A Chinese Story Too

The forbidden public toilets of Beijing

By Justin Rowlatt

BBC News

The journalists' rule of thumb in China is that you cannot report the so-called three Ts - Tiananmen, Taiwan or Tibet. But it turns out there is also another T that upsets Chinese censors.

Jeff Sun is the scion of one of China's new rich and the founder of the "China Super Car Club". He has got so many he cannot even remember them all.

With a bit of head scratching he can list the two Lamborghinis, the two Ferraris, the Audi R8 and the Maserati. But then there is a long pause before his face suddenly lights up.

"Ah yes," he says, "and the Bentley".

We met Jeff while reporting on the yawning chasms of inequality that have opened up in Chinese society.

We filmed in some of the poorest communities I have ever visited - Chinese villages where no-one has ever owned a car and where they still till their fields using a single donkey, shared between dozens of farmers.

China still claims to be a communist society and has a fearsome reputation for censorship, so why was it happy for us to do this? 

The answer says a lot about both China's ambitions and the challenges the country faces.

A couple of years ago I made another series, this one about China's great expansion into the world over the last decade.

I had not expected the Beijing government to like the films. We met some very sympathetic Chinese people but we showed the corruption and brutality of others.

Yet, shortly after the programmes were broadcast, I received an email from a senior official at the Chinese embassy inviting me to tea at a London hotel. It said the Embassy had liked my programmes.

In the genteel grandeur of the hotel the embassy official told me why.

"We thought you were fair," she said. "You showed the Chinese people as they are."

She took a sip of tea from the bone china cup and told me the rest of the world seemed to think that the Chinese did not have the same hopes, fears and ambitions as everyone else.

"They believe China is a threat to other nations. We want people to understand they do not need to be afraid of us," she said.

My guess is we were allowed to explore the eye-watering inequities in Chinese society because the government reckoned that on balance we would again, present a sympathetic picture of Chinese people.

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A Chinese Story

Hantu Laut

That was 20 years ago when Chinese illegal immigrants from China risked their lives at the hands of human smugglers to sail to the United States to find a better life. 

America, the "Land Of Opportunity" attracted all kind of immigrants, legal and illegal.

Today, Chinese from China will not risk their lives to go to the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. The doors are opened for them to leave the country as and when they wish. They have now become the world's largest tourism with money to throw.

In my travel to various countries in Europe and Asia the past two years I have never failed to bump into Chinese tourists, from the big city to the smallest town, they were every where. From Paris, Milan to Kathmandu, they were there.

China has come a long way to come out of the hovel it was and is now the second largest economy in the world after the United States.

I was first in Beijing in 1985 and was in Beijing again a month ago, the transformation was nothing less than spectacular. It's a miracle in motion and China will continue to gleam economically and would overtake the U.S. in the next decade.

With all the modernisation, gleaming skyscrapers and high street shoppings in the cities, there was a forgotten and neglected niche similar to Malaysia, the public toilets stink to high heaven!

Read the irony of U.S. immigration law below.

"A Path out of purgatory" 

Pinoy Babel Incorporated

Hantu Laut

Accident can happen when we least expect it and nothing we can do to stop it.

I always have reservations about flying in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, Laos and countries where air safety standard takes a back seat.

The Philippines had more than fair share of disasters, natural and man-made. 

From God's furies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and seasonal typhoons to man-made maritime and aviation disasters and not forgetting the restive provinces in the south where killings and murders hardly bat an eye.

If you think the Titanic was the worst peacetime maritime disaster, it was, but not anymore.

The worst commercial maritime disaster in history happened in the Philippines. The collision, ensuing fire and eventual sinking of the "MV Dona Paz" in 1987 dwarfed the death toll on the Titanic. The death toll of the Dona Paz was estimated at 4,375 people.

The tragedy was caused by human greed. 

The Dona Paz was formally the "Himeyuri Maru" built in 1963 and plied the Japanese waters and had passenger capacity of 608 people. It was later sold to Sulpicio Lines in the Philippines in 1975 and used as inter-island ferry.

