Do you recognize Qian Zhijun? He was an internet sensation a couple years ago, after a picture of his abnormally chubby face was photoshopped to become everything from Doraemon to the Mona Lisa. Ever wonder what became of him? more ›

Important rice news for a country that eats tons upon tons of it! Chomping down on white rice may boost your risk of diabetes, while substituting brown rice can actually decrease it instead! more ›

Already overflowing with superlatives, some of them not so great, China has now been declared the "diabetes capital of the world." A new report says that over 92 million adults in China have diabetes and nearly 150 million more are going to develop it. While, China's population tends to make numbers skew bigger than they would otherwise, check this percentage: That's 1 in every 10 adults here. Luckily, the solution for stemming this growing epidemic isn't that hard: walk more, eat less, China. more ›

• To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It [NYT] "Over the next few years, city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of this warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved."
• Diabetes more likely to strike the young in Asia [AP] "Without strong government policy, education and good clinical care, Asia's escalating epidemic could "erase economic gains made in recent decades," said Hu, one of the authors. Trends of diabetes in the region are influenced by everything from genetic makeup and cultural differences to smoking and degrees of urbanization, the JAMA study showed. But the most startling findings — which tended to vary from country to country — related to body mass and age."
• China Said to Harass Rights Lawyers [NYT] "Many of the lawyers have taken on cases, involving issues like Tibetan political activism and police brutality, that gained national and even international attention. The advocacy groups, Human Rights Watch and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, called the actions by the legal authorities part of an effort to intimidate the lawyers and their law firms into avoiding sensitive cases."