Meat and Telecoms

The Rise of China and Meat Prices
Back when I was in California growing up, my parents would occasionally take us out to eat at western restaurants or fast food places. I was generally able to finish my food as a kid, but my sister used to be able to eat only a spec of food before she explodes [...]

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关我鸟事，我出来打酱油的

Buying Soy Sauce
I like random Chinese phrases that become extremely popular on the internet. I personally think they’re much more interesting than those 4-letter chengyu that the ‘cultured’ people use.

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Freedom in China

The west has generally perceived China to be a country without freedom. That’s why there’s always this talk about no human rights, police brutality, and government regulations over every little thing you do. When someone says this to a Chinese person, they would generally get a reply about how China is free and they never [...]

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Random Thoughts about China

Alright, I kinda wanna talk about something other than the earthquake, so here are some random things I’ve been thinking about.
First of all, there’s sports. A lot of people in the United States like to call Yao Ming and Liu Xiang tools of the CCP. I mean they really don’t have much personality when compared to [...]

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Criticism and Crisis

Internet Special Agents
Whenever some sort of disaster or crisis strikes, there’s usually some kind of call for ‘unity’. Anti-Flag and Rage Against the Machine gets taken off the radio, people all go to enquire about joining the armed forces, and people wave a lot of flags. Any dissenting opinion leads to condemnation that they’re unpatriotic [...]

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Earthquake Links

Well, now that I’m back at work I guess it’s time to start gearing up the post-writing-machine again. However, I’m a little rusty after running around to different tourist sites and trying to think of different types of Chinese pastas to feed my noodles-addicted sister for the past week so here are just three links [...]

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Enough Tears to Go Around

Just got back from a little trip to Guangdong, but my sister is coming today for a 10 day visit, so I won’t have much time to write anything since I’ll be her tour guide and translator around Beijing.
So let me ramble for a bit about nothing before I go meet her at that big [...]

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Away Message

I will be out of town for the next four to five days, so unless I drop by a net bar, I probably won’t be posting.
Also, I will not be able to moderate comments so if you haven’t posted here before, your comment might not show up for a while.

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Earthquake and Politics

Detailed Updates at Shanghaiist
I retract my previous statement in which I dismissed the earthquake as something that happens all the time. I know little about earthquakes and didn’t quite realize the significance of a 7.8 earthquake. I made a premature assumption that people were getting excessively paranoid, which was the case when people were talking [...]

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Earthquake in China

BBC News
Xinhua News
CNN News
The Guardian
So there’s a big earthquake that hit the northwestern part of Sichuan as well as a few other earthquakes around the country. There’s all this talk about how this isn’t a very good year for China with the Darfur stuff, terrorists in Xinjiang, Tibetan protests, disruption of the torch relay, intestinal [...]

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