A girl in Chengdu sparked a "mass incident" this week when she appealed for a boyfriend on a campus message board at the University of Electronic Science and Technology. Potential suitors were to call out her name outside her apartment, but it seems she got more than she bargained for when over 1,000 guys turned up below her window; EastSouthWestNorth provides the details.

Southwest art: eCitiesChina has a post this week about the North Village Art District in Chengdu's suburban Xindu.

Although Peter Hessler has "postponed" his scheduled appearances at this year's China-based literary festivals, including the Chengdu Bookworm's Literary Festival, he wrote a long post about how snapping away with a digital camera has aided his writing, with examples from his new book, Country Driving.

It was Lei Feng day last week, and it seems like the man himself came back to life to talk about how to do good deeds in the 21st century. Danwei translates the micro-blog parodies. (Requires proxy.)

Finally, back to EastSouthWestNorth, which transcribes an interview with artist Ou Zhihang, a Guangzhou TV host who has won a prize at the World Press Photo (WPP) competition for his photography series depicting himself doing naked push-ups around China. The artist discloses how he manages to avoid arrest while photographing himself in front of Chinese landmarks and the locations of major social events as well as his motivations for his nude photography.

The biggest story on the Chinese Internet this week seems to be the not-so-secret diary of Guangxi Tobacco Bureau chief Han Feng, who rather stupidly kept a detailed log of his daily activities, including taking bribes and bedding girlfriends, but most of the time, it seems, playing with electronics. The diary was, of course, later uploaded to the Internet, provoking much mirth. EastSouthWestNorth has the full translation, ChinaSMACK has netizen comments, and ChinaHush translates a Han Han post that claims that Han Feng is in fact one of the good officials.

New China blog china/divide, powered by some of the more prolific China bloggers on the scene, has been desperately trying to get your attention this week with some controversial topics and sex-related posts: see "Pornography should be legal in China" for a case in point.

The CPCC (that's the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) started this week, and Chinayouren has a round up of the stories coming out: Free laptops for delegates, thundering proposals, and the sly placing of a grass mud horse on one newspaper front page. Meanwhile, China Media Project provides a more detailed analysis of the tax-payer laptop giveaway.

Finally, how Confucian should a daughter be these days? Does it extend to doing as your parents say and paying for a younger brother's wedding to avoid being disowned? Netizens seem split on this moral conundrum. Little Red Book and ChinaSMACK have the goods.

How can the countryside in China regain a attractive image and develop sustainably? This post on Asia Snapshots holds Chengdu's local organic food farm in Anlong as a worthy model after they chat with Gao Qingrong from the Gao Family Farm in Anlong, Sichuan.

Chengdu and Sichuan have both come under fire during the crackdown on soccer corruption. China Sports Daily has a round-up of the latest scandals.

The state-owned newspaper The Global Times has run a particularly open article about the extensive controls on the internet within China and their effect on users and Internet companies. If you're too lazy--er, pressed for time--to read the whole thing, DigiCha posts some choice quotes.

China Beat has a long and wide-ranging article by Ross Terrill, author of the biography Mao, about the book's publication in China, Mao fever, and Mao's changing place in Chinese thought.

The stereotype of the old, baijiu-quaffing, banquet-eating male government official might soon be displaced by the under-qualified but connection-rich and altogether cuter next generation. To Rise From Ashes and ChinaSMACK translate skeptic netizen reactions to the appointment of 20-something-year-olds high up the hierarchy of officials.

There's still no access to YouTube here for most of us, but you can always head over to Youku Buzz, which has a selection of the most-viewed videos to hit their site this week, including the hottest beggar ever to stroll Chinese streets and Chinese cross-talk comedy.

You probably received a blizzard of text messages wishing you all manner of fortune for the Year of the Tiger. Learn how to join in the fun with translated greetings over at Laowai Chinese.

Buzz, Google's new email-integrated, Twitter-like product, is throwing people into a tizzy regarding privacy concerns, and after the Google vs. PRC standoff against censorship, Buzz's implications for Chinese activists is under particular scrutiny. And while everyone else is asking if Buzz will survive the Great Firewall, Uln at Chinayouren has already predicted the software's downfall in China.

First he gave it a funny but scathing review, and now he says it's good for Chinese cinema. Star Chinese blogger, author and racecar driver Han Han shares his thoughts on the movie Confucius, translated at ChinaSMACK.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the appeal of World of Warcraft in China, but this post at Youku Buzz might help make the phenomenon more clear. The satire of a popular video is shot entirely through WoW and touches on Internet memes and 'net censorship and makes numerous gaming references. The speech (translated into English) describes how WoW provides an outlet for disaffected Chinese.

