Liar, liar, underpants on fire

Beijing, Feb. 11, 2009: It was, quite literally, an unmissable event. A giant inferno that engulfed a 30-storey building in east Beijing, drawing a crowd of hundreds of onlookers.

Even those Beijingers who didn't see the fire itself on Monday night were affected by it the next morning as the firefighting operation shut down a major highway – the capital's Third Ring Road – for much of the day, causing traffic chaos throughout the city. The fire also contributed to Tuesday being one of the worst air-quality days in Beijing in recent months.

The blaze destroyed the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental hotel, which had been due to open this spring but is now an empty blackened tower. One firefighter died from smoke inhalation and seven others are in intensive care.

Making the fire even more obvious was its location, inside the complex that contains the iconic new headquarters of Central China Television, or CCTV. Dubbed the dakucha (the big underpants), by locals, the futuristic CCTV headquarters is one of the most striking new buildings on the Beijing skyline. In fact, CCTV owned the adjacent Mandarin Oriental building that was destroyed in the fire, and hosted the fireworks party that was found responsible for starting the blaze.

And yet, the news staff at the state-run CCTV were apparently the only people in Beijing who didn't notice the tower of flames directly in front of them. That night's newscast began not with live footage of the fire inside their complex, but with news of the fatal bush fires in faraway Australia.

As Han Han, one of China's best-read bloggers, sarcastically noted: “If CCTV's premium evening news program started airing at that time, the cameramen could move their lens toward the window after news anchors introduced what was happening with the fire — they would get the images of the fire and produce the first unedited news story in CCTV's history.”

In comments that were themselves censored before being reposted by other Chinese bloggers as well as websites outside China, Han Han compared the Mandarin Oriental to “the thing underneath the big underpants” and said that by burning it, CCTV had committed a symbolic act.

“Such self-castration just perfectly fits the image of CCTV being the world's number one eunuch media,” he wrote. “For sure, the present CCTV does not deserve to have one.”

Han Han is not alone in his disdain. Last month, a group of 22 prominent Chinese intellectuals called for a boycott of CCTV, saying the network churned out only “low-grade propaganda.”

(For a taste of why many Chinese people might be fed up with CCTV, check out this YouTube clip of how the network covered Barrack Obama's inaugural address. The live feed is muted and the presenter awkwardly cuts in just as Obama mentions that “earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.”)

CCTV eventually acknowledged that it was responsible for the fire, and that it didn't have the required permit to use fireworks that the deputy chief of Beijing's fire control bureau said were identical to those used during the opening ceremonies of last summer's Olympic Games.

It has yet to apologize for its shoddy coverage of an event that couldn't have been any easier to report.

Two thrown shoes, one "despicable act"

Beijing, Feb. 4, 2009: After trying for 24 hours to pretend that nothing happened, the Chinese government is now declaring its belated outrage over an incident that saw a protester throw a shoe at Premier Wen Jiabao during his speech at Cambridge University.

The incident occurred Monday as Mr. Wen was giving a speech entitled “See China in the light of her development” to a crowd of some 500 of the university's students and staff. As Mr. Wen was speaking, he was interrupted by an audience member who blew on a whistle and yelled that it was a scandal that Mr. Wen had been invited to speak at Cambridge. “How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?” the unnamed protester shouted as others in the crowd yelled for him to stop.

He capped off his diatribe Iraqi-style, tugging off his shoe and hurling it towards the podium, where it landed about a metre away from the Chinese premier. Mr. Wen briefly paused to size up the situation and to examine the grey sneaker that now lay to his right.

Then, after the protester was hustled out of the room by British police to face charges of disturbing the public order, he calmly resumed his speech. (You can watch a video of the incident here. The link may not work if you're inside China.)

At first, Beijing tried to act as though nothing had happened. The live broadcast of Mr. Wen's speech on state television was halted immediately after the incident, and no mention of the footwear-hurling was made in yesterday's newspapers.

Today, however, the government changed tact and went on the offensive, labeling the incident to be “despicable behaviour.”

“The Chinese side has expressed its strong feelings against the occurrence of the incident,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement, part of which appeared on the front page of today's China Daily.

The Chinese blogosphere also erupted. A clip of the incident that was eventually posted on the popular sina.com web portal drew more than 8,000 responses, most of which condemned the protester and praised Mr. Wen for his restrained response. Even my Chinese teacher was upset. “Did you see what happened to Premier Wen Jiabao? This is very disappointing,” she told me between lessons on proper sentence structure. “Everybody wants to know who would do this.”

One thing that detracted from China's cries of insult: the same Foreign Ministry that complained of despicable behavior had seen fit to make light of a similar episode last month in Baghdad when Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi tossed his size-10s at former U.S. President George W. Bush.

When asked about the Bush incident at a press conference in Beijing soon after that incident, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao earned a few chuckles with his response.

“Next time I should watch out for not only [those] who are raising their hands, but also [those] who are untying their shoelaces,” he said.

Wise advice for Mr. Wen and all world leaders these days. But it appears the Chinese government found such things funnier when the shoe was on the other foot.