By WEI HAN CHONGTU
Xinjiang Correspondent

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.”

 Keep track of dark-skinned males with @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By LONG TAO
Spring Festival Correspondent

Grandpa Jin appeals for witnesses, by displaying a copy of an equally cherished 2003 copy of CCTV Chunwan that he just found in his shed

ZHENGZHOU (China Daily Show) – The fireworks are still exploding over the village of Nanren, Henan but for one family, there will be no celebrations this year.

The Zhou household’s enjoyment of this most sacred of Chinese festivals has been destroyed, friends say – by an act of theft despicable even by Henan standards.

As their neighbors ready themselves for the traditional Lantern Festival, marking the official end to the Year of the Dragon, the Zhaos’ lives have come to a standstill, as the 12-strong clan contemplate the whereabouts of a much-treasured DVD.

The four-hour film, a recording of CCTV’s classic 2004 New Year’s Eve Gala, – known as ‘Chunwan’ – had apparently been left in its usual place: underneath a pile of other DVDs, at the back of a closet, in Auntie Wen’s old bedroom, when it was reported absent.

“Grandpa Jin immediately raised the alarm,” said Uncle Han. “But it was already too late. That disc was gone, baby, gone.”

Grandpa Jin (pictured, right and below) says the DVD is all but irreplaceable, and contains such vintage acts as Brother Balloon – a  clown with the magic ability to craft balloons into shapes vaguely resembling animals – and a 20-minute skit featuring a young, married couple.

Grandpa Jin trawls the web for extant copies of the critically acclaimed Gala

“This was a classic Chunwan, made in the days before gay jokes. The good old days,” Jin explained.

“We have appealed on the Internet for replacement copies but to no avail. Clearly, no one else is willing to part with their precious copy of Chunwan 2004.”

“Some netizens even mocked us,” Jin added. “They still have the gift of laughter – alas, we no longer do.“

Local police have appealed for witnesses, in an attempt to solve a mystery that has baffled the Zhao family for an entire day.

“Who would do such a thing?” wondered one neighbor. “Seriously – who? I’m genuinely curious.”

Others offered their own theories.

“It’s probably been cleared up, along with a bunch of other useless stuff we never use. and chucked out, then maybe picked up by a passing vagabond collecting trash, or something,” said the Jins’ 14-year-old daughter, Peng. “I really don’t think we should get the police involved. We should just move on and forget it. We should definitely not dust for fingerprints.”

But Grandpa Jin observed that there was no other explanation for the errant disc than a criminal act of theft.

“The cops should tear this town apart until they find the devil that did this,” vowed an emotional Lao Jin. “I, for one, will not rest until the culprit faces justice – or at least goes to court.”

Local police seem to be satisfied that foul play is not involved, however.

“The one thing we did before this case was even opened,” said one officer, “before we even got here, in fact, was rule out theft.”

Follow the hunt on Twitter with @chinadailyshow or send tips to cds@chinadailyshow.com

Police take a break from the hunt by helping out with a little girl’s homework

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.”

Follow this and other breaking China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By SAICHE SHOU
Education Correspondent

Han Han poses in uniform for 'Attitude' magazine

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) — Naughty schoolboy Han Han may be in trouble again, after challenging a neighborhood bully to a race – and winning.

The doe-eyed “Diet Coke of dissidents” reportedly got into a spat with classmate “Big” Dao Gu, 12, when the latter stole his lunch money during class recess.

Rather than risk his good looks, Han suggested a soapbox race down a nearby hill to settle their score.

But local police say the pair’s race-off infringed on public space and was a traffic misdemeanor. Thus, even though he won the battle of the karts, Han still stands to lose — to the long arm of the law.

The adorable blogger has been a thorn in the side of authorities at the Song Jiang No. 2 High School ever since graffito in the boys’ changing rooms, accusing one teacher of being “smelly,” was traced to Han’s school locker.

