tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386460082012-02-16T16:54:48.762-08:00The Bitter Melon blog.Anecdotes and observations teaching journalism in Shantou, China. All rights reserved.Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.comBlogger551100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-28280092171293762982008-06-04T03:15:00.000-07:002008-06-04T03:27:52.317-07:00

Mark films the rapids at Bujagali Falls, near the source of the NileOur guides in Nima, a Muslim district of Accra, wear heavy suits in the scorching torpid heat.Instructor explains how chimps are trapped for bushmeatat chimp rescue centerRitchie, guide at Elmina Castle, one of the chief holding centers for hundreds of years for slaves enroute to the New WorldMattress man, KampalaMoving right

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-28552744396174236122008-06-04T02:58:00.000-07:002008-06-04T03:10:34.330-07:00

They say a picture is worth a thousand words...so hopefully this will make up for the lost ones over the last few

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-38073490160592950292008-03-12T20:04:00.000-07:002008-03-12T20:06:57.198-07:00

Only half an hour into our walk through the Pu, we had a group of about twenty teenage boys trailing us and shouting at ear-splitting volume. This is what it feels like to be a celebrity, I thought. This is what it would be like if I were Ben Affleck and showed up at the local mall.My girlfriend and I headed out on a recent afternoon to what the foreign community here affectionately refers to as

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-64191525439520257622008-01-09T02:47:00.000-08:002008-01-26T13:28:43.845-08:00

No, not the long awaited endeavor by Axle Rose, sorry to pique your appetite... The school weight room used to be an appalling affair. It was covered in green astro turf that was rotted away in places. Then they redesigned it, tore out the floor and put in a new one, tore out a wall of the gymnasium and replaced it with a giant window. Along with the improvements came bureaucracy; after it

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-61700743976127623522008-01-02T02:08:00.000-08:002008-01-02T04:14:32.195-08:00

The English teaching racket has its fair share of horror stories. You get off the plane in a foreign country, and it turns out that those modern, lovely facilities you saw on the website were, hmm, from the web. I've heard plenty of these stories -- the Korean hogwans have a particularly bad reputation. I mean when you start with a name like that, what can you expect?A recent news story, however,

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-35725820630370878672007-12-28T17:44:00.000-08:002007-12-28T19:02:12.071-08:00

Good lord, it's been a drought these past few months for the one-and-a-half Melon readers out there. Apologies, adoring public. It hasn't been for lack of things happening: Gatherings of war reporters, film festivals, and, most recently, a visit from Mom. The last was the most terrifying. Try as I could after she told me she was coming, I just could not imagine my mother in China. After her visit

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-80617058797484978672007-11-07T18:29:00.000-08:002008-06-30T17:58:54.089-07:00

Yesterday I had the students brainstorm things they had seen, read, or heard around campus that were newsworthy. They then had to evaluate the credibility of the information (credibility being a recent vocabulary word they were still trying to get right in their mouths) and try to decide what the truth of the matter might be.The stories ranged from the banal to the bizarre. The English Speech

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-26557955915450199732007-11-06T06:21:00.000-08:002007-11-07T18:27:33.362-08:00

(This is a story from almost exactly two years ago. Xiao di, little brother, is a common term in Chinese of address for a younger man in south China.)Little Brother sits at the barbecue grill with black smoke streaming into his face. We walk up with calls of, “Ni hao, ni hao.” He responds with the only English he knows, “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD.” He finds amazing versatility in the phrase. With a

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-25084428888197050092007-11-01T02:03:00.000-07:002007-11-04T22:23:50.172-08:00

When you have been in China as long as I have, you sometimes get lulled into a sense of normalcy; you forget that you are living in a place that is really, really different. Then there's that back-of-the-hand-across-the-face moment that cause the chopsticks to go flying out of your hands, or the spittle out of your so pridefully-non-spitting mouth. I had a couple of these

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-17796544349136976092007-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:002007-11-06T05:50:26.175-08:00

Ever wonder how journalism works in China? I am not sure if this story is representative, but it certainly touches on some interesting problems. Emma is a student of mine from a nearby city.A Summer in the Local News BusinessBy: Emma LuThis summer holiday, I interned for the Guangzhou Daily's Shantou office. I went to Chaonan, Jieyang and downtown Shantou with Ruan Xiaoguang, a journalist from

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-5287270217513179982007-10-12T19:31:00.000-07:002007-10-12T20:08:59.504-07:00

