Tea Leaf Nation

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 [...]

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 [...]

We’ve seen this movie before, and so has the rest of China. On Saturday, October 27, Tea Leaf Nation reported that protests were heating up in the coastal city of Ningbo as locals expressed opposition to the construction of a chemical refining project they feared would pollute their hometown environment. On that same day, prominent [...]

With another veto cast by China against a UN resolution aimed at resolving the Syrian crisis, some Chinese netizens are expressing their outrage on Sina Weibo, a microblogging platform. Thursday’s resolution would have used the threat of economic sanctions to pressure the Syrian government into implementing a peace plan that had been accepted months ago [...]

Exhibit #593 that the world is a small place: Chinese netizens have already reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s hours-old ruling on the Affordable Care Act. We pulled a small sample of interesting (not necessarily representative) comments from Weibo, China’s Twitter. At a historic moment like this, it’s worth remembering the eyes of the world [...]

In a society increasingly divided between the haves and the have-nots, migrant workers who leave their homes in the countryside for jobs in China’s cities often find themselves right at the bottom of the urban social hierarchy, with limited protection from employer abuses, no right to an education for their children and, perhaps worst of [...]

There are good people everywhere–including in rough and tumble China. With over 15,000 reposts, the image of a (rather well-appointed) wallet and its return is Sina Weibo’s most viral image of May 25, 2012, according to Hong Kong University’s Weiboscope. Weiboscope tracks the most frequently re-posted images among prominent Weibo users. What is this image? [...]

We all need someone. With over 23,000 reposts since its appearance, the image of love and companionship at left is Sina Weibo’s most viral image of May 22, according to Hong Kong University’s Weiboscope. Weiboscope tracks the most widely re-posted images among prominent users. What is this image? The image is self-explanatory; more interesting is [...]

Beautiful Formosa, we hardly know ye. Though netizens have never held back their praise for Taiwan, or China’s “Treasure Island” (宝岛), Han Han’s recent blog entry, Winds of the Pacific, took the admiration to another level after going viral online. (Tea Leaf Nation recently translated an excerpt of it.) Often dubbed the opinion leader of [...]

Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, in response to recent discussion of the mainland’s brewing conflict with the Philippines over the Huangyan Islands, user @有子如虎 recently tweeted his summary of military history this way: “I was thinking about recent history: U.S.: We strike whoever we want! England: We strike whoever the U.S. strikes! Russia: We [...]

The below are translated excerpts from a recent blog entry (Chinese) by China’s most famous young writer, Han Han.  Winds of the Pacific  Taipei stood before me like a labyrinth, just like any other city to any other traveler. My companion needed a new pair of eyeglasses, so we walked into a shop near National Taiwan University. [...]

Following blind rights lawyer Cheng Guangcheng’s daring recent escape from years of house arrest, observers waited with baited breath to see how China’s media would break its silence on the news. This morning, the relatively pro-party Global Times took the first step with articles in Chinese and English which, the Wall Street Journal reported, tried [...]