任是无情也动人

So as a matter of curiosity I was googling for slash references in Chinese history, and I stumbled on this link.

乾隆x和珅
...
Remembers 《宰相刘罗锅》
...
*is ded*

More articles...
中国古代同性恋排行 - Lots of examples from Han; a bit from Song, Ming, Qing. Surprisingly little from Tang, despite the fact that it was a really sexually liberal dynasty...
历史上哪个朝代盛行男风
古代中国为什么要盛行“男风” - Article in last comment.
古代“男风” - Seems to mostly concentrate on pre-Tang

http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/SanFrancisco/32644365.html

Yes we all know that Journey to the West is a political commentary. So no big surprises on the numbers here. It's still some interesting info. And gotta admire the JttW geeks who took the time to compile it all.

Looking for a good video quality download of 国庆宴会 w/o having to bt it myself. *hinthint*

Also want mp3 versions of the new songs...
eg. http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTIyNTY4MTU2.html

复兴之路 Menu (need something that can stitch mp4's together)

复兴之路 04 曙色 (彭丽媛)
毛阿敏 呼唤 复兴之路
宋祖英 大漠深处 复兴之路
歌曲《走向复兴》指挥：李玉宁 复兴之路

link to cashew's reviews

Background:
赤壁 (Chi Bi) is supposed to be a remake of the famous battle in the middle of the Three Kingdoms period. I heard from somewhere that it's one of the most expensive movies produced in China to date - although, it's hard to tell where all that money went. The director claims that he was trying to move away from the ROTK standards and stereotypes that was set by the classic novel of the Ming Dynasty and the original TV series, and instead be more faithful to the historical documents on the era. Unfortunately, his attempts seem to have failed.

Overall Impression:
In my opinion, Chi Bi is the Chinese equivalent of Troy. A purposeful maligning of classical stories and history with modern "reinterpretations" and Hollywood flash-over-substance. And worse still, it's apparently only the first movie in a duology or even trilogy (cuz I certainly can't imagine them being able to finish the story in just 1 more movie given the pace the storyline is moving). The characters and characterizations have been modernized and "humanized" to their detriment, and have lost many of the qualities that made these characters into cultural heroes in the first place. In the end, the movie leaves the audience (as long as they are not ignorant of Chinese culture and history) with the impression that the Chinese filmmakers have sacrificed their own cultural heritage in order to make a film through the eyes of the modern western world on one of the most famous times of Chinese history. And that is just sad.

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The good: I have the opening to the Special Olympics. About 1.5GB in size. HD quality. CCTV version. The show was pretty good. :D

The bad: Don't read some of the news on the post-Olympics drama. It just makes you want to slap someone.

Saw the closing live on CCTV5 at 5 in the morning. It wasn't as grand as the opening, leaving me with just a little feeling of "虎头蛇尾". Then again, I realize that the opening may have been far too tough an act to really follow up on, maybe.

OR, on thinking deeper, if the opening ceremony is mainly focused on the long history of China to this momentous day/era/etc, and the closing ceremony is supposed to mainly reflect modern day Chinese society... then... well, it's sadly accurate. Culturally, we seem to have left the best of our artistic (performing, musical, artistry, etc.) talents somewhere in the Tang and Ming dynasties. =_=;

OK, maybe that's a little harsh. But the mish-mash of pop stars yelling at the top of their lungs at the end, not to mention Jacky Chan's appearance (he's so adorable up there *wibbles*), is a rather good portrayal of today's "common day life" in China.

At any rate, at 8:30 I watched NBC version. Once again, they cut out a lot of parts for commercials and did some of the songs at the end out of order. Also, I have no idea where they parked their camera crew, cuz the acoustics was so bad that sound for the various pop songs at the end sounded like it came from a cell phone recording.

