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).

Cox the Cantopopstar: Barry Cox is a Liverpudlian who learned Cantonese at age 18 and now is a successful singer at the Venetian Hotel in Macau. Richard Spencer comments on his achievement and what it says about Chinese language learning and the education system in general:

...when you look at this story from the perspective of someone living in China, it makes you think. Apart from the choice of Cantonese, eccentric but not unheard-of these days, why should it be surprising that someone decides to learn Chinese? It is, after all, the most widely spoken language on the planet. China is a nation of growing political and business importance. The government talks endlessly about teaching Chinese in schools. China Now!, the strange organisation I wrote about before which wants to promote China in Britain with the imaginative use of fireworks and kung fu, recently announced ambitious plans to teach children how to count from one to ten in Mandarin. Wow!

Earlier Telegraph profile here.

Citizen reporter arrested, escorted home: Zhou Shuguang, aka Zola, ran into trouble when he tried to cover the Yilishen ant farmer protests in Liaoning. John Kennedy at Global Voices Advocacy has the latest information on the "citizen journalist" who became famous for his reporting on the Chongqing Nail-house:

Zola managed to get out two blog posts before he was arrested.

His first notice, Twittered on the afternoon of Dec. 5, reads:

I was intercepted, and held for 24 hours. I gave four recorded statements, was stripped of the 1,200 yuan I had on me, and escorted by two people back to Meitanba by both plane and car. Peace.

"I'd better do my own squatting": At MCLC, Wendy Larson reviews Wang Xiaobo in Love and Bondage, Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer's translation of three novellas:

The translation by Zhang and Sommer is excellent. It both expresses the meaning of the original and also catches the simple, colloquial, and direct language that is Wang Xiaobo's trademark. His gentle mocking of the language of logic in The Golden Age, the charm he extracts through his concrete scene description in 2015, and the abbreviated vernacular in East Palace,West Palace all come through in the joint translation between a poet (who, I assume, does not understand Chinese), and a literature teacher (who clearly does), both of whom work at Fontbonne University. By translating Wang's work, they have provided a service to all of us who teach modern Chinese literature. Because the Chinese original is easy to read, and because the translators have captured this simple yet profound style, the book should be a welcome addition to modern literature courses in translation. I congratulate them on their effort and results.

HIV test accused of discrimination: At the China in Transition blog, Josie Liu reports on opposition to new HIV tests for returning Chinese nationals who have spent more than one year overseas:

In fact, the regulation does require foreigners to test for HIV, but only when they intend to "stay in China." Some people interpret "stay" as long term, or over one year, present in China. The regulation does not say that Chinese citizens returning for a short visit could be spared from the test, nor does it require all foreign visitors to take the test upon entering China. Some people suspect that this is because the Chinese government is afraid of human rights complaints from foreigners. Others see the newly added procedure as one way for responsible Chinese government agencies to make more income, because apparently people need to pay over 100 yuan for the test, out of their own pockets.