Hua Shao stands knee-deep in water at the edge of the sea, behind a table piled high with large crabs. The famous Chinese TV host is sweaty, sunburnt and laughing with a co-host as a red-and-blue fishing boat bobs behind them. “The sea-ears taste so good, it must have been collected from a sea area where the water is very clear,” he tells more than 100,000 people who are watching online. It’s the eve of “618”, one of China’s biggest retail festivals, which are increasingly driven by the weird world…
Day: June 18, 2022
The Complex Nationalism of China’s Gen-Z
Advertisement China’s Gen-Z (defined loosely as individuals born after 1996) tends to be associated with images of ferocious, vocal, and unyieldingly nationalistic supporters of the country and regime. In his incisive ethnography of China’s youth in the aftermath of the late 1980s era of brief political liberalization and contentious politics, Alec Ash remarks that “the newest Chinese youth, born in the 2000s, are also different, formed by a stronger and more nationalistic China” – though Ash caveats that “the diversity is still there.” Renowned IR expert and intellectual Yan Xuetong…
A Chinese Telescope Did Not Find an Alien Signal. The Search Continues.
It was a project that launched a thousand interstellar dreams. Fifty years ago, NASA published a fat, 253-page book titled, “Project Cyclops.” It summarized the results of a NASA workshop on how to detect alien civilizations. What was needed, the assembled group of astronomers, engineers and biologists concluded, was Cyclops, a vast array of radio telescopes with as many as a thousand 100-meter-diameter antennas. At the time, the project would have cost $10 billion. It could, the astronomers said, detect alien signals from as far away as 1,000 light-years. The…
Smoke clouds Shanghai as chemical plant fire leaves at least one dead
At least one person was killed in a large fire at a Shanghai chemical plant that shot clouds of smoke across the city on Saturday, state media reported. The fire at a Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co plant in outlying Jinshan district broke out around 4am but was brought under control later that morning, according to state news agency Xinhua. “The fire at the scene has been effectively brought under control and protective burning is currently being carried out,” Xinhua said. “According to our initial understanding, the fire has already caused…