7:10pm: Sitting on the plane for over an hour now. Pilot’s last message: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally been cleared for takeoff. However, the car that was supposed to push us back has disappeared. I will try to contact the tower.”

UPDATE 7:15:

Last message: “Ladies and gentlemen, the tow truck arrived and disappeared again. This is not an organized airport. I apologize.”

UPDATE 7:20:

All announcements are in very good English. Chinese versions are toned down… Last message was English only.

UPDATE 7:24:

We are finally moving. I guess they found the missing truck. Just one hour late…

UPDATE FROM SZ: The flight was almost two hours delayed. I spent 5 hours on the plane, only 3 hours of which in the air… It is July and the weather in SZ is better than Beijing…

This recent China Daily article attempts to draw attention to the accusations of “group licentiousness” against a teenage girl in southern China:

GUANGZHOU – A 17-year-old girl who is suspected of participating in group sex parties has been put on trial in Dongguan No 2 People’s Court in Guangzhou.

Li Jie (alias), a sophomore at Houjie vocational school, is being charged with group licentiousness in Dongguan.

In the public indictment, the prosecution said Li, who repeatedly had sex with several male students on one occasion, committed group licentiousness.

It would seem unlikely that the girl not only participated parties where she had sex with multiple men, but also agreed to be filmed doing so. Unlikely, but not impossible, especially in Guangdong province, where in the past few years it has become something of a fad for teenage girls to gang up on a classmate, hit, kick, and slap her, pull her hair, rip off her clothes, and otherwise humiliate her, and then film the whole thing and put it online.

Equal consideration is given to both sides of the story — whether the girl knowingly plotted “group licentiousness” or was simply drugged with ketamine and gang-raped. It is both enjoyable and sad to watch the author drop hints, in the most tortured and indirect of ways, that the accusations against the girl are perhaps a bit over the top. No mention is given to any actions taken against the three male students she supposedly “partied” with.

Even more interesting to me, though, were the links in the two right-hand columns. Top billing in the “Specials” column goes to World Cup, which is being played in South Africa. Just below it is an AP story about black slave children in the antebellum United States. Actually, it’s about a photograph of black slave children. This key piece of news was deemed more important than an analysis of China’s economy, which is listed third among the “Specials”. For those who were too dim to catch on, the leading piece in the adjacent “Columnists” section is titled “Africa, World Cup and neo-colonialism”.