I was sure I'd mentioned this before, but I appear not to have. Rob Gifford, a couple of years ago, produced an NPR series following one highway - Route 312, China's answer to Route 66 - across China from the eastern metropolis of Shanghai to the Gobi Desert town of Korgaz on the western border. The trip is all archived here, with pictures and maps, so you can listen to the whole thing,... more

China and Europe have connections that go back further than you'd think. So what *does* a "Chinese" person look like anyway?

National Geographic brings news of a fellow named Yu Hong found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb.

He was buried there with "a woman of East Asian descent" (my guess, and theirs, would be his wife), but his DNA is different.... more

Item 1: Is Chinese business success based on lucky numbers?

That's what the Wall Street Journal seems to be asking up there. Actually that particular story is mostly about how individual investors make up the bulk of Chinese stock trading, rather than in America, where conglomerates and brokerages take up the biggest slice of the pie.

But it's got a nice chart of Chinese numbers in it, and a nice overview of why it's a good practice to give somebody you like eight of something, and why you won't find a fourth or 14th floor in a lot of tall buildings,... more

Chinese - or, I should say, Mandarin, the official spoken language of China*, has a bad rap as being a Very Difficult Language. I'm not sure this is entirely deserved - after all, more human beings speak it than any other language, and people are more or less the same wherever you go.

It's actually quite simple for most English-speakers to get a few sentences of Mandarin together - enough to a/impress people that you're trying,... more

So, since my last two entries on the subject, the Washington Post follows up with more reporting on toxic China. Or, more properly, reporting on Chinese imports with things in them that shouldn't be.

Last month, 107 shipments of food containing things like pesticides and banned antibiotics got snagged by the FDA, along with over 1,000 shipments of dietary... more

Here is a traveling dream come true: A man named Joff Summerfield is bicycling around the world. Over the past year, he's traveled from London across Europe, into the Middle East, through Australia and New Zealand and has just entered China. On a penny farthing bicycle.

He's also wearing a pith helmet, because... more

Mao's famously big face is looking a little bit darker thanks to vandalism (or at least it was before the cleaning crews got finished).

A guy down on his luck threw "something flaming" at the giant portrait overlooking Tiananmen Square. The painting didn't catch fire, but it got a little sooty.

(The Dalai Lama, that notorious anti-Mao "splittist," probably wasn't responsible - he's just announced... more

How do you say "Bueller? Bueller?" in Mandarin?

I've been looking at the programs in which American yayloos like me go to China and teach English again. (That is, I have again been looking, not that I would be notionally teaching English again. Maybe I shouldn't be trusted with this language after all.)

Anyway, I found this one, Worldwide Language Study, which has an awfully sunny and green image... more

Beijing Ancient Observatory

OK, so what I was saying about toxic counterfeiting? That isn't the only bit of advanced biochemistry that China's contributing to the world. (And it's not like... more

Kongfuzi, better known on this side of the Prime Meridian as Confucius, outlined one of the world's clearest and most durable ethical systems. Thousands of years after writing his Analects, he's still got admirers among scholars (and bloggers!) around the world. And although viewed as a dangerously counter-revolutionary imperial influence during the... more