An American group by the name of the National Labor Committee (NLC) has just released a shocking in-depth report on working and living conditions for factory workers in one particular ‘hi-tech’ plant in Dongguan, southern China, which makes computer keyboards for Lenovo, HP, Dell, IBM, and Microsoft. The deeply alarming report was compiled after months …Read More
A couple weeks back I wrote a rather exhaustive (at least for me) post for CNET Asia titled “Human flesh search engines — crowd-sourcing ‘justice’“. In it I called the human flesh search engines a “rather uniquely Chinese phenomenon”. I’d like to rescind that statement. Rather, I’d like to adjust it to say a “rather …Read More
From the photographer (blog): “A pair of teenage girls watches a snake show at the Ditan Park Spring Festival temple fair in Beijing.” NOTE: The original photo of the week has been changed, as it was pointed out in the comments that it wasn’t actually taken in China – heavy sleuthing guys. It’s still an …Read More
We have come for various reasons, in a variety of guises from different places, with the educations and habits of our homelands as guides in our judgment of the world. We interpret what we find here, in the peerless republic of China, according to standards and assumptions formed in distant cauldrons of human experience and …Read More
This past week, while many people were out celebrating the Spring Festival holiday, I was stuck in my apartment with a disease I might fairly compare to demon possession in terms of severity. The upside of this condition was that I got to spend a lot of quality time listening to, watching, and being startled …Read More
Got my copy of Charter 08, bilingual, with the names of 300 supporters affixed. At the very least it is food for thought and fodder for conversation and that can go a long way in a country where words, printed, spoken, recorded, sculpted, etched, molded, callagraphised, stamped, blasted, tatooed, broadcast and fired like blazing arrows into the throng are …Read More
For this the next chapter in Lost Laowai’s series of posts on prolific bloggers in the English-language China blogsphere I go right to the source, as there are few more seminal English-language China blogs than the Peking Duck. Authored by Beijing-based PR man Richard Burger, the Peking Duck is one of, if not the, oldest …Read More
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the need to criticize this nation with such a blanket statement as “grow up China”, but in watching and reading the country’s reaction to Obama coming to office – I can think of nothing more relevant to say. I’ve spent the last year looking at China as …Read More
It is said that an individual’s fears can be seen in what they spend their life avoiding and evading. As for governments, their fears are exposed in what they censor, and yesterday’s Inauguration speech by the new US president Barack Obama (wow, it feels good to type that for the first time ever) seems to …Read More
China’s wildly popular IM service has “quietly” launched a new portal focused on the international market – IMQQ.com. According to a post on Mobinode: “An email sent from an insider, reveals that Tencent has just quietly launched its international portal for QQ, IMQQ.com where you can find all the English information you need to try …Read More
According to an article at Caijing, Shanghai’s rapid development may be causing the city to sink into the sea. Built on what is largely sandy marshland, according to the Shanghai Institute of Geology, the city has sunk more than two metres in the past 40 years. This sinking is believed to be connected to the …Read More
Wokai, or “I start”, is a new(ish) Web site offering microfinancing to China’s poor. There are few things that make me tingle like the principle of microfinancing does. I’d like to think I have a philanthropist’s heart (if not the wallet), and as much as I believe “give it and forget it” charities unarguably do …Read More
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