With the 20th anniversary of Tian’anmen approaching, I anticipate we’re going to see more and more stuff like this in the news:
A group of mothers of those killed in the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square has urged China’s leaders to fully investigate the deaths. Their call was issued as the 20th anniversary of the massacre approaches, and days ahead of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
The Tiananmen Mothers want the government to name the dead, compensate families and punish those responsible. In an open letter, Chinese leaders were also urged to “break the taboo”. BBC News
Speaking of important anniversaries, I wrote a little about this over on Inventorspot.com. I encourage you guys to add my new Inventorspot China Tech blog (RSS) to your blogrolls and feed readers if you’d like to follow my occasional China-related thoughts and ramblings. As it’s a paid blogging position, I’ll be putting significantly more effort and thought into those articles, so you’ll likely find them far more insightful lengthy than past PandaPassport posts.
This is pretty wacky. Check out this video that appeared on youku’s hot page of a van that some dudes modded into a tank. Or is it a tank modded into a van?
I can’t really tell.
I have a new addition to my blogroll.
As many of you know (I assume somebody is still reading out there), I moved to Japan a few months back. And while I’ve eagerly jumped head-first into the Japan tech scene, I’m still keeping an eye fixed on China as well.
I was shocked to see the CCTV fire the other night, which was certainly not a good way to end a year that has already has it’s fill of tragedy for China.
That said, part of me was also fascinated to see how information was gathered, re-packaged, and sent out to the world. Last night I wrote a guest piece for inventor spot on that very topic, if any of you would like to check it out:
And if you’d like to follow along with all the writing I’m doing these days (I’m a little all over the place recently) feel free to follow via my bran’ spankin’ new catch-all RSS feed.
Photo source: Shanghaiist
The Chinese equivalant of Police Chief Wiggum is falling under heavy criticism for hiring actors to rob a Zhenzhou bank, as a part of a training exercise. The only problem with this situation is that nobody – not the people in the bank, nor the police officers – were told that this was a drill:
Four ‘robbers’ rushed into the Post Office Bank, disarmed security and demanded all the people inside drop to the floor. They even snatched a customer’s bag containing £20,000, reports Guangzhou Daily.
Critics said police officers, unaware that it was a training drill, could easily have used their guns on the fleeing robbers. Source: ananova
Only in China, folks…
