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Palace Museum: Home to Many ‘Mosts’ and ‘Firsts’

Posted by MyLaowai on Thursday, May 22, 2014

Guest Post
For reference: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2014-05/14/content_17505075_5.htm

Of course, it is high time the MyLaowai team turned its unbiased, unprejudiced but somewhat bleary eyes on the centerpiece of Chinese tourism. Unlike the propaganda promulgated by our colleagues at China Daily, that shining example of harmful harmonious reporting and a beacon of light to all lovers of suppressed free speech globally- we here at the MyLaowai newsteam have done a more thorough report on one of the world’s largest tourist traps.

First, let’s look at the claims.

1. The Forbidden City is the largest and most intact ancient building complex in the world.
Err, someone hasn’t been to the Tower of London. Size-wise, as in most important things, laowai much bigger than Chinese… It’s also older… much older… Technically speaking, the chink king brothel is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. There, if we narrow it down a lot, seeing as most smart little pigs built their houses from stone to stop the big bad wolf from burning them the fuck down… we can finally find a biggest. It’s the biggest surviving fire hazard from ancient times. Not really that ancient either. When I think of Ancient, I think of 1,000+ years, our chinky king brothel is about half that.

2. Biggest collection of old chink things.
Well, that’s a gimme, especially considering they include collections held elsewhere… and nobody, even the Palace Museum, is interested in over half the shit they have anyway…

3. The Palace Museum has been visited by the most tourists in the world.
Another gimme, seeing as Chinese can’t afford to visit other countries, even when they are granted permission to leave. What is with that, permission to leave your own country? Sigh. I can just see it now: “Let’s go visit the Louvre my honey-steeped locust” – “Sorry duck-face, we can’t get passports, Beijing ok?” Talk about a captive audience.

4. The Palace Museum was among the first batch listed as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO in China.
One of the first group of… not the first, but if we STREEEETTTTCCCCHHHHHHH the facts we can squeeze a first out of this I guess. A bit like a Chinese girl with a size-C push-up padded bra claiming to have C-size tits. No hun, they are AA’s. As in the battery…

5. The Palace Museum located in the most beautiful city central axis in the world.
WTF??!!! OMG. Excuse me while I have a martini or 60 to get over the shock. Once we wipe the pavements clean of blood, and ignore the fact it’s a giant bloody concrete pavement, how about we settle with “Located in the middle of one of the most polluted cities on the planet” and call it quits.

6.
Hang on, there isn’t a number 6. You mean, even with including an outright lie or two, and stretching the facts until they can be plucked to accompany a mosquitoes hum, you can only find five?

There are plenty more, here’s just a few:

6: Museum with the most number of citizens slaughtered onsite in the modern era.
Argueably also true for the ancient era.

7: Most number of toilets in any museum without toilet paper!
Google ‘forbidden city toilet’ for a chuckle at reviews.

8: Least disabled-friendly museum.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/02/un-forbidden-braving-beijings-biggest-tourist-attraction-in-a-wheelchair/ as one example. Let’s not forget, this is after the HUGE (Chinese huge is anything bigger than tiny) effort put in for the Olympics…

9. Museum with the most number of military police on duty.
Well, they hafta do something to keep unemployment rates down I guess…

10. Museum with the most ignored signage in the world.
From “No Spitting” to “No Photos” and “No Smoking”, I have yet to see any Chinese taking ANY notice at all of any of these signs…

That’s enough for now, but at least we made it to 10, and did it with the raw truth. MyLaowai > ChinaDaily, yet again.

Have a harmonica day!

DaBizzare.

Posted in ChinaDaily, Guest Post, History, Media, Propaganda | 8 Comments »

Kung Fu Monkeys At It Again

Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, September 27, 2011

This is on the front page of the Communist Party mouthpiece ChinaDaily, today:

So that’s how one defends against terrorist threats and enemy air raids, is it? By hitting a piece of mud-brick? What, so Al Qaeda are in the business of lobbing a few lumps of adobe at their enemies now, are they? The much-feared Japan Air-Self Defence Forces are likely to drop a few pounds of gravel on you, is that it? You people are pathetic. That’s just weak.

