From the China Rises blog by Tim Johnson (via HaoHao)

Here is what you don’t see in China: You don’t see enraged passengers reaching across airline counters and shaking fingers at quivering airline employees. You don’t see people drinking way too much on flights and making scenes. In other words, you don’t see behavior that goes beyond boorish to the realms of freakish and even dangerous.

In China, I never look around and hope there’s an air marshal nearby.

I got an email from a reader in Massachusetts recently voicing surprise at the lack of road rage in China. It’s true. There’s plenty of muttering among drivers, and an occasional shout. But I never see drivers, pedestrians or cyclists really lose it. Just about everywhere else outside of Asia, I’ve seen that.

First things first, in China I have seen an enraged passenger of an airline yell at an airline employee at a check in counter, step up onto the conveyor belt that pulls luggage into the the metal detector and pick up and slam on the floor some piece of machinery from the desk (possibly the credit card swiper?). I have seen people screaming at each other from their cars, and was in a cab for an epic shouting match between a man on a bike and our female cab driver. Of course, these incidents are relatively rare, and Tim Johnson’s not seeing it and my witnessing of it proves nothing. But that is my point; to say that there is no road rage in China is a ridiculous statement for many reasons. He cites no studies, articles, or other opinion pieces that support his findings. Johnson also makes no attempt to explain his theory, or to give reason as to why there is this lack of the phenomenon.

However, my own personal experiences, my discussions with others, articles I have read (Road Rage, Chinese Style), and even the comments for that post on his blog directly contradict his point that these public outbursts of anger are non existent. I find China Rises to generally be a good blog, but this post just seemed so wrong I needed to address it.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Across the street from 静安寺, Jingan Temple, in Shanghai. I am not sure why these statues are there, as they don’t seem to have anything to do with Buddhism or the Email Plaza that is behind them.

Popularity: 22% [?]

A sign on the campus of Nanjing Normal University

This sign caught my attention mostly because of the small cartoon that accompanies the message. I cropped the area in question below:

My first impression is that it the blue figure is a ninja fighting two bad guys, but this is obviously not the case on a government sponsored notice. The large characters at the top are an idiom, 见义勇为 （jian4yi4yong3wei2), meaning “To act bravely for a just cause” or “Never hesitate to do what is right”. My translation for the section to the right of the illustration:

Victims who come into contact with violent criminals such as murderers, robbers, rapist, kidnappers and other people who are harmful to public safety should practice self defense.

So the blue guy is really you, stabbing the criminal on the left and punching the other guy in the face after they tried to steal your sack of 100 Yuan notes. That is some good self-defense!

Popularity: 36% [?]

Before I begin, a brief definition of cosplay for those who are not aware of it. This is from Akime’s Anime World:

Costume Play; either the act of dressing up as favorite characters, particularly at a convention, or a sort of amateur theater in which fans in costume reenact scenes from anime, almost always at conventions.

Cosplay is used to refer to both the act of reenacting scenes from anime dressed as the characters and the act of dressing up with no theater involved. The word is an Americanization of a Japanization of Costume Play; that phrase was adopted by the Japanese and shortened into Cosu-purei, which has been readopted into English as Cosplay (both versions have the same meaning).

These people can also dress up as video game characters, and I think that is still considered cosplay. I don’t know, it all seems weird and kind of scarey to me. For weeks now there have been signs all over Nanjing advertising the 2007 China Joy Cosplay convention. I wasn’t aware that people weren’t into this here in China until I saw a group getting dressed up in a McDonald’s. Apparently it is quite popular. So yesterday, the first day off the May week long holiday, we took the long hot trip to the cultural center downtown. It was overall disappointing, mainly because of the small number of people that were dressed up and the high entrance fee, 30 RMB per person. There were probably a total of 30 people in costume, a really small number for a cosplay convention. Here are some of the more hardcore enthusiasts, pictures by Jenn.

I am not sure what MMORPG they were supposed to be from, but they were terrifying.

Popularity: 30% [?]

By popular request, more cat pictures that are making the rounds on the internet

Although I don’t know how you could ever get enough mana to cast CATTANK.

Related RedKemp:
Cats Seen on December 20th, 2006
Cats!
Ping Pong Lessons Day 1

Popularity: 100% [?]

Popularity: 30% [?]

From a now defunct website, and, in my opinion, one of the best photoshops I have ever done.

Popularity: 25% [?]

At the Beijing Natural History Museum, meaning this is an old picture that I totally forgot to post. I felt sorry for the little guy. He was so stubby.

Popularity: 23% [?]

“Welcome to the International Symposium of Crust-Mantle Evolution and Mineralization”. At Nanjing University.

Popularity: 22% [?]

While we were staying in Wenxi for Spring Festival we went to a newly rebuilt to tower that overlooks the yellow river. And by rebuilt I mean that nothing remains of the original. So while very nice and clean, the whole thing was totally fabricated. But apparently a famous poet (not Li Bai, who apparently wrote a poem about every damn thing in China except this tower) had stood at the top of the tower and writing a poem about the river. Anyway, the most impressive thing was that there was an ostrich farm right next to the tower grounds. And you could walk right up to the fence and check it out. Which we did.

Ostrichs are huge! Taller then I am (6′1″). Notice that the male has black feathers and the female gray feathers. This is important for the rest of the story. The male started to follow around the female in the usual mating bird style, only to catch her directly in front of us, maybe a foot away. This quickly went from “Oh my god this is hilarious” to “Oh my god I’m going to die” as another male came over and challenged the mounting one. They both stood up to their full height, maybe 7 feet, and beat their wings and made this crazy “Angry Ostrich Sound!” The female ran away at this time with both wings spread out, and I am sure thinking in here little ostrich head “Noooooooooooooooo”. As you can see in the picture above the fence is maybe two bamboo poles, not really something I would trust to hold back two crazed males enraged with mating hormones. Someone later stated it was at this time that i ran away like a little girl, but I think it was a sensible retreat.

Popularity: 27% [?]