When most people think or talk about Beijing today, the focus is on pollution or the crowds Rarely do they think, “Beijing? Great graffiti!” But that may change, thanks to a documentary about graffiti artists in Beijing called Spray Paint: Graffiti in the Capital of China. Here’s what a report on PRI had to say about…
Month: April 2014
Dueling Aircraft Carrier (Videos)
To celebrate the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the Aviation Industry Corporation (a state-owned company) released this video of China’s J-15 carrier plane and the country’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. http://youtu.be/-oVXMg7GEnM Round about the same time, the US Navy released their own video of the USS George Washington-based…
English Words Borrowed from Chinese
This is a pop quiz — what common English words are borrowed from Chinese? The answer may surprise you. How about kowtow, gung ho, and ketchup? Or typhoon. Or “long time no see.” Even though English is a language that compulsively borrows from other languages, we don’t have too many borrowed from English. A post…
Death of a Snow Bank
Here in Minnesota, we mark the turning from winter to spring by monitoring the death of the snow banks that surround us. When they are at their highest, we wonder if they will ever melt. It seems unlikely. But the days get longer, and sun gets warmer, and even the biggest ones eventually succumb. This…
Hong Kong, China. Really?
Way back in 1997 I was the director of a Chinese language program at a major university in Changchun. As the semester was coming to an end, one of the students (they were all Americans) let me know that he needed to go to Hong Kong at the end of June. This was back in…
China Divided in Half
It is often said that there are two China’s — urban China and rural China. But according to this map, recently published on Tea Leaf Nation, China can be split in half according to GDP distribution. Here’s the description: Foreign Policy compiled GDP figures reported by municipalities across China and found that 35 cities contributed just…