The worrying part is that Chinese people actually believe that this Kung Fu malarky is some kind of magical, powerful, all-defeating force that truly does enable one to fly through the air and intercept bullets with bits of bamboo stick and all that other childish nonsense one sees in those puerile commie B-films. And yet they somehow still need odds of twenty to one in their favour before they will even consider a fight to be evenly matched.

Back in the days when this cuntry was being run properly (i.e. by the British, Germans, French, Japanese and Americans), the local yokels insisted on staging a fight to prove the superiority of their magical dancing. No, not the Boxer Rebellion, although those idiots also believed that Kung Fu could best Enfield rifles by the power of the mind (Darwinian selection at work, if you ask me). No, it was in Shanghai, and the local hero was some grand master who spent his days on the tops of mountains or whatever it is they do to avoid having to go to work like the rest of us. The hated Laowai was some bloke who had paid attention to the Marquess of Queensbury and knew that dancing around and jumping about like a stick insect on a hot plate didn’t stand up next to a good, solid, thump in the nose. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that he wasn’t a nine-pound weakling who’d been raised on a diet of grass, rice and melamine, and that he could, therefore, allow himself to be hit a few times without collapsing into a soggy heap on the ground. Not that there was ever any likelihood of that happening, of course. The result was fairly predictable, as you would expect: he was stronger, faster, and knew how to actually fight, and it was a three-hit contest – He hit the kung fu wallah, the kung fu wallah hit the ground, and the ambulance hit the hospital. The mighty Laowai went back to work and put in a proper day’s effort afterwards, and when it became necessary a few years later to go to war and fight terrorists and aeroplanes, he used firearms, or ‘thunder sticks’ as the Chinese called them.

Well, Chinese ‘soldiers’, if you insist on your magical flying kung fu as a weapon of modern warfare, then all I can say is you’d best invest in swimming lessons. You’ll need them when you try to visit Taiwan.

Posted in ChinaDaily, History, Newsflash | 30 Comments »

How China Is This?

Posted by MyLaowai on Thursday, January 6, 2011

From the Party mouthpiece, ChinaDaily:

Mistresses jump into the river for BMW

Two 25-year-old women who shared the affections of the same man in Jinan, Shandong province, jumped into the Yellow River in the hope of snagging a BMW.

The pair were both mistresses of a man surnamed Wang, who had separately promised to buy each of them a BMW car.

When the two women ran into each other on Jan 3, they began to quarrel about the car. One of them said she would do anything for Wang and jumped into the Yellow River to show she meant it. Not to be outdone, the second one followed suit.

A passer-by surnamed Mi saw the two women, one of whom had cut her leg on an icicle, and pulled them from the river before calling their lover.

Wang, a construction supplier from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, arrived at the scene with his wife, who denounced the two women and told her husband to return the BMW to her.

An anonymous party reported the ensuing row to the police, who recorded the incident, and Wang paid Mi for rescuing the women from the river.

You couldn’t make this stuff up, honestly.

Posted in ChinaDaily, Wang Xiansheng | 28 Comments »

How Wet Thou Art, Pussy!

Posted by MyLaowai on Thursday, August 19, 2010

Well now, Lee Hannon, it seems you have been a bad boy recently. A very bad boy indeed. Been working for ChinaDaily, have we? Tsk, tsk. As the Chief Editor no less, according to your LinkedIn profile, although ChinaDaily themselves say you are a mere ‘journalist’. My word, Mister Hannon, you have been stretching some truths, haven’t you? Naughty, naughty.

