Geoff Ng…Around

Because going backwards burns more calories.

A rough video I made from short clips I made while riding the Alleycat.  The audio’s horrible–if it’s not clear, I had bike problems from the start.  The crank kept coming loose so I tried to stop to get that replaced, but the shop ended up not having the parts I needed.

Not included: my half-hour argument with a taxi driver after getting hit, and me hitting the finish line after three hours of riding.

Links if this all seems weird to you:

• What’s an Alleycat race?
• Route map
• Weekend recap from race organizer Tyler Bowa
• Pics from the weekend on Flickr

Enjoy!

“Man ‘takes job as women’s punchbag’”

“The first woman was about 25 years old. She paid for half an hour but soon got tired and spent the rest of her time just chatting to me.

“The second customer also only lasted for a few minutes but they both looked much happier afterwards. It does people good to let off some steam.”

Xiao reportedly charges 100 yuan (£9) for a 30-minute session.

China’s leadership needs to be even more far-sighted than Obama is. China is replacing the American consumer as the motor of the world economy.  Since it is a smaller motor, the world economy will grow slower, but China’s influence will rise very fast.

For the time being, the Chinese public is willing to subordinate its individual freedom to political stability and economic advancement. But that may not continue indefinitely – and the rest of the world will never subordinate its freedom to the prosperity of the Chinese state.

-George Soros in a piece from Project Syndicate

Looking for something to do this weekend?  Come out to the Alleycat Race this Saturday.  Free entry, lots of prizes, lots of fun.

Find out more in this piece I penned for City Weekend.

Propaganda then:

Pieces from various periods call out from the past with artistic flair, asking for citizens to up industrial production (“Produce more steel to support the liberation of Taiwan!”), back political allies abroad (“Defend the Cuban Revolution!”), and, of course, to buy into state ideology (“Continue to criticize Confucius and persist in revolution and resist the return of capitalism!”).

-My City Weekend Cover Story on Shanghai’s Secret Museums

Propaganda now:

2009 military recruitment posters…

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pictures cribbed from ChinaSMACK; you can find a few more there.

Basically, this is what the titles says.  Man some weird shit happens in China.

• Bear bites off boy’s hand.  Yes, really.

• Don’t want to wear a seat belt but tired of the car beeping at you?  Use one of these.

• Chinese Midgets.  I bet you click on that.

• The “Smooch Patrol” is cracking down on PDA on a university campus.  Probably about time.

• Fake condom factory busted.  I’ll let the actual article add to the hilarity:

Officers seized 40,000 boxes of condoms labeled with Jissbon, Durex, Sixsex, Love Card, NOX and Rough Nider brands and more than 1.62 million unlabeled condoms worth a total of 536,000 yuan (US$78,511).

Dusty condoms were scattered over the floor and lubricants was stored in large oil drums.

Teenage girls hired by Li were lubricating condoms and putting them into two packaging machines when officers broke in the 20-square-meter workshop, according to a China Youth Daily report.

More next week, or whenever more weird shit goes down.

A fake iPhone that runs Google Android.  Sweet.  Plus it runs on a dual-core processor and has a 3.5″ in screen and a 2MP camera.

Update: The 16GB APhone costs RMB880.  The real iPhone 3GS costs RMB5800–five times more.

There’s a black market for everything in China, and kids are no exception–especially when supply is restricted by the one-child policy.

So for years, there have been reports of kids getting abducted and sold for money, written up everywhere from Reuters to the LA Times.  The Guardian even reported in 2007 that 190 kids were getting snatched every day.

But I guess that’s what happens when a kid fetches RMB18,000 (USD$2,626) on the open market.  That might not sound like a lot, but the alternative–doing it the right way and getting a university education–only gets you a RMB3,762 (USD$551) starting monthly salary.

So anyway, it was great to see this headline last Friday: Child trafficking probe saves 2,169 kids.  With 19 more were rescued Saturday.

Hopefully, that’ll help stem the tide a bit and prevent more edgy parents from lynching shady-looking book salesmen.

Postscript: Children are also sometimes born and sold (or even auctioned off online) by their parents willingly, often for large sums.  Right or wrong?  Hard to say, given the lack of central adoption processes and the poverty blanketing most of rural China.

A couple great 360-degree shots of People’s Park here in Shanghai put together by Will Pearson.

Check them out here and here.