For this the next chapter in Lost Laowai’s series of posts on prolific bloggers in the English-language China blogsphere I go right to the source, as there are few more seminal English-language China blogs than the Peking Duck. Authored by Beijing-based PR man Richard Burger, the Peking Duck is one of, if not the, oldest [...]
Archive for January, 2009
Grow Up China
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the need to criticize this nation with such a blanket statement as “grow up China”, but in watching and reading the country’s reaction to Obama coming to office – I can think of nothing more relevant to say. I’ve spent the last year looking at China as [...]
Obama Speech Censored in China
It is said that an individual’s fears can be seen in what they spend their life avoiding and evading. As for governments, their fears are exposed in what they censor, and yesterday’s Inauguration speech by the new US president Barack Obama (wow, it feels good to type that for the first time ever) seems to [...]
I’m QQ – wait, no I’m not.
China’s wildly popular IM service has “quietly” launched a new portal focused on the international market – IMQQ.com. According to a post on Mobinode: “An email sent from an insider, reveals that Tencent has just quietly launched its international portal for QQ, IMQQ.com where you can find all the English information you need to try [...]
Shanghai is sinkin’ man, and I don’t wanna swim
Shanghai Skyline (c) Ryan McLaughlin
Built on what is largely sandy marshland, according to the Shanghai Institute of Geology, the city has sunk more than two metres in the past 40 years. This sinking is believed to be connected to the massive amounts of steel and concrete being poured on top of the city to facilitate it’s massive expansion in all directions – including up.
Since the 1960s, the city has gone from 40 tall buildings to having about 1,000 buildings more than 100 meters in height. This rise in height of Shanghai’s skyline is nowhere more evident than in the row of uber-tall skyscrapers offering Bund visitors a myriade of technocolour photographs.
Empowering the impoverished with Wokai
Wokai, or “I start”, is a new(ish) Web site offering microfinancing to China’s poor. There are few things that make me tingle like the principle of microfinancing does. I’d like to think I have a philanthropist’s heart (if not the wallet), and as much as I believe “give it and forget it” charities unarguably do [...]
Disney and Barbie for Shanghai
Shanghai, and mainland China as a whole, got an economic vote of confidence from two fluffy sources this week: Disney and Barbie. News was announced that a Disneyland in Shanghai is likely to be approved this year, and the world’s biggest official Barbie store is finally ready to open in the city. The two American [...]
New words for the new time
“Generation gap” (代沟) , “supermarket” (超级市场), “honeymoon” (蜜月) and “breakdance” (霹雳舞). These words are all newcomers in the Chinese language. In fact, all of them have appeared after China started unfreezing its relations to the rest of the world with the Reform and Opening policy, embarked upon by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. In a fascinating [...]
Photo of the Week: Winter Swim
From the photographer, flickr user elephantonabicycle: “A man warms up for a winter swim in the Lijiang River. Many elderly believe swimming in the freezing river can increase one’s life expectancy (though drinking cold water has the opposite effect, and can lead to stomach cancer).”
Nudity, Train Tickets, More Nudity, Rockets, and Gas: The Week in Review
“Shameless” Zhang Zi Yi unwittingly volunteered to be China’s first web scandal of 2009 when an intrusive long-lens paparazzo snapped the Chinese actress and her western boyfriend playfully cavorting on the beach. Many sites and netizens were outraged at her being ‘nude’, though technically she wasn’t, while other netizens in this country jumped on the [...]
