Amidst all the depressing news surrounding us it is sometimes necessary to feature something, well, completely silly. I couldn’t call this only in China (see the previous post on these lines here) as people all over the world do stupid stuff and put it on the internet. Here’s a young Chinese guy who says he’s just bought a bazillion …

This is a spoof diary of a day in the life of an ordinary Chinese that has been circulating on the web recently (in Chinese here, for example). I have edited out large chunks as it gets pretty repetitive, though that of course is the point. The excellent translation is courtesy of Chris Hughes of the London School of Economics and …

Here’s our story on China’s upcoming Shenzhou VII mission and plans for the country’s first spacewalk.

Jailed Chinese activist Hu Jia and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, have made the early list of favorites for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. From the Associated Press:

(OSLO, Norway) — The annual guessing game about who will get the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize focused this year on a possible human rights rebuke for China.

Experts said the coveted

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Our take on milk powder and other recent disasters here.

Lin Yang on an exhibition of post-earthquake photos from Sichuan:

A special section at the 2008 Pingyao International Photography Festival is dedicated to 50 residents of the quake-stricken town of Wenchuan. They recorded life after the quake with point-and-shoot cameras donated by …

The director of The Joy Luck Club revisits the theme of Chinese-American identity with two new films this fall. Click here to submit your questions for Wayne Wang, then look for the upcoming interview in TIME.

To find out why Asian models like Du Juan are finally getting a share of the spotlight, read TIME Style & Design’s story, Color Lines on the Catwalk, and watch the accompanying video here.

It’s probably one of the hoariest clichés in the book about China but in this case it keeps popping up because it has a core nugget of real insight. The word for crisis in Chinese is weiji, 危机, made up as the tale goes from two characters, one meaning ‘danger’ and the other ‘opportunity.’ Although it’s a bit of a stretch …

Coverage of the 85 billion-dollar AIG bailout by the Fed in the Chinese media has generally been fairly reserved. That’s partly because AIG owns around twenty per cent of the People’s Insurance Company of China, the country’s largest casualty insurer, and the government doesn’t want anyone getting worked up about a possible threat to its …

As Austin notes below, the Mayor and (more importantly) Deputy Communist Party Secretary of Shijiazhuang, the center of the storm over the tainted baby powder has been fired. The Chairwoman of the main company embroiled in the scandal, Sanlu, has also been relieved of her posts and is widely expected to be arrested soon. In other words, …

Good news, folks. “Most companies’ baby milk powder is safe,” China’s State Council says. I think that’s meant to be reassuring. But “most?” That’s the always-look-on-the-bright-side way to say the tainted milk powder scandal (here’s our story from yesterday) that started with one producer, Sanlu, has now expanded to 22. …