The China chapter of Hoop Nation (which probably comprises about, oh, 350 million people, ie, more than the entire United States) is in a deep funk today after the Houston’s Rockets’ inconceivable game seven loss at home last night to the Utah Jazz in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Once again, Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady & Co. …

Censorship in China marches on. A report from RFA on the death—or at least neutering—of one of the few muckraking print publications, called “Commoners,” here in China. Since the RFA site is not–surprise!–accessible in China, I’ll reprint the entire story below.
Commoners, RIP. (And remind me again, when does the much …

In response to comments, I am posting a somewhat better picture pf the torch design that I think makes the connection to the jinqubang clearer. I do concede that “western demons” was an unhappy phrase and somewhat facetious to boot. Regarding the point about Monkey as a rebel, I am posting what seems to me an interesting comment by …

Tuesday is the start of China’s Golden Week holiday, when tens of millions of people head out on vacation. Last year 415,000 of them came to Hong Kong, and many restaurants, shops and hotels saw an uptick in business. Now people wonder whether recent reports of local stores selling fake watches and jewelry to mainland tourists will …

Is it just us or does the just-released design of the Olympic Torch look amazingly like…..

Jingubang, the magic cudgel carried by the legendary Sun Wukong, Sage of Emptiness and Monkey King? Jodi Xu of our Beijing bureau thinks so. “When the unveiling ceremony was held on April 27 in Beijing,” she writes, “the host of the …

Numbers in China, as has been noted elsewhere in this blog, are squishy, too put it mildly. With the Health Ministry numbers I referred to below, I cite them as they indicate a trend rather than thinking they represent an exact statistical number. Allegories for the reader’s edification like Biblical stories, and for both, having faith …

The horrors of health care (or lack of it) in China are a constant topics in the Chinese media, where tales of fraudulent doctors (and even fraudulent hospitals), blatant overcharging, over-prescription and deadly mis-diagnosis and so on are common. The Ministry of Health yesterday released statistics for last year that show these are …

Another example of the sort of Olympics-related protests we have mentioned will be increasingly common. This one was at the base camp for Mount Everest and about Tibet. See the story here unless you are in China (in which case you should have figured out how to slip around the Great Firewall by proxy anyway). There’s also a video on …

The current New Yorker has a fascinating piece by Jianying Zha about her brother, democracy activist Zha Jianguo, who was convicted of “subverting the state” for his role in helping create the banned China Democracy Party and is serving a 9-year prison sentence. The article tells of the author’s complicated feelings towards her brother …

I was watching TV in a Hong Kong cafe last night when a jarring image at the end of a commercial caught my eye. It was this symbol:

It designates a product as one of China’s top brands. I couldn’t help but think of a similar symbol, that of Nazi Germany’s Schutzstaffel (SS), a brutal outfit that, among other things, committed genocide …

I went to an energy and environment conference here in Shanghai recently in which one of the foreign participants—gripped apparently by the sort of irrational exuberance that afflicts a lot of foreigners peddling wares (or, in this guy’s case, services…) here—said something to the effect that China could and would leap-frog the …

A few weeks ago the China Blog marked the death of Nina Wang, Asia’s richest woman. As expected, Wang’s passing is hardly the end of her dramatic story. After her husband was declared dead in 1999, Wang and her father-in-law battled over the estate, which was then estimated at $3 billion. That clash centered around two competing wills. …

This from our colleague Jodi Xu:

A 23-episode TV series featuring a young Mao Zedong, the founder of People’s Republic of China, has received an unexpectedly favorable reception from young Chinese. The show, QiaTongxue Shaonian (恰同学少年) or “Those Student Days” (it sounds better in Chinese, being a phrase from one of Mao’s …