By WO KOU
Sovereignty Correspondent

‘Look – there’s a diplomat. Let’s have a rational debate!’

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Across Chinese cities, thousands poured into the streets yesterday to express a diverse range of considered musings concerning the controversial issues raised over a quintet of uninhabited islands in the South China Seas.

The Diaoyu Islands, currently claimed by Japan and China, as well as Taiwan, have become the recent subject of a heated political dispute.

Today, concerned protestors around China used a sensitive anniversary to publicly call for delicate diplomacy and plead for measures to prevent the clumsily-handled dispute from escalating into a potentially devastating confrontation.

Thought-provoking banners were in abundance, many proclaiming prudent slogans such as “Remember the tragic 1931-1945 war! End all violence, seek diplomatic solutions” and “We condemn the provocative actions of the right-wing Tokyo nationalists but urge the Chinese government to seek a bilateral solution,” as crowds called for a tactful end to the immature stand-off.

“It’s about peace and free love, man,” smiled one long-haired citizen, waving a sign playfully urging fellow citizens to “Fuck the Japanese.”

“We will not stand for any more bullying!” insisted another poster; its owner, Beijing shopkeeper Lao Ping, 52, explained he was sickened by the recent acts of cowardly violence and looting committed against foreign-owned businesses.

Many placards bore the images of incumbent leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, as well as President-in-waiting Xi Jinping, because, as one demonstrator explained, “they’re the ones who are supposed to be in charge of defusing this mess.”

Tomorrow, millions of Chinese plan to march to their local libraries, in order to research the thorny, unresolved historical issues surrounding the partially submerged outcrop and seek more informed opinions.

“But at the end of the day, they’re just rocks,” shrugged one.

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By WO KOU
Sovereignty Correspondent

Aggrieved at Japan’s clear flouting of international maritime law, four-year-old Li locked himself in his bedroom yesterday and wept

SHENZHEN (China Daily Show) – The parents of plucky toddler Li Beibei say he’ll be showing his patriotism the only way he knows how this week: by refusing to eat raw fish.

As demonstrations against the Japanese nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands spread across China, young Li spent much of his weekend angrily playing Playstation 3.

Incensed by what he sees as Japan’s violation of China’s sovereignty, the plucky four year old began his sushi boycott on Sunday.

“Please, Daddy, I don’t like that stuff,” Li protested, his heart burning for the motherland and nose wrinkling at a plate of uncooked seabass, wasabi and raw, dripping mackerel, wielded by his 46-year-old father.

Little Li’s distaste for Japan’s national cuisine demonstrates an unflinching support of the motherland, his parents claim.

“Look how much he cares about ancient sovereign territory,” beamed proud mother Mrs Zang, watching her four-year-old son begin to wail and cry as his father thrust a live, wriggling squid – dripping with soy sauce – into Li’s mouth. “That’ll show the dogs.”

“The boy’s hatred of sushi will certainly foment and harden into a rational loathing of the Japanese nation,” grunted Mr Li, as he later dangled a glistening slice of sashimi in front of his terrified son. “Just give it a few more hours.”

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By SHA DUI
South China Seas Correspondent

The islands are an increasingly popular holiday destination for rabidly nationalist tour groups

DIAOYU ISLANDS (China Daily Show) – A Japanese man puzzled by recent unexplained activity on his island chain was surprised to discover a Chinese woman living there without his permission, police said yesterday.

The woman was found in her pajamas on a beachhead of the Senkaku Islands – known as the Diaoyu in China – four of which are owned by a Japanese private citizen.

“She was clearly kitted out for an extended stay: she had several Chinese flags, a compass, an 1892 maritime map, blankets, everything,” said a spokesman.

Police said they also found 12 empty packets of instant noodles nearby, indicating the woman had been there several hours already.

“We think she moved in this morning,” the spokesman said. “She told us she intended to reclaim the land for her motherland, then get some sleep.”

The woman – identified as 27-year-old student He Ting – was discovered living on the northernmost point of the island, sheltering under a rock shelf five metres from the southernmost point.

