CHINAYOUREN

The great China Beat has just published an article by James A. Millward about Facebook’s controversial plans for China.  The article is written from a cultural/human rights perspective, and it includes an interesting passage from LuXun’s Nahan. “Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. [...]

Last week I wrote a post where I expressed some views on Ai WeiWei and other dissidents. This attracted an unexpected number of comments, and it even inspired a podcast in the best blog about China in Spanish, Zaichina. All in all, it has been a long and fruitful exchange, so I want to thank [...]

Interesting article by Evan Osnos, explaining Why Ai Weiwei Matters. He gives three good reasons why we should not dismiss the Ai WeiWei case as irrelevant. Despite the annoying tone (he seems to imply that foreigners ignoring Ai Weiwei are brainwashed readers of The Global Times), it is fair to say that he addresses the [...]

So there we go again. It is this time of the year when the USA State Department publishes its annual human rights report including China as a major offender, and China promptly responds with its own report exclusively dedicated to the US. This show is déjà vu, but if you are interested you can see [...]

So many things are happening outside China right now, I have the strange sensation that the roles have been reversed, and for once we are the onlookers instead of the targets of all eyes. It feels relaxing, and I note it’s had a great effect on the Chinese TV as well. After the absurdly oppressive [...]

I was pleased by the TV reporting we got on Chinese TV during the weekend. It was surprisingly fresh, with different specialists coming in live and direct connection with the Japanese NHK. At some point in the Finance Channel there was a photo-slide with images of the victims, played with Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World”, [...]

After a few months in the shade of the GFW, I wanted to get active again on the internet, so as a first step today I have unblocked my blog. I think there has been a few quirks this morning as I was moving to the new URL and some of you might have seen [...]

I was very disappointed when I read this story about the US ambassador in Beijing taking part in the so-called “Jasmine” protests last Sunday. This is very bad news for Chinese supporters of democracy (yet again). First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an [...]

I just learnt about Liu’s Prize. This is important news, which could mark the beginning of new developments in international politics. Certainly, the whole thing would have been more effective if the Nobel wasn’t completely made worthless by last year’s award. But even without that, it couldn’t have any positive direct result. The government will [...]

In the 2010 Social Blue Paper, published last December by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there was a very interesting piece hidden among the 330 pages of socio-economic analysis. Under the title “Population problems China should pay attention to between 2011 and 2015″, this article contained some of the newest and most negative data [...]

I was flying back from Chongqing recently when I was reminded of the very frustrating problem of reading Chinese. There was a movie on the cabin TV and it had a particularity: it carried subtitles in Chinese and English in parallel, in two lines of comparable font at the bottom of the screen. As I watched [...]

One of the things that foreigners enjoy lamenting in China is the destruction of architectural heritage. It is understandable, modern China has a terrible record of heritage destruction, and today there are cities with 2,000 years of history where it is hard to find any trace of old construction. But the worst is that you can [...]

Here is the post I promised analyzing the fate of our friend Michael in the Tianya BBS.  Michael (卖抠) is the main character in the little Chinese story I wrote last week. I didn’t write the story particularly for this purpose, but once it was there I thought it would be a good idea to [...]

A little update on the Oriental Morning Post. I know nobody is interested because nobody actually reads this paper (not even its editors), but for the sake of consistency I have to inform of their new exploits. Follow me in this new chapter of their fascinating spiral to hell. The weekend’s Oriental had the following [...]

This week I have little time to do the Language post, partly because I have been busy writing a short story, partly because I have already discussed a good deal about language in other blogs. I take advantage of this to do the post with my final views on Shanghainese after the long discussion we [...]

Here is my first short story in Chinese. The title is “Lost in Translation”, and it illustrates the potential consequences of bad mandarin pronunciation. If you don’t read Chinese I left a little summary in comments, or else use G Translator to get the enhanced experience. UPDATE: I have reposted this on Tianya to give [...]

Today I just wanted to comment on the mysterious world of Chinese punctuation. It is a fascinating field in these times when everyone accuses Chinese of discriminating against our foreign symbols. In fact, there is a kind of foreign symbols that are used in practically every sentence of modern Chinese: the points, the commas, and [...]

Saturday there was some alarming movement down the road. Starting early morning masses of unidentified individuals concentrated near the intersection, partially blocking the traffic. They were visibly nervous, but their expression was firm, clearly they intended to hold the position. They had been there for almost 2 hours when I arrived with the camera. When [...]

Today I just wanted to share this picture, taken by one of the brave reporters in the Oriental toilet paper, who were first on the scene: This is a brand new sculpture called “communication”, just arrived from the US to Shanghai to commemorate the 30 years of the opening of relations between the two countries. [...]

This little piece by historian Hong Zhenkuai has been taken down from the Southern Metropolis, but it has managed to escape the censors on some other sites. I liked the subtle way Hong criticizes the reigning CCP dynasty, and the cool Chinese rendering of “L’Etat c’est moi” as “朕即国家“. Since I don’t have the time [...]

Here is an update to yesterday’s review of Han Han, with some additional info about the Time nomination, which might be more important than it appears at first sight. Then, if you stay till the end of this chapter, we will put on the yellow socks to analyze a bit more that terrible scourge of [...]

Han Han has been nominated for the Time’s most Influential People, and pushed by the millions of Chinese netizens, he is quickly ascending to a likely Number 1. Xujun Eberlein has done a good analysis of the situation, particularly the disgusting way that the People’s Daily and the Shanghai Daily are trying to downplay and [...]

I never thought of this before, but when I was asked this week which was my favourite province in China, I naturally answered Zhejiang. I have been travelling there again on QingMing holidays and I have been reflecting what a remarkable place it is. Zhejiang is the smallest province in the mainland, just a bit [...]

In this week’s language post I want to speak about language protectionism. I am not sure this is the word I am looking for, but if you have been following the blogs for the last couple of weeks you probably know what I mean. It all started with this proposal last month to ban English [...]

In this week’s language post I want to examine the gender implications in the Chinese written and spoken language, and the reactions of the Chinese women to the many discriminatory expressions in use today. Given that most traditional cultures were extremely sexist by today’s standards, it is very common to have sexist elements embedded in today’s languages. [...]

China Files is looking for an English native speaker based in Shanghai for a part time job during the EXPO shanghai 2010. Preferably with journalism or media related experience. Experience in video and photography will be an advantage. We’re looking for someone clever, active and with excellent communication skills. This person will be in charge of [...]

Last week I did a post where I gave three reasons why I thought the Oriental Morning Post was going to the dogs. This week I read an article on the DeluxZilla blog from Shanghai that makes the following observation: Despite being a party newspaper, I am more a fan of the Shanghai Morning Post [...]

Of all the amazing things that happen to me in China, the SMS messages I get in my cell phone are one of them. When I first got to Shanghai 3 years ago I was young and my heart was full of ambition. Eager to make a name for myself in the local business circles, [...]

Today was the opening day of the new Bund. After a decade with the elevated road flowing into this street, the urban planners have finally realized that a 5 lane highway is not the best thing to have in the middle of your famous promenade. This year they have been busy getting that ring road [...]

The debate about the New Media and the Death of the Newspapers has been raging for years on the free internet. In the Chinese intranet, however, this question doesn’t raise so much interest, because journalism here was already murdered long ago by the hideous hand of the censors. It is for this reason that Chinese [...]

This is a new feature in my blog. It is a follow up of the initial Language and Culture posts last year, and I commit from now on to continue the series every Thursday that I feel like it. The idea is to post about those language curiosities that I encounter in my study of [...]

How many times have we seen the discussion on China forums about what exactly is Soft Power? That mysterious force of the white side that the Jedi use in international politics, turning all arguments to their advantage? China has coveted this weapon for years and spent many a valuable resource in its quest, but all [...]

So Google has done it finally. My worst predictions have turned out to be right, and Google.cn is living on in exile, challenging the authority of the Chinese government from Hong Kong. Speak of burning the bridges. Like usual, most of the commentators our there got it all wrong. This is not about Google offering [...]

I just finished reading that book 蚁族 (Ant Tribe) that is all over the place on the Chinese internet. I was curious why it was becoming so hot here while Western media covered it only briefly. I think I know the answer now, but let me introduce the book first and more on this later. [...]

I just noticed this picture I took this morning in the little lane. The intention was to illustrate how the Olympic spirit is finally coming to the Shanghai local communities. The result is I unwittingly took a cool portrait of myself reflected in the announcement board glass cover. This is the typical Chinese motivational message [...]

I visited an Expo for the first time as a kid, when my school took all my class together to Seville ’92. Spain was living a crazy year, the Olympics where happening at the same time that Summer, and the Expo was designed to be one of the largest ever. Like now in China, there [...]

This morning I was doing some tests on Google to see if there was any change in the search results, and I noticed one detail I had not thought of before: although everyone is describing Google.cn as “hosted in China”, the IP is American, as you can see on whois. In fact, other than the deals with [...]

Disclaimer: In the interest of science, this post contains sexually explicit material. If you are underage and/or a sensitive person you are advised not to scroll down. If you don’t read Chinese it’s OK. This is the continuation of the previous post in the series, where we ended up rambling off the main topic and [...]

The case of Google’s new approach to China is moving slower than expected, but I have the feeling that we may see something happen pretty soon. After the New Year, the Double Meetings are almost over and the Chinese government will probably want to have this cleared before the next big item in the agenda, [...]

Finally, after a long week of intense NPC-CPPCC coverage, the first signs of the spring are starting to bloom in the press of Shanghai. The Oriental Morning Post opens with a picture of the large billboards promoting the EXPO on New York’s Times square, while its archrival, the more conservative Shanghai Morning Post, shows the [...]

This weekend I have taken a break from my exhausting research into the the sex of Chinese conservatives, to update old parts of the site and finish implementing some new features I had been trying lately. The changes in version 2.0 are not related to design, so they may not be immediately apparent to the [...]

It looks like Charles over at the new China Divide blog has found a new source of clicks to revive the China blogging scene: debating the crackdown on pornography in China. While I don’t usually support any kind of censorship, I have to say I couldn’t care less for the cause of porn in China. [...]

The Oriental Morning Post of Shanghai is doing a nice coverage of the annual NPC-CPPCC meetings. I liked today’s paper edition, which carries a couple of cute alpacas right next to a picture of Hu and the boys walking down the aisle from the CPPCC they’ve just inaugurated. It is a long story for those [...]

NOTE: For those readers who’ve been offline for the past 3 days, this is a post about Google Buzz, the new Google service that has invaded the World’s mailboxes this week. But take it easy, hold on a sec, don’t rush to your GFW test tools, this has not happened yet. I just want to [...]

Holy Smokes! Something is moving in Google China. I have been working for the last 12 hours with Google docs, and I just realize I was using Yi’s computer, the one that doesn’t have the VPN installed. This means that Google Documents is unblocked since  yesterday evening at least.  And so is Google Groups! Both sites [...]

All this G talk of the last days has brought me a lot of readers from the tech world, and I feel a responsibility towards them now to report the latest innovations. That is why yesterday during my Sunday walk I decided to stroll into the local public lavatory, where the latest developments are always [...]

Back on the job. On re-read, I have the feeling that I might have been too optimistic yesterday. Sure, the style of Google’s announcement betrayed personal involvement, and once at the negotiation table it is to be expected that a more businesslike atmosphere will prevail. But even if G shuts up, it is not sure [...]

You might be wondering why this story of Google is taking up so much space in this otherwise low-tech blog. I am as well. I think what fascinates me is the almost complete absence of first hand news after the G bomb. The time is for speculation, and for China bloggers and tea leave readers [...]

Looking back to what I wrote last week I realize that, in my effort to keep a cool head and analyze the events, I forgot to say a very important thing: I Respect Google. I have never had any doubt of the non-business nature of their decision, and, in spite of our poll’s results, I am [...]

The news of the resignation of Baidu’s Chief Technical Officer Li Yinan came as a shock to Chinayouren, where I am still gaping at the CDT with goggling eyes. This is going to make more noise now than it would normally, as people will be quick to find connections with the Google China affair and [...]

Some images of the battle of the decade, the non-evil corporation Google against the dark forces of the commy government of China. Below the logo on Google.cn today. Clearly, the big G is sending a message to the Chinese: we respect you, we dig your ancient culture, it is just the disgusting authorities of your [...]

I know, there are other news in the World, and I am probably not paying enough attention to them. But I can’t help it, I’ve been overclocking for the last 48h trying to understand Google’s decision, I have read every single article appeared on the internet since. And I still don’t get it. I want [...]

There has been very little new information today and most of the media and the blogosphere is turning around the same ideas, many of them mentioned already in the previous 2 posts of the series. Here are a few interesting new points I have gathered that I think are worth commenting: There has been a [...]

Following the previous post about Google and China, here are my reflections regarding the foreseeable consequences of all this. First of all, an important clarification: I don’t think fighting against censorship is bad. Censorship in China is very real, it is a disgrace not only for activists but for most honest Chinese, and it only [...]

First of all, read this article posted on the Google official blog. It is all you need to read for the moment because there is no more first hand info out there yet. It was published some 5 hours ago. What it says in a rather muddled way is essentially: That Google has detected attacks [...]

Wow. Baidu.com has been hacked this morning around 9:30 and is just back on at 3pm. More than 5:30 hours downtime. Worst of all, they have no way to hide it was a hack, even the People’s Daily published the picture. Perhaps the party media does not consider websites as part of China’s glorious industry [...]

