02.11.13
An actual email from one foreign teacher to his Chinese students—he thought it also might be useful to any first time Spring Festival-ers out there.
09.18.12
This is the worst kind of dispute because everybody’s right and nobody’s right. Japan and China have more than their share of nationalist nitwits, but nobody actually lives on these rocks and it’s not like you can go and ask the goats what they’re feeling. (Apparently the moles tried to hold a referendum back in ’98 but backed...
06.22.12
It's a good time to be a Manchu on television. Costume dramas such as “Palace” and “Bu Bu Jing Xin”, which feature modern-day protagonists flung back in time to the days of the Qing emperors, rank among the most-watched programmes on China’s video-sharing sites. And while these series would seem to mine every possible fish-out-of-water plot...
via Jottings from the Granite Studio
06.07.12
Today is the gaokao, when parents across China send their senior high school students off to take the most important exam of their lives, offering such helpful, encouraging words as “If you do badly your mother will die in a pauper’s grave.” Clearly in today’s China-A-Go-Go, competition for elite, urban jobs is intense. You don’t want to be left...
06.04.12
Anniversaries have power beyond merely marking the passage of time, and sometimes their power can be most keenly felt when they are actively forgotten. Like Arthur Doyle’s dog which did not bark in the night, the silence speaks.