BEIJING – A stray dog has become China’s newest celebrity after latching onto a group of cyclists and traveling more than 1,100 miles over at least 12 mountains, some as high as 13,000 feet, in China’s southwestern Tibetan Plateau.

The homeless dog, nicknamed Xiao Sa, finished her 24-day journey from China’s Sichuan Province to Lhasa, Tibet on May 24.

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“At first we didn’t think about adopting her at all,” said 22-year-old cyclist and college student Xiao Yong in an interview with China Central TV. “But we were shocked by her perseverance. She followed us [from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province] to Litang [a town in Sichuan province with a 2.6 mile altitude]. We then decided to make a cage for her when we had a steep road going downhill.”

The long march began with a chicken leg Xiao Yong tossed to the puppy when he started his bike ride in early May. The little mutt followed the cyclist team after that and became part of the cycling group.

They came up with the nickname “Xiao Sa” by combining the term “xiao,” which means “little,” with the last syllable of Lhasa, the administrative capital of Tibet and the cyclists final destination.

“She once ran 37 miles in one day, going uphill. We were very impressed by Xiao Sa’s persistence, that inspired us all the way till our destination, the Potala Palace [in Lhasa, Tibet],” said Xiao Yong. “I’ll take Xiao Sa back home. I think she’s taking me as her owner now.”

Lu Bo, another team member, said the little white fur-ball was an inspiration to the whole team. The dog “made us so happy. Once a few of our team members lagged behind, she ran from hill top to the bottom, to bring these guys to the rest of the team. She injected power into us,” said Lu. 

She is now with her new owner, Xiao Yong, in Wuhan, capital city of the southern Hubei province.

And like a true celebrity, Xiao Sa has even opened her own Weibo account, China’s most popular Twitter-like service. It is called “GoGoXiaoSa,” where fans can check out her latest photos and whereabouts. And she already has over 82,000 followers.

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BEIJING -- Westerners spreading Christmas cheer with their holiday lights last year probably didn’t realize that some of the warm glow came courtesy of a prison labor camp in China, and partially thanks to a former inmate named Fang Hong.

After serving a year making Christmas lights in grueling conditions, Fang Hong was released on April 24 from the Drug Rehabilitation and Re-Education-Through-Labor Center in China’s southwestern mega-city of Chongqing.

Fang’s crime? Before their fall, he criticized Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai, two formally powerful Chongqing officials, now with their own legal problems.

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Wang is the ex-police chief of Chongqing, who fled to the American consulate in Chengdu for protection in February, allegedly after a fall-out with Bo.

Bo is the former Party Secretary of Chongqing, who had been a hot contender for one of China’s most powerful political positions on the standing committee of the Communist Party's politburo, but is now under investigation for corruption. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Thin and energetic, 45-year-old Fang has never been shy about speaking out. Before his imprisonment, he worked at the Fuling District Forestry Bureau in Chongqing, but spent most of his spare time writing blogs that challenged wasteful public spending and criticizing government corruption.

It is unclear whether a post he wrote last April was the last straw. In it, he mocked a lawsuit that implicated Li Zhuang, a lawyer who defended a businessman during Bo’s controversial crackdown on gangs started in 2009. While defending the businessman, Li himself drew criticism and was accused of inciting perjury. 

“Bo Xilai took a dump, and asked Wang Lijun to eat it,” Fang wrote. “Wang passed the dump to the public prosecutor, and public prosecutor passed it to the court. The court then passed it to Li Zhuang. Li’s lawyer said, Li is not hungry. Whoever took the dump can eat it.”

City divided by disgraced Communist leader's legacy

The mocking scatological references obviously irritated someone within the police force, who then summoned Fang on the same evening that the blog post was published.

Fang was told by police to delete his post. He did, but his ordeal had just begun.

The next day, Fang received a summons again from the Chongqing police. He refused to go, but soon found his home surrounded by more than 20 policemen and a fire truck. The standoff lasted a whole day.

Fang was detained, and four days later received a written decision without trial, sentencing him to one year in a labor re-education prison for “spreading rumors and disturbing social order.”

Fang’s son and his girlfriend were also forced to “take a vacation” to prevent them from talking to lawyers and journalists.

Fang told NBC News he had to work about 10 hours every day, including weekends. He said he was locked in the prison along with about 1,000 other inmates. He shared a room with 11 others, most of whom were serving sentences for petty crimes such as gambling, fighting, stealing a neighbor’s chicken, or taking lewd photos.

Fang said his job was to weld Christmas light bulbs for a Shenzhen-based company called Kingland Lighting, and also screw in wires for notebooks for another company, Chongqing Baogen. He also made straws for Fuling Taiji Group for its health drinks. Kingland’s website says it exports its Christmas lights to Europe.

Fang made 8 Yuan a month, about of $1.27. He told NBC News he was not allowed to eat meat and had no connections with anyone on the other side of the iron bars. A chain smoker, Fang said he eased his nicotine withdrawal thanks to a cellmate who smuggled in cigarettes for him. Chinese prisons allow inmates to smoke, but Fang had been stripped of this privilege.

