Featured Article
Vatican and China in final push for elusive deal on bishops (October 21, 2016, Reuters)
Representatives from the Vatican and China are expected to meet before the end of the month in Rome in an effort to finalize a deal on the ordination of bishops on the mainland, a move aimed at ending a longstanding dispute, according to Catholic Church sources familiar with the negotiations. The Church sources also told Reuters that China is preparing to ordain at least two new bishops before the end of the year and these appointments would have the blessing of the Vatican. A person with ties to the leadership in Beijing confirmed that these ordinations would go ahead.
Joann Pittman
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October 27, 2016
Featured Article
Digital Divide: Does the Web Only Benefit China’s Urban Rich? (October 19, 2016, Sixth Tone)
Bai Yansong, a presenter at state broadcaster China Central Television, posed provocative questions to industry representatives at an e-commerce conference held last week in Sichuan province, southwestern China. “If the internet only makes big cities bigger and more convenient, has people rushing in and raising housing prices, while people in small towns just play video games, what is its value?” Bai asked.
Joann Pittman
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October 20, 2016
Featured Article
Discoveries May Rewrite History of China's Terra-Cotta Warriors (October 12, 2016, National Geographic)
In the four decades since mysterious terra-cotta statues first came to light in northern China, archaeologists have uncovered a whole lifelike army. But that wasn’t the only secret hidden underground there. Stunning revelations are now rewriting the history of the great ruler who created this army as part of his final resting place. And a radical new theory even suggests that foreign artists trained his craftsmen.
Joann Pittman
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October 13, 2016
Featured Article
How China got its name, and what Chinese call the country (October 5, 2016, South China Morning Post)
During periods when the Chinese nation was unified under one ruling house, the name of the dynasty was also the name of the nation, thus “the Great Tang”, “the Great Qing” and so on. The same principle applied when China was divided, with individual states, great or otherwise, bearing their own names. However, several names have been used to represent the idea of an integral geographic and cultural nation, the most famous one being Zhongguo (“the Middle Kingdom”).
Joann Pittman
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October 6, 2016
Featured Article
Video: China’s Quest for Scientific Glory and Aliens (September 27, 2016, The Guardian)
China’s new radio telescope, the largest in the world—and the latest marker of Beijing’s ambition to become a global player in science—began its search for signals from distant galaxies on Sunday.
Joann Pittman
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September 29, 2016
Featured Article
Being Christian in China's Jerusalem (September 18, 2016, BBC)
Danny Vincent travels to Wenzhou to meet Pastor Zhang, an illegal pastor in one of the thousands of underground churches that serve the millions of Chinese Christians. However, he also meets a pastor from a government registered church who defends the crosses being taken down and how he says the real reasons that crosses are demolished is because they are illegally built and not because the Chinese government is so concerned about the meteoric rise in the faith.
Joann Pittman
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September 22, 2016
That was a stupid idea — until we thought of it: The cultural phenomenon of squatting toilets, split pants and giant hickeys (September 11, 2016, The Culture Blend)
Maybe, the most prominent recent example of “it was stupid until we thought of it” has been brought to us by 23 time gold medalist Michael Phelps (and numerous other Olympians who jumped on the cupping train). He taught us in Rio that gigantic hickeys aren’t always a bad thing.
Joann Pittman
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September 15, 2016
Featured Article
Shariah With Chinese Characteristics: A Scholar Looks at the Muslim Hui (September 6, 2016, The New York Times)
Mr. Erie’s recently published book, “China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law,” is a look at how Shariah — Islamic law and ethics — is implemented among the Hui. In an interview he discussed his findings, which confound many preconceptions about Shariah, Chinese law and the rigidity of the Communist state.
Joann Pittman
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September 8, 2016
Featured Article
China: When the Cats Rule (August 26, 2016, New York Review of Books)
But it’s in Cat Country that Lao She stretches himself the furthest, producing one of the most remarkable, perplexing, and prophetic novels of modern China. On one level it is a work of science fiction—a visit to a country of cat-like people on Mars—that lampoons 1930s China. On a deeper level, the work predicts the terror and violence of the early Communist era and the chaos and brutality that led to Lao She’s death at the Lake of Great Peace. Cat Country is often called a dystopian novel, but when Lao She took his own life, it was an uncannily accurate portrait of the reality around him.
Joann Pittman
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September 1, 2016
Featured Article
Cradle of Tofu (August 18, 2016, The World of Chinese)
With the possible exceptions of rice and dumplings, few foods seem as intrinsically tied to Chinese culture as tofu. But despite its widespread popularity throughout China and vegetarians everywhere, the origins of this food remain shrouded in mysteries of Chinese kings obsessed with finding an elixir for immortality.
Joann Pittman
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August 25, 2016
Featured Article
Why China’s Cities Must Maintain Ties With the Countryside (August 16, 2016, Sixth Tone)
Urbanization normally refers to the movement of rural populations toward a city. But Shanghai and other Chinese cities serve as evidence that urbanization is often much more complicated. In essence, it’s about change of lifestyle. The divide between rural and urban is more obvious in China than it is in any Western country.
Joann Pittman
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August 18, 2016
Featured Article
Why Won’t China Stop Moaning About the Rio Olympics? (August 9, 2015, Sixth Tone)
There were only two ways of concealing this embarrassment. The first was to admit that China had overemphasized the importance of the Olympics — that what we had treasured was just average in everyone else’s eyes. Obviously, we couldn’t do this: we would look foolish. The other was to moan about everyone else, making them the fools instead. Hosting the Olympics is an honor: we treated them with respect, and so should you.
Joann Pittman
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August 11, 2016