“The woman told us that she could not afford an apartment in Beijing, and that living on an uninhabited rock in the middle of the ocean was much the same as living outside the Fifth Ring Road,” said Yashimoto Kawashira of the Japanese Coast Guard.

“She was logging onto Facebook when we found her.”

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By HUI JIA
Hurt Feelings Correspondent

Stateside Jeremy Lin fans are seen to urgently lack PRC flags

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – As “Linsanity” continues to sweep both sides of the Pacific, an increasingly heated territorial dispute concerning the “rights” to Jeremy Lin has embroiled China, the US and Taiwan.

Lin, point guard for the New York Knicks, became an overnight sensation after scoring 25 points and leading the Knicks to victory against the New Jersey Nets on February 4.

Only hours after Lin’s astonishing performance, a top military panel – known as the People’s Liberation Army General Assembly Guarding against Americanism, or PLA-GAGA – met in a secret bunker outside Beijing.

Six hours later, a confidential memo was issued, asserting Lin was now ancient Chinese property. Within days, a team of experts had compiled the appropriate response: a well-worded editorial, published on Xinhua, offering Lin the Holy Grail of Chinese citizenship.

“We’re not the Americans. We don’t shoot first and ask questions later,” a source revealed. “We ask questions – then start shooting.”

Beijing suspects the star player is being held at an undisclosed Las Vegas location. A source told China Daily Show that Lin is under constant guard by US agents disguised as cheerleaders.

Yesterday morning, a special session of the United Nations Security Council saw Chinese and US delegates lock horns over exploration rights to Lin, with the Chinese representative at one point removing his slip-on loafer and banging it on the table, screaming, “We will bury you!”

Meanwhile, the British – completely in the dark as to who Jeremy Lin was, and why he mattered – are being urgently briefed on the matter.

Today, the unsightly turf war threatens to go public, as each side offer their own version of events.

Taiwan’s government has waded into the debate, claiming the breakout star belongs to Taipei. “He’s the child of Taiwanese immigrants. A pure-blooded son of our glorious island,” diplomat Ch’en Ch’ing-Chiew told reporters. “We have plans to name a food street after him. It’s a done deal.”

The US State Department responded with its own soft power in the form of an attractive Times Square advert, lushly directed by Tom Hanks.

“Why, hush my mouth… ol’ Jeremy’s as American as apple pie,” actress Kathy Bates coos over alternating scenes of a shirtless Lin draped with an American flag and footage of steaming, fresh-baked pies at a small-town Fourth of July parade. “If some no-good railroad-buildin’ varmints want him, why, they are welcome to come on over ‘n’ try!”

With reports that Lin, a devout Christian, has been in talks with religious organizations aimed at securing citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, the controversy shows no sign of abating.

Analysts suggest the tough US stance could be in response to the Bush administration’s unpopular decision to cede sovereignty over Jackie Chan to China. The deal was struck in 2007, in exchange for mutual assurances that Chan wouldn’t make another Rush Hour.

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By HUI JIA
Foreign Correspondent

Thakrat Samranpong, sole populant of Shadui, pictured in the newly founded provincial capital

SHADUI (China Daily Show) – A castaway on an obscure South China Seas deserted island has become the subject of a fierce nationality dispute, after vast deposits of rare minerals were uncovered in nearby waters.

Thakrat Samranpong is the only recorded inhabitant of the island of Shadui, several hundred miles off the south coast of Vietnam. The island is claimed by China, however, as well as every other nation within swimming distance.

Samranpong, 51, a former commodities trader from Bangkok who was stranded on Shadui after his yacht capsized during a solo fishing trip in 2005, has subsisted on raw shellfish and plant roots after Thai authorities failed to mount a rescue operation.

He was officially declared dead in Thailand in March 2006 and offered Chinese citizenship Saturday.

A China Citizenship Reclamation and Rescue (CCRR) patrol boat arrived after a three-day voyage to Samranpong’s island home where CCRR representatives sat down with the man Beijing is already calling the “newest addition to China’s diverse minority ethnicities.”

