An animal rights group has called for China to treat rats with kindness and respect. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said it has asked the Chinese government to consider animal welfare laws for rats used in laboratory experiments.

Coco Yu of PETA’s Asia-Pacific branch said in a statement: ‘Rats sing, they dream, and they express empathy for others.’

And they were also possibly, probably, responsible for the Black Death, or the Black Plague, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history. It probably began in Central Asia and spread to Europe by the late 1340s.

The total number of deaths worldwide from the pandemic is estimated at 75 million people; there were as many as 50 million deaths in Europe.

The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population.

Still the rats who carried the disease probably did not mean to. Just one of those things. They were singing and dreaming as they did it. And probably expressed empathy for the victims.

The rat is one of 12 animals in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, which follows the lunar calendar.
Source: Yahoo

An advertisement on Beijing’s subway proclaiming ‘Squeezed in?! Go and buy a car then!’ has angered passengers and the government.

Plainly such advertising would encourage traffic jams.

The official Beijing Daily said the advertisement, which was apparently written in large white letters on a red background, is contrary to the Beijing city government’s aim of getting more people to take public transport.

The storm of criticism against the advertisement does not identify the company or organization behind it.

The newspaper quoted wisely unnamed experts as saying, ‘If they only cared about getting eyeballs rather than the impact it would have on people and society, has it not been effective?’
Source: Reuters

The picture is Wildlife opening the passage of life at the Qinghai-Tibet railway. In the 2006 CCTV news photos of the year it was a bronze medal winner. It was selected as one of the top 10 most memorable photographs of 2006 — and, sadly, was a PhotoShop compilation which is OK if you say so at the time.

When this was first reported on a blog and hundreds started looking at the picture for clues. The EXIF information (present on digital photographs indicated that the time when the photograph was taken was faked.

The award-winning photographer was Liu Weiqiang, who is presently the assistant director of the photography department at Daqing Evening News. He is a senior member of the Chinese Photographers Association and a special contracted Xinhua photographer.

Liu Weiqiang admitted: ‘The antelopes in the photograph are real. The overpass bridge is also real. But it was not easy to capture such a moment.’ Thus he created the picture with PhotoShop.

He said, ‘Actually, I hoped that this incident would blow up because more people will pay attention to the Tibetan antelopes.’

Which sounds sort of reasonable but at the CCTV Awards Presentation Ceremony transcript shows he said this:

Liu: ‘In the language of photography, this was an instant. It was a very brief moment. The Tibetan antelopes are smart and easily scared. When humans are even far away, they are already fleeing. When I took this photograph, I dug a hole half a meter deep and I put camouflage on top. I hid in the hole covered by camouflage. That was why the Tibetan antelopes came to pass in front of my camera. It took only a several seconds for the Tibetan antelopes to pass in front of me. But I had waited for eight days.’

You can see the picture in all its PhotoShop enhanced glory by clicking on Source.
Source: Chengdu Evening News via EastSouthWestNorth

This Vertu mobile phone, as illustrated,  is listed at RMB2.7 million in a department store in Beijing. It is one of only eight such handsets in the world, with diamonds and sapphires studded on the phone. Its title, so that you may avoid it, is Signature Cobra and it was designed by French jeweler Bouchero. The Cobra has one pear-cut diamond, one round white diamond, two emerald eyes and 439 rubies.

It is also unbelievably ugly and lacking in taste or style. On the other hand, it may work very well as a mobile phone. And it is not the most expensive mobile in the world. That is the Goldvish “Le million” which is selling for $1 million. No takers.

Note that Vertu is a division of Nokia, a Finnish company, which started life making Wellington boots. As our illustration shows, they are still available at a far more reasonable $80 a pair. They have more style than Nokia’s Vertu phone.
Source: Jongo News

Traffic police stopped a university student who was attempting to ski home on the Hanyi Expressway in Hubei province.

Police escorted the student, who was dressed in a ski outfit and boots, off the busy road. He was skiing when police stopped him.

The Jingzhou-based Changjiang University student said he decided to ski to Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, for the upcoming holiday after hearing that the expressway had been closed due to a heavy snowfall.