Nightlife down here on the southern frontier is pretty limited, and recently the crowd out at night seems even more homogeneous than normal. It used to be that you could walk into the one decent bar downtown, Sunglow, and come across a handful of Shantou's foreign community. The three or four times I've been down there in the last couple of months, however, there's been nary a foreign face to be

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-3627157019889989242007-10-11T20:24:00.000-07:002007-10-11T20:38:08.793-07:00

My apologies for the long absence to the one or two Melon readers that might be out there. I've been concentrating my attention on writing and trying to get writers for MyShantou.net, a website all about our fair southern city here. (www.myshantou.net)There's something attractive about the website, despite the fact that it runs on a system which can't even handle correct punctuation. I guess it's

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-52025020062879069812007-09-28T19:34:00.000-07:002007-11-06T05:53:14.163-08:00

Okay, now that I have got your attention with the overly sensational headline, let me rephrase that. The hills behind the university are fairly scenic, and criss-crossed with trails nice for hiking. I have walked in them many times over the last three or four years. On no occassion however, have I ever seen what I did a few weeks ago: Dozens and dozens of very large spiders with enormous (three

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-39230373357536862222007-09-12T00:35:00.000-07:002007-09-12T01:21:49.845-07:00

Before returning to Shantou, I had the good fortune to do a bit of traveling in and around Hangzhou -- definitely one of China's nicer cities.The trip began bizarrely, by meeting a young woman on the airplane who turned out to be the wife of a high school classmate of mine. Said classmate's mother was something of an arch-enemy in high school; she was born-again, and I was punk rock, a stormy

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-64458657179523811542007-09-04T18:46:00.000-07:002007-09-04T19:12:40.332-07:00

Shantou, specifically a little satellite community of Shantou called Chenghai, is filled with toy factories. A fact that, until recently, seemed of little importance or merit. With the ongoing Chinese product scandals, however, it's taken on a certain relevance. Especially since there are 3,000 toy manufacturers in this district and that "at least 70 percent of the products are exported to more

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-37376591124298823092007-08-31T18:38:00.000-07:002007-08-31T19:00:05.980-07:00

I spend the summers in northern Michigan, about as far spritually and physically from Shantou China as you could get. It's a land of working class folk, mixed with high rollers from big cities like Chicago, who have disposable income for second homes on the lake. There's a host of folk about, enjoying that fleeting summer up there, mostly gregarious folk. I love to watch their reactions when I

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-50837874796715428492007-07-17T08:36:00.001-07:002007-11-06T05:53:56.608-08:00

All the children are blonde. The air is that kind of northern crisp and clean that I associate with autumn. The sky is so blue it hurts your eyes. The water glows. All the homes here seem to have flags, and when they wave, it seems like the colors will bleed out and turn everything red, white, and blue.I feel like I'm in a movie about America.I came home about ten days ago -- to a house that my

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-31449635370274159162007-06-22T18:59:00.000-07:002007-06-22T19:25:39.263-07:00

The brick slave case is so horrible in so many different ways that it leaves one groping for adequate language and thought processes to deal with it all. What strikes me most, however, in the accounts I've been reading, is how the whole thing was allowed and de facto encouraged by local police and authorities. A common excuse that I've heard -- echoed by friends here and media -- is that the

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-2497647703559637582007-06-17T06:38:00.000-07:002007-11-07T20:12:19.428-08:00

Are you aged 6 to 16 and tired of those pesky parents and those droning teachers? Are you looking for a change of pace, and work that is challenging and builds character? Then we have a job for you!The Tonggong Brick Factory seeks 1000 new workers due to, er, unforeseen staff reductions, for the exciting job of making bricks 23 hours out of every 24-hour day. Located in the scenic loess plateaus

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-8720315991413433372007-06-17T06:04:00.000-07:002007-11-12T00:11:10.121-08:00

Things I wish had known before coming to China...hmmm...I wish I'd figured out that when I started studying Chinese, I was in a place where three languages were spoken, the least popular of which was the language I was attempting to study - Putonghua, Mandarin Chinese. A bit like going to a border town in Texas to learn the Queen's English...And I wish I'd known that perfect pronunciation in the

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-40541619393082208432007-06-02T20:25:00.001-07:002007-11-04T22:27:17.009-08:00

