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).

Gourd Brothers (Eweihai)

I was a teenage Gourd Brother: From FEER's Travellers' Tales blog:

When the Shanghai Animation Film Studio came to East China Normal University in the summer of 1987 looking for laowai 'talent,' we answered the call of show business ... The result was an English-language version of 'Gourd Brothers', a classic of the animation genre. TT voiced the pangolin, as well as a few other minor characters.

Foreign companies and Chinese Nationalism: China Law Blog summarizes the dangers of Chinese nationalism for foreign companies operating here.

China youth Internet stats: Kaiser Kuo has picked out some of the more interesting information from a recent report by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) about Chinese youth culture and youth behavior on the Internet.

Chinese intellectuals: what we're learning from the earthquake: Last week China Digital Times published translated excerpts from a Southern Metropolis Daily article containing messages from several dozen Chinese columnists, scholars, and social workers contemplating the devastating Sichuan earthquake.

"If we work together we can do anything": Barking at the Sun reports on the relief effort underway in Chengdu:

Day four and the people of Chengdu are starting to return to their normal lives. The palpable sense of fear that gripped the city for three days now seems to be largely gone. Many have switched gears entirely: an individual sense of self-preservation has turned into a city-wide sense of urgency to help the victims, many of whom are located just an hour's drive north.

Why are schools crumbling like sand houses?: At The Economic Observer, Zhang Jinghua asks why so many of the earthquake victims were children:

It's always been our pride that we are a nation that respects the old and love the young. It's also been many officials' mottos that children and education always come first, however hard the situation is. Yet our schools are still so fragile.

Hopefully, we have learnt our lessons during this disastrous year. We call for more stringent standards to be set to enforce public infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals and bus terminals. Safety guidelines, especially those on quake and fire prevention, for public buildings must be strictly adhered to.

Peter Hessler's former students after Sichuan quake: A piece in the New Yorker: author Peter Hessler who taught English in rural Sichuan in the 1990s hears from his former students in the earthquake zone.

New tourist visa rules for Chinese visiting USA: From The People's Daily:

Chinese citizens are to be allowed to apply for U.S.-destined travel in groups starting from June 17, announced China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce here on Thursday.

Within six months from then, the travel agencies in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Hubei, Hunan, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provincial areas would be able to organize local residents for group travel to the United States.