By CHUN GE
Spring Festival Correspondent

Cops help a petitioner whose sign reads ‘Will pelt Apple store with eggs for one-way ticket to Gansu’

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Zhang Lu did not have to wait long.

Standing in Tiananmen Square with a giant placard reading ‘Shandong government, give me back my land,’ it took just thirty seconds for a team of plainclothes police officers to arrive offering assistance.

Two hours later, Zhang was on a train enjoying a hearty meal, paid for by the guard escorting him home. Yet the 28-year-old migrant worker was delighted. For the first time in years, he’d secured a ticket home for Chinese New Year – and he hadn’t had to pay for it either. “I don’t even own any land,” he grinned.

Zhang’s tale is not an untypical one. In a country whose continuing obsession with the annual Spring Festival get-together has become a source of untold misery for those unable to find an affordable handrail home, more and more workers are exploiting the government’s obsession with stability to score a free handrail back.

The situation is at breaking point, experts warn. Bosses frequently withhold vital wages – or abscond with payrolls – after construction jobs finish. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transport’s recent introduction of an online booking system, requiring real-name registration, has simply made scalpers’ jobs easier:  few of China’s nearly half-billion web users are minimum-wage laborers.

Posing as a petitioner, though, virtually guarantees an instantaneous journey to the provinces, courtesy of the central government.

Petitioning – the official airing of grievances, often by traveling to the capital to plead a case in person – is an archaic, judicial last-resort in China, designed to side-step its skewed court system and offer possible redress to the wronged. In fact, however, it often results in plaintiffs being kidnapped and sent home – and for many migrant workers, that’s the ideal result.

“It was probably worth it,” said Jie, an avuncular grandmother who works as a traditional Chinese dentist in Beijing, touching the numerous bruises on her face. Jie gave up hope after queuing at a train station for three days without success. A friend suggested she saunter through Xidan wearing a ‘Free Wukan’ T-shirt.

Workers queue hopefully outside a booth selling tickets to queue at another station selling tickets

“I got the usual sustained beating and lost a couple of teeth – but there’s no other way I could have gotten any standing room to Changsha this late in the day,” Jie mused.

With the petitioning scam now simply the latest migrant craze, Jie observed, it’s already getting harder to make an impact. “Next year I’ll probably have to light myself on fire,” she sighed.

In fact, the main drawback to the scheme, says Zhang, is having to attend the festival itself.

“Since I got back to my family, I’ve only been asked two questions: how much money have you brought for us, and when are you going to get married? I’m beginning to think it wasn’t worth having my balls whipped with a car aerial for two days, after all.”

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By ZOU MIAO
Fashion & Style correspondent

Pensioner Yan Miao plans to use a 5,000-year-old drop-stitch technique to make the Princess "shimmer, dazzle and hobble"

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — Has Kate Middleton become Wait, Middle Kingdom?

That’s the question fashion experts and time-rich Royal Wedding watchers are asking this week, following sightings of regal lady-in-waiting “Waity” Kate Middleton at a downtown – and downmarket – clothing destination in Beijing’s Silk Street Market.

The news has set the fashion world alight with fruitless gossip.

Within hours, chaos had descended on the popular tourist destination, after Vogue flew in dozens of interns to pester vendors, many of whom refused to answer questions until reporters paid 800 yuan each for a “silk” dressing gown.

“It’s good. Last price, no joking with me!” 28-year-old Xiao Liu retorted to a question about whether Kate planned to have classic and sophisticated elements to her dress or would instead opt for a lighter, springtime feel, possibly using organza lilies of the valley to offset the conservative mood.

Designer Oscar de la Renta was meanwhile reported to have hurled a stiletto through the window of a Los Angeles branch of Vivienne Westwood upon hearing that 76-year-old unknown Yan Miao, a migrant tailor from Sha’anxi Province, was seen deep in discussion with the future Princess over the weekend.

Remarks such as “You want winter coat?” “You’re my friend!” and “I just got a bunch of Daniella Issa Halayel in, can give you good price” were all overheard by local blogger Shan Jingping, who broke the story later that day on her BeijingDoll website.

Harper’s style editor Valentina Rubchenka told China Daily Show that she and Yan had long been friends.

“We always catch up when I’m in Shanghai, yaah. I admire Yan for her common touch. I’m not saying she’s déclassé. She’s what I would call a ‘real’ woman” Rubchenka revealed. “She may not be well-known to the masses but those of us in fashion have always had the name Yan Ma on our Rolodex.”

Fashionistas predict Yashow Market will now be the next go-to place for a relaxing, upmarket shopping experience

If true, the hiring of Yan will be a bold move in more ways than one.

