BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.

After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”

As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.

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With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.

But the Beijing Municipal government hopes to end such unintended jokes with its new guidebook intended for the public and restaurants alike, “Enjoy Culinary Delights: The English Translation of Chinese Menus.”

The effort began in 2006 with a “Beijing speaks English” campaign. By the 2008 Summer Olympics, officials had created a draft guide with translations for major restaurants to meet the demand for arriving athletes and tourists.

“After 2008, we felt like the book was in a good demand, so we kept working on it and collected more menus. Finally we translated over 2,000 Chinese dish names,” said Xiang Ping, deputy chief of the “Beijing speaks English” committee, in an interview with NBC News.

Some of the dishes kept their original names, which people familiar with Chinese food may understand: jiaozi, baozi, mantou, tofu or wonton.

Some more complicated dishes come with both Chinese pronunciations and explanations: “fotiaoqiang” (steamed abalone with shark’s fin and fish maw in broth); “youtiao” (deep-fried dough sticks); “lvdagunr” (glutinous rice rolls stuffed with red bean paste),
and “aiwowo” (steamed rice cakes with sweet stuffing).

Chen Lin, a 90-year-old retired English professor from Beijing Foreign Language University, was the chief consultant for the book.
He told NBC News that about 20 other experts – like English teachers and professors, translators, expats who have lived in China for a long time, culinary experts and people from the media – helped develop the final version.  

So next time you're in Beijing and you are confronted with a menu item like "hand shredded ass meat," hopefully you can crack open the book to get some guidance. It means "hand shredded donkey meat."

BEIJING – It’s the biggest news in China in a long time – and China’s netizens are finding ways to get around censors to gossip and get the latest online rumors.

The scandal, which has spread to the New York Times front page and other Western news outlets, is centered on Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, China’s biggest municipality with 30 million residents, and his wife, Gu Kailai, who is a murder suspect in the death of British businessman Neil Heywood.

Before the bombshell announcement from China’s official news agency, Bo had been considered one of the top contenders for the country’s highest echelon of power, the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party, in the upcoming power reshuffle this fall.
 
No further official information has been released since last Tuesday’s news, but it still seems as if China’s entire population of 1.3 billion people is talking about the scandal. And despite the government’s best efforts to squelch online chatter, the country’s savvy computer fans have come up with novel ways to circumvent Beijing’s watchdogs.  

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Foreign 'rumors'
Foreign media have continued to feed the voracious appetite for more juicy details from Chinese netizens.

Many in China have made use of VPNs (virtual private networks) to circumvent the Great Firewall to access these Western reports, as well as overseas Chinese websites like Boxun, or Hong Kong and Taiwanese media reports. 

Every time a new article comes out, it’s instantly translated into Chinese and posted on Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like service, followed by tons of comments and re-tweets.

The foreign reports have delved into everything about Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife, from her business dealings to her friends and close personal relationship with Heywood.

The extravagant lifestyle of Bo Guagua, Bo Xilai and Gu’s only son, has also come under the spotlight in foreign news reports – from his hard-partying ways at expensive private schools such as, Harrow, Oxford and Harvard, to his penchant for fast cars.   

And on Tuesday Reuters added a new wrinkle to the story with a report that Bo initially agreed to a police probe of his wife's role in the murder before abruptly reversing course and demoting his police chief, which eventually led to the downfall of both men.

The government has applied every method possible to silence not just the local press, but the public passing along tidbits from the foreign reports.

Posts regarding the Bo scandal, defined by the official media as “rumors,” are usually deleted quickly after they show up online. Major web portals have been ordered to intensify their monitoring of allegedly scurrilous reports. And government mouthpieces like CCTV and Xinhua have appealed to the public to stop spreading rumors.

Chinese authorities do not issue empty threats – at least six people were recently arrested for posting gossip about a rumored military coup in Beijing.

Getting around the Great Firewall
But cracking down on gossip is an enormous project in China. The country’s sophisticated netizens – who now number up to an estimated 500 million – pass along rumors using puns, hints and words with different Chinese characters but similar pronunciation to key words.

For instance, the word “Bo,” which also means “thin” in Chinese, has been replaced by the term “not thick.” Many posts have called Bo “the not thick governor” in order to slide past censors.  

Meanwhile, some witty netizens have referred to the city of Chongqing as “tomato,” because tomato is pronounced “Xi Hong Shi” in Chinese, which sounds the same as “Western Red City.” That seemingly cryptic reference is to the “red revolutionary song” campaign initiated by Bo when he was governing Chongqing. As the son of a major leader of China’s Communist Revolution, Bo was also famous for promoting a campaign to revive Cultural Revolution-era “red culture.”

“This is the most remarkable event [in China] ever since 1976, when the Gang of Four was arrested,” said Yao Bo, a China-based Internet observer and blogger, in a phone interview with NBC News. He was referring to when the leaders of China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution were publicly purged from the Communist Party a month after Chairman Mao’s death – marking the end of one of China’s most turbulent political eras.

“When people used to talk about politics on forums or bulletins before, it was censored much more easily, since such discussion always had a topic. Weibo is like a virus, it can share information much faster and becomes uncontrollable,” Yao said.

‘We Firmly Support the Central Party’
The government has tried to introduce a counter-campaign of sorts by ordering all major newspapers and TV news channels to pledge their loyalty to the Communist Party. Within a few days after Bo’s scandal was exposed, a variety of publications had editorials with the same headline: “We Firmly Support the Central Party.”
 
