Asia

One of the dramatic tales to come out of this spring’s Sichuan earthquake was the fate of the pandas. The China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda was near the epicenter of the magnitude 8.0 quake, and the home of China’s panda recovery efforts was badly damaged and blocked from the outside world for several days. …

A new site calling itself Chinasmack (www.chinasmack.com) sets out to translate the latest controversies preoccupying Chinese netizens into English. Like the internet in China itself, the variety of maerial on Chinasmack varies hugely, ranging from the completely silly (man dressed as a mummy on the Shanghai subway! Pictures, too!) to …

Beijing is apparently ignoring the Dalai Lama’s comments about giving up on making a breakthrough and Chinese officials said yesterday that the next round of talks between the two sides would go ahead as planned. This is in accordance with their apparent long-term game plan, to wait until the 73 year old current Dalai Lama, with his …

Our 10 Questions for film director Wayne Wang is out in the current issue of TIME Asia, and online here (this link has been fixed), with an accompanying podcast and photo gallery. 15 years after The Joy Luck Club, Wang is once again telling Chinese-American stories.

Just over a year ago, Austin and I wrote about a bronze horse head from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace that was controversially auctioned off at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. Macau’s casino tycoon Stanley Ho swept it up for $8.84 million and donated it to the state-run Poly museum in Beijing. Now two more of the 12 zodiac animal heads, …

This is somewhat counterintutitve but clever. A group in Hong Kong have developed a Firefox addon that let’s you experience what it’s like to surf the net inside China’s Great Firewall. The folks at Chinachanel.com apparently feel that it’s important for outsiders to find out just how carefully controlled the Chinese web experience is. …

It’s a pretty firm rule of doing business in China that you don’t want to get on the bad side of those people who regulate your industry. Like bureaucrats in other areas (think sports here), they tend to take the attitude that anybody openly defying them should be immediately squished as an example to others. But when you are trying to …

Further thoughts on the seemingly hopeless situation in Tibet here.

A surely unique perspective. God knows what it all means, but you can “watch” the extremely static video and listen to the song on youtube here. Lyrics below, courtesy of Prof. Don Clarke. Don’t think they’ll be performing at the National Center for the Performing Arts anytime soon.

CHINESE DEMOCRACY
It don’t really matter
You’ll …

Asian and European leaders met in Beijing over the weekend and winds, as you can see were very strong. That gave us beautiful clear days in the capital. The final communique from the meeting was pretty windy too despite being loaded down with platitudes and truisms. The one interesting aspect was the pressure the Europeans and …

TIME’s blog server cratered over the weekend and we migrated to a new host. We’ll have an automatic redicrect up soon but meanwhile please click here to go to the new site at: http://china.blogs.time.com/

It is always hard to tell what is for show and what is real in the long, drawn out tragedy of Sino-Tibet relations but the Dalai Lama’s announcement that he has had enough (see here) and is giving up on talks with China is an important moment, even if it is partially symbolic. It has also lead to renewed speculation about whether he …