Was the Sichuan Earthquake Caused by Man?

February 7, 2009
By C. Custer

The New York Times thinks maybe: (h/t James Fallows) Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake’s geological fault line. A...
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What the Hell Does "Crackdown" Mean?

February 5, 2009
By C. Custer

If you’re reading this post right now, chances are this isn’t the first thing you’ve read about China in English. And if this isn’t the first thing you’ve read about China in English, you’ve probably read about a Chinese government “crackdown” before. But what, exactly, does it mean when the Chinese government cracks down?...
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Flying Shoes

February 4, 2009
By C. Custer

We didn’t want to write about the shoe thing, but here we are, writing about the shoe thing. Everybody knows that a month and a half ago, someone chucked a shoe at former (!) President Bush during a press conference in Iraq. Much merriment was shared by all, and the Chinese netizens, as one...
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The Hidden Dangers of Cohabitation

February 3, 2009
By C. Custer

Any formal student of Chinese language who’s made it past the second year has likely gotten to the point where each chapter of his or her textbook takes the form of “: is it good or bad?” One of the most common social issues is 同居, or “cohabitation”, specifically, the cohabitation of men...
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Recommended Reading

February 2, 2009
By C. Custer

As anyone reading this blog is probably aware, there are a ton of valuable China related sites out there. Here’s a list of the ones we read regularly, or at least, most of them. This page will be edited regularly to add new blogs as we find them. General China Blogs Danwei.org - Chinese...
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Is Spring Festival Safe?

February 2, 2009
By C. Custer

Is the Spring Festival tradition of making things explode more or less at random over the course of the festival really compatible with an increasingly urban China? Having heard reports of accidents and even deaths, we decided to investigate.
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