In February, a lawyer who came to see Fang told him Wang and Bo were in trouble.

“The whole labor camp was in ecstasy,” said Fang. “Everyone was jubilant and saying, the oppressive official is now a traitor! The red song singer is a traitor!”

On April 24, Fang was finally released.

What did it feel like to regain his freedom? Fang simply shook his head and calmly said: “Nothing. I have no feeling. Nothing is too shocking in this country. Unfortunately, I was born in China.”

With the help of a few lawyers, Fang is now suing the Education-through-Labor Office of Chongqing, demanding that his conviction be overturned and asking for compensation.

Whether his case will be heard by the Chongqing's Third Intermediate Court is uncertain. Pu Zhiqiang, one of the lawyers fighting for Fang, told NBC News he’s optimistic.

“If the court rejects his case, it shows its cowardice to the whole world. It tells people the court cannot meet a citizen’s expectations,” Pu said.

Fang and his lawyers hope that by making his case known to the world, China will one day abolish the decades-long re-education through labor system.

“We should pursue the answer to one question: Is a labor camp legal?” said Pu. “Is it based on laws? It’s so brutal and completely up to some individual’s decision to arrest anyone, without trail and any legal procedure. Victims have no way to help themselves. It’s against the Chinese constitution and international laws. The labor camp system should be permanently abolished.”

(NBC News contacted Chongqing Third Intermediate Court on May 15. The court confirmed Fang's case will be heard but declined to give more comments at the moment.)

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BEIJING – He Peirong’s voice was last heard on Friday morning, when she was talking to Bob Fu, the head of the U.S.-based nonprofit group China Aid. Fu said he was communicating with He via Skype when she said that state security agents had arrived at her home. Nobody has been able to contact her since then.

He, an activist, is one of the many people who assisted Chen Guangcheng’s daring escape from a year and a half of house arrest last week. The blind lawyer and human rights activist is now allegedly under the protection of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

But his family members and friends are still subject to police detention and harassment, a contradiction to claims by some people that his brutal persecution was only a single case by the local government in Shandong province, where Chen is from.

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Mysterious disappearances
Among those who have disappeared is another helper, Guo Yushan, a Beijing-based human rights advocate.

Guo was taken away by police on April 26, but released Monday night. Shortly after he was let go, Guo answered a phone call from the Hong Kong paper Apply Daily, claiming he was one of the organizers of Chen’s escape. He also confirmed to Apple Daily that some of the local villagers were also arrested for assisting the breakout.

Who is Fu? Chinese exile is 'God's double agent'

However, when NBC News tried to reach him by phone multiple times Tuesday, his phone went silent again. He allegedly had a conversation with police Tuesday morning.

At least three of Chen’s relatives have been detained by police, including his brother and uncle. Chen’s mother, wife and 6-year-old daughter are still under siege at their home in Linyi in eastern Shandong province by dozens of thugs, who stopped journalists’ attempts to enter their home after his escape.

Chen Kegui, a nephew of Chen, is also on the run now after he stabbed two unidentified men who broke into his home Thursday night when they took his father.

According to a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Chen Kegui’s wife wouldn’t even tell their lawyer Liu Weiguo where she was hiding herself, too frightened of being dragged away like her relatives. But even the lawyer wasn’t exempt from the pressure from the authorities.

Watch World News videos on msnbc.com

Chen Wuquan, another Guangdong-based lawyer, told NBC News that Liu sent him a text message early Tuesday morning, saying he had been summoned by police and was under heavy surveillance. NBC News tried to contact Liu many times, but his cell phone remains off.

Cat and mouse between censored and censors
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is enforcing its strong will to hide the news from the public.

On China’s most popular Twitter-like service, Weibo, searching for names like "Chen Guangcheng" or "He Peirong" only leads you to some unrelated posts of funny videos, a predictable result.

But in the past few days, tweets with other words that netizens have been using as code words to avoid censorship, including "blind man," "sightless," "sunglass man" and "Shawshank Redemption," have all miraculously disappeared.

Threads guiding users to foreign media reports also have been deleted -- hours or sometimes minutes after they are added to Weibo. The wrestling between the censors and the censored is turning into a cat-and-mouse game and a test of imagination.

 

BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.

After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”

As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.

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With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.

But the Beijing Municipal government hopes to end such unintended jokes with its new guidebook intended for the public and restaurants alike, “Enjoy Culinary Delights: The English Translation of Chinese Menus.”

The effort began in 2006 with a “Beijing speaks English” campaign. By the 2008 Summer Olympics, officials had created a draft guide with translations for major restaurants to meet the demand for arriving athletes and tourists.

“After 2008, we felt like the book was in a good demand, so we kept working on it and collected more menus. Finally we translated over 2,000 Chinese dish names,” said Xiang Ping, deputy chief of the “Beijing speaks English” committee, in an interview with NBC News.

Some of the dishes kept their original names, which people familiar with Chinese food may understand: jiaozi, baozi, mantou, tofu or wonton.