But hey, it’s cool with us. We don’t mind if you get your kicks by licking a Panda’s arse, and we don’t really care if you do love the Party more then you love your own family, because it takes all sorts to make the world go round, and even treasonous vipers like yourself have a place in society. Granted, that place is swinging from the end of a rope tied to your gentleman’s vegetables at one end and a lamp post at the other, but it’s a place nonetheless.

I was, however, interested to read a recent article in which you slagged off England, the nation of your birth. In it, you said words to the effect that the UK was not a good place for tourists to visit during the next Olympic Games. As evidence, you cited the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index on the quality of welcome offered to visitors, in which the UK ranked 14th. You probably thought you were quite safe in doing so, as this Index is not widely available for public consumption.

You obviously read the report thoroughly, right? I mean to say, it would hardly be responsible of you to not have read it from cover to cover, agreed?

You made a point of bemoaning the fact that, in the particular category quoted, the UK ranked 14th. Where did your beloved China rank, I wonder? But wait, it would appear that I have a copy of the report myself. Let’s just have a look, shall we? Oh yes, here we are…

Overall Nation Brands Index
UK 4th
China 22nd

Exports Index
– contribution to innovation
– effect on attitudes towards ‘country of origin’
– degree of creativity
UK 4th
China 17th (quality of products 45th)

Governance
– competently and honestly governed
– respect and fair treatment of it’s citizens
– responsible behaviour in international peace and security
– responsible environmental protection
– responsible for reducing world poverty
UK 7th
China 49th (just in front of Iran, in last place)

Culture
– sports
– cultural heritage
– music, films, art, literature
UK 4th
China 7th

People
– friendly towards visitors
– other people want them as friends
– valuable employees
UK 6th
China 35th (but hey, up from 41st, which is good)

Tourism
– people would like to visit
– rich in natural beauty
– rich in historic buildings
– vibrant city life
UK 5th
China 19th

Immigration & Investment
– foreigners want to live there
– quality of life
– good place to study
– businesses worth investing in
– equal opportunities
UK 4th
China 33rd

Special Category: Contribution to Global Recovery from the Economic Crisis
UK 3rd
China 11th

There’s something else worth noting about this report, and that is that the authors have a website on which you can see how ordinary people around the world rated cities and countries across the globe, including their own.

This is how the Chinese people (and Lee Hannon) ranked Beijing:
Most important city in the world (with Shanghai 2nd and Shenzhen 3rd. Hong Kong 4th, of course.)
Best services and accommodation in the world
Best people in the world
Most lively city in the world
Most opportunities in the world

However, China was the only country in which it’s citizens were not allowed to give their opinion on their own country. I find that telling.

What I find equally telling, is that you, Mister Hannon, have lied through your back teeth whilst in the service of the Party. You have crossed the line, sunshine. The Wet Pussy Award is given to those bottom-feeders who “actively seek out ways to support the Han Regime, who publicly side with the Chinese Communist Party… A great many of these sympathisers work […] in the entertainment industry, and most show their support by […] agreeing in public with the position the Han regime takes on anything and everything […] they [also] do the ‘look at the stupid Laowai’ entertainment shows in which Han Chinese are shown to be superior to the nasty barbarian foreigners.”

Mister Hannon, I believe you qualify in the worst possible way, and I award you this Wet Pussy for being a complete and utter toe-rag, wastrel, scumbag, and all-round traitor to humanity. You’d better hope you never meet me in a bar, because I’ll have your guts for my garters, sparky.


Mister Lee Hannon, Wet Pussy Winner.
I hope you die of cancer.

Posted in ChinaDaily, Lies & Damned Lies, Media, Olympics, Propaganda, Wet Pussy Awards | 14 Comments »

Corruption? Bribery? Judicial Independance?

Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, July 24, 2009

The Chinese Communist Party, under the leadership of Chairman Hu Jintao, is warning Australia to keep out of China’s ‘internal affairs’ in the case of the Rio Tinto employess who are being held hostage for political reasons. China Daily, the Party mouthpiece, has had the following headlines recently:

Australia urged to treat Rio Tinto spy case ‘properly’

China urges Australia to respect judicial sovereignty

Australia urged to respect judicial sovereignty in Rio case

It seems the Chinese take a dim view of bribery and corruption, and want to be seen to be taking a hard stance. Strange, therefore, that all news of the Nuctech case is being blocked.

Wait, Nuctech? What’s that?

Chinese Govt. mum on $3.7 million fraud
THE Chinese Embassy has declined to comment on the $3.7 million X-Ray equipment fraud involving Chinese manufacturer Nuctech Company, despite the fact that it is headed by Hu Haifeng, the 38-year old son of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The official spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Windhoek, who preferred to be named only as Mr. Yang told [the press] that the embassy was not prepared to say more than: “We will take the necessary steps.”

The charges are connected to a contract for the supply of security scanners to the Ministry of Finance. It was awarded to a Chinese company, Nuctech Company, and was marred by alleged corruption and the payment of kickbacks to the tune of as much as a third of the contract price of some $3.7 million.

Search engines in China, including Google Inc.’s local site, are blocking news on a graft case in Namibia involving a company once headed by the son of President Hu Jintao.

Hu Haifeng is the former president of Beijing-based Nuctech Co., a maker of security scanners involved in a corruption probe in Namibia.  Investigators want to talk to him to get information about the company.

A search on Google’s Chinese Web site using the characters for “Hu Haifeng” and “Namibia” results in the following message in Chinese: “The search results may involve material that may not be in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, unable to display.”

The restrictions show the extent to which the government is working to contain news of the case, which may embarrass President Hu as he cracks down on official corruption. A Beijing court this month gave a suspended death sentence for bribery to Chen Tonghai, former chairman of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia’s largest refiner.

“Google’s operations in all countries worldwide must comply with local laws, regulations and policies,” said Marsha Wang, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the company. Because of that, “some search results are not shown.”

MyLaowai calls on the Chinese Government to treat the Nuctech case properly, and to respect Namibia’s judicial independance. Oh yeah, and hand over Hu Jintao’s grubby-fingered boy at once.

Corruption in the Hu family? Like father, like son…

Posted in Censorship, China, ChinaDaily, Corruption, Human Rights, Media | 15 Comments »

It’s [Fact] Friday!

Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, April 10, 2009

Today’s fact is:

Fact! The new ‘Eye of Tianjin‘ will only cause problems.

According to ChinaDaily, this is the observation wheel ‘Eye of Tianjin’, pictured on its inauguration day in the northern city of Tianjin on Sunday April 5, 2009. Yet according to every Chinese person I’ve ever met, round eyes are no good. The future bodes ill for the Eye of Tianjin, then.090410eyetianjin

China – Leading The Way Since 2991BC

Posted in ChinaDaily, Fact Friday | 4 Comments »

Muscle Man Championship

Posted by MyLaowai on Wednesday, April 1, 2009

I shit you not, this isn’t a wind-up. This is a straight screen-grab from ChinaDaily’s home page, complete with their text.

“Body Builders”…? “Muscle Men”…? There’s a falling cow in this somewhere, I just know it.

090401muscleman

Posted in ChinaDaily | Leave a Comment »

He Says, They Say… (Reprise)

Posted by MyLaowai on Sunday, November 25, 2007

Darfur rebels spurn Chinese force

Rebels in Darfur have demanded that peacekeepers from China pull out of the Sudanese region just hours after the arrival of 135 Chinese engineers.

The army engineers arrived on Saturday to prepare for a joint UN and African Union peacekeeping force of 26,000.

The key Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) rebel group accuses China of being complicit in the Darfur conflict.

Last month the group attacked a Chinese-controlled oilfield, kidnapping several workers.

The Jem says it wants China to withdraw its support for the Sudanese government.

They say that oil sold to the Chinese is being used to fund government operations in Darfur.

