It appears that our fair city of Kunming has received international press attention, though not for its beauty, good weather, or fine food. Nope, Kunming’s claim to fame may now be it’s dwarf theme park, which since last year has been open to the public. From the New York Times: Chen Mingjing’s entrepreneurial instincts vaulted [...]
Living in Yunnan we’re treated to the regular spectacle of Chinese tourists from the coastal provinces arriving en masse to indulge themselves in a little å°‘æ•°æ°‘æ— exploitation. This New York Times article touches upon this subject, and includes a funny concluding section: At another table outside were two Han tourists from the city of Chongqing. [...]
China Hush has translated a rather long screed in the form of an open letter from an outraged Chinese to President Obama. The letter is interesting not for its unremarkable message but rather because it provides a useful archetype of how a Chinese fenqing, or angry youth, thinks. Much of the letter consists of a [...]
The invaluable China Smack has an interesting post translating Chinese netizen reactions to the just-released blockbuster Avatar. Intriguingly, many commenters connected the eviction of the Na’vi people from their forest home to the frequent eviction of Chinese people who stand athwart government-led development. What surprised me most about the film was its seemingly leftist point [...]
On November 16 US President Barack Obama held an American-style town hall meeting with a group of university students in Shanghai. During the event, the camera panned toward a pretty female student dressed stylishly in black who was seated near the president. Naturally, the identity of this girl elicited the attention of the Chinese internet [...]
I’ve spent part of this morning listening to a podcast lecture organized by Folger on the subject of foreign impressions of China. The three panelists are Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing and a former actress in the Chinese soap opera of the same name, Orville Schell, the distinguished China scholar and author [...]
Slate’s Daniel Gross has made a couple of lazy and incorrect assumptions in his recent column about real estate in China: In Shanghai, which is China’s New York, locals and expats are doing their best to foist American-style consumerism onto China’s rising masses€”with mixed results. Starbucks has opened several hundred stores, even though China has [...]
Having never been to Taiwan I’m always interested in discovering ways in which the island differs from the mainland. One phenomenon that seems to exist in Taiwan but not in the rest of China is that of the “betelnut beauties”, who are attractive, skimpily-attired young women selling booze, cigarattes, and betelnut from glass-enclosed booths. Photographer [...]
I caught around a half-hour of China’s National Day pagaentry from a small television set in a tiny Dai village somewhere between Baoshan and the Salween River. I only came to the village in order to re-stock on water and mooncakes*, the latter perfectly suited for bicycle energy food. (Unfortunately I missed the exciting bits; [...]
From a friend, a Chinese woman in her mid-twenties: My best male friend is gay, and he has known this for sure since college. He first told me and a few other female friends about his sexual orientation, a difficult admission to say the least. I encouraged him to tell his parents. His father, not [...]