“Disasters” In the Name of Rat
Beginning of the year of Rat in China, the word “disaster” came up again and again in the news media. Here I will point out two major ones that are most talked about local news. They are not related but since they happened around the Chinese new year, I will just call them “disasters” in the name of Rat.
The first round of disaster was millions of migrant workers who were traveling home for spring festival stuck at train stations for days. Guangzhou, a money-making capital in southern China has increasing amount of migrant workers from all over the country. Like other major cities, most of these workers travel home by train for Chinese new year. And when this happens, it means the biggest human migration on earth. This year, the extreme cold weather made traveling an impossible task, snow and ice paralyzed many of the railway system that is powered by electricity. Guangzhou train station was one of the major disaster site. Some pictures here.
The second round of “disaster”, which of course might not be more entertaining than disasterous for most of us is happening online these a few days and, even now. Hong Kong Pop idol/singer Edison Chan’s sex photos with seven (so far) HK entertainment celebrities are exposed all over the web. I didn’t pay much attention in the beginning because that kind of news happen every minute in HK’s very saturated entertainment circle. But not until yesterday I saw some of the photos and read into the story more, I realize the intensity of the event. Till the night before, there were four hundred of these photos had been leaked on web. I haven’t see the full download of the images but only a few. And here we are talking about explicit sex images that are in amateur porn. The only differences are that they are personal pictures of these celebrity singers and actresses. Some of them like one singer from the Twins were idols for the Hong Kong youth with their pretty and innocent appearance; and some of them had retired from the entertainment career and married into the rich. With the leaking of the images, Edison Chen and the girls appeared in the photos, the career of pop idols and marriage life of the rich wives and mothers are in great dangers.
Maybe less interested in moral stands of these stars, I am most intrigue by the media aspects of this whole event, from the way the information leaked out from Edison Chen’s Mac book, to the speed the photos has been spreading and how it went beyond the HK police control and kept flooding the web with new images continuously, and how the online community circulated these images during all the online crack down. Images are what forms public perception. And in this case they are used like weapon. With the traffic of internet and the mass, the effect of the sex images are maximize to another extreme that is unseen before. Not only on web, there were stores selling CDs of these images package illegally, and even have service to download for your cell phone…
I am not going to include any pictures here, but go search them on your own. It’s part of the game, isn’t it?
Regardless, hope we all have a good year! A late happy new year to you all.