| Video Pick of the Month |
 Mad for Shark FinIn this video, a very emotional woman from Hong Kong repeatedly shrieks, "I want to eat shark fin!" (我要食鱼翅!), interspersed with complaints like "There are so many fish in the sea, how can you not have any shark fin?!" and "Did you hide the shark fins?," all in Cantonese. The only response she gets from the boss is “the shark fins have been sold out today.” At the end the video turns out to be a viral video produced for 2009 - The International Year Of The Shark. Fishing for shark fin is of course widely regarded as an environmentally unsound practice, and there are many perfectly good substitutes that don’t involve overfishing of an important part of the ecosystem just to lop off its dorsal fin. |
| Youkulest |
 Who Needs an Elevator?Don't try this at home, even if this kid at the Guangzhou Agricultural University makes scrambling up seven stories in just 29 seconds look fairly easy in this video his buddies shot and uploaded on March 22. I liked the homage to Ozzy with the "Crazy Train" riff at the beginning of the video. |
 Parkour in da HouseNo time to hit the gym? Exercise at home like this guy does. This is some pretty impressive Parkour in some very confined quarters. If you're into Parkour or its related sport, free running, check out Adam Schokora's excellent collection of Parkour videos from around China here . |
| The Month's Most Viewed |
 A Bank Robbery Video Leaked after Six YearsThis video recorded an armed robbery at a branch of the China Construction Bank in Kunming, Yunnan province, which took place on February 26th, 2003. The robber opened fire in the business hall, killing one and wounding three. The robber held his fire observing the environment for a while, and took out his gun when he saw the bundles of money in the blue satchel. Tragically, the 24-year-old lady in the center of the video died soon after the video ends. "Finally it's out there! When I was working for China Constrction Bank in Kunming, every branch has a copy of this video, which was confidential," a commenter said on Youku. If Internet video websites had been around six years ago, the secret videotape wouldn't have been kept secret for so long. |
 Behind the MagicA Youku user who looks very shy, very (deliberately?) amateurish, and very shanzhai uploaded a video which revealed the secrets behind some mind-blowing magic tricks performed by Liu Qian, the fabulous Taiwanese magician. While some magic tricks heavily rely on the magicians’ superior misdirection and manipulation skills, some other tricks simply work through gimmicks. The objects used in the magic tricks which you can see in the above video are modified in some way to guarantee a successful outcome. After watching this video, you may find it’s not that difficult to play David Copperfield in front of your colleagues, if only you know where to buy the right props. A new magic-tricks-revealed video by the same guy can be seen here . |
| Hot Topics |
 Is it so f@#king difficult to dial 110?A security camera in Xuexiang Village, Shenzhen has captured an insanely terrible scene: in the 15 minutes after a six-year-old boy took a terrible fall from a high residential a building, not one passerby bothered to make an emergency call on his behalf. Some people even turned back to check if the boy was still alive, but all of them just walked away indifferently as though nothing had happened. Steven says that in his childhood, his parents and teachers always told him, "If you find a wallet on the street, hand it to the police." But now, Chinese children have been well taught: “If you find a wallet on the street, just walk away. It's a trap!" And almost everyone naturally assumes every beggar or anyone who asks for help on the street is a swindler. Now you know how cold today’s Chinese society can be. |
 A Principled Stand: Don’t Pay For HeadNaturally it wasn’t going to take long before Cai Mingchao, the mystery man who’s become a hero to many patriotic Chinese, would be celebrated in song. With accompanying video. This is titled “I’m Not Paying” (就不付你钱）and it comes to us courtesy of H.O.T Video Studio (H.O.T视频工作室). Read a rhyming translation of the lyrics here . Cai Mingchao, as you may already know, was the anonymous bidder who won the Christie’s auction of the bronze rabbit and the rat heads so infamously pried off a Jesuit-designed fountain by Anglo-French forces during the looting of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing in 1860. Cai bid a whopping 14 million euros for each piece before famously refusing to pay for them. He certainly made his point, though I don’t know what this does for China’s chances of actually recovering the pieces. |
| Viral Ad In Bad Taste of the Month |
 Electrolux Sucks for Making Light of SuicideThis viral video ad for Electrolux vacuum cleaners has a local reporter presenting “live coverage” of a jumper, with emergency services rushing around on the ground. The desperate man finally leaps from the edge of a building, but he doesn’t hit the ground. There have been many controversial ads that have made light of suicide, raising quite a bit of resistance and prompting apologies in Western markets. This clip, produced by Lowe China evidently didn’t engender any backlash when it was first released in June 2006. Chinese don’t tend of course to be quite as sensitive to these things. |
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