Some leftist websites that openly supported a return to a Maoist-like regime have been mysteriously shut down in recent days – another signal suggesting its best time to stick to the party line. None of them has publicly stated that they are following an official order, but they all went into “maintenance-mode” simultaneously.
 
Over the last few days less gossip devoted to the Bo scandal has appeared online, which Yao attributed to both censorship and the political nature of the scandal. 

“What Bo did was to pull China in an extreme direction when nobody knew where it was going. The leftists say ‘it’s a red trial,’ the rightists say ‘it’s a disaster.’ Now he’s down, people have nothing to argue about. This is a signal sent by the highest leaders that they do not wish to go back to China’s past.”
 
“This has made netizens realize one thing: rumor is another name for truth,” said Yao.

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BEIJING – It can be exorbitantly expensive to travel in China – and Chinese tourists are fed-up.

For instance, Sanya, a big resort city on China’s southern tropical island province of Hainan, is usually a dream destination for winter holiday makers. But it is becoming a target of netizens complaining about being ruthlessly ripped off there. One irate tourist recently complained on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging site, that he paid almost $635 dollars for a meal of three dishes including one fish.

Tourists everywhere could complain about getting gouged.  But it seems that Chinese tourists truly are justified in their gripes.

For example, a recent study published by Netease.com, one of China’s biggest Web portals,  borrowed the concept of the Big Mac index from the Economist to compare the prices of tourist attractions in both China and overseas.

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The Economist’s Big Mac index is based on the “theory of purchasing-power parity.” 

They use the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. as a benchmark and compare it to the local cost of a Big Mac to create a comparison between the currencies.

The Netease.com article borrowed the Big Mac index idea to compare entrance fees charged at Chinese tourist attractions versus those overseas.

The statistics are eye-opening.  

For example, the cost of admission to Jiuzhaigou National Park in southwest China, a U.N. biosphere reserve famous for its shimmering turquoise lakes and snow-crusted mountain peaks, costs 220 Yuan ($35) to get in, or, 14.3 Big Macs.

In contrast, Yellowstone National Park costs an adult entering by foot or bike $12 dollars, the equivalent of 2.7 Big Macs. (It costs $25 dollars for one vehicle, including all passengers).

In Paris, the Louvre Museum costs 2.9 Big Macs, while a ticket to China’s Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City in Beijing is as much as 3.9 Big Macs.

The well-known Great Wall just outside Beijing also looks expensive – its cost is 2.9 Big Macs, compared to the Taj Mahal, which is a quarter of one Big Mac (for Indian tourists; foreigners are charged more).

No regulation
“There’s no government supervision of ticket prices,” said Wu Jingmin, a former tour guide who agitated the tourism industry in 2006 by publishing his book “How Can I Not Rip You Off? – A Tour Guide’s Monologue.” In the book, Wu exposed how the industry scams tourists, from tour agencies to restaurants and even local governments.

Besides high admission fees in China, travelers also often have to pay additional costs at tourist sites for such items as shuttle buses or cable cars.

At Changbaishan, the sacred mountain on the border of China and North Korea, a tourist must buy three different tickets at $16 a piece if they wish to take in the view from its three different peaks, and that doesn’t include the extra $14 for the shuttle bus. 

Chinese tourists also normally travel during one of the three one-week-long national holidays.  Even if that means going to Beijing’s Forbidden City with 130,000 more visitors than on a usual day, or slowly pushing their way forward on the Great Wall when it is as packed as a rush hour subway.

“The regulations for ticket prices are in complete disorder,” Wu, the former tour guide, told NBC News in a phone interview. “Local price regulators usually say ‘yes’ to tourist attractions, no matter what they want to charge. Then the tourist-trap managers give a big discount to tour agencies, who make the money from selling very expensive tickets to tourists.” 

Wu complained that little is being done to remedy the situation.  

“The natural resources belong to the people. They just build a wall around it and then charge a high ticket price to the people, who don’t really have a choice. This industry’s future is worrying,” added Wu.  

He’s says he’s planning to create his own tour packages to counter the notorious prices in Sanya.

BEIJING – "I went to see your brother and sisters. They all know that you are leaving this world. But, sorry, they didn’t want to see you."

"I don’t want to see them either. Let me die," the man said, wiping his teary eyes. Two policemen stood behind him while a microphone was pointed at him.

"Is there anything you want me to tell your brother and sisters?"

"No. I did something wrong. I killed my mother. "

This exchange was a conversation between TV hostess Ding Yu and Bao Rongting, a convicted murderer, just a few hours before he was executed on Nov. 20, 2008. It was broadcast on "Interviews Before Execution," a weekly TV program, that aired on the Legal Channel in China’s central-eastern Henan Province for over five years.

Starting in late 2006, the hour-long show attracted millions of viewers and ranked among the top-ten TV programs in the province. Every Saturday night, almost half of Henan’s 94 million residents tuned in to watch the show, which was not available to viewers outside the province.

The show has now gained international attention since the BBC aired a documentary, "The Execution Factor," on Monday. A Chinese production company, LIC, worked with the BBC and PBS International, which will soon launch its own documentary on the show and its host, Ding.   

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Last words
Ding interviewed 226 prisoners on death row. Most of the prisoners were executed afterwards, but some received a death penalty "pardon" with a few years of reprieve, which usually means a life sentence in China.

A former law student, Ding’s journalistic style is similar to many female Chinese primetime news anchors: She has short hair, a patient-tone with her interviewees, is well-dressed – but not ostentatious – and her questioning style is straightforward, not dramatic 

She interviewed a husband who killed his ex-wife because he "was still in love with her," a teenage girl who ruthlessly strangled her best friend over a trivial quarrel, and a wife who burned her husband to death after suffering years of domestic abuse.

