When I ran across a Youtube video of the recent Nanjing East Rd flash mob on Shanghaiist, I favorited it for the fun weirdness of it. Today I realized that it was recorded by Shanghaimat, and that it got huge traffic from a site called CNbeta. I think I've heard of it before so I surfed on over.

Turns out CNbeta is like a Chinese Slashdot with some general news headlines thrown in and a few other features besides just tech news and comments. Shanghaimat's video was included in a post on the "freeze" flash mob which got the usual snarky BBS comments from posters, a few of the more interesting of which I'll translate here:

之前看过在国外的
I saw this abroad before.
很无聊
Boooring.
今天上海下雨能够组织起来这样的活动，老外也真能够玩儿
Foreigners sure like to play, organizing something like this on a rainy Shanghai day.
城管呢？
Where were the urban control officers?
拿个打火机点死你!
Gonna burn you to death with a lighter!
You tube 强!
Youtube's cool!
吃着没事干
What a buncha boors with nothing better to do.
我在想如果是中国人这样做，那些jcss会不会也不阻止呢
I gotta wonder, if this had been a buncha Chinese would those police have held back? (警察叔叔)
上海欢迎老外与外地打工者,但请新上海人gun出上海
Shanghai welcome's foreign talent and migrant workers, but wannabe "new Shanghainese" get the fuck out.
完美的诠释了什么叫做有钱没事干
A perfect illustration of "got money and nothing better to do".
这是一种幽默的生活态度。高压下的中国人的确很难体会
This is a kind of humor-loving lifestyle. Chinese living in the pressure cooker that is China today just can't understand. (in reply to the "boooring" comment)
看不到了吗？和，蟹 了吗？
Why can't I see the videos? Have they been "crabbed"?
没见到美女，要不然可以去乘机抱一下，哈哈
No hot girls, or else you could jump in and get a hug out of it, haha.
旁边拍照的有什么用呢？都是静止的
What's the point of the people taking photos. They're standing still!
老外是有钱就想生活慢节奏,所以有时frozen;天朝是没钱恨不得一分钟当120秒用,走得象跑的,赶着整点钱,哪有那闲工夫整这个啊 .
Foreigners have money and like to live life in the slow lane, so they've got time to play "frozen"; us Chinese can't even take a minute to smell the daisies, we walk like we're running, squeezing the cents out of every minute, where would we get the time to pull these things off?
城管在玩街霸
The urban control officers are off playing Street Fighter. (in response to "where's the chengguan?")
马上就有中国人模仿了，像meizu一样
The Chinese will copy this in a second, just like Meizu.
看见视频中闪过的一个口号“创新是民族进步的灵魂”。不过呢，或许过不了几天，北京、天津、南京、……等等都开始了冻僵艺术的模仿了。
In the video I caught a glimpse of a sign saying "Creativity is the spirit of advancement for the people" (a classic Nanjing East Road landmark). However, I betcha in a few days we'll see "freeze" mob imitators popping up in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing...
中国人与狗不许被冻僵
No Chinese or dogs allowed to freeze mob

Haha, funny. But not as good reading as another article I read on CNbeta, supposedly written by Jack Ma's wife and titled "Son addicted to online games, Jack Ma swears not to invest a cent in the industry". It goes on to describe how Jack and his wife made millions at Alibaba, neglecting their son and almost losing him to the net cafe. A good example of parental responsibility in the end.