Danwei Picks

African traders in China, Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa

Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

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'Chocolate city': African traders in Guangzhou: Blogging for China translates a Southern Metropolis Daily article about African traders in Guangzhou and elsewhere in China.


Chinese in Tanzania: Tudou.com co-founder Marc van der Chijs has just returned from a trip to the east African nation of Tanzania and has written a blog post about Chinese entrepreneurs he met there.


Middle name? No tickets for you: The WSJ's China Journal blog tells of foreigners unable to claim Olympic tickets they reserved:

The online application forms requested only first and last names. But when foreigners showed up to claim their tickets, using passports for identification, bank staff refused to hand over tickets to people whose passports also included a middle name. (It's a non-issue for most Chinese, who use family names and given names but not separate "middle" names.)


Hip-hop Olympics: At Blogging Beijing from the the Seattle Times, Daniel Beekman profiles Beijing-based hip-hop group In Three (阴三儿).


Make Polo: A group of journalism students from the University of Texas at Austin traveled around China in May and are publishing photos, articles and blog posts about their visit at ChinaOnThe Brink.com.

One of them, Patrick Michels, wrote about Internet startup MakePolo.com:

Makepolo is a search engine designed to help small businesses quickly find specific supplies and stock items from online retailers. By focusing on the online needs of a narrow group of users, Su is counting on the fact that just a sliver of the Chinese market can mean serious business--30 million small businesses in China alone, he says.


97 new airports planned: From The China Daily:

China sets aside $64b for airport shuffle

China drafted a long-term plan for development of air cargo, which will require the building of 97 new airports, consolidation of smaller airports and upgrading of certain key airports by the year 2020. The entire project will cost the government a massive investment of $64 billion.


Could China stop Taiwan from coming to the Olympic Games?: Susan Brownell answers that trick question at The China Beat:

Global politics usually don't change as quickly as we would like, but they do change. One year ago I was one of many people who thought that the biggest political threat to the Beijing Olympic Games was the movement toward independence in Taiwan. Now it appears that the Taiwan situation is comparatively stable. But the symbols associated with Taiwan - including words - remain one of the most politically sensitive areas of the Olympic Games.

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From 2008
Books on China
The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
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From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ Korean history doesn't fly on Chinese TV screens (2007.09): SARFT puts the kibbosh on Korean historical dramas.
+ Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet.
+ David Moser on Mao impersonators (2004.10): I first became aware of this phenomenon in 1992 when I turned on a Beijing TV variety show and was jolted by the sight of "Mao Zedong" and "Zhou Enlai" playing a game of ping pong. They both gave short, rousing speeches, and then were reverently interviewed by the emcee, who thanked them profusely for taking time off from their governmental duties to appear on the show.
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