Ding was particularly blunt with one unrepentant interviewee, saying: "I’m glad you got caught. You are a scumbag." One episode featured a man yelping, "I’m sorry," and kneeling down on the ground hours before his execution. In another, right before his execution a convict asked her: "Can I shake hands with you?"

The producers say the aim of the show was to act as a deterrent to other would-be criminals. And while there are up to 55 crimes in China that carry a potential death penalty sentence, the show focused exclusively on cases of violent murder. The show also got Henan province’s High Court approval for each case that was featured.

"Many people say I’m an angel and devil. I never thought myself as an angel, because it’s work that puts me into contact with these people. I see myself more as a witness," Ding told the BBC in their 50-minute-long documentary.

While 58 countries in the world impose the death penalty, China is believed to have the highest number of executions annually. The exact number is considered to be a "state secret," but the government argues it’s dropped steadily since early 2007 when the Supreme Court took back the right to have the final say on all death verdicts from local courts. 

A 2011 report from Amnesty International indicates China executed thousands of people in 2010.

While it’s hard to determine the exact number, Ding’s show does offer some indication of how big they are, according to He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University. "Ding Yu interviewed 226 prisoners sentenced to death in five years. My guess is all these cases were tried in Henan Province and they only represent part of the whole situation. You can imagine how big the number is nationwide,” He commented on his blog.

Many scholars and lawyers have argued for the abolishment of the death penalty, but in a country with rampant corruption (which is also a capital crime over a certain financial amount), there seems to be little real movement to outlaw it.   

Backlash
With all the international attention on the show, there have been concerns about whether or not it would continue to air.

 

"We were very worried about the consequences after the documentary aired. Some media have distorted our program," Shirley Cheng, a producer from the Chinese production company LIC, told NBC News by phone. "We didn’t do it to discuss the death the penalty. We just wanted to record the process."

A BBC report on Monday claimed the show was taken off the air by Henan TV last Friday. When NBC News reached Henan Legal Channel and asked about it, we were told that was not the case.

The temporary "disappearance" of the show is apparently only making room for a new show, and "Interview before Execution" will come back on air in about six weeks.

However, on the channel’s official website, no links to Ding Yu’s program can be found, while information about other shows is available.  

BEIJING — He means something to many people: Asian Americans, underdogs, geeks, Ivy Leaguers, sports fans, Christians, anyone who loves a great story.

But Jeremy Lin — the Harvard graduate of Chinese descent born in Palo Alto, California, to Taiwan parents — is not the same thing to all Chinese.

If ever there were one event that has the potential to show how fractured Chinese communities can be, "Linsanity" — or linfengkuang in Chinese — might be it.

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For days now, we in Beijing have been fielding emails from our U.S. colleagues: “Hey, we hear Lin’s big in China now?  He’s on the cover of the New York Post!”  “The NY Knicks player is having a Cinderella week… he’s being noticed/watched in China….”

For the record, yes, he’s big in mainland China. 

It’s been widely reported that his Sina Weibo account (a popular Chinese version of Twitter) clocked more than a million followers as he led the Knicks to victory over the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday — more than doubling the number he had the night he faced off with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers last Friday.

Perfect storm continues for Jeremy Lin

On Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce site, shoppers can buy copies of Lin’s Knicks jersey and t-shirts and sweatshirts bearing his number “17.”  A quick look suggests the merchandise isn’t moving as briskly as Weibo messages about the athlete, but it’s an impressive range of goods nonetheless.  In the brick and mortar world, however, his jersey — even counterfeit versions — is said to be selling out.

But mainland China is also very big.

Let’s go back to Weibo.  Lin’s following, large as it sounds, is still just a fraction of some high-profile mainland Chinese.  Pan Shiyi — a Beijing-based property mogul some people liken to Donald Trump — has 8.6 million followers.  Hong Huang — a publisher and commentator who is often described as the "Oprah of China" — has four million.  Lee Kai-fu, the former head of Google China, has 11 million.

The comparisons may be unfair since none of these Chinese are athletes and all have had profiles on Weibo for longer.  But high-profile mainland athletes like Yao Ming, Guo Jingjing (the glamorous Olympic gold-medallist female diver), Liu Xiang (the Olympic gold-medallist hurdler) don’t have a presence on Weibo.  Only Yi Jianlian has a profile; the mainland Chinese NBA athlete who plays for the Dallas Mavericks has 6.5 million followers.

In the offline world, Lin’s name is not on everyone’s lips the way it seems in the U.S.  It’s not perfect evidence, but a random sampling of Beijing taxi drivers, normally glued to radio news, this morning came up blank.  “We only know Yao Ming,” said one cabbie.

PhotoBlog: Lin leads Knicks to 7th win in a row

There’s been steady speculation about why China’s state-run media has been muted with its reporting on the Lin phenomenon and why CCTV — normally awash with NBA coverage — has not been broadcasting his games.  (New York City Time Warner subscribers, we share your pain.)

 “Mr Lin is a trickier fit for Beijing’s propagandists,” one Western report noted.  “His Christianity is perhaps more awkward for China’s atheist Communist rulers. While Beijing officially sanctions some churches, it frowns on the spontaneous professions of love for God that pepper Mr Lin’s postgame comments.”