By the way, I watched the movie Avatar last night. It was an amazing experience for a China observer, and I draw this enlightening conclusion: the film has absolutely nothing to do with China. Even if the king of the internet and man of the year Han Han thinks the opposite, the plot has as [...]

The Tiger is coming to the surface. The New decade has already come in the West, and in China we are again in this no man’s land between the Solar and the Lunar New Year, between the Bull and the Tiger. It is time to look back and see where we stand. In World politics [...]

Goodbye 2009. Here is another Year-End Special of Chinayouren, the first after a full year of operation. Thanks all for sticking around. As usual we will start with the popularity of China in the news. This year it is more interesting than ever, because 2010 is a round number, and the early-birds of the China [...]

The summit of Copenhagen has inspired some hot debate on the media, for the most part more related to international politics than to climate change. Some spectacular pieces like Mark Lynas’ on the Guardian have been followed by more moderate opinions, like those appeared on Danwei and Inside Out, trying to understand the roles of [...]

I have been away for a while because all my holiday time has been absorbed by two fascinating stories of Shanghai, one of them a TV serial, the other a novel. The serial is WoJu, the Snail’s House, stupidly translated to English as Narrow Dwellingness, or whatever. It has been red hot in China since [...]

Happy Christmas everyone. Sad Christmas for China, and for all of us who love that country and who believe in freedom, dignity and truth. Exactly one year ago, on Christmas Day, I published this post about Liu’s Charter. I was critical with the initiative for many reasons: it contained contradictions, it was reactive rather than [...]

Look what I found in my letterbox today. An advert for the "Toothy Rabbit’s Children’s EQ Camp!" Those of you who are patient enough to stick to this blog might remember the last post I did about the popularity of self-help/business books in China, and in particular those related to Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Not surprising [...]

Read this rant against Han Han on the China Daily. I have to say I didn’t like the tone, it reads like it’s written by an envious loser. But it is the intelligent kind of loser, and he hits the nail on the head several times. He is absolutely right in the main thesis of [...]

I was tinkering with some statistics last night, considering that strange idea of the Insularity of the Chinese Internet that we’ve been discussing lately. The expression itself is odd, because “internet” and “insularity” form an oxymoron, but you hardly notice these things when you live here. It’s normal routine in the land of socialist market [...]

There’s been a lot of things coming up lately in the field of “demise of the media“. In particular in China we have seen the spectacular series of posts by James Fallows and others, casting some light on the results of Obama’s visit to China. For the Old vs. New media debate this cannot count [...]

You might have heard the term Laobaixing (老百姓), literally “the hundred surnames”, the common people of China. They are also known as LBX in this website dedicated to them. Laobaixing is a great word, not only because of its obvious etymology, but also because its connotations are quite different from our  “common people”. From what [...]

In the first two posts of this series, we saw that Chinese is the last language in the World to maintain a complete set of independent vocabulary roots and a non-phonetic script to represent them, what we might call a separate Word System. For this reason I argued that Chinese may be the most difficult [...]

Last Friday I wrote a very long post where I ended up including too many ideas. The main point got a bit obscured as a result, but it was simply this: that vocabulary plays an essential role in learning a language, and that because of this Chinese is not only extremely difficult at an advanced [...]

There comes a point in the life of every student of mandarin when he feels the call to write about the difficulty of the language. The time has finally come for me, and I will follow the path of the masters. In fact, I intend to go even further. I am set out to prove [...]

I just received an email that reminded me of this funny post on the China Hearsay blog. In the blog, he says of Wen: This guy never ceases to amaze me. When he retires from politics, he should really start his own PR firm. The “everyman” stuff is handled perfectly. The only folks who have [...]

I saw on ESWN this Time magazine interview of Han Han, and since I have written before about him, I think it is worth a comment. It is also interesting because it illustrates the scary misunderstandings between East and West that Kaiser Kuo warned against recently. This is, in my opinion, the key passage: …despite [...]

Do not miss this story by A. Galbraith of the China Economic Review. In the long debate of China’s reaction to virus, this is the most reasonable opinion I’ve seen in a long time, and also the best informed. The story reminds me of what my friend, a doctor back in Spain, told me when [...]

There are some beliefs that, although not originally from China, were embraced so thoroughly by the Chinese that they became part of the local culture. One example is Buddhism, imported from India in ancient times. Another one, I have found out, is the teaching of the modern management gurus, imported from the USA. It is [...]

So Obama is in China, and even if he is not my president he is still my favourite president. Here is my first-hand analysis of the visit. The most important news, surprisingly gone unnoticed by all observers, is that Obama wants to become Euro-bama in Chinese. That is how I read the new spelling of [...]

I have realized lately that, due to a certain unbalance in my training methods, my Chinese reading skills might be running ahead of my speech, and I have been forced to take severe corrective measures. At the risk of turning this into an SM blog, I am going to speak today of the terrible penance [...]

This business trip in Sichuan is really full of surprises. Today we went to visit the Project, a giant industrial complex which will be, upon completion, the largest factory in the World to produce X. A typically Chinese megaproject on the bank of the Yangtze. But the surprise came when we went to town for [...]

It has to be my lucky day. Today’s marathon meeting in Chongqing was aborted mid-session, and we had the whole afternoon for ourselves to explore the city in the mist. The place feels like all the energies of China concentrated in one tiny peninsula. The result is not beautiful, perhaps, but it is intense.  By [...]

I know, I should be studying right now, and not writing posts. But I was just breathing slightly between two sessions of 模拟考试, and I reflected on the fascinating process of learning a new language, and on how, when you have been through it a few times, you end up developing your own secret methods [...]

I am back to Shanghai with some interesting anecdotes and some mildly funny pictures of Japan. Unfortunately, I will not be able to post any of that,  because this week I am busy with work trips in China, and especially because this is the HSK week. It is just as well, I guess, after all [...]

Now that I am in a free internet country, I have taken the chance to look at the CDT website, and I have found this interesting question coming from al Jazira: what would have happened if Mao had lost? I am not in principle against counterfactual history,  it can be useful in many cases to [...]

First impressions are usually mistaken, but they are also interesting because the eye is alert to any novelty, and the culture clash is rich with ideas. Warning: this post contains sweeping generalizations. Take it for what it is, and if you are serious about understanding Japan you might want to look somewhere else. I came [...]

I was pleasantly surprised when I booked my last minute flight to Japan, I got a very reasonable price for the 1st October National Day. When I went to Pudong airport I understood why: the streets were empty in Shanghai, nobody flew at that time because they were all at home with the eyes glued [...]

A middle aged man in a dark suit left this car. He didn’t look in the least embarrassed. Was he a pedophile? A cadre under the influence, bringing it home to sweetie? Or just the resigned father of a normal Shanghai girl? I didn’t stop to ask. But I appreciated the customized kitty steering wheel, [...]

I am finding it difficult to concentrate on my work with a band of spidermen in overalls hanging outside the window. It is tower rinsing day today, like every year, and again I find myself paralyzed by panic. I know, it is a common sight in a vertical metropolis like Shanghai. The problem is, through [...]

Yesterday I went for a walk on Nanjing Lu and I witnessed a strange phenomenon I had not seen before: the mooncake brokers. It was last Saturday of mooncake picking season, so they were all busily walking up and down the street, scanning the crowds for potential buyers and sellers. A bit of background: Every [...]

The other day I saw a tourist bus from Nanjing that caught my eye. On one side the name of the travel company was written in Chinese characters, and below it there was a text written in a mysterious language: “ISGNOG NAIXUOY EHCIQ UOYVL NAITGNEH GNIJ NAN”  Initially I thought it must be Uyghur, but [...]

One of the things I learned this Summer is that, while I may leave on holidays to Europe, China doesn’t really leave me anymore. More than just a country, it is a force of nature, the other face of mankind that is now part of my life. China is always there, and she is everywhere, [...]

The discussion about racism in China keeps coming back every once in a while, and each time it arouses the strongest passions. This is a post I’ve been wanting to do for some time, following the interesting comments we had in March, and as a conclusion to the Xinjiang series. The story that sparked the [...]

It has been a while since I last wrote, and now I feel the typical blogger’s guilt, the same that drives some weaker souls to start all their blog posts with unasked apologies. But worry not, we are not that kind of blog. We don’t ask for forgiveness here, and that is because we already [...]

One more from the fantastic world of China mobile. These last weeks I have encountered what has to be the weirdest form of political activism ever tried in China.  It has happened twice, each time on a Sunday afternoon. It comes in the form of a phone call from an inexistent number. A very professional recording, [...]

You haven’t really seen a city until you have been to its zoo. I have known this fact since I was 5 years old, and after many years I suddenly remembered it again last Sunday, and I decided it was about time I went to the Shanghai zoo. When you grow up you realize zoos [...]

Many blogs have written about this already, but I still want to do my own post for Xu Zhiyong, who was arrested 3 weeks ago. I have no new information to offer here – info will be forthcoming only when the police decides it – but if you are reading this please do not let [...]

I just learn from Reuters that U.S. is testing system to break foreign Web censorship. This is the first news I have that the US government is trying to outsmart the GFW. Fantastic, after the anonymous hackers now it is the most powerful state in the World that will confront the dreaded wall. The war [...]

Following last week’s posts about Xinjiang conflict, I see this AFP dispatch: China promotes Xinjiang armed police chief. Mr. Dai,  the man at the top of the armed police has been promoted. Which means that the first of the failures I noted in the last post (i.e. failed to protect the citizens on 5th July) [...]

One of the essential purposes of a government is to ensure the safety of the citizens and, from this point of view, the Chinese government has failed spectacularly in Urumqi. To begin with, it did not afford sufficient protection to the Han victims during the night of 5th July. Some wrong decisions were most likely [...]

I was not there and I do not know more than what is in the press. But in the light of the available information, I think it’s worth it to have another look at the events, and see what we make of it. Refer to the NYT diagram linked on the illustration, this paper is [...]

Have you been watching Xinjiang TV these days? I am a fan. It’s the new Love TV, a 24-7 concentrate of all the corniest efforts by the Chinese official media to promote harmony after the events of 5th July. Smiling kids, flowery dances, long meetings of interethnic neighbour associations discussing love and togetherness. Best served [...]

I have written a lot recently about the Great Firewall of China (GFW). I had my site blocked for two weeks and this inspired some frustrated posts until eventually I worked my way through the Wall. The good news is I learnt a lot in the process, and now I can write some tips to [...]

After a terrible weekend in front of the computer I have managed to re-open my site on a new URL. I am fed up of the internet right now and I am going out to enjoy the Shanghai Sun for a few hours. I will try not to write more about this for a while, [...]

It is common knowledge that studying a foreign language involves studying a culture. Consciously or not, that is the main reason why people enjoy it. If it weren’t for its cultural content, a language would be little more than an empty set of code-words and rules designed with an exasperatingly faulty logic. And learning languages would be just like memorizing the [...]

This week I had some interesting conversations on other blogs, mostly regarding my state of internet blockdom and the possible actions that a webmaster can take to solve this problem. I will share here some conclusions that might be of interest. Just to make sure we don’t forget anything, I will go first over the [...]

So there you are. July 1st passed without any major incident and the famous Anonymous Netizens didn’t show up. I am as blocked as ever and the Nutty Nannies of China are still running loose on the web, unimpressed by the headless suit . I cannot say it is a surprise, frankly the chances of [...]

It was about time Mozilla issued their new revision. Ever since Firefox emerged as the big challenger of Explorer many of us switched to this swift browser with the unlimited add-ons. As time passed, we grew so used to all the fox capabilities that it became normal for an internet browser to perform the most [...]

Last night I went to the evening organized by Earnshaw to launch their two latest books: “I sailed with Chinese Pirates” and “Shanghai Story Walks”. I have been a fan of Earnshaw Books since they published the first of their series of reprints, Carl Crow’s “Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom“, my favourite China read [...]

This is the imposing main entrance of my favourite university campus in Shanghai: HuaShiDa.  I like this entrance because it is very green and very complete, and it has everything from a roundabout sign to a saluting giant Mao, to a construction crane in the background. But what I like most is the inscription: SEEK [...]

I enjoyed reading this article by Evelyn Chan on the Carter Center blog.  It is clear and well written and in my opinion it is right on the money. It’s the article I would have liked to write on the stimulus package (h/t  CDT) When it comes to Chinese economy I have always been a bit [...]

So OK, I am censored, but why NOW? I mean, I haven’t been writing anything for ages, is the Propaganda Department punishing me for being lazy? Has some big Chinese BBS  linked to me recently, is Uln hot now? As I was looking around for an answer, I found out that the Peking Duck blog was [...]

So guess what now:  I am blocked. I am banned, prohibited, harmonized, river-crabbed. Censored, in short, by the Great FireWall of China. If you are reading my blog now and have not noticed anything strange, it is because either: 1- You are reading the blog from outside China and therefore you are not going through [...]

In the afternoon of the World Environment Day, the sky in Shanghai has gone almost completely black (brown?) at 3pm, and these little babies have fallen from the sky. In the same time,  many “Environment Day” squadrons were busy in the parks and beaches for the 1 hour long volunteer cleaning up activity. I hope [...]

Last year I wrote a post about foreign entrepreneurs in Shanghai that included a Big Question with a link:  Who gets rich in China? The page attracted a ridiculous amount of search engine hits considering its dumb content, which proves that it was indeed a hot question. Time passed and I never got around to [...]

The mysterious ways of computer science. Today for example, I completely panicked when I stumbled into one of the bugs of wordpress. For some reason, when you add a “click to read more” tag next to a section in bold, it goes and turns the whole blog to bold, including sidebar, titles and header. So [...]

