Shock Values
March 23: Unemployed community surgeon Zheng Minsheng attacks elementary school students with a knife in Nanping, Fujian, killing eight. April 9: Certified psychiatric patient hacks to death a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone
Picture this. A top official of a powerful state newspaper stands before a room of journalism students and flatly admits that their government has been lying to them, changing facts in the news or...
View ArticleA Slightly Late Response
James Zadroga was a NYPD officer and one of the police, fire, and paramedic first responders to the attacks at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He died in 2006; the cause was in dispute but is believed...
View ArticleThe World According to Xinhua
The world portrayed in China’s state media has a certain disconnect to reality. Hence the joke from ordinary Chinese: “When can my life resemble the one on CCTV”? Recently President Hu visited a woman...
View ArticleA Cautionary Tale
Everyone is imprinting their hopes on the revolution in Egypt. China and America have both stressed the need for a peaceful and stable transition of power; and though both hope that this transition...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tittle-Tattle Fatigue
I’m a regular CCTV viewer. Hand to God. However, most shows I watch grudgingly because I can’t avoid it. Living with a Chinese partner in a miniscule one-bedroom apartment has forced me to accept the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
And on the Seventh Day News Rested
Yesterday was the seventh day after the Wenzhou railway crash that claimed dozens of lives and rocked the Weibo micro-blogging universe. The seventh day after a death in China is called touqi (头七) and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The State of American and Chinese New Media
There is a battle raging in Hollywood, and it’s getting ugly. The explosive growth of the Netflix customer base, which now has more than 24 million subscribers (more than any individual cable...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Humor Me
Brother High-speed Rail Safety Helmet Niels Bohr once said, “Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.” Certainly, humor is one way in which the Chinese public have chosen to deal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Kim is Dead, Long Live the Kim
As a China watcher, the most remarkable aspect about the recent death of North Korea’s hereditary Dear Leader is the level to which it has exposed the Chinese media’s divorce from reality. Last night...
View Article
