Is it impossible for your staff to distinguish between reviewing a play and promoting it? Only a few weeks back you posted a notice about this rep company, which was just shy of being an advertisement for them.

Do they advertise with you, as well? Is that why the play is being reviewed?

I don't recall us ever mentioning Great Brother productions, the company behind 剩女郎, but thanks for the heads-up, sidney. I've added links to the post lest anyone else jump to conclusions.

Ribbons' review was as insightful as her own plays.

Someone please explain how this play or this review of the play could possibly be of interest to regular Danwei readers. Is the writer good mates with Danwei? Danwei would do well to stop handing out freebies for cosy expat mates. Pathetic.

Tim

Danwei has had occasional coverage of the theater scene in Beijing and elsewhere in China since 2003.

What are "freebies for cosy expat mates"?

Thank you, Joel. By the way, and in part as a nod to Tim's point, here is such an example--a posting that could very much be read as an announcement/advertisement: link

With respect, the "occasional coverage" referred to here usually involves people whose work is promoted and who are then seen later in these same pages as "contributors".

In other locations, this practice might be called "conflict of interest" or perhaps not being completely candid with one's readership.

sidney / SinaSource:

Once again, you have caught us out. We took millions from Elyse Ribbons after one of her plays became a Beijing blockbuster.

Of course we hide such ill-gotten gains from our readers, and we then we dare to pull the wool over their eyes by publishing a short review by the same Ms Ribbons.

I see you have also noticed that we sometimes post evil advertising announcements from local mind control squads, masquerading as theater groups.

Bwa ha ha ha.

It's a good thing for our readers that we have you to alert them to the subtle brainwashing and sheer capitalist greed that are the true aims of Danwei.org.

NO SHIT. It's a conspiracy. LOL. Sinasource is still beefing with Danwei, lol lol lol (FREAK is not Sinasource).

I support you man Sinasource. Danwei's been pissing me off lately. We should rebel (yeeehaw) and stop coming to this site. This site is the evil empire, know what I mean? They are in the pockets of the communist government, NO doubt! How else would they be able to operate in China without impunity???

FUCK this site. It's in bed and equivalent to that other piece of crap website/forum and wannabe rag "the Beijinger."

HAHAHA LOL LOL LOL.

Censor my shit, please. Ban me for a week. Ban me permanently. I beg you.

Fuck the beijinger, fuck danwei, fuck the control matrix! Support the revolution!!!!

Therese:

Ribbons' [sic] review was as insightful as her own plays.

Jeremy:

"freebies for cosy expat mates" really doesn't need any further explanation, but since you asked I'll clarify. You've promoted Cheeky Monkey Theatre before. Now Cheeky's "dramatist" gets space on your blog to write a review, which surprise, surprise has links to Cheeky's website and has a little intro blurb on the "dramatist"'s past works.
Actually, I hardly care about that, but what's annoying is that the review was boring and badly written. Hardly strikes me as "coverage" of the Beijing theatre scene. Yes, I know you make no money from this, and detect an undertone of bitterness about that in yr sarcastic riposte to sinosource et al, but only felt moved to comment as Danwei is usually full of such gold as to amplify the occasional boring bits of fluff that make it on the blog. Keep up the good work and cut out the bollocks.

Thanks for the explanation, Tim.

We welcome guest contributions, but since we're currently unable to offer the authors any payment for the articles we publish, we usually give them the courtesy of a link. That typically goes away if the author contributes more than just the odd one-off (they get their own login and byline then), and some of our guest contributors prefer to remain anonymous.

Theater is not something we've really covered on Danwei. Unlike books and movies, you can't sit at home with a pirated copy - you've actually got to go out and mingle with the people. I thought this review presented an interesting perspective on a Chinese play that's currently onstage, so I posted it with an introduction. There's nothing I can say if you think it doesn't measure up quality-wise, except that I'm glad you'll keep reading and I hope you won't find too many boring bits in the future.