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 Minzhu Jiao
South China Seas Correspondent

A typical Scarborough newsstand yesterday

LUZON ISLAND (China Daily Show) – The ailing reef print-media industry suffered a blow this week, after a newspaper announced record losses just one week after publishing its first edition.

The Scarborough Bugle, incorporating the Panatag Shoal Times-Inquirer, was launched last week at a glamorous press conference held on the barnacle-riven peak of South Rock.

With a venture-capital injection from Aquino Asset Management of around 40 million pesos, the Bugle announced it was aimed at bringing readers “all the patriotic news and views fit to print in the Scarborough Shoal Bay Area.”

The debut issue launched with a cover splash pledging loyalty to the Philippines and an exclusive interview with Economic Secretary Arsenio Balisacan. Inside, a two-page spread revealed that Lethal Weapon 2 had been confirmed for a long-awaited cinematic release on Scarborough in July.

Investors had hoped the Bugle would pick up offshore readers from the nearby Spratly Sun, which was forced to close last year amid allegations of conch-hacking.

Initial sales have proved disappointing however, with the 32-page daily newspaper struggling to sell even a single copy on the godforsaken atoll.

At newsstands across the 150-square kilometer shoal, the level of consumer disinterest was said to be disappointing, even by Scarborough Shoal standards.

“I’ve seen more activity among the mono-cellular marine life in a stagnant lagoon,” one disgruntled vendor reported.

Bugle staff say they are baffled at the lack of success.

“It’s really hard to understand – the market is wide open. There’s pretty much zero competition,” said editor-in-chief Bentley Wilson III. “But the wankers just aren’t picking up a copy.”

Despite scoops such as ‘Scarborough officials to boycott chopsticks’ and ‘Giant wave washes away capital city,’ the newspaper posted losses of 80 million pesos within just hours of going to press.

Nightlife editor Pipa Sipin nevertheless predicted that sales would likely bounce back after the tourist season began.

“Though when exactly that is, it’s hard to say,” Sipin added. “But if you hear of any bar openings, drop me a line, would you?”

Headlines such as ‘Pet Seagull Missing’ failed to tempt readers

The losses may cause the publishers to cancel an upcoming Sunday literary supplement and replace the food correspondent, after a ‘101 best starfish recipes to crunch your way to that beach body’ feature led to widespread illness in the newsroom.

Wilson has promised an aggressive marketing campaign to be plastered across local coral reefs, targeting passing fisherman and Chinese naval patrols.

With this publicity tactic comes the fear of Chinese reef review rip-offs, however. “It’s a fucking nightmare,” admitted Sipin.

Editor Wilson remains defiant.

“A lot of people said that launching a daily newspaper on an uninhabited and partially submerged group of rocks in heavily disputed oceanic territory was just plain foolish,” Wilson admitted.

“They’re all wrong. I’m now more determined than ever to prove that maritime print-media still has a strong future in the deep abyssal plains of the Luzon Sea.”

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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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