Since moving to China after graduating from college, Eli Bildner has lived in Yunnan, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. You can read more of his essays and poetry at www.elibildner.com.
This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Type the word “Ordos” into Google and the results are rather uniform. “Ordos, China: A Modern Ghost Town,” reads one headline, from …
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The news for aspiring Chinese homeowners continues to get worse. Despite a series of government measures aimed at curbing speculation in China’s torrid housing market, real estate prices throughout the country continue to soar. Just …
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This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. My favorite video of Henry Winter shows him strolling down the streets of Shanghai’s central business district wearing a wool poncho, a …
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Nearly five weeks ago, Beijing experienced its worst day of air quality on record: Levels of PM2.5 — small particulates that can cause lung, cardiovascular and respiratory disease — soared to more than 30 times …
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This article also appears on Tea Leaf Nation partner sites ChinaFile and The Atlantic. On Friday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that income inequality in the country exceeds a warning level set by the United Nations. …
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This article was produced in collaboration with ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Are Chinese citizens happy with the direction their country is taking? Do they believe in a market economy? Do they believe that …
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This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Had Li Ping been working anywhere else, she probably would be dead. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had recently found work as …
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On a day with much sad news in China and the U.S., it’s perhaps worth remembering that China’s blogosphere has been home to many touching and amazing stories in 2012. Censored and fraught thought it …
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This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Chinese Internet users have a new name for themselves: Taxpayers. Over the past year, the word “taxpayer” (nashuiren or nashuizhe) has appeared with …
Read MoreIt was a drab February day in 2009. I sat in my college dorm room four floors above York Street, drinking instant coffee and languorously gazing out the window at pedestrians below—miniature fortresses of warmth …
Read MoreA few months ago, I returned to the United States after two years abroad in China. While I quickly re-embraced many comforts of home life—proximity to family and friends, palatable Mexican food, etc.—I also found …
Read MoreJust minutes after CNN declared Rick Santorum winner of Louisiana’s Saturday GOP primary, China’s netizens were already posting their Sunday-morning reactions — in sentence and smiley-face form — on the country’s most popular microblogging sites. …
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