Ah, the Chinese bank...though they might be open seven days a week, they still manage to be places of frustration on an almost Sisyphean level, where your spirit is tested by the wait times and paperwork requirements. In a piece called "Four Mao Too Many", literary translator Eric Abrahamsen writes in the New York Times' Latitude blog on the Kafkaesque bureaucracy involved in trying to close his Chinese bank account, in what counts as an expat rant par excellence. more ›

The Chinese Basketball Association formally decided to drop the ban-hammer on the possibility of Kobe, Dwight Howard and a slew of other locked-out NBA players playing in China during the upcoming CBA season beginning in November. The CBA concluded after meeting in Shenzhen that only free agents currently not under contract with any NBA team can participate in the upcoming season. more ›

We informed you a while ago that expatriates in Shanghai can now apply for the two-year residence permit. Our friends at City Weekend have figured out how to go about getting it done, but first, you need to figure out if you're eligible:

First up, almost anyone can apply if they’ve been working in Shanghai for a decent length of time. Anyone whose had a “Residence Card B” for two years (this covers all foreign nationals legally living here) is eligible, as are managers, legal representatives or high-tech workers with companies registered in Shanghai. If you’re just an “ordinary person” in a company worth over US$30 million, you’re up for it as well. more ›

They say the Germans invented the art of bureaucracy but the Chinese perfected it. This may be true if a recently compiled list on Tianya forum is anything to go by — it contains over 3,000 permits/licences/fees a Chinese citizen may be subjected to through the course of his/her life. China Digital Times translates just a handful of them, and as they correctly pointed out, some sound reasonable while others just make you go huh:... more ›