Some more complicated dishes come with both Chinese pronunciations and explanations: “fotiaoqiang” (steamed abalone with shark’s fin and fish maw in broth); “youtiao” (deep-fried dough sticks); “lvdagunr” (glutinous rice rolls stuffed with red bean paste),
and “aiwowo” (steamed rice cakes with sweet stuffing).

Chen Lin, a 90-year-old retired English professor from Beijing Foreign Language University, was the chief consultant for the book.
He told NBC News that about 20 other experts – like English teachers and professors, translators, expats who have lived in China for a long time, culinary experts and people from the media – helped develop the final version.  

So next time you're in Beijing and you are confronted with a menu item like "hand shredded ass meat," hopefully you can crack open the book to get some guidance. It means "hand shredded donkey meat."

BEIJING – It’s the biggest news in China in a long time – and China’s netizens are finding ways to get around censors to gossip and get the latest online rumors.

The scandal, which has spread to the New York Times front page and other Western news outlets, is centered on Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, China’s biggest municipality with 30 million residents, and his wife, Gu Kailai, who is a murder suspect in the death of British businessman Neil Heywood.

Before the bombshell announcement from China’s official news agency, Bo had been considered one of the top contenders for the country’s highest echelon of power, the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party, in the upcoming power reshuffle this fall.
 
No further official information has been released since last Tuesday’s news, but it still seems as if China’s entire population of 1.3 billion people is talking about the scandal. And despite the government’s best efforts to squelch online chatter, the country’s savvy computer fans have come up with novel ways to circumvent Beijing’s watchdogs.  

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Foreign 'rumors'
Foreign media have continued to feed the voracious appetite for more juicy details from Chinese netizens.

Many in China have made use of VPNs (virtual private networks) to circumvent the Great Firewall to access these Western reports, as well as overseas Chinese websites like Boxun, or Hong Kong and Taiwanese media reports. 

Every time a new article comes out, it’s instantly translated into Chinese and posted on Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like service, followed by tons of comments and re-tweets.

The foreign reports have delved into everything about Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife, from her business dealings to her friends and close personal relationship with Heywood.

The extravagant lifestyle of Bo Guagua, Bo Xilai and Gu’s only son, has also come under the spotlight in foreign news reports – from his hard-partying ways at expensive private schools such as, Harrow, Oxford and Harvard, to his penchant for fast cars.   

And on Tuesday Reuters added a new wrinkle to the story with a report that Bo initially agreed to a police probe of his wife's role in the murder before abruptly reversing course and demoting his police chief, which eventually led to the downfall of both men.

The government has applied every method possible to silence not just the local press, but the public passing along tidbits from the foreign reports.

Posts regarding the Bo scandal, defined by the official media as “rumors,” are usually deleted quickly after they show up online. Major web portals have been ordered to intensify their monitoring of allegedly scurrilous reports. And government mouthpieces like CCTV and Xinhua have appealed to the public to stop spreading rumors.

Chinese authorities do not issue empty threats – at least six people were recently arrested for posting gossip about a rumored military coup in Beijing.

Getting around the Great Firewall
But cracking down on gossip is an enormous project in China. The country’s sophisticated netizens – who now number up to an estimated 500 million – pass along rumors using puns, hints and words with different Chinese characters but similar pronunciation to key words.

For instance, the word “Bo,” which also means “thin” in Chinese, has been replaced by the term “not thick.” Many posts have called Bo “the not thick governor” in order to slide past censors.  

Meanwhile, some witty netizens have referred to the city of Chongqing as “tomato,” because tomato is pronounced “Xi Hong Shi” in Chinese, which sounds the same as “Western Red City.” That seemingly cryptic reference is to the “red revolutionary song” campaign initiated by Bo when he was governing Chongqing. As the son of a major leader of China’s Communist Revolution, Bo was also famous for promoting a campaign to revive Cultural Revolution-era “red culture.”

“This is the most remarkable event [in China] ever since 1976, when the Gang of Four was arrested,” said Yao Bo, a China-based Internet observer and blogger, in a phone interview with NBC News. He was referring to when the leaders of China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution were publicly purged from the Communist Party a month after Chairman Mao’s death – marking the end of one of China’s most turbulent political eras.

“When people used to talk about politics on forums or bulletins before, it was censored much more easily, since such discussion always had a topic. Weibo is like a virus, it can share information much faster and becomes uncontrollable,” Yao said.

‘We Firmly Support the Central Party’
The government has tried to introduce a counter-campaign of sorts by ordering all major newspapers and TV news channels to pledge their loyalty to the Communist Party. Within a few days after Bo’s scandal was exposed, a variety of publications had editorials with the same headline: “We Firmly Support the Central Party.”
 
Some leftist websites that openly supported a return to a Maoist-like regime have been mysteriously shut down in recent days – another signal suggesting its best time to stick to the party line. None of them has publicly stated that they are following an official order, but they all went into “maintenance-mode” simultaneously.
 
Over the last few days less gossip devoted to the Bo scandal has appeared online, which Yao attributed to both censorship and the political nature of the scandal. 

