Ride on, baby

I gather that this young woman has been subjected to considerable vilification (and a little libidinous ribaldry) by Chinese netizens recently, after pictures like this one began to spread around the Internet. Yes, she's sitting on the shoulders of The Great Helmsman (apparently it's a newish statue of him, in a shopping plaza in Changsha, the capital of his home province of Hunan) - how disrespectful!

However, while most of the commentary has been critical of the girl, much of it (representative samples reported with translations on Global Voices, here), it seems, has been critical of Mao.

I particularly liked this bitter observation:

他骑了几亿人民一辈子，
凭啥就不能让别人骑一下下？

He rides on millions of people for his entire life. Why can't people ride on him for a while?

A good question.

And it reminded me that last week saw the anniversary of the unfortunate death of the great rock'n'roller Bon Scott. So here, just a little late, is a nice tribute video from YouTube, accompanied by one of my favourite of his songs, Ride On - a number that really makes me wish AC/DC had played more slow blues. [How's that for free associating?!]