Tea Leaf Nation

Do you know your left from your right? A visual key to the meaning of leftist versus rightist politics in China, an answer to this hugely popular pictorial on U.S. politics, was created by CNPolitics.org (政见). With CNPolitics’ permission, we reprint sections of the picture here with English translations and original commentary from Tea Leaf Nation. You can [...]

China’s people have now shown that they don’t just build beautiful structures; they design them too. On Monday, Mr. Wang Shu, a 48-year-old born in Urumqi, China, was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. A slideshow of his stunning work is available here.  Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, netizens reacted with joy and [...]

“Weibo = Freedom of Speech” is a powerful equation. It shows what microblog platforms mean for China today. So what happens after March 16, the day of Weibocalypse, when netizens are required to register with their real identities in order to tweet or comment on all microblog platforms in China?  Tea Leaf Nation was interviewed [...]

Is it another sign of a great censorship thaw? A technical glitch in China’s Great Firewall? A brilliant hacker? Or as @R小寧 of Shanghai speculates on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, “another hook” to catch would-be Firewall-crossers in the act?  For a few hours on February 27, many netizens across China reported that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were [...]

“Intentional murder.” That’s how one netizen, @飞天,  described the Chinese government’s forced repatriation of North Korean defectors. The issue has again risen to the fore after Chinese authorities recently conducted a mass arrest of 30 North Korean defectors and began the process of repatriating them to the harsh dictatorship. South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak promised to [...]

The “What People Think I Do” Internet meme tornado has swept through a number of professions, from social media managers to Indian corporate lawyers. Chinese Communist Party members are now in its path. This picture, created by Ernest Lin (see his Google+ account here) with original translations from Tea Leaf Nation, views CCP members through various lenses and makes [...]

Linsanity! Lincredible! Lindestructible! But how about some Yi-lation or even just some pla-Yi-ng time? Not only has Lin shown the world that Asians can ball, he’s also unlocked the full potential of Chinese surnames as portmanteaus. As Jeremy Lin has shot up in popularity, so too has the debate on China’s only NBA player – [...]

Haircut Day. If one could invent a child’s least favourite holiday, this might be it.  Sadly for little blokes across China, the second day of the second month on the lunar calendar – which fell on Feb. 23 this year – means one thing for them: haircuts. The day is known as “The Dragon Raising [...]

Netizens beware: One errant tweet can make years of your online history disappear. The Chinese blogosphere is abuzz after Zhuang Wuxie (@庄无邪), an advertising exec in Bejing, wrote a mini-essay on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform, complaining about the deletion of a friend’s account. The friend, who uses the handle Mo Zhiguo (@魔之果), [...]

Has a great thaw begun? On February 21, netizens reported that Google+ has become accessible in China without a user’s having to scale the Great Firewall. Accounts seem to differ on whether Youtube is now accessible in China as well. Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, a magazine called The Founder (@创业家杂志 ) tweeted a [...]

Just give up. That’s the message Shaanxi province’s Zhaocun village is apparently sending its children, after government officials there kicked Yifu Elementary School students out of their newly-built school grounds to make way for an authorized car dealership (called 4S car shops in China). In mid-May 2010, approximately 80 students began studying at the newly-built [...]

It’s no secret that Gaopeng, Groupon’s joint venture with Tencent in China, is a train wreck. The troubled company saw multiple rounds of job cuts in 2011, closed thirteen braches and was rumoured to have cash flow problems. The only comfort for Groupon may be that many of its competitors in China are having troubles [...]