“What Bo did was to pull China in an extreme direction when nobody knew where it was going. The leftists say ‘it’s a red trial,’ the rightists say ‘it’s a disaster.’ Now he’s down, people have nothing to argue about. This is a signal sent by the highest leaders that they do not wish to go back to China’s past.”
 
“This has made netizens realize one thing: rumor is another name for truth,” said Yao.

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BEIJING – It can be exorbitantly expensive to travel in China – and Chinese tourists are fed-up.

For instance, Sanya, a big resort city on China’s southern tropical island province of Hainan, is usually a dream destination for winter holiday makers. But it is becoming a target of netizens complaining about being ruthlessly ripped off there. One irate tourist recently complained on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging site, that he paid almost $635 dollars for a meal of three dishes including one fish.

Tourists everywhere could complain about getting gouged.  But it seems that Chinese tourists truly are justified in their gripes.

For example, a recent study published by Netease.com, one of China’s biggest Web portals,  borrowed the concept of the Big Mac index from the Economist to compare the prices of tourist attractions in both China and overseas.

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The Economist’s Big Mac index is based on the “theory of purchasing-power parity.” 

They use the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. as a benchmark and compare it to the local cost of a Big Mac to create a comparison between the currencies.

The Netease.com article borrowed the Big Mac index idea to compare entrance fees charged at Chinese tourist attractions versus those overseas.

The statistics are eye-opening.  

For example, the cost of admission to Jiuzhaigou National Park in southwest China, a U.N. biosphere reserve famous for its shimmering turquoise lakes and snow-crusted mountain peaks, costs 220 Yuan ($35) to get in, or, 14.3 Big Macs.

In contrast, Yellowstone National Park costs an adult entering by foot or bike $12 dollars, the equivalent of 2.7 Big Macs. (It costs $25 dollars for one vehicle, including all passengers).

In Paris, the Louvre Museum costs 2.9 Big Macs, while a ticket to China’s Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City in Beijing is as much as 3.9 Big Macs.

The well-known Great Wall just outside Beijing also looks expensive – its cost is 2.9 Big Macs, compared to the Taj Mahal, which is a quarter of one Big Mac (for Indian tourists; foreigners are charged more).

No regulation
“There’s no government supervision of ticket prices,” said Wu Jingmin, a former tour guide who agitated the tourism industry in 2006 by publishing his book “How Can I Not Rip You Off? – A Tour Guide’s Monologue.” In the book, Wu exposed how the industry scams tourists, from tour agencies to restaurants and even local governments.

Besides high admission fees in China, travelers also often have to pay additional costs at tourist sites for such items as shuttle buses or cable cars.

At Changbaishan, the sacred mountain on the border of China and North Korea, a tourist must buy three different tickets at $16 a piece if they wish to take in the view from its three different peaks, and that doesn’t include the extra $14 for the shuttle bus. 

Chinese tourists also normally travel during one of the three one-week-long national holidays.  Even if that means going to Beijing’s Forbidden City with 130,000 more visitors than on a usual day, or slowly pushing their way forward on the Great Wall when it is as packed as a rush hour subway.

“The regulations for ticket prices are in complete disorder,” Wu, the former tour guide, told NBC News in a phone interview. “Local price regulators usually say ‘yes’ to tourist attractions, no matter what they want to charge. Then the tourist-trap managers give a big discount to tour agencies, who make the money from selling very expensive tickets to tourists.” 

Wu complained that little is being done to remedy the situation.  

“The natural resources belong to the people. They just build a wall around it and then charge a high ticket price to the people, who don’t really have a choice. This industry’s future is worrying,” added Wu.  

He’s says he’s planning to create his own tour packages to counter the notorious prices in Sanya.

Hong Kong means “fragrant harbor” in Cantonese, but to me as a young girl in the 1980s it meant “mysterious dream.”  

My family, like millions of others in mainland China, didn’t own a television at the time. But the most enjoyable after-school activity for me and my friends was to go to the home of our one neighbor who actually had a TV to watch Hong Kong kung-fu series.

He had a black-and-white TV, but managed to make it look like a colored one by gluing a few translucent colored plastic straps on the screen. We were happy enough with a fake colored TV. We were also all fascinated by the Hong Kong soap operas. None of us could speak a word of Cantonese (the dialect spoken in Hong Kong), but we all could sing a few songs in perfect Cantonese; the shows’ themes songs played repeatedly on TV.

People talked about Hong Kong like it was a paradise of milk and honey: “Mr. Li got a new watch from his relative in Hong Kong! Look at him!”

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We also heard stories of mainlanders swimming across the sea between neighboring Guangdong province to sneak into Hong Kong, seeking asylum or a free life.   

In those old days, Hong Kong was a land of “capitalist” treasure, closed off to mainlanders like me, but open to the rest of world. Hong Kong was a lofty faraway dream that none of us thought would ever come true for us.
 
Just a few years later, every family in my hometown could afford to buy a TV, a refrigerator, and a telephone. Some richer ones even got themselves video cassette players.  

