Stories
From Takungpao A former Red Guard made a written apology for his evils during the Cultural Revolution last week, the first of its kind in China. Liu Boqin, a man in his 60s, was a second-year student at Jinan No.1 Middle School (equivalent of eighth grade in the U.S.) at the start of the Cultural [...]
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This is a moment that Chinese have long been waiting for – China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan shake hands with her U.S. counterpart Michelle Obama, with the rest of the world sizing them up, chattering about which one is more graceful and has a better red-carpet look. “Now that we finally have a presentable First [...]
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A video of five chengguan (city management) officers manhandling bicycle vendors has shocked and outraged Chinese netizens, bringing the age-old topic of highly abusive chengguan force back into spotlight. In the video, a man was knocked down onto the ground by the five chengguan officers in uniform in a violent brawl. One officer then jumped [...]
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A deadly fire broke out Monday morning at a poultry plant in northeast China’s Jilin province, claming at least 120 lives. As rescue efforts and police investigation go on, on Sina Weibo, the Chinese answer to Twitter, popular mourning emoticons such as flickering candles and black ribbons have been disabled to prevent the public uproar from [...]
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Unmarried mothers and mistresses who give birth may have to pay a 80,000 yuan (USD13,000) fine, the Chinese city of Wuhan says Friday. According to Article 26 of a draft city ordinance published by the capital city of Hubei province, “Those who give birth and fail to provide valid identification from her partner,” or who [...]
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On May 27, Ye Haiyan, a prominent women’s rights activist, staged a protest outside the gate of the No.2 Elementary School in Wanning, Hainan province. The hand-made sign reads aloud, “Principals, Get A Room With Me! Leave Elementary School Students Alone!” The sign reads, “Principals, Get A Room with Me! Leave Elementary School Students Alone! [...]
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An unsolved 18-year-old attempted murder case in China has been brought to the White House’s We the People site. So far, the petition to the U.S. government demanding the deportation of the suspect back to China has garnered more than 130,000 signatures within in four days as the public fury over the possible foul play [...]
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Campaigns to abolish the oft-maligned reeducation-through-labor camp have been gathering steam on the Chinese social media in the past few years and even made their way into the agenda at China’s annual political meetings, for the reeduation system is often seen to be an extrajudicial punishment that have emboldened local authorities to jail and torture [...]
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Source: Sina Weibo Tech giant Apple and German automaker Volkswagen were accused of jerking Chinese consumers around in a 3-hour expose aired by China Central Television Friday evening, but a celebrity’s foolish mistake on Weibo revealed that the so-called investigative journalism from CCTV was nothing but the big shark’s PR offensive against the wrong targets. [...]
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Sources: Xinmin Evening News, CRI We don’t know yet if the polluted water has killed too many pigs, or too many dead pigs have polluted the water, but the sight of over 1,200 bodies of domesticated pigs floating with tons of garbage and flotsam in Songjiang River, which has the city of Shanghai downsteam and [...]
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Source: Seattle Times, Sing Tao Daily A 19-year-old Chinese community college student is facing homicide charge after killing a 25-year-old woman in a fatal car crash in November. His mother flew to the U.S. from China and paid two million dollars in bail last week. Chinese social media are now abuzz with condemnation of such [...]
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Chinese-made anti-Japanese patriotic television dramas have been the object of an awful lot of ridicule on Sina Weibo, the Chinese twitter, after netizens found much to their amusement that in one extreme example, a Chinese man tears up a “Japanese soldier”, or commonly known in China as “Japanese devil”, across like a piece of paper, [...]
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As complaints over the severe baby formula shortage in Hong Kong rise, the local authorities plan to slap a tough restriction on the amount of formula outbound travellers can take. The new rule, which is aimed at mainland Chinese smugglers, has sparked fear, outrage and angst on Chinese social media. Under the regulation, each individual [...]
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Two elderly gay men living in Beijing find themselves in the center of controversy after their high-profile coming out on the web is as much censured as praised. The two men, one a retired teacher and the other a rural migrant working as a water bottle deliverer, created a profile page named “Two Old Men’s [...]
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Jazza John, our contributor, is currently a student at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. A report from Reporters Without Boarders suggests that freedom of the press in both Hong Kong and Taiwan has dropped. The Press Freedom Index, which is compiled of 179 nations, showed Hong Kong drop from 54 to 58 and Taiwan from 45 to 48, while [...]
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Chris Toepker is a contributor to Ministry of Tofu. He hails from the United States, has been living in greater China since 1990 and has recently relocated to Beijing. All too often, visitors to Beijing fret and cluck their tongues at the air pollution. While it certainly is awful, clearing the air is certainly no simple [...]
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As the Spring Festival travel season, also known as the largest annual human migration in the world, approaches, the vexing and taxing battle for a train ticket home starts. This year, a new problem occurs: tech-savvy Chinese ticket buyers have been using plug-ins, add-ons and other software applications, which causes a surge in traffic that [...]
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Five weeks after a lengthy chronicle of his sexual encounters with a woman went viral on the Chinese Internet, Yi Junqing, a high-ranking official, was fired for “improper lifestyle,” according to a terse news dispatch from the state-run Xinhua News Agency on January 17. Yi Junqing, director of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, has [...]
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Note: Gil Hizi is Ministry of Tofu’s contributor. He is also the chief editor of website Thinking Chinese. Numerous elder Chinese have a desire to remain fit and to nurture health. Some of them even fulfill this need by swimming in icy lakes and pushing the body to efforts that it had doubtfully met even in [...]
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“I’m sorry, but the lavender pillow is out of order, can you please choose another?” A classic mixture of over-the-top yet sincere customer service sprinkled with cultural “close enough-ness” to be charming. A soft knock on my hotel door reveals a smiling young man with my Chinese Herb Pillow as I think “what a crazy [...]
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