I was a bit reluctant to read “Chinese Gods”.  I never had much of a taste for the mystical, and the rows of whiskered statues staring in the temples fail to arouse in me more than a cautious curiosity. But when I received the latest publications of Blacksmith, the promise of a book that “makes sense” [...]

From the post left unfinished last week. Some of the main arguments read (or heard) in China Crisis discussions: The Time Economies don’t grow indefinitely.  Low cycles follow high cycles and after 30 years it is about time. China cannot break the laws of economics, so the recession must necessarily come in the next X [...]

It was exactly one year ago, almost to the minute. It was Monday, and we had started our meeting at 2pm in the 22nd floor of the client’s headquarters. About an hour later, in the middle of heated negotiations, there was an awkward silence.  It took a long moment before we understood what was making [...]

It’s been half a year since the first announcement of the Chinese stimulus package, and the time has come to look back and ask ourselves: how is the Crisis doing to-day? Well, we don’t need to surf very far to find some hints. Judging by the attention she gets  in the media, the Crisis is still [...]

Last Saturday we went down to Anar to watch the Lions of Puxi. This is a reggae band recently formed in Shanghai, with some familiar faces of the expat music scene, including some of the guys we usually see at JZ.  I am not much of a music critic, but I can say this band sounds [...]

Chinese ultra-blogger Han Han is starting a magazine. He announced it previously on his blog, and his last post is already giving the details to send in article drafts and job applications. I learned this last night from my friend 2Ting, who was eagerly preparing her CV and intro letter. The literati of the post-80s [...]

Some pictures of my recent travels in Shanxi & Shanxi. As with past editions, 5 words per picture. The Shanxis have solid history There are some alarming Gods And alarming fire fighting equipment Guanyu deserved better than polystyrene The council should buy benches The way of The Way is a rather steep Way No, I kid [...]

Oh dear. This is a disaster. I haven’t written anything for a month! Now is when I have to come up with some good excuse.  Like:  Spring has finally come to China; I have been travelling a bit in the dusty real-sphere of Shanxi; a band of homeland friends cheerfully invaded Shanghai, bringing with them [...]

Today it was a calm morning, the perfect Sunny day to take a long lunch break like we do back in homeland. So at midday sharp I took my bike and rode over to my new favourite reading spot. It is a bright, silent cafe, where reading is the main part of the menu.  I [...]

“The country is changing so fast!” , this is one of the things I usually say back home  to explain why I find living in China so exciting. Today my street has changed very fast indeed.   Linder was lucky enough to spend the night in the garden, but other bikes where not so lucky. Inexorably [...]

This discussion on China Geeks caught my eye, mostly because it is one of the few that has managed to engage the real Chinese blogosphere to interact with us foreign China blogs. And no less than hecaitou, a respected blogger in both the Chinese and Western communities. Unfortunately, the results are rather discouraging. It all [...]

I first read about  “China Underground” last Friday, during my daily browse of the China blogs. I had never heard the name of Zachary Mexico before, but the review on  China Beat made me feel curious, so after work I stopped by the Garden bookshop and got my copy. Only 24 hours later I had [...]

Another one by the cell phone scam-buster. Take a look at the picture. This baby beeped into my life the other day at 4am, just as I was getting ready to switch into deep sleep. I knew it was spam, but I couldn’t help the reflex. I stretched out one arm, opened one eye and [...]

My anonymous friend N. has sent in this picture recently taken in an underground station in Shanghai Xuhui. It is a poster depicting a (Kazakh?) horseman riding with a baby just at the moment when a Shanghai policeman has engaged him in a vicious exchange of toothiness. Government slogans are some of the phrases that [...]

NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS - Let’s admit it. We’ve been watching closely the NPC, we read all the material available and we have written about it. And yet, this year again, we have no clue what the NPC is for. According to their own website, the NPC has legislative functions, so we tend to compare it [...]

I am going to spice up my blog by providing some first hand opinion on my weekly tour of the Sinosphere. These are mostly comments that I’ve done previously in other forums and I collect here. I will try to do this every week, subject to the rate at which my brain can churn out [...]

There was some buzz last week on the Chinese internet about this supposedly new concept of  Online Democracy. The excitement started with the weird “elude the cat” story, and then continued when Premier Wen JiaBao chatted online with “internet friends” .  David Bandurski of the China Media Project, who has been watching these things for [...]

Oh, thank you, thank you Xinhua and thank you editor Yan. Thank you for adding now pictures to your yesterday’s article :  China’s “scientific development” works to counter economic downturn. And thank you for choosing the most beautiful of the slides you published last week, the one which I call:  “La vie en rosy” Now [...]

Xinhua has come up with the most brilliant in-depth analysis of the economic crisis that we’ve read to date. BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — China’s relatively fast economic growth has caught the eye of the world at a time when most of the countries are experiencing the full wrath of a raging economic slowdown. As [...]

Wow, there’s been some activity around here this week. It is exhausting to be in the limelight, and I long to get back my status of internet chopped liver. But no worries, I think I know just how to do that: Everybody knows that serious China bloggers don’t do Chinglish. That’s for newbies, and we [...]

Ever since I opened this blog the problem of credibility has been in the back of my mind. These days, the comments of a tenacious part-time troll, as well as some recent events that shook the Chinosphere have brought back the subject to the top of my agenda. It is well known that Chinablogs* (defined [...]

Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of [...]

The AFP dispatch says it all: Seventy-four workers were confirmed dead and dozens trapped underground after a gas blast early on Sunday at a colliery in northern China, the worst accident to hit the nation’s mines in over 14 months. There is something very wrong with these news.  The paragraph should end with “the worst [...]

Finally, we have a new blogger in the community who has moved all the way to South America to bridge-blog about the Chinese expansion there and other interesting stuff. Tom Pellman is Double Handshake. He was an editor in a well known economics magazine in Shanghai, he is almost trilingual in Chinese and he is [...]

I just came across this picture on Hecaitou’s Blog.  Brilliant: I hate spoiling jokes, so those that can speak a bit of Chinese should figure it out by themselves. For those who don’t speak Chinese, see after the fold. SOLUTION: By now you should have noticed that the large Mao portrait is missing on the [...]

Over the weekend I read this post on zompist that creates a new writing system for English called  “Yingzi”: how would English look if it was written with characters. h/t FOARP It is an enjoyable read and it is useful to explain to those back home that don’t study Chinese how characters work. In Europe, [...]

I have a bunch of friends back in Spain who are always quick to send me the juiciest China news coming up over there, and to supervise that I’m fulfilling my duties as a bridge blogger. This time I have received a couple of links from Spanish newspapers El Pais and El Mundo where there [...]

Last night I was going to stay in and write a long, thoughtful post. Instead I went out and took some pictures. The first full moon marks the end of the New Year celebrations. It is called 元宵节, usually known in English as the Night of the Lanterns. Apart from the lanterns, there are also fireworks. [...]

This is a bit of a silly post, I know, and I’m sure it has been done before. But I had to do it anyway. Yesterday I finally remembered to take a picture of my favourite sign in Shanghai, the Rules of the Green Administration Bureau. It is the one that prohibits feudal behaviours, expects [...]

More bad news about the Crisis. Yesterday All Roads had another of those worrying posts: 3 Announcements and 2 Rumours, and not one of them good. Still, on our return from the double New Year’s season, many of us are suprised to see the sky is not falling on our heads, and the dire predictions [...]

Here is the illustrated report of our Fujian trip. Today I present some clear symptoms of blogorrhea after my 5 day internet abstinence. So we’ll try to keep it ruly and live up to my Bull Year’s resolutions. I am applying the special astringent potion: Max 5 words per picture. The rest in your imagination: [...]

What is the meaning of life and work? How can it possibly be so cold in the same latitude as the Sahara desert? Where did you put the camera’s battery charger? What do you mean “where did YOU put”? These and many others are the fundamental questions you ask when back to Shanghai after a [...]

Today is the last of the Rat days. Happy 牛 Year to all! And byebye too, I won’t be around for the next few days: I’m off to where the weather suits my clothes, down to the charming shores of Southern Fujian. I will take the chance before I pack up to write my little [...]

Since I started posting about censorship I’ve noticed that the basics of the system are not clearly understood by many readers outside China. This post is to classify and explain the system in the most simple way possible. It is largely drawn from my own experience as a user in China and from the studies [...]

I don’t usually do direct accusations on this site, because I know better than searching conflict, and I understand nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. But this one I cannot let pass, it is too low and too gratuitous. It is sad: why does it have to be  China who tells the first [...]

The guests just left, what a night! The tense atmosphere of a final match in my Shanghai apartment; high expectations and a sense of History. Friends, all of different nationalities, sharing my wine and watching the first speech of President Obama. The silence during the 18 minutes was complete. Is it only me, or the [...]

I can’t wait to see the speech tonight. I have spent the whole midday lunch hour (and a bit more) tinkering with the NYT and others speech analysis sites. I have learnt more about the speeches of previous American presidents that I ever knew before. And in particular I have learnt one surprising detail. Those [...]

I was wondering lately why do I get so many people coming into my “Learning Chinese” category, which I haven’t updated for ages. It struck me just now: of course, New Years Resolutions! How many expat readers have made the firm resolution to improve their Chinese this year? I for one. Why do we do [...]

We are at the beginning of a historic week, and I just can’t not write about Obama’s inauguration. This blog is also about changing the World, and there is a chance that this Tuesday will be one of those days that changes everything. Call me a dreamer, but I want to believe that this new [...]

For those who are following the developments around Chrter 08: I have discovered a website containing the full original Chinese Charter (+ translations) that is still not blocked by the censors. It is also open to comments, apparently not manipulated: https://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3jhi1zdzvxj3f/9 Thanks to heroic advocate of freedom of speech David Ferguson who, by introducing himself [...]

Some strange things happening in this blog: Post unpunned? It is hard to resist when you are writing a post and you see the chance to put in one of your puns, but lately I’ve been pretty good at it. It’s been more than a month, for example, that I don’t refer to the Leadership [...]

You know how Wen Jia Bao asked us this week to have “faith and determination“, and added that the “nation will be the first to recover” from the crisis and grasp the opportunities available. Then come the experts of the World Economic Forum, who are getting ready for their yearly skiing holiday, and they publish [...]

Last Sunday I did a post on internet censorship in China where I mixed in various different ideas and I’m afraid the final result regarding Search Engine Censorship didn’t come out as clear as I would have liked. I think it is an important subject, so here are the complete results: We will be looking [...]

Wow! The People’s Daily (AKA the Mouthpiece Newspaper) is getting state-of-the-art technology for its online English edition: you can now listen to the articles at the same time as you read them. I’m just back from their website where I have heard these words of Grandpa Wen pronounced by HAL 9000: “We must have faith [...]

You will excuse me for writing two serious posts in a row. It’s been ages we don’t do anything on the Crisis, and these days there’s been a series of articles on the subject that I couldn’t just let pass. Two of them have to do with the growth projections for 2009. Yawn. We’ve been [...]

When I started my article about the Chrter 08 last month I couldn’t help wondering if it was well worth the effort. Most of the English speaking blogs and media had been very quiet about this issue, and in China nobody seemed to know anything about it.  Two weeks after the Charter’s publication, I thought [...]

I know I shouldn’t be linking the same source all the time, but since I got my new coded connection I have rediscovered the Time China Blog and I just can’t get my eyes off it. Check out this picture of the rich corn fields in Ningxia in their last post by Lin Yang. After [...]

I got a bit excited last night with my new VPN connection. For a few hours I thought I’d found Democracy in a Box, neatly packaged in a 40$ yearly subscription. I have been since exploring new horizons. Today, second day using VPN I’ve had 2 surprises, one good and one bad: The good one [...]

I had to do it, really, I couldn’t stand it one second more and it was getting on my nerves. It’s all very good to show solidarity and suffer with the people, but I have my limits. This time back in Europe I got used to the advantages of an adult life and I can’t [...]

As I was answering to a comment on the Chrter 08 post, I felt a sudden urge to find the original context for one of my favourite quotes, which stands on Instructions as a principle of this blog. That is how I found again this beautiful passage which I can’t resist copying here, although I [...]

When I left China for the holidays I was pretty sure I would not manage to write a single line on the blog until my return. China is such a stimulating place that every day I am jotting down notes, and my blog runs 20 posts behind myself. In Europe the stimulus would stop - [...]

I got a few email greetings today with this title and I found it particularly funny and adapted to year 2009. For those who don’t do Chinese, 牛 means “Ox” or “Cow”, and in mandarin it is pronounced “Niu”, which sounds similar to the English “New”.  So Happy 牛Year is basically what Chinese picture when [...]

As I am writing this entry, 2008 has finished in China. Fortunately, we still have a few hours in Home Country to fit in my last 08 post before the evening aperitif. I take the chance to get back in action after this week’s holidays and do my little roundup of 2008. It has been [...]

Barely two weeks after the publication of the Chrter 08, it has already become old news, lost in the indifference of Western media (with notable exceptions), and erased in China by the cold intervention of the censors. I want to examine here the importance of this document and give some more thought to it and [...]

Last 10th December, a group of Chinese human right activists published a document called Chrter 08,  requiring political reform in the PRC. This document has had surprisingly little impact in the Western media/blogging scene. There is no telling right now how influential this document is going to be looking into potentially conflictive 2009. In any [...]

I love the way Xinhua refers to the People’s Daily as a “mouthpiece newspaper”, or “the mouthpiece of the ruling party”. For example, in this otherwise boring article that I just read. Recommended if you need to doze off for a quick siesta. I find all this mouthpiece thing funny in 3 different ways, which [...]

