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Wǒ Men Podcast Special: Live Anniversary Episode

The Wǒ Men podcast is a bi-weekly discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men podcast can be found here, and you can find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

On Saturday 7 July, the RADII-backed Wǒ Men Podcast celebrated its first anniversary at The Bookworm in Beijing. It was an entertaining afternoon of thoughtful discussion – all recorded live.

Check out a photo gallery of images from the event below and listen to an audio recording of Wǒ Men hosts Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang’s discussion with RADII columnist Jeremiah Jenne above.

Photos: RADII x Wǒ Men One Year Anniversary

Article Jul 08, 2018

Have thoughts or feedback to share? Want to join the discussion? Write to Yajun and Jingjing at [email protected].

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Photo of the Day: Off to the Races

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos from Inner Mongolia, taken during the Naadam period last year.

Aside from the wrestlers, a major feature of the Naadam period, or any period in Inner Mongolia really, is the horses.

Many of the visitors to the Plain Blue Banner festivities turned up on horses to watch horse races and debate which of the horses were among the best looking in the region.

It’s the races — with around 20 horses and riders going full pelt across the grass — that make for one of the most dramatic parts of the whole event however.

Previously:

Photo of the Day: The Wrestlers

Article Jul 09, 2018

Photo of the Day: Praying for Rain

Article Jul 10, 2018

Photo of the Day: All the Fun of the Fair

Article Jul 11, 2018

Photo of the Day: All the Fun of the Fair

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos from Inner Mongolia, taken during the Naadam period last year.

Once they’d made their offerings at the hilltop site, the menfolk and their families headed out to the grasslands for the games to begin. On this occasion, the True Blue Banner authorities were keen not to classify this as a fully-fledged Naadam, due to the drought that had preceded the festival.

Nevertheless, there was a generally celebratory feel to the event with families setting up little stoves out the back of their cars, playing fairground games such as hoopla, and generally catching up with relatives and friends.

Previously:

Photo of the Day: The Wrestlers

Article Jul 09, 2018

Photo of the Day: Praying for Rain

Article Jul 10, 2018

Photo of the Day: Praying for Rain

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos from Inner Mongolia, taken during the Naadam period last year.

Finding information on Naadam festivities in Inner Mongolia as someone who isn’t a local can be tricky. Several times I drove for hours to get to a rural town having been told by a restaurant/hotel owner/gas station attendant/random person in the street that that location would be hosting a Naadam, only to find that the whole thing had been called off the day before.

Arriving late one night in a town in the south of the autonomous region, I was told by a man running a yurt camp that there would be festivities taking place the next day. If I wanted, he said, I could go with his son in the morning to the pre-ceremony. I agreed, and woke up before 5am the next morning to join his son in a convoy of cars driving way too fast (thankfully down deserted roads) out to a nearby hillside.

While female visitors were made to wait on a hill opposite, males young and old ascended the slopes to an altar-like monument draped in prayer flags. They circled around it and doused it with milk and the local alcoholic spirit in the hope that rain would come to their parched lands, before clambering back into their cars and heading off to the Naadam site.

Later the next day, a huge storm rolled through the area bringing heavy rains with it.

Previously:

Photo of the Day: The Wrestlers

Article Jul 09, 2018

WeChat Shuts Down 50,000 World Cup Gambling Accounts

All-encompassing mega app WeChat yesterday announced that they had removed 50,000 accounts and deleted a further 8,000 group chats related to gambling since the World Cup 2018 got underway in Russia just under a month ago.

Gambling is officially illegal in China, though that hasn’t stopped people’s phones from being inundated with spam text messages about the practice or from WeChat users’ feeds filling up with friends talking about which team they’re betting on during the World Cup. And in a classic China contradiction, while betting is officially illegal there are a number of State-run gambling systems, including the China Sports Lottery, which is the second biggest lottery in the world.

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“During the World Cup, World Cup gambling websites have been shut down by the government, causing some betting activities to migrate to social platforms,” read a statement from WeChat. “We appeal to the majority of users to watch the World Cup rationally, to appreciate the competitive nature of football and respect the spirit of the game, and keep away from gambling.”

Or at least, away from illegal gambling. Forbes reported that during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, China Sports Lottery’s match betting sales jumped by an incredible 384.3% and that in the first quarter of this year, the State-run organization’s sales were already at 16.5 billion USD. In the first three weeks of the World Cup, reports betting site Calvin Ayre, the Sports Lottery raked in 28.6 billion RMB (4.3 billion USD) in sales.

Many illegal World Cup betting sites and WeChat accounts act as a proxy for Chinese citizens to bet via overseas gambling outlets. One such operation in Beijing that was shut down by the authorities this past weekend, resulting in the arrests of 46 individuals, had reportedly handled 320 million RMB (48 million USD) in bets.

Cover photo: Group chats showing World Cup odds in an image released by WeChat.

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Photo of the Day: The Wrestlers

This Wednesday marks the official start date of Naadam, a centuries-old Mongolian celebration that these days is held to mark the country’s independence from China. While the main festivities take place in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, similar, smaller events can be found throughout the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia as well, where wrestling tournaments and horse races are held to give thanks to the land. Our Photo of the Day series this week will therefore share some photos from the province, taken during the Naadam period last year.

Last year, I hired a car from Hohhot and drove around Inner Mongolia for a couple of weeks. I was going in search of Naadam festivities, but I ended up only seeing one proper celebration. Much of the province had been hit by drought, leading numerous banners (as the council-like states within Inner Mongolia are known) to cancel any planned activities.

One celebration that did take place last year was under the Shuluun Huh Banner (Plain Blue Banner). It was a dusty affair — a truck made regular circuits of the grounds spraying the dirt with a water cannon, not to much avail — but a colorful one. There was a real fairground atmosphere, with hundreds of people in traditional dress, families barbecuing and cooking out on the grass, and entertainment in the form of regular wrestling matches and horse races.

The photos here come from the wrestling heats, several of which take place simultaneously. Some are over in minutes, with one wrestler putting his immense weight onto another and causing them to collapse to the floor; others can go on far longer, with the fighters feeling each other out and making tentative jumps and trips, wearing down their opposite number’s resistance as the tension is continuously cranked up. Either way, the bouts are fascinating to watch and the spectators at these festivities were often glued to the action all day.

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