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06 Mar 07
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Imagethief on BBC - the interview that China didn't want you to hear You'd think they'd have bigger fish to fry. It's just taxis, fer chrissake.
At any rate, here is the interview I did on Beijing's smelly taxis with BBC Radio Five's "Pods and Blogs" program this morning (RealAudio link), despite the government's... |
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06 Mar 07
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A most peculiar conversation makes Imagethief paranoid Imagethief is sometimes surprised at which posts drive the big discussions. I certainly didn't expect yesterday's throwaway on smelly taxis to be quite the lightning rod that it has been.
But has it got me in trouble with the state?
I ask because... |
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05 Mar 07
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But onion breath disguises the smell of burning motor oil Imagethief, who has been subjected to the depravities of Beijing's taxi drivers more times than he cares to remember, was elated to see the following stern article from Xinhua this weekend:
Smelly taxis warned to tarnish Beijing's image in... |
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04 Mar 07
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CNET 60: Yeeyan translates Chinese tech news and blogs into English Yeeyan translates Chinese tech news and blogs into EnglishMarch 4, 2007
Yeeyan is a new Chinese blog that
runs a great two-way translation service, translating English blog
posts and articles on a number of topics into Chinese and vice-versa.
"Yeeyan"... |
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03 Mar 07
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CNET 59: Does it matter if Google can't have Gmail.cn? Does it matter if Google can't have Gmail.cn?March 3, 2007
A few days ago Reuters published an article
about Google's attempts to buy the Gmail.cn domain from a Chinese
company. It seems that Google has been frustrated in its attempts to
get its hands... |
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03 Mar 07
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Don't like China Daily? Check out New Light of Myanmar With all due respect to the many fine people who have worked there, the China Daily is not one of the world's great newspapers. Last night, at a cold and windswept drinkathon at an outside table at Shanghai's Cotton bar, Imagethief found himself in a... |
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01 Mar 07
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Sinister commie robot pigeon bombs on the wing! If there is anything more sinister than a grubby urban pigeon, it must be a grubby urban pigeon under remote control!
That's right, first the testing of an anti-satellite weapon, and now we get wind of China's plans to create a devastating army of drone... |
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28 Feb 07
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China stockmarkets: Casino Spoyale OK, anybody who didn't see this coming, go bang your head against the wall until your brain falls out:
BEIJING, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese shares slumped sharply on profit-taking on Tuesday, with the major Shanghai index down 8.84 percent, the biggest... |
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28 Feb 07
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Wednesday PR blog: Sport of capitalist lackeys under fire Imagethief is not a golf fan, for several reasons. First, I had a bad early experience in high school when I signed up for archery and flag football for PE and was instead assigned to tennis and golf. My resentment over this enforced sissification... |
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28 Feb 07
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Welcome back, Kaiser Well, no one is going to confuse him with Gabe Kaplan, and as far as I know he doesn't have any Sweathogs, but he does have a blog again, after a long hiatus, and it's here. |
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27 Feb 07
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Why Chinese television sucks (number 893 in a series) Because its priorities are entirely screwed up, as is clear from this article in today's Washington Post:
"In foreign countries, televisions are privately owned and you can broadcast whatever you want," Wang Weiping, deputy head of the series division at... |
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27 Feb 07
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CNET 58: All Internet bets are off All Internet bets are off
27/02/2007
The runup to March's dual government extravaganzas, the meeting of the full National People's Congress and the (take a breath) national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress, is... |
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27 Feb 07
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Tuesday PR blog: Reputation warfare against Singapore Having just returned from a week's vacation in Singapore, Imagethief can report that the city-state's image in much of Southeast Asia is, not to put too fine a point on it, crappy. Singapore has a reputation for arrogance, part of which is justified and... |
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26 Feb 07
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2006 best-of-Imagethief and statistics Another year gone, and time to reflect back back on a turbulent 2006. Every year seems to bring a different flavor to Imagethief. If 2004 was the wide-eyed beginnings and 2005 was hitting its stride, 2006 was the year it settled into some kind of... |
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18 Feb 07
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Testing Just a test, as you were... |
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18 Feb 07
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Happy new year! 新年快乐！ Imagethief wishes all readers a happy new year, and a prosperous year of the pig.I am in Singapore on vacation this week, but will try to drop by from time to time.-Will |
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16 Feb 07
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And for the fake ant breeder...death! Death for an ant-selling pyramid scheme. Only in China:BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for conning people out of 3 billion yuan ($387 million) in a giant scam to breed ants, local media said on Thursday.Wang Zhendong, from... |
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16 Feb 07
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Apoligies for inconsistent service You may have notice Imagethief being inaccessible for short periods over the past couple of days. The friend who hosts my blog is migrating his servers so there are likely to be more brief interruptions over the next couple of days as the technical issues... |
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15 Feb 07
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CNET 57: 3G is coming to China! Sort of... 3G is coming to China! Sort of...February 15, 2007
China Tech News reports
that TD-SCDMA networks will be rolled out by October of 2007. Does this
mean that the Ministry of Information Infrastructure (MII) is living up
to its pledge to... |
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15 Feb 07
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How green was my mountain Bad PR:Villagers in southwestern China are puzzled by a county government's decision to paint an entire barren mountainside green.Workers who began spraying Laoshou mountain in August told villagers that they were doing so on orders of the county... |
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11 Feb 07
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A funny thing happened to me on the way to political re-education... Imagethief was morbidly fascinated to find a Reuters article over the weekend that explains how the Chinese Propaganda Ministry has launched a point-based "demerit" system to try to encourage proper behavior from the print media:CHINA'S Communist Party... |
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11 Feb 07
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CNET 56: Baidu news and gossip site now in English Baidu news and gossip site now in English
February 11, 2007
Via the indispensable China Web 2.0 Review, I see that Baidu news and gossip site Baiduer has launched an English version.
