Right on the heels of CCTV’s 《心灵之窗》 (“Soul’s Window”) being exposed for wholesale copying* of Japanese anime film “5cm Per Second“, comes news that CCTV’s 《恐龙宝贝龙神勇士》(“Dinosaur Darlings: Dragon God Warriors” …or something like that) is slightly-less-than-wholesale copying* well-known Japanese anime titles “Pokemon“, “Digimon“, and “Naruto“. I say “slightly-less-than-wholesale” only because this time they’re sorta-kinda lifting elements from multiple sources and remixing them into something different, as opposed to outright copying (or poorly tracing) entire scenes from a single source. But maybe that’s “wholesale” copying too. Shrug.

Either way, it is damn embarrassing. I have absolutely nothing to do with it and I still feel embarrassed.

“Soul’s Window” vs. “5cm Per Second”

More aggravating still is how CCTV has responded. After Chinese netizens noted and posted about the uncanny-to-obvious similarities, CCTV apparently told people to “consider the difference between imitation and plagiarism”.

Wait…what?

CCTV, don’t be an idiot. Just shut the hell up and hang your head.

Oh god, we’re so getting GFW’d for this.

More Images of “Dinosaur Darlings: Dragon God Warriors”

Comparisons between CCTV's "Dinosaur Darlings" and the originals.

Some background information: The Chinese government has mandated limitations on foreign cartoons that can be shown on Chinese television, requiring more “domestically produced” content. One reason, voiced by Premier Wen Jiabao himself, was to help foster the domestic animation industry by giving it some breathing room, chances to showcase its efforts, and the opportunity to further develop to a more competitive level (think Korea) without being instantly squashed by the offerings of Japan’s mature animation industry. The other reason, boisterously supported by the anti-Japanese fenqing (or an army of wumaodang), was to limit the potentially negative influence of Japanese anime upon Chinese youth.

It seems what we have now is a bunch of “domestically copied” cartoons with slightly rejiggered stories and moral/ideological lessons. The children get to enjoy somewhat familiar characters while supporting domestic animators. Everyone wins, right?

* Warning: The Sankaku Complex website is NSFW. It posts a lot of interesting news like chinaSMACK does, but unlike chinaSMACK (maybe), it regularly posts tons of clearly pornographic content. You were warned. I, of course, read it for the articles, like Playboy.

For those who aren’t familiar with what’s going on, here’s a quick 12 point summary of this entire ludicrous mess:

1. Government announces that web-filtering and censorship software called “Green Dam Youth Escort” (silly direct English translation of a more reasonable sounding Chinese name) is required to be included with all new PCs sold and shipped after July 1, 2009. This initiative is packaged as helping parents protect their children from pornography and other “vulgar content” online.

2. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

3. “Green Dam Youth Escort” tested and hacked, confirming that the software censors political content that Chinese government doesn’t want its people to see. It also does a rather poor job of its advertised purpose of blocking porn, with a plethora of false positives and false negatives, and generally sucks. Oh, and apparently it stole its code from an American software company. Wheee!

4. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

5. CCTV airs news broadcast attacking Google China (but not Baidu) as corrupting China’s youth by providing links to pornographic and “vulgar” content. This news report featured Google’s search box suggestion feature, which automatically “suggests” to currently popular search terms as you type in your search query. CCTV showed how a search for “son” on Google suggested vulgar content like “mother-son incest.” Yikes, right? The report also featured an interview with a university student, named Gao Ye, recounting how his friend became “absent-minded” after discovering porn through Google. Other state-controlled media follow suit.

6. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

7. That university student, Gao Ye, is found by China’s human flesh search engines and revealed to be an intern for CCTV, confirming widespread suspicion that the yet another ridiculous CCTV interview was likely scripted or directed. “Gao Ye” then becomes a censored term on Google.

8. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

9. On the evening of June 24th, reports flooded in around the internet that various Google websites were blocked and inaccessible throughout China, in what everyone suspected to be the Chinese censors either “warning” Google (for its unhealthy content of course) or just completely losing their minds. Access was shortly restored for many, though for some, it remains either intermittent or still blocked.

10. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

11. A Chinese internet user discovers that all those incestuous and “vulgar” search suggestions on Google aired in CCTV’s smear campaign against Google were actually fake. In the days leading up to the news report, all of these searches were artificially generated (perhaps through computer programs) in order to trick Google’s search box suggestion feature to show these “searches” as “popular.” All of these search originated from…Beijing.

12. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.

So yeah, there we go. Okay, maybe that was really only six points (seven, if we include a point for “outraged”) but long-time Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo has a 10 point review if you want to compare notes.

It is difficult to imagine what the next big development will be, especially given that the Chinese government hasn’t really backed down from the Green Dam issue. In fact, as we saw above, it shamelessly brought its massive propaganda apparatus to bear in supporting Green Dam through deception and defamation. While Google has, in some ways, benefitted from the increase in attention (of the bad news is good news variety) CCTV brought to it by wrongfully setting up and scapegoating them, the entire fiacso still leaves a wretched aftertaste in everyone’s mouth. More disheartening still is that none of us really know what can be done about washing it all away. The Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software will still be deployed on all new computers in a few days time, and CCTV and Xinhua will remain the primary mainstream media of China even if their credibility has been eroding and eroding with the average Chinese citizen.

Has any of this outrage, both foreign or domestic, accomplished anything in combating the systematic and institutional wrongs inherent in the acts of censorship, propaganda, and coercion above?

Riding China’s Trains

Jalal from the Lost Laowai Blog recounts his good, bad, and ugly experiences riding a long-distance Chinese train from Shanghai to Hubei. Short-distance trains are often a very cost-efficient alternative to flying in China, but the long-distance, sleeper, multi-day trips can be incredibly brutal, especially if you’re a poor college kid going back to your hometown during Chinese New Year and all you can afford is standing room only for your 48 hour ride…with everyone else in China. An excerpt:

I remembered why I sometimes enjoy long train rides. Of course, with a hard seat ticket anything over 8 hours becomes a test of mental and physical toughness; but journeys in the sleeper carriages can be a great opportunity to socialize, practice your Chinese, people-watch, or just kick back and catch up on some reading. Of course, you might run into a couple of clowns, like I did on the way to Hubei, but you takes the rough with the smooth, right?

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’ve always been curious about taking the train instead of the plane in China.
2. You’re wondering if Jalal’s experiences remind you of your own.

Anti-Democracy Sentiment In Action

Allie Shi over at Shanghaiist indulged those of us who love hearing what Chinese netizens have to say about anything by translating a bunch of their reactions to the Iranian election controversy. The comments selected are sure to prickle quite a few hairs though:

“现在选举演变成几十年所未有的对抗和骚乱，不知道自由派做何感想？ ——————用军队干呀！敢对抗，杀死他几十万人算个球！反正伊朗人多！军队的枪是干什么的？真是傻瓜。”
“The Iranian presidential election evolved after decades but now is triggering so many protests and riots; I am not sure how the liberal wings of the party would think? Use the army. Whoever fights against the government should be killed. There are so many people in Iran so killing several hundreds of thousands is not a big deal. What does the army do? Foolish (Iranian government).”

“支持内贾德。他是世界上仅有的三个敢于对美国说不的国家领导人之一。他是有骨气有勇气的领导人。”
“I support Ahmadinejad. He is one of the only three leaders of the countries who say no to America. He is a brave and dignified country leader.”"

戈尔输给小步什的时候，小步什也是作弊的，但戈尔比较理性，能以国家安定为重，宣布失败。穆萨维他们有美国支持，但没有大多数伊朗人的支持，输了还不心甘。 ”
“When Bush was elected as the American president, he cheated too. But Al Gore was rational and admitted that he lost because of national stabilization. Mousavi has America as his biggest backer but not many Iranian supporters. He should admitted that he lost.”

Yikes, eh? Quick, go find some other Chinese…

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’ve been watching the Iran election fallout.
2. You’re not sure if democracy always works either.
3. You’re part of the 50 cent gang.
4. You’re a masochist who secretly enjoys reading fenqing comments.

