Boy racers of Beijing

San Lian Life Week's April 3 issue features the cover line Drag racing youths. With the steadily-decreasing price of cars, speed-loving Chinese youngsters are taking to illegal drag racing with the same enthusiasm as their counterparts in other countries.

The 'boy racer' phenomenon has been a source of worry to parents and society all over the world since James Dean made drag racing famous in Rebel Without a Cause, and it's no different in Beijing.

The trend has become a subject of public discussion in Beijing since February 10 this year, when the police arrested two 20-year-old men for racing around the city's Second Ring Road at death-defying speeds - nearing 150kph, or fast enough to complete the circuit in under 13 minutes and place them in the Beijing racing pantheon with the legendary "Sir 13 of the Second Ring" (二环十三郎, a title the Sanlian article conspicuously avoids). The article profiles one of the youths, and looks at the influence on China's high octane youth culture of Formula 1, which entered the country in 2004 when Shanghai opened an F1 racing track.

FHM cover girl: Zhang Lei or Japanese sex doll?

The April issue of FHM's Chinese edition gets in on the drag racing vocab trend, using the Chinese word for drag racing (飙 - biao1) in a coverline: You can drag race whatever you ride: Donkey, horse, camel: completely change your sluggish life.

Inside the magazine are adverts for automobile brands KIA and Buick, and a special section sponsored by Cadillac. The San Lian Life Week issue contains ads for Ford and Buick, as well as a co-branded ad for Nokia and BMW.

For more on drag racing in greater China, have a look at blogger Glutter's Hong Kong street racing section.