THE ROUGH GUIDE to - Parallels Plesk Panel
THE ROUGH GUIDE to - Parallels Plesk Panel
THE ROUGH GUIDE to - Parallels Plesk Panel
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The media<br />
Hopes that a newly wealthy, post-Olympics China would relax its hardline on<br />
dissent have been dashed; if anything, the heavy hand of the state censor has<br />
tightened in the last few years. All Chinese media is so heavily controlled that it<br />
shouldn’t be relied on. That said, the official English-language newspaper, the<br />
China Daily, has improved of late. Imported news publications (sometimes<br />
censored) such as Time, Newsweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review, and<br />
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, can be bought at the Friendship S<strong>to</strong>re or<br />
at the bookstands in four- and five-star hotels.<br />
Listings magazines<br />
The English-language Beijing This Month<br />
has listings and light features aimed at<br />
<strong>to</strong>urists; you can pick it for free in the lobbies<br />
of the upmarket hotels, from any <strong>to</strong>urist office<br />
or the counter inside the front door at the<br />
Friendship S<strong>to</strong>re on Jianguomenwai Dajie.<br />
Much more useful, though, are the free<br />
magazines aimed at the expat community,<br />
which contain up-<strong>to</strong>-date entertainment<br />
and restaurant listings and are available<br />
at expat bars and restaurants. Look for<br />
City Weekend (Wwww.cityweekend.com<br />
.cn/beijing) and Time Out (Wwww.timeout<br />
.com/cn/en/beijing). Both have listings<br />
sections that include club nights, art<br />
happenings and gigs, with addresses<br />
written in pinyin and Chinese.<br />
TV and radio<br />
There is the occasional item of interest on<br />
Chinese TV, though you’d have <strong>to</strong> be quite<br />
bored <strong>to</strong> resort <strong>to</strong> it for entertainment.<br />
Domestic travel and wildlife programmes are<br />
common, as are song-and-dance extravaganzas,<br />
the most enjoyable of which feature<br />
dancers in weird fetishistic costumes. Soap<br />
operas and his<strong>to</strong>rical dramas are popular,<br />
and often feature a few foreigners, and talent<br />
and dating shows are currently all the rage.<br />
CCTV, the state broadcaster, has an<br />
English-language rolling news channel,<br />
CCTV International. CCTV5 is a sports<br />
channel that often shows European football<br />
games. CCTV2, CCTV4 and local channel<br />
BTV1 all have English-language news<br />
programmes at 11pm. Satellite TV in English<br />
is available in the more expensive hotels.<br />
On the radio you’re likely <strong>to</strong> hear the<br />
latest ballads by pop-robots from the Hong<br />
Kong and Taiwan idol fac<strong>to</strong>ries, or versions<br />
of Western pop songs sung in Chinese.<br />
Easy FM (91.5FM) is an expat-geared<br />
English-language station carrying music<br />
programmes and local information.<br />
BASICS |<br />
The media<br />
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