Growing Middle Class

Are countries like China, India and Brazil getting stronger? Here are two shows from TVO's The Agenda that gives us a better idea of where the world might be going in the next decades.





I would have to take the side not really believing that the middle class is growing or will make much difference in China or India. The levels are so low. It's not really fair to call the middle class in China the biggest in the world compared to countries like US and Canada when the a person making $2 a day can be considered middle class. The countries are growing but the people there are still just hanging on. China is growing at 9% a year and a person may have gotten a raise from $4000 a year to $5000 a year but unless that growth continues year after year after year, the so-called middle class will get very restless and demand more and more from the communist authoritarian government.

7up Chinese time travel commercial

Remember! Toilet Paper is very important!

Chinese Hurdler doesn't give a fuck!

Can't make it over the first few hurdles, falling behind? So what!!!




Liu Xiang this guy is not!

Sex Education Class For Beijing Elementary Schoolchildren

Source: chinaSMACK

December 9th, at the Hepingli No. 1 Primary School in Dongcheng district of Beijing, during a sexual health education class, the teacher uses a game to teach students how a "sperm" and "ovum" unite after going through multiple obstacles, and even allows them to experience the hardships of a mother's ten month pregnancy.

December 9th, at the Hepingli No. 1 Primary School in Dongcheng district of Beijing, students pretend to be "sperm" during a game.

So what do you think?

Do you think this class is appropriate?

2010 Asian Games Opening Ceremonies

We all know how impressive the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies were.

Same idea here in Guangzhou. More flying on wires!

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:


Part 5:


Part 6:


Part 7:


Part 8:


Part 9:


Part 10:


Part 11:

Rick Mercer In Shanghai

Few weeks ago, The Rick Mercer Report went to Shanghai.

Here are a couple of clips. Hilarious!





Nothing beats FREE Poutine!

Create The Caption #3

See if you can create a caption for this picture of Tiger Woods and Lee Westwood learning how to handle their swords in Shanghai.

China 2030

Maybe with tonight's elections results and the Republicans taking back some of the power, the American people have seen the light?

Create The Caption #1

Going to try something here. We provide a photo, you come up with hilarious captions and we present the winner, and a new pic in a few days!

GO!

Woman Attacks Police and Camera Crew

In Hainan China, there was a camera crew filming with police doing a feature on checkstops. According to an account by journalist Xiao Jiang for Hainan TV news station: On the night of the 20th September I picked up a video camera and went out with a female colleague. We went to Binhai Road near the Haikou Wenhua Hotel to interview police investigating drink drivers at the scene. At around 11:30 at night the police stopped a car suspected of being driven by a drunk driver and carried out a spot check. Xiao Jiang and the female colleague then interviewed the suspected drunk driver.

Suddenly, a woman from the crowd of people watching rushed forward, charged towards Xiao Jiang saying: Your video camera filmed me, why do you want to film me?

Hilarity ensues!

Don't Sit For Too Long!

Source: Orange

Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long - by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.

If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.

The spikes are too short to cause any serious harm - but long enough to prevent people from sitting on them comfortably.

Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialisation of modern life.

"He thought he was exaggerating. He didn't foresee that a very practical country like China might actually use them for real," said one critic.

Parks in China suffer from chronic overcrowding at weekends when millions of people try to escape the country's teeming cities.

"We have to make sure the facilities are shared out evenly and this seems like a fair way to stop people grabbing a bench at dawn and staying there all day," said one park official.

It's mostly young couple hogging the benches and making out.. so I don't know about the effectiveness of these so-called spikes.

Chinese set new world record for human dominoes

More than 10,000 people have set a new Guinness World record for "human dominoes" in China's Inner Mongolia, toppling a record set a decade earlier in Singapore by more than several hundred.

The 10,276, mostly students seated cross-legged and falling backwards in a line that snaked across an enormous square, took 1 hour and 20 minutes to set the new record on Thursday.

"The human dominoes were a success. The new record is 10,267 people. This is a new Guinness World record," Guinness' official Wu Shaohong said, in images broadcast on state television.

The ceremony in the Inner Mongolian city of Ordos kicked off with Chinese basketball star and former NBA player Mengke Bateer passing a basketball to the first domino in line, who then all fell backward in turn.


The participants trained more than four hours each for three days in preparation for the event, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Previously, the human domino record was held by 9,234 students in Singapore in 2000.