Lin’s success has also raised the inevitable and perhaps unwelcome question (at least in the mainland) “Could China, an Olympic powerhouse and homeland of Yao Ming, produce such a gifted, confident point guard?”  As the journalist pointed out, not for now.  Not given the state-run sports industry or its rigid approach to training and talent-spotting. 

China's president-in-waiting returns to Iowa

Then, of course, there’s the fact Lin’s parents come from Taiwan, which has engaged in a fractious rivalry with mainland China for nearly 70 years.  Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province while the latter regards itself an independent nation.

Tug o’ war over the favorite son
Over the weekend, folks in China’s Zhejiang Province, the ancestral home of the athlete’s maternal grandmother, laid claim to him.   And today, a local newspaper re-posted photos from Lin’s visit to his mother’s hometown last May. 

The accompanying article opens with the following lines: “Lin Shuhao became famous overnight.  But what we here are more proud of is his roots here in Pinghu.”  It concludes with a quote from Lin’s mother saying the family might return to Pinghu again this summer.

The media in Taiwan — which has hailed Lin as one of their own — have taken notice.  Local newspapers on the island today went on a blitzkrieg to assert Lin’s Taiwan identity, quoting family relatives, and also claimed Lin might visit the island this summer.  The coverage followed a report in the New York Times, which quoted Lin’s uncle in Taiwan as saying about the Knicks player and his parents, “For sure, they are Taiwanese.”

Since Lin’s debut for the Knicks on February 4^th, Taiwan’s local media have given the overnight sensation blanket coverage, and there has been no problem catching any of his games live on television.  “They’re broadcast live in the morning,” one of my uncles who has spent the past month in Taipei told me.  “And then they’re shown twice again later in the day.  And every newscast has packaged highlights of every game.”

And, yet, something still seems to ring hollow about the mainland's or Taiwan's scramble to call Lin one of their own.  One of the mainland Chinese readers who responded to the local Zhejiang newspaper report put it succinctly: "He's American.  You should be ashamed of yourself trying to dig up his maternal ancestral grave."  In fact, many Chinese--in dismissing comparisons between Lin and Yao Ming--have argued that Lin is distinctly American, has nothing to do with China, and didn't experience the cultural and language adjustment that Yao underwent when he moved to the U.S. to play in the NBA.

But then there are the American-born Chinese (ABCs).

'A watershed moment'
Judging by the flood of columns by Chinese-American commentators, Lin’s success means more to this cohort than any other community:

Eric Liu: “[The Knicks fans’] embrace of Lin has made millions of Asian Americans feel vicariously, thrillingly embraced. Not invisible. Not presumed foreign. Just part of the team, belonging in the game. It’s felt like a breakout moment: for Lin, for Asian America and, thus, for America.”

Jeff Yang: “It’s hard not to feel like this isn’t a watershed moment. Hard not to feel like this is historic. Hard not to think that we’re at the cusp of an actual tectonic shift in the culture, when an Asian American “kid” could be the unquestioned king of one of the most storied franchises in sports, the guy that every guy in the room wishes he could meet and every kid in the room wants to group up to be.”

Ling Woo Liu: “For those who've been following the campaign ad controversies as well as the [Harry] Lew and [Danny] Chen cases, Lin's meteoric rise has been a much-needed sign of hope.

Bryan Chu: “Some might say, why didn’t Yao Ming evoke this type of emotion in you?  The difference is that Jeremy is one of us. He was born in the U.S. He was that kid who got straight A’s in school. He was the one that worked at his high school student newspaper. He has a bit of an Americanized accent when he speaks Mandarin. He had a pipe dream of making it to the NBA. He’s humble and sometimes misperceived as a shy, Asian kid who shows flashes of brilliance and then finally explodes on the scene when he’s given a chance. He’s the guy friend who, if he needs a place to crash, will be thankful for a couch.”

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.

 

BEIJING – Wukan, a village in Guangdong province in southern China, is making headlines again – this time for taking the first steps toward open and transparent elections, which 7,688 villagers participated in on Wednesday.

Wukan was in the spotlight late last year for a high-profile protest by villagers against local officials believed to be illegally selling public land to developers. 

The 11-day rebellion was defused peacefully in late December after senior Communist Party officials reached an agreement with Wukan’s protest leaders – promising free elections and an investigation into the murky real-estate deals. They also promised to investigate the death of a protester who had died in police custody.

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In another surprise, the local Communist Party appointed Lin Zuluan, one of the well-respected leaders of the defiant revolt, as the village party secretary. So Lin served as the chief in command for the first balloting that took place in the Wukan Elementary School Wednesday.

Villagers gathered in a festive scene to cast votes, for many the first time ever, to select an independent election committee to oversee upcoming ballots.  

Initial steps
Dozens of aluminum ballot boxes were placed around classrooms at the elementary school and students were mobilized to help count the ballots before they were distributed. Teachers helped elderly villagers who could not read or write.  A media counter was set up outside the school, and journalists were allowed in after registration.

“My biggest impression here at Wukan is that the atmosphere here is very different from any other Chinese villages,” one Chinese reporter at the scene wrote on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog. “The people here are very used to foreign journalists walking around filming. The village committee is open to everyone. Every family invites you to go to their house to stay, to eat or to drink tea. Brave and lucky Wukan villagers made their home different than any other Chinese villages with the same problems.”

The election lasted nine hours (with a two-hour break). It began at 9 a.m. with the national anthem playing and fireworks being set off – a Chinese tradition during the new lunar year.

The final results came at 11 p.m.: Out of the 50 candidates, 11 (including one woman) were elected to be on the election committee.

