Too Much to Bear Thinking About

China's national English language newspaper, The China Daily, is a constant source of hilarity for me here in Beijing. The humor is not, as you might guess, in consistently poor/ridiculous English (actually, most articles are very well written), but other, much more subtle features of the paper. One of my favorites is a daily page devoted to "headlines from around China." Some highlights of one recent edition include:

"Pampered Cat Attacked by Uppity Mouse"
"Stressed out Fugitive Turns Self In"
"Wedding Leads Groom to Drink Self to Death"
"Girl Fakes Kidnapping to Avoid Doing Homework"

And this is all from one day's paper. It may give us a clue as to how The Onion keeps coming up with fresh ideas. There is something in today's paper, however, that I feel compelled to share. Take a look at the cartoon in the photo below.

Old Man "World Oil Co." drowns in the swamp, marvelling at the way fat, young "Chinese Oil Co." walks on water. How does he do it, indeed?

Well, to begin with, he does business with the most unsavory regimes on earth, personally propping up the genocidal regime in Sudan, and the nutbars in Iran. That , I suppose, goes back to what I was saying the other day, about Chinese not wanting to mess in the affairs of others. For me, the real killer, is the bitter, bitter irony provided by the headline immediately below the cartoon: "Harmonious society to be a model for the world." Harmonious, honestly.