Xinhua News Agency reports on a new tightening of One-Child Policy enforcement, in the form of a campaign to publicly shame people who pay extra to have more children.

"The public is very much aware that some celebrities simply pay money to have two or more children. This kind of behavior must be stopped," said Zhang Wenbiao, head of the provincial family planning commission, at a press conference.

As public figures, these people should be an example of compliance with the law, instead of circumventing the one-child family policy by simply paying fines, Zhang said.

Zhang... more

There's an interesting discussion going on at Brian Stuy's Research-China.org blog about the fairly recent Beth Russell New York Times piece about the "missing orphans" of China.

Stuy thinks her math is all messed up.

Her essay is filled with intellectual "leaps". One of the most... more

The leftists over at Daily Kos have an interesting reflection on poetry and Chinese history -- specifically, Auden's reflections on the Rape of Nanking. Well, we call it "The Nanjing Massacre" nowadays. But it's still a big deal in lots of people's minds. That's lots of people.

And Auden wrote a pretty good sonnet.

What was I saying about pigs & babies?

Apparently, officials in Taiwan are hoping for an especially provident union this year -- between a very special husband and sow.

The People's Daily reports:

With the Year of the Pig around the corner, a pair of pet pigs -- Shui Fu-ko, the bridegroom, and Huang Pu-pu, the bride -- got marital blessings from their owners, local folks, county leaders and even a priest who presided over their nuptials on Monday.

Every guest invited... more

I'm a little bit fond of this particular (somewhat ominous) hexagram, because when I tossed the coins while in the process of adopting Daughter, lo, these three years ago, this was one of the two hexagrams that came up. I liked the fact that it has the (corny, old) connotation of "a journey over water." It's one of eight hexagrams made by doubling a trigram -- in this case, it's double-water, or more specifically, double-quickly running-water, like a rapid... more

I haven't actually read this book, so I can't officially call this a "review," but if you're reading this blog, you may or may not be interested in The Chinese Adoption Handbook: How to Adopt from China and Korea, by John Maclean.

It's supposed to be an exhaustive, easy-to-use guide to the daunting process of adopting... more

"Wǎng jì" means "internet" in Mandarin.

The kids are alright? eBay and Google take a backseat to internet kidstuff in, well, what could be the largest market in the world.

And people keep saying the internet is different in China.

No other Internet company in the world — not even Google — has achieved the kind of dominance in its home market... more

For one thing, The Rumor Queen site has a fine list of blogs of people who've just gotten referrals.

So if you want to see pictures of babies, babies, babies, you now have lots of places to go.

On the other hand, I'm curious where people who read this come from, so I want to see if this little gizmo will work:

Create your own visitor map!

Hmmm. The stats showing actual visitor locations should be up here: http://www.maploco.com/view.php?id=204996... more

I've written briefly about the potential Roman ancestry of the taijitu, or "yin-yang symbol," before. (And you know about the Jews of Kaifeng, right?)

Now, the Daily Telegraph is asking: Are there... more

Too huge to stick on here.

Look, it's the whole city, just about.

Panorama.