Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the “From the Web” links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
I’m just here to buy soy sauce: From Speak4China:
And the newest expression sweeping the Chinese internet: ‘I don’t give a $@*&; I’m just here to buy soy sauce.’ (关我鸟事，我出来打酱油的)
Telecom reform: a tale told by an idiot?: From China telecoms veteran David Wolf:
The government has finally announced the broad strokes of the long-anticipated plan for the restructuring of the telecoms industry, and a quasi-definitive time frame for the government to finally issue the coveted 3G censes. The business and industry media are having a field day with it, arguing about what it will mean for everyone in the industry, from China Mobile to Cisco to Nokia and, yes, even to Apple.
Here is what it really means:
Nothing.
Sichuan photo gallery: A gallery of photos taken in Sichuan after the earthquake by Janek Zdzarski.
The story of Donations Gate: ESWN has translated a Southern Weekly article about ‘Donations Gate’, the online scandal in which Chinese netizens have attacked foreign companies for being stingy with donations, and also focused anger on Chinese real estate entrepreneur Wang Shi and his company Vanke.
Website copyright infringement pays, traffic inflation doesn’t: From Tom Melcher’s blog:
I think that it’s clear that within the world of Chinese internet companies, lying limits growth, but stealing intellectual property doesn’t.
China quake survivors scavenge amid the ruins: Tini Tran describes for the Associated Press how earthquake survivors are trying to carry on with their lives by looking for scrap metal:
Standing atop an enormous pile of rubble that was once a three-story building, Mao Hong Lin meticulously searched for the dull glint of metal. Spotting a pointed tip, he pulled out a twisted length of steel.
"It takes money to buy anything and everything. Now our house is collapsed and I have nothing. I need the money for basics, to buy salt and cooking oil," said Mao, 37, a short, wiry man in orange shorts and soiled white gloves.
China’s all-seeing eye: Rolling Stone has published an alarmist article by Naomi Klein captioned ‘With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.’
Klein’s ideological biases and her undergraduate fixations about the evils of multinational corporations make her an unreliable journalist but the article contains some interesting research.
China starts probe into collapsed schools: From The China Daily:
The National quality watchdog Thursday warned of ‘severe punishment’ to anyone found responsible for the collapsed school building in the May 12 earthquake.
Inspectors have taken samples of rubble to see if shoddy construction material was used, according to an official of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).