Rebels would not allow the Chinese into areas controlled by their forces, Jem leader Khalil Ibrahim told the news agency Reuters following the arrival of the engineers.

“We oppose them coming because China is not interested in human rights. It is just interested in Sudan’s resources,” he said.

“We are calling on them to quit Sudan, especially the petroleum areas.”

Mr Ibrahim did not say whether he would target the Chinese engineers.

“I am not saying I will attack them. I will not say I will not attack them,” he said.

“What I am saying is that they are taking our oil for blood.”

The Chinese engineers are tasked with building roads and bridges and dig wells ahead of the deployment of the joint peacekeeping force planned for January.

The rebels have said they would not object to peacekeepers from any country other than China.

But on Friday, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir said his country would only accept non-African troops from Pakistan or China.

A month ago the Jem attacked Sudan’s Defra oilfield in the Kordofan region, run by a Chinese-controlled consortium, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company.

Jem said at the time that the Chinese company had one week to leave Sudan.

An estimated 200,000 people have died during four-and-a-half years of fighting in Darfur, with a further two million people displaced.

– BBC

But the Party mouthpiece, Xinhua, says this:

Chinese vanguards arrive in Darfur for peacekeeping

Vanguards of the Chinese engineering units arrived in the western Sudanese region of Darfur on Saturday to take part in the hybrid peacekeeping force of the United Nations and the African Union (AU).

The 135 Chinese peacekeepers, upon arrival in South Darfur State capital Niyala, were warmly welcomed by UN, AU and Sudanese officials at the Niyala International Airport.

The Chinese vanguards were also joined in the airport by five Chinese officers who had arrived in Niyala in August in order to receive the equipment of the Chinese peacekeepers, some of which have been transported there since September.

The 140 Chinese peacekeepers will dwell temporarily in a transitional camp before the camp of the Chinese unites is set up, an anonymous Chinese officer told Xinhua in a telephone contact.

The main tasks for the Chinese engineering units include building camps, roads and airports, and digging wells in addition to some other projects in preparations for the deployment of peacekeepers from other countries.

This is the first batch of the UN peacekeepers arriving in the region to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1769 adopted on July 31, which authorizes the deployment of a 26,000-strong hybrid peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The Chinese government has exerted a lot of efforts to help resolve the Darfur problem since armed conflicts erupted in the region in 2003, including appointing a special envoy for the Darfur issues and providing a large amount of relief materials to the region.

And there is also this headline:

Engineering peace, prosperity in Darfur

And another one here, in case anyone missed the point:

Chinese peacekeepers honored in Sudan

Jeez, 1984 anyone? Brazil, perhaps?

Posted in ChinaDaily, Human Rights, Lies & Damned Lies, Propaganda | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Why Smoking Won’t Kill Me

Posted by MyLaowai on Saturday, October 27, 2007

Further to a previous blogpost, here’s a quick comparison between various places, using the Air Pollution Index as a yardstick:

Beijing, China – 184
Riverside County Metro, California, USA (which is on fire) – 173
Los Angeles, California, USA – 41

Note also that the Chinese data is based on, well, Chinese data. Which means that the reality is almost certainly far worse. This is only what they admit to. Anyone who actually believes what they are told here is a naive fool.

In other news, the Olympics is coming up. Xinhua, the Party mouthpiece, has this story:

Beijing going all out to achieve ‘Green Olympics’

The blue bright sky Beijing enjoyed over the past days had been mistaken by some foreign journalists as “a result of government intervention” to polish the city’s image while a significant congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was going on.

Beijing Vice Major Liu Jingmin, a delegate to the five-yearly Party congress, said at a news conference on Friday it actually was the wind coming down from the north that cleaned the air in the host city of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. “Frankly speaking, we didn’t take any measures. It’s the weather that played the role, ” he said.