The errant schoolboy has since written quasi-critical articles on the school’s Intranet, questioning its canteen policy, bus schedule and curriculum.

His recent refusal to meet with the visiting headmistress of foreign faith school the United Church of America earned him further rebuke.“She’s just a silly girl,” Han pouted at the time.

Teachers are now exasperated for the youngster’s future.

“If Han doesn’t pass his exams, how will he succeed?” asked one. “There is no way to prosper in life if you fail the Chinese education system. What is he going to do, race cars? Write blogs?”

But it seems cops can’t stay mad at the cherubic Han for long. After confiscating his boxcar and giving him a stern ticking-off, police chief Wen quietly slipped Han a hundred yuan: a kickback for winning the race.

The same can’t be said for Big Dao, who claims Han cheated and he wants a rematch behind the school’s bicycle sheds — an event which could lead to more trouble but also possible corporate sponsorship, experts say.

So far, the Nescafe-sipping Han has avoided detention — but his sulks have earned him an embarrassing public rebuke from his mother.

“I’ll take away his blog privileges if he carries on like this,” Mrs Han warned him via China Daily Show, adding that Han should start showing more filial respect by “ceasing to slouch, sitting up straight and taking his hands out of his pockets.”

“And brush your hair,” she added.

Follow this and other China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

UPDATE: Han Han won plaudits recently for an essay-writing competition in which his winning entry, ‘On Racing,’ demonstrated the breadth of his knowledge and learning: “Having traveled widely throughout the school grounds, I can say with confidence that everything is working well,” he wrote. “We shouldn’t then knock the school, otherwise the whole education system might collapse — even though that system has produced a great deal of embarrassingly low-quality students.”

At the prize-giving ceremony, Han accepted his award from a tearful headmaster,  adding, “The fact I have won this award proves the system actually works, despite what I may have cheekily suggested in the past. Them were just jokes, baby.”

By HUAI SHASHOU
Crime Correspondent

Police answer a tourist's questions in Beijing yesterday

DONYANG (China Daily Show) – The family of a suspected thief who died in custody have expressed their disappointment and anger at an official police report which concluded their son died from “breathing too much.”

“At the very least, [the police] could have come up with a credible excuse, like a fall down the stairs,” Ma Yonghuan, 58, told reporters. “This insults the memory of my son. He was an asthmatic and couldn’t breathe much anyway. Couldn’t they have just said he had an asthma attack?”

Ma Yipeng, 17, was arrested by police in Donyang, Zhejiang Province last month trying to make off with a side of beef, following a collision between two tricycles carrying grocery supplies.

After being held for six days, police told family members that Ma went to sleep in his cell normally on the evening he died. Officers later discovered him “breathing heavily and clearly on the way out.”

Attempts to save Ma by throttling him failed and he was declared dead by officers shortly after.

Oxygen overdoes are unusual in China, where the air is mostly composed of recycled carbon dioxide and microscopic toxins.

The report, however, is the latest apparent episode of Chinese police taunting victims’ families by proffering ridiculously poor, inept and lazy excuses for deaths in police custody.

In 2009, Li Qiaomong was detained for illegal tree-felling in Jinning County; police attributed his sudden death to “a game of hide-and-seek” gone wrong. One Hebei Province inmate died after “suddenly drinking cold water” while in Guangdong Province,  a suspect fatally “slept under a quilt.”

Rumors now abound of a book being run among officers nationwide for whoever can come up with the most insulting report.

In January, Wuhan police chief Yin Zuo reportedly received a 20,000 yuan payout from peers after explaining the death of a prisoner, referred to only as P, as having “slept-walked into a punching machine left out by two officers trying to demonstrate how [Chinese UFC fighter] Zhang Tiequan beat up Jason Reinhardt again and again.”

One child, suspected of quarreling with his parents, was last month left in a coma after losing “an argument with his brain,” according to officers in Anhui Province.