Interview With CEO of Chinese Post-90s Generation SNS 360quan.com

And it’s a white guy! Alice with Danwei, the department store that achors the mall of China blogs, posted an interview with Dan Brody talking about China’s post-90s internet culture. Dan Brody is CEO of 360quan.com, “the smallest of the first tier SNS sites, and biggest of the second tier.” Their social networking service/site is focused on China’s youth, particularly those infamously born in the 1990s often stereotyped for their loose morals, goth/emo/punk leanings, and proclivity towards taking exaggerated photos of themselves…and then photoshopping them to be even more exaggerated. Here’s part of the interview:

Danwei: Is 360quan.com unique?
DB: There’s obviously lots of other social networking sites, but each has it’s own niche. For instance, Douban.com is more cultural, and Kaixin001.com is for white-collar office workers － but that’s basically all about branding. All large websites in China have basically the same demographics. For instance, bands and music never accounted for MySpace’s traffic in the US; 90% of their traffic is still just regular people talking to each other. And Xiaonei.com is supposedly just for students, but they have more members than there are students in China.

We position ourselves as the post-90s generation, very hip trendy and new, and we have strong branding on this by finding cool kids on the website — kids who play parkour, graffiti artists, punks — and promoting them. That’s our branding, but by definition cool people can never be the majority of our users, because cool people are only a small percentage of any social group. The people who use our website are the same people who use other large websites in China. What each website does is to feature and promote a group of people who are most interesting for them to associate with their brand.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Great insights into Chinese youth culture.
2. Great insider insights into the Chinese SNS business and market.

Nail Houses In China (and around the world)

Nail houses are not the same as hair salons, though those of us with quick and dirty minds might occasionally confuse the two given the right context. Nail houses refer to those stubborn homeowners or tenants who refuse to sell or vacate their property to a developer that has already purchased and leveled the surrounding buildings to build something new (and hopefully more profitable). They’re called “nail houses” because, well, they stick out like a nail. *badabing!* This post comes from a non-China blog called Deputy Dog, but nonetheless features 3 nail houses from China (2 from America, 1 from Japan) with some great pictures:

perhaps the most famous nail house in history was situated on a huge mound of dirt in chonqing until april 2007, at which point it was demolished by exhausted developers after battling for 3 years and eventually parting with ¥1m. the house’s owner, mrs wu ping, was the only person from 241 properties who refused to leave when asked in 2004 in order to make way for a new shopping centre. she really dug her heels in and the story quickly spread around the world by way of the intertubes. there’s an interesting interview with mrs wu here. following some searching, see what i believe to be the site of wu ping’s old house here on google schnapps.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Everyone loves a rebel, especially in the face of evil monolithic greedy capitalist land developers! Especially if the latter are Chinese! *shakes fist*
2. Oooooh, nifty pictures.

8 Successful Tips On Being A Successful Government Official

More hair-raising this week comes courtesy of Fool’s Mountain, where they post a translation of a letter written by a Jiangsu government official to his son containing 8 pieces of advice for joining the world of politics that would make Machiavelli (the Italian, not the rapper) proud:

1. Don’t seek truth, and don’t search for the essence of things.

Leave these tasks to intellectuals. The credo you have to firmly keep in mind: “as long as it is advantageous to oneself, it is correct.” If you have difficulty to grasp this, then follow this simplified principle: “whatever the higher-ups promoting is correct.”

2. Not only you have to be a liar, but also you have to be a virtuoso liar.

You should build a habit of telling lies. No, actually you should treat it as a mission with the goal that you are able to believe your own lies. Prostitution and politicians are very similar professions. The difference is that being an official is to sell one’s mouth. Remember, your mouth does not belong to you anymore once you become an official. You have to say according to what you need, not what you think.

Plus six more gems. If there is anything morally redeemable in this, it is the final non-enumerated bit of advice:

These are the principles of being an official. Think carefully now, if you can do all of these, your will have a smooth sailing career. Not up to the task? It’s high time to switch to another profession.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re a politician/government offiicial, or looking forward to a career in politics/officialdom.
2. You’re a marketer/salesman, or looking forward to a career in marketing/sales.

