The back alley near our school is called Nine Street. It’s your typical back alley: garbage, construction, trinkets, small restaurants. On some days, it really smells, and on others, you can barely maneuver it due to trucks hauling material down the narrow street. It is so off the beaten path that Beer Monster and I [...]
Not sure if I’ve written about this: corn on the cob is sold on the street here. Men with food carts sell them usually near bus stops. You can also get sweet potatoes or stinky tofu. Chinese people love tofu, which I never knew before moving here. But, the corn on the cob continues to [...]
Following Li Yang’s “I’m mature. Nothing offends me” comments, we walked back to the hotel for lunch. We ate lunch and dinner in a private room at the hotel’s restaurant. They put out the same buffet for each meal. Good food, but the same stuff for each meal for 12 days. …. At lunch that [...]
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/15/china.internet.crackdown.ft/index.html
(FT) — China has banned individuals from registering internet domain names and launched a review of millions of existing personal websites in the toughest government censorship drive so far on the internet.
As of Monday, people applying to register a domain name in China must present a company chop and a business licence, [...]
Beer Monster stayed out all night Thursday drinking and called in sick on Friday. I figured as much would happen. I left him at the bar at 3 a.m.
“Just hang out a little while longer,” he said.
“This isn’t going to get any more fun,” I said, and then left.
Friday I had an incredible hangover [...]
These two boys in one of my classes today goofed off while the two girls in their group did all the work. I called them out on it, and the one boy said his group was finished.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Which news story did your group choose?”
“Pardon?”
I felt like I had him on the run. [...]
China’s got the same stuff as America – just slightly different. Case in point: celebrity magazines. Every newsstand in this country has a boatload of crappy celebrity gossip rags and teen beat flyswatters. The two main differences between this stuff here and in America is 1) I have no clue who these people are or [...]
I have an acid reflux problem, and for years I took Prilosec. This summer, I started mixing apple vinegar and apple juice, and it worked really well. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find apple vinegar in China, but, to my surprise, I found something much better: apple vinegar drink. In my local [...]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7000931.stm
In the first of a series of pieces on China’s one-child policy, the BBC’s Michael Bristow looks at whether the country’s controversial regulations are working.
Some parents in China are happy with one child
China’s family planning policy has prevented 400 million births, officials say.
Since the regulations were introduced in 1978, China has kept its population in [...]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8383424.stm
Over 2,000 trafficked children have been rescued since China’s government began a crackdown on the trade in stolen children earlier this year.
But as the BBC’s Damian Grammaticas reports from Beijing, many thousands of children are being snatched off the streets to be sold every year and most are never recovered.
The footage from the CCTV [...]