Poll: Boy or Girl

Is this a Boy or Girl?

Here's the story!

Source: Orange

A Chinese man has been arrested for pretending to be a woman to marry men for their money.

Wang Mou, 18, allegedly married three men this year and fled with the engagement money, reports the Dahe Daily.

Wang, who is very slim and softly spoken, reportedly admitted: "A lot of people mistake me for a woman on first sight."

His first 'marriage' happened in February when a woman promised to find him a job but instead sold him as a wife for £500.

"She cheated me but I found a chance to escape then realised I could use the same shortcut to make some money," he said, according to the police.

With the help of an accomplice, Wang allegedly then sold himself to a Mr Liu who paid £1,000 for the engagement. Wang escaped the next night and split the money with his accomplice.

Police say he was then introduced to another potential husband, a Mr Zhang in Zhoukou, who also paid a £1,000 engagement fee.

Wang allegedly escaped again but was caught a day later by local women who handed him over to the police after finding out that he was really a man.

Wang was still wearing his pink wedding dress when he was taken to the local police station for questioning.

So if you said girl, you were duped :)

Bra-Removing Contest

A Titanic Struggle as you can clearly see!

Source: AOLNews

Since the dawn of women's apparel, men have been trying to score by unhooking brassieres. This contest, however, brings the game to a whole new level.

A Chinese shopping mall hosted a competition to find out who could unclasp bras the fastest using just one hand.

Competitors raced to undress a line of eight masked women who stood on a stage in the Guangzhou mall wearing bras and short-shorts.

Eager participants entered the contest to fulfill their dreams and have the chance to take home a mall gift certificate for 1,000 yuan -- about $146.

The victor, who declined to give her name, said she might have had an unfair advantage over her male rivals.

Oh course the men lost. Don't have a clue phhttt

Student got stuck down a toilet

Source: Orange

A Chinese student had to be rescued by firefighters after he got his arm stuck down a toilet trying to retrieve his mobile phone.

The student had dropped his phone while playing with it on the loo - and decided on desperate action to try to get it back.

He wrapped his arm in newspaper in the hope of keeping clean, but the paper expanded in water trapping his arm in the u-tube.

The young man, who is a student at Chongqing Technology and Business University, had to shout to his dorm mates for help.

But they too were unable to pull his arm out so they called firefighters who worked with specialist equipment for more than an hour to free him.

The embarrassed student, who did not wish to give his name, later admitted: "I dropped the phone down the toilet by accident.

"Thinking of the filth, I found some newspaper to wrap around my arm but it bulged when soaked with water and I was trapped."

This would never happen if they got rid of those idiotic squating toilets. Anyone ever dropped something in a regular toilet? I don't think you'd lose it right away.

Lorry driver builds himself a Lamborghini

Source: Orange

A Chinese lorry driver has built himself a Lamborghini supercar in his spare time - for just £2,000.

It took Chen Jinmiao, 25, of Binzhou, Hunan province, a year to build the replica sportscar, reports the Red Net.

"I downloaded the drawings from the internet, and then bought materials from the market," he said.

Chen, who has only a basic school education, had always dreamt of owning a Lamborghini but knew he would never be able to afford a real one.

It is a fully working car - and even has the famous wing doors - but its top speed is a little over 50mph, compared to a real Lamborghini's 200mph-plus.

Chen said his family and friends tried to discourage him from building the car.

"But they couldn't stop me, as I did it all with my own savings," he explained.

He is now waiting to see whether traffic officials will give him permission to drive the car on the road.

"If they don't, I can have it for my collection at home," he added.

Holy crap, £2,000 is alot of money that he's been saving up. A whole year!
That's a really cool project but there's not way he can really drive that thing very far. Just around the neighbourhood? It looks great but doesn't look safe, no bumper, bad wheels. Can it even break at high speeds? I like his attitude though, that's a wonderful lifetime collection to have :)

Hello Mr. Death! Researcher finds rare Chinese names

Source: Reuters

A man in China's southern province of Jiangxi has spent the last 20 years compiling a list of unusual family names, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Most Chinese people share a few common surnames, like Zhang, Wang, Li, Liu and Chen. The Chinese expression for "ordinary people" literally means "the old one hundred surnames."

But Cheng Yinglian's interest was piqued after reading a newspaper many years ago and discovering a person with the surname Gui, meaning "ghost," CCTV said.