Then on July 1, 1997, we were told that Hong Kong was finally handed back to China after 100 years of British colonial rule. We were told to be proud of the return of the lost land cut off from its mother ship for a century.

It’s true that since Hong Kong’s handover it is no longer such a mystery – but in many ways it is still a world away for many mainland Chinese.

Not so open for mainlanders
For instance, on a recent trip, I left Beijing one hour earlier than my American colleague – but she arrived in Hong Kong several hours before me. She was able to hop a flight directly from Beijing to Hong Kong, but because I’m from a small city in mainland China, I was denied that privilege.

Not every mainlander can go to Hong Kong anytime they wish. For starters, they need a special blue pass that is issued only for trips to Hong Kong and nearby Macau. Like a regular China passport, this special pass is only given out by local police in the person’s hometown.

Take me, for example. Even though I have been living in Beijing for many years, I have to fly back to my hometown to apply for that blue pass. (I could apply for one in Beijing if I had Beijing residency, but I don’t and it is extremely hard to obtain.)
 
And – unlike my American colleague or most visitors other countries – I need a visa to go to Hong Kong.

Someone like me, who doesn’t have relatives or a business in Hong Kong, can only get a seven-day group tourist visa to visit. Individual tourist visas are only available to residents of many Guangdong province cities, such as nearby Shenzhen, and big cities in other provinces.

So to get there for our recent assignment, I had to fly to Shenzhen, known for its cheap labor and numerous factories. From there I took a bus from Shenzhen airport to the Shenzhen side of the Hong Kong border, where I met a travel agent.

The agent filled out a form to show the company had organized a “tour group” for me. Then he took me to the border inspection, where the officer stamped the form and my blue pass.

The border officer, the agent and I all knew I wasn’t joining any “tour group.” Everyone knew I was going to Hong Kong on my own. But I had to detour first through Shenzhen, with its population of 15 million, because I’m from a smaller faraway city (population of 3 million), not Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou.

Anchor baby battle: Hong Kong vs. China

Biggest surprise: bookstores
Hong Kong didn’t strike me as anything special when I first saw it in person. I had seen the city so many times on TV.

But certain things did surprise me. I was stunned by its bookstores: biographies of Chinese politicians, memoirs of dissidents, books about corruption and power struggles between Chinese officials were openly available. I could find any of the books normally banned in China.

I also noticed Hong Kong has the fastest escalators I’ve ever seen. There, everyone walks fast. Nobody would stop for me and my colleague when we tried to interview people on the street. In fact they didn’t even look at us. They were always rushing as if they had very important business to take care of.
 
The variety of food and drink in Hong Kong is also amazing, but it’s much more expensive than in Beijing and Shanghai. That doesn’t stop tons of mainlanders from buying it though. They come here to buy iPhones, computers, high-end cosmetics and expensive clothes.  The mainland might have been Hong Kong’s poor cousin for decades, but with mainlanders’ new-found wealth things have completely changed – almost.

There is still an impression in Hong Kong that their nouveau riche cousins have a bit of impolite country bumpkin in them.

Once when I entered Hong Kong I was struck by a sign on the wall: “Please cover your mouth when you sneeze.”  This is a sign I have never seen in the mainland.

In fact, during all my 16 years of mainland education, not a single teacher or parent ever told students, “don’t spit in public” or “wait in line.” There was no such thing as etiquette education back then.

I don’t know what’s going on in schools now, but I certainly hope the children in kindergarten these days are told to cover their mouths when they sneeze. (And I find it funny when I hear that Hong Kongers criticize mainlanders for being “loud.” I have the impression that the Cantonese are the loudest people in the world.)

Some friends tell me the recent tension between Hong Kong people and mainlanders – over issues like birth rights – is exaggerated by the media. Some other mainland friends say they clearly feel the hostility expressed by the locals. Some scholars say it is actually a conflict between Western and Eastern cultures, due to Hong Kong’s colonial past and international flavor.

Exaggerated or not, I sure don’t want to be called a “locust,” an insult currently being hurled at mainlanders by their Hong Kong brethren.  

Many mainlanders yearn to have the same lifestyle as Hong Kong people have –just like the one Hong Kongers pursued all those decades when they left mainland China.

BEIJING – Wukan, a village in Guangdong province in southern China, is making headlines again – this time for taking the first steps toward open and transparent elections, which 7,688 villagers participated in on Wednesday.

Wukan was in the spotlight late last year for a high-profile protest by villagers against local officials believed to be illegally selling public land to developers. 

The 11-day rebellion was defused peacefully in late December after senior Communist Party officials reached an agreement with Wukan’s protest leaders – promising free elections and an investigation into the murky real-estate deals. They also promised to investigate the death of a protester who had died in police custody.

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In another surprise, the local Communist Party appointed Lin Zuluan, one of the well-respected leaders of the defiant revolt, as the village party secretary. So Lin served as the chief in command for the first balloting that took place in the Wukan Elementary School Wednesday.

Villagers gathered in a festive scene to cast votes, for many the first time ever, to select an independent election committee to oversee upcoming ballots.  