Busy week. Yesterday I had to cancel my Chinese lesson in the last minute due to an unexpected request from one of my hardcore Chinese clients. It made me feel miserable, partly because I always feel like a 9-to-5 bitch when I have to break my word for a client. But most importantly, because I [...]

It is Friday. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day. I’m in an excellent mood this morning, pondering the unexpected turns of Fate and Fortune. I mean, take the weather in Shanghai, for example. Did you ever imagine we would see these long weeks of clean blue skies? You lose faith in things and then they happen, [...]

This week David Dollar has a very informative post: On exchange rates, think multilaterally. It is an analysis of the RMB exchange rates and their change over time. Using one of those useful trade-weighted indexes that the World Bank likes so much, David goes over the history of RMB exchange rates from the 90s to [...]

Hm, no comments. I wonder what the readers are thinking of all this. I can picture some scratching their heads and trying to type in lines of zeros in their office calculator. “RMBs to the Moon? Rubbish! Show me the money!” Here’s my little math for the non believers: 4,000,000,000,000RMB * (0.015m/10,000RMB)  =  6,000,000 m [...]

I was thinking last night of the stimulus package and of how, since the beginning of the crisis, economy has invaded every conversation, and we all go about speaking of Billions and Trillions like nobody’s business. And I have decided to write this little post to explain to my readers what is a Billion and [...]

After what I wrote last week in my sensationalistic post of the Tower of Babel, I have continued to follow as promised my Path to Enlightment. The results are modest for the moment, but I’ve found already five good links to get me closer to smelling Chinese politics. And I have added these 5 links [...]

I have been looking carefully at the Xinhua serial feeder today, and it’s been as expected: no news from Beijing. At least now we know who and when (Hu and Wen) attended the conference, but that’s about all they tell us from The Annual Meeting to Set the Tone for the Economic Development Next Year. [...]

This week the international observers are observing us with renewed interest: China’s Annual Central Economic Work Conference is being held in Beijing Monday to Wednesday, where the country’s leaders will decide how to maintain a stable economic growth that will “improve people’s livelihood“. Expectations are high on the meeting that will change the World. The [...]

One more from the Bridge Blogger: Lately I have received by email these pictures that are widely circulating on the Spanish speaking internet. They apparently originated in Colombia, so they are referred by some as Colombianadas. Colombianadas are the Latin American equivalent of Chinglish: signs and other pieces of writing with a twist of unintended [...]

Now that inflation seems under control, unemployment has been identified by most as the real threat to Chinese stability in 2009. The risk of massive layoffs and social unrest is so obvious that you hardly need an economist to identify it. My blue taxi driver was telling me about it only a minute ago. In [...]

Today was a pretty stressful day in the office, but in between meetings I was able to join a lively discussion on the Fool’s Mountain about the latest Dalai incident. To wit, the French President said he will meet the DL in Poland during a ceremony in honour of Lech Walesa. China immediately threatened EU [...]

These last years we’ve seen many of the big newspapers scanning and digitizing their historic archives, and sometimes even allowing full access to non-subscriptors. Such is the case of the NYT, Atlantic Monthly, Guardian and many others. These archives constitute great tools for research, and provide irresistible eye candy for history nerds like Uln. But [...]

The other day it was too cold to get my Linder started, so I had to go and flag a cab instead. I got one of the green chubby ones. Green cabs are well known for being stubborn, having a true passion for History and polishing their nails 5 times a day. Remember: never never [...]

Yesterday I read the World Bank’s Quarterly Update on China. It is the report where they forecast the 7.5% annual growth for 2009. First of all, I should thank chinalawblog for showing me the way to it, and also the World Bank itself for doing a very useful report that can be understood by dummies. [...]

Finally Friday. It’s been an exhausting week and I feel like I need a little break. Sometimes I wonder why I ever took up Crisis Watch as a hobby. Other China blogs watch cool things like Scandal, or even Shoes. But Crises are an awful thing to watch, believe me. You watch it for a [...]

The China blogosphere brought us some disturbing news again today. This time it’s about Foxconn, aka the Hon Hai Precision Industry, based in Taiwan. The rumour has it that it’s planning to lay off 100,000. You might remember Foxconn from the funny episode of the IphoneGirl that became world famous for a day. It might [...]

I am quite excited about the new 2009 Growth Forecast for China issued by the World Bank, because it gives exactly the same figure  I estimated 2 months ago on my Crisis Page. OK, granted there is a bit of luck in there. But, if you think of it, it was an obvious number to [...]

Last night I was out for a little dance with one of my Shanghai friends. My performance must have been pretty good, because as we were leaving she invited me to join Kaixinwang, and added that she would buy me straight away if I bought her. Now, I didn’t know what to make of all [...]

I was writing just yesterday my latest Crisis article when I realized that in Shanghai we have our own economic weak link, with quite a lot of companies that are suffering as much as the Pearl River Delta workshops. I am speaking of foreign startups in Shanghai. One of the things that makes Shanghai such [...]

One of the advantages of Crisis Watching in China is that there’s such a large community of observers dedicated to this country that you are never short of ideas. The downside is that with so many voices it is difficult to make sense of the whole thing. To the question in the title, for example, [...]

If you’ve been around in Shanghai today you might have noticed there was a Beijing nip in the air. One could almost smell the 烤鸭 as the temperature got rapidly freezing by midday. In the same time, the air felt clean like it does in the clean Northern winters, and it’s been a great day [...]

I have decided I can’t really run a serious China blog without the corresponding “learn Chinese” section. So here you go. This first post is about the HSK (汉语水平考试), which is giving me a lot of trouble these days. HSK is the official test for Chinese language organized by the Beijing Language University. Also known [...]

This weekend the leaders of the most powerful countries in the world met up in Washington to discuss how they are going to pull us out of the big economic mess where we are stuck deeper day after day. After a refreshing dinner in the white house including quail, lamb and Vermont brie, the leaders [...]

Last weekend, as I was browsing the net for some material to get over my post electoral withdrawal, I came across this iconic Obama. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but something in it looked very familiar. Very Chinese. I saved it in my Obama bookmarks, and didn’t think of it again until Sunday [...]

Just as I was writing the previous entry, I came across this article on the NYT about the packet of fiscal measures that China is taking to the upcoming G20 meeting in Washington. The $586 Billion Stimulus Plan has been announced today on the government website. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it come on [...]

Finally, it looks like the Chinese authorities are going to get serious about internet addiction. My favourite Xinhua reader on the sidebar just brought in the scoop, straight from the medical research labs. Internet addiction in China is a well known problem, and it has been quite present on China blogs these last weeks, following [...]

Today was the opening ceremony of the 7th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition of Zhuhai, the main fair of the industry in China. These last days, my Xinhua reader at the bottom of the page has been spitting some interesting news for the occasion, and international media have been quick to follow. Everybody in [...]

Hong Kong - It feels good to travel just for fun once in a while. I flew to HongKong this weekend to say goodbye to a good friend who is leaving Asia, with the firm intention to relax, enjoy the city, and not indulge in any sort of  China watching activity. My only serious mission [...]

You know that feeling in the morning sometimes. You wake up with the lark, full of optimism to face a new day, and, before you even had the chance to smell the first espresso, trouble is knocking at your door. It was just like that this morning when my cell phone beeped. It was a [...]

Shanghai - Last night I took my new camera to the 拉面 (lamian) restaurant down the street.  Everyone was excited to see me with the new baby, and Mehmet’s apprentice absolutely insisted that I take some pictures of him Pulling the Mian. The result is this beautiful parabola underlining his smile. More details on possibly [...]

The Chinese internet community is enthusiastically building up resources to buy crisis stricken Iceland at a bargain. The webste Douban has taken seriously the ebay auction for the Island, and offers the first 10,000 chinese to join the investment group privileged access to houses on the seaside and to government positions. As a +, the [...]

During my travels these last weeks in Europe and Asia, and on my return to China, I have observed some rather striking contrasts. So much that they made me think a lot about the present state of Chinese economy, and here is a word about it. Two different ways of seeing the world I was [...]

Finally, I got my blog in English. It’s unbelievable how long time it has taken me to setup the baby. WordPress is piece of cake they say, but when you try to change this font and rearrange that sidebar, and then you see some fancy pic you feel like using for your header. And you [...]

I got a few email greetings today with this title and I found it particularly funny and adapted to year 2009. For those who don’t do Chinese, 牛 means “Ox” or “Cow”, and in mandarin it is pronounced “Niu”, which sounds similar to the English “New”.  So Happy 牛Year is basically what Chinese picture when [...]

This is a bit of a silly post, I know, and I’m sure it has been done before. But I had to do it anyway. Yesterday I finally remembered to take a picture of my favourite sign in Shanghai, the Rules of the Green Administration Bureau. It is the one that prohibits feudal behaviours, expects [...]

Last night I was going to stay in and write a long, thoughtful post. Instead I went out and took some pictures. The first full moon marks the end of the New Year celebrations. It is called 元宵节, usually known in English as the Night of the Lanterns. Apart from the lanterns, there are also fireworks. [...]

Wow, there’s been some activity around here this week. It is exhausting to be in the limelight, and I long to get back my status of internet chopped liver. But no worries, I think I know just how to do that: Everybody knows that serious China bloggers don’t do Chinglish. That’s for newbies, and we [...]

It is common knowledge that studying a foreign language involves studying a culture. Consciously or not, that is the main reason why people enjoy it. If it weren’t for its cultural content, a language would be little more than an empty set of code-words and rules designed with an exasperatingly faulty logic. And learning languages would be just like memorizing the [...]

Yesterday I went for a walk on Nanjing Lu and I witnessed a strange phenomenon I had not seen before: the mooncake brokers. It was last Saturday of mooncake picking season, so they were all busily walking up and down the street, scanning the crowds for potential buyers and sellers. A bit of background: Every [...]

There are some beliefs that, although not originally from China, were embraced so thoroughly by the Chinese that they became part of the local culture. One example is Buddhism, imported from India in ancient times. Another one, I have found out, is the teaching of the modern management gurus, imported from the USA. It is [...]

Look what I found in my letterbox today. An advert for the "Toothy Rabbit’s Children’s EQ Camp!" Those of you who are patient enough to stick to this blog might remember the last post I did about the popularity of self-help/business books in China, and in particular those related to Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Not surprising [...]

It looks like Charles over at the new China Divide blog has found a new source of clicks to revive the China blogging scene: debating the crackdown on pornography in China. While I don’t usually support any kind of censorship, I have to say I couldn’t care less for the cause of porn in China. [...]

This is a new feature in my blog. It is a follow up of the initial Language and Culture posts last year, and I commit from now on to continue the series every Thursday that I feel like it. The idea is to post about those language curiosities that I encounter in my study of [...]

In this week’s language post I want to examine the gender implications in the Chinese written and spoken language, and the reactions of the Chinese women to the many discriminatory expressions in use today. Given that most traditional cultures were extremely sexist by today’s standards, it is very common to have sexist elements embedded in today’s languages. [...]

In this week’s language post I want to speak about language protectionism. I am not sure this is the word I am looking for, but if you have been following the blogs for the last couple of weeks you probably know what I mean. It all started with this proposal last month to ban English [...]

I never thought of this before, but when I was asked this week which was my favourite province in China, I naturally answered Zhejiang. I have been travelling there again on QingMing holidays and I have been reflecting what a remarkable place it is. Zhejiang is the smallest province in the mainland, just a bit [...]

Today I just wanted to comment on the mysterious world of Chinese punctuation. It is a fascinating field in these times when everyone accuses Chinese of discriminating against our foreign symbols. In fact, there is a kind of foreign symbols that are used in practically every sentence of modern Chinese: the points, the commas, and [...]

This week I have little time to do the Language post, partly because I have been busy writing a short story, partly because I have already discussed a good deal about language in other blogs. I take advantage of this to do the post with my final views on Shanghainese after the long discussion we [...]

One of the things that foreigners enjoy lamenting in China is the destruction of architectural heritage. It is understandable, modern China has a terrible record of heritage destruction, and today there are cities with 2,000 years of history where it is hard to find any trace of old construction. But the worst is that you can [...]

I was flying back from Chongqing recently when I was reminded of the very frustrating problem of reading Chinese. There was a movie on the cabin TV and it had a particularity: it carried subtitles in Chinese and English in parallel, in two lines of comparable font at the bottom of the screen. As I watched [...]

In the 2010 Social Blue Paper, published last December by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there was a very interesting piece hidden among the 330 pages of socio-economic analysis. Under the title “Population problems China should pay attention to between 2011 and 2015″, this article contained some of the newest and most negative data [...]

I was very disappointed when I read this story about the US ambassador in Beijing taking part in the so-called “Jasmine” protests last Sunday. This is very bad news for Chinese supporters of democracy (yet again). First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an [...]

During my travels these last weeks in Europe and Asia, and on my return to China, I have observed some rather striking contrasts. So much that they made me think a lot about the present state of Chinese economy, and here is a word about it. Two different ways of seeing the world I was [...]

Today was the opening ceremony of the 7th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition of Zhuhai, the main fair of the industry in China. These last days, my Xinhua reader at the bottom of the page has been spitting some interesting news for the occasion, and international media have been quick to follow. Everybody in [...]

Just as I was writing the previous entry, I came across this article on the NYT about the packet of fiscal measures that China is taking to the upcoming G20 meeting in Washington. The $586 Billion Stimulus Plan has been announced today on the government website. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it come on [...]

