Tea Leaf Nation

Fast vehicles and racy women have always been the playthings of the rich. But when a car is too fast to handle, the driver may find himself and his exotic cargo just where he didn’t want to be: the limelight. On the afternoon of April the 5, Yeh Mao-hong (葉茂宏), president of Architecture World (葉財建設), [...]

The weeks preceding Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, are notoriously miserable for train travelers in China. The holiday is China’s main traditional festival, and it is generally considered vital to return to one’s home region at this time to celebrate with family. In recent years, travel by air and car have greatly expanded. But [...]

This article also appears in Tea Leaf Nation Partner sites ChinaFile and The Atlantic. Since China unveiled the new Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s Web users have been paying close attention to the new elite group of leaders who will set the country’s agenda for [...]

It’s an oldie but a goodie. Two years ago, Shen Yin, co-founder of The Founder magazine, wrote about two unnamed friends, “L” and “W.” L focused his business on China’s poor laborers, while W focused his on its elite. From L’s success, and W’s comparative frustration, Shen felt the reader could learn about the bifurcation [...]

American reality shows like “Wife Swap,” where two families swap mothers for a predetermined time, have already found notoriety. But did you know that one Chinese reality show swaps children? On X-change (变形计), a program on Hunan Satellite Television, two children swap families for seven days. One child hails from a low-income rural household, the [...]

American reality shows like “Wife Swap,” where two families swap mothers for a predetermined time, have already found notoriety. But did you know that one Chinese reality show swaps children? On X-change (变形计), a program on Hunan Satellite Television, two children swap families for seven days. One child hails from a low-income rural household, the [...]

What is “a lot” of money in China, anyway? With over one million US-dollar millionaires in China and counting, the country’s currency doesn’t go as far as it used to. A delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference recently irked China’s blogosphere by suggesting China issue higher-denomination bills. Although that idea has been officially shelved, China’s [...]

Mark Zuckerberg, eat your heart out.  12306.cn may not sound like the most alluring, or easy to remember, website, but starting on January fifth of this year its average daily page views have exceeded 1 billion, making it one of the world’s most trafficked sites.  No, it’s not the next Facebook or Google.  It’s the [...]

Is it a New Years’ miracle? An elaborate media charade? A Greek tragedy? Microbloggers on Weibo, China’s Twitter, diverge sharply on the story of Xiao Yanqin, the betrayed young wife who reportedly commited suicide on Christmas day, only to appear, very much alive, for a January 1 interview on Beijing television after her “resurrection” was [...]

China’s class divide continues to rile the masses.  Netizens have rushed to condemn a young mother who called a young laborer “dirty” after he offered her his seat on a public bus in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. As of this post, this incident had garnered almost 1.3 million  comments on Weibo, China’s Twitter, and was the [...]