China This Week: Batteries Not Included

China This Week, April 16-22, 2016

Want to know about the hottest trending topics in China, you won’t see on TV or newspapers? Follow the weekly updates from U.S.-China Perception Monitor, “China This Week”. We are providing you with the most talked-about topics, most interesting points and must-know information of Chinese culture and society.

1 Not street legal

This week, a shirtless street vendor in China’s Henan Province grabbed national attention when he was filmed yelling and swearing at an urban management officer.

The street vendor was caught setting up shop illegally (lacking the proper permits). Here he is looking suspiciously like a guineafowl puffer fish trying to scare off predators.

Chinese urban management officers have had the bad reputation of police violence and brutality. However, in the video, this officer was very calm while the street vendor who set up a shop illegally by the street was swearing at the officer and threatening him with a knife.

“Not all cops are bad”, said a netizen.

2 We all need somebody to lean on

In Hangzhou, a deaf-mute pregnant woman was giving birth to a child while the nurse behind her wrote 4 pages of words to encourage and console her.

Some of the motivational lines include: “He is a boy! He cries really loud!” ”Do you feel any discomfort? It is almost over.” ”Congratulations! You are really brave!” ”Let’s go back to the ward!”

The nurse, named Wang Yan, said “both she and her husband are deaf-mute. Giving birth is hard for normal women, and even harder and scarier for her.” “I am just doing my best to make her feel she is not alone.”

The mother cried in tears with happiness.

3 Shut yo’ mouth…(we can dig it)

This is popular Chinese internet star Papi Jiang. She has achieved a lot of popularity for her online videos which feature her distinctive profanity-filled monologues.

Wait a minute…

Jiang’s videos are popular with China’s internet users and they have even begun to turn up a happy profit through advertisements. However, she has also run into a few roadblocks, as the Chinese government took down her videos from Chinese video-streaming website. Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported that her videos were pulled for “their use of expletives, citing regulators as saying they must be cut before the videos could be reposted.”

“Shawn Eng” who commented on an article of the incident on the Wall Street Journal put it like this:

“The Party is like a bitter old woman who knows she doesn’t have many days left, so she curses at children on the playground. You try to find best and brightest for your cadres but only the grifters apply. You try to inspire them to rise to the occasion and then the jealous and treacherous knock them down. You buy the expensive Western clothes, the wine, the artwork but you deny the Chinese people the deep well of the heart from which creativity springs. People like Papi are censored not because she is subversive, but because someone high up realized their lives have been wasted for a lost cause, that there is another world outside full of sunshine, that doesn’t care about the 52 Mandatory Edicts of Proper Vegetable Cooking. How does it feel? All your life, your family told you that you were the best singer in the world but now when you are on the stage of the Karaoke bar, the crowd throws garbage at you. So do you keep singing? Do you attack the crowd? Force them to applaud?”

4 Instant Karma’s gonna get you

A Buddhist temple outside of Beijing is making Buddhism much more accessible to tech-minded people with this:

Meet Xian’er a 60-cm (2-foot) tall robot that resembles a cartoon, novice monk in yellow robes with a shaven head, holding a touch screen on his chest. Longquan temple developed the robot monk to chant Buddhist mantras, move via voice command, and hold a simple conversation. Master Xianfan, the inventor of Xian’er said “Buddhism filled a gap for people in a fast-changing, smart-phone dominated society.”

Xian’er is intended to satisfy the needs of many people in a time and society so centered around smartphones and technology.

However, despite catching the interest of many on social media, Xian’er spends most of his days sitting on a shelf in an office in the Longquan temple.

Xian’er is sure to help people reach spiritual realization through his accessible user-interface system.

By AARON WALAYAT compiled by YAO SUN on USCNPM