A Slow Boat to China

I often listen to 中国之声–“The Voice of China”. It helps maintain my Chinese proficiency, and some of the shows are actually pretty good. In the past year or so, they’ve begun broadcasting different commercials and public announcements before the show. This one made me laugh. The scene is a classroom:
(Translation–see bottom […]

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Although I had never heard of the event until now, many Chinese bloggers have compared the heroic act of Liviu Librescu blocking the Virginia Tech shooter from entering his classroom so that students could escape, and the shameful acts of Chinese officials at a huge fire in Xinjiang in 1994 that killed over 300 middle […]

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辽宁省铁岭清河特殊钢有限公司， 20多吨钢水冲进工房 32人亡

When most of America’s attention was drawn towards the Virginia Tech story, Fang Jun alerted me to another incident, on the other side of the world, that is just as tragic, although it did not involve human evil displayed by the Blacksburg shootings.
From Eastday: Thirty-two workers were killed and six injured yesterday after […]

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Fang Jun (方军), one of the Chinese bloggers on Mindmeters, offered this thought regarding the killings at Virginia Tech, or more appropriately the media response of it. The title is “Tragedy.”
I feel sorrow for the campus tragedy that occurred in America.
But the thought suddenly occurred to me, why does everyone care this much about […]

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I visited the Chengdu Zoo in June 2005. As any of you that have been to Chinese zoos know, the animals there are usually treated no better than the poorest Chinese citizens–which means they generally get very shoddy care. The Chinese visitors routinely feed the animals all kinds of junk that they might […]

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