What intrepid escapades did you pull off when you were 12? Teepee a house? Sneak out in the middle of the night? Prank call the local radio station? Hop in a bus and take it for a 30-minute joyride through a city of 800,000?
No?
Then you have nothing on this 12-year-old Chinese kid, who slid into the driver’s seat of an empty bus around 2 pm on June 30 in Zengcheng, Guangzhou province, and proceeded to cruise around the city for the next half-hour, presumably nodding at chicks while slowly driving by…
This is not the picture of a kid who gives a damn:
Far from cute, the bus company issued a statement saying this boy — whose age is given as “around 12 years old” — is actually a repeat criminal, someone known for stealing cell phones and wallets on multiple occasions.
Police used the bus’s GPS to find and intercept him. I feel like if he was an adult in the US, they probably would have roughed him up and cuffed him, but since he’s a boy in China, this is how they let him enter the police station:
Again, this is not the strut of a kid who gives a damn.
At the tail end of the above video, someone says to him, “It’s all over.” He begins to wail, and is loudly chided, “STILL CRYING? STOP!” Maybe he was given the cigarette to calm down.
All in all, the kid appears to be a good driver. Police say he didn’t cause any problems on the road, which is not something you can say about a lot of people his age. Twelve years old.
David Bandurski published a gem of a read on Quartz over the weekend, “There’s an American story at the heart of China’s national anthem,” which examines the (relatively brief) history of the Chinese national anthem, “March of the Volunteers.” The song was hand-written in 1935 by Tie Er, popularized the year after by a Chinese subsidiary of a French record company in Shanghai, fell out of favor during the Cultural Revolution, and only in 1982 officially designated as the country’s national anthem (then made constitutional in 2004).
It’s all very timely, as March of the Volunteers made headlines recently after China’s top legislature proposed a draft law to protect its sanctity, including up to 15 days detention for those who have “maliciously modified the lyrics or performed it in a distorted or disrespectful way.” One lawmaker went so far as asking Chinese people to stop using the “American” gesture of placing a hand over the heart during the national anthem.
But the song’s early years had some very compelling American tie-ins, as we learn from Bandurski:
In 1940, the year after the release of The 400 Million, Liu Liangmo [a Chinese intellectual and activist employed by the YMCA in Shanghai] too left China for the United States, carrying Chinese songs of resistance along. Liu had been invited to New York by the YMCA for further study(link in Chinese), but was soon visiting cities and small towns across the country, raising awareness about China’s war of resistance against the invading Japanese army. Ten years later, writing in New York’s left-leaning China Daily News, a Chinese-language newspaper, Liu would recall his mission at the time, and how it brought him face-to-face with one of the great American voices of the day, Paul Leroy Robeson, a former professional athlete and graduate of Columbia Law School who by the 1930s had become an international singing sensation, a cinema star, and a leading voice for civil rights.
Paul Robeson, an American icon who fought for individual liberty at home and abroad, and who was persecuted during the McCarthy era for his outspoken beliefs, performed a stirring rendition of March of the Volunteers in 1940 at a massive recital in West Harlem. The year after, Robeson recorded his rendition of the song, which he called “Chee Lai” — an Americanized spelling of the first two Chinese characters in the song, qilai, which taken together is March of the Volunteers’ sonorous, urgent call to “Arise”:
Play the video above, in which Robeson says, “This is a song born in the struggle of the brave Chinese people,” before singing in (very good) Mandarin Chinese:
Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!
With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall!
As China faces its greatest peril
From each one the urgent call to action comes forth.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of but one heart
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
March on! March, march on!
Then he does a version in English, substituting the second, third, and fourth lines (which he sang in the original Chinese) to:
Let’s stand up and fight for liberty and true democracy!
All our world is facing the chain of the tyrants,
Everyone who works for freedom is now crying,
Arise…
It’s a classic in the political folk music genre — if not slightly forgotten in our day and age.
After Robeson’s death in 1976, none other than China’s People’s Daily wrote:
In the period of the Chinese people’s war of resistance, he sang “March of the Volunteers” in the Chinese tongue, and supported the war of the Chinese people against the Japanese, becoming a true friend to the people of our nation.
Four years ago on 60 Minutes, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled what to many looked like a publicity stunt: using automated drones to deliver packages. “We’re talking about delivery,” he told interviewer Charlie Rose. “There’s an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.”
Charlie Rose: What’s the hardest challenge in making this happen?
Jeff Bezos: The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood’…
Charlie Rose: Yeah, that’s not good.
Jeff Bezos: That’s not good.
