Done with finals

Done!
I’m leaving for Europe tomorrow, and I will be back in three weeks.

Confucius Institutes and China’s Soft Power

A classmate of mine just had his article on China’s Confucius Institutes published in Asia Times. It’s well written and I’m very impressed. Read it here.

CCP drops plan that would force netizens to use real names online

According to Mure Dickie at The Financial Times, “China has put aside proposals to force internet users to use their real names when signing up for blogging services – and will now merely encourage them to do so.”
Xinhua reports that decision was made due to objections from blog-hosting companies who were
worried that many users [...]

Studying for my Third-Year Chinese final

I started studying for my Chinese final two days ago. The test isn’t until next Friday, but rather than cram like crazy a few days before, I’ve decided to only do five lessons a day (out of 25), for five days, and then focus in on the vocab and grammar that I’m shaky on.
I used [...]

Greetings from Lanzhou

I just got an interesting e-mail from my dad, who’s arrived in Lanzhou safe and sound. I thought his message was pretty amusing, and I can definitely tell that he’s getting a sense of that difficult to describe dose of oddness that many westerns get when they first go to China.
He writes,
“This has so far [...]

Computer crashed

My Powerbook G4 crashed this morning while I was in the middle of writing the final paper for my journalism class, which was due today. That caused a bit of a panic.
Luckily, I remembered that I’d sent an earlier draft of the paper to my professor using Gmail, so I recovered that document and got [...]

4th of July in Beijing

Last summer, my friends and I went to Beijing’s Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate the 4th of July. Good times were had by all—since we hadn’t discovered Steak and Eggs yet, the meal was our first dose of American food since arriving in Beijing a month earlier.
This year I have slightly more ambitious plans, and [...]

Anyone have any experience with Lanzhou?

My father is leaving for Beijing tomorrow–his first trip to China–and then, later in the week, over to Lanzhou to visit a factory of a company he is affiliated with.
I think he’s hoping for Lanzhou to be a cool place to visit, but the Wikipedia entry on it is less than thrilling.
If any of you [...]