Hi, my name is Zheng Xiaoyu, and the reason I look so happy is that I’ve just won a no-expense paid trip to visit my ancestors. That’s right folks, I have been awarded the coveted title of 2007 Chinese Scapegoat of the Year – an honour unlike any other. I mean, I had wished and …Read More
By now, just about all laowai should have heard of our “Harmonious Society“. The first time I saw those words was about three years ago, in Chinese, written in huge font on a billboard along the road just after the Lupu Bridge in Pudong, Shanghai. At the time the sign was an anomaly, but within …Read More
Here’s a cool idea: Tear up the gray concrete of Tiananmen Square and turn it into a Chinese version of New York’s Central Park. One leading architect is suggesting something along those lines, the Guardian reports (via CDT): Ma Yansong, an award-winning urban planner, says the grey concrete symbol of China’s red politics should be …Read More
Anyone who’s lived in China for more than a couple weeks has likely amassed a pile of pirated DVDs. Coming from Western countries where the prices are 15-30x more, it’s tough to throw even the worst ones away (I’ve still got my copy of Benchwarmers for Christ’s sake). Getting them home is one of the …Read More
This is just going to be a few sentences long, but I was hoping people would check out the Manchurian Candidate’s website: www.kyle.cn It has a very interesting list of all the school killings that China has had (reported) since 2004. If you think the US is violent, check this list out.Read More
As most everyone with Internet, cable, a radio or a newspaper knows by now – there was a terrible shooting at Virginia Tech University yesterday where a man shot and killed 32 people, injuring 15 others. What’s quickly coming to light is that the killer was very likely a 25-year-old Chinese man in the US …Read More
The big news in China the past couple weeks has been about Western fast food chains (McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut) underpaying their staff in China – particularly the part-timers. The issue was sparked by accusations from China’s top trade union that McDonald’s was underpaying their employees (Reuters/China Daily), in some places by almost half, …Read More
I’m not a timid man. Generally speaking I don’t get overtly nervous in most situations. However, any time I see the financial protection services folk, clad in their somewhat comical blue combats, and armed with a tube of a gun, I get shaky. These guys, whose job it is to protect transfers of money between …Read More
I was just reading Yale Professor Robert Schiller’s article Thrifty China, Spendthrift America, which explains the apparent discrepancy of the saving rate in America versus what’s occuring in China. While I cannot provide as indepth an economic analysis as the learned professor has made, I would like to touch upon some of the points he …Read More
I think it is a fairly common phenomenon in China for foreigners to get angry and make snide remarks when we hear the government make comments about how they will have a peaceful rise to world power or how they will be number one by 2050. I must admit something in me shutters when I …Read More
China’s economy got off to a shaky lunar new year with Tuesday’s stock market plunge in Shanghai, which saw a fall of 9%, which then triggered the worst trading day in the US since 9/11. Although yesterday’s (Wednesday) activity saw ‘Shanghai A shares’ gain some of their previously lost value (as well as the important …Read More
Reflections on a month spent wandering the Chinese Internet: China was hit hard about a month ago by the big Boxing Day earthquake in Taiwan, which knocked out or hindered access to most foreign websites from behind the great wall. As one Chinese acquaintance of mine put it “This is really a big inconvenience for …Read More
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