BUT! The biggest difference is the commentary that was droning on in the background. They actually remained silent during some parts (such as the human-flame-tower bit) instead of making up random "meanings" like they did the opening. And that wasn't the most shocking change! There were no more politically charged comments that drove me into contemplating violence across the TV screen! No more badmouthing China while watching the performance!

I dunno, maybe the last 2 weeks of hospitality in China given to these reporters was as good an influence as the Chinese government undoubtedly hoped for. Or maybe they were too embarrassed to badmouth the country after the final gold count became clear. Or maybe NBC is too happy rolling in the $ and ratings it's been getting to think bad thoughts of the conspirator that made it all possible. Whatever it was, let's see how long it lasts. (Certainly didn't last for long on the internet news, that's all I can say.)

Overall, what do you know?

8:08 8-8-08 was China's lucky moment after all. ^_^

PS: Anyone help me figure out if Yahoo news even has a place where it archives old articles?

Written by an Associated Press journalist. Covers mainly the day to day stuff in Beijing rather than Olympics oriented. Looks like it's being updated daily. I found it hilarious.

linky

Note that the most recent entries are added at the top. So it may seem disjointed if you try reading it top to bottom instead of bottom to top.

I love the bit about getting his haircut from some overpass volunteer guard. "...I asked him, mainly through gestures, to do me." *snicker*

And the bit about Chinese men liking to roll up their shirts in the heat. (My dad does that at home sometimes too... -_-)

EDIT: HAHAHA! This one is hilarious too. Poor hockey teams and their mismatched undies. BWAHAHA.

Holy cow...

I just happened to be watching while it happened on CCTV 5. The Chinese contestant Qiu Jian wasn't doing so great in the beginning which left him playing catchup most of the last couple shots. Even the commentators didn't think he'd get anywhere since they were barely mentioning him.

But by the last shot, he was just .1 points behind the Ukrainian guy in 2nd place. At first was Emmons from the USA, who had been pulling steady shots of above 9.8 the entire time. He was 3 whole points ahead of 2nd place and the commentators said all he'd need was a 8 pointer to keep the gold.

At the last shot, Qiu Jian and the other guy shot first, Qiu Jian pulled ahead by .2 to surpass the then 2nd place. Everyone thought we'd gotten silver and that was pretty good.

Then, Emmons shot last... and completely flubbed a 4.4. The commentators spazzed out. The closeup of the stands showed complete jaw drops. There was a moment of complete disbelief in the entire stadium before it erupted.

Emmons dropped from first to fourth place. Ouch. (EDIT: Just read the yahoo article on this. Turns out last Olympics, Emmons also was in the lead until he flubbed the last shot. Except last time he shot the wrong target completely and this time he "at least" made fourth. He must REALLY hate the world right now.)

Was this was the last marksmanship match of the games? If so, it makes for a very interesting counterpoint to the results of the first one...

EDIT2:
In other news, Li Na is up against Russia for women's tennis singles for the bronze. (It's "live" right now on NBC website and the score is 3-3 games of the first set.) The match for gold/silver are between two Russians too. So if Li Na doesn't make it then we get to see Russia sweep all 3 medals for that one. o_O

The other hot match is upcoming semifinals for beach volleyball between China and USA... And not just cuz I think our girls are hot when they jump around in red bikinis. ^_~

EDIT3:
And what's up with women's windsurfing? Yahoo just put a gold medal symbol next to Jian Yin's name but the gold medal count/total medal count haven't incremented.

Nastia Luikin got gold and Shawn Johnson got silver. Yang Yilin made bronze. Jiang Yuyuan unfortunately got off to a bad start and didn't make the ranks.

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EDIT: In other news, yesterday China's Li Na beat USA's Venus Williams in tennis (won 2 sets straight with 7-5) and got into the semifinals. *cheers*

It's no surprise that the western news services will find any excuse to nitpick anything with the Beijing Olympics.

