Dolorous Ett's Bestiary

In which a man is savaged by a panda in a Guilin wildlife park, after climbing into its enclosure and trying to cuddle it.

Two years ago, I would have laughed and posted this for its comedy value alone.

But you see, two years ago there was this article about an over-friendly drunk who got mauled for trying to cuddle a panda.

And then last year there was this story (same panda as the 2006 article above, by the way).

You wouldn't expect three incidents of people being mauled by pandas to be easy to find, but it took me about 5 seconds. I suspect I could find others if I dug a bit. In short, there is a definite pattern emerging. I absolutely can't see it myself, but there is plainly something about pandas that makes people want to cuddle them as soon as they've downed a few drinks.

What is the matter with these people? There's been plenty of media coverage, for obvious reasons, but there seems to be an unlimited number of foolhardy animal lovers ready to leap into the enclosure and have a go.

To the China-lovers, China-experts, Old China Hands, lovers of online bookings and anyone else who knows what's what on my F-list - 

My Mum's thinking of taking a boat down the Yangtze River. And I've realised to my deep embarrassment that I really don't know anything about how to set such a thing up, what goes on or how to make sure she gets a good deal. I mean, I could fudge something together I'm sure, but I have nil experience of boats in China, Chongqing or any of the stopping-off points. Or booking things in China online. And I have such a knowledgeable F-list...

So, do any of you have any experience of this journey? Or a tame travel agent? Or words of wisdom about online booking in general? Or any helpful comments of any sort? I'd be very grateful to hear from you.
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Other news: After tomorrow I'm going to be a bit out of touch for a few days - going to sunny Portsmouth to talk interminably about China with an old friend. No internet access, so no commenting from me. 

Do leave me a note, though, if something unmissable happens...

The things we do to avoid marking... I remembered this in the middle of a Literature and Gender seminar this afternoon, and I thought I'd share.

This is from a book called Midnight by the renowned author Mao Dun. A literary prize was named after him. He was meant to be very good at the sensitive portrayal of women. What do you think?

And before you ask, don't blame the translator. This is just like the Chinese, only in English

( An ice-bag! Get an ice-bag! Old Mr Wu's having a stroke! )

This isn't on the Required Reading list for our Literature & Gender course... but it damn well should be.

I stumbled upon this by accident a couple of days ago - a colleague lent me a book about Chinese with one of the words from the piece below on the cover. It wasn't till I read the author's notes that I realised this is English letters distorted to appear like Chinese calligraphy. I can't isolate one letter, but here's a link to the whole piece. 

If you can't decode that, try the banner to the left of this page, which reads "Art for the People".

The artist is called Xu Bing, and the work is "New English Calligraphy". Clever, clever Xu Bing.

How were they for you? I found them incredibly hard to figure out - I've spent years training myself not to look for Roman letters in Chinese characters, and to process them as a whole, or at most in two or three big chunks - so although I'm fascinated by them, they also do really bad things to my brain - when I look at these pages I can feel my brain running round and round my skull and whimpering to be let out.

And here's another one.