The new members will be responsible for organizing an upcoming election for the Wukan Village Committee. They will devise a plan for the election process; mobilize and familiarize the villagers with the new plan; scrutinize and publish the candidate list; and, most importantly, organize the villagers to vote. The election is due to start in early March.

Not a new idea
Village-level elections are not a new concept to Chinese people, but seldom are they transparent or democratic. The Communist Party still maintains single-party authority across the government – from Beijing to the smallest village – and has absolute control.

There have been experiments with grassroots elections since the 1980s – the outcome is usually just pre-determined from above. Representatives are often appointed by higher-level government officials and the process is usually murky or manipulated.

In Wukan, the former village head had been in power for 40 years without ever being properly elected. He was accused of misappropriating public land and embezzling compensation money that belonged to villagers.

So many are hopeful Wukan’s experiment will spread.

“Wukan is a start of China’s local political reform! I hope to see a real self-rule in the countryside,” wrote a Weibo user going by the name “Orient leaping towards wealth."

The user added, “Villagers that have both traditional legal culture and modern citizen spirit, they are the hope of China’s democracy.”
‘An experiment in democracy’
But others are not so sure about declaring a democratic victory in Wukan.

Chang Ping, a veteran journalist based in Hong Kong who has been closely following events in Wukan, is not so optimistic about its future.

“Their path is not going to be very smooth. The Guangdong government was smart about not cracking down with violence like other local governments, but that doesn’t mean they agree with complete self-rule. They will try to absorb Wukan into their old system, which they can still control. If that happens, the election will be the same election happening everywhere else,” Chang told NBC News in a phone interview. “Wukan’s protest has no end. Democracy doesn’t arrive just because you had three months of protest.”

However, Chang agreed that the event is revolutionary – if only as an exercise in how elections are supposed to work.

“Most of the elections we see are usually manipulated or the villagers don’t really know what their vote means. But Wukan villagers have their own understanding of voting, after their protest to finally obtain this right,” said Chang.  “It is an experiment in democracy, and it will affect other places in China.”

Related stories on Wukan:

Photo Blog: Chinese village takes halting democratic step

Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

Villagers defiant as government creates new narrative

A contagion of conflict in China?

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

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The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

Heavy-handed police tactics
On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

“They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

Rumors of cancer
A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

“The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

Hearing about Wukan
“Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

“This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

BEIJING – Just days after Christian Bale made a red carpet appearance in Beijing for the premiere of his blockbuster new movie, “The Flowers of War,” about the 1937 Japanese sacking of Nanking, he made even bigger headlines in China off-screen on Friday.

Bale invited CNN’s Beijing bureau crew to accompany him Thursday as he attempted to visit Chen Guangcheng, an activist who has been under house arrest since his release from a four-year-long jail sentence last year.

The 40-year-old Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer became a persecuted dissident after he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.

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He was thrown in prison on what human rights activists say were trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.”

Related link: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Since Chen’s release in September 2010, dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, as well as supporters, have gone to Dongshigu village, in Shandong Province, to try to visit him, but all have blocked from even entering the town. Some were even violently manhandled and beaten up by unidentified thugs, and some TV crews had their equipment damaged or confiscated.

Bale was no exception.  

He and the crew were stopped at a road checkpoint when government security guards wearing green army coats asked what they were doing and punched the camera. When Bale took out his flip camera to record, he was punched and shoved, exactly the same treatment the CNN crew received just a few months earlier when they tried to visit.

After the scuffle, the crew got back into their vehicle and drove off, but they were followed by a security van for about 40 minutes.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale said on camera. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

In a later interview on CNN, Bale said, “It’s amazing a superpower like China is actually terrified of this man. It shows such an intrinsic weakness within the fabric of the country.”

China's human rights detainees 2010

He also stressed that he did not inform any members of the movie crew in order not to implicate them with his own actions.

‘Pandaman vs. Batman!’
Bale’s confrontation with the security guards soon made headlines on Twitter and Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like, but government-controlled, social media forum. Posts about the encounter spread rapidly on Friday morning with some joking headlines like “Pandaman vs. Batman!”

The cartoonist known as “Rebel Pepper” who posted the Pandaman vs. Batman cartoon on Weibo said he was somewhat surprised that Bale was treated exactly the same as everyone else.

“Dongshigu village is the only place in China that everyone is treated the same [and roughed up] no matter where you are from,” Rebel Pepper said during a phone interview with NBC News.

Some cynics noted it could be a publicity stunt for Bale's new movie, but most expressed their respect and appreciation.

A Weibo user named Shenan wrote, “You could pretend not to see or hear. That blind man is not your relative or friend in a faraway foreign country. Even if the whole 1.3 billion people were jailed, it’s not your business. You really didn’t have to ask for the roughing up, Batman.” 

By Friday afternoon, Weibo administrators censored all the posts related to Bale’s attempted visit. Steven Jiang, the CNN producer who was with Bale, found all his Weibo posts on their journey could not be forwarded.

It is a common practice for social media censors to jump in and try to put out the fire online before the flames get out of control. But determined Weibo users still spread the news with puns or pictures too difficult to censor. 

A post on Weibo joked that Zhang’s movie “Flowers of the War," would be pulled from Chinese cinemas. But another user said, “No, the movie will be there, only all the parts Christian Bale is in will be deleted!”

Bale left China today for the U.S., but Chen still remains off-limit to all his visitors.

Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese guards

 

BEIJING – As the Chinese village of Wukan entered its fifth day besieged by a police cordon cutting off food and water from entering the village, reports from inside the cordon suggest villagers have continued to resist government overtures to end their protest.