Over a state banquet of raw crab and palm root – samples of which are now being promoted in government canteens as typical Shadui culinary heritage – Chinese officials proposed to make Samranpong a Chinese citizen.

“He was dubious at first,” admitted Sanranpong’s legal representative, Ma Zhou. “After all, he would be the first person in the world to ever actually request Chinese citizenship. But after they offered him a meal, bed and a hot shower, he signed all the releases.”

China has now appealed to the UN to acknowledge the “now-populated” nation of Shadui as its sovereign territory and is already busy promoting Shadui’s intangible cultural heritage.

New additions to the minorities exhibition of the National Museum of China – the  largest and most heavily censored museum in history – have been ordered by officials. The media this week was granted a sneak preview of forthcoming Shadui exhibits, which include Samranpong’s non-functioning mobile telephone, a single cuff link and a rock formerly used to smash crabs.

Samranpong is also due to appear in a hastily scheduled TV gala being arranged to mark the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival. He will perform a medley of songs and skits used to entertain himself during his lonely six-year vigil.

Artist's impression of typical Shadui daily life, customs and traditions

“The honor of singing and dancing for the benefit of viewers is cherished by our minority peoples,” said a Ministry of Entertainment spokesman. “China embraces our newest brother and all his mineral deposits close to the motherland’s bosom.”

The diplomatic initiative has left other nations scrambling in the dust. Vietnam’s coastline is technically much closer than China to Shadui and officials there are said to be furious at this latest intervention in the disputed waters.

“You can’t argue that the teeming, newly-liberated masses of Shadui is due his rights as a Chinese citizen,” said Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman Yang Jiechi. “These islands are populated by a Chinese citizen. Other nations must relinquish their claims immediately.”

Samranpong himself, whose language has reportedly devolved through long isolation into a series of grunts and Thai, was unreachable for comment.

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By XING CHOUWEN
Entertainment Correspondent

The ending of the ban is good news for both pornographers and fishermen

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Servers crashed and internet connections slowed to a crawl yesterday, after Japan ended its recent ban on Chinese exports of specialist pornography, in what is being seen as a diplomatic gesture of seasonal goodwill.

But the move, part of a thawing of diplomatic relations after an unsteady few months, left millions still without proper access, as Internet providers buckled under the strain of the sudden pornfall. Some users were this morning being told that “holiday hand-relief” was effectively canceled until after Chinese New Year.

Senior Chinese ministers were last night demanding to know who was responsible for the lack of preparation, which they said embarrassed China and left it looking like a “developing country, like Vietnam or Great Britain or something.”

Lack of access to porn is seen as a major potential cause of social instability in China. In November, Japanese officials blocked all exports of so-called “rare” pornography as part of a tit-for-tat controversy between the two nations over a sovereignty dispute in the Diaoyu – or Senkaku –  Islands.

Japan, fondly known  in China as “Nipporn”, has long specialized in such erotic exports but the November ban left to an upsurge in fake or shanzhai product, which many described as lacking the production skill and high cinematography values of the real thing.

User Yao Ten, 23, downloaded a copy of Calamari Co-eds 5 only to find it was an inferior Chinese knock-off.  “I found myself watching a group of Shandong women awkwardly rubbing each other with dead eels. A total turn-off,” Yao told China Daily Show.

Since the prohibition was lifted, schools and universities across the country have reported widespread truancy, which is expected to last well into late January.

Undergraduate Yu Men, 24, describes himself as an angry, bitter nationalist to the point of almost total ignorance. Yet he was quick to praise its adult cinema industry: “Japan is highly superior in the quality of their adult videos compared to China, mainly because they are perverted, barbarian running dogs,” he said, adding, “I’ll give them their due, though: their porn is top-notch.”

Search engines and forums pledged this morning to put their engineers on full alert to maintain connectivity, while UNAIDS ambassador and TV personality James Chau has promised those unable to download authentic squid porn free access to an infamous full four-hour bootleg sex tape, featuring Chau, that recently surfaced on the web.

