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Well it's the fault of global warming elves, who have been wreaking havoc on China of late. First they go and make it hard for Harbin to hold the ice festival in an economical way by raising the temperature by five degrees (Celsius) over the average, while in other parts of China, there are those who are rapidly losing their source of drinking water. The subject of the latter, part of an article written by Beijing Newspeak blogger Chris O'Brien, is Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province. And it's not just human beings that are being endangered there; much of the world's population of Siberians cranes calls the place home. The lake is shrinking, and being at the mercy of the Yangtze River, itself suffering from the worst drought in years, the picture seems bleak. For one, conducts its first nationwide pollution survey? more ›

star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the new graffiti king in town, Bill Cosby's adorable dog, and the disturbing tale of a yoga instructor who was found guilty of killing his girlfriend, a dancer from Ohio who stripped to make ends meet. more ›

OK, a very short, but interesting photo essay into the lives of minors working in Guangdong province. The person that appears in several of the photographs is Xiao Liao (Liao is his surname), and he, like many others, left their homes behind and started working in Dongguan's factories at the age of 15. more ›

is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. more ›

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... more ›

Hey, have y'all been using our new "Recommend this" feature at the bottom of each post? This week we're bringing you the "Most Recommended" posts from across the -ist world, as well as recommending some of our own. more ›

Remember when you misbehaved and your parents threatened to beat you senseless, send you to boot camp, or send you to Michael Jackson's ranch? Well, as soon as we read this article (in Chinese), all those memories came flooding back. This article from Southern Weekend is about the "Marching School", which is basically a school run like a military boot camp. more ›

If you've been following media reports about North Korea, then chances are you've also heard stories of North Koreans slipping over the borders to China, or trying to scale the walls of embassies in Beijing in order to get asylum. For most refugees, this means ending up South Korea, but don't think that just by making out of the "hermit kingdom" into China means getting to the promised land -- China is quite willing to send them back, as happened recently in Yantai, when seven North Koreans entered an international school. The refugees included five women and two men. Four of them were from one family. There's a Chinese article about it (containing mostly the same info as the English link above) here. more ›

That's China Daily's headline for this story, which they copied and pasted from its original source, U.S. News & World Report. The story, originally titled "The Shanghai High Life," is annoying and vapid and tells the story of Lily Wang, a "typical Shanghai yuppie." Or perhaps the author was trying to show that the life of a typical Shanghai yuppie is annoying and vapid? more ›