Most resourceful driver in China

Patience will reward you (watch all the way to the end...)

How Chinese View Foreign Elections... and other stories

This article by Yang Hengjun (杨恒均) in China Media Project reminds me of talking to Chinese friends of mine about elections back in early 2008. I had not a few dinners with my friend, Jane, during which I was quizzed about the on-going Presidential election. As you'll remember the Democratic Primary went on and on, and each time we met for a meal I went further into my explanation of the American National election system. First explaining what are primaries, then to having to explain the electoral college (nothing makes you feel like this is a stupid system than having to explain it to people from another country), and ultimately to super-delegates. I told her that, even the most educated people in America had never heard of such things until they came up in the spring of 2008. I was only a little surprised by her inquisitiveness, Jane is one of the most intelligent and hardworking people I've met in my life. But it is a little curious to be grilled on the inner workings of our "American experiment" especially by someone who lives in a country which generally eschews all notions of messy democracy.

Tiny "Egghouse" in Beijing

Compelled by a sense of creativity and desperation, at the high cost of housing in Beijing and other major Chinese cities, Dai Haifei (戴海飞) has built himself an egg shaped house in the courtyard of an apartment building. 

Now this is some big news

China "backs Korean unification"

It was always assumed that the Chinese would be very unhappy at the prospects of united Korean peninsula. (This would of course be a Korea united under the government of the South). The main reason for China to oppose such an outcome was that it would place US troops (the United States has some 30,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea) across the Yalu river from China. Al Jazeera reports on findings from Wikileaks:

The latest documents released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Tuesday detail conversations between US officials and Chinese diplomats, as well as a senior South Korean official's discussion with his Chinese counterparts.

Cheng Guoping, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, was reported to have told Richard Hoagland, the US ambassador, that "China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term".