Initial steps
Dozens of aluminum ballot boxes were placed around classrooms at the elementary school and students were mobilized to help count the ballots before they were distributed. Teachers helped elderly villagers who could not read or write.  A media counter was set up outside the school, and journalists were allowed in after registration.

“My biggest impression here at Wukan is that the atmosphere here is very different from any other Chinese villages,” one Chinese reporter at the scene wrote on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog. “The people here are very used to foreign journalists walking around filming. The village committee is open to everyone. Every family invites you to go to their house to stay, to eat or to drink tea. Brave and lucky Wukan villagers made their home different than any other Chinese villages with the same problems.”

The election lasted nine hours (with a two-hour break). It began at 9 a.m. with the national anthem playing and fireworks being set off – a Chinese tradition during the new lunar year.

The final results came at 11 p.m.: Out of the 50 candidates, 11 (including one woman) were elected to be on the election committee.

The new members will be responsible for organizing an upcoming election for the Wukan Village Committee. They will devise a plan for the election process; mobilize and familiarize the villagers with the new plan; scrutinize and publish the candidate list; and, most importantly, organize the villagers to vote. The election is due to start in early March.

Not a new idea
Village-level elections are not a new concept to Chinese people, but seldom are they transparent or democratic. The Communist Party still maintains single-party authority across the government – from Beijing to the smallest village – and has absolute control.

There have been experiments with grassroots elections since the 1980s – the outcome is usually just pre-determined from above. Representatives are often appointed by higher-level government officials and the process is usually murky or manipulated.

In Wukan, the former village head had been in power for 40 years without ever being properly elected. He was accused of misappropriating public land and embezzling compensation money that belonged to villagers.

So many are hopeful Wukan’s experiment will spread.

“Wukan is a start of China’s local political reform! I hope to see a real self-rule in the countryside,” wrote a Weibo user going by the name “Orient leaping towards wealth."

The user added, “Villagers that have both traditional legal culture and modern citizen spirit, they are the hope of China’s democracy.”
‘An experiment in democracy’
But others are not so sure about declaring a democratic victory in Wukan.

Chang Ping, a veteran journalist based in Hong Kong who has been closely following events in Wukan, is not so optimistic about its future.

“Their path is not going to be very smooth. The Guangdong government was smart about not cracking down with violence like other local governments, but that doesn’t mean they agree with complete self-rule. They will try to absorb Wukan into their old system, which they can still control. If that happens, the election will be the same election happening everywhere else,” Chang told NBC News in a phone interview. “Wukan’s protest has no end. Democracy doesn’t arrive just because you had three months of protest.”

However, Chang agreed that the event is revolutionary – if only as an exercise in how elections are supposed to work.

“Most of the elections we see are usually manipulated or the villagers don’t really know what their vote means. But Wukan villagers have their own understanding of voting, after their protest to finally obtain this right,” said Chang.  “It is an experiment in democracy, and it will affect other places in China.”

Related stories on Wukan:

Photo Blog: Chinese village takes halting democratic step

Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

Villagers defiant as government creates new narrative

A contagion of conflict in China?

BEIJING – Just days after Christian Bale made a red carpet appearance in Beijing for the premiere of his blockbuster new movie, “The Flowers of War,” about the 1937 Japanese sacking of Nanking, he made even bigger headlines in China off-screen on Friday.

Bale invited CNN’s Beijing bureau crew to accompany him Thursday as he attempted to visit Chen Guangcheng, an activist who has been under house arrest since his release from a four-year-long jail sentence last year.

The 40-year-old Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer became a persecuted dissident after he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.

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He was thrown in prison on what human rights activists say were trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.”

Related link: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Since Chen’s release in September 2010, dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, as well as supporters, have gone to Dongshigu village, in Shandong Province, to try to visit him, but all have blocked from even entering the town. Some were even violently manhandled and beaten up by unidentified thugs, and some TV crews had their equipment damaged or confiscated.

Bale was no exception.  

He and the crew were stopped at a road checkpoint when government security guards wearing green army coats asked what they were doing and punched the camera. When Bale took out his flip camera to record, he was punched and shoved, exactly the same treatment the CNN crew received just a few months earlier when they tried to visit.

After the scuffle, the crew got back into their vehicle and drove off, but they were followed by a security van for about 40 minutes.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale said on camera. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

In a later interview on CNN, Bale said, “It’s amazing a superpower like China is actually terrified of this man. It shows such an intrinsic weakness within the fabric of the country.”

China's human rights detainees 2010

He also stressed that he did not inform any members of the movie crew in order not to implicate them with his own actions.

‘Pandaman vs. Batman!’
Bale’s confrontation with the security guards soon made headlines on Twitter and Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like, but government-controlled, social media forum. Posts about the encounter spread rapidly on Friday morning with some joking headlines like “Pandaman vs. Batman!”

The cartoonist known as “Rebel Pepper” who posted the Pandaman vs. Batman cartoon on Weibo said he was somewhat surprised that Bale was treated exactly the same as everyone else.

