25 billion = 250亿
250 means dumbass in chinese
we are talking about immense amount of irony.

Yes, Peteryang, you know the meaning but your explanation may be misleading; the actual reading should be "二百五" and not "250".

actually 250 can mean 二百五, there's literally no difference.

Peteryang,

Why argue? 250 in Mandarin is commonly pronounced liang-bai-wu-shi, which defeats your purpose of saying er-bai-wu.

Scott Loar: I don't see what the argument is. The form "250" is used throughout the Chinese Internet as an insult; it can have the reading èrbǎiwǔ in the same way that it can be read in English as "two fifty" or "two hundred fifty." Heck, people have adapted and are even using 290 (250 + 38 + 2) nowadays, although that meme probably doesn't have a very long life-span.

wow thanks joel, I didn't even know 290, lol.

Joel, I see your point, although stating "250" by itself seemed to me a bit removed from 二百五 which usage dates at least back to the 1930's.

I wonder what the Global Times would have done if the Japanese or American military had senselessly and needlessly shot at the boat.

A poster at Tianya was thinking along the same lines:

受难者真是大不幸! 这船如果是美国海军击沉的, 那可有好戏看了.
　　
　　首先外交部发表声明, 对美国海军滥用武力, 杀害无辜的做法表示强烈的谴责, 并保留作进一步强烈反应的权利!
　　
　　国务院总理立刻指示我驻外使馆人员保持高度警惕, 并积极营救我遇难人员.
　　
　　人民日报发表社论 >
　　
　　中国人权协会发表文章 >
　　
　　中国律师协会发表声明: 屠杀无辜, 于法难容! 美国必须承担相应的法律后果, 作出应有的赔偿.
　　
　　大批电视台,报社记者赶到遇难者的家中 对着镜头遇难者的母亲手捧遗像, 泪流满面,泣不成声地说: "他从小就是个孝顺儿子啊....."
　　
　　大批记者又赶到另一个失踪者的家里, 他那尚未成年的小女儿,瞪着天真无邪的大眼睛,里面充满着泪水,喃喃自语: 爸爸,爸爸, 你什么时候回来, 女儿想你.....
　　
　　全国五毛像炸开了锅, 网络上铺天盖地........
　　
　　可现在,是俄罗斯干的, 无声无息.

That's almost not even parody!

MAC, I know! in the past few days the internet was filled with anti-russia rhetorics and today all of a sudden they disappeared and leaving all the excuses on top justifying russia's action, fuck them, seriously it has to be the nanny's work, now thats what I called "hurt feelings"!!

I don't find it hard to believe that there may be some nannying, but it hardly seems to me that the anti-Russian stuff has disappeared. Of course, Chinese not being my first language, I'm not able to skim as quickly to get a general feel for what's out there.

I do find it interesting, though, that at Huanqiu, home of the Angry Young Man, there are vastly more comments about the girl sitting on the shoulders of the Mao statue than the Russian thing- and now there's a new story about yet another case of official luxury that currently has 6,590 comments, far more than I can ever recall seeing there before. I don't know what the take-home message is there, but it seems odd to me given that you can often see similar numbers of comments as there are about the Russia story over foreign "insults" a lot less substantial than sinking a ship.

Oh, well, I have at least solved the mystery of the (now 7000) comments on the corruption story... somebody spammed 692 pages of this comment:

这才叫镇定！台完问题？钓于岛？南沙？新星号？发国？打赖......
哎呀事真不少，我们领导正在休闲享受别来烦我们了......

I guess somebody really wants eyes drawn to this story.

Says who, Mac and Peteryang?

link

Gee Pffefer, I would hate to deprive you of a chance to stick up for the Chinese government and people, but I think you'd be hard pressed to interpret any part of my post as saying that there's some kind of news and comment blackout; all I said is that there are perhaps less comments than you would expect considering that people actually got killed, and normally China's Angry Young Men will pee their pants in rage any time any foreigner implies that anything might be less than perfect in China. Take it up with Peteryang.

Note: Pffefer responded while MAC's second comment was still held in moderation, yet I would agree that there's nothing in MAC's first comment to indicate an accusation of a news blackout.

Every Human on the earth should condamn Russian's abuse of force. It's totally unacceptabe and flagitious that armed militants shot unarmed civilians and their properties and put them to death.

I strongly condemn rogue Russian army and goverment.

I strongly advocate that we Chinese sever ties with Russian totally.