Nudity, Train Tickets, More Nudity, Rockets, and Gas: The Week in Review

“Shameless”
Zhang Zi Yi unwittingly volunteered to be China’s first web scandal of 2009 when an intrusive long-lens paparazzo snapped the Chinese actress and her western boyfriend playfully cavorting on the beach. Many sites and netizens were outraged at her being ‘nude’, though technically she wasn’t, while other netizens in this country jumped on the opportunity to slam Ms Zhang as “shameless” for having a foreign lover, and for stripping off on the beach, as if either of those things were unnatural acts. The funniest comment I read on the story was over on Shanghaiist, where some wag said, “It’s hard to tell whether she’s on her back or on her stomach…”.

National Ticket Lottery
In a display of stoical, non-complaining queuing not seen since the days of food rationing in the UK during World War II, Chinese citizens have been queuing for hours – some queuing overnight in freezing conditions – for the chance of buying a train ticket home for the upcoming Spring Festival holiday. Not all were successful, and had queued for hours in vain, or instead bought tickets from nearby scalpers at over-inflated prices. On the bright side, in a decade or two the trains will be less epically busy, and there will be epic traffic jams on highways instead.

I feel less vulgar already
Thanks to the Beijing top brass we are all a little less vulgar and a little more harmonised this week, after a government-led crackdown on lewd and downright sexy photos on Chinese websites, which are common on even mainstream web portals. Self-censorship is the mainstay on the Chinese webosphere, but photos of lovely ladies wearing little in the way of clothing have run somewhat rampant. Google, Baidu, MSN, TOM, Sina, and lots of smaller Chinese sites and photo-sharing forums had, according to an official, “violated society’s morals, and harmed the health of young people.” True indeed. We all know it makes you go blind.

You say Halal, I say Kosher, let’s call the whole thing off
As I unfortunately predicted in my previous Lost Laowai post Israel and Palestine find themselves back at square one, in a more severe and potentially protracted battle than has been seen for years. Worse still, Israeli rockets have hit schools and safe shelters, killing women and children, even though Israel insists it is only trying to take out Hamas, the Palestinian ruling party and their armed division. Outgoing US president George W. Bush made his sole trip to the region late last year, and confidently predicted that Israel and Palestine would move forwards towards peace. Wrong again, Georgey Boy.

From Russia, With Malice
Once again Russia is using its vast gas supplies as a stick with which to beat neighboring countries which had the nerve to cede from Russia in the past. Citizens of the Ukraine are not the only ones suffering without gas – their primary source of heat for food, water, and their homes – during a typically freezing Eastern European winter.
Bulgaria too is without gas, causing a rush for electric heaters among those who can afford them. Today in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia it is minus 16 degrees centigrade (that’s 3’F). Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, one regular Bulgarian family man said: ‘We feel like pawns in someone else’s game.”