At times, parsing propaganda for deeper meaning is difficult. At others, the (unintentional) message is hidden in plain sight. In October 2018, one bus passenger in Guizhou’s Nayong County realized that a roadside billboard...
At The New York Times, writer and free speech advocate Murong Xuecun looks at the lasting effect...
The linguistic gymnastics used to evade censorship by China’s more politically inclined web...
Catch-22, the title and starring-rule of Joseph Heller’s 1961 satire of bureaucratic folly...
At Caixin, Yu Ge comments on recent criticism in People’s Daily of the adoption of English...
At China Real Time on Monday, Te-Ping Chen noted the relative lack of recent adoptions of Chinese...
In response to a Hong Kong Standard article which accused The South China Morning Post of...
Global Times reports instructions for TV and radio hosts to use more “proper...
While Shanghai strives to be an international city, locals are worried about the preservation of its cultural identity. After the 1990s, when Shanghai increased its efforts to become an international metropolis, the use of...
The Economist's Analects blog has a post about the recent television dramas about the Qing Dynasty, such as Palace, and suggests that the popular image of the Manchus is far from accurate:Actors in Chinese film and...
This photograph (via CDT Chinese) was taken in 2010 in Kangding city, in the Ganzi/Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of western Sichuan. The poster’s comment: “As I was out for a stroll, I happened to see a...
Worldcrunch translates an article from Die Welt on changes in the new eleventh edition of the Xinhua Zidian (New China Dictionary), and the social changes they reflect. From the very first edition in 1953, it has mirrored...
The Wall Street Journal looks at a revival in interest in their native language and culture by China’s Manchu minority: So Hasutai, who in the Manchu tradition goes by the one name, has come to this remote corner of China...
For the National Geographic special issue on China, author Amy Tan wrote about the village of Dimen in Guizhou. On National Public Radio, Tan discussed the Dong people who live in the village and their tradition of using song to...
From Reuters: A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday. The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of […]
From Xinhua via Shanghai Daily: Three decades ago when Hong Kong was still under British rule, English and Cantonese were the most popular languages in the territory. It was during that time that Cheung Dan, a Beijing linguistic scholar, established a Mandarin school there, vowing to teach Hong Kong people Mandarin….[Full Text]
From PC World: “Google Inc. has commented on a new software tool it released in China this week, although it did not address allegations that the software bears more than a passing resemblance to a rival’s product. “Two days ago we launched our Chinese Pinyin Input Method Editor (IME) as a test product in Google […]
From Physorg.com: A computer user in Hong Kong watches online Mandarin teacher Lily Huang at her home on Hainan island, mainland China on 27 March 2007. Lily teaches students across the globe via Skype, the Internet telephony system that allows people to communicate for free across the world, often using webcams. Such is the strength […]
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
CDT is a non-profit media site, and we need your support. Your contribution will help us provide more translations, breaking news, and other content you love.
