Abe afterwards visited the nearby Unit 731 Canteen for a light lunch

TOKYO (China Daily Show) – Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last defended his unusual decision to pose next to a gruesome new World War II mural, while grinning broadly and flicking multiple ‘V’ signs.

The recently unveiled mural, which depicts in painstaking detail the massacre of a platoon of Chinese soldiers surrendering to a marauding troop of Japanese war criminals in Manchuria, is likely to cause offense in China.

But the right-wing leader, currently riding high in the polls, said he was the victim of a misunderstanding.

“I am of the view that visiting this mural, which enshrines the souls of those who fought in the service of their country, is just the same as popping to 7-Eleven to buy a bottle of sake,” Abe later told a journalist.

“This is really no different from what other world leaders do,” Abe said, referencing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s undocumented pilgrimage last year to a Nazi shrine and former US President George W. Bush’s non-existent weekend retreat at a former cotton plantation in Mississippi, during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Abe said that the Japanese government had done everything it could to acknowledge previous war crimes, and the media was not reporting the full story.

“I have said before we’re, you know, sorry about some of the stuff we did,” said Abe. “How many more times do I have to say we’re, you know, sorry?”

How exactly one should define the term ‘sorry’ was another matter entirely, Abe added.

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Lieutenant Dashan of the Foreign Expert Squad poses for action, as a territorial slap-fight ensues

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – The first season of CSI’s much-anticipated ‘Shanghai’ spin-off has been cancelled, after scriptwriters failed to take into account the East Coast city’s complete absence of crime.

Plotlines involving corruption, sexual harassment and high-end ergotou were shelved after quality-control cadres for the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT)  cited an “insufficient suspension of disbelief” for viewers.

The news comes as a blow to fans, who had been hoping for a forensic examination of the infamous metropolis’s seedy underbelly. 

Instead, producers were forced to admit that it doesn’t exist.

Initially, expectations for the China-based crime drama had been high.

A pilot – featuring an arrogant British businessman foolishly attempting to molest a female kung-fu student – won high praise from critics and viewers alike.

“This is essential viewing for young, unemployed men. The exciting plot confronts a serious and very important criminal trend in China today,” wrote the People’s Daily TV critic. “Foreign criminals.”

“I liked the bit where she kicks the foreigner hard in the groin and runs into the arms of a nearby CSI inspector for comfort,” said CSI fan Ma Jingguo, 17. “That was particularly satisfying and realistic.”

The detectives at CSI: Shanghai prepare to investigate a high-level wok theft

Yet SARFT officials later lambasted producers, after details of the second episode – in which a city official forces a subordinate to dine at a Japanese restaurant with him – were leaked on an online BBS forum.

According to an internal SARFT memo, “The opening scene depicts the cadre leaving his duties to answer a personal phone call. He is then shortly after seen at a lunch banquet, drinking a light alcoholic beverage and encouraging his companions to do likewise.

“To depict top leaders’ behavior in such an unrealistic manner is hurtful to the image of the Party and offends the feelings of the Chinese audience,” the memo concluded with quiet fury.

It is believed that angry censors did not even bother viewing the next scene, in which the same Shanghai official sodomizes an unconscious male prostitute, before choking on his own vomit. 

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The Red Cross website assures Chinese donors that their money is good here

LUSHAN (China Daily Show) – The Red Cross has pledged to investigate, after a sum of money intended to line the pockets of the charity’s managers instead made its way into the hands of a needy child orphaned by the recent Sichuan earthquake.

Twelve-year-old Li Meng lost both parents in the April quake, and faces a perilous struggle ahead.

Weeping as he handled the small sum, believed to be around 800 yuan, Li said he was “so, so grateful” for the money but “mystified” as to how he had received it.

Red Cross Society executive vice president Zhao Baige said the funds may have been misdirected from a manager’s bank account, and admitted the scandal-riven society faces a long struggle ahead to reorganize its accounting.

“I will personally resign if we don’t receive enough funding to allow me to peacefully retire within the next few years,” Zhao vowed yesterday.

Zhao also urged the orphan to return some of the cash, saying, “Don’t be selfish, kid – spread a little of the love around.”

