Asia

One of the privileges of being a Time reporter is working with great photographers. I get a thrill out of seeing them approach an ordinary scene and produce and extraordinary image. I find this particularly intriguing as, despite an keen appreciation of good photography, I am a fairly lame photographer myself. Still, I enjoy shooting now …

I knew there was a reason I should’ve taken those damned piano lessons my parents wanted me to take when I was a kid…
This from today’s New York Times, on the match between musicality and mandarin…

March 20, 2007
Skilled Ear for Music May Help Language
By ERIC NAGOURNEY

Anyone who has tried to learn Chinese can attest to how …

If there’s one thing that can get people riled in Hong Kong, it’s money. Recently, it’s been bad money. Fake $1,000 HK bills (worth about $128 US) have been showing up around town, and retailers and consumers are spooked. I have managed to remain calm, mainly because the “gold bull,” as the yellow note is known here, rarely makes its way …

I forgot to post this from the just-finished National People’s Congress, or rather from Premier Wen Jiabao’s Press Conference afterwards. A pretty impressive turn out, I thought, though the guy next to me said he was there reporting for the Inner Mongolian Yurt Builders Weekly…or was it the Hothot Times?

Anyway, it struck me …

A few months ago Hong Kong was waiting for an election campaign. Now it has one, and it’s surprisingly lively. Chief Executive Donald Tsang’s re-election is a foregone conclusion, after all. So why the debates, open-top bus rides, and flesh pressing with people who won’t have a say on March 25?

While most people in Hong Kong can’t vote …

From the indispensable Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at Cal Berkeley’s School of Journalism, comes the following classic exchange between a reporter and Wang Min, the governor of Jilin Province, on the role of the press in present day China. How odd to have a provincial governor compare his fellow government …

This is for the readers who asked for more pandas and fewer vivisected pigeons. It is Huamei, who is indeed as several people pointed out, U.S. born (hence the name: 中华 的 华, 美国的美). Lastly, a link to what is definitely going to be the last Panda post for a while, a video clip of Huamei which is a bit better than the …

A number of people commented on my double standards in posting the Robo-pigeon picture and expressing my disgust. As I said in the post, admittedly in a slightly weasely hedge, I was aware that this goes on in the rest of the world. Apparently, I wildly underestimated just how much, having not really thought this through. Mea culpa. Or, …

This purports to be a picture of a pigeon which has had electrodes implanted into its head by scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center the Shandong University of Science and Technology in Qingdao. The idea is they can send signals and direct its flight. This is called vivisection, a 19th century sort of word but …

Five Questions for Jim Mann

Jim Mann, who was Beijing Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times from 1984 to 1987, is the author of Beijing Jeep, a classic tale of one of the early Sino-American joint ventures after China opened up its economy. More recently he wrote the Rise of the Vulcans, a superb early account of the George W. Bush …

Click here Download file to download what I admit is a pretty bad video, but it makes a point. You’ll see the long bamboo pole being wielded from above giving this female panda Huamei the odd whack. (you can hear her making a mewling sound of displeasure) This was to correct her “bad habits” I was told. Firstly she likes to play with the …

Here’s the first piece I’ve seen on the publication of the late Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs in Hong Kong, a book based on conversations with a close friend of his during his many years under house arrest. It sounds as if it will live up to its advanced billing as something that will, to put it mildly, cause great discomfort among the Chinese …

I was lucky enough to visit the Panda Protection and Research Center at Wolong outside of Chengdu in Sichuan Province. As you see, the Center is located among some pretty spectacular hills..

And in fact those resident there (around 120, though it varies) lead a pretty good life as Joe Six Pack here can testify.

The two chief …