He should be congratulated for his original thinking and courage in the face of adverse weather conditions.
Source: China Daily

The picture is of a tourist enjoying an icicle which is part of a frozen waterfall in Mount Huangshan, east China’s Anhui Province. Extreme low temperature turned the waterfalls into spectacular icicle falls. These falls in Mount Huangshan are now crystal clear and attractive with fine weather allowing spectators.

There has always been a debate as to whether a waterfall can freeze in that freezing it becomes an icicle and not a waterfall. Take no notice of such arguments. This is a frozen waterfall.

How do waterfalls freeze? From the edges inwards … slowly. And there is another picture of an even more amazing frozen waterfall at the foot of Flame Mountain in Turufan, XinJiang province.
Source: China View

Our picture is of David Beckham in the latest ad for Armani underwear. He is used to endorse a lot of products.

Now Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newpaper in Britain — not always a source of truth and light — claims a ‘dodgy Chinese company has plastered David Beckham’s name on condoms, claiming users will score with the ladies like he does on the soccer pitch.’

And, according to The Sun, the Beckham prophylactics, which are not endorsed by David Beckham, are now the biggest-selling brand in China.

The Sun newspaper reports Chinese Beckham fans want them banned.

‘We do not want Beckham to think the Chinese people are disrespecting him. We love him here,’ one said.

Quite so. Every reference to the story seems to have been lifted from The Sun which claims no sources. No one would wish to think that a sub-editor was making up a story from the whole cloth. Certainly not.
Source: The Sun

At the annual CCTV gala Chinese Hollywood actress Zhang Ziyi popped up in a stunning pink dress and sang. And was promptly accused of lip-synching during the annual Spring Festival evening gala.

She sang ‘Fairy Scattering Flowers,’ which was specially composed for her by leading musician Ji Zhongping. Zhang was alone on stage during the performance.

Comments at Sina.com, a major Chinese news portal, were not kind. Some messages said that her performance was just ordinary and she had no real singing skill; it was just her fame that got the attention of the audience. The complaints about the program started to appear almost as soon as the show signed off at about 1:00 a.m.

An article in the Modern Express, a newspaper based in Nanjing, capital of eastern Jiangsu Province, said that lip-synching was common during the annual CCTV gala due to ‘hardware problems’.

‘Lip-synching at the gala is a tradition,’ it said, adding Zhang came in for public criticism because ’she was an amateur singer who was not well-prepared and even forgot words’. The article attributed her poor performance to ‘a lack of experience’.

But Zhang thought she did well.

She told reporters, ‘Fairy Scattering Flowers symbolizes happiness and auspiciousness. 2008 is especially important for Beijing and China and each of us. I wish spring would come earlier so that the snow in disaster areas would melt soon.’

Certainly, if she did lip synch she did not have the horror show that befell Milli Vanilli. In July 1989, during a live performance recorded by MTV at the Lake Compounce theme park in Bristol, Connecticut, the recording of the song ‘Girl You Know It’s True’ jammed and began to skip, repeating the partial line ‘Girl, you know it’s. . . ‘ over and over. Try lip synching to that.
Source: China View

A blacksmith in southern China has built a copper microcosm of the Forbidden City, the world’s largest surviving palace complex, in his house.

Li Weimin, a Chaozhou local in Guangdong Province, has built a model that occupies almost an entire room. Li’s Forbidden City features 200 or more miniature palaces and halls, including gates as small as nails that can be opened and closed like real doors.

Using the skills he gained from his previous job, the 62-year-old retiree spent two years on the landscape, using up 30 kilograms of copper. He has also lacquered each model building with gold.

Li said his next ambition is to build a landscape depicted in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) scroll painting Along the River during the Qingming Festival. The 5.28-meter-long original features hundreds of humans and dozens of animals.
Source: CRI English

Normally we do not run stories on Hong Kong but this sign of an awful and aweful future is too good to miss.

A service in Hong Kong allows individuals to sign up and be tracked on their mobile phone.

With over 10,000 subscribed members, ‘Follow Me, Follow You’ offers subscriber unlimited searches to track the other subscribers through their mobile phone signal.

The service said that although they introduced the service as a way of tracking for worried couples, many people use the service to do much more.

Parents can watch their children and others use it to monitor their elderly parents.

Some couples use it just to be able to find each other in the densely populated city.

The service requires both parties consent. Perhaps. But if a couple are able to track where each other it does suggest a small lack of trust.
Source: Weird News Asia