After wandering the halls of the China blogsphere for a few years now, it generally takes a pretty unique China-themed site to raise my eyebrow. ChinaSMACK is just such a site.

Essentially the site digs up, translates and reposts all the shit and sludge, peppered liberally with the plain weird, that are hot (or “viral”) topics in the Chinese-language Internet (blogs, bbs, etc.).

The site is well summed up by its tagline:
“Viral Chinese internet stories, pictures, & videos, translated. See what’s so popular, sexy, scandalous, or shocking behind the Great Wall”

I remember back in the early days of the net me and my high school buddies couldn’t get enough of the site rotten.com …

I’m not sure what amuses me more, that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao has a Facebook profile, or that he has more supporters on his profile than US President George W. Bush.

That’ll teach George not to respond to natural disasters in a timely manner.

Still, the PM is just below Arnold Schwarzenegger - but really, even if you stick all the disasters that Grandpa Wen has weathered, it hardly amounts to saving the world from a future war with cyborgs. I mean, lets keep some perspective.

From the NYT article:
The page appears to have been set up recently. It is not clear whether Mr. Wen, 65, did …

If you’ve been using the Firefox addon Access Flickr, which allows you view Flickr photos while being behind the Great Firewall, you may have noticed some photos display just fine and some wont at all.

Since posting last june about the fantastic solution for us shutterbugs in China, Flickr has added a new “farm” for photo storage - essentially a different sub-domain of the Flickr site. Unless you are using the latest version of the addon, currently 1.9, you will have sporadic broken images in your browser.

To fix this, simply upgrade to Access Flickr 1.9 or higher.

Not using Firefox yet? Why the heck not? Download it free.

Related
An interesting article with …

Now with the troubles in the West mostly harmonized, and Taiwan’s newly-elected president certified as China Friendly, it looks like YouTube has returned to its previous sluggish-but-accessible self.

As a freebie, the powers that free also appear to have unblocked BBC News, a site that to the best of my knowledge has been blackballed near the entire time I’ve been in China (3+ years).

Most of the usual suspects (Wikipedia, most all blogging networks, Flickr images, etc.), however, haven’t felt the sweet flick of any switches that would see them return to mainstream Chinese Internet viewership.

China bloggers unite! The China Blog Network has arrived.

In an effort to tie together all us sinobloggers, we’re launching the China Blog Network, a (appropriately enough) network of China blogs that all link together in a ring-around-the-rosie style (we’re praying we don’t all fall down).

Though most of us link to each other through our blogrolls, I thought it might be more convenient, and fun, to have a method by which we can create an actual blogging network, whereby we can explore new related blogs and show a bit of solidarity for our blogging niche.

Membership to the network is free, but limited to blogs about China. …

China wouldn’t be my first guess of places American lawmakers would look for legislative ideas. But Mashable points to a proposed law in Kentucky that would make it illegal for websites to allow anonymous comments and fine site owners $500 for the first offense. Tim Couch, the state representative who sponsored the bill, says it’s necessary to fight “online bullying,” according to WTVQ in Lexington.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The …

Think Baidu’s just a Google copy? Think again. The Chinese search engine that dominates domestic searches may have a lot in common with the “do no evil” American search giant, but it is in itself a whole other animal.

On March 10th my good friend and business partner, Professor Lonnie Hodge, will be joining Grace Zhou, manager of Baidu’s international office, to present the Baidu Basics webinar. They’ll be joined by Sam Flemming, CEO and Founder of CIC, an innovative IWOM research and consulting firm out of Shanghai.

Moderating the event, in between filming new video podcasts …