I'm waiting in China Merchant's bank, and two kids in front of me are taking out a million Renminbi.Yes, you read correctly, a million kuai. That, with the new mark of the RMB against the dollar, is roughly $US 130,890.05. Enough to buy a nice house in the town I went to college, the next ten years on an island in Laos, or about a dozen United-Colors-of-Benetton orphans for Angelina Jolie.And yes

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-84214922072734791392007-05-27T23:30:00.000-07:002007-06-03T02:19:09.981-07:00

My friend's writing a piece on the CBL, the China Baseball League, and the Beijing team, the Tigers. We've been going to the games, and I've been trying to shoot a bit. It's good to actually get out of the office and do something that approaches reporting again.Baseball on the mainland is in its infancy. The fans are sparse, and the games are free of charge. The field is so far out in the suburbs

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-91159564554386576692007-05-27T03:45:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.452-07:00

I'm aware that what follows is gushingly positive, so if that's not your thing, be forewarned.A couple of weeks ago back in Shantou, I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture of epic proportions: Peter Arnett, the new addition to the J-school faculty, speaking about the life, times, and untimely death of his good friend David Halberstam.(Halberstam, for those who don't know, was a journalist who

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-28544527159936714002007-05-22T22:21:00.000-07:002007-11-06T05:51:27.601-08:00

Lately I've enjoyed getting my 12 cents worth of news from the China Daily, the English-language state-run paper. It's interesting to see what gets covered with a fair degree of accuracy and balance (generally speaking, international news that has utterly nothing to do with China) and what doesn't get covered (anything dealing with China's sensitive issues or Chinese politics).And it's not to say

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-9108414650713895642007-05-20T17:38:00.000-07:002007-11-06T05:52:24.619-08:00

A delegation of Yale University students met with president Hu Jintao on Friday, in a visit to promote greater understanding of China. (Story here.)This correspondent, however, met many of the same members of the delegation at a local dive bar, opportunely named Pure Girl.Engaging in that age-old undergraduate tradition of shots and imbibing copious amounts of beer, the delegation nevertheless

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-7631919771213473672007-05-16T19:47:00.000-07:002007-11-06T05:56:59.387-08:00

What's Ripe in the Middle Kingdom? Danwei itself is the news, with CNN reporting favorably on Sexy Beijing, Danwei's take off on Sex and the City. The article describes the website as "well positioned to capitalize on China's Internet boom." Agreed. It's only a matter of time before Sexy Beijing goes mainstream.Elsewhere, Image Thief has a deeply-considered and thoroughly examined look at the

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-84765167307596891312007-05-12T17:42:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.453-07:00

The number of incidents of mass protest in China in the last few years is often quoted as being in the hundreds of thousands. (So much for the image of the docile and subservient Confucian horde.) One of the main reasons for protests is land seizures, in which local government simply announces villagers have to move, as the new knitting factory goes up. Locals are often compensated, but

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-59692012188152748552007-05-08T23:22:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:04:40.226-07:00

A recent Reuters story that I read in the SCMP (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's premier English-language daily) provided a fascinating peek behind the Wizard-of-Oz curtain that the G maintains here in the Middle Kingdom. Xie Tao, 85, a veteran party official wrote an essay criticizing the current political system and advocating a kind of middle path democratic socialism as practiced by

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-4661889829459426572007-05-07T23:32:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.453-07:00

What the world sees from afar through the eyes of the media is fascinating, especially when you are in a place at a time when something happens. A ferry goes down in Thailand, and everyone from all over the world starts frantically sms-ing you whether you are alright; even though you are on the island where the ferry went down, a few miles from the accident, you are getting the news via satellite

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-17524869014545314902007-05-05T00:24:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.454-07:00

A lucky cannon shot hit the Dutch invasion's munition ship, in the early 1600s; the Dutch thought the Portuguese had some mad weaponry, and fled. Thereby leaving this strange little enclave of Portuguese, Cantonese, African and Las Vegan culture on a peninsula and a few islands in the south of China -- Macau is far enough from Beijing, and certainly different enough, to feel like a foreign

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-8544977865535553712007-04-29T20:44:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.454-07:00

Fei Fei stood up in class four years ago, after I'd been here only about a week. She was tiny, with close-cropped hair and a high voice. But from the very beginning, there was evidence of iron in there somewhere."Hello, my English name is Bob. You can call me Bob. I know Bob is a boy's name, but I don't care," she said.Bob it was. Somehow Fei Fei seems more appropriate now though: My students are

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-66355040311411352442007-04-27T18:50:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.455-07:00