“Dongshigu village is the only place in China that everyone is treated the same [and roughed up] no matter where you are from,” Rebel Pepper said during a phone interview with NBC News.

Some cynics noted it could be a publicity stunt for Bale's new movie, but most expressed their respect and appreciation.

A Weibo user named Shenan wrote, “You could pretend not to see or hear. That blind man is not your relative or friend in a faraway foreign country. Even if the whole 1.3 billion people were jailed, it’s not your business. You really didn’t have to ask for the roughing up, Batman.” 

By Friday afternoon, Weibo administrators censored all the posts related to Bale’s attempted visit. Steven Jiang, the CNN producer who was with Bale, found all his Weibo posts on their journey could not be forwarded.

It is a common practice for social media censors to jump in and try to put out the fire online before the flames get out of control. But determined Weibo users still spread the news with puns or pictures too difficult to censor. 

A post on Weibo joked that Zhang’s movie “Flowers of the War," would be pulled from Chinese cinemas. But another user said, “No, the movie will be there, only all the parts Christian Bale is in will be deleted!”

Bale left China today for the U.S., but Chen still remains off-limit to all his visitors.

Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese guards

BEIJING – Zhang Bingjian’s art studio in the northern suburb of Beijing looks like a simple one. Spiral stairs lead to a small penthouse where he stores his books and makes tea for guests, a big wooden desk sits downstairs, and a huge map of China hangs on the wall. 

But something catches your attention when you walk in: Dozens of huge portraits on the wall, all in bright pink, all of Chinese government officials convicted of corruption charges.

Most of the officials are in prison, some have been executed, and others have been sentenced to “death with reprieve” – which in China means a life sentence.

Zhang came up with the idea of creating his “hall of shame” as early as March 2009, during China’s National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of Communist Party officials.  It was then that he learned that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in the previous year alone. 

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“I was shocked at the numbers, I did not realize there were so many,” Zhang told NBC News during a recent visit to his studio.  “China is in such a transition period, those corruption issues also should be witnessed in a historic context.”

The artist decided to depict the history of China’s shame as part of an ongoing project. But he is not the actual painter – the portraits are mass-produced just like other “made-in-China” commodities. 

Zhang picks a publicly prosecuted government official, finds his age, crime, and most importantly, a photo of him – then he sends it to Dafen village in southern China, a place famous for churning out cheap, Wal-Mart-quality oil paintings for the whole world.  Through an assistant, Zhang finds artists in Dafen village to paint the portraits in a deliberately tacky and assembly-line style to reflect China’s 30 years as the world’s leading exporter of low-end, mass manufacturing. Their rosy hue is the same bright pink color as the Chinese currency.

Zhang doesn’t remember all the names of the officials portrayed and says he doesn’t want to play the role of a judge or prosecutor. “For me, I see the project as a whole instead of each individual portion,” he said.

Widespread corruption
Critics say corruption has long been one of China’s most chronic problems. Chinese presidents and premiers, including the current leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have publicly denounced rampant corruption for years, but standards of conduct only seem to deteriorate. 

Out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index – which measures the perceived levels of corruption in public sectors – China ranked 78th.

That’s lower than most other developed countries, as well as many developing countries such as Brazil and Cuba.
According to a Beijing News report last May, 24,406 government officials were jailed in 2010 for corruption, up 9.4 percent from 2009.  Almost 6,000 of them were sentenced to more than five years in prison.  

China is also one of the few countries in the world that executes its citizens on corruption charges.  Some of the officials captured in Zhang’s portraits have already been executed, including the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration and the former governor of Guangxi province.

As of today, Zhang has produced about 1,600 portraits.  Some hang on his studio wall; others are stacked in wooden crates, waiting to be displayed either in China or overseas. 

Zhang joked about ideas for his next exhibition.

“Maybe we can do another project for the U.S. America also has corrupt officials so the painting would be green, the color of U.S. dollars,” he said.

When asked whether or when he will ever finish the project, Zhang admitted one day he might have to stop producing the portraits if he cannot continue to finance himself and the 20-plus painters he employs.  Still, he doesn’t really know when he’ll move on.
 “It could end soon, probably within the next five years.  It could also be the next 15 years.  Part of the beauty of this piece is it’s open-ended,” he said with a smile. 

(Celeste Ho contributed to the story.)

BEIJING – Just as the “Tiger Mom” controversy started simmering down in China, the “Wolf Daddy,” a self-proclaimed expert on strict parenting, is sparking a new round of fervent discussion on child-raising methodologies among anxious Chinese parents.

The “Wolf Daddy” is actually Xiao Baiyou, a 47-year-old Chinese businessman who deals in real estate and luxury goods. This past June, he published a book on parenting that featured an eye-catching photo on the cover of a graduation cap with a wooden ruler underneath, a device commonly used by old-time Chinese teachers and parents to spank their children when they misbehaved.

The message was clear and straightforward: Children need to be disciplined, ruthlessly. His favored method is the rattan cane, which his own mother used on him.