In a bid to combat the Red Cross’s battered reputation, Zhao has announced plans to completely rebrand China’s Red Cross as a cash-guzzling tool of charitable corruption, adding: “We can do this.”

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Police are seeking a man who may or may not resemble – or, at least, look somewhat like – this shifty-looking character, pictured in front of a shit-ton of knives

URUMQI (China Daily Show) – Police are seeking ‘dark-skinned males’ in connection with events in Xinjiang, state media announced yesterday.

“Anyone in the Xinjiang region whose skin is darker than, let’s say, a mild yellow?” police chief Li Baixing said, “should be asking themselves some pretty searching questions over the next few weeks. We certainly will be.”

Speaking gruffly, clutching a cigarette and wearing a pair of horn-rimmed sunglasses, Chief Li said his officers were already scouring the streets of Urumqi, performing random searches and vigorously questioning any dark-skinned males they saw.

“Rest assured, no dark-skinned, curly-haired male can expect to get away with these crimes,” Li assured.

“We’re asking all dark-skinned males to turn themselves in at their nearest police station and confess to these attacks as soon as they possibly can.”

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Kenny G (left) meets a fellow jazz fan in this undated photo

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Zhang Li can still remember the first time he heard a Kenny G record.

The 34-year-old was walking past an upmarket duck-neck boutique when he caught the opening strains of ‘Songbird,’ the classic third single from the 56-year-old’s American saxophonist’s breakthrough studio album, Duotones (1986).

“It was flat. Uninspiring, almost,” Zhang recalls. “I have been a lifelong fan ever since.”

Now, every time Zhang wants to catch some Kenny, all he has to do is slip on an overcoat and pop down to his nearest department store.

“It’s great. They play all the classics – all the time!” Zhang enthuses, his foot tapping to the sophisticated weavings of ‘By the Time This Night Is Over.’

 “They put the Greatest Hits on a loop, so you never get tired of listening.”

To some extent, the story of Kenny G’s success here mirrors the progress of Western rock n’ roll music in China.

Originally arriving in a wax-sealed container, illicitly floated across the Shenzhen River by Hong Kong human-right activists, the first dakou (‘saw cut’) CD of G Force, 1983’s astonishingly insipid second album, hit China in 1992.

It was swiftly bootlegged, spreading like wildfire around the hip industrial-punk neighbourhoods of Foshan, Guangdong province. Suddenly, Kenny G was big in China – a full decade after he first electrified Western youth.

The announcement, therefore, by Alan Clancy – Vice-President of Operations (Asia Pacific) at Time Warner – that sales, downloads and licensed usage of Kenny G’s popular alto-saxophone ballads have reached their strongest-ever throughout the first quarter of this year should come as no surprise.

While the star of the Seattle-bred saxophonist has somewhat dimmed in the US since the demise of smooth-jazz radio, in the East it burns as bright as ever. This is due, in no small part, to licensing agreements with several major Chinese supermarkets to play the exact same song, all day.

“Kenny’s dulcet tones have long serenaded Chinese listeners during their final moments of shopping, and can be expected to continue blandly ringing in their ears for many more decades of development,” Clancy stated during the call.

Listeners throughout China have grown so accustomed to the transcendently bittersweet stylings of ‘Going Home’ that most shoppers can expect to hear its languorous saxophone arpeggio roughly 4,876 times during their lifetime.

“It feels like every time I hear this song, I’m taken to a different place,” said Jinkelong regular Sun Demin. “One moment, I’m in a hand-made canoe, paddling slowly towards a log cabin on a frosty winter’s morn, there to spend the afternoon wistfully looking through old sepia photographs.

“The next, I’m hustling over to Kitchen Goods before they turn off the escalators. It’s a song to savor.”

Kenny G was recently inducted into Beijing’s ‘Great Hall of the Moderately Prosperous Western Musical Success,’ alongside all surviving members of The Carpenters and the cast of It’s a Chipmunks Christmas.

Asked to explain the abiding popularity of Kenny G in China, long-time fan Zhang observed: “I think people just basically like listening to the same song over and over again.”