Out the window there’s nothing but the green drooping shadow of the hills that surround the college – no neon signs, screeching horns, or artillery-style fireworks. Most mornings, there’s just the sound of birds twittering in among the green. This morning the kindergarten behind the building is blasting happy music. Even at its insane volume, there’s something comforting about it: the fact that

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-66535209786367763472007-04-24T19:53:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.455-07:00

It's a sea of people. Black-haired heads bob. A shuffling mass. We move a step every ten seconds. Literally. Enormous and oddly-configured luggage bumps along and pushes against us, and I push back; my rucksack is nearly as big a person. When we finally make it through the narrow iron guantlet where human swell bottlenecks and the guards take the ticket, I tell her: "Well, however bad it is,

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-67345307605234882262007-04-20T20:35:00.000-07:002007-04-20T21:09:31.187-07:00

Poor Wayne Chiang...he is at least one of the people of Chinese descent misidentified as the Virginia Tech killer. In Wayne's own words, he does indeed meet some of the criteria of the descriptions of the killer that were circulating the day of the massacre: he's Asian, he recently broke up with his girlfriend, he's got a connection to Virginia Tech, and he's a gun collector. Considering these

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-88351014083610849572007-04-17T23:42:00.000-07:002007-04-18T00:10:45.902-07:00

This is issue is discussed more comprehensively than I could ever do it here,under the title, "Ill-Informed Columnist Scares the Hell out of China."www.beijingnewspeak.com/

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-71740272477956522872007-04-17T22:13:00.000-07:002007-04-17T23:00:58.903-07:00

By now most everyone knows that the shooter in the Virginia case was not Chinese, but Korean. South Korean, to be specific. In fact, in my view: Mostly American really, since he was raised in the States from the time he was a boy.What interests me most about this is the reporting -- including the Melon's -- yesterday of the possible Chinese mainland and student-visa status of the shooter. That

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-11388360623130573122007-04-16T22:42:00.000-07:002007-04-16T22:47:16.530-07:00

A famous leader here in China once said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."While this has nothing to do with political power, it has everything to do with guns...The Chicago Sun Times is reporting that the shooter in the Virginia Tech university massacre "may have been" a mainland Chinese recently arrived in the States on a student visa.If this turns out to be true, it's going to

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-74148196279214274312007-04-10T22:56:00.000-07:002007-04-10T23:00:15.286-07:00

An interesting controversy on the ever-cutting-edge Danwei site. On the lighter side of what they do, a recent episode of their take-off on Sex and the City, Sexy Beijing, deals with the English names that Chinese people select for themselves. It stirred up some debate about whether the episode constituted "media imperialism"...hmmmm...let me check my dictionary...http://www.danwei.orgAnd look

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-65057372650901700292007-04-10T22:50:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:04:40.226-07:00

Suddenly it is not bitterly cold anymore. Central heat all around the city went off on March 15th, and, despite a week of scary weather, the sun has gotten stronger, slowly, day by day. A week ago, the first suggestions of leaves began to appear on skeletal trees. The local bars and restaurants have began dusting off their patios and decks. A few windy days have drifted through, but so far the

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-72425853269440659342007-03-11T23:27:00.000-07:002007-05-28T00:04:40.227-07:00

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-13690307870146132492007-03-11T23:05:00.001-07:002007-05-28T00:06:08.456-07:00

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-43687970147819298552007-03-11T22:48:00.000-07:002007-03-11T22:58:34.800-07:00

I recently spent a month in paradise. As penance for such luxury, I read Night Draws Near, by Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post. The book describes the first few years of the Iraq war, from the fall of Baghdad to the first elections. Sitting there on a southern Thai island, looking at gem-colored water filled with light, reading about unspeakable horror and colossal failure...I don't know

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-55372785493061144362007-03-08T21:55:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:04:40.228-07:00

Man! It feels great to beat the Great Firewall of China, even if it takes blood, sweat and tears to do it. (I have this legitimate excuse for not posting in so long...)Some enterprising journalist should do an investigation into how the Internet police in China actually operate. I get the feeling that there are probably few deliberate spies out there keeping a physical eye on what you are doing;

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-10505502570349689722007-02-11T01:44:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:06:08.456-07:00

Thank God - or Buddha - for Thailand.I couldn't imagine a better antidote to Beijing than this place. Koh Pha Ngan, the small island in the Gulf of Thailand famous for the Full Moon Party, continues to draw more people. Neither sun nor rain nor coup d'etat will deter the farangs, as the Thai refer to foreigners, from flocking here.Heading out tomorrow for three days to a remote island national