This weekend the leaders of the most powerful countries in the world met up in Washington to discuss how they are going to pull us out of the big economic mess where we are stuck deeper day after day. After a refreshing dinner in the white house including quail, lamb and Vermont brie, the leaders [...]

One of the advantages of Crisis Watching in China is that there’s such a large community of observers dedicated to this country that you are never short of ideas. The downside is that with so many voices it is difficult to make sense of the whole thing. To the question in the title, for example, [...]

I was writing just yesterday my latest Crisis article when I realized that in Shanghai we have our own economic weak link, with quite a lot of companies that are suffering as much as the Pearl River Delta workshops. I am speaking of foreign startups in Shanghai. One of the things that makes Shanghai such [...]

I am quite excited about the new 2009 Growth Forecast for China issued by the World Bank, because it gives exactly the same figure  I estimated 2 months ago on my Crisis Page. OK, granted there is a bit of luck in there. But, if you think of it, it was an obvious number to [...]

The China blogosphere brought us some disturbing news again today. This time it’s about Foxconn, aka the Hon Hai Precision Industry, based in Taiwan. The rumour has it that it’s planning to lay off 100,000. You might remember Foxconn from the funny episode of the IphoneGirl that became world famous for a day. It might [...]

Yesterday I read the World Bank’s Quarterly Update on China. It is the report where they forecast the 7.5% annual growth for 2009. First of all, I should thank chinalawblog for showing me the way to it, and also the World Bank itself for doing a very useful report that can be understood by dummies. [...]

Now that inflation seems under control, unemployment has been identified by most as the real threat to Chinese stability in 2009. The risk of massive layoffs and social unrest is so obvious that you hardly need an economist to identify it. My blue taxi driver was telling me about it only a minute ago. In [...]

This week the international observers are observing us with renewed interest: China’s Annual Central Economic Work Conference is being held in Beijing Monday to Wednesday, where the country’s leaders will decide how to maintain a stable economic growth that will “improve people’s livelihood“. Expectations are high on the meeting that will change the World. The [...]

I have been looking carefully at the Xinhua serial feeder today, and it’s been as expected: no news from Beijing. At least now we know who and when (Hu and Wen) attended the conference, but that’s about all they tell us from The Annual Meeting to Set the Tone for the Economic Development Next Year. [...]

I was thinking last night of the stimulus package and of how, since the beginning of the crisis, economy has invaded every conversation, and we all go about speaking of Billions and Trillions like nobody’s business. And I have decided to write this little post to explain to my readers what is a Billion and [...]

Hm, no comments. I wonder what the readers are thinking of all this. I can picture some scratching their heads and trying to type in lines of zeros in their office calculator. “RMBs to the Moon? Rubbish! Show me the money!” Here’s my little math for the non believers: 4,000,000,000,000RMB * (0.015m/10,000RMB)  =  6,000,000 m [...]

This week David Dollar has a very informative post: On exchange rates, think multilaterally. It is an analysis of the RMB exchange rates and their change over time. Using one of those useful trade-weighted indexes that the World Bank likes so much, David goes over the history of RMB exchange rates from the 90s to [...]

When I left China for the holidays I was pretty sure I would not manage to write a single line on the blog until my return. China is such a stimulating place that every day I am jotting down notes, and my blog runs 20 posts behind myself. In Europe the stimulus would stop - [...]

I know I shouldn’t be linking the same source all the time, but since I got my new coded connection I have rediscovered the Time China Blog and I just can’t get my eyes off it. Check out this picture of the rich corn fields in Ningxia in their last post by Lin Yang. After [...]

You will excuse me for writing two serious posts in a row. It’s been ages we don’t do anything on the Crisis, and these days there’s been a series of articles on the subject that I couldn’t just let pass. Two of them have to do with the growth projections for 2009. Yawn. We’ve been [...]

You know how Wen Jia Bao asked us this week to have “faith and determination“, and added that the “nation will be the first to recover” from the crisis and grasp the opportunities available. Then come the experts of the World Economic Forum, who are getting ready for their yearly skiing holiday, and they publish [...]

More bad news about the Crisis. Yesterday All Roads had another of those worrying posts: 3 Announcements and 2 Rumours, and not one of them good. Still, on our return from the double New Year’s season, many of us are suprised to see the sky is not falling on our heads, and the dire predictions [...]

Finally, we have a new blogger in the community who has moved all the way to South America to bridge-blog about the Chinese expansion there and other interesting stuff. Tom Pellman is Double Handshake. He was an editor in a well known economics magazine in Shanghai, he is almost trilingual in Chinese and he is [...]

Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of [...]

Xinhua has come up with the most brilliant in-depth analysis of the economic crisis that we’ve read to date. BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — China’s relatively fast economic growth has caught the eye of the world at a time when most of the countries are experiencing the full wrath of a raging economic slowdown. As [...]

Oh, thank you, thank you Xinhua and thank you editor Yan. Thank you for adding now pictures to your yesterday’s article :  China’s “scientific development” works to counter economic downturn. And thank you for choosing the most beautiful of the slides you published last week, the one which I call:  “La vie en rosy” Now [...]

It’s been half a year since the first announcement of the Chinese stimulus package, and the time has come to look back and ask ourselves: how is the Crisis doing to-day? Well, we don’t need to surf very far to find some hints. Judging by the attention she gets  in the media, the Crisis is still [...]

From the post left unfinished last week. Some of the main arguments read (or heard) in China Crisis discussions: The Time Economies don’t grow indefinitely.  Low cycles follow high cycles and after 30 years it is about time. China cannot break the laws of economics, so the recession must necessarily come in the next X [...]

Last year I wrote a post about foreign entrepreneurs in Shanghai that included a Big Question with a link:  Who gets rich in China? The page attracted a ridiculous amount of search engine hits considering its dumb content, which proves that it was indeed a hot question. Time passed and I never got around to [...]

I enjoyed reading this article by Evelyn Chan on the Carter Center blog.  It is clear and well written and in my opinion it is right on the money. It’s the article I would have liked to write on the stimulus package (h/t  CDT) When it comes to Chinese economy I have always been a bit [...]

The Tiger is coming to the surface. The New decade has already come in the West, and in China we are again in this no man’s land between the Solar and the Lunar New Year, between the Bull and the Tiger. It is time to look back and see where we stand. In World politics [...]

I have written a lot recently about the Great Firewall of China (GFW). I had my site blocked for two weeks and this inspired some frustrated posts until eventually I worked my way through the Wall. The good news is I learnt a lot in the process, and now I can write some tips to [...]

After a few months in the shade of the GFW, I wanted to get active again on the internet, so as a first step today I have unblocked my blog. I think there has been a few quirks this morning as I was moving to the new URL and some of you might have seen [...]

Finally, I got my blog in English. It’s unbelievable how long time it has taken me to setup the baby. WordPress is piece of cake they say, but when you try to change this font and rearrange that sidebar, and then you see some fancy pic you feel like using for your header. And you [...]

The Chinese internet community is enthusiastically building up resources to buy crisis stricken Iceland at a bargain. The webste Douban has taken seriously the ebay auction for the Island, and offers the first 10,000 chinese to join the investment group privileged access to houses on the seaside and to government positions. As a +, the [...]

Finally, it looks like the Chinese authorities are going to get serious about internet addiction. My favourite Xinhua reader on the sidebar just brought in the scoop, straight from the medical research labs. Internet addiction in China is a well known problem, and it has been quite present on China blogs these last weeks, following [...]

Last night I was out for a little dance with one of my Shanghai friends. My performance must have been pretty good, because as we were leaving she invited me to join Kaixinwang, and added that she would buy me straight away if I bought her. Now, I didn’t know what to make of all [...]

These last years we’ve seen many of the big newspapers scanning and digitizing their historic archives, and sometimes even allowing full access to non-subscriptors. Such is the case of the NYT, Atlantic Monthly, Guardian and many others. These archives constitute great tools for research, and provide irresistible eye candy for history nerds like Uln. But [...]

I love the way Xinhua refers to the People’s Daily as a “mouthpiece newspaper”, or “the mouthpiece of the ruling party”. For example, in this otherwise boring article that I just read. Recommended if you need to doze off for a quick siesta. I find all this mouthpiece thing funny in 3 different ways, which [...]

I got a bit excited last night with my new VPN connection. For a few hours I thought I’d found Democracy in a Box, neatly packaged in a 40$ yearly subscription. I have been since exploring new horizons. Today, second day using VPN I’ve had 2 surprises, one good and one bad: The good one [...]

Wow! The People’s Daily (AKA the Mouthpiece Newspaper) is getting state-of-the-art technology for its online English edition: you can now listen to the articles at the same time as you read them. I’m just back from their website where I have heard these words of Grandpa Wen pronounced by HAL 9000: “We must have faith [...]

Last Sunday I did a post on internet censorship in China where I mixed in various different ideas and I’m afraid the final result regarding Search Engine Censorship didn’t come out as clear as I would have liked. I think it is an important subject, so here are the complete results: We will be looking [...]

I don’t usually do direct accusations on this site, because I know better than searching conflict, and I understand nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. But this one I cannot let pass, it is too low and too gratuitous. It is sad: why does it have to be  China who tells the first [...]

Since I started posting about censorship I’ve noticed that the basics of the system are not clearly understood by many readers outside China. This post is to classify and explain the system in the most simple way possible. It is largely drawn from my own experience as a user in China and from the studies [...]

There was some buzz last week on the Chinese internet about this supposedly new concept of  Online Democracy. The excitement started with the weird “elude the cat” story, and then continued when Premier Wen JiaBao chatted online with “internet friends” .  David Bandurski of the China Media Project, who has been watching these things for [...]

Chinese ultra-blogger Han Han is starting a magazine. He announced it previously on his blog, and his last post is already giving the details to send in article drafts and job applications. I learned this last night from my friend 2Ting, who was eagerly preparing her CV and intro letter. The literati of the post-80s [...]

It was exactly one year ago, almost to the minute. It was Monday, and we had started our meeting at 2pm in the 22nd floor of the client’s headquarters. About an hour later, in the middle of heated negotiations, there was an awkward silence.  It took a long moment before we understood what was making [...]

So guess what now:  I am blocked. I am banned, prohibited, harmonized, river-crabbed. Censored, in short, by the Great FireWall of China. If you are reading my blog now and have not noticed anything strange, it is because either: 1- You are reading the blog from outside China and therefore you are not going through [...]

So OK, I am censored, but why NOW? I mean, I haven’t been writing anything for ages, is the Propaganda Department punishing me for being lazy? Has some big Chinese BBS  linked to me recently, is Uln hot now? As I was looking around for an answer, I found out that the Peking Duck blog was [...]

It was about time Mozilla issued their new revision. Ever since Firefox emerged as the big challenger of Explorer many of us switched to this swift browser with the unlimited add-ons. As time passed, we grew so used to all the fox capabilities that it became normal for an internet browser to perform the most [...]

So there you are. July 1st passed without any major incident and the famous Anonymous Netizens didn’t show up. I am as blocked as ever and the Nutty Nannies of China are still running loose on the web, unimpressed by the headless suit . I cannot say it is a surprise, frankly the chances of [...]

This week I had some interesting conversations on other blogs, mostly regarding my state of internet blockdom and the possible actions that a webmaster can take to solve this problem. I will share here some conclusions that might be of interest. Just to make sure we don’t forget anything, I will go first over the [...]

I have written a lot recently about the Great Firewall of China (GFW). I had my site blocked for two weeks and this inspired some frustrated posts until eventually I worked my way through the Wall. The good news is I learnt a lot in the process, and now I can write some tips to [...]

Have you been watching Xinjiang TV these days? I am a fan. It’s the new Love TV, a 24-7 concentrate of all the corniest efforts by the Chinese official media to promote harmony after the events of 5th July. Smiling kids, flowery dances, long meetings of interethnic neighbour associations discussing love and togetherness. Best served [...]

I just learn from Reuters that U.S. is testing system to break foreign Web censorship. This is the first news I have that the US government is trying to outsmart the GFW. Fantastic, after the anonymous hackers now it is the most powerful state in the World that will confront the dreaded wall. The war [...]

There’s been a lot of things coming up lately in the field of “demise of the media“. In particular in China we have seen the spectacular series of posts by James Fallows and others, casting some light on the results of Obama’s visit to China. For the Old vs. New media debate this cannot count [...]

I was tinkering with some statistics last night, considering that strange idea of the Insularity of the Chinese Internet that we’ve been discussing lately. The expression itself is odd, because “internet” and “insularity” form an oxymoron, but you hardly notice these things when you live here. It’s normal routine in the land of socialist market [...]

Read this rant against Han Han on the China Daily. I have to say I didn’t like the tone, it reads like it’s written by an envious loser. But it is the intelligent kind of loser, and he hits the nail on the head several times. He is absolutely right in the main thesis of [...]

Goodbye 2009. Here is another Year-End Special of Chinayouren, the first after a full year of operation. Thanks all for sticking around. As usual we will start with the popularity of China in the news. This year it is more interesting than ever, because 2010 is a round number, and the early-birds of the China [...]

By the way, I watched the movie Avatar last night. It was an amazing experience for a China observer, and I draw this enlightening conclusion: the film has absolutely nothing to do with China. Even if the king of the internet and man of the year Han Han thinks the opposite, the plot has as [...]

Wow. Baidu.com has been hacked this morning around 9:30 and is just back on at 3pm. More than 5:30 hours downtime. Worst of all, they have no way to hide it was a hack, even the People’s Daily published the picture. Perhaps the party media does not consider websites as part of China’s glorious industry [...]

