Jack the Peeper in action!

Here are the facts: yesterday at around 11pm in the Shijingshan district, Ms. Liu went to the loo and saw the shape of a man moving underneath the poop-holes of the public toilet. After rushing out in panic, she immediately returned to the scene accompanied by a female friend and two men. After checking the women's toilet without seeing the peeping bugger, they moved on to the men's to find a man quietly squatting over a poop-hole. They asked him if he saw anybody leaving the toilet, and his reply was '走了! 走了!' (he's gone!). Only problem was, the squatting man had smears of crap on his clothes and filthy plastic bags wrapped around his shoes.

The guy was captured and he's now under police custody.

If you are a person with a foreign face living in Beijing, the Shandong International Photographic Festival needs you to add some of that laowai flavor to their event. This is what you get if you agree to go:

You leave Beijing on August 4 by train and visit the scenic areas around Tengzhou and Weishan Lake in Shandong. The organizers will pay all transport, dining and accommodation expenses. The trip returns to Beijing on August 7.

Interested laowai should immediately contact Chen Jian on 1360 118 8517 (Chinese only).

The front page of Beijing Times, featuring a photo of thousands of passengers waiting for delayed train

2. Train tailgate accident kills 5 and injures 30, and causes 17 trains to be delayed

3.China's first astronaut Yang Liwei rekindles 10th national games flame

4. Saudi Arabia's King Fahd passed away

5. Gu Chujun (former chairman of Kelong Appliances) detained for corruption, involving diversion of RMB 30 million

Expatriate life in Hong Kong

She was married to a managing director at Merrill Lynch named Robert Peter Kissel. They had the perfect Hong Kong expat couple's life: loads of money, all the right friends, and a dream apartment.

Then one day in November 2003, Nancy Kissel gave her husband a drink laced with sedatives. When he fell asleep, she beat him to death with a golf club. She carefully wrapped up his body in plastic sheeting, rolled it up in a carpet, and then had the chutzpah to ask the building service company staff to help her move the grisly package down to the building's basement, where she left it to rot. She was arrested a few days later, after her husband's unexplained absence from work caused his colleagues to inform the police.

For some reason, the South China Morning Post has been very shy with its coverage of this sensational murder case, which may be because of sensitivity or good taste but which is more likely to be because of the newspaper's reluctance, in the last few years, to report on anything of interest to its readers. The Chinese press in Hong Kong have had no qualms about reporting the case in graphic detail, as you can see from the illustration, taken from the Sun (太陽報) tabloid newspaper.

But yesterday's testimony by Nancy Kissel at her trial was too hot to miss: even the South China Morning Post has published an article about it. According to Kissel, her husband's cocaine and whisky addictions fueled an obsession with anal sex; if she refused he would beat her up.

There is no doubt that she killed him: it seems that she is just trying to prove that the homicide was justifiable. The affair makes one look anew at square-looking bankers in powder blue shirts.

我已经很长时间不看《经济观察报》了。这个世界也已很少注意这张报纸在报什么了。最新从那里传来的消息是，该报灵魂、主笔许知远正式辞职。（http://www.mindmeters.com/blogind.asp?id=16）

如果我们写文说到昨晚和朋友喝酒，我们顶多会说，“昨晚和张三在外面鬼混喝酒、一派胡话”，因为和这个场景相比，我们更想说其他的东西。但许知远会写出标志性的文字：“夜班与ERIK在路边喝酒，风清月明，对面是麦当牢和永和豆浆的灯火。”这种“格调”是深入许的骨髓的，这因而得到了很多人的热爱，也遭到了很多人的厌恶。

从我的角度来看，世人再也没有像经观主编何力如此宽容和溺爱许知远了。当你第一次看到许的文字的时候，你会很喜欢，那种类似“纽约客”的文笔舒缓地告诉你一种情绪，劝说你相信我们处在一个“后现代的、全球化的、不确定的”世界，甚好。但如果自从2001年4月以来，这种劝说在每周的报纸上都出现，而且不分场合、不论何事，扔给它任何劲爆的主题，它都能抛还给你一个“后现代的、全球化的、不确定的”优雅骨头，这就会彻底激怒我们这种对信息和观点越来越苛刻的读者。除了这个优雅骨头，难道经观没有别的了吗？

其实有的。首席记者仲伟志的业界口碑就非常之好。但任何看过《经济观察报》的人，都把这种橙色报纸和一个希望让全世界大吃一惊的年轻主笔联系在一起了。以至于今天许知远的辞职，完全代表该报一个时代的彻底结束。

离开的许知远依然很自信，他依然用我们几乎会背的句式讲诉他之后的理想：“人生一场长跑，一切都才刚刚开始的，我又想起了罗兰·巴特，他37岁才开始写作，卡尔·波普尔，他到了将近50岁，才获得初步的声名。或者想起了更厚颜无耻的一种说法，这世界会记得梁启超和他的朋友们，至于他们参加创办过多少份报纸，谁记得它们的名字(这一句实在有点骄傲和让人讨厌，但我真的这么想过)。”

不过，我看了最后这段，却有些悲哀，想和爱许的人分享。当许知远刚宣布要让人大吃一惊的时候，他提起的都是20多岁的外国人名字。4年过去了，当他开始引用37岁和50岁的外国人名字的时候，整个媒体界已经是群雄并立，已经很少人有耐心听他在说什么。道理也很简单，他有过说过除了“后现代的、全球化的、不确定的”这根优雅骨头之外的东西吗？甚至，我们今天还能想起他在任何一个公共话题上提出的任何一个令人佩服的除了优雅骨头之外的洞见吗？

也许许知远离开经观是对的，这样他才能看到精彩的大地，虽然没有那些眩目的18世纪法国名字，但却是一切事业的源泉。他的理想也是的确有很大的空间的，例如曾经模仿《纽约客》或者《纽约书评周刊》的《书城》，现在走到了《读书》的左派死胡同，丧失了大量的读者。如果许真的能办一个精英文化杂志，也会得到成功。但恐怕最重要的问题是，许能不做主笔吗？

每一个男孩都有让人大吃一惊的梦想，但男人都会知道，让人大吃一惊的从来不是这个人，而是他身后那片令人眩目的事业。我们记得梁启超，是因为他卷入了那千年不遇的大变局。的确，许的未来意识是对的，今后20年的各界泰斗就出于我们这一代中；但历史颇为残酷，只会眷顾那些有着长期艰苦准备、并且深深卷入当下的年轻人。

人各有志，祝许知远在理想主义道路上走好。

The books are mostly the originals of the Hollywood adaptations that have been popular with Chinese fans - The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears - along with the latest Jack Ryan novel The Teeth of the Tiger and the non-fiction Shadow Warriors.

While this is the first large-scale release of Tom Clancy's military fantasies on the mainland, most of these books have long been available in pirated extraterritorial and fan-produced editions. Red October even had an authorized translation two decades ago, done by Zhang Zhaozhong, professor of military strategy at the PLA University of National Defense. Zhang also participated in the retranslation.

The novels did not come through unmolested. In response to a reporter's question, "We all know that Tom Clancy is a right-wing author; how do the Chinese translations address his political leanings?" the series editor Li Yuyao said:

There really isn't that big of a problem with the other books, but in The Hunt For Red October, there were a few places in which the treatment of the former Soviet Union was troublesome, so we made some necessary cuts. No more than a few hundred words, though.

Danwei makes the bold prediction that SSN and The Bear and the Dragon will not be appearing in your local Xinhua bookstore anytime soon.