Chinese Anxiety—In Debate About Overwork, a Glimpse...
TEA LEAF NATIONAlmost half of all Chinese report feeling “more anxiety” now than they did five years ago. What, exactly, is driving these concerns, or increasing reports of these concerns? Avid followers of China-related news might immediately think of censorship and other restrictions on...
Why Can’t China Make Its Food Safe?—Or Can It?
ALEX WANG, JOHN C. BALZANO, ISABEL HILTON (& authors)The month my wife and I moved to Beijing in 2004, I saw a bag of oatmeal at our local grocery store prominently labeled: “NOT POLLUTED!” How funny that this would be a selling point, we thought.But 7 years later as we prepared to return to the US, what was once a joke had...
Maoism: The Most Severe Threat to China
OUYANG BINMa Licheng (马立诚) is a former Senior Editorials Editor at People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s most important mouthpiece, and the author of eleven books. In 2003, when Japan’s then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine inflamed China’s...
Unrest in Beijing Over Mysterious Death of Young Woman
TEA LEAF NATION, RACHEL LUA rare protest in Beijing involving hundreds of people was documented by photos posted on China’s social media (scroll down to see a sample photo). The cause of the protest was the death of a twenty-two-year-old migrant worker, who fell several stories from an apparels...
Lao She in London
ANNE WITCHARDLao She remains revered as one of China’s great modern writers. His life and work have been the subject of volumes of critique, analysis and study. However, the four years the young aspiring writer spent in London between 1924 and 1929 have largely been overlooked. Dr. Anne...
Truth in Chinese Cinema?
JONATHAN LANDRETHIn 1997, as James Cameron’s Titanic sank box office records around the world—including in China—Sally Berger, assistant film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, worked to bring New York moviegoers a raft of Chinese movies they’d never heard of.The fourteen films in the...
“I Just Want to Write”
TEA LEAF NATIONWhether or not I deserved the Nobel Prize, I already received it, and now it’s time to get back to my writing desk and produce a good work. I hear that the 2013 list of Nobel Prize nominees has been finalized. I hope that once the new laureate is announced, no one will pay...
Rat Meat Masquerading as Lamb—Yet Another Food Safety...
TEA LEAF NATIONRat meat + gelatin + red food coloring + nitrates = lamb. Have you tried it yet?“This is what a ‘complete’ sheep looks like,” reads a caption under the photoshopped image of a sheep with Jerry, the mouse from Tom and Jerry, as its head. The image was posted by...
Why Is a 1995 Poisoning Case the Top Topic on Chinese...
RACHEL LU, ANDREW J. NATHAN, SUSAN JAKES (& authors)With a population base of 1.3 billion people, China has no shortage of strange and gruesome crimes, but the attempted murder of Zhu Ling by thallium poisoning in 1995 is burning up China’s social media long after the trails have gone cold. Zhu, a brilliant and beautiful...
The Wall Street Journal: Covering China Past and...
THE EDITORSThe Wall Street Journal was one of the first American publications to set up a bureau in Beijing. Since its establishment, scores of the Journal’s correspondents have traveled in and out of the country to cover China’s economic and political development. On April 30th, 2013,...
The Long Battle Over “White Pollution”
TEA LEAF NATIONIn the past weeks, Chinese citizens have learned that the styrofoam boxes from which they eat their lunches will soon be legal. On February 16, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s highest economic policy-making body, changed the Industrial...
Events
THE EDITORSA listing of upcoming ChinaFile events. Each of the events will be live-streamed here.