China Expat Rants

Fact or Fiction IV: March Madness

Welcome back one and all to the March edition of Fact or Fiction.Â Those of you who read either of the last three will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day.Â Every answer will have a â€œFactâ€ or a â€œFictionâ€ and some justification to go along with it.

Today my guest is fellow Laowai blogger Matt.Â He is the resident Kunminger (that is a word, right?), and his most recent intelligent posts have been about learning and teaching Chinese, as well as cooking and alcoholism.Â Also, he keeps his own personal blog, Matt Schiavenza – A China Journal, which is a worthy addition to your Google Reader, whenever it’s not blocked.Â Today we’re doing a bit of a topic potpourri, discussing Google, prostitution, and the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the National People’s Congress.

o join us for Fact or Fiction 4:Â March Madness~!!!Read More

Glen

// Mar 31, 2010 //

6 Comments

China Expat Rants

Hong Huang tells laowai, ‘don’t assume you can be one of us’

I just finished reading Hong Huang’s opinion piece in the China Daily entitled, “Dear laowai, don’t mess with our Chinese-ness” and I can’t figure it out. What I’d like to think, based on Hong’s reputation, is that it is self-depreciating humour actually directed at Chinese about Chinese superiority and penchants for stereotypes. If this is …Read More

Laowai homecoming — mass-transit misery

I’ve been home in Canada for a little more than a week, and am already beginning to rub up against the things that run different from my laowai life in China. And while we’ve covered this topic a few times on the blog, I felt like using this post as an opportunity to reach out …Read More

Pandemic on the Streets! Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Vaccine

I’m going to be honest.Â I don’t really know how to write an introduction for this.Â You all know the story by now.Â H1N1 is going around and it is either a media creation or a harbinger of the apocalypse.Â So I would like to apologize in advance if I am further flooding the blogosphere …Read More

On Tyranny

“For we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us” — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty Before I came to China I was asked a series of questions which seemed normal at the time but now seem completely laughable.Â They included “Is there a curfew?”, “Are there police everywhere?”, and “You’ll be …Read More

Searching for Real China

Last night I was watching the season premiere of 30 Rock.Â In the episode Jack says that their television show has lost touch with “Real America” to which Liz responds “all of America is real” . This comment is of course ignored as most of the rest of the episode is spending trying to reconnect …Read More

The Great Firewall: longer, higher, meaner

The already unfortunate situation of internet censorship in China – imposed by the so-called Great Firewall – has been slowly getting worse this year, making a mockery of claims that the Olympics would open up China in terms of allowing a greater spread of communication and discussion. This year the Great Firewall has metamorphosed from …Read More

Giving Thanks To China

Today is a special day in Northern North America, Canadian Thanksgiving.Â While it is (not surprisingly) less of a big deal for us than it will be in about six weeks for our neighbours to the south, it is still an important day on the calendar.Â While I won’t be heading to mom’s for a …Read More

Time for the Associated Press to buy a decent map

The other day I wrote a quick post about how pneumonic plague had infected and killed residents in a small community in Qinghai province. My post was meant mostly as a joke, as my friend Glen was in Qinghai and complaining about being ill. However, there’s nothing funny about pneumonic plague. Now several more people …Read More

Chinese Graduates’ Lives Destroyed by Manila Envelopes

I recently read this NYT article on missing student records and became infuriated.Â In short, the article is about recent graduates from various universities, who came from poor families, worked incredibly hard to set the foundations for their futures, only to find that their entire academic records (high school grades, college grades, test scores, proof …Read More

Block Block Block, Blockity Block

I went to the supermarket today, but was blocked at the entrance by some dude checking his receipt and yelling at someone on his phone. Shrugged it off. Grabbed my gear and headed for the bus stop, but was blocked by some old lady super excited to bear witness to China’s mass-transit system in motion. …Read More

Ryan McLaughlin

// Jul 7, 2009 //

43 Comments

Chinese Politics & News

Twitter & Flickr blocked ahead of Tiananmen’s 20th

Tweets are filling my screen with reports that Twitter.com and Flickr.com are both inaccessible in Mainland China. They join YouTube, as well as WordPress and Blogger blogs as the latest casualties in the Great Firewall of China’s war against free speech. Undoubtedly the blocks are in an effort to curb online commentary and the dissemination …Read More

Ryan McLaughlin

// Jun 2, 2009 //

32 Comments