Follow this and other leading China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By ZOU MIAO
Fashion & Style correspondent

Deng’s workout group sit eating for 10 hours before a mine collapse kills three

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – “A police officer chased me half way around the city and then beat me mercilessly,” says Mia Xin. “I’m down 20 pounds!”

So run adverts popping up all over popular microblogging websites such as Weibo in recent weeks, sparking a new feeding fad: the Migrant Worker Diet.

Mia is one of millions of young Chinese particpating in the new diet-and-exercise regimen that is taking China’s urban centers by storm.

The thousands of illegal coalmines outside of Beijing are packed to the brim with tracksuits.

“They say inspectors are going to come in with baseball bats and shut this coal mine down, maybe maim a few people,” said Deng Liubao, a lumber exporter from Kaixian county, Chongqing municipality. “I’ll need to find a new gym.”

Under the extensive rules of the regime, practitioners can only spend 10 yuan a day on box meals, are forced to kneel for pay cheques and must  hitchhike to another city at weekends or whenever they see an authority figure. Practitioners are all but forbidden from enjoying any kind of sex life.

Deng intends to hitchhike to Yiwu, Zhejiang Province to crack bricks on a building site and will continue doing so until he can fit back into his high-school jeans.

The diet is the latest brainchild of mung-bean farmer and dietitian Professor Jin Xiaoxin, who is said to have come up with the revolutionary regimen after closely observing migrant workers naked.

“With my diet, anyone can have a physique rippling with pure muscle,” said Jin. “Minus the vacant, soul-crushing stare, of course.”

Migrant workers are said to comprise 1 in 4 residents of first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing. Many may consider this 200 million-strong army of labor a poorly treated, highly disposal workforce that is often sidelined for political and economic expediency – for others though, they may be the perfect way to fit into that wedding dress at the last minute.

Even foreigners are getting into the mix. Jennifer Pepper from Des Moines, Iowa and a teacher in Shanghai, says that she lost over 12 pounds in one week after she started moonlighting at a building site.

“I can’t really leave the city. So, I’ll have to turn to other, more domestic options here in Shanghai,” she said, stripped to the waist and soaked in sweat and brick dust on a Pudong construction site. She added that after the Spring Festival, dietary options often dry up in the city. “But there is a hairdresser on my way home from school that should do until I find another building project.”

Professor Jin’s diet is also an appealing change to the office grind familiar to China’s legions of urban white-collar workers. When news of his next fashionable food habit leaked onto the Internet – dubbed the “Dissident Diet” – the Jin Company’s servers crashed under the demand.

But Professor Jin is keeping the Dissident Diet close to his chest. When asked by China Daily Show, all he would reveal is that hopeful dieters should stock up on jump suits.

Tylenol  contributed to this story

Follow this and other top China stories at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By HUAI SHASHOU
Crime Correspondent

A recent mass-trial pilot scheme in Jilin Province for capital crimes was deemed a "huge success" by ammunition industry insiders.

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Chinese leaders are expected to announce a new, more efficient “fast-track” legal system to begin running next year, leading to concerns among right-wing US critics that the superpower is “falling behind” in its record of miscarriages of justice.

The new system will dispense with vestiges of bureaucratic incompetence thought to be hampering the current system, such as physical evidence and independence of judiciary, officials said.

The announcement comes after the recent trial of Wu Yuren, a Beijing artist accused of dissident activity and assaulting police. According to court officials, Wu’s trial dragged on for nearly seven minutes. The unprecedented length is said to have embarrassed senior politicians.

Wu’s lawyers attempted to postpone swift justice by pointing out that the court could provide no actual evidence of the alleged assault, which is said to have taken place within a well-guarded police station, under constant CCTV surveillance. Prosecutors are now demanding Wu also pays the officers’ hospital fees — which amount to nearly six yuan –  as punitive compensation for the hold-up.

