Yes, That CCTV Gala Sketch Was Racist

Like most families in China, we always spend part of our Chinese New Year’s Eve watching the CCTV Gala, one of the most watched annual events in all of television with an annual viewership of about 400 million people. (By contrast, the Superbowl is watched by about 100 million people). This year, though, we had Read More

There and Back Again – Going Full Circle

I mentioned in a previous post that big changes were coming (as if bringing our daughter home only six months ago wasn’t a big enough change!). So today I can finally announce that… We are moving to Yangshuo! Our China journey began nearly seven years ago in Yangshuo in Guangxi province. We came to China Read More

Chinese Company Now Owns Rights to Iconic Tiananmen Square Photos

When I read this, I thought it must have been an Onion article, but apparently not. Bill Gates recently sold the rights to countless images, including dozens of images from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre to a Chinese company, Visual China Group. “The transaction strengthens our dominant position in China’s image industry, enhances Read More

China's New Domestic Violence Law – The Good, The Bad, and the Vague

On Sunday, China passed its first law prohibiting domestic violence and offering protection for victims of domestic abuse. It might be hard to believe, but before Sunday, there was no law prohibiting domestic violence in China. As far as authorities were concerned, a husband beating his wife was not breaking the law. Women who did Read More

China Should Accept Syrian Refugees

In the 1930s and 40s, America turned its back on Jewish refugees. Otto Frank, the father of perhaps the most famous Jewish victim of the Holocaust Anne Frank, applied for American visas to get his family to safety, but the family, and thousands of others, were denied, left to be crushed under a wave of Read More

Interview with Xinran, the Author of Buy Me The Sky

Most readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of the author Xinran. I reviewed her book “The Good Women of China” here and wrote about her book “Letters From an Unknown Chinese Mother” here. Her latest book “Buy Me The Sky: The remarkable truth of China’s one-child generations” talks about the children Read More

Dozens of SZ Expats Swindled in United Airlines Flight Scam

The following was originally published in the Shenzhen Daily. I have added a little more information for clarity and an analysis to the end. DOZENS of expats in Shenzhen have been swindled out of tens of thousands of yuan in a United Airlines fraud case allegedly perpetuated by a well-known Shenzhen international student, an investigation Read More

China's Family Planning Policies Still Firmly in Place

Don’t worry, everyone. China still has the most brutal and backward family planning policies in the world. I work at a newspaper, but the biggest news in weeks broke while I was on my way home for the weekend Thursday night. In the 45-minutes it took to get from my office to my home, my Read More

Buying (Banned) Books and Getting Published at the Hong Kong Book Fair

This past weekend, Seth, Zoe, and I made our way to the Hong Kong Book Fair. The Hong Kong Book Fair is the largest book show in Asia, with over 500 vendors from over 30 countries and over 1 million guests. We had two purposes for our trip: finding a publisher and buying banned books. Read More