« on: July 23, 2007, 09:36:48 PM »
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200707/20070712/article_323093.htm
Eatery closed for selling cardboard-stuffed buns
By Alice Gu 2007-7-12
BEIJING authorities yesterday closed a dim-sum restaurant that sold steamed cardboard-stuffed buns, Beijing Times reported today.
The cardboard was a substitute for pork. The restaurant owner fled and is wanted for questioning.
The raid came after the restaurant in Beijing's Chaoyang District was reviewed by a local TV station a few days earlier.
The stuffing of the bun was made of cardboard and pork fat, said the TV program.
The recipe went like this: Cardboard was soaked in water and an industrial-use caustic soda, a poisonous chemical, was added. The cardboard lost its normal color and became fragile under the soda's strong causticity, making it look more like pork. Finally, pork-smell essence and pork fat were stirred into the concoction to make the stuffing more "vivid."
"It may save me almost 1,000 yuan (US$132.14) a day," said the shop owner, according to the program.
It was unclear how long the restaurant was serving the cardboard-filled dumplings.
The buns were prepared at a kitchen in nearby Taiyanggong Village to avoid people finding out. Officials with the Zuojiazhuang Industrial and Commercial Administration closed down the prep kitchen yesterday.
The prep-kitchen's landlord is being questioned, said the Beijing Times report.
Chaoyang District's Industrial and Commercial Administration said it will inspect the district's 58 dim-sum restaurants soon.
Pork prices in 36 major cities nationwide continued to rise last month due to a supply shortage.
Pig leg was sold at 19.56 yuan per kilogram on average in June, jumping 12.3 percent from May, and continuing April's upward trend, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
The video showed an under-cover review over the prep-kitchen:
http://news3.xinhuanet.com/video/2007-07/12/content_6363132.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289972,00.html (similiar article at
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=120312 )
Beijing Reporter Detained Over Fake Report on Cardboard-Filled Buns
Thursday , July 19, 2007
BEIJING —
A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said.
The report came amid a spate of real food scares involving toxic fish, tainted pork and egg yolks colored with a cancer-causing dye that have harmed China's reputation as an exporter and alarmed people at home.
The story, allegedly shot with a hidden camera, was first broadcast on Beijing Television's Life Channel on June 8 and then shown again on China Central Television last week.
It created a buzz on the Internet, and people flooded chatrooms with comments expressing shock and disgust. On YouTube Web site, the video had been viewed more than 6,000 times by Thursday.
Beijing Television apologized to the public during an evening news broadcast Wednesday and said the creator of the fake news report, identified only by his surname, Zi, had been detained by police but did not say when. A copy of the broadcast was obtained by AP Television News on Thursday.
"He used deceptive means to get the footage on the air," said news anchor Wang Ye, without giving specifics. "The Beijing Public Security Bureau has taken the criminal suspect, Zi, into custody and he will be severely dealt with according to law."
Zi's footage appeared to show a makeshift kitchen where people made fluffy buns stuffed with 60 percent cardboard that had been softened in a bath of caustic soda and 40 percent fatty pork.
Beijing Television explained that an investigation revealed that in mid-June, Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood and had four migrant workers make the buns for him while he filmed the process. It said Zi "gave them the idea" of mincing softened cardboard and adding it to the buns.
The newscaster said the station was "profoundly sorry" for the fake report and its "vile impact on society." The station vowed to prevent inaccurate news coverage in the future.
The report prompted Beijing's health authorities to carry out a spot check of more than two dozen vendors selling the pork buns — a common breakfast in China. None was found to be using cardboard.
http://shanghaiist.com/2007/07/22/fake_fake_buns.php
Fake fake buns maybe not fake after all?
Despite some pretty damning arguments regarding the plausibility of blending cardboard and caustic soda into baozi, steamed pork buns, the internets are chattering again: Government conspiracy and cover-up! The fake buns being fake is itself fake!
It's a bit like unpicking the speech of an 8-year-old who has just discovered double-negatives-- It's not not Opposite Day, not!-- but we'll do our best.
Officials searched Beijing high and low for cardboard buns, and concluded that overzealous TV reporter Zi Beijia staged the whole thing. One very brave Japanese guy even made cardboard buns in his kitchen and testified that they taste totally gross (link to ESWN for translation). Zi's bosses issued an apology, and Zi has been taken into custody pending as-yet-unknown criminal charges (AP coverage here).
But wait-- there's more! Danwei reports the latest in nattering nabobs of netizen dissent:
What is not being reported in the press is that many people in Beijing believe that the news about the cardboard buns story being fake is itself fake (e.g. see these posts by Chinese journalists Ping Ke and Milk Pig). The way the authorities have gone about stopping the story is exactly the same way they clamp down on real news stories that they don't want circulating.
It makes sense to us that, after decades of clamping down on real stories that they wished were fake, authorities would use similar tactics in the suppression of an actual fake story.
But dissent rages on.
Upon returning to the site of the already-acknowledged-to-be-fake fake bun story, Hong Kong reporter Ming Pao returned to the number 13 courtyard of Shizikou village, location of Zi Beijia's original story, and had a strange reception (translation via ESWN):
At the scene yesterday, our reporter observed that there was a high level of security outside number 13 in Shizikou village. There were uniformed security guards as well as unidentified men keeping watch.
When the reporter asked a cleaner where number 13 was located, the cleaner was immediately warned by a man not to talk. When the men found out who the reporter was, one of them came up to push the reporter around while threatening: "If you dare to go in, you better be careful that someone will beat you up." The reporter called the Taiyanggong town government for assistance. The town deputy party secretary named Huang said that he does not know about what is happening. When the reporter asked the town government to send someone as company, the deputy party secretary said that all their party cadres are in meetings and therefore nobody can be dispatched. He asked the reporter to go by himself. He said that they would inform the village and the reporter can call the police if he feels that his personal safety is at risk.
When the reporter returned to Number 13 courtyard in Shizikou village, a woman told him that the town leader had just telephoned to warn them not to let any reporter in.
Standard-issue government secrecy and subsequent citizen defensiveness? Or conspiratorial cover-up in the face of fake-product overexposure in the international media?
« Last Edit: July 23, 2007, 09:44:13 PM by Baradium »
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