Thanks to a commenter in an earlier thread I found this story about some nasty riots in Chengdu.

Protesters smashed a local Japanese supermarket’s windows after a demonstration in China against Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council turned violent, Kyodo news agency reported Sunday.

Protesters in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in southwest China broke the windows of Japanese-owned supermarket Ito-Yokado on Saturday, Kyodo said.

Many Chinese harbor deep resentment of Japan’s war-time past and what they see as Tokyo’s failure to own up to atrocities.

Beijing estimates up to 35 million Chinese were killed or wounded by invading Japanese troops from 1931 to 1945.

That resentment has fed into opposition to Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, hopes of which were raised in Tokyo after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan seemed to back Japan on March 21 as part of the most wide-ranging reforms to the world body since its creation in 1945.

Domestic Chinese media said last week that millions of Chinese had signed an online petition to oppose Japan’s bid for a permanent seat.

More than 10,000 people signed a 10-meter (33-ft) red banner bearing an anti-Japanese slogan in the southern city of Guangzhou. Protesters in two other large cities, Shenzhen and Chongqing, also took to the streets, Chinese media reported last weekend.

You can also read about it in Chinese and see more photos here.

I can see being unhappy at the prospect of Japan having a UN Security Council permanent seat. But smashing windows at a Japanese store? That sounds just a bit out of control, not to mention self-defeating.

This one was closest to my heart, of course.

You’ll find a whole lot more about the rally, plus lots of pictures, here.

In Chinese and English — and it all started here at Peking Duck.

Bingfeng and Bellevue, I love you both. Now, why can’t you love each other?

I posted earlier about how height can be a major factor in one’s ability to land a dream job in China, and how this results in some terribly unfair hiring practices. Well, leave it to the practical Chinese to find a creative solution.

She’s an acting student. She sits in a wheelchair. He’s a business major. He relies on crutches to get around.

Each of them willingly had a doctor break their legs and insert steel pins into the bones just below their knees and above their ankles. The pins are attached to a bulky contraption that looks like a metal cage. For six months or so, they will wear this stretching device even though it delivers excruciating pain eased only by medication.

They dial the adjustment knobs daily, forcing the ends of the broken limbs to pull away from each other even as they heal. As new bone grows, the device forces it apart again, resulting in more new bone to fill the gap. Patients on the device typically gain about 3 inches in six months.

It may sound like medieval torture, but people who are determined to stand taller say it’s nothing short of a dream maker.

At about $6,000, the treatment is out of reach for the average Chinese urbanite, who makes just more than $1,100 a year. But for some with money, it’s a price they’re willing to pay. In this increasingly competitive society, height has emerged as one of the most visible criteria for upward mobility.

“I was not tall enough to apply to film school before,” said the 20-year-old acting student, who was accepted to the Beijing Film Academy after adding 3 inches to her 5-foot-1-inch frame. The school’s website says female acting department applicants must be at least 5 feet 3.

I want to understand the thinking behind such requirements, considering how many great actors and actresses are diminutive (like Dustin Hoffman and Linda Hunt). If anyone can explain how these restrictions benefit the general population, please, enlighten me.

The article explores China’s growing obsession with height, which is rather ironic, considering that the man who saved the country, Deng Xiaoping, practically qualified as a dwarf.

Via China Digital Times.

Little people can do great things. Why discriminate against them?

And this one tops them all.

Just remember what today’s date is. And check those ads on the left! I was laughing out loud. Click on them and you will laugh even louder. In fact, click all the links on the page. Obviously a lot of work went into this masterpiece.

Via Atrios.

From the inimitable and often ingenious Harry Hutton:

Terri Schiavo is dead. In my opinion she should be frozen. Hundreds of years in the future, scientists will be able to make her walk around in short jerks using electric pulses.

Do you think that’s in poor taste? If it’s OK to use science to keep her going ping-ping-ping in a hospital, why not make her move around a bit while you’re at it? She won’t be present in either case, having died in 1990. This modern fad for trying to turn speechless vegetables into immortal vegetables, with the aid of technology, seems to me grotesque and blasphemous. If the brain is dead, that’s dead enough for me. Just how dead does one have to be to satisfy these people?

“The times have been, that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end…” (Macbeth).

Those were the days. Now you’ll have packs of religious busybodies showing up to poke their long noses in. I would like to state now, for the record, that when my noggin finally packs up and Hutton the Cabbage is bleeping precariously on a respirator, you may feel free to unplug the thing. Or leave it on, I’m not that bothered. Have me stuffed, feed me to a pack of dingoes… I couldn’t give a toss; I won’t be there. All I ask is this: if anyone tries to read the Bible at me as I lie there drooling, please throw them out.

Remind me to visit Harry’s blog more often. It’s fantastic.