Liu Yunshan, director of the Communist Party’s publicity department, faxed the notifications to newspapers and radio, TV and Internet news outlets Sunday, one day before Google Inc. announced it was pulling its search Web site from the country, The Asahi Shimbun reported Friday.

The banned subjects include problems in Tibet and the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, difficulties faced by graduating students seeking jobs, the rising price of cooking oil and reports on criticism against China from U.S. officials and other international leaders.

“Most of the subjects that people are interested in have been banned. We don’t know what to report on,” an official at a Chinese newspaper told The Asahi Shimbun.

via China bans 18 topics from media – UPI.com.

吃不消 Food Inc

Interesting translation of Food Inc., 吃不消 chībuxiāo means “unable to stand” (as in exhaustion, exertion) made up of individual characters
吃 to eat
不 not or no
消 to consume, use, disappear, remove or spend.

I’m going to guess this is a Chinese “original” as the original Food Inc is not even a book but a documentary (available for download and DVD) — and very much worth watching.

Fascinating article “Chinese Cyberposse” in New York Times Magazine about Chinese “human flesh search engine” (人肉搜索引擎 rénròusōusuǒyǐnqíng) phenomenon accompanied by wonderful calligraphic illustrations by Leo Jung.

Feng decided to get revenge on the human-flesh searchers. He and a few other users started a human-flesh search of their own, patiently matching back the anonymous ID’s of the people who organized against Diebao to similar-sounding names on school bulletin boards, auction sites and help-wanted ads. Eventually he assembled a list of the real identities of Diebao’s persecutors. “When we got the information, we had to think about what we should do with it,” Feng says. “Should we use it to attack the group?”

Feng stopped and thought about what he was about to do. “When we tried to fight evil, we found ourselves becoming evil,” he says. He abandoned the human-flesh search and destroyed all the information he had uncovered.

• Inconvenient Truths with Rebecca McKinnon at Stanford March 4, 2010, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM (public event and everyone welcome, not sure about online availability)
• ReadWriteWeb conversation with Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey, Richard McManus and Orville Schell on Digital Activism livestreamed from Paley Media Center in New York City on March 15, 2010, 6:30 – 8 p.m. Eastern Time, (-5 GMT)

Chinese broadband users above the age of 13 number 286 million, nearly double that of the U.S. broadband population, says a new report from market analysts Netpop Research. In five years, Netpop forecasts, that number will double. While 35 percent of American users are under age 35, in China younger users make up 73 percent of the online population.

Facebook lookalike RenRen 人人, is visited by 23% of Chinese broadband users. 51.com (19%), and Kaixin001 开心网 (12%) are the other most popular social sites.

Fanfou 饭否, a Twitteresque site has been offline for weeks, joining a list of Twitteresque sites that seem to have been simply shut down by the government soon after access to the real Twitter from China was blocked following the murderous racial riots in Xinjiang province on July 5th. TaoTao 网页 and Zuosa 做啥, have been untouched.

From Xinhuanet:

“This partnership between Auckland City Libraries and the New Zealand Chinese Association has been a great opportunity to develop this tool and provide the Chinese community with platform to share stories for future generations, said Group Manager Libraries Allison Dobbie on Friday.

“New Zealand Chinese Association Auckland Inc (NZCA) is delighted to be partnering with Auckland City Libraries to launch and produce the Chinese Digital Community,” said Kai Luey, Chairman of New Zealand Chinese Association Auckland Inc.

“Chinese Digital Community is replete with rich, everyday stories which will resonate with people from all walks of life. It is a landmark project for our Association and one which will ensure Chinese New Zealand stories are kept alive forever,” he added.

Delighted to discover NZ Chinese Journals 先驅者之聲 project containing over 16,000 pages from three publications: 民聲旬報 Man Sing Times (1921-22), 僑農月刊 New Zealand Chinese Growers Monthly Journal (1949-72) and 中國大事週報 New Zealand Chinese Weekly News (1937-46) that span 50 years of Chinese New Zealand history.

Wonderful interface makes it a joy to view and search these fascinating historical sources in English and Chinese. Kezia Singleton (project manager) and David Adams addressed some of the challenges creating this complex project in this presentation at the New Zealand Digital Forum conference 2008.

More info on Chinese print culture in Aotearoa from New Zealand Electronic Text Centre.

觉 (覺) [Jué] to feel, wake up, come to one’s senses.
音乐 [yīnyuè] music
艺术 [yìshù] art

Lots of good links to current bands, artists, cafes, clubs, galleries and other groovy locales in both 北京 and 上海 from the 觉 Jue Festival celebration of “alternative, creative and progressive arts in Shanghai and Beijing. With no branding, no restrictions and no agenda, Jue is an excuse to leave your hidey-hole and experience a punk show, an art installation, and everything in between.” (Thanks PSFK.)