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).
Ramadan in China: As part of Slate’s "Dispatches" series, Joshua Kucera writes about his trip to Xinjiang:
After lunch, Ali and I went to a government-run factory where Uighurs mass-produced their traditional hats, clothes, and musical instruments to sell to tourists. We stopped in the rug showroom, where the friendly Chinese assistants offered us chrysanthemum tea. I had some, but Ali declined. They insisted, and he had to explain that he couldn’t drink anything until sundown. Although they lived in a city that was 90 percent Muslim, they didn’t know that Ramadan had started.
If at first you don’t succeed … get subsidized: At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter discusses the implications of future rules that will regulate the scrap collection sector:
In other words – licensed e-scrap recyclers are going to be armed with subsidies in the battle for China’s growing supply of domestic e-scrap. Though bad for the peddlers (and I have a serious soft spot for them), this is unabashedly good news for China’s environment. And, in the end, it may be good for the peddlers, too: according to sources close to the drafting of the directive, it will include provisions that encourage – and subsidize – the employment of scrap peddlers and former illegal e-scrap workshops.
Movie ratings will put China on the express train to pornoville: GAPP chief Liu Binjie explains how a film ratings system will lead to unbridled debauchery. Imagethief snarks:
And while I’m on that, how are film ratings "too sensitive" for the general public? The same general public that stampeded out for pirate copies of the uncensored version of Lust, Caution? If I walk down the street talking about film ratings, will women faint and strong men weep? Will grannies cover their children’s ears? Will people’s heads explode like in Scanners? Cool! How is it that the same general public that isn’t ready for a discussion of film ratings somehow survives unfettered access to the entire tawdry Hollywood oeuvre via the pirate DVD market completely unscathed? Somebody should look into that.
Tibet: Transformation and tradition: Peter Firstbrook, producer of the BBC special A Year In Tibet, writes about the clashes between traditions and modern life in Tibet’s towns and cities.
Police kill man who hijacked Australian tourists: From an article by Lydia Chen in The Shanghai Daily:
Police in the capital city of Shaanxi Province shot a man dead after he allegedly hijacked a travel bus with explosives and took a foreign tourist and an interpreter hostage today, Xinhua news agency reported.
Police pulled the trigger after negotiations failed, the report said.
But The Associated Press said the man took 10 Australians as hostages. The hostages were not hurt during the process, the Xinhua report added.
Do you believe in God?: This links to an Internet poll with that simple question.
Internet polls are notoriously unreliable, nonetheless it’s interesting that the current ratio for the U.S., a notoriously religious country, is 58% atheist vs. 42% theist. China’s numbers are currently 50% vs. 50%