Friday Morning Tea: Free Oiwan Lam…Forbidden City for stat geeks…Slate and Bushisms…PRI and Young China…HtWW and Lu Xun in Japan…Vote for us

Hong Kong-based citizen journalist and Global Voices Online contributor Oiwan Lam is facing charges of indecency in Hong Kong for posting an artsy topless photograph found on Flickr. She is facing a lengthy–and expensive–court battle and needs your help. The case has quickly become a cause célèbre in the China blogosphere. More information available at EastSouthWestNorth, Global Voices Online, Imagethief, RC Conversation, An open letter from Oiwan Lam, and Lost Laowai. Ryan McLaughlin’s company Dao by Design has also created “Free Oiwan Lam” badges for websites. Finally, a blog has been set up to provide updates on Oiwan’s situation.

For stat geeks on holiday in Beijing, China Daily has a feature called “The Forbidden City by the Numbers.” The article is chock full of measurements, ratios, and other fun figures. (And no there are not 9999.5 rooms, best as they can figure there are only 8,707.)

Slate Magazines Bushism of the Day: “I cannot look a mother and father of a troop in the eye and say, ‘I’m sending your kid into combat, but I don’t think we can achieve the objective.’ “—Washington, D.C., July 12, 2007. Yikes.

This week on PRI’s The World radio program, Mary Kay Magistad is doing a series on “Young China.” Magistad has nice, low-key interview style that avoids the snarkiness that sometimes creeps in the dispatches of some foreign correspondents.

Andrew Leonard at Salon’s How the World Works writes about a Tokyo University trying to appeal to young Chinese students by calling on the services of Lu Xun, perhaps the most well-known modern Chinese author. Lu Xun began his literary career as a foreign exchange student studying medicine at Tohoku University, though the author of the classic stories “The True Story of Ah-Q” and “My Old Home” soon abandoned his medical studies to concentrate on writing.

Finally, voting continues for the China Blog Awards. Feel free to follow this link and show a little love.

Tags: morning tea

Jottings from the Granite Studio