Europe As Center Of The World

Jottings from the Granite Studio is a favorite for many English China bloggers in our small little admittedly incestuous English China blogosphere. By “incestuous”, it isn’t that we all know each other (and engage in depravities), but we all know of each others’ writing. Jeremiah is a history teacher in Beijing, China and “a PhD Candidate at a large public research university in Northern California” (Go Bears?) who regularly posts some really great stuff on China. This past week, he decided to take to task an op-ed column written by a student from a university in the American South, highlighting the all too common perception most people have of China, particularly those who have never been to China (and some who have, and even continue to live here):

The Chinese mentality is nothing new. If one delves deep into the history books, they can find that the Chinese have possessed such a thought process since their earliest days. They were, and remain, “The Middle Kingdom” or “The Central Nation.” (In fairness, the Europeans have often thought of themselves as “The Middle Earth,” but they at least have the geography to back it up.)

Ok, I’m not a Europeanist, but has anyone not named J.R.R. Tolkien ever used the term “Middle Earth” when thinking of Europe?  And exactly what kind of maps do they use at this school to geographically “back up” Europe’s location in the middle of the earth?

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Scenes of ignorance getting taken down amuse you (as they do me).
2. Middle Earth, yeah!
3. Quotes like “answering questions and questioning answers” and “not letting students become too comfortable in certainties” resonate with you (as they should everyone).

China’s Dissidents Are Self-Serving Attention Whores

Okay, not quite, but Alice Liu from Asia Times Online (via CDT) brings some critical perspective to a lot of Chinese “digital dissidents” (many of whom actually live in China) that many bleeding-heart liberals champion are fond of championing. Her opinions, or the opinions she represents, may divide some of you with activist leanings:

So what drives him to be a citizen journalist? Does he care about the current political situation in China, or is it just means for self-promotion? Probably more of the latter. Zola has been accused by some of accepting money from his interviewees, which he does not deny, saying he needs to raise funds somehow.

Many bloggers from the “me generation” are just like Zola. They may appear rebellious, and committed to exposing scandals, but they do this mainly for self-satisfaction or fame. The majority of these bloggers are not politically adventurous, and most, like Zola, won’t criticize the communist authorities. In short, they are apolitical.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. As many have argued before, a person’s character and agenda can be just as important as what that person does or says. At the very least, it’ll help you better understand what they may really be doing or saying.
2. Wut?!? Zola is GOD! BLASPHEMER!

CCTV Embarrasses Itself Yet Again

In what may be a continuation of the last few weeks’ ongoing Green Dam debacle, CCTV ran a news piece pointing a big fat (burning?) CCTV finger at Google.cn for providing search results with links to “vulgar content” that is officially prohibited in China. They also featured an interview where some “university student” expounded on how online porn basically turned his classmate into a zombie. The fact that “vulgar content” is quite ubiquitous (sex sells…always) even in the supposedly “sanitized” Chinese internet was not lost upon the legions of Chinese (and foreign) netizens who quickly scratched their chins wondering why Google was singled out when Baidu is just as bad. A small human flesh search then also discovered that the “university student” CCTV featured was actually a CCTV employee. Ouch.

English-language blogs that covered aspects of this story included:

• GVO: CCTV’s propaganda campaign against Google.cn
• Danwei: State media blames Google for porn
• ESWN: CCTV vs Google.cn & <Focus Interview> Interviewed Its Own Intern
• chinaSMACK: Chinese Netizen Reactions To CCTV Attacking Google

The “university student’s”  famous last words:

I feel that the pornographic or obscene information on the Internet is particularly harmful.  The harm becomes especially big when it is linked by Google.  There is a fellow student of mine. He had been somewhat curious about this sort of thing.  So he visited pornographic websites and he ended up being very absent-minded for a while. Then the state began an anti-pornography campaign.  He did not go there for a while and he got better.  Then he found out that when he went through search engines such as Google.cn with many users, he could still reach these kinds of websites.  So he went back to visiting those many linked websites.  He suffered a relapse.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Hahahaha…
2. Hahaha…
3. Haha…
4. Ha.

More Ways To Get Around That Blasted GFW

Not a week goes by without Mr. Schokora getting a mention and yet again he gets one most deservedly. He should get a Adam Schokora corner or something. Oh wait, that’s his blog. Anyway, this week’s hella awesome “Friday 5″ post shares tips and tricks on how to circumvent China’s Net Nanny, that royal pain in the ass that stops you from visiting websites the Chinese censors don’t want you visiting. The entire post itself is rendered as an image instead of text, a common trick some bloggers use in hopes of evading text filters.

