Some year-end roundup items:

· A 2006 Lexicon
The Beijing News did its annual arts & entertainment review in the format of a language textbook. Twenty vocabulary items, from "blog" (博), "brokeback" (断背) and "hidden rules" (潜规则) to "Oh my God" in Shaanxi dialect (额滴神, from My Own Swordsman), "indecent exposure" (走光), and of course "spoof" (恶搞).

Origin, explanation, and usage notes are given for each term. Rounding out the "20 + 06" gimmick (image at left) are the six top "A&E Instructors" in 2006: Guo Degang (crosstalk fever), Huang Jianxiang (sports announcer goes crazy), Ning Hao (Crazy Stone), Ning Caishen (My Own Swordsman), Han Han (blog fights), and Wang Shuo (the novelist returns). (link)

· China Daily's cultural top 10
Raymond Zhou introduces the top ten cultural and entertainment events in 2006 as chosen by the paper's Life desk:

Ordinary people, armed with new technology, rose in 2006 to challenge China's cultural icons that have been perched on a pedestal for a long time. Blogs made anyone an author and a publisher; podcasts meant anyone could become a broadcaster; and affordable camcorder and editing equipment created filmmakers.

Besides Web companies that knew how to take advantage of change, the personalities and organizations that benefited most from the grassroots revolution were those that took into account the needs of the masses and churned out products that reflected their tastes.

The atmosphere was more of a carnival than a revolution. The massive online population, heavily skewed towards the young, stormed to one target after another, sometimes in fits of passion for justice and utopia and sometimes being manipulated by unscrupulous website editors who pitched one social group against anothear. We witnessed not only how quickly self-important cultural heavyweights lost their luster when they failed to adapt to the new milieu, but also how quickly rational sentiment turned to hysteria that was a faint reminder of the "cultural revolution" of 1966-76 in mentality. (link)

· SARFT rules for movie titles
Micah Sittig summarizes a Shanghai Morning Post article about titles for foreign movies, focusing on several films released in 2006. SARFT picks its translations carefully, avoiding duplications, the supernatural, and phrasing that is not "socially responsible." (link, discussion at Sinosplice)

· Online media quiz
Think you've got a handle on all the Internet happenings in 2006? Oeeee, Southern Media Group's Shenzhen-based portal, has created a Flash game to quiz you on your knowledge of Bus Uncle, the Hug Brigade, and the great partner swapping debate. In Chinese. (link)

· Earlier: Southern Metropolis Weekly's Reverse News Dictionary