China has outright banned using "literary works" to promote tourist sites under a new decree. As if that wasn't bizarre enough, they also extended the ban to "negative historical figures." That means that both The Tomb of Cao Cao and The Birthplace of the Monkey King are now no longer allowed to market themselves as such because "rival claims to be the birthplace of characters from fiction or legend can become unseemly." Oh no, what will this mean for Avatar Mountain in Hunan? more ›

• While young Chinese are modernizing, they aren't in the way the Western world would think. [Business Week]
• Bill Gates talks about joining Twitter and what he thinks about China. [Mashable]
• As much as we disparage it, the quality of Chinese made products are in fact getting better and better every day. [China Law Blog]

After more than 70 years a large rare fungus collection has been returned to China from Cornell University. Curator Shu Chun Teng smuggled the collection out of the country at the start of World War II just as the Japanese were invading to keep it safe. He later suffered during the Cultural Revolution for "selling China's history." [New York Times] more ›