Jeff Bezos: And, you know, I don’t want anybody to think this is just around the corner. This is years of additional work from this point. But this is…
Charlie Rose: But will ‘years’ mean five, 10?
Jeff Bezos: I think, I, I am, I’m an optimist Charlie. I know it can’t be before 2015, because that’s the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA. My guess is that’s, that’s probably a little optimistic. But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.
Four, five years later, and we’re still inching toward that possibility. But while Amazon navigates a range of legal issues, FAA regulations and patent requirements — so far it has only tested its program in the UK — the logistics company SF Express, founded in Guangdong province in 1993, has been given the green light to begin drone deliveries beginning now, in five villages and towns in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province.
Of course it’s just a trial phase and the range of these deliveries are limited to the countryside, but it sounds like the company has plans for the future. “Drones are expected to come into their own in remote areas where conventional means of delivery struggle,” reports Shanghai-based The Paper (via ecns.cn):
“Drone delivery services can improve efficiency, as they won’t be bothered by difficult terrain and traffic congestion. On the other hand, it shows a major technological breakthrough in energy-saving, by doing away with vehicle depreciation, road tolls and fuel costs,” SF express investor and expert Zhao Xiaomin, told The Paper.
Drones weighing less than 7 kg (15.4 lbs) are currently allowed in China; anything larger requires a license from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, according to UAV Systems International.
Two explosions rocked a village called Xiaozhai in Shazi, Qianxinan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou province this morning. According to Xinhua, precipitation in the area caused land sinkage, which damaged a natural gas pipeline. As of this moment, eight are dead and 35 injured.
Local residents fled the scene while massive fires raged, which could be seen from afar:
First Prize is an Olloclip Core Lens and Pivot Grip, plus a one-on-one mobile photography workshop with Singaporean photographer and documentary filmmaker Siok Siok Tan.
Five Second Prize winners will receive an autographed copy of Tan’s most recent photo book, Citybook.
In a first for the country’s music industry (and maybe the world’s?), the hip new boy band on the block is composed entirely of girls.
Acrush made its music video debut last month with the song Activists (行动派), and the buzz has only been spreading. The members dance, sing, and rap with a cultivated rough-around-the-edges cool you’d normally expect to see from Korean supergroups like Big Bang. What might be even more surprising is the actual quality of the song itself, as well as the video, both of which have a much more hip and modern feel than most mainland pop offerings.
Assembled through the proven Korean formula for manufacturing pop stars, the group found its final members after several rounds of auditions and rigorous cuts. Tencent is behind the scenes of all this, backing the Zhejiang Huati Culture Communications Co Ltd, which took the initiative to assemble the group.
The group has already received widespread international media coverage, and has a Weibo account boasting huge numbers of followers given their very recent debut. But when surveyed, not many local music fans seem to have heard of them.
“I honestly haven’t heard any Chinese person talk about them,” one admits. “I think I’ve only read an English article on them.”
We hope that changes in the very near future. Watch the video for Activists above. We’ve got your back with the translated version of the lyrics below. (Italics = English)
Activists
I refuse to be an insignificant existence any longer
When will this world of chaos start to rupture?
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; a sign of danger
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; my reckless paces
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; sound the alarm
Let it go
How do I fight my hardest
so that the future will come?
How do I tear off these labels
so that I can rule my own life?
“Haste makes waste”
Why wouldn’t I understand this principle?
Instead of waiting for a gift of a bouquet
Why not plant flowers yourself?
Break through the obstacles
Evolve to be irreplaceable
Break free from the sea of fire
I am my own trump card
[0:50] I refuse to be an insignificant existence any longer
When will this world of chaos start to rupture?
I’m sick of enduring this weakness Come back as activists
Even if it must be painful, let it bring the most euphoria
Everybody go!
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now
The transformation starts now
[1:27] This is the worst and the best of times
While displaying individuality, show one’s capability Yeah Only favored
are you qualified to sigh
Don’t expect it
Won’t give you any weaknesses
I, the ace wakes and accepts his rival’s worship
I, with all firepower, occupy all the stage Up, up, up My word must be
Must try to be the one
exception
[1:47] I don’t exist for anyone
Dancing heart breaks through barriers
Pure power is beyond imagination Come back, highest pose,
lofty activists
Everybody go
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
[2:31] Everybody go, yeah Everybody is expecting my new collision Right now follow my perfect tempo
Look, gotta break all illusions
Everybody go
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly Radii feature that looks at Chinese songs spanning classical to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion: [email protected].
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