There is a North Korean newsreel going around Weibo on how Americans live today. Its Chinese title is “The Deeply Suffering Imperialist American People”: I am laughing, incredulous and indignant at the same time. The things the narrator says are what you expect a satirist would come up with and said with such perfect deadpan […]
If you hadn’t noticed already, expats love talking about being expats. Usually it’s pretty vapid stuff. However, there’s a good discussion at the IHT Rendezvous blog about life as an expat. It started with the general pitfalls of being an expat, which led to what may be the “glass half full” way of looking at […]
Man, Beijing never comes out on top: 北京人：“我们北京人最幸福，打开窗子就有免费的烟。” 上海人：“那算什么，我们打开自来水就是排骨汤！” （在新浪微博被删除） — Kai-Fu Lee (@kaifulee) March 13, 2013 Translation: “Beijinger: ‘We Beijingers are the luckiest, we can open our windows and get free cigarettes.’ Shanghainese: “That’s nothing, we turn on our faucets and get pork chop soup!’” Previous AP story: Dead pigs found in Shanghai river […]
Yesterday, we awoke to a murky gray sky. Even though it was 8 a.m., there was hardly any bright morning sunshine to alert me to the fact that it was a new day. The smog was so dense that the apartment building directly facing mine was kind of fuzzy, and I could barely make out […]
Back when I went to Chinese lessons, my small class included a Spaniard and a Russian. The class was taught mostly in Chinese, but we used an English textbook. I understand English is widely spoken all over the world, but it still impressed me how many expats learned Chinese through English, not necessarily their native […]
So by now, you must have heard about the airpocalypse that engulfed Beijing (and the rest of northern China) for most of January. Now that it’s well into the second month of the year, I obviously survived! Could I chew the air, as Jon Stewart claimed? I don’t think so. Then again, I don’t notice […]
“The party personnel system isn’t based on performance and competence. It’s based on loyalty and connections.” So says one Fred Hu about the CPC in a Wall Street Journal piece on how the head of the biggest bank in China (and world) got stepped over for promotion — when the heads of other state-owned banks […]
I’m ringing in the new Chinese year in Sanya, which is the opposite of Beijing. It is an extremely popular destination, especially in the winter, for Chinese (and Russians) since it is situated on the tropical island of Hainan and southernmost point of China. I learned from Wikipedia that it’s actually on the same latitude as […]
I have a love-hate relationship with Chinese laws. 国务院办公厅印发贯彻落实国务院关于进一步做好利用外资工作若干意见部门分工方案的通知 Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Issuing the Plan on the Division of Work among Departments to Implement the Several Opinions of the State Council on Further Doing a Good Job in the Utilization of Foreign Investment (Translated title here, here and […]
This past Monday marked the third anniversary of my landing in Beijing for the first time (after the 2002 family holiday and my summer internship). What was originally envisioned to be a one-year stint as an editor for a state media website has now stretched into a fourth year of prowling the motherland. I must admit, […]