August 2012
33 posts
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@bridgers' finds: No money, no 太太 →
bridgers:
One thing I’ve noticed about Shanghai that is markedly different from Beijing is the cab rides. And I’m not just talking about the prices (though Shanghai’s ¥18 nightly base rates are still a little hard to get over).
It’s the conversations with the cabbies here that seem so different. There’s…
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“There’s an old Chinese proverb by this Mao fella. It says, “A toad...”
– More from Karl
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“There’s no toilet paper. What do they do? Do they just pull up their pants...”
– The inimitably quotable Karl Pilkington, in the pilot episode of An Idiot Abroad, which I watched again the other night. Mao-damn, what a great episode! Again, this is a must-watch for anyone who’s ever ex-patted in China.
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Duke Kunshan University →
Received an email today from Duke’s president announcing this new collaboration. It’s a slightly worrying trend — as Thomas Friedman and James Fallows like to point out every few months, America’s universities are one of its last great advantages in the globalized world — but it’s also the inevitable future of education. Can’t blame Duke for getting in on...
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Big public thanks to Bridgers for clearing up yesterday’s confusion. Apparently “Jew’s ear” is (disturbingly) an entirely accurate translation.
I wonder if Jewfish eat it.
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China's 'Leftover Ladies' Are Anything But →
Just 5 percent of urban Chinese women in their late 20s were still single in 1982, but that figure has risen to 27 percent today. A smaller but growing percentage remain single into their 30s and 40s. As the country continues to urbanize and more women have expanded career opportunities, Wang expects that China will follow the pattern of other East Asian countries, including Korea, Taiwan, Japan,...
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VISITING BUDDHIST TEMPLES
wuluwu:
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Rock & Roll in China →
I spent one of my first nights in Nanjing with a Chinese girl with blonde-streaked cropped hair, who sported fishnet stockings, a short skirt, and a thorny red rose tattoo that snaked up her leg. She swore like a truck driver and went by the moniker Ruan Ruan; she wouldn’t tell me her real name. All throughout the summer of 2010, girls in the bar would stare at her and whisper her name; she was a...
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Somewhere Between →
In profiling Chinese adoptees in contemporary America, Linda Goldstein Knowlton’s deeply moving documentary illustrates that even the most specific of experiences can be universally relatable. Of the roughly 80,000 girls who have been adopted from China since 1989 — a decade after China implemented its One Child Policy — the film intimately follows four teenagers: Haley, Jenna,...
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China Forces Ethnic Kachin Refugees Back to a... →
The authorities in southwestern China are forcibly evicting thousands of encamped ethnic Kachin refugees who fled a renewed civil war in neighboring Myanmar, pushing them back into the conflict zone in Kachin State in northern Myanmar, according to foreign human rights researchers, political analysts and two people in Kachin State.
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WHEN I FOUND OUT I'M SUPPOSED TO BE FILING TAXES...
wuluwu:
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Chinese Internet
wuluwu:
I will never take high-speed internet for granted again…
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Writing Chinese in a Digital World →
Is written Chinese suited to a digitalizing, globalizing world? Wu Wenchao, who worked at the United Nations as an interpreter for 25 years, thinks it is not especially well-suited. Characters are “inefficient and archaic,” he wrote in an e-mail….
Especially online, Chinese are experimenting with the Roman alphabet: government, “zhengfu” in pinyin, is often shortened to “ZF.” An...
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China Defers Death Penalty for Disgraced... →
A Chinese court on Monday handed Gu Kailai, the wife of a disgraced Communist Party leader, a suspended death sentence for killing a British business associate who she reportedly feared was plotting to harm her son. In the Chinese legal system, such a sentence is tantamount to life in prison.
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My guitar teacher's new assistant is named Liquid.
Solid.
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“trash dont bother me…..if u think ur a trash . keep away/keep away/keep...”
– The complete “About Me” section of [screen name redacted to protect her dignity]. I’m not black, I’m not Asian, I’m not Idian [sic], and I don’t think I’m a trash… but I’m going to keep away nonetheless.
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Bowl Movements: Inside 'More Than Toilet'... →
Tianzifang is full of restaurants serving food that tastes like shit. It seems only appropriate that one of them now serves food that looks like it too…
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This Is Awkward: The Politics of a Chinese Orgy →
At bottom, the sex party is vexing for the Party because it highlights the gap between the artifice of official solemnity and the unadorned reality beneath, a gap that has become more pronounced in recent years as the Web eats away at the monopoly on authority. …
Until the hive moves on, government censors are seeing to tamp down the discussion. The State Council Information Office has sent...
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Live From Nairobi, China Puts Its Stamp on News in... →
Pretty sinister.
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Save the Sharks! →
Please sign this and pass it on.
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China Asserts Sea Claim With Politics and Ships →
More pre-transitional chest-thumping.
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Too Much Olympic Fever in China? →
Despite its success, or perhaps because of it, China is also vigorously debating whether it’s overly obsessed with gold medals (while being dismissive of silver and bronze); whether the state-sponsored sports system is both draconian and outmoded; whether its athletes are under too much pressure; and whether national pride too often veers into an unattractive nationalism.
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Beach Essentials in China: Flip-Flops, a Towel and... →
Most emailed article of the day on NYTimes.com.
The photos alone are worth the click, but the descriptions are just as nutty:
On a recent afternoon at Qingdao No. 1 Beach, the sand and surf were thronged. Beside the rows of orange beach umbrellas, people had erected dozens of camping tents, ignoring the amplified announcements that prohibited their use. Others made shelters out of multiple...
