Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

3 minutes of Google silence: From The China Vortex:

Google China's blog (in Chinese) mentions a Google search query log which graphically shows the moment of silence and mourning on 2:28PM on May 19, which displays the moment of silence throughout China for the victims of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan.

What kind of relationship should China have with the West?: The Carter Center's ChinaElections.net has published a translation of an article originally published in the Global Times by Liu Yawei, director of the Carter Center's China Program:

If China's reform and opening up was a result of the 1968 restructuring of interstate relations, what implications might the clashes between Chinese and Western values, as seen in recent events, have for China's future? Does it signal a new reconstruction of the world order?

Death toll rises to 55,239 in Sichuan alone: Xinhua reports:

The quake death toll has risen to 55,239 in Sichuan alone as of 7 pm, Thursday, said Li Chengyun, vice governor of Sichuan on Friday in Beijing.

About 83,988 people were rescued. The quake also injured 281,066, while 24,949 are still missing, said Li.

The hand of Rockefeller: Eric Abrahamsen investigates the Peking Union Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation's contribution to Beijing geography.

Letters from Sichuan: At The China Beat blog, Peter Hessler follows up his New Yorker web report with more letters from former students in Sichuan.

Post-quake challenge: 5 million homeless: From The China Daily:

The Chinese government is grappling with the next urgent task in the aftermath of last week's 8.0-magnitude deadly earthquake -- how to shelter up to 5 million residents in Sichuan Province who are now homeless.

Tudou's off the black list: Kaiser Kuo reports:

China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has issued two new 'black lists' -- one of eight Internet audio-video companies ordered to shut down, and another listing 20 companies given warnings over objectionable content.

Tudou.com was on an earlier black list from SARFT but is not on either of the new lists.

China soft power and media freedom: Li Datong, in translation on Open Democracy on the events of 2008 so far and the weaknesses in China's government that they have exposed:

The Chinese government needs to understand that in response to the western media, an independent and free Chinese press would be much more credible than a government spokesperson. The truth lies not in one voice, but slowly becomes apparent amidst a diverse range of voices. An understanding of this underlies the effective deployment of soft power.

Accursed 2008: Shenzhen Fieldnotes has translated a short SMS poem about 'dog-fucked 2008'.

Ningbo candlight vigil: Photos by Wong Can of a candlelight vigil in Ningbo on Monday night to mourn the victims of the earthquake.

Ethnically diverse forum shut down: At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy reports on the shut-down of Uighur Online, "the main online forum serving to bridge the huge communication gap between China's Muslim population, other minority ethnic groups, and Han Chinese":

What surprises many Uighur Online users is that the website was even properly licensed, the excuse most often used by authorities to shut blogs and BBS websites down. Indeed, the 'Crowd of Spectators Out of Control' blogger, who writes about Xinjiang culture, mentions in a post late last month a conversation s/he had with the Uighur Online webmasters, retelling the absurdities the staff there went through recently in trying to report one UO user for inflaming racial hatred within the forums, and being kicked around like a football from police department to police department in Beijing and then back to the local internet supervision office, with none of them willing to address the situation.