Public backlash has caused Elle to pull an image of a North Korea soldier from the online version of Joe Zee's September "A to Zee" column about military trends. Read more »
The US will have a new ambassador to China in early 2014. Gary Locke, who has served in that role since July 27, 2011, said this morning that he will step down "to rejoin my family in Seattle." SCMP has the full text of Locke's statement. Read more »
Sex, G-string, condom are all embarrassing words for most Chinese, but for 20-year-old university student Kong Yan from the Guangzhou-based South Medical University, those are the things she talks about every day, Yangcheng Evening News reported. Read more »
A 700-year-old tree in Shifang, Sichuan province withstood the efforts of a crane trying to secretly knock it down. Check it out. That's what happens when an immovable object is actually immovable: 30 meters tall, 2.4 meters in diameter, apparently. Read more »
If you haven't been following the story of Bloomberg vs. the New York Times, start here. That's NYT's article, built around an anonymous source within Bloomberg, claiming that Bloomberg editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler spiked a sensitive China story due to pressure. Read more »
Overheard in the international departures line at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila: "What do you suppose 'wang-wang' means?"
"Don't do what the Chinese do in lines." Read more »
Junkyard Planet, the first book by Bloomberg Shanghai correspondent Adam Minter, offers a look at the often unheard and unseen $500 billion global scrap and recycling industry, which has formed in the shadow of burgeoning Western -- and increasingly Chinese -- consumerism. Minter is himself “a proud junkyard kid” from a Minneapolis scrap trading family that established themselves through hard graft in the post-Depression period. This background provided him the connections to offer an invaluable insider perspective on this unknown trade -- and also informs his somewhat Romanticized, American Dream-inspired perspective. Read more »
