A new kind of swimwear trend is sweeping the Chinese beaches in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province. As the weather get hotter, both men and women are seen appearing on the beaches wearing full body suits that cover from head to toe. The upper part of the swimsuit has a ski-mask with holes cut out at appropriate places to leave the eyes, nose and mouth exposed, giving the wearer an odd Lucha libre look. The Netizens are calling the swimwear "face-kinis”
The mask are a way for Chinese bathers to protect their skin from the sunburn, but it turns out that they are equally handy at repelling insects and jellyfish.
Unlike in western culture, women in Asian countries don’t like to get a tan particularly in the face. Tan is often seen as a connection to outdoor work and peasantry who toil in the sun. Fair skin, on the other hand, is associated with aristocracy and seen as a sign of feminine beauty unscathed by the indignities of manual labor. Preserving one's pale skin, which is an obsession across Asia, is encouraged in many Asian culture and cosmetic products that caters to this belief is a booming industry. Drugstore shelves across Asia bulge with rows of creams and cosmetic that promises natural-looking fair hue.
Facekinis started as a do-it-yourself garment that women made at home using scraps of fabric and a sewing machine, but now they can be found at swimwear shops for 15 to 25 yuan ($2.40 to $4.00) each.
Wouldn't wanna look like a peasant, that would just be uncivilized.
You ever see the stories about women who get disfigured using shitty skin whiteners? Crazy stuff. Throw some bleach in your vaseline intensive care, what could go wrong! Kinda reminds me of the great north american tradition of bullshit diets that don't involve better nutrition or any exercise.
Funny how, among many Americans, it's the opposite; so many fair-skinned people want to have a tan. At the massage center I work at, they offer spray tans (I don't personally give them), and they're very popular among lots of young women.
Lots of rich people see a tanned complexion as having the leisure time to lay out in the sun, or enjoying outdoor activities, while being 'too fair-skinned' as appearing less healthy and spending more time stuck working inside at a desk/cubicle.
There’s something to be said for keeping up appearances and making good impressions, but what underlying defect is this string of apartment buildings trying to hide by painting on pretend windows?! These high-rise housing complexes in China’s Shandong Province aren’t fooling any prospective tenants with their fake windows, so really, what’s the point?
It’s somewhat bewildering, but apparently a number of building constructors in China have begun painting windows up the entire front of their otherwise plain apartment blocks. All other sides of these towering structures have actual windows installed, so one might wonder why the builders couldn’t spare the costs to give equal treatment to the front-facing walls.
The answer is actually quite reasonable. It’s not that the builders wouldn’t do it; it’s more that they physically couldn’t. Architects designed these buildings with the elevators at the front. And let’s face it; it wouldn’t make sense to add windows to an elevator shaft.
Of course, that still doesn’t explain why planners decided to add paint to the facade. It certainly doesn’t change the quality of life for those living within. We have to assume that it’s all about first impressions. After all, when viewed from a distance or passed at a glance, the painted-on windows look like the real deal. One can’t necessarily tell them apart from actual windows! The owners must hope that this clever cover for an architectural error will encourage the public to rate them at higher value.
I suppose that as long as that’s the least of their constructional shortcuts, we can still be in business.
Beijing (AFP) - Animal activists are combing a forest in eastern China for more than 1,000 kittens rescued from a meat supplier only to be let loose by local authorities, an organiser said Monday.
Animal protection volunteers and local police intercepted a truck "filled with cats" destined for dinner plates last week, said an activist surnamed Ni from the Wuxi Small Animal Protection Association in eastern Jiangsu province.
But local government officials released the felines -- some as young as four months old -- into a nearby mountain forest to fend for themselves, Ni said.
"They were being sent to Guangzhou to be eaten by people," he told AFP.
"We didn't want to release them, our volunteers had places to keep them. It's definitely irresponsible."
Volunteers are now scouring the hillsides with cages in an attempt to capture the cats, and hope to put those found up for adoption, Ni said, adding that more than 50 have been retrieved in the last week.
"Some of the cats are hungry, and haven't eaten, while others have been run over by cars," he said.
The state-run Beijing Youth Daily said Sunday that authorities seized the cats because the lorry owner did not have the correct documents, but decided to release the animals into the wild as there was no source of funds to have them put down.
China's small but growing ranks of animal activists have staged a number of rescues in recent years.
Cats are not commonly eaten in most parts of China but some restaurants, particularly in the south, continue to serve them as food.
Around 600 cats stuffed into wooden crates and on their way to such a fate were rescued after a truck crash in January.
A convoy of trucks carrying some 500 dogs to be sold as meat was stopped by volunteers on a highway in Beijing in 2011 and the animals retrieved.
China does not have any laws to protect non-endangered animals.
Originally Posted by YouKnowWho
This is 100% TCMA principle. It may be used in non-TCMA also. Since I did learn it from TCMA, I have to say it's TCMA principle.
Originally Posted by YouKnowWho
We should not use "TCMA is more than combat" as excuse for not "evolving".
You can have Kung Fu in cooking, it really has nothing to do with fighting!
