President Barack Obama has drawn basically positive reviews for his second inaugural address yesterday, but at least one person was not impressed. (Note: probably tens of millions were not impressed, but you can read the comments section to Hot Air and other sites devoted to the corpse of Ronald Reagan if you’re interested.) We’re talking... Read more »
Like most visitors of North Korea, Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt, thought the country “weird.” It’s her that everyone is quoting today, specifically this write-up on Google Sites: It’s impossible to know how much we can extrapolate from what we saw in Pyongyang to what the DPRK is really like. Our trip... Read more »
Jeremy Lin caused us to launch prematurely. We had a date in mind for Beijing Cream’s debut — February 21, for reasons that now elude me — but Lin began tearing it up in New York earlier in the month, and I just couldn’t sit on Linsanity. Who could? Five of the first seven posts... Read more »
President Barack Obama's public inauguration begins soon, and lookey who overlooks his parade route (above, via The Atlantic). If you're in Beijing and would like to watch, the place to go is Brussels (or so TimeOut tells us), which also showed live coverage of the US presidential election. For everyone else, links.
This is a frightening lede. It is frightening indeed. More so if you knew this frightening read is about the food you eat. It’s from Caixin Online. It’s oil with an extra something, but there’s nothing virgin-like about it. Um. Pumped from sewers outside of restaurants, or pressed from trash, the oil is born... Read more »
In the latest episode of Furious World Tour, the adventurous Pete hits up Beijing's hotspots with his characteristic Canadian suave. Along the way, accompanied by the Beijinger's Marilyn Mai, he samples some multiple bowls of hand-pulled noodles, applewood-roasted duck, "pizza," spiders, scorpions of different sizes, smelly starfish (he's not a fan), and curry chicken from the infamous House of Poo Poo
I'm not sure how, but Tracy McGrady has a way of attracting refereeing debacles. (As a Beijing fan, I'm not just talking about Wednesday night's avian contest between the Ducks and Double Star Eagles in Qingdao, though that was massively craptacular too, with the home team benefitting from so many calls that I wondered aloud whether the CBA was publicly making amends with T-Mac for suspending him.) The worst -- absolute no doubt worst bar none -- happened yesterday.
It’s good to see such a public account of the Chinese and Japanese standing in solidarity for once… against an angry horde of 1,000 migrant workers demanding equal regulations. Beginning early Friday morning, employees of Japanese electronic appliance maker Shanghai Shinmei Electric besieged a factory in Shanghai and held 18 Chinese and Japanese managers hostage, including... Read more »
Found yesterday. What do you suppose that red thing is on that lovely snow sculpture? I mean, it’s almost certain a pepper, but what does it represent? Guess away in the comments. (H/T Alicia)
The Gini coefficient, a measure of wealth disparity, is one of those socioeconomic tools that the general public normally wouldn’t notice unless, oh, a country was publicizing its coefficient for the first time in 12 years. So it is in China, where officials on Friday announced that its index reached 0.474 in 2012 (with 0... Read more »
