Tag Archives: China

Imagethief and the top-secret dam of Panjiakou: A Great Wall diving adventure

Regular readers will recall that Imagethief recently accompanied Steven Schwankert ofSinoscuba to dive a section of the Great Wall that lies underwater in a reservoir at Panjiakou, near Tangshan. A prior blog post about that trip is here. We had … Continue reading

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5/12, 9/11 and three minutes on Monday afternoon

On Monday, May 12th, Imagethief was on the 27th floor of the Kerry Center for a meeting at 2:28PM. We all spent a couple of spooky minutes at the window watching Kerry and Fortune Plaza sway alarmingly, not knowing that … Continue reading

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Tibet and the trouble with unassailable national myths

Outside of Young Frankenstein there isn’t really any such thing as a “good time” for rioting, but this might be an especially bad time for China to have a bout of punishing ethnic unrest. It hasn’t really been a banner … Continue reading

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Was the China corruption website collapse story “newsiness”?

The greatest contribution that comedian Stephen Colbert has made to modern society is the concept of “truthiness”. Reading from the Wikipedia definition, truthiness is: …a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or “from the … Continue reading

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Why the Yilishen ant-farming scandal was the perfect China story

Imagethief recently found himself huddled in a wintry hutong courtyard in conversation with two longtime Beijing-based foreign correspondents. During this discussion we came to the conclusion that the recent Yilishen ant-farming scandal is more or less the perfect China story. … Continue reading

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What to make of Edwin Maher?

Imagethief found the LA Times article on CCTV9′s western anchorman, Edwin Maher, quite interesting. I didn’t have time to comment on it when it first appeared, but in general I found the story balanced as it presented both criticisms and … Continue reading

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Hairy crabs, the hill of pain and the boulevard of a thousand massage touts

Imagethief went for a hike with some good friends on Sunday. Hiking is one of the things that I was sorry to give up when I moved to Shanghai, and that I’ve been most eager to rediscover upon my return. … Continue reading

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The up is red

Imagethief was enrocketed to read on Friday that China’s taikonauts –whom I prefer to call “astronauts” because “taikonauts” sounds like they should be exploring my sugar bowl– are considering starting a Communist Party cell in outer space: “If China has … Continue reading

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Deconstructing the White Rabbit wrapper

Imagethief has rather a sweet tooth. Hence my long acquaintance with the gym and the pleasures of the long run. One of China’s under-appreciated pleasures is the enamel-stripping joy of a chewy White Rabbit Milk Candy. I’m not the first … Continue reading

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Why aren’t you drinking the Wang Lao Ji?

Imagethief spent a busy two days helping some representatives of a European country manage a last minute press conference. This was a sudden request that had resulted in 36 hours of breakneck work involving much frantic communication, central European languages, … Continue reading

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