The Beijing nail house mentioned here has been torn down. At the site earlier today there was nothing but workmen moving the last bits of rubble, planting flowers and painting the red wall behind where the Yu family store once stood. A person at a nearby store said the destruction work began at 3 a.m. on Friday. From an aesthetic …

Having just read Jurassic Park, I decided to mesh my interests in archaeology and China by penning a 20-page sci-fi adventure story about two American archaeologists poking around the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor, and the chaos that erupts when Qin’s vast terracotta army is disturbed from its slumber … …

Yao Ming, whose NBA season ended in February when he injured his left foot, returned to play last night at an Olympic warm-up game in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. The All Star center’s first official game since undergoing surgery for a stress …

As you can see from the picture below, it’s raining pretty heavily in Beijing. This may seem pretty commonplace but it is significant for a number of reasons.

One is that it has been a very rainy summer indeed by Beijing standards. Obviously that’s a worry for the Opening Ceremony where a rain-out would be a big loss of face. China …

Well, I finally saw Kung Fu Panda last night. Pretty good and quite funny, though with all the hype it couldn’t help but be a bit of a letdown. I did wonder what they spent the 130 million dollars on. All those stars’ voices might have something to do with it I suppose. But it also left me a little puzzled about some of the agonizing …

This is just a quick heads up to point out my piece on time.com today about the short-term measures the government is putting in place to ensure clean air for the Olympics. What I was hopping to convey was that it’s a bit silly (and yes, I’ve been guilty of it, too) to look out the window with a month to go before the Games, see the …

Beijing is full of patriotism these days. National flags adorn cars and “I [heart] China” t-shirts are in fashion. But it’s hard to match the display of one small store in central Beijing. A national flag flies high above its roof, next to a white Olympic flag. Below hang a pair of Communist …

From my colleague Wu Nan, some thoughts on the release of the film “Kung Fu Panda” in China:

Before the American movie “Kung Fu Panda” debuted in China, it seemed destined to set off controversy that foreign filmmakers were appropriating Chinese tradition for profit. Performance artist Zhao Bandi, who uses pandas in his own work, led …

Dissident, dissidents, dissidents complains one reader, Mr. Munir Ming, echoing George III to the historian, “Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr. Gibbon?” Anyway, probably equally exasperated, Mr. Ming suggest we we take a day off and go out and enjoy the best day Beijing has seen this whole summer. I am taking his advice and …

A strong piece by Jill Drew in the Washington Post (here)
about how Beijing is silencing dissidents ahead of the Olympics by arrest and intimidation. Like all good stories of this kind, it’s strength comes from telling the story of one dissident, Fu Pei. He and several others have been raising the “sensitive” issue of the tofu schools …

When my septic tank overflowed and caused a toxic mess in the Beijing courtyard where I live, the last thing I expected was that it would bring a measure of notoriety to my humble neighborhood. So I was a little surprised to walk out of my door the other day to be confronted with this question from my neighbor Feng: “Shuangzhou, we …

Are John Woo and Chow Yun Fat still friends? Does the director regret going to Hollywood? And what’s with all the birds? You’ve sent in your questions. Now read his answers or watch a video of the interview.