What’s going on outside the cordon, though, is a very different story.

Even as Chinese and foreign press have begun sneaking around the security cordon into town – likely assuring at least temporarily that no draconian, military-style raid on the villagers occurs – Chinese state media have started to create an alternative and unverifiable storyline about what triggered the hostilities.

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‘Official’ version of events
The China Media Project at Hong Kong University noted Thursday that late last night, the state-run China News Service reported on a press conference that allegedly confirmed that “preliminary investigations have ruled out external force as the cause of death” in the case of Xue Jinbo.

Xue, a village representative who was detained along with several other local leaders by police last Friday during a raid on Wukan, died in custody – alleged of a heart attack.

But his family was permitted to see the body and reported seeing fractures and bruising all over his body. And they were not permitted to take his remains home for burial.

However, the China News Service report said the town’s medical expert had shared photographic evidence of Xue’s body which refuted the family’s accusations that police beatings caused his death. The reporter was allegedly not permitted copies of the photos for publication.

Xue’s death and its suspicious circumstances sparked the mass protests in Wukan that eventually drove village officials and police out of the area earlier this week.

Another report from the China News Service said various Wukan village officials had been detained for discipline violations.

That no other local Chinese media – and certainly no foreign press – had reported on the press conference suggests that local government officials are engaging in what the China Media Project dubbed, “public opinion channeling” tactics.

In layman’s terms: they are dictating the narrative by creating only one plausible sequence of events.

The two separate reports are intended to get the following results:
1) Absolve local police of brutality and murder accusations – eliminating at least one of the reasons for unrest in Wukan.
2) “Detaining” – as opposed to arresting – Wukan’s senior officials demonstrate that the government is being pro-active against corruption, without officially conceding guilt. And it obfuscates the other central reason behind the villagers’ anger – illegal land seizures.

PHOTO BLOG: Chinese villagers defy government in standoff over land rights

Scapegoat a few
Another piece of the local government’s strategy to quell the unrest has emerged: scapegoat a few to spare the majority.

The Shanwei County government Thursday named two village leaders it claims are ringleaders behind the revolt and vowed harsh punishments for them and other protest leaders.

Wu Zili, the acting mayor of Shanwei County, accused two village leaders, Lin Zulian and Yang Semao, of actively spreading rumors and encouraging villagers to build barricades around the city. The mayor gravely warned that “the authorities will firmly crack down on anyone who organizes and incites the villagers,” according to Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore.    
 
For longtime China watchers, the combination of the earlier local media reports, news that the government is attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff and Mayor Wu’s threat toward the supposed ringleaders are clear signals that the government is eager to bring an end to the conflict by providing an exit plan for the majority of Wukan’s citizens.

However, taking that path will come with a price: selling out the people the government has branded as ringleaders of the rebellion.

For at least one person, this is unacceptable. “Everything they said at the press conference [about Lin and Yang] is a lie!” said one villager NBC News reached by phone Thursday afternoon. “We simply elected those two to be our representatives.”

Villagers’ side of the story: Beijing will come to the rescue
Villagers in Wukan Thursday were actively working the phones, talking to the media who called in or slipped into town. However, as the world’s attention has started to focus on the events in Guangdong, they appeared anxious to push their own storyline, which is full of condemnation for corrupt local officials and deep-rooted respect for the central government, which they seem confident will come to their rescue.

“We don’t want any foreign press here! We expect the central government to come here and rescue us,” said another villager by phone, “We have great leaders in [President] Hu Jintao and [Prime Minister] Wen Jiabao!”

However, that sentiment is not shared by all. As one Wukan native told NBC, “If the press was not here, the police would come into the village and harass us.”

National implications
Whatever tact the local government takes in Wukan, the results could have serious implications for one man in particular: Wang Yang, the Communist Party chief of Guangdong Province.

With China poised to complete a rare leadership change next year, Wang had in recent years been positioning himself to compete for a promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, which serves effectively as the nation’s top political body.

Having championed a “Happy Guangdong” campaign that he claimed would focus on improving the living standards in the province, Wang has instead found himself dealing with labor protests that have coincided with the economic slowdown in China. Public anger over rising inflation and fewer jobs has led to factory strikes and violence throughout Guangdong, which has been dubbed “The Workshop of the World.”

Now with open rebellion in what was once proudly referred to as a “model village,” Wang finds himself struggling to peacefully and definitively end the uprising – before it kills his chances of being elevated to the standing committee.

Until that elusive win-win resolution appears, expect the siege of Wukan to continue.

NBC News Producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

Related link: Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

BEIJING – Zhang Bingjian’s art studio in the northern suburb of Beijing looks like a simple one. Spiral stairs lead to a small penthouse where he stores his books and makes tea for guests, a big wooden desk sits downstairs, and a huge map of China hangs on the wall. 

But something catches your attention when you walk in: Dozens of huge portraits on the wall, all in bright pink, all of Chinese government officials convicted of corruption charges.

Most of the officials are in prison, some have been executed, and others have been sentenced to “death with reprieve” – which in China means a life sentence.

Zhang came up with the idea of creating his “hall of shame” as early as March 2009, during China’s National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of Communist Party officials.  It was then that he learned that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in the previous year alone. 

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“I was shocked at the numbers, I did not realize there were so many,” Zhang told NBC News during a recent visit to his studio.  “China is in such a transition period, those corruption issues also should be witnessed in a historic context.”

