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Beer Summit

Jim Koch, founder and chairman of The Boston Beer Company, brewers of Samuel Adams Beer, is a pioneer of the American palate as...

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Jaime Wolf on Filmmaker Chris Marker

"May you live in interesting times," that sly curse, reputed to come from ancient China, is actually apocryphal, no more Chinese than the fortune cookies it shows up in; than Robert Kennedy, who quoted it in a 1966 speech at Cape Town University; or than Chris Marker, the elusive French filmmaker who..

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Censor-y Overlords

Under ordinary circumstances, Chinese censors make it difficult for filmmakers to present any kind of meaningful depiction of contemporary life, which is one of the reasons that period stories and martial arts adventures are so prevalent. Like our MPAA ratings board, the State Administration of Radio,..

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China And The Pirates

In the current issue, the filmmaker Jia Zhang Ke writes about how China's rampant DVD piracy has created a class of street vendors operating...

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The Chinese MC Hammer

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China's Secret Weapon

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China's Less-Polished News Sources

Too frequently the slick, overly produced style of network television news shows ends up obscuring the actual subjects they're purportedly...

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Be Scared Of China (Sometimes)

Status of Chinese People is an aggregator blog primarily spotlighting news stories about authoritarian abuses committed by the Chinese Government. One can read through it for useful (if not always or entirely definitive) background on the persecution of Falun Gong, Tibet, censorship, and freedom of speech-we..

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A Chinese Pop Primer And Mixtape

Although the mainland has evolved rich and vibrant offerings in film and television in the post-Mao era, most Chinese-language pop music still...

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China's "Most Famous Foreigner"

If you happen to come across a Chinese language instruction program on CCTV International called "Sports Chinese," you may not be aware that its host, the ingratiating Canadian redhead who goes by the name Da Shan is the most famous white man in China. Da Shan ("Big Mountain"; his Anglo name is Mark..

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China's Green Brothers

In honor of Earth Day, we'd like to point you to the Green Brothers, aka John Romankiewicz and Shane Zhao Xiangyu, enthusiastic young men in their...

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Crazy English

"Crazy English" is a popular method of English-language instruction in which Chinese students declaim random-sounding sentences in unison, in public places at the top of their lungs. Its originator, Li Yang, who has become a very rich man, seems to some more like a demagogue or cult leader than a true..

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Everyone Talks About The Weather...

The old saying that "everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it" turns out not to be true in China. The latest issue of Plenty Magazine features an excellent article by Tom Scocca about the extensive effort currently being mounted by the Chinese government (whose Weather Modification..

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Document China

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Phantom Shanghai

We're pretty crazy about Greg Girard, whose pictures of Shenzen accompany Adam Matthews's story in this issue. After a decade based in Hong Kong,...

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They Win Medals!

Table tennis will be the hottest local ticket at the Beijing Olympics, and the U.S. competitors are bound to be anxious.

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