Tea Leaf Nation

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 the level considered safe by the World Health Organization. Air Quality in China — A Snapshot View a larger version [...]

In January alone, a stifling and noxious haze twice enveloped the Chinese capital of Beijing, pushing air quality indexes literally off the charts and inciting widespread outrage both on-line and off. Pollution — and the outcry surrounding it — has gotten so severe that, according to the New York Times, Beijing has taken emergency measures which “include temporarily shutting [...]

On Sina Weibo, China’s major Twitter-like platform, a user with the handle “this is America” (@这里是美国) shared the below image on January 23, two days after U.S. President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. The accompanying caption reads: “Who really changed America?” Obama’s second inaugural did not capture the same amount of attention on China’s social media [...]

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 hard work brings success? Each year, the American think tank Pew Research Center asks questions like these to over 300,000 [...]

“Foreign forces,” indeed. On the same day that Chinese propaganda authorities issued a warning that widespread online and offline anti-censorship protests were being driven by “foreign forces,” a user with a handle meaning “strange Chinese news” (@中国奇闻) has taken to Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, to share this image of an American flag flying on Chinese [...]

A user on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter with the handle @醒来的大鸦 has posted this head-scratcher: A sign reading “Breeding Base for [Communist] Party Members.” Commenting on the posted image, some users asked if Party members were wild animals, while a particularly daring user asked if the sign referred to a pig pen. Perhaps, one user [...]

This article was produced in collaboration with ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. CNPolitics, a Chinese-language news website, recently released this infographic examining the differences between China and America’s wealthiest individuals as reported by Forbes Magazine. As the site notes, China’s relatively recent economic rise means its wealthy tend to be younger. Perhaps surprisingly for a country where all land legally belongs [...]

This article also appears on Tea Leaf Nation partner sites ChinaFile and The Atlantic. Glad-handing with the locals. Kissing babies. Eating fast food. These are tried and true ways that American politicians seek to advertise their common touch; but when China’s new leaders employ these methods, it is greeted as a pleasant surprise, maybe even a sign [...]

From the department of massive PR failures comes this image, tweeted November 30 on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, by a user with the handle “soy-sauce-plus-an-egg Ming” (let’s just call him Ming). It’s a congratulatory banner on the side of what Ming says is the People’s Hospital in Wuchuan, a county-level city in Guangdong province. Ming told a local [...]

China’s late Chairman Mao Zedong has apparently gotten posthumously web-savvy. On December 2, reporter Pu Baoyi (@朴抱一) posted the following image on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. It reads: Yesterday, after a meal at a cafeteria, my wife went to pay and took out a 100 Renminbi note. After taking a look at it, she put it [...]

This article also appeared on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. An active Beijing-based micro-blogger named Dongdong Wang (@東東旺) recently tweeted this image on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: At first glance, it doesn’t look like much: Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao (left) and outgoing President Hu Jintao (right) appear to share a laugh following a [...]

As every school child in China knows, the red color in the Chinese flag symbolizes revolution–dyed by the blood of martyrs who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Communist cause, as it is often said. So it is more than a bit jarring to see this Hermes Birkins bag on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, posted [...]