The artist decided to depict the history of China’s shame as part of an ongoing project. But he is not the actual painter – the portraits are mass-produced just like other “made-in-China” commodities. 

Zhang picks a publicly prosecuted government official, finds his age, crime, and most importantly, a photo of him – then he sends it to Dafen village in southern China, a place famous for churning out cheap, Wal-Mart-quality oil paintings for the whole world.  Through an assistant, Zhang finds artists in Dafen village to paint the portraits in a deliberately tacky and assembly-line style to reflect China’s 30 years as the world’s leading exporter of low-end, mass manufacturing. Their rosy hue is the same bright pink color as the Chinese currency.

Zhang doesn’t remember all the names of the officials portrayed and says he doesn’t want to play the role of a judge or prosecutor. “For me, I see the project as a whole instead of each individual portion,” he said.

Widespread corruption
Critics say corruption has long been one of China’s most chronic problems. Chinese presidents and premiers, including the current leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have publicly denounced rampant corruption for years, but standards of conduct only seem to deteriorate. 

Out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index – which measures the perceived levels of corruption in public sectors – China ranked 78th.

That’s lower than most other developed countries, as well as many developing countries such as Brazil and Cuba.
According to a Beijing News report last May, 24,406 government officials were jailed in 2010 for corruption, up 9.4 percent from 2009.  Almost 6,000 of them were sentenced to more than five years in prison.  

China is also one of the few countries in the world that executes its citizens on corruption charges.  Some of the officials captured in Zhang’s portraits have already been executed, including the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration and the former governor of Guangxi province.

As of today, Zhang has produced about 1,600 portraits.  Some hang on his studio wall; others are stacked in wooden crates, waiting to be displayed either in China or overseas. 

Zhang joked about ideas for his next exhibition.

“Maybe we can do another project for the U.S. America also has corrupt officials so the painting would be green, the color of U.S. dollars,” he said.

When asked whether or when he will ever finish the project, Zhang admitted one day he might have to stop producing the portraits if he cannot continue to finance himself and the 20-plus painters he employs.  Still, he doesn’t really know when he’ll move on.
 “It could end soon, probably within the next five years.  It could also be the next 15 years.  Part of the beauty of this piece is it’s open-ended,” he said with a smile. 

(Celeste Ho contributed to the story.)

BEIJING – Just as the “Tiger Mom” controversy started simmering down in China, the “Wolf Daddy,” a self-proclaimed expert on strict parenting, is sparking a new round of fervent discussion on child-raising methodologies among anxious Chinese parents.

The “Wolf Daddy” is actually Xiao Baiyou, a 47-year-old Chinese businessman who deals in real estate and luxury goods. This past June, he published a book on parenting that featured an eye-catching photo on the cover of a graduation cap with a wooden ruler underneath, a device commonly used by old-time Chinese teachers and parents to spank their children when they misbehaved.

The message was clear and straightforward: Children need to be disciplined, ruthlessly. His favored method is the rattan cane, which his own mother used on him.

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Strict rules
Reasons for spanking vary from sneaking visits with friends to lying to diminishing academic achievement. In the book, Xiao recounts a time when Xiao Jun, his eldest daughter, could not complete a new song on her piano. Her calf was spanked 10 times while others watched, including her mom, who applied medicine on her bloody bruises afterwards.

Xiao lays out his spanking instructions in the book:
Before the kids go to junior high school, spank them every time they make mistakes, but greatly reduce the frequency after junior high since the children form their own personalities by that age;
The spanking tool is confined to the rattan cane only, which causes minor bruises;
Only hands and calves are spanked, other body parts are spared;
Mistakes are pointed out every time before the whack so children know why they are punished;
Sisters and brothers must watch when one of them is smacked so they learn;
The punished one has to count the number of spanking during each admonishment;
The punished one cannot try to avoid the punishment, otherwise he/she gets more.

Unlike many of his fellow citizens who are only allowed to have one child, Xiao has four children. Two of them were born in Hong Kong and two in the U.S., following a new trend in which middle-class Chinese citizens have children overseas to avoid the one-child family planning policy. Xiao originally had hoped for six children, but stopped at four when his company tumbled into financial problems.

“I persist on my own belief that has never changed: I use the oldest, the most traditional methods to educate my children,” writes Xiao in his 200-plus-page book.

Xiao’s list of banned activities is no shorter than those of the “Tiger Mom,” Amy Chua:

No TV, except a limited amount of news and cartoons (teen soap opera dramas are absolutely prohibited);
No unmonitored Internet surfing;
No Coca-Cola (but tea is allowed);
No opening the refrigerator (so no unscheduled snacks);
No air-conditioning, to train the spirit of tenacity (ouch, summer in Guangzhou is brutally humid and hot);
No visiting friends unless a written application is filled out, providing information on the friend’s academic grades and their parents’ names and phone numbers;
No pocket money at all;
And written self-criticism when mistakes are made.

Social life is severely controlled by the Wolf Father. Traveling is strictly monitored in case “bad influences” affect the kids’ academic grades. Once, when Xiao Baiyou sensed his son’s classmates were “bad boys” and the school didn’t respond to his request to separate them, Xiao made a quick decision to move and forbad his son to contact any of his former classmates. Dating is utterly out of the question, but Xiao told NBC News in a recent phone interview that he told his kids once they were enrolled at Peking University to “go find your true love now!”

Extra curriculum activities are considered frivolous. Xiao forced his son to give up basketball because it was taking up too much time.