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-73687794887428674632007-01-31T00:55:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:04:40.228-07:00

It was bar number four. She was tired, and had a quizzical look on her face, "Did you ever think -why are we here right now- in this place? Is it fun?" I was impressed she was having this thought at 24. Ten years older, here I was in a cramped, smoky space in the small hours of the morning. I looked around at the drunken, dancing crowd. A Radiohead song set to a techno beat was unexpectedly

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-78177130824263294852007-01-26T19:20:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:04:40.229-07:00

Just discovered an incredible website - I'm sure I'm behind on this one. Global Voices Online links to blogs worldwide and provides current events updates, from mostly non-mainstream media, about what's going on on this old blue marble.Of particular interest to me is the focus on "bridge bloggers," those blogging in a non-native language, usually English. Hoping some of our journalism students

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-51106978214615128552007-01-24T23:40:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:08:05.985-07:00

In one hand, he held a machine gun which blazed at an American Blackhawk helicopter overhead. With the other, he reached for a grenade at his waist. His eyes were piercing, and there was a cigar clutched coolly in his lips. Despite the fact that his head was about two sizes too big for his body, Saddam Hussein had never looked as good as he did painted on the front of that bar in the southern

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169612478362871702007-01-23T19:37:00.000-08:002007-11-06T05:58:33.397-08:00

A few items of interest in China news over the last few days. The AFP reports that a study commissioned by a variety of American businesses found that the States may make a ton of money off China - despite the trade deficit, the study projects something like a 67 billion dollar surplus over the next ten years, mostly from service industry business. A nice division of labor...you guys make the

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169448636031074042007-01-21T22:37:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:08:05.987-07:00

I was in Tuopu with Suyi, a couple of other graduating seniors and Professor Hu. We were sitting outside along a little street packed with shops and restaurants, eating hot pot and enjoying the end of the semester. We'd finished and were sitting back contentedly, when Suyi suggested I try some kushui. I had no idea what it was.“It's a drink that's very good for your health," she said, and laughed

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169436462766719172007-01-21T19:13:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:08:05.988-07:00

A few more stories on the minimum wage issue, including the main news item that I'd mentioned:http://english.people.com.cn/200701/20/eng20070120_343182.htmlhttp://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Oct/185735.htmIt's incredible the number of migrant laborers in this country: somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million. That's half the population of the United States. The situation of these laborers

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169355651331040732007-01-20T20:40:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:08:05.989-07:00

A brief news item on CCTV news this morning that several Chinese provinces are raising minimum wage standards. Somehow, this story intrigues me because it seems a perfect example of the gap between what the law aspires to and what happens in reality; as low as the minimum wage must be (I've heard that it's somewhere between 3.5-4.5 RMB an hour, 40-60 cents an hour) in reality I'm sure that many

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169265123454723172007-01-19T19:47:00.001-08:002007-01-21T20:04:09.980-08:00

This is my largely defunct and on-and-off blocked (not me specifically, but Typepad in general) blog of time in Shantou. Of particular interest may be photos of trips in 2005 to Xinjiang and Afghanistan - scroll to the bottom of the page to find links to photoshttp://daxingxing.typepad.com/

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169261740115150912007-01-19T18:38:00.001-08:002007-08-31T19:11:22.564-07:00

I can't remember when it was exactly that I met Cindy, but Id been forewarned about her by my friend Mike. “I think she's kind of psycho" he'd said. After meeting her myself, I'd protest, saying how enthusiastic she was about learning English, how sweet she seemed; but Mike would be proven right in no short time. I guess when you move to a city, and someone's friendly to you, you tend to see what

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169260594340324292007-01-19T18:34:00.000-08:002007-01-19T18:36:34.340-08:00

Philippines, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Florida, and New York City. I highly recommend the slideshow function on Flickr, with some good music. http://www.flickr.com/photos/waywarder/

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38646008.post-1169259887178718542007-01-19T18:14:00.000-08:002007-05-28T00:08:05.990-07:00

It's the last day of class today. The class, English media studies for professional Chinese journalists and business people, has been an eye opener. Until a few months ago, I'd only taught wide-eyed young university students, whose enthusiasm and innocence were large and of equal measure. This group is older, smarter, sarcastically funny and very plugged into what's happening in the world and

Zhongyuanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10722121128488634507noreply@blogger.com0