| Video Pick of the Month |
 How to Land a Job in a Down MarketWe absolutely loved this video resumé from a young recent college graduate named Ma Wen. Inspired by HP's "Hands" commercials, this guy's video does a terrific job showing off his skills in video production, the area he was hoping to work in. It was viewed nearly a million times in less than a month, and as you would expect, it brought in a huge flood of inquiries and landed him a job very quickly. |
| Youkulest |
 Awesomeness on WheelsCheck out this and a whole slew of other amazing skating videos uploaded very recently from the 2009 Beijing Freestyle In-line Skating Open competition. The woman in this video is Meng Yun, and I think you'll agree she gets a 6 out of 6 (even if she does knock over a couple of those itty-bitty traffic cones). In the playlist linked above there are jaw-dropping performances by skaters from South Korea and Singapore as well as Chinese competitors. |
 Sidewalk Mona LisaSo maybe this isn't the most accurate likeness of Leonardo DaVinci's famous painting you'll ever have seen, I'll bet it's the best you've seen by a one-legged man rendered with chalk on a sidewalk. This street artist, a 50-year-old native of Shandong, drew this on the afternoon of April 26 in Wuhan, Hubei province. His leg was amputated when he was 16 due to a tumor, and since then he's lived by painting and begging. He says that in the last 10 years he's been to 20 Chinese provinces, and he's able to write in Chinese, English, German, French, Russian, Arabic, and Korean. |
| The Month's Most Viewed |
 Tomb-Sweeping Day in BeichuanThis month marks the one-year anniversary of the tragic Wenchuan Earthquake of May 12, 2008. From April 1 to April 4 of this year, in observance of Qingming (grave-sweeping day), officials in Beichuan removed restrictions on entering the hardest-hit areas to allow people to mourn family members killed in the quake. A citizen videographer (or paike) shot these touching scenes. Much of the town, as you can see, remains almost totally in ruins. The video has been viewed over a million times, receiving over 7,000 comments have been left, with over 97% of the nearly 13,000 people voting on the video giving it a thumbs-up. |
 Flowers of Fatherly RemembranceAnother video from the same paike who shot and uploaded the video above. After their father died in the earthquake, the 22-year-old woman featured in this video opened a flower store with her older sister to commemorate him. The young woman, a member of the Qiang minority nationality from Renjiaping in Beichuan, explains in the video how her father was a great lover of flowers and that she doesn't expect to make any money doing this; after all, they only sell chrysanthemums, and they the people of Beichuan are horribly impoverished. Something about this video seems to have touched many netizens, who've viewed the video nearly 1.3 million times in the first two weeks after it was uploaded and left more than 4400 comments. A year after the disaster, which took the lives of 100,000 people, catalyzing young Chinese across the country and bringing out their charitable impulses, the tragedy of the Wenchuan Quake and the nobility of so many of the survivors still have the power to move people. |
| Hot Topics |
 Jackie Chan: Chinese Need to be Controlled"I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic. I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want." After Jackie Chan said all these in a panel at the annual Boao Forum for Asia, he pushed himself into hot water on the Chinese web. During the talk show "Suggestions After Events" (马后炮) from TVS in Guangdong province, the host openly criticized Jackie Chan's statement, including "I only buy Japanese TV sets, because the made-in-China ones will explode," and dismisses his remarks as having come from an poorly-read entertainer. But then again, he also rattles off a litany of the "control" organs that impact our everyday lives in China, joking that they even "control" how we poop and pass gas. This talk show is praised as "the program with most social conscience" by Chinese netizens. Privately, many people agreed with some aspects of Chan's remarks, and anyone who's talked to Chinese people know that it's a common sentiment to suggest that because the suzhi--the "human quality"--of many Chinese remains low in the estimation of Chinese elites, any modicum of freedom could send the country spinning wildly out of control. Taiwan and Hong Kong netizens reacted to this with particular vehemence, as was to be expected. |
 A Cross-dressing Star Is BornOn April 12th, this boy (no mistake here!) uploaded his dance video to Youku. In the next week, with no “editors’ pick of the day” or anything, more than 300,000 people have watched this video clip and reposted it everywhere on the web. The boy was born on May 25th 1985. He called himself “o♂Kitty♂o” (o♂猫猫♂o), which is doubtless girly in Chinese too. His favorite food is “any kind of sweet things” and here’s a video showing how he talks in front of a webcam in daily life. Somehow, his dancing style seems way too bold for Chinese netizens to accept - plenty of "puking" emoticons could be found on every page in the comment area. |
| Viral Ad In Bad Taste of the Month |
 Intel's Mega-Tetris ViralWe really thought this was one of the best of the many excellent viral videos that Intel has done for China. This one's great if you're a big fan of Tetris, or a fan of big Tetris. This video was done for the Core 2 Duo processor, and is part of its campaign titled “If You’re Going to Play, Play Big” (玩，就玩大的). |
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