First of all, read this article posted on the Google official blog. It is all you need to read for the moment because there is no more first hand info out there yet. It was published some 5 hours ago. What it says in a rather muddled way is essentially: That Google has detected attacks [...]

Following the previous post about Google and China, here are my reflections regarding the foreseeable consequences of all this. First of all, an important clarification: I don’t think fighting against censorship is bad. Censorship in China is very real, it is a disgrace not only for activists but for most honest Chinese, and it only [...]

There has been very little new information today and most of the media and the blogosphere is turning around the same ideas, many of them mentioned already in the previous 2 posts of the series. Here are a few interesting new points I have gathered that I think are worth commenting: There has been a [...]

I know, there are other news in the World, and I am probably not paying enough attention to them. But I can’t help it, I’ve been overclocking for the last 48h trying to understand Google’s decision, I have read every single article appeared on the internet since. And I still don’t get it. I want [...]

Some images of the battle of the decade, the non-evil corporation Google against the dark forces of the commy government of China. Below the logo on Google.cn today. Clearly, the big G is sending a message to the Chinese: we respect you, we dig your ancient culture, it is just the disgusting authorities of your [...]

The news of the resignation of Baidu’s Chief Technical Officer Li Yinan came as a shock to Chinayouren, where I am still gaping at the CDT with goggling eyes. This is going to make more noise now than it would normally, as people will be quick to find connections with the Google China affair and [...]

Looking back to what I wrote last week I realize that, in my effort to keep a cool head and analyze the events, I forgot to say a very important thing: I Respect Google. I have never had any doubt of the non-business nature of their decision, and, in spite of our poll’s results, I am [...]

You might be wondering why this story of Google is taking up so much space in this otherwise low-tech blog. I am as well. I think what fascinates me is the almost complete absence of first hand news after the G bomb. The time is for speculation, and for China bloggers and tea leave readers [...]

Back on the job. On re-read, I have the feeling that I might have been too optimistic yesterday. Sure, the style of Google’s announcement betrayed personal involvement, and once at the negotiation table it is to be expected that a more businesslike atmosphere will prevail. But even if G shuts up, it is not sure [...]

Holy Smokes! Something is moving in Google China. I have been working for the last 12 hours with Google docs, and I just realize I was using Yi’s computer, the one that doesn’t have the VPN installed. This means that Google Documents is unblocked since  yesterday evening at least.  And so is Google Groups! Both sites [...]

NOTE: For those readers who’ve been offline for the past 3 days, this is a post about Google Buzz, the new Google service that has invaded the World’s mailboxes this week. But take it easy, hold on a sec, don’t rush to your GFW test tools, this has not happened yet. I just want to [...]

Finally, after a long week of intense NPC-CPPCC coverage, the first signs of the spring are starting to bloom in the press of Shanghai. The Oriental Morning Post opens with a picture of the large billboards promoting the EXPO on New York’s Times square, while its archrival, the more conservative Shanghai Morning Post, shows the [...]

The case of Google’s new approach to China is moving slower than expected, but I have the feeling that we may see something happen pretty soon. After the New Year, the Double Meetings are almost over and the Chinese government will probably want to have this cleared before the next big item in the agenda, [...]

This morning I was doing some tests on Google to see if there was any change in the search results, and I noticed one detail I had not thought of before: although everyone is describing Google.cn as “hosted in China”, the IP is American, as you can see on whois. In fact, other than the deals with [...]

So Google has done it finally. My worst predictions have turned out to be right, and Google.cn is living on in exile, challenging the authority of the Chinese government from Hong Kong. Speak of burning the bridges. Like usual, most of the commentators our there got it all wrong. This is not about Google offering [...]

How many times have we seen the discussion on China forums about what exactly is Soft Power? That mysterious force of the white side that the Jedi use in international politics, turning all arguments to their advantage? China has coveted this weapon for years and spent many a valuable resource in its quest, but all [...]

The debate about the New Media and the Death of the Newspapers has been raging for years on the free internet. In the Chinese intranet [1], however, this question doesn’t raise so much interest, because journalism here was already murdered long ago by the hideous hand of the censors. It is for this reason that [...]

Last week I did a post where I gave three reasons why I thought the Oriental Morning Post was going to the dogs. This week I read an article on the DeluxZilla blog from Shanghai that makes the following observation: Despite being a party newspaper, I am more a fan of the Shanghai Morning Post [...]

China Files is looking for an English native speaker based in Shanghai for a part time job during the EXPO shanghai 2010. Preferably with journalism or media related experience. Experience in video and photography will be an advantage. We’re looking for someone clever, active and with excellent communication skills. This person will be in charge of [...]

Here is an update to yesterday’s review of Han Han, with some additional info about the Time nomination, which might be more important than it appears at first sight. Then, if you stay till the end of this chapter, we will put on the yellow socks to analyze a bit more that terrible scourge of [...]

This little piece by historian Hong Zhenkuai has been taken down from the Southern Metropolis, but it has managed to escape the censors on some other sites. I liked the subtle way Hong criticizes the reigning CCP dynasty, and the cool Chinese rendering of “L’Etat c’est moi” as “朕即国家“. Since I don’t have the time [...]

Today I just wanted to share this picture, taken by one of the brave reporters in the Oriental toilet paper, who were first on the scene: This is a brand new sculpture called “communication”, just arrived from the US to Shanghai to commemorate the 30 years of the opening of relations between the two countries. [...]

A little update on the Oriental Morning Post. I know nobody is interested because nobody actually reads this paper (not even its editors), but for the sake of consistency I have to inform of their new exploits. Follow me in this new chapter of their fascinating spiral to hell. The weekend’s Oriental had the following [...]

Here is the post I promised analyzing the fate of our friend Michael in the Tianya BBS.  Michael (卖抠) is the main character in the little Chinese story I wrote last week. I didn’t write the story particularly for this purpose, but once it was there I thought it would be a good idea to [...]

After a few months in the shade of the GFW, I wanted to get active again on the internet, so as a first step today I have unblocked my blog. I think there has been a few quirks this morning as I was moving to the new URL and some of you might have seen [...]

I was pleased by the TV reporting we got on Chinese TV during the weekend. It was surprisingly fresh, with different specialists coming in live and direct connection with the Japanese NHK. At some point in the Finance Channel there was a photo-slide with images of the victims, played with Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World”, [...]

So many things are happening outside China right now, I have the strange sensation that the roles have been reversed, and for once we are the onlookers instead of the targets of all eyes. It feels relaxing, and I note it’s had a great effect on the Chinese TV as well. After the absurdly oppressive [...]

The great China Beat has just published an article by James A. Millward about Facebook’s controversial plans for China.  The article is written from a cultural/human rights perspective, and it includes an interesting passage from LuXun’s Nahan. “Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. [...]

I have decided I can’t really run a serious China blog without the corresponding “learn Chinese” section. So here you go. This first post is about the HSK (汉语水平考试), which is giving me a lot of trouble these days. HSK is the official test for Chinese language organized by the Beijing Language University. Also known [...]

Finally Friday. It’s been an exhausting week and I feel like I need a little break. Sometimes I wonder why I ever took up Crisis Watch as a hobby. Other China blogs watch cool things like Scandal, or even Shoes. But Crises are an awful thing to watch, believe me. You watch it for a [...]

Busy week. Yesterday I had to cancel my Chinese lesson in the last minute due to an unexpected request from one of my hardcore Chinese clients. It made me feel miserable, partly because I always feel like a 9-to-5 bitch when I have to break my word for a client. But most importantly, because I [...]

I got a few email greetings today with this title and I found it particularly funny and adapted to year 2009. For those who don’t do Chinese, 牛 means “Ox” or “Cow”, and in mandarin it is pronounced “Niu”, which sounds similar to the English “New”.  So Happy 牛Year is basically what Chinese picture when [...]

I was wondering lately why do I get so many people coming into my “Learning Chinese” category, which I haven’t updated for ages. It struck me just now: of course, New Years Resolutions! How many expat readers have made the firm resolution to improve their Chinese this year? I for one. Why do we do [...]

Over the weekend I read this post on zompist that creates a new writing system for English called  “Yingzi”: how would English look if it was written with characters. h/t FOARP It is an enjoyable read and it is useful to explain to those back home that don’t study Chinese how characters work. In Europe, [...]

It is common knowledge that studying a foreign language involves studying a culture. Consciously or not, that is the main reason why people enjoy it. If it weren’t for its cultural content, a language would be little more than an empty set of code-words and rules designed with an exasperatingly faulty logic. And learning languages would be just like memorizing the [...]

The other day I saw a tourist bus from Nanjing that caught my eye. On one side the name of the travel company was written in Chinese characters, and below it there was a text written in a mysterious language: “ISGNOG NAIXUOY EHCIQ UOYVL NAITGNEH GNIJ NAN”  Initially I thought it must be Uyghur, but [...]

I am back to Shanghai with some interesting anecdotes and some mildly funny pictures of Japan. Unfortunately, I will not be able to post any of that,  because this week I am busy with work trips in China, and especially because this is the HSK week. It is just as well, I guess, after all [...]

I know, I should be studying right now, and not writing posts. But I was just breathing slightly between two sessions of 模拟考试, and I reflected on the fascinating process of learning a new language, and on how, when you have been through it a few times, you end up developing your own secret methods [...]

There comes a point in the life of every student of mandarin when he feels the call to write about the difficulty of the language. The time has finally come for me, and I will follow the path of the masters. In fact, I intend to go even further. I am set out to prove [...]

Last Friday I wrote a very long post where I ended up including too many ideas. The main point got a bit obscured as a result, but it was simply this: that vocabulary plays an essential role in learning a language, and that because of this Chinese is not only extremely difficult at an advanced [...]

In the first two posts of this series, we saw that Chinese is the last language in the World to maintain a complete set of independent vocabulary roots and a non-phonetic script to represent them, what we might call a separate Word System. For this reason I argued that Chinese may be the most difficult [...]

This is a new feature in my blog. It is a follow up of the initial Language and Culture posts last year, and I commit from now on to continue the series every Thursday that I feel like it. The idea is to post about those language curiosities that I encounter in my study of [...]

In this week’s language post I want to examine the gender implications in the Chinese written and spoken language, and the reactions of the Chinese women to the many discriminatory expressions in use today. Given that most traditional cultures were extremely sexist by today’s standards, it is very common to have sexist elements embedded in today’s languages. [...]

In this week’s language post I want to speak about language protectionism. I am not sure this is the word I am looking for, but if you have been following the blogs for the last couple of weeks you probably know what I mean. It all started with this proposal last month to ban English [...]

Today I just wanted to comment on the mysterious world of Chinese punctuation. It is a fascinating field in these times when everyone accuses Chinese of discriminating against our foreign symbols. In fact, there is a kind of foreign symbols that are used in practically every sentence of modern Chinese: the points, the commas, and [...]

Here is my first short story in Chinese. The title is “Lost in Translation”, and it illustrates the potential consequences of bad mandarin pronunciation. If you don’t read Chinese I left a little summary in comments, or else use G Translator to get the enhanced experience [1]. UPDATE: I have reposted this on Tianya to [...]

This week I have little time to do the Language post, partly because I have been busy writing a short story, partly because I have already discussed a good deal about language in other blogs. I take advantage of this to do the post with my final views on Shanghainese after the long discussion we [...]

I was flying back from Chongqing recently when I was reminded of the very frustrating problem of reading Chinese. There was a movie on the cabin TV and it had a particularity: it carried subtitles in Chinese and English in parallel, in two lines of comparable font at the bottom of the screen. As I watched [...]

Shanghai - Last night I took my new camera to the 拉面 (lamian) restaurant down the street.  Everyone was excited to see me with the new baby, and Mehmet’s apprentice absolutely insisted that I take some pictures of him Pulling the Mian. The result is this beautiful parabola underlining his smile. More details on possibly [...]

You know that feeling in the morning sometimes. You wake up with the lark, full of optimism to face a new day, and, before you even had the chance to smell the first espresso, trouble is knocking at your door. It was just like that this morning when my cell phone beeped. It was a [...]

Hong Kong - It feels good to travel just for fun once in a while. I flew to HongKong this weekend to say goodbye to a good friend who is leaving Asia, with the firm intention to relax, enjoy the city, and not indulge in any sort of  China watching activity. My only serious mission [...]

Last weekend, as I was browsing the net for some material to get over my post electoral withdrawal, I came across this iconic Obama. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but something in it looked very familiar. Very Chinese. I saved it in my Obama bookmarks, and didn’t think of it again until Sunday [...]

If you’ve been around in Shanghai today you might have noticed there was a Beijing nip in the air. One could almost smell the 烤鸭 as the temperature got rapidly freezing by midday. In the same time, the air felt clean like it does in the clean Northern winters, and it’s been a great day [...]

I was writing just yesterday my latest Crisis article when I realized that in Shanghai we have our own economic weak link, with quite a lot of companies that are suffering as much as the Pearl River Delta workshops. I am speaking of foreign startups in Shanghai. One of the things that makes Shanghai such [...]

The other day it was too cold to get my Linder started, so I had to go and flag a cab instead. I got one of the green chubby ones. Green cabs are well known for being stubborn, having a true passion for History and polishing their nails 5 times a day. Remember: never never [...]

One more from the Bridge Blogger: Lately I have received by email these pictures that are widely circulating on the Spanish speaking internet. They apparently originated in Colombia, so they are referred by some as Colombianadas. Colombianadas are the Latin American equivalent of Chinglish: signs and other pieces of writing with a twist of unintended [...]

