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Hospital Staff Kneels in Apology The doctor-patient relationship is a fraught one in China. Hospitals and doctors are often assumed to be either incompetent or on the take, and many people despair of receiving proper treatment unless they can scrape together money for a bribe. Several cases this month highlighted the adversarial nature of the relationship: a spate of attacks on doctors by patients on the one hand, and this video on the other. After the death of a patient from gastric perforation, the director of Baixin Hospital in Hengshan County, Shaanxi province ordered more than 40 doctors and nurses to kneel down and kowtow in apology to the patient's family. After this paike video (which has been viewed around 900,000 times to date, and widely copied and reposted) hit the internet, the director explained to reporters that the powerfully connected family had forced the hospital to apologize, as well as demanding that it pay RMB 3 million in compensation and close down operations for three months. A doctor at the hospital claims there is no evidence that the hospital or any of its employees were at fault in the man's death. |
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Women and Other Objects: The 2012 Beijing Auto Show As you may have heard from recent reports in overseas news media, there's a considerable amount of demand for luxury autos in Beijing. Last month's Beijing Auto Show highlighted the latest and greatest in conspicuous consumption by pairing fast cars with presumably fast women in spray-on outfits, as documented here by our intrepid paike. Not shown here, however, is Gan Lulu, a model whose clothing -- considered insufficient even by local standards -- earned sponsor BMW a scolding from authorities. | |
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What Do You MEAN, I Have to Wait Like Everybody Else? Before the 2008 Olympics, the government carpet-bombed Beijing with ads reminding people to form orderly queues and "be civil Beijingers." These worked reasonably well for a month or so, but no sooner had the Games concluded than the status quo ante resumed. In this bank security camera video, one man strikes a blow for civility and manners by stabbing a queue-jumper in the danged back. The wounded fellow, being a man of principle, completes his ATM transaction before stepping away from the machine and calling the police. |
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| Youkulest | |
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"Dorky White Guy" Carries the Day It's not uncommon for non-Chinese to become briefly internet-famous here for speaking a minimal amount of Chinese -- anybody remember Hong Laowai? Mercifully, the growing number of Chinese-speaking foreigners has meant that at this point, any second-language Chinese speaker is going to have to do something more than just speak. Mike Sui, a mixed-race Chinese-American, brings mad skillz to this video, entitled "Dorky Chinese-Speaking White Guy Plays 12 Parts," in which he plays twelve roles, each of them speaking English, Chinese, or Japanese with a different accent. Sui speaks English and Chinese natively, and does bang-on imitations of New York, Beijing, and Taiwanese accents as applied to both Chinese and English. The original video has been viewed nearly five million times as of this writing, and copies of the video have been widely shared and reposted across Chinese social media. For more on the video and netizens' reaction, see ChinaSMACK's coverage. |
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| Special: Micro Movies | |
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In March, Youku announced that it would kick off its "Beautiful 2012" campaign with four "micro movies" (wei dianying) from Kim Tae-yong, Tsai Ming-liang, Ann Hui, and Gu Changwei -- some of Asia's most renowned directors. These artistic, evocative micro movies have now all launched on Youku's platform, and have been selected for screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June and the Pusan International Film Festival in September. Tsai Ming-liang's "Walker," below, has also been chosen to screen at Cannes this month.As of this writing, the films and their trailers have been viewed a total of more than 12 million times. |
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"Walker," from Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, has been the runaway hit of Beautiful 2012 so far, receiving nearly 1.5 million views and more than 17,000 comments within two days of its April 26 debut -- a Youku record for audience engagement. Elsewhere on the Chinese internet, viewers have offered their own fan remix of "Walker" by running the film in fast-forward, transforming it into a three-minute short. |
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Set in Beijing, Gu Changwei's atmospheric, impressionistic "Longtou" tells the intertwining stories of a writer, an artist, a young girl, and a trash picker. Many commenters are chiming in to say that they don't get it; others see in the film echoes of recent events -- most notably writer Yan Lianke's recent "Year of the Stray Dog." |
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Kim Tae-yong: You Are More Than Beautiful
At the press conference following the screening of the micro movies at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, Kim Tae-yong predicted that "You Are More Than Beautiful" would outperform his 2010 film Late Autumn. He's off to a good start with nearly 2.6 million views to date. |
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Ann Hui: My Way
Hong Kong native Ann Hui tells the story of a middle-aged, conventionally successful businessman who has hidden from the world the fact that deep inside, he is really a woman. "My Way" debuted on Youku on April 12, and has since been viewed nearly 2 million times. |
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Youku will be presenting more micro movies from leading directors in the coming months, including 12 micro movies presented by Youku and Buick through the "Infinite Drive" campaign. |
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