Black and White Cat comments on a photo of Lin Hao, the 9-year-old Sichuan quake survivor that helped rescue two of his classmates. Lin accompanied Yao Ming in the opening ceremony, but what might not have been immediately noticeable was that his flag was upside down. After sending out the photo, Xinhua immediately issued a notice to news agencies not to use the image.

“Yao Ming is not a national hero,” a student recently declared in one of my English classes. Some years ago,before I spent much time in China, I might have been stunned to hear a Chinese citizen talk about Yao Ming in such a way.