After what I wrote last week in my sensationalistic post of the Tower of Babel, I have continued to follow as promised my Path to Enlightment. The results are modest for the moment, but I’ve found already five good links to get me closer to smelling Chinese politics. And I have added these 5 links [...]

I was thinking last night of the stimulus package and of how, since the beginning of the crisis, economy has invaded every conversation, and we all go about speaking of Billions and Trillions like nobody’s business. And I have decided to write this little post to explain to my readers what is a Billion and [...]

Hm, no comments. I wonder what the readers are thinking of all this. I can picture some scratching their heads and trying to type in lines of zeros in their office calculator. “RMBs to the Moon? Rubbish! Show me the money!” Here’s my little math for the non believers: 4,000,000,000,000RMB * (0.015m/10,000RMB)  =  6,000,000 m [...]

It is Friday. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day. I’m in an excellent mood this morning, pondering the unexpected turns of Fate and Fortune. I mean, take the weather in Shanghai, for example. Did you ever imagine we would see these long weeks of clean blue skies? You lose faith in things and then they happen, [...]

As I am writing this entry, 2008 has finished in China. Fortunately, we still have a few hours in Home Country to fit in my last 08 post before the evening aperitif. I take the chance to get back in action after this week’s holidays and do my little roundup of 2008. It has been [...]

I had to do it, really, I couldn’t stand it one second more and it was getting on my nerves. It’s all very good to show solidarity and suffer with the people, but I have my limits. This time back in Europe I got used to the advantages of an adult life and I can’t [...]

I know I shouldn’t be linking the same source all the time, but since I got my new coded connection I have rediscovered the Time China Blog and I just can’t get my eyes off it. Check out this picture of the rich corn fields in Ningxia in their last post by Lin Yang. After [...]

Some strange things happening in this blog: Post unpunned? It is hard to resist when you are writing a post and you see the chance to put in one of your puns, but lately I’ve been pretty good at it. It’s been more than a month, for example, that I don’t refer to the Leadership [...]

We are at the beginning of a historic week, and I just can’t not write about Obama’s inauguration. This blog is also about changing the World, and there is a chance that this Tuesday will be one of those days that changes everything. Call me a dreamer, but I want to believe that this new [...]

I can’t wait to see the speech tonight. I have spent the whole midday lunch hour (and a bit more) tinkering with the NYT and others speech analysis sites. I have learnt more about the speeches of previous American presidents that I ever knew before. And in particular I have learnt one surprising detail. Those [...]

Today is the last of the Rat days. Happy 牛 Year to all! And byebye too, I won’t be around for the next few days: I’m off to where the weather suits my clothes, down to the charming shores of Southern Fujian. I will take the chance before I pack up to write my little [...]

What is the meaning of life and work? How can it possibly be so cold in the same latitude as the Sahara desert? Where did you put the camera’s battery charger? What do you mean “where did YOU put”? These and many others are the fundamental questions you ask when back to Shanghai after a [...]

Here is the illustrated report of our Fujian trip. Today I present some clear symptoms of blogorrhea after my 5 day internet abstinence. So we’ll try to keep it ruly and live up to my Bull Year’s resolutions. I am applying the special astringent potion: Max 5 words per picture. The rest in your imagination: [...]

This is a bit of a silly post, I know, and I’m sure it has been done before. But I had to do it anyway. Yesterday I finally remembered to take a picture of my favourite sign in Shanghai, the Rules of the Green Administration Bureau. It is the one that prohibits feudal behaviours, expects [...]

Last night I was going to stay in and write a long, thoughtful post. Instead I went out and took some pictures. The first full moon marks the end of the New Year celebrations. It is called 元宵节, usually known in English as the Night of the Lanterns. Apart from the lanterns, there are also fireworks. [...]

I have a bunch of friends back in Spain who are always quick to send me the juiciest China news coming up over there, and to supervise that I’m fulfilling my duties as a bridge blogger. This time I have received a couple of links from Spanish newspapers El Pais and El Mundo where there [...]

Finally, we have a new blogger in the community who has moved all the way to South America to bridge-blog about the Chinese expansion there and other interesting stuff. Tom Pellman is Double Handshake. He was an editor in a well known economics magazine in Shanghai, he is almost trilingual in Chinese and he is [...]

Ever since I opened this blog the problem of credibility has been in the back of my mind. These days, the comments of a tenacious part-time troll, as well as some recent events that shook the Chinosphere have brought back the subject to the top of my agenda. It is well known that Chinablogs* (defined [...]

Wow, there’s been some activity around here this week. It is exhausting to be in the limelight, and I long to get back my status of internet chopped liver. But no worries, I think I know just how to do that: Everybody knows that serious China bloggers don’t do Chinglish. That’s for newbies, and we [...]

My anonymous friend N. has sent in this picture recently taken in an underground station in Shanghai Xuhui. It is a poster depicting a (Kazakh?) horseman riding with a baby just at the moment when a Shanghai policeman has engaged him in a vicious exchange of toothiness. Government slogans are some of the phrases that [...]

Another one by the cell phone scam-buster. Take a look at the picture. This baby beeped into my life the other day at 4am, just as I was getting ready to switch into deep sleep. I knew it was spam, but I couldn’t help the reflex. I stretched out one arm, opened one eye and [...]

“The country is changing so fast!” , this is one of the things I usually say back home  to explain why I find living in China so exciting. Today my street has changed very fast indeed.   Linder was lucky enough to spend the night in the garden, but other bikes where not so lucky. Inexorably [...]

Today it was a calm morning, the perfect Sunny day to take a long lunch break like we do back in homeland. So at midday sharp I took my bike and rode over to my new favourite reading spot. It is a bright, silent cafe, where reading is the main part of the menu.  I [...]

Oh dear. This is a disaster. I haven’t written anything for a month! Now is when I have to come up with some good excuse.  Like:  Spring has finally come to China; I have been travelling a bit in the dusty real-sphere of Shanxi; a band of homeland friends cheerfully invaded Shanghai, bringing with them [...]

Some pictures of my recent travels in Shanxi & Shanxi. As with past editions, 5 words per picture. The Shanxis have solid history There are some alarming Gods And alarming fire fighting equipment Guanyu deserved better than polystyrene The council should buy benches The way of The Way is a rather steep Way No, I kid [...]

Last Saturday we went down to Anar to watch the Lions of Puxi. This is a reggae band recently formed in Shanghai, with some familiar faces of the expat music scene, including some of the guys we usually see at JZ.  I am not much of a music critic, but I can say this band sounds [...]

It was exactly one year ago, almost to the minute. It was Monday, and we had started our meeting at 2pm in the 22nd floor of the client’s headquarters. About an hour later, in the middle of heated negotiations, there was an awkward silence.  It took a long moment before we understood what was making [...]

The mysterious ways of computer science. Today for example, I completely panicked when I stumbled into one of the bugs of wordpress. For some reason, when you add a “click to read more” tag next to a section in bold, it goes and turns the whole blog to bold, including sidebar, titles and header. So [...]

In the afternoon of the World Environment Day, the sky in Shanghai has gone almost completely black (brown?) at 3pm, and these little babies have fallen from the sky. In the same time,  many “Environment Day” squadrons were busy in the parks and beaches for the 1 hour long volunteer cleaning up activity. I hope [...]

So guess what now:  I am blocked. I am banned, prohibited, harmonized, river-crabbed. Censored, in short, by the Great FireWall of China. If you are reading my blog now and have not noticed anything strange, it is because either: 1- You are reading the blog from outside China and therefore you are not going through [...]

This is the imposing main entrance of my favourite university campus in Shanghai: HuaShiDa.  I like this entrance because it is very green and very complete, and it has everything from a roundabout sign to a saluting giant Mao, to a construction crane in the background. But what I like most is the inscription: SEEK [...]

After a terrible weekend in front of the computer I have managed to re-open my site on a new URL. I am fed up of the internet right now and I am going out to enjoy the Shanghai Sun for a few hours. I will try not to write more about this for a while, [...]

You haven’t really seen a city until you have been to its zoo. I have known this fact since I was 5 years old, and after many years I suddenly remembered it again last Sunday, and I decided it was about time I went to the Shanghai zoo. When you grow up you realize zoos [...]

It has been a while since I last wrote, and now I feel the typical blogger’s guilt, the same that drives some weaker souls to start all their blog posts with unasked apologies. But worry not, we are not that kind of blog. We don’t ask for forgiveness here, and that is because we already [...]

A middle aged man in a dark suit left this car. He didn’t look in the least embarrassed. Was he a pedophile? A cadre under the influence, bringing it home to sweetie? Or just the resigned father of a normal Shanghai girl? I didn’t stop to ask. But I appreciated the customized kitty steering wheel, [...]

First impressions are usually mistaken, but they are also interesting because the eye is alert to any novelty, and the culture clash is rich with ideas. Warning: this post contains sweeping generalizations. Take it for what it is, and if you are serious about understanding Japan you might want to look somewhere else. I came [...]

It has to be my lucky day. Today’s marathon meeting in Chongqing was aborted mid-session, and we had the whole afternoon for ourselves to explore the city in the mist. The place feels like all the energies of China concentrated in one tiny peninsula. The result is not beautiful, perhaps, but it is intense.  By [...]

Do not miss this story by A. Galbraith of the China Economic Review. In the long debate of China’s reaction to virus, this is the most reasonable opinion I’ve seen in a long time, and also the best informed. The story reminds me of what my friend, a doctor back in Spain, told me when [...]

All this G talk of the last days has brought me a lot of readers from the tech world, and I feel a responsibility towards them now to report the latest innovations. That is why yesterday during my Sunday walk I decided to stroll into the local public lavatory, where the latest developments are always [...]

This weekend I have taken a break from my exhausting research into the the sex of Chinese conservatives, to update old parts of the site and finish implementing some new features I had been trying lately. The changes in version 2.0 are not related to design, so they may not be immediately apparent to the [...]

I visited an Expo for the first time as a kid, when my school took all my class together to Seville ’92. Spain was living a crazy year, the Olympics where happening at the same time that Summer, and the Expo was designed to be one of the largest ever. Like now in China, there [...]

I just noticed this picture I took this morning in the little lane. The intention was to illustrate how the Olympic spirit is finally coming to the Shanghai local communities. The result is I unwittingly took a cool portrait of myself reflected in the announcement board glass cover. This is the typical Chinese motivational message [...]

Today was the opening day of the new Bund. After a decade with the elevated road flowing into this street, the urban planners have finally realized that a 5 lane highway is not the best thing to have in the middle of your famous promenade. This year they have been busy getting that ring road [...]

Of all the amazing things that happen to me in China, the SMS messages I get in my cell phone are one of them. When I first got to Shanghai 3 years ago I was young and my heart was full of ambition. Eager to make a name for myself in the local business circles, [...]

I never thought of this before, but when I was asked this week which was my favourite province in China, I naturally answered Zhejiang. I have been travelling there again on QingMing holidays and I have been reflecting what a remarkable place it is. Zhejiang is the smallest province in the mainland, just a bit [...]

Today I just wanted to share this picture, taken by one of the brave reporters in the Oriental toilet paper, who were first on the scene: This is a brand new sculpture called “communication”, just arrived from the US to Shanghai to commemorate the 30 years of the opening of relations between the two countries. [...]

Saturday there was some alarming movement down the road. Starting early morning masses of unidentified individuals concentrated near the intersection, partially blocking the traffic. They were visibly nervous, but their expression was firm, clearly they intended to hold the position. They had been there for almost 2 hours when I arrived with the camera. When [...]

One of the things that foreigners enjoy lamenting in China is the destruction of architectural heritage. It is understandable, modern China has a terrible record of heritage destruction, and today there are cities with 2,000 years of history where it is hard to find any trace of old construction. But the worst is that you can [...]

Today was a pretty stressful day in the office, but in between meetings I was able to join a lively discussion on the Fool’s Mountain about the latest Dalai incident. To wit, the French President said he will meet the DL in Poland during a ceremony in honour of Lech Walesa. China immediately threatened EU [...]

I love the way Xinhua refers to the People’s Daily as a “mouthpiece newspaper”, or “the mouthpiece of the ruling party”. For example, in this otherwise boring article that I just read. Recommended if you need to doze off for a quick siesta. I find all this mouthpiece thing funny in 3 different ways, which [...]

Last 10th December, a group of Chinese human right activists published a document called Chrter 08,  requiring political reform in the PRC. This document has had surprisingly little impact in the Western media/blogging scene. There is no telling right now how influential this document is going to be looking into potentially conflictive 2009. In any [...]

Barely two weeks after the publication of the Chrter 08, it has already become old news, lost in the indifference of Western media (with notable exceptions), and erased in China by the cold intervention of the censors. I want to examine here the importance of this document and give some more thought to it and [...]

As I was answering to a comment on the Chrter 08 post, I felt a sudden urge to find the original context for one of my favourite quotes, which stands on Instructions as a principle of this blog. That is how I found again this beautiful passage which I can’t resist copying here, although I [...]

I got a bit excited last night with my new VPN connection. For a few hours I thought I’d found Democracy in a Box, neatly packaged in a 40$ yearly subscription. I have been since exploring new horizons. Today, second day using VPN I’ve had 2 surprises, one good and one bad: The good one [...]

When I started my article about the Chrter 08 last month I couldn’t help wondering if it was well worth the effort. Most of the English speaking blogs and media had been very quiet about this issue, and in China nobody seemed to know anything about it.  Two weeks after the Charter’s publication, I thought [...]

You will excuse me for writing two serious posts in a row. It’s been ages we don’t do anything on the Crisis, and these days there’s been a series of articles on the subject that I couldn’t just let pass. Two of them have to do with the growth projections for 2009. Yawn. We’ve been [...]

