China’s Ministry of Culture on Wednesday (Nov 12) released a draft of new regulations to gather public opinions on commercial performances related matters; among the proposed regulation is to ban lip-syncing in commercial events in the country.
If the proposal is approved, artists who lip-sync will be penalised, and repeated offenders will have their performance license revoked.
It’s not the first time that such suggestion is made; a people’s representative had proposed similar idea in 2005, but didn’t manage to get much response.
Ironically the new proposal is made just months after the scandalous lip-synching at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in which a background singer was used while having another kid lip-syncing at the centre of the stage.
~590,000 Korean students took their College Scholastic Ability Test (수능 – Suneung) on Thursday (Nov 13)… a day where the students had to endure a gruelling nine-hour tests that would significantly influence their future career prospect.
It’s a day where stock market and offices were opened an hour late to ease the morning traffic; where flights had to be rescheduled during the listening test to avoid the slightest disturbance… and it’s a day where temples and churches were packed with parents praying for good performances from their kids.
Parents praying for their kids in a Seoul temple; and students cheering for their seniors
to do well in the exam (Image from
Xinhuanet)
The CSAT would determine which university/college the Korean students would be enrolled to… and the reputation of the universities will make a huge impact on their career path. A student who gets into a top university is almost guaranteed a bright future in their working career.
The larger-than-life exam culture is not entirely unique to Korea; most of the East Asian countries are adopting similar ideology, presumably originated from the Chinese civil servants’ exam in ancient Chinese dynasty some thousand of years ago. The Koreans however seem to be taking the whole idea to its extremity.
Many quarters have criticised that the high pressure of preparing for the CSAT attributes to the high suicide rates of Korean teenagers; while some others are criticising that the system are undermining the students’ creativity and other talents by overemphasising the exam results.
UK’s Newcastle University has expelled 49 students from China and one from Taiwan after the certificates they used to gain entry were found to be forged.
Most of the students had enrolled on business studies courses which started in September, but the university became suspicious when the students were unable to keep up with work. Their applications were rechecked and forged English language and degree certificates were discovered.
Newcastle University said many of the students appeared to be victims of bogus agents based either in China or the UK; but it was necessary to exclude them to protect the interests of other properly qualified students [more on BBC]
Personally I find it hard to believe that the students were not aware of the forgery or at least suspicious of what the ‘bogus’ agents were doing to get them enrolled… wonder what kind of documents they might forge when they get into the job market.
Korean Viliv PMP commercials featuring popular actor Bae Yong-joon…
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Korean pop groups 2PM and SNSD posed for Elite school uniform…
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Hatsuyo Sugawara, a 44 year-old Japanese woman, won the 23rd Wanko-soba National Tournament that was held in Morioka City on Sunday (Nov 10) after eating 383 ‘bowls’ of soba noodles in 10 minutes.
Wanko-soba is a famous delicacy in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture; contrary to most soba dishes, wanko-soba is served in small portion… roughly 10-15 bowls of wanko-soba make up a standard bowl of soba.
The contestants had 15 mins to eat as much as they could… Hatsuya’s time was reduced to 10 mins as handicap for being the reigning champ; but she still managed to defend her title rather easily… [via Japantoday and Japanprobe]
Youth Trekkers Wanted – Taiwan Giving You a Free Hug
The National Youth Commission of Taiwan is organising a contest to promote youth tourism in the island, in which the winners will get a travel allowance of USD1,000 and free air tickets to Taiwan.
The contest is opened to young people (aged 18-30) with the nationality of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore or Malaysia.
Participants are required to draft a thematic travel plan lasting for over 10 days to interact with the society, culture and environment of Taiwan.
12 winners (two from each country/place) will be awarded the travel allowance of USD1,000 and free return air tickets. There are however a few clauses that the winners have to oblige with… kindly check the contest website for more details.
The contest expiry date is November 30, 2008.
