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If you follow either Apple, the Chinese tech scene or Chinese Internet buzz, you've probably heard of ''iPhone girl''. A British man reportedly discovered several photos of this young lady, apparently a quality-assurance inspector at contract manufacturer Foxconn, on his newly purchased iPhone 3G. Reportedly the girl's photos were taken by her ...

Imagethief likes the Mid-Autumn Festival. I like it because even though it actually comes in late summer, it reminds me of autumn, and autumn is famously the nicest time of year in Beijing. In any year devoid of Olympic rigging, late summer in Beijing is intolerably hot, muggy and polluted. This year it was merely hot. Over the years many people ...

Today a colleague sent Imagethief a link to an interesting article from the UAE-based newspaper The National about one of the very small group of foreigners who came to China before or during the Communist Revolution and have stayed ever since. The article, a couple of weeks old but still worth a read, chronicles the life of Mr. Sidney Shapiro, an ...

Imagethief, being an arrogant son of a bitch and a bona-fide member of the Ivory Tower Elite, is seldom interested in what the common man has to say. Nothing gets me to change the channel faster than an ''iReport'' segment on CNN, or the BBC equivalent. Of course, most professional pundits are equally useless, so in a sense, my contempt is ...

Snark goeth before the eating of a generous helping of crow. I owe Beijing an apology. On Thursday and Friday I lamented the return of Beijing's air pollution to what I assumed was status quo ante. But yesterday was one of those days --of which Beijing gets a mere handful each year-- that make you realize how time here erodes your standards for ...

Via Boing Boing, Ethan Persoff's website of political and counterculture cartoons (and other interesting things) has an excellent gallery of 35 late '50s and early '60s Chinese political cartoons. Unfortunately the cartoons are not translated, but the images generally speak for themselves. If you're interested in Chinese propaganda art or Cold War ...

Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality. In the space of about 36 hours the skies have transformed from the Olympic blue we all got perhaps ...

Black and White Cat compares an August 10th New York Times article on Beijing's preparation for the Olympics with a heavily ''improved'' version run in translation in the Beijing Evening News (with attribution). The Cat creatively shows the omissions and additions together: Visitors to the Olympics, however, can be forgiven for thinking are ...

Xinhua headlines from the last 36 hours, almost all of which came to me in one Google news alert:Swiss media praise Beijing Olympic Games World leaders, media praise Beijing OlympicsU.S. media praises ''truly exceptional'' Beijing Olympics  Iranian media hails Beijing Olympics as great success Foreign leaders hail successful Beijing ...

Those who live in Beijing and commute on the subway will know that bags are now X-rayed on the way into the station. The security is already fairly porous in several ways. For instance, they only seem to cover one of three entrances at the station by my office. However, as I was heading home last night, I spotted a particularly Olympic-themed ...