Cup of Cha
This is China

To those of you who follow Cup of Cha’s RSS feed,you may have noticed that I have barely posted since the end of the 2008 election. I started a bunch of posts, but never bothered to finish them, and then stopped writing altogether. Now it’s time to stop pretending altogether. I’ll be taking down [...]

Continue reading “Cup is Empty” »

Be it athletes, politicians or actors, I long ago accepted that you have to embrace people for the parts of their personalities that are positive and productive. Bill Clinton was an extremely effective president, all things considered. He was not, however, a particularly good husband. But his vow to me and the American public was [...]

Continue reading “Bubba Woods” »

Three months ago I had a post planned where I would review The Founding of a Republic (建国大业), the Chinese film timed for the 60th anniversary of the most important day of the 20th century: the founding of Communist China. I was going to write a review extolling how the film portrayed the true greatness [...]

Continue reading “So THAT’S How The Republic Was Founded” »

Reports say that a whopping 70 percent of Caijing magazine staff members have resigned. While the first thought might be there could have been government pressure in some way, it appears China’s most respected magazine’s founder may in fact be behind the exodus.
Hu Shuli, the magazine’s legendary founder, who sas recently featured in a New [...]

Continue reading “Why Did 70% of Caijing’s Staff Resign?” »

As you may have heard, China’s economy has changed over the last few years. In 1979 China’s economy was 10th biggest in the world between Spain and Holland. It is expected to pass Japan as the world’s second largest this year, if it hasn’t already.
And yet, with all of the changes that have taken place, [...]

Continue reading “Grow the Economy, Print Bigger Currency” »

We’re 20 years removed, and China is a far different place from where it was on that terrible day.
There are two schools of thought about what has changed in the 20 years since. The first argument is that China totally opened up its economy in the aftermath of being shunned by most of the world, [...]

Continue reading “Modern China: Hermit or Leader?” »

I get how gay marriage is a threat to democracy. That makes sense. Men being monogamous with other men. Women devoting themselves to another woman. I get it. That could really ruin a great country.
But surely Twitter couldn’t ruin a good autocracy, right? Those annoying one sentence blasts that usually link to something more interesting [...]

Continue reading “Twitter Threat to Autocracy” »

So, I’ve accepted that I’ve become to busy (euphemism for lazy) to continue posting as much as I did during the Olympic period. I’ve written a bunch of post that I never bothered to put up because I didn’t want to spend the time to work out the kinks. So I’ve moved to the laziest [...]

Continue reading “Twitter Account: CupOfCha” »

During my bike ride to work down the Second Ring Road yesterday, I noticed tiny little bugs–gnats or something–gathering on my shirt. As I looked at them and wondered if one of them would end up getting smeared across my work clothes, I realized that this was meant that Beijing spring had officially arrived. This [...]

Continue reading “The 10 Plagues of Beijing Spring” »

For some reason, a lot of people in Beijing have decided that it is really cool to paint things onto the side of their cars. I have a friend who painted a giant Yankees logo onto the side of his car in New York, which seemed pretty dumb. But he was handed two world series [...]

Continue reading “Chinese Police to “Punish and Enslave”” »