In a public ceremony yesterday attended by international media, Japanese Foreign Minister Yamata Hatanzi handed Politburo representative Li Fu a specially commissioned copy of Conger Conga 4, featuring AV star Erika Sato with a cast of thousands of fish and underage schoolgirls.

Accepting the gift on behalf of senior Chinese officials, Li said: “Our countries may disagree on some things but fundamentally see eye-to-eye over the need to maintain a constant balance of trade between cheap, disposable plastic goods and 90-minute DVDs of Japanese women being molested by octopi.”

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By XING CHOUWEN
Entertainment Correspondent

China is said to only have enough squid porn to last two weeks

TOKYO (China Daily Show) – The dispute over the Diaoyu Islands showed no signs of abatement yesterday, after Japan was reported by domestic media to have taken steps to ban the export of specialist pornography to China.

The move, believed to be in retaliation for China’s unofficial limits on “rare-earth” exports, is said to have “devastated” netizens across China.

Pornography is commonly found across the Internet but Japan has cornered the market in the refinement and production of so-called “rare” pornography, a vital ingredient in modern web-viewing habits.

Reuters reported that Japan was declining exports in the 2 Girls, 1 Cup series to Chinese ports, though customs officials were quick to claim the stoppage was in fact due to “stringent quality-control issues.”

Rare porn is also manufactured in China, mainly in the autonomous Hong Kong region, but is widely agreed to be of a much lesser quality than that produced in Tokyo.

“Connoisseurs of so-called faux snuff, coprophilia tapes and barely legal schoolgirls consider Japan indisputably superior producers — and rightly so,” Sinologist, historian and noted philanthropist Sir William Buckfast told China Daily Show. “If exports are blocked, this could have a serious effect on the domestic tissue industry, as well as causing potential social unrest. One shudders to imagine how Beijing will retaliate.”

Buckfast, who was the first to notice the alleged freeze, added that he will be monitoring the situation extremely closely.

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By RONG REN
Politics Correspondent

Norwegian scholars are baffled as to why China wants one of its least interesting lakes

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — The Chinese government today ramped up diplomatic pressure on Norway by claiming an obscure fjord as “sovereign Chinese territory.”

Erskyrykærøyfjord, in the region of Sogn og Fjordane, has long been known by locals as a peaceful and wholly uninteresting body of water.

But all that changed this morning during a press conference held by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“New research has come to lighting which conclusive show that Erskyrykærøyfjord is actually Chinese waters, not of the Norway,” said Foreign Affairs spokesman, Ma Shangsha, “and has been so since time immoral.”

According to Ma, the new research is based on an obscure 14th-century Yuan Dynasty map “and other conclusive, contemporary document,” which reference the fjord and its surrounding areas as “Genghis Khan’s favorite whoring sector.”

According to China, the two-kilometer square area was comprehensively conquered in 1349.

“The evidence have proved that the Norway fjord is, was, and always will be sovereign Chinese territory,” the Ma said. “China will not tolerate any attempt to restricting the reunify of all of Chinese territory, and strongly urge Norway to support the One-China politics.”

The announcement is part of a series of stringent measures against Norway, following the country’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to controversial Chinese dissident and human-rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo, currently serving a 10-year sentence for penning Charter 08, a petition urging gradual political reform.

China has cancelled meetings with Norwegian fisheries ministers and warned diplomats against attending the awards ceremony.

Most recently, Beijing also banned Norwegian salmon fishing off the coast of the Diaoyu Islands, a move described by experts as being both a “thawing of Sino-Japanese relations” and “completely pointless.”

The PS'd version of the map, clearly showing a conquer date of 1349 or thereabouts.

In an interview with China Daily Show, noted Sinologist, philanthropist and historian, Sir William Buckfast said that the territory in question may, in fact, actually be Mongolian.

“The map, if ultimately proven legitimate, would indicate that the Erskyrykærøyfjord actually belongs to Mongolia, not China,” Sir William gently pointed out.

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