Chinese police rescue 178 children after mass child trafficking ring bust, from The Telegraph, covered the biggest story of the week: Chinese police arrested over 600 suspects connected with trafficking. This issue of child trafficking is one we’ve covered before on the blog, and if you’d like to learn more about it, read my interview w [...] Keep reading »

On December 6, 2011, two days before the 3rd anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s arrest in 2008, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing on “One Year after the Nobel Peace Prize Award to Liu Xiaobo: conditions for political prisoners and prospects for political reform.” Eight people spoke at the hearing. Mr. Perry Link, profess [...] Keep reading »

The first year of blogging has resulted in well over 300 posts, so in celebration of surviving the writing process that has yielded over 150,000 words, I thought we should revisit a few of the best posts. My personal favorites – and the story behind them There must be something in the air – I don’t think anyone but my wife, and a [...] Keep reading »

When I started Seeing Red in China one year ago, the plan was to write a post every weekday for a few months and see what happened. I am incredibly pleased by the way this site has grown into something beyond a typical travel blog, into a more complete guide to modern China, and that every post has been further supplemented by your excellent comme [...] Keep reading »

China halts U.S. academic freedom at the class door, from Bloomberg, was the better of two excellent pieces this week on the topic of joint-managed colleges in China (the other being No academic freedom for China). This piece generated a lot of discussion about education, and one friend who actually studies at the school mentioned that the article [...] Keep reading »

This week we offer an assortment of Weibo items for your thoughts: the mysterious but all-powerful Above, China’s new land reform, China’s AIDS exiles, journalists as propaganda workers, free turnips, and more. Click on date below item for link to the original. 黎学文在北京/Li Xuewen in Beijing/(Writer, publication planner)/:【The  invi [...] Keep reading »

Yesterday at the bus stop, I noticed a man wearing all black waiting by the back of the mass of people getting on the bus. He would get pushed forward, and then purposefully work his way towards the back; it seemed suspicious. I know from friends that pickpockets like to use the moment of climbing on the bus to snatch wallets and mp3 players as peo [...] Keep reading »

A week or so ago I stumbled upon a Chinese language version of Animal Farm in a local bookshop. I was slightly surprised to see it, but the back cover described it as being about 1950’s England, so perhaps the censors signed off on it as a criticism of the west. It was only 9rmb, so I bought it as a gift for one of my co-workers to see how she wo [...] Keep reading »

In my three years in Chinese schools, teaching 20 different groups of students, nearly every class told me that “In China, the customer is God,” which left me dumbfounded because in my experience, customer service in China is practically non-existent. Today I’ll be sharing a few of the more extreme examples of this, and hopefully [...] Keep reading »