““One hundred and ten!” one of my neighbors yelled proudly from our shared common courtyard. He had been walking around the inside perimeter of our block of flats for the better part of an hour, phone in one hand and a leash connecting him to his sluggish corgi in the other. Face covered with the now obligatory mask, he walked over towards another dog-neighbor duo sitting on a bench enjoying the spring sun and in his booming voice announced he was increasing his loops by 10% each day.  » Read more »

Just to the south of Hong Kong lies Macau. This tiny territory of just under thirty square kilometers must be one of the few places in the world where a former colony boasts a higher per capita income than the parent country.

Under the reign of the fifth Emperor Wencheng, a senior monk named Tao Yan from western Gansu province requested Imperial sponsorship to create the first rock carved caves in China at a sandstone escarpment 16 km west of Datong. So were the Yungang Caves born.

One of the most composed and sublimely beautiful films to have come out of China is Raise the Red Lantern (1991), hailed by IMDb as one of the “25 movies you must see before you die”. For a quintessentially Chinese location, director Zhang Yimou picked Pingyao, a turtle-shaped, walled city of nearly 4,000 wonderfully preserved original Ming (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) buildings.  Almost the entire town consists of traditional cobbled streets dividing classically-styled courtyard homes,  » Read more »

Do Chinese Women Enjoy More Freedom & Power Than Other Countries? In the eyes of the western media, the Communist experience in China is presumed to be irredeemably bad. This picture is complicated when it comes to the position of women in Chinese society. Communism broke down the traditional strictures on women, freeing them to advance in many professions. Though the picture is mixed, for example women are under-represented in the upper tiers of government, there’s little question that women in China are far ahead of their peers in Japan and Korea.