A story about a Harbin photo studio that’s been doing professional photography in China since 1936: 30 years of change in images

In Tianjin, no one doubts that the air quality is beyond brutal. Aside from some vague improvement during the Olympics, we’re back to smog thicker than you’d believe if I described it to you. This detailed report crunches all the data and compares readings from before and after China changed locations of the monitoring stations in order to record more ‘blue sky days’ (doesn’t necessarily literally mean ‘blue sky’). It’s not the first time this report has made rounds in the media, but this time they’re presenting the numbers.

Pronounced: tài niú le
Literally: Too cow!
Means: “So awesome/great!” or “So brutal/bad!” depending on the circumstances. If you get 100 on a test that all your classmates fail, or there’s an awesome move on the sports highlight reel, people can say that it’s tài niú le! But if there’s a really embarrassing sports highlight, or you fail a test that everyone else aces, or someone does something blatantly wrong that most other people wouldn’t do like drive off on the police or run out of the restaurant without paying, then it’s also tài niú le! When used negatively it’s criticizing a bad person or making fun of a stupid/unfortunate person.

You can also say “really cow” (真牛) where you’d say, “really cool” or “really awesome.”

This is the scene immediately after the Sunday morning service concludes at Tianjin’s Shānxī Lù church; people have to wait for some personal prayer space at the altar:

Shānxī Lù is a TSPM church (Three-Self Patriotic Movement). These kinds of Chinese churches are also sometimes called registered churches, official churches, or government churches, depending on the bias of the author. Here’s an official version of what that means: China’s Protestant Churches to Adhere to “Three-Self” Principles. This church seats several hundred, and it’s been full each of the couple times I dropped in.

Karaoke Party with the teachers!
We sang karaoke for FOUR HOURS this afternoon with some of our teachers and classmates. Tons of fun, and our throats are sore now. I’d include a video clip of one of our teachers singing Wannabe by the Spice Girls, but she’d probably kill me. We sang a mix of Chinese and English songs. I once read somewhere that one of the reasons Mainlanders love karaoke so much is because it’s one of the few places where they get to explicitly verbally express romantic feelings. On the way out we passed a room where a middle-aged businessman was totally rocking out to some love ballad.

Burning Day
Riding back from the karaoke place we discovered that it’s another burning night, when the neighbours send ghost money to their dead relatives. This was taken right outside our apartment building:

See “There’s hell to pay” or the related links below for more about burning stuff for dead relatives.

A Mainland reporter ditches his career after 10 years and explains why: “Farwell to my ‘reporter’ career” (from CDT).

The announcement got buried under news of the U.S. election and the global financial crisis, but China’s recently passed rural reforms could result in massive changes to the country, possibly sparking the biggest mass migration in history.

I’ve been waiting a long time for a truckload-of-migrant-workers photo. Today I finally was in the right place at the right time with a camera.

This is a small truckload, as truckloads of migrant workers go. Legions of legions (literally) of guys like these — who prefer manual labour in the cities to the rural life they left behind — built and are building (literally) the new New China.

These guys are one of the major reasons why China can build so much so fast, and why stuff on store shelves in North America is so ridiculously cheap: migrant construction and factory workers exist in Dickensian conditions, and there are millions of them. This keeps labour costs way down, and lets China’s government/business elite pass (some of) the savings on to us!

And yes, that’s a McDonald’s (麦当劳 / mài dāng láo) in the background.

One thing that stunned me when I arrived in China was how it seemed everyone and their grandmas were burgeoning entrepreneurs. Mainlanders will find way to sell stuff — any stuff, anywhere — if it is at all possible to sell stuff. This article argues that China is less capitalistic now than it was in the 80′s.

The Chinese Media Project discusses “new nationalism,” the latest in a long string of obstacles for China’s boldest news publications: “But as a younger generation emerges in China with a sense of entitlement and national pride, they are increasingly battling against more liberal voices in China’s media that push for social and political reform. Younger and more educated Chinese, those who have benefited most from reforms, often resist change to the status quo, and often stridently.”

From the NYT: Wary of Islam, China tightens a vise of rules