Tea Leaf Nation

At the entrance of Gongjian Hutong in Beijing sat a short thin man who walked with a limp and wore a blue, one-piece jump suit. He lived in a one-room metal shack with a clear sliding door and fixed bikes for a living, with a large shelf of tools next to his bed. He gossiped [...]

A rare protest in Beijing involving hundreds of people was documented by photos posted on China’s social media (scroll down to see photos). The cause of the protest was the death of a 22-year old migrant worker, who fell several stories from an apparels wholesale market building in Beijing on May 3. The police declared [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. As Chinese authorities try–and repeatedly fail–to cool off the nation’s red-hot real estate market, the real-world impact of high housing prices is being keenly felt in the nation’s capital, Beijing. In a recent viral post on Douban, a Chinese social media platform featuring [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This article also appeared in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Beijing has been the capital of China for about 700 years. Is that about to change? The establishment of a city on the northern fringe of what’s considered “China Proper” as the capital of the Chinese empire is somewhat of an accident of [...]

This article also appeared in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Among all the ancient traditions that Chinese people observe during the lunar New Year, setting off firecrackers is the most controversial. Originally used to “drive bad luck away,” firecrackers have been an intrinsic part of the Chinese New Year celebration for thousands [...]

This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. A policeman draws his gun to stop a desperately escaping criminal. It may sound sensational, but this is technically what happened in the southern Chinese megalopolis of Guangzhou on January 31. As traffic policemen were manning a drunk driving checkpoint, a driver in a red Porsche [...]

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 [...]

This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Beijingers are choking on their air — again. Just seventeen days after Chinese cyberspace erupted with complaints about pollution so bad that it was “beyond index,” denizens of the Chinese capital awoke once again to a city blanketed with smog. Over the past [...]

“I had no idea it would become so big,” said Jesse Appell, director and producer of the now-viral “Laowai Style” Internet video. The video—a parody of Gangnam Style—was shot in one day, with no budget. Within twenty hours of its posting, “Laowai Style” had 60,000 views on Youku, China’s Youtube, and was featured on the [...]