Adam, if you’re reading this, I’m waiting for your tweet asking me to update this post because you cleaned up this post by, I dunno, adding links via HTML image maps. That would cement your niubi status.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Knowledge is power.
2. Power is access.
3. Access is freedom.
4. Freedom is knowledge.

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

• Subway services on Line 10 were interrupted last night. Line 10 services did not only skip Jintai Xizhao, the closest station to the fire; all of Line 10 went out of action.

• Immediately following the fire, Xinhua sent this scary note to all mainland (PRC) media organizations:

All networks:

Regarding the “CCTV New North Side Building on Fire” report, all sites must use only the Xinhua news script. Do not post pictures, videos; do not report in depth; only post in Domestic (Chinese) news; close all posts and replies; do not put this as the “top topic”; do not place this in “Recommended Articles”.

• The talk of the day on Beijing streets was simple — the fire at the hotel late last night.

• Xinhua, oddly enough, ran a multi-part article on the fire early in the day (I got up at around 10:00, and this was pretty much one of the first sites I checked out). It seemed like that the censorship was gone.

• Last night, there was no attempt made whatsoever to mute the press or civilians. Police did not intervene when people snapped photos — even if cars were stopped halfway through the streets. They were only there (some in plain clothes) to get people across crossings — it seemed like they weren’t interested in harmonizing (censoring) coverage of the whole event.

• This very spooky picture (from a local / Chinese forum) made it onto the Web. No idea if it underwent a bit of Photoshopping or not. We can’t call this one fake, but it doesn’t immediately coax us that this was “real”.

• This made big news today on the Beijing Evening News:

Here’s a translation (more to come soon):

Fire In Nearby Television Culture Center Works Site in New CCTV Tower Site — Caused By Illegal Fireworks

Luo Yuan, the spokesman of the Beijing Municipal Fire Brigade, revealed this morning that causes for the fire last night at the Television Culture Center site have now initially been found out. Luo Yuan stated: “The fire was caused because workers inside the works site did not listen to police advising them against setting off fireworks in the site.”

As briefed, the building on fire is the Television Culture Center, which is split into a broadcast hall, a digitization room and the Mandarin Hotel, which are presently not in service and have not underwent fire brigade inspections. Fire brigade authorities investigations initially conclude that the fireworks that caused the fire was a Class A fireworks. Police were on hand to attempt to obstruct the fireworks from being set off, but attempts at obstruction failed.

A fire report was received by the fire brigade at 20:27. The Beijing 119 fire brigade instruction center quickly dispatched 27 fire brigade groups, 85 cars and 595 fire fighters to extinguish the fire. The Hongmiao fire brigade was the main responsible group and arrived first on the scene. The instructor, Zhang Jianyong, guided four fire fighters and entered the scene, and at the same time, looked for some security guards and the project manager trapped in the building.

In discovering the fire, fire fighters found the situation extremely complex; hence they went down from the 14th floor. At this time, smoke was all over the place, hampering visibility; movement was extremely encumbered. Upon arriving at the 8th floor, it was almost impossible to move. In the very end, three fire fighters reached the ground floor, but immediately lost contact with the outside world. Fire fighters which arrived subsequently immediately started rescue operations, and rescued fire fighters trapped in floors 1 to 8. Unfortunately, Zhang Jianyong died due to inhaling excess amounts of poisonous gas. During the rescue operations, 6 other fire fighters and one other works site personnel were also injured, apart from Zhang Jianyong.

As briefed by the fire brigade authorities, Zhang Jianyong, born February 26, 1979, was supposed to turn 30 this year. He became a firefighter in 1998 and was promoted in 2002. Prior to his death, his post was a deputy-post instructor. His wife presently works at a hospital. His parents live in Shenyang. This morning, both parents arrived in Beijing.

As briefed, the building on fire had 30 floors above ground and 30 floors underground, with a building area of 103,000 square meters. Investigations are still ongoing in the parts burnt. The fire caused serious damage to the outside of the building, with the western, southern, and eastern parts of the exterior burnt. Thanks to rescue efforts by the fire fighters, the fire did not spread to the northern exterior and did not damage the main structure.

