While many foreigners enjoy the Chinese hospitality at banquets, I get the feeling that most of them are trying to survive the meal rather than impress at them. Banquets are a social obligation, and we’ve learned from guidebooks that we shouldn’t stick our chopsticks upright in the rice bowl, and it might not hurt to toast once or twice [...] Keep reading »

I work in a large hospital, and sometimes there are “unfavorable outcomes”, which in hospital-speak translates as a death or life changing mistake. When we have an unfavorable outcome families typically gather in front of the administration offices and battle with the hospital’s security guards (we have a whole police office). The [...] Keep reading »

This week there was heated discussion about the toddler who was twice run over by a van and not helped by passersby and people around until a rubbish-collecting woman picked her up (read here).  Below is this week’s offer about the continued Weibo activism to free Chen Guangcheng; what are “socialist core values”; China’s luxurious prisons [...] Keep reading »

Those of us who grew up in Christian homes are all familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Sadly we learned this week that the tale has a very different ending in China: A toddler was going down to the street to play, she was run over by an inattentive driver, who paused a moment to consider what to do and then departed, leaving her half d [...] Keep reading »

I recently finished Troy Parfitt’s travelogue “Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas,” and I rather enjoyed it. It was at times funny, shocking, enlightening and enraging. The basic idea behind the book was that Troy would visit a number of Chinese cities over a few marathon-like trips to China and record [...] Keep reading »

In addition to “The west doesn’t understand China,” the second refrain you’ll hear when it comes to defending some of the Party’s more draconian policies is that “China is a big country with a large population.” For example, a comment on an old post: “China insists on having solution that is suitable [...] Keep reading »

From time to time people disagree with some of my thoughts on China. I welcome thoughtful comments, and one of my major motivations in starting this blog was seeing to what degree people agreed with my thoughts on the middle kingdom. That being said, there are a few excuses that I’m tired of hearing. We’ll be looking at a few of these o [...] Keep reading »

(This week, there were a lot postings and re-postings about what seems to be concerted efforts by well-known people as well as ordinary netizens to go to Linyi, Shandong Province, to visit the blind rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚, more here ) who is under illegal house arrest.  Many people are now using Chen’s picture as their Weibo av [...] Keep reading »

By Yaxue Cao …Continued from yesterday I have been wanting to write about my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Huang, who died more than a decade ago. He was the best chemistry teacher in my school, but he was a wreck! Although extremely near-sighted, he didn’t wear glasses and had to hold things up close to his eyes to see, whether it was [...] Keep reading »