China's not often praised for the quality of its museums, but perhaps they are given more of a rough deal than is deserved. While the government plans massive investment in museums all over China, Evan Osnos of the New Yorker blog Letter from China talks to the authors of China: Museums, a book that reviews China's strange (600 horse skeletons, anyone?) and mundane museums.

If you want some hardcore and thoughtful reading about national identity in China (who doesn't?), Danwei this week features an academic, "Imagined Communities" take on what it is to be Chinese from University of Manchester's William A. Callahan's new book, China: The Pessoptimist Nation.

China's contemporary art world is a complicated thing despite its short history, but to see how art has dealt with the Cultural Revolution, head over to read an article at Inside-Out China, translated and with notes by Xujun Eberlein.

If you found it hard to get hold of some traditionally-cooked turkey this week, think of the lengths you would've had to go to in the '80s. Si Bu Xiang tells of just that: how one enterprising foreign-affairs officer secured a big turkey for Americans living in Chengdu in 1981.

Recent TV series Snail House, otherwise known as Dwelling Narrowness, has been the hottest thing on the telly this year with its tales of mistresses, corrupt cadres and, erm, housing developments. Chinayouren enthuses about the show and tells us why it's so popular.

Danwei interviews Jonathan Watts, former China correspondent for the Guardian, about climate change and Copenhagen, and James Fallows reacts to comments, and then "follows up" on a much-discussed opinion piece in the Guardian about China getting its way in Copenhagen.

You can see how Chinese medicine works and whether it can cure the common cold thanks to an enlightening e-mail exchange on My Health Beijing in which our favorite physician, Dr. Richard, quizzes an American doctor trained in Chinese Medicine about how TCM approaches 'ganmao.'

It turns out that Taobao is more than just a treasure chest of just about anything you could ever want to buy: It can also be a source of humor. Veggie Discourse has a funny post of exchanges between sellers and their disgruntled and rather witless customers. (Requires proxy)

And Shanghaiist has gone list crazy. If you have a penchant for numbered paragraphs, check out the top ten sports stories, the top 'bubble stories' of 2009, China's five most significant stories of the decade ... and many more.

A woman in Chengdu's Jinniu district set herself on fire last month in protest the demolition of her house. ChinaSMACK has the story and netizen reactions, and China Geeks gives more details about this sad case.

Find out all you ever wanted to know (and a little more) about the life of a migrant worker and his workmates in Hainan in this post translated by China Hush.

What are the vital ingredients for a successful Chinese pop song? Albert at Laowai Chinese reckons he has the answer: by stuffing in as many cliched words as you can.

As if Chongqing's skyline needs more madness, Shanghaiist has some pictures and news of a new wobbly skyscraper to be built in Sichuan's neighboring city by MAD Architecture.

If stories about China leading the way in all things green and environmentally friendly has you raising an eyebrow, you're not alone. Adam Minter on Shanghai Scrap also takes a skeptical view in this post on controlling pollution and carbon emissions in China.

The time has come for end-of-year lists, and should you have happened to miss the most popular Internet posts this year, you can catch up with ChinaSMACK, which posts a list of 2009's top Chinese Internet memes ...

... and in the same vein, China Hush lists the top ten hottest people (plus a cat) on the Internet in 2009.

At a time when many Chinese apparently feared that the camera would suck out the soul, one of the world's first photojournalists, John Thomson, traveled around the country taking portraits of ordinary people. Danwei has an extract from the introduction to a book of his photography, The Inmost Shrine: A Photographic Odyssey of China, 1873.

If you're frustrated in your Chinese studies, you might take comfort from this series of posts at Chinayouren, in which Uln attempts to argue that Chinese is the hardest language in the world.

You might not have noticed it while watching Tomorrow Never Dies, Transformers, or Pearl Harbor, but apparently these are among the top ten movies that suck up to China. EastSouthWestNorth translates the silliness.

For those of you who celebrated "turkey day" this week, Useless Tree has a post on what it means to celebrate a Taoist Thanksgiving (Requires proxy).

And CNReviews links to an extremely interesting and lengthy (and now year-old) interview on China Beat about the filming of a Pepsi commercial exploring how ethnicity and nationality are constructed and conceived in China.