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).
Mr Mao’s Ringtones: This is a podcast in which Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of China’s Brave New World: And Other Tales for Global Times reads an essay titled ‘Mr. Mao Ringtones’ and speaks about the book and his thoughts about American perceptions of China.
Fight for your right to Firefox: An informative article about Mozilla and their free browser Firefox, now preparing to take on Microsoft in China.
Under house arrest and on Channel 4: Black and White Cat blog has excerpted translations of a Chinese response to the imprisonment of activist Hu Jia, and a link to a Channel 4 story that includes an interview with his wife Zeng Jingyan, currently under house arrest in Beijing.
Official asks Chinese Protestants to contribute more to society: Xinhua has published an article about the eighth National Conference of Chinese Protestant Churches. It’s not that the Chinese Protestants don’t have a Protestant work ethic, but Jia Qinglin, chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, wants them to do more.
Jia did however note that the Chinese Christian Council and the National Committee of Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China have provided various social services and resisted ‘foreign sabotage activities.
Shanghai Maglev protest videos: Shanghaiist has videos and explanations of the citizen protests against the Maglev high speed train in Shanghai.
China’s e-scrap nightmare just isn’t what it used to be: Is Chinese jewelry being made with lead reclaimed from electronic scrap exported to China? Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap shows how suggestions contained in a scholarly article were blown up into near-certainties by a press release:
The press release concerns the Weidenhamer and Clement papers — even though the papers were quite explicit in their acknowledgment that the source of the leaded material was unknown. In fact, the papers didn’t even try, because – as Weidenhamer and Clement surely know – there’s absolutely no way to distinguish lead solder imported into Taizhou from the United States, from lead solder that was trucked down to Zhejiang after being purchased in front of my Shanghai apartment building. That is, there is no way to tell without tracing the lead from the Yiwu workshop, to the e-scrap recycling shop where it was processed, and then – finally – back to the shipper, and the shipper’s source. Without doing that – without tracing the source – the only possible conclusion is a geographically non-specific one.
ABRO-Gate: The Mutant Palm blog pulls together some information on Yuan Hongwei, whose MagPow corporation is accused of counterfeiting glues branded by ABRO, an American company. Chinese media reports that Yuan escaped arrest in the UK when a warrant was mistakenly issued for "YAUN HONGWEI".
A guide to selling wine in China: Beijing Boyce has published a brief introduction to selling wine (i.e. grape wine) in China, in five parts.
Anti Maglev protests stopped in Shanghai: From Shanghaiist:
Yesterday, we were tipped off on our Contribute page that an anti-maglev protest was going to take place today 2pm at People’s Square. Apparently that has been derailed by the police.
The top ten ‘very yellow, very violent’ websites: Sarcastic reactions from the Chinese Internet to a crude piece of CCTV propaganda continue. Roland Soong at ESWN translates one of the funnier and more telling reactions: a top ten list of links to yellow and violent pages on State-owned websites and major portals.