“Such an impudent delay in proceedings will be unimaginable within the excellent new system,” noted Professor Ma Yaochang, a Renmin University legal expert and CPC member who recently returned from a seven-month fact-finding trip to the Bahamas, sponsored by the Ministry of Justice. “In the words of a famous Western writer guy, brevity is the soul of justice.”

“Within the next five years, we expect to have a high-speed legal network linking Tibet to Heilongjiang, Beijing to Shanghai, Guangzhou to  Kunming within a few hours,” said a Ministry of Justice spokesman. “It will be the fastest justice system in the world and all done with Chinese technology. You’ll be able to commit a minor misdemeanor offence on Tuesday in Urumqi and be remanded in custody, tried and punished by indefinite detention by lunch-time Wednesday in Anhui.”

The high-speed justice record was previously held by Burma, whose trial of Aung San Suu Kyi was so brief that it never actually physically took place. According to Guinness Book of Records officials who stripped them of the title in 2010, the lack of any actual legal proceedings disqualified Burma. Burmese leaders have vowed to do better next year, with a new automated courthouse being tested on monks. Currently, Zimbabwe now holds the title, after using a method first patented by the Romans in Gaul.

Meanwhile, Chinese officials, their family members, and serving army officers will be offered a 75% discount on the “Gold Club” legal  service as part of the new scheme. Gold Club members will be excused from up to four felonies a year and entitled to carry a platinum-embossed card they can show to officers at crime scenes

“We got the idea from a pair of legal experts called the Parker Brothers,” said a senior ministry official. “It should put an end to any more embarrassing ‘Li Gang’-style incidents.”

Conservative critics in America voiced concern that the US is now falling dangerously behind China in its fast-track justice infrastructure.

“We were once among the foremost [countries] in terms of innovation and technology. But while we sluggishly debate overhauling our state courthouses, and spend weeks on Supreme Court nominations, China is racing ahead,” warned Irkle Dangerfield, a pastor and radio shock-jock host who is one of the American Right’s most thoughtful spokesmen. “We need to create jobs for Americans, not force them to do jury service to serve some secret Islamic-socialist agenda.”

Follow this and other breaking China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By HUAI SHASHOU
Crime Correspondent

Hu says Beijing’s safe environment is ideal for a career rapist

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A serial rapist who has eluded Chinese authorities for nearly two decades told China Daily Show reporters over breakfast Monday that “Beijing is actually very safe.”

“You really don’t see a lot of crime here,” reported the 37-year-old man, who asked to be identified only as Hu.

“Pickpockets on the public transportation system are about as bad as it gets,” observed Hu.

Despite his words, though, Hu himself is no stranger to crime.

Since 1992, he has been raping traffic cops, migrant workers and other village people, often in broad daylight.

“I’m not gay per se,” said Hu. “I just have a thing for uniforms. The trouble is, at the moment, almost every third person you see on the street is dressed up like a four-star general.”

Hu’s reign of terror began after a friend got a job in traffic management.

“He came over in his uniform and my instincts just kicked in. I got him drunk and, after he passed out, buddy-raped him. I don’t think he noticed. He’s certainly never mentioned it since.”

Hu confessed to having unusually small genitalia, to which he attributes both his criminal tendencies and his success in eluding capture thus far.

“Most people just think I’m being incredibly over-friendly. After a while, they catch on that it’s  a bit more than that. But by then,  it’s too late: I’m doing my thing and wild horses couldn’t drag me off,” Hu chuckled.

“Fact is, I’d like to move on with my life but there aren’t the resources here in Beijing to help with this kind of mental problem. Obviously, I’d much prefer to be molesting and terrorizing women and young girls – but for that I’ll need proper therapy.”

In the meantime, Hu says he plans to just take each male-rape as it comes.

“I’ve already staked out a few security guards. They’re mostly just innocent young boys from the provinces, really. Easy meat. I’ll be in and out in a flash with no chance of getting busted.

“You just have to be smart, and think like a criminal.”

Follow all your Beijing crime news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter