I’m back in the USA this week to attend my twin brother’s wedding (Congratulations Alex and Erin). So this week we’ll be looking at marriage in China again, this time focusing on Chinese-Foreigner relationships. We have a couple of guests posts to look forward to as well as a fairly crazy look at online dating. So now would be a g [...] Keep reading »

One of China’s newspapers broke the story that gov’t officials were in Hunan province were forcing parents who had more than one child to give up their extra children. The children were than sold to adoption agencies by these officials. This isn’t to try to scare people out of international adoption, but I think it is important to [...] Keep reading »

It seems in the last few years in the US the fear of “Big Gov’t” has been enough to draw large crowds to the Tea Party. Apparently these people have never been to China. The idea of small gov’t in China would be almost heretical here in the Middle Kingdom, where there are 5 levels of gov’t compared to the US’s 3. [...] Keep reading »

Yesterday we started to look very generally at China’s efficiency problems. Today I would like to introduce you to a few of the most pointless jobs in China that highlight the practices inspired by low wages. Bus Line Monitor I see these people standing at each of the bus stops on my way to work each morning. They stand around with their yellow o [...] Keep reading »

A lot of words come to mind when thinking about business in China: “Booming”, “Exports”,  “Walmart”, “Cheap Labor”, “Outsourcing” – You’ll notice “Efficient” isn’t one of them, and this doesn’t just apply to manufacturing. Over these next few days we’ll be looking at the Chinese workplace, and a few interesting jo [...] Keep reading »

I was asked to share a few of the surprises I had when I first moved to China for the great new blog, Shanghai Novice. The site is geared at people getting ready to move to China, or are brand new to the Shanghai area. So head over there and check out a few helpful tips from me and other China bloggers to find out what to expect when you first arri [...] Keep reading »

On Tuesday I reported briefly on Shaanxi’s plan to relocate 2.7 million residents from the northern and southern parts of the province. The local gov’t reported that this was a major push to help break the cycle of poverty that has been effecting those regions for generations. They also cited the fact that both areas are prone to disast [...] Keep reading »

It was 2:28 in the afternoon when the 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck, it was felt as far away as Hanoi, but I didn’t notice it because I was running late to class. A few of the students who walked in late to class, still rubbing the sleep of their noon nap from their eyes, asked their classmates if they had felt the earthquake. Nobody knew what [...] Keep reading »

Du Haibin’s film “1428” captures a variety of scenes from post earthquake Beichuan in a way that I hadn’t seen before. Even though I was in China at that time, and remember checking the news hourly for days, there was still very little I knew about the conditions in Sichuan at that time. All of the images were being very carefully selected [...] Keep reading »