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Red Rock: soft-rock hits in China

‘Take It Easy’: Sixty-two-year-old school caretaker Peng Damen, who tearfully describes himself as “a child of the Sixties,” says he loves the 1972 Eagles hit precisely because it doesn’t remind him of 1972. “At the same time that record peaked at Number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, I was very much not taking it easy: doing back-breaking gardening at a collective in Yunnan, instead of finishing off my law degree at Peking University!” chuckles Peng of his hippie-farmer days in the Cultural Revolution. “Kicking back and listening to The Eagles, I can forget all about my formative years and just enjoy the moment, man.”

‘Yesterday Once More’: “The lyrics perfectly encapsulate everything that is truthful about the progress of a moderately prosperous developing society,” says shopper Sun Demin of the Carpenters’ classic. “La-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. You see?”

‘My heart will go on’:  One of the most popular Western pop hits of all time in China, Celine Dion’s theme song from Titanic endures just as much as the lyrics. “Whenever I hear this song, I too wish I was onboard a doomed ocean liner,” agrees IT worker Pi Zhang.

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Zhao: says he doesn’t even get SPAM anymore

KAIFENG (China Daily Show) – In the remote village of Huyang, Henan, chicken farmer Zhao Chunlu is starting to feel even more isolated than usual.

“It started about a month ago,” says Zhao. “All of a sudden, the weekly telegrams stopped coming. My pager stopped beeping. And the mountainous road to my chicken farm was flooded by persons unknown.”

With no TV, one book – a guide to chicken farming, written in the 1920s – and only an iffy dial-up connection, Zhao normally relies on occasional mahjong games with a nearby hermit to stay connected.

But even the hermit has stopped making the two-hour journey by horseback to shoot the breeze.

Alone in his yard, Zhao gazes thoughtfully at a pristine biohazard warning, hanging from a nearby tree.

“You know, I really get the impression that people are now avoiding me for some reason,” he admits.

“Maybe it’s something I did?” he continues. “I mean, I got drunk at a dinner a few weeks back and said a few things. But I assumed everyone else was blind drunk too, and wouldn’t remember.”

Avian flu has come to this secluded Henan village – the first visitor in months. In the past week, the only callers at Chen’s backwoods farm have been the migratory birds that carry the virus.

Conscious of his work-life balance, Zhao says he washes four times a day to get rid of the omnipresent smell of chickens.

“You don’t smell chickens, do you? If I smell of chickens, say something,” Zhao pleads. “I don’t want people to stop visiting because they don’t like the smell of chickens.”

At these words, Zhao directs a loving gaze at the hens pecking by his feet.

“Well, looks like it’s just me and the birds now. But that’s how I like it,” he declares. “They won’t abandon me… and I won’t abandon them.

“Unless, of course, they contract some kind of airborne virus – then I’ll cut their throats and dump them in the nearest river.”

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The sight that greeted NYT staff Thursday

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – It was a day of mourning at the China offices of the New York Times today, after its ace reporter Chase Ketterman was discovered buried alive beneath a gigantic mound of paperwork.

The paper’s redoubtable 47-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning Shanghai bureau chief had reportedly been spending long hours at night, tracking down information pertaining to possible tax loopholes enjoyed by the family members of Premier Li Keqiang.

However, it seems Ketterman’s obsessional pursuit of documentary evidence proving possible financial chicanery by Chinese leaders had grown out of control, even by Times standards.

The fatal stack of papers is said to have included tax records, spooling faxes, share certificates, old news clippings, public documents, probate letters, bus tickets, business cards, taxi receipts, restaurant fapiao, jotted notes on paper napkins, random doodles, school textbooks, a hardback edition of The Complete Speeches of Zhu Rongji (Volume 6: 1982-87), several copies of the last will and testament of Jiang Zemin, and a stack of empty pizza boxes.

There is no question of any fiscal impropriety involving Premier Li, the Times admitted.

“We didn’t want to give false hope to the family by saying that he was found buried alive,” Sanlitun police chief Zhao Bing later explained at a press conference. “But technically, Ketterman was buried alive,’ inasmuch as he was dead when we later found him.”

