Cup of Cha
This is China

The Year of the Rat is here, and that can only mean one thing: two weeks af constant firecrackers crackling outside my window. China once banned fireworks in the big cities, but now they are back with a venegence. Kids fire them off, and so do adults. It’s a constant barrage.
Outside of stadiums people set [...]

Continue reading “Bang Bang Bang Means One Thing” »

American politicians love to lament the fact that so many US manufacturing jobs go to China, but they less often talk about the service-sector growth that trade encourages. Based on my experience in China, the US will never lose much of this economic activity to Asia’s economic dragon.
Simply put, the service sector in China is, [...]

Continue reading “China’s Bad-Service Economy” »

Most of my friends in the States, and indeed, most of the mainstream media outside of China, is under the false impression that news only trickles into the the Mainland. Historically this has been true, and there are still remnants around, but if you can read or understand English, as many young Chinese can, things [...]

Continue reading “China’s Domestic Media Closed, but Gateway Open” »

One of the amazing theories many Chinese hold about foreigners is that we are somehow promiscuous and sex-obsessed. The not-that-subtle phrase that people use is ‘open,’ or kaifang (开放), literally meaning ‘open door.’ You might think that this would not have a negative meaning, especially since the Open Door Policy (改革开放) uses the same two [...]

Continue reading “Foreigners are so Kaifang!” »

The common man in China, laobaixing, seems really mad, and it’s left me wondering why. In the last week I have seen two fist fights break out of the same subway station at 8:50 AM. The first one left one man severely bloodied, while the second led to an arrest.
This is anecdotal evidence, but I [...]

Continue reading “Why Are China’s Laobaixing So Mad?” »

I have been a big defender of Chinglish, but I came across a bizarre column in Beijing Today that talks about the perils of incorrectly using English. However, the story refers to a supposedly embarrassing phrase, which seems perfectly normal.
The newspaper, which despite its name is actually a weekly, has a regular feature that talks [...]

Continue reading “Beijing Today “Chinglish” Article Confounds” »

There’s a little game I play when I get into taxis in Beijing. I always take a look at their registration numbers to get a sense of how long they’ve been on the job. The lower the number, the longer they’ve been working (although I discovered that this only started about 12 years ago, so [...]

Continue reading “A Beijing Cab Driver in 1973” »

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a Chinese message board that had comments on my blog, and more prominently, a few others (Danwei, CLB etc.) I dutifully posted the comments on Cup of Cha, but when I went back, I noticed that one of the Chinese posters had copied my post, making it available [...]

Continue reading “So I Posted on a Chinese Message Board” »

During a trip several months ago in Xinjiang I noticed something quite peculiar in a typical Muslim restaurant: a tablecloth with Hebrew writing (sorry, picture is slightly out of focus, but it should be clear enough). Now Islam and Judaism share roots, but I would not tell that to a Uyghur guy wielding one of [...]

Continue reading “Jewish Tradition in Muslim Xinjiang” »

Not to make light of IP abuse in China, which is rampant and discourages innovation by reducing the rewards associated with creativity, but it is safe to say Microsoft can sleep well knowing no one will be buying fake versions of Vista.
About two months ago I bought a new computer, and even considered switching over [...]

Continue reading “Microsoft Unconcerned About VISTA Piracy” »