Outraged reaction  
Xiao got widespread attention after he registered with China’s Twitter-like micro blogging site Weibo under the name of “China Wolf Father” three months ago.

The Weibo account, with its short introduction, says “one scolding every day sends your children to Peking University,” one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, and it quickly attracted over 2,400 followers. His book is called, “Therefore, Peking University Brothers and Sisters,” and it has sold over 20,000 copies. If you search “Wolf Daddy” on China’s local search engine Baidu, you get over 1 million results.

But the attention he’s gotten doesn’t mean every Chinese parent believes his is the best parenting approach. In a recent online chat with chinanews.com, many readers left disapproving or even angry comments. One reader called “og_wfny” said, “you are building your vanity on your children’s pain.”

Shi Shusi, an editor at a national newspaper “Worker’s Daily,” commented: “Wolf daddy can only train wolf cubs. This story has nothing to do with human beings.”

Xiao argues that all those critical voices are from the people who either do not have parenting experience or do not truly understand him. He’s extremely proud of his three children who got into Peking University, but denies that was his ultimate goal (the fourth is still in high school).

“This is only a goal during their study times, a finishing point of their high school, but a beginning to new life. Their ultimate goal is to bring glory to my family, and I believe they will achieve that goal by being decent, capable, healthy and honest people,” Xiao told NBC News.

Without a doubt, Xiao’s four children are impressive: the son is a chess pro and loves Chinese ink painting, the eldest daughter is good at writing and plays piano, the second daughter is a calligraphy master and the third daughter is a professional guzheng (a traditional 21-stringed musical instrument) player.

NBC News tried to interview Xiao’s children but was told they do not wish to be disturbed while they are focusing on their college studies.

Xiao Yao, the son, said in the book that he believes he and his sisters have “much stronger self-control” than other children thanks to their father’s strict parenting. 

But the boy also wrote about his self-pity in another article included in the book: “Although daddy’s parenting gave us many traits other children don’t have, there are regrets in my childhood. I remember one summer some relatives came to visit and we children jumped and laughed on the bed, I was so happy. This only happened once in my childhood and it will never happen again. That was the only moment I thought childhood could actually be worry-free! I wish I had a few more such moments!”

When asked if he ever has any regrets in his parenting, Xiao Baiyou said “no” without any hesitation. But he said he regrets not buying his wife a ring or flowers after they got married. He says his wife, who he calls “the queen” in the family, never used make-up after she married Xiao, since every penny was spent on their children’s education, like expensive piano classes.

Xiao does has one question that he wishes could reach the president of the United States: “Dear Mr. Obama, I’m really curious to know, were you spanked when you were a child?”

By NBC News’ Bo Gu

BEIJING – Within a day of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ death, over 63 million tribute messages had already been published on China’s Twitter-like, government-controlled, micro-blogging site Weibo.  

The huge outpouring reflects the mutual admiration between the tech pioneer and China’s 1.3 billion people.

China has become Apple’s fastest growing market, with revenue from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan reaching $3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2011 – six times the amount from the same period last year.  In an earnings report speech in July, new Apple CEO Time Cook acknowledged “China was very key” to the company’s bottom line.

Fans of Jobs flocked to the Apple store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood on Thursday, leaving flowers, cards and a poster-sized photo of the computer titan as customers continued to browse the shop inside.

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The popular Sanlitun Apple attracts not just customers, but dozens of illegal vendors trying to hawk Apple-related products outside as well.  The products are so popular and the vendors are so brazen that when iPads were officially launched, some of them went inside the store, bought dozens of iPads, and then tried to sell them right outside the shop for a higher price. 

Kuang Hao, a 21-year-old Beijing student who said he has been saving up to buy an iPod touch, told NBC News that he was sad about Jobs’ death, but didn’t believe the loss would affect Apple’s development. “It’s not one person’s career, but rather teamwork,” said Kuang.
 
Away from the shop, the tributes flooded in online.

“I’m not being pretentious or showing off here, but I started with a Shuffle three years ago, and now I’m using a Mac Pro,” Apple user “Xu Yanlin” wrote on his Weibo page.  “Apple products keep me company each night when I study or go to the library....Farewell, Qiao Bangzhu!” 

“Qiao Bangzhu,” meaning “Master Jobs” in English, is an affectionate nickname Chinese Apple fans bestowed on Jobs. It’s the title of a hero taken from a novel written by China’s most renowned martial arts fiction writer Jin Yong. 
 
Another user on Weibo, “Xiaoyu-meow,” expressed his admiration by saying, “I miss you, Jobs.  Please also make heaven this cool since we are all going there one day.”
 
Sina.com.cn, one of China’s leading Web portals, put up a special black-and-white front-page report to remember Jobs.  “[You] lived to change the world,” read the big headline on the site’s front page. The special tribute coverage included stories of his life, mourning and condolence messages from celebrities, reports translated from Western media, a video of Jobs and surveys of Apple users’ expectations for the future of the company.  

Apple just opened its newest store in Shanghai, its fifth in mainland China, on Sept. 23. The store is the largest in Asia and attracted over 100,000 customers in its first week of business. 

Young Chinese are keen to own Apple products – the whole country was shocked in June by the news that a 17-year-old boy from Anhui province sold one of his kidneys for $3,000 to buy an iPad, according to local reports. 
 
Outside the Apple store, next to the long line of fans waiting to spend some cash, a young man selling anti-scratch plastic covers for iPhones said he learned the news this morning when he “came to work” in front of the store.  The vendor, who preferred to stay anonymous, said his business had not been affected by the death of Master Jobs.