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).

It don't look like a red envelope...: Jonathan Ansfield writes about the practice of slipping people gift certificates as favors:

Vouchers from the supermarket chain Trust-Mart (好又多) have become a favored currency of petty corruption in Fujian, says a local entrepreneur who carries a stack on him. In the course of a recent interview about unrelated topics, by way of demonstrating how he greases the palms of tax, commerce, customs and other officials, he opened his glove compartment and whipped out the bills. Each was worth 100 yuan. "That right there is 3,000 kuai."

Your flight is delayed. Why? Unspecified reasons.: Beijing Newspeak presents some Xinhua reports on the recent PLA-related flight delays in Guangzhou:

Xinhua seemed to have deemed the case closed despite the vague warning coming in the last paragraph that the airspace controls would last for days resulting in continued disruption. An awareness of an audience other than its own "leaders" has never been the agency's strong point. In addition, the initial report only referred to delays in Guangzhou yet there were hundreds of flights affected all over eastern China. There was barely any coverage in the Chinese-language press and only a nib in Shanghai Daily.

Australia elects Chinese-speaking prime minister: The State-owned Xinhua news service has placed the election of new Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd at the top of their agenda this weekend. Funnily enough, the Xinhua reports do not mention that Rudd speaks Mandarin fluently.

The translation crisis in China: ESWN translates a Phoenix Weekly article explaining why the quality of translated literature in China is so poor these days:

An important reason for the fall in translation quality is the tendency for mainland publishers to seek quick profits. Many mainland publishers will leverage the popular works and seek short-term profits. For example, on the occasion of the anniversary of the birth or death of a famous writer, they will publish the person's works. These newly translated works are packaged nicely and the printing is excellent quality, but the quality of the translation do not measure up to the previous translations.

Some of the newly translated works are so poor as to be unreadable -- they were translated by "brute force." One cannot speak of excellence or fluency. Sometimes one cannot even understand the translation.

The deterioration of translation quality is related to the dire situation of the industry for translated works.

A few (edited) words on Chinese censorship: At the Financial Times, Mure Dickie writes about an experience on a Shenzhen panel show:

The concept of the show was fascinating: an exploration by former senior officials, academics, journalists and students of the implications for China of issues brought up in the Rise of the Great Nations, a history series shown on state television last year. But while the discussion during the recording session was wide-ranging and stimulating, the version broadcast offered an object lesson in how the Communist party's pervasive system of media censorship guides and limits public political discourse.

For me, it meant that those of my comments not cut completely were stitched together in ways that robbed them of any political sensitivity and, indeed, of most of whatever significance they might have had.

See also: Changing the Subject: How the Chinese Government Controls Television.