Love or hate Baidu, they are one of the most... |
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11 Feb 07
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What do the kids think of Starbucks in the Forbidden City? Over the weekend an eighth-grade English teacher at the Suzhou International School named Eric MacKnight dropped me an e-mail. Eric wanted to let me know that he had used an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that Starbucks' was not the... |
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08 Feb 07
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CNET 55: Internet imperils Chinese civilization yet again Internet imperils Chinese civilization yet againFebruary 8th, 2007Those crazy Internet kids are ruining the Chinese language.
Or so you would think from a cute pair of Xinhua stories that ran
today. (I realize that "cute" and "Xinhua" aren't words that... |
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06 Feb 07
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CNET 54: Early warning signs of danger for MySpace China Early warning signs of danger for MySpace China
February 6th, 2007
Last October News Corp media baron Rupert
Murdoch, the proud owner of social networking gorilla MySpace,
announced that he was planning to develop MySpace China. Anyone who... |
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06 Feb 07
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Apartmental, a part mental As regular readers will know, Imagethief has been on cross-assignment
to his company's Shanghai office in recent weeks. The company is,
meanwhile, attempting to persuade me to consider semi-permanent
reassignment to Shanghai. I have not yet made a... |
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06 Feb 07
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An anus too far As long as we are going with the toilet humor (see the previous post). Chinglish is to be stamped out. Really. We mean it this time. Via Peking Duck, here is Mei Fong's article in from the Wall Street Journal (quoting my buddies Jeremy Goldkorn and Josh... |
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06 Feb 07
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We have met the bathroom enemy and they are us Imagethief's office in Shanghai is in the middling-swank K. Wah Center on the middling-swank (and appropriately named) Huaihai Middle Road. Here we work in splendid isolation from the rest of our WPP brethren, based just up the road in The Center. We had... |
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03 Feb 07
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Saturday PR blog: I'm sorry, the government has killed your story Colleagues from American and European offices often ask Imagethief how PR in China is different from PR in the west. Usually I give a two-part answer. First I tell them that were they to step into our offices in China they would see many things that they... |
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03 Feb 07
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Localization backlash: Not just for Internet firms any more It can happen to foreign retailers as well. |
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29 Jan 07
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WaPo's Ed Cody on media bribery in China How did I miss this?The Washington Post's Ed Cody has written a fascinating story (via David Wolf's Silicon Hutong) about a syndrome we in the PR business in China run into regularly: the practice of media extortion in China. I can't comment extensively... |
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29 Jan 07
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CNET 53: Baidu more a media company every day Baidu more a media company every day
January 29, 2007
I've been interested to watch some of the recent moves being made by Baidu,
China's leading search engine. Baidu has already distinguished itself
by trouncing Google in the China market in terms of... |
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28 Jan 07
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Chinese Propaganda Posters Imagethief likes Chinese propaganda posters. People who have seen me republish images from Stefan Landsberger's great Chinese propaganda poster website will be familiar with this inclination. I like to think that my appreciation of these posters extends... |
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21 Jan 07
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Principles are good...what happens when they are tested? Longtime readers of this blog will recall I have devoted extensive time to the various woes of foreign (read: American) Internet companies in China, covering both their business and political woes. (Recap of previous posts here.) Now we've reached the... |
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21 Jan 07
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CIC's new blog and review Periodically journalist friends ask me who can comment on China Internet issues. The list of people I send them to is pretty short. Someone who's always near the top is Sam Flemming of CIC, a company in Shanghai that specializes in watching what is... |
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18 Jan 07
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Wal-Mart tourists There's an old gag list that makes the rounds of China expats, popping up in e-mail boxes from time to time when a recent arrival stumbles upon it and sends it, yet again, to everyone living here. The top of the list includes such gems as:A June 2001... |
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18 Jan 07
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Once again, Starbucks ain't the problem with the Forbidden City As the epitome of the considerate foreign resident, Imagethief is sensitive to the need to preserve China's cultural heritage. That's why I do not deface monuments or ridicule the metropolitan statuary (excessively) and why I did not fart loudly when... |
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17 Jan 07
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CNET 50: Four weeks after quake China’s Internet still crippled Four weeks after quake China’s Internet still crippled
January 17, 2007
It’s now been nearly a month since a
Boxing Day earthquake near Taiwan damaged some of the Internet cables
that connect China to the rest of the world. Internati... |
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10 Jan 07
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Beijing to Washington DC nonstop Imagethief was interested to read that United Airlines has inaugurated the first nonstop flight from Washington DC to Beijing.Now American senators and congressmen will be able to fly directly to Beijing to either suck up to the Chinese government for... |
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10 Jan 07
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Chinese hotel restaurant cliches After another late night in the office, Imagethief had a late but adequate dinner at the Equatorial Hotel's "Golden Phoenix" hotel. With the possible exception of low-rent, neighborhood flop-houses, every self-respecting hotel in China has a Chinese... |
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09 Jan 07
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Signs you're back in China... Imagethief appreciates the finer things in life. Unfortunately, as a mid-ranking salt-miner in the immense WPP empire, he seldom gets to experience them. But when he does, oh, baby!That's why I was thrilled exactly one week ago to spending a night a the... |
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08 Jan 07
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Back to work, you! Well, vacation is over.How do I know? Well, I got back into Beijing on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon flew onto Shanghai. Today was my first day of work and any illusions I've had about a gentle slide back into work have been ruthlessly dashed. I... |
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