this is the most boring post, Joel, that i have ever read in my life.

You shouldn't have brought it up in the 1st place. BTW, it's such a bland piece of journalism.

When journalism goes awry.

This is brilliant use of Twitter. Just can't resist the title! I thought we were at the beginning to create the mythology of Chinese Area 51 and all we get is a reporter typo?

Sometimes reporter's typos in China are very revealing, such as when they show the age of Olympic gymnasts.

Who else remembers the controversy when He Kexin's age was reported to be 14 by Xinhua and China Daily, as well as 生活报, 法制晚报, and 北京晚报?

China said "Oh, sorry, just a typo" and the IOC decided to let He keep the gold medals.

link

To bad your link does not work and all other english lang. chinese news source discuss his visit to Tangshan and Qinghuangdao but nothing about taking the train back to Beijing. They do report that he "personally interacted with the others, asking them specific questions about their lives and work."

If he did take the train it very well might have been D28 not D18.

The western media or White House communications office has never made any mistakes right?

Just another westerner who knows nothing about China that loves to cram western thinking and lifestyle down its throat.

I've updated the post with screen-captures of the sources I used prior to their deletion.

The D28 for D18 possibility is noted in the text translated above. Even if it's a press office mistake, why not simply correct the error rather than deleting the online posts that point it out?

why not simply correct the error rather than deleting the online posts that point it out?

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You are assuming that it is the same person or even the same department that can do both the deleting and correcting jobs. But there is no such person or department. They probably do not even cooperate on this trivial thing.

Wen is more like an actor than a premier, was he so childish as to get some truth from the passengers?
Show time!!!!!

Even if the train number is wrong, that doesn't mean that the reason it's wrong is in order to create a bogus quote in the newspaper about how Wen "personally interacted with the other riders, asking them specific questions about their lives and work." Of course, that type of ritualistic language is hard to stomach and it has a clear agenda. Perhaps all the questions about the train's real number are just excuses to bring up the hollowness of Wen's manufactured public image.

Looks like the popular Chinese blogger Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth does not agree that this is the most boring bland post cramming western thinking down China's throat.

Meanwhile I am hoping to meet Hu Jintao on the train to Henan and would like to ask his opinion of the government official in Zhengzhou (逯军）who photoshoplifted his hair and suit for the municipal government's website:
link

"The D28 for D18 possibility is noted in the text translated above. Even if it's a press office mistake, why not simply correct the error rather than deleting the online posts that point it out?"

--Because it's BORING to answer this and that and then more discussion and more analysis and a few more points and more and more...

--Besides, by correcting D18 to D28, to defend what? Oh, Mr. Wen is actually still a quite amiable person in the end, sigh...

"BORING" is not an excuse for poor journalism anway

Besides, Wen is really just a figurehead, his job is too look and act good, I think most mature Chinese know this inside. And he does a good job of it too.

D18 is a newly established service from BJ to a satellite city which happens to locate in Hebei Province...The service started this week, surely you wouldn’t see it on your old train schedules.