Tea Leaf Nation

A poll currently live on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com shows that a majority of over 62,000 respondents favor amending China’s Marriage Law to allow for same sex marriage. The poll allows respondents four choices: “I support it, love does not require a gender difference” has received 50.1% of the vote thus far. “I oppose it, [...]

Imagine a city flush with both renminbi and Taiwan dollars, one where Chinese and Taiwanese managers, designers, researchers, and officials work together to create a harmonious “home,” and where children from both sides of the Straits play together at summer camps. Does such a city exist? Not quite yet. But Pingtan—an island located in China’s [...]

Journalist Zhou Zhiyi (@周志懿) tweeted on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, the rumor that China’s two censorship organs, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) will merge as a part of the widely-expected reshuffling of China’s central bureaucracy. What will the merged entity be called? Zhou’s [...]

On February 27, People’s Daily posted a long list containing 2,987 names on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. These names are completely unknown to the average Chinese person, yet these are the supposed elected representatives of China’s 1.3 billion people. They will attend the National People’s Congress (NPC), an event of considerable pomp that will be held in [...]

This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, announced on February 20 that it had surpassed half a billion users — more people than live in South America, and approximately the population of North America. Thickly-settled Europe edges out Weibo by about 230,000, but [...]

Yesterday, a group of prominent Chinese citizens issued an open letter to China’s government calling on it to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While open letters are a venerated form of protest and speech, this group made waves when they chose to share their message on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. As [...]

It was the best piece of news that many Chinese people had heard in years — they may soon be able to receive medical treatment in hospitals without having to pony up a hefty deposit first. This would have marked a major change from the current, much-maligned system that sometimes denies life-saving treatments to those who [...]

People’s Liberation Army Major General Luo Yuan debuted on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, just as a true military man should—with a big blitz and an ensuing war-in-words. On February 20, Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper, published an article headlined: “What Asahi-readers should know: The Truths of China. PLA Major General says ‘Will Bomb Tokyo’.” [...]

This article also appeared in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. “There is such a bakery in Nanjing: about one third of its employees are people with mental disabilities; it’s called ‘Ai De Bakery’ [Amity Bakery in English]. They are han han”—the character for “han” means simple and naïve, but also straightforward and [...]

This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. It appears that Chinese environmental activism is going further mainstream. The Sina micro-blogging account of Global Times, a well-known Communist Party mouthpiece, has just shared news about the horrific proliferation of “cancer villages” in China. Earlier today, @环球时报 wrote: A map of China’s ‘cancer [...]

Back in September 2012, Tea Leaf Nation translated in part one Chinese journalist’s first person account of his “tea-drinking” session, a euphemism for police interrogation. Recently, Oiwan Lam of Global Voices translated the nine tips shared by social media activist Wu Gan, who is a regular “tea-drinker,” on the do’s and don’ts when being “honored” with such an [...]

This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Over the last few days, new regulations on China’s real estate information system have provoked another wave of anti-corruption sentiment. According to the Southern Metropolis Daily (@南方都市报), the government of Zhangzhou City, Fujian Province instituted a regulation on February 16 restricting access [...]