Police are now ordered not to participate in land grabs and home demolitions. If this is actually enforced, this could be one of the best new regulations coming out of the two big meetings, making it our news story of the week. One of the few Communist holdovers in China is that the gov’t still technically owns all of the land. Farmers only have [...] Keep reading »

Sometimes when I sit down to write my daily blog post, I find it hard to find something nice to say about China. It takes a few minutes (occasionally a few hours) to find a topic that I can at least add a little silver lining to. Apparently though I’m not the only one who is having a hard time coming up with something nice to say, a recent poll s [...] Keep reading »

One of the fun things about living in China, is that there are very few questions that are considered off-limits (less fun when they are asking you), so I make the most of it and dive right into the personal lives of complete strangers (much to my modest wife’s embarrassment). One of the first questions I get when I start chatting with a stranger [...] Keep reading »

With growing unrest in the Middle East, China’s gov’t has been a bit more on edge than usual. News of what is happening in Libya and elsewhere is pretty hard to come by. The official gov’t position on Libya is that the violence should end, but is purposefully vague as to what that means. The argument I feel like I have been bludgeoned with th [...] Keep reading »

I know that one of the few things I learned in middle school about China was that the Chinese language has many “dialects.” I had never been clear on what a dialect really was, often people say that it’s like an accent, and for a few of them that’s correct. In many cases though “dialects” are completely different [...] Keep reading »

Now I hope you’ll read past the headline before leaving angry comments.  You’ll see that my reasons have nothing to do with genetics or race and everything to do with culture. After all, driving is so dangerous/crazy/nerve rattling that Beijing has come out with a 5-year plan to improve “driving manners.” This list x 1.3 billion people [...] Keep reading »

There has been a recent movement in China to use social media to try to free abducted children, as well as child beggars. Initially these stories made the front page of the People’s Daily, but according to China Digital Times, the gov’t has become concerned that these stories are starting to make it seem that they aren’t doing much to stop th [...] Keep reading »

Not sure how long this is going to last, but for the first time since I’ve started this blog, I’m actually able to read it without having to use internet magic (my more tech savvy friends may know it as a proxy). Chances are good that this is just a temporary thing, since the timing seems strange with all the protests going on in the Ar [...] Keep reading »

This is part two, make sure to read yesterdays post about “face” The other term that every expat dreads is “guanxi.” Roughly translated it means “relationship,” or “connection,” but really it is so much more than that. Guanxi is often described in textbooks as a kind of privilege or as a thing that might help you get a job. [...] Keep reading »