If you're suffering after a tough New Year, we're here to help soothe the pain. Take it easy and enjoy this rundown of some of the most-watched, strangest and funniest videos to hit China's streaming sites in the year just gone by.

With North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il having looked at his last thing, a nation mourns. (A mite theatrically, admittedly, some of the wailing looking like the first semester of an adult education drama course). Journalists have been busy reporting on the event, by, um, not doing much. Well, they can't just hop on the next flight to Pyongyang, can they? Instead, the intrepid hacks are peering through the frosted glass of China’s scattering of North Korean restaurants. Sounds like a plan. I’m in.

Surf’s up: the Beijing Government will launch a new, free wi-fi network called “My Beijing” later this month. According to China.org (via Techcrunch), the plan is to “provide 2Mbps broadband WiFi to approximately 60 percent of Beijing through some 90,000 access points that the municipal government plans implement over the next few years.”

The 2Mbps broadband service will require users to input their China Unicom, China Telecom or China Mobile numbers to obtain a password good for three hours of access. Considered a pilot program, the network will be free to users for three years, but may eventually become a fee-based service (details TBD).

Check out the full story on agendabeijing.com.

In my very first dispatch as a wet-behind-the-hearing-holes dining editor, I made passing mention to my raging McDonald's delivery addiction. Lest you get the impression, dear reader, that I spend my days holed up in my room with the shades drawn and the lights off, subsisting solely on a diet of McDonald's, Tim Tams and reruns of the Eurovision song contest, please let me assure you that you are wholly mistaken: there is also cake.

Here are a few of our favorite pushers of hand-delivered diet doom.

Nicely Made in China (http://nicelymadeinchina.com), one of our favorite Beijing-based blogs, just celebrated its one-year anniversary yesterday.

The website, which seeks out quality products and services in China, was met with much skepticism at the time of its inception. With all the recent scandals to rock the nation, from melamine-tainted milk to lethal pet food, public faith in Chinese manufacturing had been thoroughly shaken.