Due-East.org

I came across an article saying that 40% of China’s population can’t speak Mandarin. That’s a staggering statistic. According to the article, it’s mostly people in the rural areas, “the illiterate”, who can’t speak it. The article states that there are about 80 languages spoken in China, which is good news for travelers because you only have to learn about 79 more languages should you go somewhere where nobody speaks Mandarin!

More good news: The Chinese Ministry of Education says that about 30 million people are learning Chinese overseas, so even if you go somewhere in China where the natives don’t speak Mandarin, maybe you could talk to a random 老外.

Link to article

The next time you go to a Chinatown looking for a cheap knock-off version of a Louis Vuitton or a Gucci bag, you may not have a great selection. Police in Milan, Italy, just confiscated over 650,000 fake versions of those companies’ bags in a huge raid. Sorry, incredibly-vain-and-insecure-people-who-feel-like-they-have-to-have-the-most-expensive-looking-stuff-to-have-self-esteem, you may have to find another pretentious way to show how “rich” you are.

Wouldn’t it be ironic, though, if this raid led to a shortage of fake bags that actually caused the price of the fake bags to rise to around what the real ones cost? That would be poetic justice (or something like that).

Link to article

Since most of my readers (all 2 of you) know nothing about how the internet works, I’ll leave a lot of the technical details behind the article in this post.  Trust me, they would bore you (and me) stiff. 

Basically, the internet has been running out of IP addresses (every website has an address) because of the inherent mathematical limits of the current technology used to carry information across the ‘Net.  For a few years now, a newer protocol (IPv6) has been invented but not actually used much of anywhere.  Apparently, China is ahead of the United States, South Korea, and Japan in rolling the new technology out, and they hope to have the technology running on a trial basis by the end of this year.  The Chinese government is hoping that the early implementation of IPv6 technology will allow Chinese telecom companies to get their new IPv6-enabled products to market before the current leaders of the current technology (IPv4), American companies Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, can do so.  The goal is to make Chinese tech companies more competitive on the world scene.  Only time will tell if it works out well for the Chinese or if consumers will be brand-loyal to Juniper and Cisco. 

Link to article

Okay, this has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen.  Some guy in Hawaii (probably a major Anime freak with a serious Asian fetish) is selling “Busty Mousepads”.  Sure, it’s kind of a funny idea in a “let’s have this major dork of a character in this movie that owns one of these” kind of way, but nothing I’d even think of actually BUYING.  Here’s an example pic:

Unbelievably retarded.

News Corp (owners of MySpace.com) want to move into the Chinese market, but they may have a long road ahead of them. The Chinese government is pretty strict about digital media and foreign influence. So News Corp’s chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has decided to send his wife, Wendy Deng, a native Chinese speaker, to help pave the way for them. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out and what kinds of restrictions are placed on the site if it does indeed get up and running.

Link to article

Ah, China. A country of firsts. The first flushing toilet (where’d that idea go since then, guys?), the first to make pasta (or so I’m told), the first to make fireworks…and now the first country to perform not just a penis transplant, but also a penis transplant removal.

I don’t know how I missed the original article (probably because I was on vacation), but there are so many jokes in this story, it’s ridiculous. Apparently, a Chinese man was involved in some sort of accident about 8 months ago, and his penis was severely damaged. Now, I haven’t read anywhere that any other parts of his body were damaged, but I’d love to know (or maybe I wouldn’t?) what this man was doing that caused his penis to be the part that got damaged to the point of needing to be replaced. Articles that I’ve read say that the poor guy has been unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse since the accident, so I can understand his wanting it replaced. You can live without sex, but the whole not being able to pee thing would be really irritating. Ten days after the transplant, he was able to urinate, so I guess you could call it a success.

But then comes the bad part…According to one article, “The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife’s psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis.” How do you define “psychological rejection”? Was it a, “Oh, that’s gross!” kind of thing, or a “That’s not a penis! I refuse to call it a penis. I refuse to refer to it as anything other than a baked potato,” kind of thing? And the swelling…I’m kind of curious, but not enough to actually want to see a picture. So, the newly-offending member was removed…and thus China became the first country to both transplant and then remove a penis.

I’m sure the patient feels quite self-conscious about the fact that his member is getting so much press. That’s got to be a bit embarrassing. But to make matters worse, the surgery performed to fix his penis is called “a microsurgery.” Ouch.

Link to article

There’s been a military coup in Thailand while their Primer Minister is in New York City, and they’ve revoked the country’s constitution that was ratified in 1997.  I don’t know much about Thai politics, but the military says they’ll soon restore power to the people.  It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Link to article

The new Disneyland theme park in Hong Kong isn’t doing as well as Disney would like for a few reasons. One reason is that people are complaining about the 1.5 hour long wait needed to get on some rides. It seems amazing to me that people there are waiting in line at all, given that Chinese culture seems to lend itself more to bum-rushing a given point rather than waiting in line to reach it. Another issue cccording to the Reuters article is that Asians are more conservative and don’t enjoy white-nuckle rides as much as Westerners do, so Disney may have packed in too many of those kinds of attractions and not enough of the kinds of attractions good for the requisite picture-taking opportunities that the Chinese seem to love so much. The article also says that while the Chinese have a pretty strong familiarity with the Disney brand, they don’t necessarily have a strong familiarity with the Disney characters. It sounds a little to me like buying a car because of the famous name, not because you have any actual knowledge about the car itself.

Mainland Guangong province’s “Ocean Park” seems to be a bigger attraction for people in the region than Disneyland. Dolphin shows? Sharks? Think of the photo opportunities!

Link to article.

This is interesting.  There was a 3.5 magnitude earthquake in Hong Kong on Thursday, which is quite rare for the area.  I’ve never even heard of an earthquake in Hong Kong, personally.  Apparently they’re so rare that according to the Hong Kong Observatory website, only six measuring over 5.0 on the Richter Scale have been measured in the territory since 1874.  The end of the world is nigh!

Here’s the link to the article about it.