Meanwhile, does this mean what I think it means? Glow-in-the-dark BACON!?!?
in Science & Technology - on 29.12.13 - No comments
A handout photo shows fluorescent green pigs in a Taipei lab. (Reuters/STR New)
Along with red, green is the color of this holiday season. And bright green is showing up in more than just decorations. In Guangdong Province in Southern China, ten transgenic piglets have been born this year, six of them since August, and under a black light, they glow a greenish tint.
A technique developed by reproductive scientists from the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa's John A. Burns School of Medicine was used to quadruple the success rate at which plasmids carrying a fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA were transferred into the embryo of the pig. Drs. Zhenfang Wu and Zicong Li of the South China Agricultural University have detailed the research that produced the transgenic pigs in an academic manuscript recently submitted to the Biology of Reproduction journal. Dr. Zicong is a UH alumnus. Also assisting in the manuscript was Dr. Johann Urschitz, an Assistant Research Professor in the UH medical school's Institute for Biogenesis Research (IBR).
Credit: South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, 2013.
In a video accompanying the research, the pigs not unlike human children afraid of the dark begin to squeal when the lights are turned off, except for the black light, which helps illuminate the green tint. The noise is because the scientists are holding the by-now-large piglets in a container to prevent their movement, to make the florescent glow most visible.
The green color simply indicates that the fluorescent genetic material injected into the pig embryos has been incorporated into the animal's natural make-up. "It's just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it," explains Dr. Stefan Moisyadi, a veteran bioscientist with the IBR.
Dr. Moisyadi said the animals are not affected by the fluorescent protein and will have the same life span as other pigs. "The green is only a marker to show that it's working easily," he said.
The ultimate goal is to introduce beneficial genes into larger animals to create less costly and more efficient medicines. "[For] patients who suffer from hemophilia and they need the blood-clotting enzymes in their blood, we can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build," Dr. Moisyadi said.
The IBR technique involves proprietary pmgenie-3 plasmids conferring active integration during cytoplasmic injection. This technique was also used to produce the world's first "glowing green rabbits" in Turkey earlier this year. Turkey is expected to announce results of similar research involving sheep in the New Year.
I like the walnut one. Douchy, but smart. You get to sell it all twice. One happy customer and one really pissed off customer. But at least they aren't poisoning people. Just a good ol fashion straight up bait and switch scam. Love it!
Sculptures of two naked Buddhas are seen on the top of a building in Jinan, capital city of east China's Shandong province on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014. [Photo/China News Service]
Pictures of the two Buddhas, one climbing a wall and the other looking at him with folded hands, swiftly made the rounds on the Internet.
Some thought the sculptures were interesting, while others said they were disrespectful to the Buddha.
Sculptures of naked Buddhas removed after two-day appearance
A sculpture of naked Buddha is seen being removed Monday, for it has damaged the cityscape of Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province.
Too bad some people have no sense of humour. I think it's quite appropriate, actually. I'm curious as to what the intended meaning was. Maybe I'm reading too much into it though.
China's market for kitchen gloves is wide open too. Reuters/Lucas Jackson
Victoria’s Secret is making its first foray into mainland China, parent company L Brands announced last week, with the opening of Victoria’s Secret Beauty and Accessories stores later this year.
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But blinged-out bras, lace undergarments, and $50 sweatpants won’t be available there just yet. These “VSBA” stores are smaller outlets that are often located in airports. Typically, some of them sell underwear, but when queried by Quartz, L Brands said the VSBA stores in China would ”focus on an iconic, fashion-forward range of beauty products, including our award-winning prestige fragrances, and chic accessories.”
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Still, the entrance of one of the most iconic lingerie brand marks another stage in China’s transformation from the world’s low-cost garment manufacturer into a consumer in the premium clothing sector. Selling lingerie to China’s growing middle class is likely Victoria’s Secret’s end goal. L Brands executive Nicholas Coe called the country “an incredibly significant market for us in the future” during an analyst call on Feb. 27.
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China’s contribution to the global lingerie industry is small but growing. In 2010, total revenue was about $3.9 billion, according to statistics from cloth.hc360.com, a Chinese clothing retailer, compared to the global value of the industry of over $30 billion. But sales of intimate wear have been growing up to 20% annually. China is already home to local brands like La Miu, which has been called the Victoria’s Secret of China, as well as independent designers and a few foreign brands like Italy’s La Perla and France’s Etam. Industry observers say there’s certainly room for more competition, given that lingerie is the least saturated segment of the Chinese retail market.
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Expanding Chinese interest in intimate wear is also a positive sign for other “invisible” luxury goods like premium perfume and make up, which have only recently started to gain traction among China’s traditionally logo-focused shoppers. In 2012, Tim Brasher, former chief executive of La Perla, told Jing Daily that Chinese consumers tended to have a “much more functional orientation toward lingerie and underwear.”
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Victoria’s Secret already has some brand awareness in China. In December, it hosted a version of its annual annual fashion show, in Shanghai and it already operates stores in Hong Kong, where millions of mainland Chinese go to shop. As long as the brand doesn’t try launching another tone-deaf Go East collection—with chopsticks and fans, promising “exotic adventures”—its prospects for unclasping the Chinese market seem bright.
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Originally Posted by GeneChing