Eyewitnesses stated that the fire first started from the upper parts of the building, which then spread quickly to the outside. Luo Yuan said that the fire was able to spread so quickly due to the material used in renovating the building. “This was a 30-storey building with a lot of wind on the top part of the building, thereby directly impacting the duration of the fire.” In addition, due to the fact that the building was as yet unfinished and had incomplete fire fighting devices, water guns proved to be ineffective even when used with a 98-meter raised ladder.

Right now, associated departments have already taken hold of fireworks which were not set off, and are continuing the investigation leading to the cause.

UPDATE 2/12: Apparently the photos were not from Sina editorial but from Pan Shiyi, Chairman of SOHO China.  Comment from Zach Herold, SOHO China:

These photos were taken by Mr. Pan Shiyi, Chairman of SOHO China, and posted on his Sina blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/panshiyi). They have nothing to do with Sina editorial. Thank you for giving proper credit to the source.  Zach Herold

I guess this is what happens when a brand new building is hit by Chinese New Year fireworks.

Photo source: Green67 Twitpic

Before CCTV, CNN, and others mainstream media roll into action, people on Twitter immediately started capturing news and information about a fire at the TVCC building within the CCTV complex and near the iconic Rem Koolhaas designed CCTV building in Beijing. More photos:

Source: Leondellee Twitpic

More information has been collected on this Google Doc (started by niubi)

More photos and links on the Google Doc.

Some photos on a Picasa album by Jason JS Wang.

Some pictures and video (Youku) on Netease:

Television Cultural Center: (TVCC)

Via 1rick on Twitter, here is more information about the Television Cultural Center. Apparently the nickname for this building is “The Termite’s Nest” (not the be confused with the Rem Koolhaas “Big Pants” or “Underpants” right next door).

Photo source: TVCC

Twitter broke this story (in English)

Niubi first tweeted about the fire around 8:30 pm Beijing time.

The news has been coming in non-stop via the hashtag #cctvfire (first suggested by BillGlover):

Update: See the rhetoric the day after

Live Update From Yours Truly

Just after 21:50, I set out to the fire at the new CCTV complex after taking a look at pictures of the fire via the Web. I took it first with a great deal of salt, but soon I was proven wrong.

I live just outside Chaoyangmen, so for me it was just a matter of getting onto Chaoyangmen Outer Street by car. This avenue goes straight to Big Pants, as it’s known (although this time, Big Boots, the TV Culture Center, got hit), but right at the Dongdaqiao crossing with Chaoyang North Road, cops were out to force roadblocks. Buses were the only four-wheelers being allowed through.

(I took these photos while driving — so sorry about the poor quality.)

The presence of the cops was felt in many places. Chaoyangmen Outer Avenue was fully locked from east of the Dongdaqiao crossing. Meanwhile, I had to reroute via Chaoyang North Road. Even here, cops prevented people from turning right onto the side road of the eastern 3rd Ring Road and getting any bit close. Cars that turned right anyway got blocked and had to go back. People leaned on their horns like mad.

I next went on a relatively “silent” back street — Jintai West Street. Unfortunately, at the crossing with Chaoyang Road, where we neared the fire, things got sort of out of control.

Eventually, I made it through the crossing and caught sight of the flame. It was pretty scary.

The flame was clearly visible from this pic. On an iPhone pic, it doesn’t appear particularly “huge”, but when you take into account that just about all of the building was on fire, dimensions change very quickly.

Folks were gathering around — quite a number had camera phones and all took shots of this event in the making.

Even at places afield, the flame was still very much visible.

I could not attempt to describe the feelings as the fire continued to burn away. The Chinese “love” (so to speak) to huddle around any kind of a “show”, so to speak. If a car flips over, you can be sure there’s a crowd. Traffic queues emerge because some car bumped into a huge truck. It’s therefore no surprise that traffic nearly ground to a standstill as folks were stopping and snapping away.

I had a movable window on the ceiling, so I parked the car and snapped away photos like mad. Everyone out there was snapping, and we had folks with video cameras. Locals and expats alike looked on. Folks were phoning their friends with the news and their whereabouts. Many reports poured in that Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road was bolted.

I next drove out to Guanghua Road (where this building lies near the bridge with the ring road), as well as on Zhenzhi Road, which is sort of a widened road through the eastern bit of the CBD. At the crossing here, the flame was clearly visible (and so were the masses).