Last Sunday I did a post on internet censorship in China where I mixed in various different ideas and I’m afraid the final result regarding Search Engine Censorship didn’t come out as clear as I would have liked. I think it is an important subject, so here are the complete results: We will be looking [...]

For those who are following the developments around Chrter 08: I have discovered a website containing the full original Chinese Charter (+ translations) that is still not blocked by the censors. It is also open to comments, apparently not manipulated: https://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3jhi1zdzvxj3f/9 Thanks to heroic advocate of freedom of speech David Ferguson who, by introducing himself [...]

We are at the beginning of a historic week, and I just can’t not write about Obama’s inauguration. This blog is also about changing the World, and there is a chance that this Tuesday will be one of those days that changes everything. Call me a dreamer, but I want to believe that this new [...]

The guests just left, what a night! The tense atmosphere of a final match in my Shanghai apartment; high expectations and a sense of History. Friends, all of different nationalities, sharing my wine and watching the first speech of President Obama. The silence during the 18 minutes was complete. Is it only me, or the [...]

I don’t usually do direct accusations on this site, because I know better than searching conflict, and I understand nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. But this one I cannot let pass, it is too low and too gratuitous. It is sad: why does it have to be  China who tells the first [...]

Since I started posting about censorship I’ve noticed that the basics of the system are not clearly understood by many readers outside China. This post is to classify and explain the system in the most simple way possible. It is largely drawn from my own experience as a user in China and from the studies [...]

I just came across this picture on Hecaitou’s Blog.  Brilliant: I hate spoiling jokes, so those that can speak a bit of Chinese should figure it out by themselves. For those who don’t speak Chinese, see after the fold. SOLUTION: By now you should have noticed that the large Mao portrait is missing on the [...]

The AFP dispatch says it all: Seventy-four workers were confirmed dead and dozens trapped underground after a gas blast early on Sunday at a colliery in northern China, the worst accident to hit the nation’s mines in over 14 months. There is something very wrong with these news.  The paragraph should end with “the worst [...]

There was some buzz last week on the Chinese internet about this supposedly new concept of  Online Democracy. The excitement started with the weird “elude the cat” story, and then continued when Premier Wen JiaBao chatted online with “internet friends” .  David Bandurski of the China Media Project, who has been watching these things for [...]

I am going to spice up my blog by providing some first hand opinion on my weekly tour of the Sinosphere. These are mostly comments that I’ve done previously in other forums and I collect here. I will try to do this every week, subject to the rate at which my brain can churn out [...]

NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS - Let’s admit it. We’ve been watching closely the NPC, we read all the material available and we have written about it. And yet, this year again, we have no clue what the NPC is for. According to their own website, the NPC has legislative functions, so we tend to compare it [...]

This discussion on China Geeks caught my eye, mostly because it is one of the few that has managed to engage the real Chinese blogosphere to interact with us foreign China blogs. And no less than hecaitou, a respected blogger in both the Chinese and Western communities. Unfortunately, the results are rather discouraging. It all [...]

Have you been watching Xinjiang TV these days? I am a fan. It’s the new Love TV, a 24-7 concentrate of all the corniest efforts by the Chinese official media to promote harmony after the events of 5th July. Smiling kids, flowery dances, long meetings of interethnic neighbour associations discussing love and togetherness. Best served [...]

I was not there and I do not know more than what is in the press. But in the light of the available information, I think it’s worth it to have another look at the events, and see what we make of it. Refer to the NYT diagram linked on the illustration, this paper is [...]

One of the essential purposes of a government is to ensure the safety of the citizens and, from this point of view, the Chinese government has failed spectacularly in Urumqi. To begin with, it did not afford sufficient protection to the Han victims during the night of 5th July. Some wrong decisions were most likely [...]

Following last week’s posts about Xinjiang conflict, I see this AFP dispatch: China promotes Xinjiang armed police chief. Mr. Dai,  the man at the top of the armed police has been promoted. Which means that the first of the failures I noted in the last post (i.e. failed to protect the citizens on 5th July) [...]

Many blogs have written about this already, but I still want to do my own post for Xu Zhiyong, who was arrested 3 weeks ago. I have no new information to offer here – info will be forthcoming only when the police decides it – but if you are reading this please do not let [...]

One more from the fantastic world of China mobile. These last weeks I have encountered what has to be the weirdest form of political activism ever tried in China.  It has happened twice, each time on a Sunday afternoon. It comes in the form of a phone call from an inexistent number. A very professional recording, [...]

The discussion about racism in China keeps coming back every once in a while, and each time it arouses the strongest passions. This is a post I’ve been wanting to do for some time, following the interesting comments we had in March, and as a conclusion to the Xinjiang series. The story that sparked the [...]

I am finding it difficult to concentrate on my work with a band of spidermen in overalls hanging outside the window. It is tower rinsing day today, like every year, and again I find myself paralyzed by panic. I know, it is a common sight in a vertical metropolis like Shanghai. The problem is, through [...]

I was pleasantly surprised when I booked my last minute flight to Japan, I got a very reasonable price for the 1st October National Day. When I went to Pudong airport I understood why: the streets were empty in Shanghai, nobody flew at that time because they were all at home with the eyes glued [...]

Now that I am in a free internet country, I have taken the chance to look at the CDT website, and I have found this interesting question coming from al Jazira: what would have happened if Mao had lost? I am not in principle against counterfactual history,  it can be useful in many cases to [...]

I have realized lately that, due to a certain unbalance in my training methods, my Chinese reading skills might be running ahead of my speech, and I have been forced to take severe corrective measures. At the risk of turning this into an SM blog, I am going to speak today of the terrible penance [...]

So Obama is in China, and even if he is not my president he is still my favourite president. Here is my first-hand analysis of the visit. The most important news, surprisingly gone unnoticed by all observers, is that Obama wants to become Euro-bama in Chinese. That is how I read the new spelling of [...]

Do not miss this story by A. Galbraith of the China Economic Review. In the long debate of China’s reaction to virus, this is the most reasonable opinion I’ve seen in a long time, and also the best informed. The story reminds me of what my friend, a doctor back in Spain, told me when [...]

I saw on ESWN this Time magazine interview of Han Han, and since I have written before about him, I think it is worth a comment. It is also interesting because it illustrates the scary misunderstandings between East and West that Kaiser Kuo warned against recently. This is, in my opinion, the key passage: …despite [...]

I just received an email that reminded me of this funny post on the China Hearsay blog. In the blog, he says of Wen: This guy never ceases to amaze me. When he retires from politics, he should really start his own PR firm. The “everyman” stuff is handled perfectly. The only folks who have [...]

In the first two posts of this series, we saw that Chinese is the last language in the World to maintain a complete set of independent vocabulary roots and a non-phonetic script to represent them, what we might call a separate Word System. For this reason I argued that Chinese may be the most difficult [...]

You might have heard the term Laobaixing (老百姓), literally “the hundred surnames”, the common people of China. They are also known as LBX in this website dedicated to them. Laobaixing is a great word, not only because of its obvious etymology, but also because its connotations are quite different from our  “common people”. From what [...]

Happy Christmas everyone. Sad Christmas for China, and for all of us who love that country and who believe in freedom, dignity and truth. Exactly one year ago, on Christmas Day, I published this post about Liu’s Charter. I was critical with the initiative for many reasons: it contained contradictions, it was reactive rather than [...]

The summit of Copenhagen has inspired some hot debate on the media, for the most part more related to international politics than to climate change. Some spectacular pieces like Mark Lynas’ on the Guardian have been followed by more moderate opinions, like those appeared on Danwei and Inside Out, trying to understand the roles of [...]

The Tiger is coming to the surface. The New decade has already come in the West, and in China we are again in this no man’s land between the Solar and the Lunar New Year, between the Bull and the Tiger. It is time to look back and see where we stand. In World politics [...]

The Oriental Morning Post of Shanghai is doing a nice coverage of the annual NPC-CPPCC meetings. I liked today’s paper edition, which carries a couple of cute alpacas right next to a picture of Hu and the boys walking down the aisle from the CPPCC they’ve just inaugurated. It is a long story for those [...]

It looks like Charles over at the new China Divide blog has found a new source of clicks to revive the China blogging scene: debating the crackdown on pornography in China. While I don’t usually support any kind of censorship, I have to say I couldn’t care less for the cause of porn in China. [...]

Disclaimer: In the interest of science, this post contains sexually explicit material. If you are underage and/or a sensitive person you are advised not to scroll down. If you don’t read Chinese it’s OK. This is the continuation of the previous post in the series, where we ended up rambling off the main topic and [...]

How many times have we seen the discussion on China forums about what exactly is Soft Power? That mysterious force of the white side that the Jedi use in international politics, turning all arguments to their advantage? China has coveted this weapon for years and spent many a valuable resource in its quest, but all [...]

Han Han has been nominated for the Time’s most Influential People, and pushed by the millions of Chinese netizens, he is quickly ascending to a likely Number 1. Xujun Eberlein has done a good analysis of the situation, particularly the disgusting way that the People’s Daily and the Shanghai Daily are trying to downplay and [...]

Here is an update to yesterday’s review of Han Han, with some additional info about the Time nomination, which might be more important than it appears at first sight. Then, if you stay till the end of this chapter, we will put on the yellow socks to analyze a bit more that terrible scourge of [...]

This little piece by historian Hong Zhenkuai has been taken down from the Southern Metropolis, but it has managed to escape the censors on some other sites. I liked the subtle way Hong criticizes the reigning CCP dynasty, and the cool Chinese rendering of “L’Etat c’est moi” as “朕即国家“. Since I don’t have the time [...]

In the 2010 Social Blue Paper, published last December by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there was a very interesting piece hidden among the 330 pages of socio-economic analysis. Under the title “Population problems China should pay attention to between 2011 and 2015″, this article contained some of the newest and most negative data [...]

I just learnt about Liu’s Prize. This is important news, which could mark the beginning of new developments in international politics. Certainly, the whole thing would have been more effective if the Nobel wasn’t completely made worthless by last year’s award. But even without that, it couldn’t have any positive direct result. The government will [...]

I was very disappointed when I read this story about the US ambassador in Beijing taking part in the so-called “Jasmine” protests last Sunday. This is very bad news for Chinese supporters of democracy (yet again). First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an [...]

So many things are happening outside China right now, I have the strange sensation that the roles have been reversed, and for once we are the onlookers instead of the targets of all eyes. It feels relaxing, and I note it’s had a great effect on the Chinese TV as well. After the absurdly oppressive [...]

So there we go again. It is this time of the year when the USA State Department publishes its annual human rights report including China as a major offender, and China promptly responds with its own report exclusively dedicated to the US. This show is déjà vu, but if you are interested you can see [...]

Interesting article by Evan Osnos, explaining Why Ai Weiwei Matters. He gives three good reasons why we should not dismiss the Ai WeiWei case as irrelevant. Despite the annoying tone (he seems to imply that foreigners ignoring Ai Weiwei are brainwashed readers of The Global Times), it is fair to say that he addresses the [...]

Last week I wrote a post where I expressed some views on Ai WeiWei and other dissidents. This attracted an unexpected number of comments, and it even inspired a podcast in the best blog about China in Spanish, Zaichina. All in all, it has been a long and fruitful exchange, so I want to thank [...]

Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of [...]

I first read about  “China Underground” last Friday, during my daily browse of the China blogs. I had never heard the name of Zachary Mexico before, but the review on  China Beat made me feel curious, so after work I stopped by the Garden bookshop and got my copy. Only 24 hours later I had [...]

I was a bit reluctant to read “Chinese Gods”.  I never had much of a taste for the mystical, and the rows of whiskered statues staring in the temples fail to arouse in me more than a cautious curiosity. But when I received the latest publications of Blacksmith, the promise of a book that “makes sense” [...]

Last night I went to the evening organized by Earnshaw to launch their two latest books: “I sailed with Chinese Pirates” and “Shanghai Story Walks”. I have been a fan of Earnshaw Books since they published the first of their series of reprints, Carl Crow’s “Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom“, my favourite China read [...]

This business trip in Sichuan is really full of surprises. Today we went to visit the Project, a giant industrial complex which will be, upon completion, the largest factory in the World to produce X. A typically Chinese megaproject on the bank of the Yangtze. But the surprise came when we went to town for [...]

I have realized lately that, due to a certain unbalance in my training methods, my Chinese reading skills might be running ahead of my speech, and I have been forced to take severe corrective measures. At the risk of turning this into an SM blog, I am going to speak today of the terrible penance [...]

I have been away for a while because all my holiday time has been absorbed by two fascinating stories of Shanghai, one of them a TV serial, the other a novel. The serial is WoJu, the Snail’s House, stupidly translated to English as Narrow Dwellingness, or whatever. It has been red hot in China since [...]

I just finished reading that book 蚁族 (Ant Tribe) that is all over the place on the Chinese internet. I was curious why it was becoming so hot here while Western media covered it only briefly. I think I know the answer now, but let me introduce the book first and more on this later. [...]

One of the things I learned this Summer is that, while I may leave on holidays to Europe, China doesn’t really leave me anymore. More than just a country, it is a force of nature, the other face of mankind that is now part of my life. China is always there, and she is everywhere, [...]

Here is my first short story in Chinese. The title is “Lost in Translation”, and it illustrates the potential consequences of bad mandarin pronunciation. If you don’t read Chinese I left a little summary in comments, or else use G Translator to get the enhanced experience [1]. UPDATE: I have reposted this on Tianya to [...]