And then you gotta wonder. "If that was faked, then what is this? Hallucination? Conspiracy?" *rolleyes*

According to yahoo's news entry, NBC withholding live Olympic events from west coast viewers - it's not enough that NBC is only broadcasting SOME events "live", as well as liberally cutting time out of said broadcasts to fit in commercials, those events will only be "live" for the East Coast. *stabs* I especially love the 3000+ replies echoing disgust at NBC's broken promises, incompetence, and general stupidity.

Here's some other news entries from Silicon Valley Insider - NBC Olympics: We Don't Care If You Hate Us, You're Watching USA-China Basketball On Tape Delay, NBC Lawyers In Panic Mode, Scrambling To Stamp Out Internet Olympics Feeds, Olympic Committee Outraged About USA Fans Watching Live Online, Sends Takedown Notices.

On a more helpful front, here's two more articles from SVI - How To Watch The Beijing Olympics LIVE On The Web -- Even If NBC Doesn't Want You To, YouTube At The Olympics: Exclusive Video You Can't Watch

Disclaimer: I feel extreme dislike for NBC and what it stands for right now. Some comments might have bashing be biased. Caveat lector.

ADD: Just learned from the net that Canada was in the same boat as the US. Some station bought all the broadcast rights and enforced its monopoly in the same draconic way as NBC.

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In summary: CCTV version is 200% better.

Starts at 8/8/08 8:08 PM Being time. Which is 5:08 AM here. Which means I've been up since an unholy hour of morning to watch it live over SopCast. With its itty bitty screen. *sigh*

*stabs NBC* Freaking greedy, censoring, capitalist pigs.

( Random initial responses... )

EDIT to add:
linky w/ pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdVBb08HZg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhDoJNN6Ndw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAukz--Ms6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s4zg2O9qiE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nycxfRdvt-E

To ADD:
<<春江花月夜>> is the song I want.

Right, because China is so evil for enforcing censorship on their interwebs, so much that Washington called in google, yahoo, and Microsoft and yelled at them for helping the "commies" and told them to go write up a set of internet anti-censorship standards. So explain to me why NBC is responsible for causing IP filters to block people from outside China from watching the Olympics (international event, no less) on webcast? Because censorship in the name of politics is evil and censorship in the name of greed is A-OK, amirite?

*breathes*

On slightly happier topic, add http://www.yourglobaltv.com/china/ to the list of possible (remaining) webcast sources.

I tried to filter out the ones from the official album.

Part 1/2: http://www.savefile.com/files/1713277
Part 2/2: http://www.savefile.com/files/1713310

Because China is one big MMO farming community, amirite?

WOW Welcomes You

EDIT:

Also, more panda pics

Not sure if we're going to be able to get the special channel for the Olympics. (And how stupid is that to dedicate a channel to an international event that's not, y'know, easily available internationally? *rolleyes*)

So, anyone know of a website/place where I would be able to watch the opening, preferably "live" or close to it, online?

EDIT: ref http://cashew.insanejournal.com/1285489.html

一醉方休...

Album here

OK, so some of the pics and albums are a little racy, and some of the pics look like cosplay. But still, there are some pretty ones.

Also, there are other albums on the side, some of which contain powder art.

^^

Anywhere where I can find the full list of all songs featured on the show?

http://www.changxiangaoyun.com/paiming/

Attempting to download...

宋祖英 - 送你一朵东方茉莉

安德烈·波切利 张靓颖 - 拥抱爱的梦想

周杰伦 - 千山万水

周华健 - 圣火传奇

孙楠 - 在这里

腾格尔 - 世界吹来奥林匹克风

徐千雅 - 万山之巅

郭蓉 - 荣光

BTW, which was the Olympics song by 刘和刚 and somebody else?

Well I asked my co-workers in Australia but no luck. However I did come across a subtitled version on youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A0721BAF21807BE3

Not sure if it's the same one.

Also see another version on veoh but it appears to be a HK version.

Le sigh. Well, guess will try saving the youtube ones first.