Outside the CCTV works site, the flame was equally visible. Especially here, it stank really badly.

At this point, I neared Guanghua Bridge, which is where Guanghua Road meets the side road of the eastern 3rd Ring Road. Here, the lights turned red and the cops were in action. No cars passed on the ring road overpass above except for cop cars.

Folks that looked like either fire brigades or security guards wearing helms enforced order and blocked the northbound side road.

Pretty soon, a sign — oh the formalism! — or in fact, two signs, were put up. They simply read: “TRAFFIC CONTROL — ALL CARS REROUTE”. No cars, except for rescue ops, were allowed into the side road.

I next drove underneath the bridge and got the car parked just next to the Line 10 stop at Jintai Xizhao. Here, the flame was clearly visible — and so were the police blockades.

Heading back, parts of Chaoyangmen Outer Street were still very much blockaded by at least two police cars. It didn’t feel like a riot or a mad dash away from the CCTV complex, but you couldn’t say it wasn’t tense.

The Vox Populi

In no particular order, and uncensored and virtually unretouched, here are some views from this pretty tense night that shows you what we in the Jing think about all this:

• Tonight’s the last night you can set those firecrackers off. Officially you’re supposed to be detained if you set them off after midnight, so let’s roll — and set the thing up as much as we can.

• What? Big Pants? No, wait, Big Boot. That’s a lot of money wasted.

• Not a lot of folks liked the new CCTV complex anyway. It’s a total waste of cash and looks just outright weird.

• “Help! Help! Those two buildings are coming together and are being built slanted!” (That was what locals complained when work on the nearby Big Pants got underway in late 2006.)

• I think next year we’ll see the rules changed — firecrackers won’t be allowed in the city center any more as of 2010.

Update: See the rhetoric the day after

Frustrated Chinese complain that CCTV version failed to capture many of the exciting (and in some cases crucial) camera angles and Chinese announcers only managed to provide vacuous commentary. Meanwhile, the American commentators were able to go into great detail about the numerous traditional Chinese elements and symbols used throughout the intricately planned ceremony, displaying a much more complete knowledge of what was happening than in the Chinese version (granted, the delayed broadcasting of the ceremony by NBC gave the commentators time to do their homework). Some even go as far as to assert that Chinese will have to retract their accusations against foreign media for biased reporting since this time they presented China with such creativity and expertise that “even Americans are unable to find fault.”

Here are some of the more glaring faults (translated from original Chinese here)

1. The CCTV version is a confused jumble of close and far shots, but the NBC version captured all the action from every possible angle providing the big picture in a much more complete and exciting way.
2. During the reading of the Analects, NBC provides a shot of the top of the bird’s nest where there is both English and Chinese translation, which shows a consideration for visitors from other countries and welcomes them. The version shown in China does not provide any shots of this and you cannot even hear what is being read!
3. Later there is a shot of children painting with watercolors and then the sequence is over, but in the NBC version there is a close up shot of the whole canvas, allowing the viewers to see that the black circle is actually the adorable smiling face of the sun, complete with two blushing red cheeks, so cute.
4. During the modern China section, the Chinese version jumps straight to the astronauts very suddenly, only after watching the NBC version do we see the picture of the universe and night sky from where the astronauts drop down. And after the Olympic theme song is finished, the 2008 faces are not captured well in the Chinese version, but the NBC version takes it all in and finally in a moving sequence shows close ups of all the different smiling faces of the children from all over the world.
5. Chinese people were really confused by the “footage of legs,” only afterwards did we discover that in front of the blank canvas were plates full of pigment so that each time a person walked across it created a rainbow effect. This was captured very well in the foreign version, but wasn’t captured in the CCTV version.
6. In the Chinese version, when the athletes entered the stadium you could not see the signs held up for each at all, only after watching the later version did we discover that each sign had 3 languages written on them (French, English, and Chinese) and were written with our traditional Chinese brushwork.