A ferry with 608-passenger capacity carried more than 4,000 passengers? A mind-boggling feat of sheer greed bordering insanity. Thousands of names were not on the ship's manifest and official investigation also revealed only one apprentice member of the crew was monitoring the bridge when the accident occurred, other officers were either drinking beer or watching television and the captain watching movie on his video player.

The Philippines has a long list of inter-island maritime disasters and Filipinos are one of the most indiscipline people in Asia.They have no time for rules and regulations.

Air and sea travel are still considered the safest mode of transport, but accident do happen and can happen when you least expect it and more often than not in countries where people have no respect for rules and regulations.

Cebu Pacific crash landing exemplifies a shambolic air transport system

The crash landing Sunday of a Cebu Pacific domestic flight in Davao City in the Philippines exposed a long series of disasters after the flight veered off the runway and ended up nose-down in a ditch.

More than 160 passengers of Cebu Pacific Flight 5J 971 escaped unharmed after the plane came to a stop, although passengers charged that the evacuation procedure was such a mess that if the plane had caught fire, disaster would have ensued. All flights into and out of the Davao airport were cancelled.

That was only the start of the passengers' problems, with the travel chaos spilling over to the next day as they were bused 170 km to another airport where crowds waited for hours to be processed. The plane was still stranded yesterday, making Davao City's runway inaccessible to incoming and outgoing flights. Read more.

The Cocksure Cocksucker !

Hantu Laut

He is the most amusing and at the same the most disgusting schemer in the whole PKR outfit that might have put to shame the real Goebbels.

If you don't know who the real Joseph Goebbels is. Here he is!

Rafizi thinks a video showing a Bangla, the correct term is Bengali (there is yonks old confusion in this country of calling Sikhs and Pakistani (West) as Bengalis) holding his inked thumb and saying he is not Malaysian is strong evidence of cheating in the13th GE by BN. Here, the story.

Who is he trying to kid?

Below is another allegation of vote rigging, which sounds as hollow as the 40,000 Bengalis voting in the 13th GE, an incredulous story of logistical nightmare to fly them in all the way from Dhaka to KL. 




Most people know (unless you are bozo like him) with today's technology you can do almost anything with photos and videos. Though, videos are more difficult to doctor but easiest to stage. As they say nothing is impossible, it's miracle that takes time. Every week this court jester will come up with new evidence of frauds by BN.

Rafizi can get one of his Malaysian Indian friends to act as a Bengali and claimed he is from Bangladesh. What so difficult about that. Even my 5 years old grandson can shoot the video for him. All he has to do is get the actor.

Morons will believe him.

Why should the EC investigate such incredulous claims. It is not their job to investigate. If a crime had been committed the right avenue is the police and the court of law.

We have sufficient law to take care of election offences. Go to court to seek justice there, if you think you had been had. The streets, the stadiums and the huge rallies are not going to render justice, it can only be the tinder box, which is what Anwar wanted, I guess!

Someone told me he is a prodigy of some kind, but I think he is a bit screwed in the head. From his body language and his grins you know he is a man ,either, in love with himself or suffering from "siege mentality", the same sickness afflicting Anwar that makes him delusional, a persecution complex that is an acute irrational fear that other people are plotting one's downfall and that they are responsible for one's failures.

Let me ask this young and bright Melayu boy about Anwar's  sex video, which Anwar denied it was him and claimed the video was faked, though, the man in the video is a spitting image of him, does he think the video is pukka, the real stuff ?

If Anwar's video is faked, can we not also say Rafizi's video is also faked? 

In every game there should be fair play and level playing field. You can't win all the time. If you claim your video is genuine than Anwar's sex video must be the same.....pukka!

Whatever happened to Anwar's double, who was apparently apprehended by Malaysian Immigration and deported to Thailand. Another lie .There never was his double. That was another pre-election red herring to fool the people.

In spite of the fact that the experts confirmed the sex video is not faked, Anwar and every Pakatan leaders staged a wayang for the court of public opinion and the Malaysian public are sold..... log, stock and barrel.

Liars!