“Kate’s dress will probably be too small and may well include toxic chemicals,” said Shanghai fashion expert Huang Po. “And it will almost certainly fall off mid-way through the ceremony.”

Middleton was later seen marching determinedly out of the Silk Market with a North Face jacket she managed to bargain down to 180 yuan and four pairs of knock-off Guiseppe Zanotti shoes that normally retail for thousands of dollars each.

Cost to Kate? “She wouldn’t go above 100 kuai a pair,” recalled seller Xi Miao, 22. “Tough customer. We eventually settled on 450 for the whole lot. She’ll be back.”

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Full details of the China Daily Show interview below:

China Daily Show: Was that Kate Middleton who just came in?

Vendor: What do you want: Hat? Gloves? I have summer collection just in.

CDS: What can you tell us about [wedding designer] Yan Miao’s designs? Does she favour a retro look or can we look forward to some fresh colors and perhaps an elegant, sexy even precious feel?

Vendor: Miao is good friend. But very expensive. I’m cheap. Come, I show you.

CDS: This season’s New York runway has been influenced by English tones and styles such as traditional plaid and 30s style necklines. Would you say this is due to the Middleton look? How do you think this will influence Yan’s dressmaking?

Vendor: Don’t tell anyone, I give this T-shirt to you only 400 yuan, OK? Deal?

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By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG

Education Correspondent

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – An investigation by the Ministry of Education has uncovered huge numbers of Chinese students obtaining fake diplomas from “illegally-operating overseas nations.”

The crackdown on 1,225,080 recent graduates alleges that most had never left China for study, as claimed on their CVs, but had instead paid private agencies to supply them with the necessary paperwork, including fake visas, stamped diplomas and copies of artificial UN charters declaring the sovereign status of 11 uncharted territories, spanning eight continents.

The fabricated nations include Turdukistan, the Kingdom of Bavaria and the United States of Armenia, with forged tuition invoices from Al Qaeda Polytechnic, the Hinterland Institute and Hogwarts.

On August 16, the diploma of Zhao Minsheng, Minister of Education, was found to be printed on Rizla cigarette rolling paper. Zhao was tried and convicted before supper, prompting the full-scale investigation by next morning, exposing Zhao as the centerpiece of the operation.

“The Chinese education system has always encouraged cheating so that the clever may rise above the careless,” said the tearful Minister during his swift trial. “My only regret is that I have been caught, thus bringing shame to my family and colleagues, who have always regarded me as someone who could get away with anything.”

In light of the investigation, Ministry of Education Undersecretary, Tang Tingwei, has called for immediate sanctions against the “false regimes,” stating, “the ease of exposure of these rogue nations threatens the foundation of our purposefully vague system. Impressionable Chinese youngsters ought not be groomed in such casual global circumstances.”

Tang, who holds a degree in Native American English from Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, in Yolo County, California, is expected to replace Zhao Minsheng as Ministry of Education Secretary pending evaluation of his credentials.

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Minister of Education, Zhao Minsheng, was just sauntering off to the loo when the shit hit the fan

By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

It has been alleged that Cooter is working in China fraudulently

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — An English teacher who hit the headlines recently after canceling a Saturday morning lesson appeared to be in further trouble today, after a routine background check found an apparent anomaly with his English-teaching (TEFL) certificate.

Earl Cooter, 33, of Delberville, Mississippi, told university staff in his application that he was a graduate of the University of Mississippi and had completed a four-month post-graduate course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the Mountainland Applied Vocational College.

“Because of the cancelling, so our dean had asked me several times to checking Mr Cooter’s certificate of the qualify,” said class assistant Zhao Wei. “Whereas, they had found no detail of the record of the enrolling or graduating ceremony. This made no sense totally.

“We had later discovered that the School of Mountain Applied Vacations had not existing at all. So we knew the possible of the fraud had been slippery through the security bypass of the reference had checked it.”

If true, it would mean that Cooter has been blithely teaching English, Applied Engineering and Sociology at Beijing’s No. 6 University of Horticulture & HVAC Repair without apparent difficulty for the last four years. The possibility has baffled university staff, who assured parents and staff on Friday that, if true, such a case of academic fraud would be unprecedented in the history of both the faculty and the Chinese university system at large.

“All English teachers in China are subject to rigorous background checks and professionally assessed as ‘Foreign Experts’ according to Chinese law,” said an official at the Exit and Entry Administration Bureau today. “It would be quite impossible for a incompetent, unqualified or unprofessional foreigner to be granted permission to work in China.”

Calls to Cooter’s mobile phone went unanswered and there was no response when China Daily Show reporters knocked on his apartment door.

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