A crusader for the truth, NYT assistant Mai Huang has some important news she must tell Ketterman’s wife

Forensic tests suggest that Ketterman’s dogged pursuit of the mile-long paper trail became a one-way ticket to tragedy at around 11pm Monday, when the veteran journalist reached for a folder of redacted tax returns from underneath a squashed carton of stale baozi, and triggered an avalanche of accounting.

“When I came into the office, Chase was up to his eyeballs in incriminating clerical documents and had asphyxiated on half a steamed bun,” sobbed impressionable 22-year-old news assistant Mai Huang (pictured, left) who found the body.

“Do you think I should tell his wife about us now?”

His family has announced that they intend to respect Ketterman’s wishes by not disturbing his papery grave.

“At the moment, we’re simply going to leave him there, as per his will’s precise instructions in case of emergency,” a family spokesman said. “It’s how he would’ve wanted to go.”

Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Institute in the US has already expressed an interest in purchasing the mausoleum.

The museum issued a statement saying that the Shanghai-based tomb was a “historical landmark of journalism,” remarking that, “there can be no greater legacy for any Times reporter… than to have his final resting place marked by a vast heap of dry reading material.”

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The Smithsonian has eagerly released plans for the proposed Ketterman mausoleum

This two-headed fish is worried about the high number of dead pigs in the water

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – In what some are describing as “the final straw,” nearly half-a-million still-living fish have been pulled from a stretch of river that runs through Shanghai.

The fishy find follows reports of up to 16,000 dead pigs, 1,000 dead ducks and hundreds of human corpses being pulled from China’s waterways.

“That’s messed-up, man,” said one Shanghai resident. “What is with all those live fish? I mean, the river’s full of floating dead pigs, for gosh’s sake! How the hell can those fish still be alive?”

“I wouldn’t eat a dead fish from that river, let alone a live one,” commented local mortician Ding Jing, 43. “Give me a fresh monkey anytime.”

“What’s next – algae?” demanded one sickened student.

Government officials have told worried Shanghainese that the discovery of still-living animals in the Huangpu River is no cause for alarm. “The water quality hasn’t changed: it’s still completely fucked,” one expert reassured.

But not everyone was convinced.

“There’s something definitely wrong with the water, and with those live fish,” said a talking fish yesterday, adding that it “just wanted to live a normal life” along with the rest of its two-headed friends in the Huangpu River.

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All Wen has to do now is change the youngest Wang’s nappy and then she gets a five-minute lunch break

BEIJING – Fifty-two-year old Sichuan native Wen Qian completed a hard day’s working holiday by walking her employer’s two Schnauzer dogs and sweeping his ancestral tomb.

April 4 in China is Qing Ming, or Tomb Sweeping Day, a national holiday in which families gather to pay respects to their forebears by offering tributes and cleaning their final resting places – but for Wen, it’s just another day, another dollar.

“When I sweep a tomb, I sweep a tomb… and I swept that tomb but good. That’s how I roll,” said Wen, mopping her brow from the exertion. “It’s in my resume.”

After returning to the apartment of her employees, the wealthy Wang family, Wen dropped off Oscar and Butch, their two dogs, grabbed a broom – and hit the cemetery.

Here, Wen offered totemic dispensation to the Wang family’s vague and unspecified traditional gods by burning paper money, car, apartment and iPhone 5.

Wen then further observed ancient Chinese feudal custom by taking out her broom and thoroughly sweeping every last inch of the area surrounding the Wangs’ cremated familial remains.

“I got back just in time to cook supper,” admitted a breathless Wen.

“It’s all part of the endless service,” she added. “I re-gift mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival and often take Mr Wang’s place in the antediluvian Dragon Boat rowing team of which he is a founder member.”

Wen says taking care of her employers’ filial obligations is simply another duty in her infinite roster.

“All ayis make dumplings for Chinese New Year. But I light fireworks, perform skits, sing patriotic songs and put the kids in the bath.” But Wen says she has to draw the line at some things.

“I absolutely will not visit their parents again for Spring Festival. Not after last time.”

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Ja, the T-shirt has a double entendre

This is small step forward: It means you are slowly getting your memory back. I encourage this. It is just as we discussed last week – though, you must understand,  this therapy will take many, many, many years.