Noam Chomsky was in China recently, delivering a speech at Peking University and then conducting an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily. The folks at Global Voices Online have translated the questions (and re-translated the answers) - while he talks about the U.S. trying to force its views on China (yet anther example of American imperialism for him) and China's need to stop being the factory of the world, the author of Media Control is surprisingly silent on propaganda, only criticizing the West's use of advertising to influence elections. Or maybe he wasn't and it just wasn't published. Who knows! more ›

This video entitled “这个女人太要了” ("This girl wants it too much") uploaded to Youtube just five days ago has received over 317,000 views and raised a storm on the Chinese internet. It shows a young Chinese couple hugging and kissing at a subway exit point before finally saying goodbye. Well, it turns out that the clip was taken via the surveillance cameras that you see all around subway stations and the (really annoying) voices in the background were Metro staff. Shanghaiist doesn't quite understand Shanghainese, but here are two choice quotes:

“哦呦！这个女的还满好看的！” more ›

The Red Laowai (红老外) — yes, that shirtless dude in New York that's been singing communist propaganda songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》and putting his videos online — has done it again. This time, he has put his shirt on, created a music video and he's singing Jay Chou and rapping. The song 止战之殇 (The Wound That Ends War) is an anti-war song in... more ›

The Peking Duck: Is the rush to study Chinese a time-wasting fad? more ›

It was too much to watch something like this, kept me vomiting for a long time more ›

Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online has offered a great summary of reactions from the international blogosphere to Friday's announcement that former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. more ›