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

Photo from Slow Boat to China: Winter time at the Summer Palace in Chengde. more ›

So, like we told you, the word "democracy" (民主) was mentioned 60 times in President Hu's report to the 17th Party Congress. The China Media Project fills us in on other top buzzwords. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义) was mentioned 52 times, “scientific development” (科学发展) was a distant second at 38 times, “opening and reform” (改革开放) was mentioned 34 times, just edging out “harmony” (和谐) at 33. “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (邓小平理论) made 10 appearances and former President Jiang Zemin's pet phrase “Three Represents” (三个代表) racked up 9 appearances. See how the occurence of these phrases have risen/fallen over the past Party Congresses (totally useless information that you can try to use to impress your date with). more ›

About 100 Chinese teachers are expected to arrive at state schools in the United Kingdom (yes, that haven of foreign language education) by next year, but schools which have already employed some of those teachers in their classrooms (which they described as "lovely") have already found problems, such as the following:

"Their lack of familiarity with the English system of discipline, target setting etc is a problem."

"They also tend to have different, perhaps unrealistic, expectations of pupils."

"Concerns are expressed about Chinese teachers' abilities to manage pupils, particularly whole classes or where there is a tendency for students to be disruptive."

Has Cosette finally found a reason to smile in China? more ›

A 30-year old man in Guangzhou appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge. Paramedics tried to revive him at the cybercafe but failed and he was declared dead on the spot. more ›

... and we thought Xinhua's mistake of illustrating a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain was bad! more ›

Gosh. With the third allegation of hacking by the Chinese military into government computers in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom surfacing within two weeks, the guys at the Foreign Ministry have been kept busy! Fons Tuinstra points to past cases of bored teenagers who have successfully hacked into other governments and surmised that the German government could not have said that they had an issue with millions of bored Chinese teenagers! Richard Spencer made the erudite argument that if the "US and other western governments are busy infiltrating the computer systems of foreign governments... it is disingenuous to complain too vigorously when those same foreign governments become good at doing it back". Hmm... more ›

more ›

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›

Our weekly round-up of some of the highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: more ›