I’m not a big fan of China Daily, China’s national language newspaper but I do read its website occasionally when there’s nothing better available for work. I recently noticed one thing at the bottom of the each news story, a massage ad.
Now I thought that was something only The Shanghai Daily did — and even then the ads appeared in the back of its classified section not on the news stories of its website. Maybe I’ve still got my sense of idealism from journalism school but it seems to tarnish the work of the journalists that write for the paper to have the ads placed there.
But forget about me for a …
© d. Fuka
Living, as I do, just outside of Shanghai tends to see me visit The City on “official business” quite frequently. Not only is it the ultra-modern, socio-cultural mecca of Mainland China - it’s also the closest place to Suzhou a Canadian guy can get consular stuff done.
Despite having been to “The Paris of the East” numerous times, there is one thing that continues to baffle me, and perhaps some of you Shanghai laowai can enlighten me: Why is it Shanghai is the only city I’ve been to in China where the taxi drivers assume 16 RMB = 20 RMB?
It doesn’t happen all the time, but a good 60-70% of …
Recently a friend forwarded my name to a freelance reporter for the China Daily Hong Kong edition. Yes, like many of you, I didn’t know China Daily had a Hong Kong edition …more on that later.
The Canadian born Chinese China Daily reporter emailed me a list of questions regarding English teaching and English use here in Hong Kong and I was more than happy to help her out. I even invited her out to join some friends of mine for dinner later and she commented that she’s “always searching around for freelance gigs and it helps to talk to journalists and people looking for English-language writers.”
In my email I casually asked the reporter what the readership numbers of the China …
I just got finished reading that Time Out Beijing, one of the city’s preeminent English-language entertainment guides, has been suspended indefinitely.
Not, as one might guess, because it had been publishing subvert-the-youth articles or anything of the sort - but simply because it wasn’t properly licensed.
Fair enough.
I mean, in pretty much any country you’d need proper business licenses and if you didn’t have them, you could be shut down for any number of legalities. That’s not too bizarre.
But the part that I think is… amusing (?)… is that the magazine was operating just fine for more than three years without complaint, or proper forms filled in.
This is strikingly in line with the …
What follows is the third part of a series of posts we’re running by fellow Laowai - Turner Sparks. Turner and his friend Jake decided just sitting around Suzhou and watching quake relief efforts on TV was not good enough, and so hopped into Turner’s car and pointed it towards Chengdu. Read
Part I and
Part III want to talk for a minute about the differences between what the media is reporting regarding the situation here (I can only speak for Chinese media as I haven’t seen international TV), and the reality of what we are seeing and experiencing.
First of all, Chendgu is completely fine and is operating as a normal city. Ambulance sirens are …
I’ve gotten a little tired of all the stories about Chinese and nationalism around that I spent most of last weekend trying to avoid most foreign news coverage about it. But I was dragged back in an interesting way when I learned to a recent podcast on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) Radio’s Ideas program. Two of the New Yorker Magazine’s Canadian writers, Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik were debating what Canada was — a nation or a notion?
It was Gladwell’s argument that Canada was a nation that pulled me back in. He was making the “small as beautiful” debate. Gladwell’s method for arguing this was to use the experience of overseas Chinese businesspeople as in …
Hot off the extremely reliable mobile SMS chain comes news that Carrefour and the French government have banned together to concoct a special May Holiday sale to lure Chinese customers away from their boycott.
And not just that, French TV is hoping to catch it all for the 6-o’clock news, presumably to put the French people’s minds at rest, and hearts at ease, that their largest shopping chain in China isn’t going unattended.
法国政府准备拿出两千万美金，家乐福自己再拿出五百万美金，用于五一降价促销，听说家乐福高层很狂妄，让中国人在五一降价中挤破家。
The French government has prepared 20 mil and Carrefour has prepared 5 mil to use for a May Holiday sale. The owner of Carrefour is very arrogant, believing Chinese people during May Holiday will buy excessively at Carrefour.
法国电视台也在积极做准备，拍摄中国人到家乐福疯狂购物的景象，让中国人自打自的嘴。如果你是爱国的中国人，把此信息传给你的亲戚朋友，不要到家乐福购物，不要为了丁点的小便宜，而丢了尊严，丢了民族志气，让外国人笑话。再不能让外国人把我们看作东亚病夫了。
French television is also actively making preparations …
The lead-up to the Beijing 2008 Olympics has spun so totally out of whack that I believe they need to add a new sport to the Games - Puerile Ping Pong.
The event pits countries from across the globe against each other in a balls-out relay race to see who can reach absolute absurdity first, all the while volleying hypocritically mundane arguments back and forth. Athletes will be judged on their ability to leap without looking, speak without thinking and masterfully perform the ultimate Puerile Ping Pong move - the Downward Spiral of Stupidity.
Though traditionally China has dominated the semi-pro leagues in …
If you ever been around Shanghai’s People’s Square and Nanjing West Road, you’ve seen them — the shoe shine guys. They’ve got their little foot bench that doubles as a carryall for their oily rags and 3-kuai tube of shoe polish.
If you work in that area of Shanghai these guys will pester you. Two or three times a day when I leave the office, I hear “Hey Laowai, hey shoe shine, shoe shine 10 yuan very good hey!” I usually keep right on walking even if my shoes are dirty. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the service these guys are trying to offer, it’s the way they go about getting my business. They try to catch you and run …
Let me get this straight. A man dedicates his time, money and energy working to help the poor, the sick, the dying, the forgotten and the endangered. And rather than the acclaim and accolade he deserves, he is kidnapped, put under house arrest and now sentenced to 3 1/2 years of hard time in prison for subversion.
I think I need to check my dictionary.
From Merriam-Webster:
Subversion (sub·ver·sion | \səb-ˈvər-zhən, -shən\): A systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working secretly from within
Something’s not right. Helping raise AIDS awareness, assuring poor people aren’t taken …
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