But with a longer view of the city’s environment and air quality, the improvement is explicit. In 2006, Beijing registered 240 “blue sky” days, or days with fairly good air quality, a rise of 64 days from the previous year.

Nice.

Posted in ChinaDaily, Environment, Olympics | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Quotations From Bastards

Posted by MyLaowai on Monday, September 3, 2007

From the Land That Time Forgot, these quotations…

“China is highly transparent in terms of military policies and security strategy, as reflected in its commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons… [but] Transparency will always be relative. The key point is mutual trust.”
– Peng Guangqian

Yeah, except that China has a stated first-use policy and is internationally known for having the least transparent set of military policies and budgets on earth.
.

The number of cases involving foreign institutions and individuals conducting illegal surveying and mapping in China has been on the rise in recent years, according to the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM).

In the first six months of this year, local authorities have handled five cases and investigating five others in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shanghai Municipality, and Jiangxi and Jiangsu provinces.

SBSM said most of these foreigners came into the country under the disguise of scientists, tourists, expeditionists, and archaeologists.

The results of these foreigners’ surveying and mapping belong to China, and must not be brought and transmitted abroad without official permission by Chinese authorities, according to the law.

Foreigners who have illegally surveyed, collected and published geographical information on China will be severely punished according to law.
– ChinaDaily

These cases involve innocent people entering positional data into their GPS handsets. Hell, it includes me, since I’ve entered waypoints into my GPS-enabled cellphone. Come and get me. .

“Organic farming is not a new thing in Chinese agriculture. We did it thousands of years ago and now we are just going back to the traditions with some modern technologies.”
– Guo Changjun

Yeah. Modern Technology. Like not shitting in the rice paddy and calling it ‘Organic Farming’.
.

“China consistently spares no efforts to enforce its IPR legislation with great success acknowledged by the international community… It is regrettable for China to see the United States has chosen to request the establishment of a panel in spite of China’s efforts to settle this dispute through consultations.”
– Chinese WTO Delegation

Except that China rejected consultations under “relevant WTO regulations”.
.

一人超生，全村结扎！
If one person has too many babies, the whole village will have their tubes tied!
“一胎环，二胎扎，三胎四胎杀杀杀！”
One pregnancy gets the ring. Two pregnancies gets your tubes tied. The third and fourth, kill kill kill!
– Family Planning Slogans

.

“The reality of this country’s economic reforms is that the country, the race, is prospering. This must be extolled. It can only be extolled. There can’t be anyone who makes fun of it. People who do either have ulterior motives or they’re mentally challenged… As a Chinese director … as a Chinese actor, this point of view must be firmly entrenched.”
– Han Sanping, China Film Group Chairman

.

An unidentified official with the [Zhejiang] provincial industry and commerce bureau said that a thorough inspection shall be carried out for imported food products.

He also warned people to be cautious of taking foreign nourishment and avoid blind faith in expansive [sic] products.
-ChinaDaily

Yeah. Better to stick to cardboard-filled buns, right?
.

If we are serious about protecting Chinese culture, maybe we should begin by preventing our language from being Europeanized.
– Zou Hanru, ChinaDaily ‘opinion’ writer

.

Foreign acquisitions of Chinese companies will be subject to stringent new checks intended to protect national economic security under a new law passed Thursday.

“As well as anti-monopoly checks stipulated by this law, foreign mergers with, or acquisitions of, domestic companies or foreign capital investing in domestic companies’ operations in other forms should go through national security checks according to relevant laws and regulations”
– From the new Anti-Monopoly Law

.

Foreign investors are urged to pay more attention to environmental protection and energy conservation.

“China will strengthen restrictions on foreign investment in energy-intensive high polluting and low efficiency industries.”
– Vice-Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo

Yeah, because that’s the exclusive traditional domain of Chinese companies.

Posted in Censorship, ChinaDaily, Environment, Food, Human Rights, Lies & Damned Lies, Propaganda, Rules of the Road | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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