If you're soon to be traveling to adopt a young Chinese person - or if you're just the type to be interested in other people's trips - you could do worse than to cast your eyes over Randy Cassingham's travel blog.

If you haven't heard of Cassingham, he's one of the godfathers of internet publishing. He's been running a for-profit e-mail newsletter, This is True, since the mid-90s. It collects news stories from the world press - focusing on the bizarre, idiotic and just plain unbelievable... more

Because traveling families (and other people with a connection to China, like, uh, people who've adopted from China) need to know what's going on, here's just a few headlines from the Middle Kingdom:

The Dalai Lama just got a medal from America's government, and boy, is the Chinese legislature ticked off. That official statement is as good a way as any to learn China's version of Tibetan history. It also ends dramatically:

No force can stop the progress of Tibet in the great family of the Chinese nation. All attempts to interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine... more

So, we're teetering closer than ever to a diplomatic something between the United States and China - something that could, one way or another, have a direct effect on paperwork and people traveling between the two countries. Including, of course, those of us involved in the business of international adoption.

Today is the day that the Dalai Lama is supposed to get a Congressional Gold Medal. He's already been buddying around with Dubya at the White House, and joining Al Gore in the limelight from getting the Nobel Peace Prize. ... more

So Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, the cartoon we've all been waiting for with the Chinese-American family and the adopted Chinese vocal star... well, we'll have to keep waiting. It won't be airing until February now. I'm hoping this doesn't bode ill for the project. And I hope... more

As someone interested in 1. news that affects China and 2. news that affects people traveling to China, you might have heard something about the recent trouble in the country we call Burma, but that its own government calls Myanmar. It's the bit that borders Yunnan province and a tiny piece of Tibet.

People are protesting, and protestors are being rounded up for interrogation:

relative of three released women said those being interrogated... more

So, our Autumn Moon festival was a bit of a dud this year, waylaid by cold germs and dismal, tropical rain. In other places, there were other observances, though. There were bigger Autumn Moon festivals for adoptive families in Pittsford, New York, and Bayside, California, separated by the continent but linked by similar situations - families eager to create a sense of "Chineseness" for their kids. These things always seem paradoxical to me (but the descriptions of food make me hungry... more

So, for those of us who care about the kind of world our kids come from and will be left in after we're gone (and who doesn't?), there are a couple of developments in the Big Summer Stories.

Toxic product recalls: Remember the lethal Chinese toothpaste sweetened with antifreeze story? Did you ever wonder exactly how the diethylene glycol was discovered to begin with? It wasn't an imports inspector. It wasn't a curious doctor. It was a Kuna Indian dude from Panama - a civil servant who doesn't even own a car - who ... more

Every so often, I play the "What If...?" game. I think, in part, it's because I grew up reading comics - or, well, more like listening to friends tell me about the comics they were reading, because buying comics wasn't really on my parents' list of things to do. Forbidden fruit. Or, as "What If..." comics would have it: "The road not taken!" This series, in particular, took familiar characters like Spider-Man and placed them in subtly... more

Traveling to China? The future seems to be arriving there in some pretty spectacular ways. I mean, more than just the kind of future you see in a child's eyes - I'm talking about the kind of future you used to see in movies with the number "2000" stuck at the end of the title.

No ordinary Olympic pool.

Like, for instance, you have to see the pool they've built in Beijing. It's like a mad hybrid of Roger Dean... more

I like reading stories about Chinese adoption... but I also think it's important for traveling families to keep up with what's going on in China right now, and for families at home to know what's going on with Chinese people that they (parents and children alike) might be running into or looking up to.

So here are a few of those stories, fresh off the wires:

The Cincinnati Post reports on teenagers from America returning to their birthplace in Changzhou. Funny, my first reaction to that is: maaan, teenagers. I'm so dooooomed! My... more