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Strict rules
Reasons for spanking vary from sneaking visits with friends to lying to diminishing academic achievement. In the book, Xiao recounts a time when Xiao Jun, his eldest daughter, could not complete a new song on her piano. Her calf was spanked 10 times while others watched, including her mom, who applied medicine on her bloody bruises afterwards.

Xiao lays out his spanking instructions in the book:
Before the kids go to junior high school, spank them every time they make mistakes, but greatly reduce the frequency after junior high since the children form their own personalities by that age;
The spanking tool is confined to the rattan cane only, which causes minor bruises;
Only hands and calves are spanked, other body parts are spared;
Mistakes are pointed out every time before the whack so children know why they are punished;
Sisters and brothers must watch when one of them is smacked so they learn;
The punished one has to count the number of spanking during each admonishment;
The punished one cannot try to avoid the punishment, otherwise he/she gets more.

Unlike many of his fellow citizens who are only allowed to have one child, Xiao has four children. Two of them were born in Hong Kong and two in the U.S., following a new trend in which middle-class Chinese citizens have children overseas to avoid the one-child family planning policy. Xiao originally had hoped for six children, but stopped at four when his company tumbled into financial problems.

“I persist on my own belief that has never changed: I use the oldest, the most traditional methods to educate my children,” writes Xiao in his 200-plus-page book.

Xiao’s list of banned activities is no shorter than those of the “Tiger Mom,” Amy Chua:

No TV, except a limited amount of news and cartoons (teen soap opera dramas are absolutely prohibited);
No unmonitored Internet surfing;
No Coca-Cola (but tea is allowed);
No opening the refrigerator (so no unscheduled snacks);
No air-conditioning, to train the spirit of tenacity (ouch, summer in Guangzhou is brutally humid and hot);
No visiting friends unless a written application is filled out, providing information on the friend’s academic grades and their parents’ names and phone numbers;
No pocket money at all;
And written self-criticism when mistakes are made.

Social life is severely controlled by the Wolf Father. Traveling is strictly monitored in case “bad influences” affect the kids’ academic grades. Once, when Xiao Baiyou sensed his son’s classmates were “bad boys” and the school didn’t respond to his request to separate them, Xiao made a quick decision to move and forbad his son to contact any of his former classmates. Dating is utterly out of the question, but Xiao told NBC News in a recent phone interview that he told his kids once they were enrolled at Peking University to “go find your true love now!”

Extra curriculum activities are considered frivolous. Xiao forced his son to give up basketball because it was taking up too much time.

Outraged reaction  
Xiao got widespread attention after he registered with China’s Twitter-like micro blogging site Weibo under the name of “China Wolf Father” three months ago.

The Weibo account, with its short introduction, says “one scolding every day sends your children to Peking University,” one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, and it quickly attracted over 2,400 followers. His book is called, “Therefore, Peking University Brothers and Sisters,” and it has sold over 20,000 copies. If you search “Wolf Daddy” on China’s local search engine Baidu, you get over 1 million results.

But the attention he’s gotten doesn’t mean every Chinese parent believes his is the best parenting approach. In a recent online chat with chinanews.com, many readers left disapproving or even angry comments. One reader called “og_wfny” said, “you are building your vanity on your children’s pain.”

Shi Shusi, an editor at a national newspaper “Worker’s Daily,” commented: “Wolf daddy can only train wolf cubs. This story has nothing to do with human beings.”

Xiao argues that all those critical voices are from the people who either do not have parenting experience or do not truly understand him. He’s extremely proud of his three children who got into Peking University, but denies that was his ultimate goal (the fourth is still in high school).

“This is only a goal during their study times, a finishing point of their high school, but a beginning to new life. Their ultimate goal is to bring glory to my family, and I believe they will achieve that goal by being decent, capable, healthy and honest people,” Xiao told NBC News.

Without a doubt, Xiao’s four children are impressive: the son is a chess pro and loves Chinese ink painting, the eldest daughter is good at writing and plays piano, the second daughter is a calligraphy master and the third daughter is a professional guzheng (a traditional 21-stringed musical instrument) player.

NBC News tried to interview Xiao’s children but was told they do not wish to be disturbed while they are focusing on their college studies.

Xiao Yao, the son, said in the book that he believes he and his sisters have “much stronger self-control” than other children thanks to their father’s strict parenting. 

But the boy also wrote about his self-pity in another article included in the book: “Although daddy’s parenting gave us many traits other children don’t have, there are regrets in my childhood. I remember one summer some relatives came to visit and we children jumped and laughed on the bed, I was so happy. This only happened once in my childhood and it will never happen again. That was the only moment I thought childhood could actually be worry-free! I wish I had a few more such moments!”

When asked if he ever has any regrets in his parenting, Xiao Baiyou said “no” without any hesitation. But he said he regrets not buying his wife a ring or flowers after they got married. He says his wife, who he calls “the queen” in the family, never used make-up after she married Xiao, since every penny was spent on their children’s education, like expensive piano classes.

Xiao does has one question that he wishes could reach the president of the United States: “Dear Mr. Obama, I’m really curious to know, were you spanked when you were a child?”