Since then, he has scoured newspapers, books and other publications to find similar rare surnames, coming up with about 2,000 to date.

Those he has found include Ling, or "zero," Cu, or "vinegar," Miao, or "second" and Yi, or "one."

Superstitions related to names are still strong in China, and many parents go out of their way to give their children auspicious names which suggest they will grow up to be healthy, strong and rich.

While you can legally change your surname in China, the report did not say how many people had chosen to change theirs if they were unfortunate enough to be born a "death" or "ghost."

Ever notice Asian names (especially Vietnamese) names are always opposite the personality?

A girl who's named Snow is dark.
A girl who's named Nice is mean
A guy who's named Brave is a coward.
A guy who's named Strong is a wuss.

Chinese youth accused of not being fighting fit

At least they're running, somewhere

Source: Reuters

The government must immediately invest some of its new wealth in ensuring that children take regular exercise, Beijing Sports University president Yang Hua told the sports group of the largely ceremonial advisory body to China's annual parliament.

"It is time for the Chinese nation to improve the physical fitness of our next generation," said Yang. "If we miss the next three to five years a whole generation will be next to useless.

"If there was another war against Japan, would the younger Chinese be able to fight the Japanese one-on-one?

"The government has enough money for banquets and for luxurious office buildings, do they not have money for children's physical education?" he added.

Japan invaded and occupied much of China between 1931 and 1945. Rancour over Japanese wartime atrocities has subsided as a diplomatic flashpoint, but it continues to shape Chinese public attitudes toward Japan and its people.

.....more

For a country that calls itself the Center of the World, they sure are insecure about what the Japanese are doing. Are they seriously still thinking about a future war with Japan? One-on-One? Does this guy realize that this isn't the Three Kingdoms era and wars aren't wrestled? I'm not even sure the next war would even use guns.
And I'm not sure either the Chinese nor the Japanese were fit in 1931.

Children's physical education in schools is very important. China spent a bazillion dollars on Olympic facilities, Olympic programs and the opening ceremonies. All for nothing as it may have resulted in 60 gold medals, but a kid sitting on his can watching China win 6 gold medals in table tennis isn't going to make him any fitter.
For a country who Communist motto famously says, opportunity for the many, only the best get selected for sporting greatness. China addiction of showing the world that they can win the Olympics, has resulted in a neglection of the bigger picture of sports in schools.

Another symptom is that the academic system is too competitive. Students study 24 hours a day to get into the best schools. Sitting on a chair studying numbs your butt. No time for exercise.

Chinese police cancel Mr. Gay China pageant

Beijing police cancel China's first gay pageant from Janek Zdzarski on Vimeo.

The Mr. Gay China pageant has been canceled by police in Beijing, thus scuttling China's chances at winning the presumably prestigious Mr. Gay Worldwide title in Norway. Given China's state sponsorship of other competitive events like the Olympics, you would think they'd give the fellas a little support?

Why did The Man come down on, er, The Men? "It's sensitive" - a catchall phrase that describes everything in China from Taiwan and Tibet to heroin addiction and AIDS.

Anyways, kudos to the participants for speaking frankly about their disappointment, but what the hell is up with the dude wearing a leather thong swimsuit five sizes too small for him? Does he turn into the Hulk onstage or something to fill it out? I'll never get these things.

UPDATE!

Newsy.com provides some social context (thanks to Rosa Sow):

Watch where you put that chopstick!

Li Jingchao learned the hard way -- be careful what you stick up your nose.

The 14-month-old little boy was playing with chopsticks, when his doctor says he fell, with one of the sticks piercing his nose.

"It touched upon the deep area of his brain, four centimeters of the chopstick was inside his skull" Doctor Sun Wei told CNN.

Jingchao's mother, Zhao Guilu didn't see what happened -- she was in another room at the time, but came running when she heard her son crying.

"I was washing dishes... I rushed in and saw him lying on the ground. He couldn't stop crying and I noticed a chopstick stuck in his nose."

She went to a local clinic, but doctors there warned her it was too dangerous to try and remove the chopstick because it may cause massive bleeding. Zhao was frantic and called her husband. A relative offered to drive them from their small village, hundreds of miles to a hospital in Beijing.

That mom is smart. I probably would have just yanked the chopstick out of his nose instead of going to the doctor.

I'm not fit to be a mom huhuhuhuhuhu.