Putting on the Dog

IF the term had been coined here, the "cat walk" of the West would have been a "dog walk" in the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese are "putting on the dog," but the old expression for dressing up in one’s     

Club, Sweat and Gears

HAYDEN Opie, Sam Callaghan and Tom Lanhove are ama-teurs – amateur sportsmen that is, who are the kingpins in three clubs helping to make after-hours life in China fun and healthy. Dug in Beijing, they have re-created for them-selves, and everyone else who shares their interests, a little bit of "home," whether that’s Belgium, South Africa or New Zealand. Sport takes the edge off the     

The Hidden Land of Guizhou

FATE endowed China’s diminu-tive, landlocked province of Guizhou in its southern interior with an outsized significance to modern China. Several factors have conspired to largely shield the region from foreign eyes, and being one of Chi-na’s poorest provinces, it has been slow to modernize and shape its future. That is precisely what transfi xes certain kinds of travelers. The sense is that much of the region is "untouched," and that     

Chris Buckley： Extreme Textiler

EXTREME textiles is a name we might associate with a carpet that can report the footsteps of an intruder or the heat of a fire （don＇t laugh; they exist!）. But that＇s not the sort of extreme we have in mind when discussing Chris Bucktey＇s work. It＇s more along the lines of Mathilda McQuaid＇s lecture on high-tech textiles at the Copenhagen Conference ＂Avantgarde - Innovative Cooperation Between Craft and Businesses.＂     

Walking on Air

SKIPPING the bit where you spend years paying your dues, two young Western women with good enough credentials find themselves cresting the waves of China＇s media ambitions. Their ＂overnight success＂ at the expanding networks of CNC and Bon Live is being played out against China＇s desire to tell its own stories about itself to the world, and at the same time make room for constructive public criticism and uncensored coverage of sensitive topics.     

Who＇s Your Digital Daddy？

JESPER Lodahl and Victor Wong, expatriates and China transplants, are not technocrats nor techno-geeks; the partners who founded SmarTots met when Lodahl needed help building an online social networking application, and realized somewhere along the line that communication in families had radically changed since they were children, and not entirely for the better. Wong had a kind of epiphany at his own dinner table - "The phenomenon he     

Defenders of Slow Culture

THERE’S a hutong brew pub in Beijing where owner and patrons drink cheerfully under Blitzkrieg-like conditions. They are making a stand on the front lines of beer culture, in the back alleys of a high profile, low-tech hutong heritage neighborhood. The Great Leap microbrewery     

Serve the Literati

ALEX Pearson bound a community of bookworms. Every March in China thousands of people who define themselves as avid readers surrender two weeks of their spare time - weekends, lunch hours, and after work - to their local Bookworm- a happy marriage of restaurant, library, bar and book shop.     

Lost in Translation

LET＇S make sure we understand each other. That, in a nutshell, is the driving ambition of interpreters, translators and editors working in China. These are the folks who are responsible for the conversion of anything written in Chinese into your language： articles, novels, biographies and histories, those subtitles that allow you to enjoy television programs, films and opera. Others labor over professional, academic and press conferences, live at official meetings,     

The Kids Are All Right

THIS column has been exploring what people come to China to do,and the unique perspectives they get on this rapidly developing country as a result of their work and passions. Much less has been said about the families that come with them. In Beijing,25 percent of all expats are estimated to be families with children,