagery for marketing purposes, but we do encourage the use of condoms, whether used for birth control, STD prevention, or water balloons.

With condoms in mind, I headed on over to the Jissbon website and was pleasantly surprised with their “sexual knowledge” section (性知识). I picked up a few new vocabulary words in the process, along with their descriptions in Chinese. Here are just a few (visit the website for a more complete list, though without translations):

安全套 (ān quán tào) - condom

前戏 (qián xì) - foreplay

手淫 (shǒu  yín) - masturbate

舔阴 (tiǎn  yīn) - cunnilingus

吹萧 (chuī  xiāo) - fellatio

G点 (G diǎn) - Need I explain?

69 式 ·体位 (liù  jiǔ  shì  tǐ  wèi) -It’s all about the numbers

A film about Chinese democracy (no, not the new Guns n’ Roses album), Please Vote for Me is a documentary with a  deep look into a 3rd grade class that elects their 班长 (class captain) instead of having the teacher appoint one. The candidates take the whole process very seriously and things get crazy when the parents get involved, who serve as campaign managers for their child’s bid for class monitor.

Check out the clip below or watch the whole film on YouKu.

Here at Laonei, we are in the process of making some big improvements to the site. We figured the best way to ring in the holidays was to give Laonei users the gift of a new and improved site.

But we need your help. We want to know what you think is important information to have while living in China. Help us reach our goal of making Laonei.com the most useful and aesthetically pleasing site in Beijing!

Two of the English-challenged studs from our IT team made a video especially for you! They couldn’t read an English script, so we put it in Chinese characters. Check out the video, Experiment in Transliteration, and make sure to take the questionnaire!

If you haven’t given up on Internet Explorer like the rest of us, now is the time. For anyone learning or using Chinese on a daily basis, here are three great plugins for Firefox to help you learn and understand Chinese (in order of awesomeness).

1. Chinese Perapera-kun

Simply put, this extension will allow you read Chinese on websites. This is useful for just getting around a site, or even MORE useful if you are studying Chinese. It works with both Simplified and Traditional characters, and also allows you to export words to a file to study later.

Though the plugin can be a bit finicky, it is an absolute must readers of Chinese no matter what your level. Bottom line: Once you use it, you’ll never go back!

2. BBDict

BBDict is a simple online translation extension which only supports the translation between chinese and english, so I just call it B(a)B(y)Dict which is inspired by my girlfriend’s name….

Not as pretty as Perapera-kun, but still great for going back and forth between Chinese and English. Bottom line: use it when reading in English, that way you will feel like you are always learning new Chinese words!

3. gTranslate

With gTranslate you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text.

Translaters are decent, but still no replacement for understanding the original text. Bottom line: If you are in a crunch, use this one. Otherwise, tough it out!