Additional source states: “On August 9th, I spoke with a friend in the television industry and he said that the live broadcast of the opening ceremony was the responsibility of Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB). The BOB live broadcast was global, and many television stations around the world (including TVB) all used the BOB broadcast which was excellent. But CCTV held broadcasting rights in China and brought their own cameras and director, so the final broadcast in China included clips from both CCTV coverage and BOB coverage cut and broadcast simultaneously, ruining the overall effect. The odd collection of closeups on famous people and actors and leaders and the shaky video footage was all thanks to CCTV.” (Original source here)

Who to blame? A source says:”

I am really angry! No wonder I have this weird (disconnected) feeling in watching the opening. The answer is that a Swedish broadcast director ruined our 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony and Lao Mouzi’s (Yimou Zhang) talent.”

“NBC’s version is 1000 times better than CCTV’s, it shows the grand overview, super! But all our Chinese were watching a discounted gala.”

“So the broadcast director didn’t show us a real and extravagant opening. The director is a Swedish, not Chinese.”

真的很愤怒！！

怪不得看开幕式的时候感觉怪怪的！！！！

原来答案是这个 S B 瑞典导播毁了我们的2008奥运开幕式和老谋子的才华！！！！

美国NBC制作的奥运开幕式确实比垃圾瑞典导播的好千倍,展示的很全面很大气，超赞，而咱们自己中国人却看到的是打折的盛会，飚泪5555555~~~

所以这次导播的垃圾让我们完全没有真实的看到一个美轮美奂举世震惊的开幕式
导播是瑞典人，不是中国的

But so far, there is no official statement about the program director. Search “奥运会 导播” and you will see more stories.

To compare and contrast for yourself, download CCTV TVB version (3.26GB); BBC version (2.5GB); NBC version (4.92GB); CCTV version (Bittorrent)

The first section of this page is dedicated to Chinese resources. Good for overseas Chinese who want to hear Chinese commentary on their favorite events. The second section is for non-Chinese language. Feel free to add good resources for your language/country in the comments below thus more readers can view the video online.

Part I: Chinese Language

Bejing Olympic Games Official Website：

• www.beijing2008.cn

Online Live Video Stream Sites

• 　　 CCTV: http://2008.cctv.com/05/index.shtml
• 　　 Sohu 搜狐：http://info.2008.sohu.com/Live/
• 　　 Tencent 腾讯：http://2008.qq.com/live/
• 　　 Netease 网易：http://v.2008.163.com/
• 　　 Sina 新浪： http://2008.sina.com.cn/video/

Video Stream Application/Software (P2P) Live: (need to download and install software; may not be compatible with all browsers and operating systems)

• 　　 UUSEE 优视 网络电视下载:http://nj.newhua.com/soft/44708.htm
• 　　 风行网络电影:http://nj.newhua.com/soft/898.htm
• 　　 PPS网络电视: http://www.ppstream.com/download.html
• 　　 PPLive网络电视:http://www.skycn.com/soft/24106.html
• 　　 QQ视频播放器：http://tv.qq.com/download.htm

Olympic Games Schedules：

• 　　 http://2008.cctv.com/03/index.shtml
• 　　 http://info.2008.sohu.com/Schedule/

Thank Hanger08 for above list.

Part II Non-Chinese Language

Bejing Olympic Games Official Website

• http://en.beijing2008.cn/video/ (English)

Online Live Video Stream Sites:

• NBC: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/index.html (English, 2,200 hrs, up from 100 hrs in 2004, RWW reported.) Just enter zipcode and install Microsoft Silverlight plug-in. （US only)
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/beijing2008 (Available in more than 70 countries where exclusive rights have not been sold like India, South Korea, Iraq. See cNet report here.) How to get around Youtube regional filtering
• Eurosport: http://eurosport.yahoo.com/ (multiple languages, only available to certain regions outside of the US) Also has streaming audio coverage
• Eurovision: http://www.eurovision.net/ops/olympics.php (certain European Broadcasting Union (EBU) territories only)
• CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/livevideo (Canada only)
• BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/video_and_audio/default.stm (UK only)
• TerraTV: http://www.ar.terra.com/shared/pekin2008/ (based out of Argentina – Spanish – certain regions only)

More options are listed at the Wired How to Wiki:

• Watch Olympics. syndication of user generated feeds
• TV Tonic: download service similar to iTunes. But 32-bit Windows Vista compatible only
• Yahoo7: Australia official Olympics online portal including live streams
• Cox High Speed Internet: Cox customers can access the NBCOlympics content via a Cox portal