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A travelling salesman in China has taken the idea of a portable home to the extreme after building himself a house he carries around on his

Playwright Lucy Kirkwood has been obsessed with a photograph. It’s one of the most famous images of the 20th century: the lone man with his shopping standing in front of tanks en route to Tiananmen Square – and it’s inspired her native

Luxury British fashion brand Burberry annual profits have risen a better-than-expected 14 per cent to £428m.

If you’ve traveled to China, you’ve likely encountered senior citizens flapping their arms early in the morning in public parks, or perhaps squatting, walking, singing or dancing in groups, twisting waists and wiggling hips and watching their own hands while performing repetitive movements. Most likely, these folks were engaging in their morning qigong.
Ranging from simple to quite complex, this popular mind-body exercise represents a uniquely Chinese method of uniting good intentions with specific results. Because it is more accessible and less challenging than practices like tai chi or yoga — and takes far less time to learn — it is growing in popularity among New Agers, the alternative medicine crowd and just about anyone whose mind is more open than their wallet when it comes to taking good care of themselves.
The word “qigong” (pronounced “chee gung”) is a composite of two Chinese characters, the first meaning energy (“qi”) and the second meaning work

When you bought your last Apple iPod, you may have been aware that it had been manufactured at a factory in China, perhaps the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen in the province of Guangzhou. (Let’s put aside for the moment the working conditions there.) You may have been aware too that in manufacturing your electronic marvel, the Shenzhen plant emitted roughly 25 pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It’s even possible that you were aware of the 9-10 pounds of CO2 emitted in transporting the device to you from China. (See Apple’s environmental report for the iPod classic [PDF].)
Here’s what you probably didn’t take into account: The coal that powered the Foxconn plant in the south of China likely was mined in the far northern province of Shanxi, transported by truck or rail to coal terminals on the coast (e.g., the port city of Tianjin), and from there shipped by freighter to Shenzhen in the far

Last Sunday, armed with nothing more than a webcam, a pushup bra, and two minutes fifty-two seconds of too much free time, UCLA student Alexandra Wallace committed professional suicide. She went on YouTube and posted a racist video attacking the “hordes of Asian people” in the library who bother her by using their cellphones to check on family members impacted by “the tsunami thing” while she’s trying to study.
She quickly took down the video, but not before it had been reposted by others and gone viral. By now, it’s been seen by millions. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block condemned her statements in his own

When the Dalai Lama talks about his health, as he did with me one day less than two years ago, he often recounts with a giggle how physicians say his body is that of a much younger man.
Despite his 75 years, he’s had only minor bouts of ill health. One came in October 2008, when doctors in India operated on his gall bladder. Afterward, he delighted in telling listeners that he was less of a Dalai Lama than before: A monk without his gall bladder.
The Dalai Lama may be advanced in years, but he remains quick-witted.
Thursday’s announcement that the Dalai Lama plans to retire from political life is actually not a new sentiment. I heard him express it at a news conference in Tokyo just a month after his gallbladder surgery.
“I’m looking forward to complete retirement,” he

If you want to get to know your book, read it out loud. This is a simple lesson I learned recording the audio book of Big In China, My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing.
Shortly after my editor at HarperCollins accepted my manuscript for Big in China, I began bugging her to let me read the audio book. No one else could capture my inflections and my intentions in this first-person memoir, the very personal tale of my family’s adventures and experiences during three and half years living in

Americans at the pump are worried. They should be. As civil war looms in Libya, oil prices are up 19% in just three weeks, topping $105 a barrel. And even through there has been some easing today, that spells bad news not only for the American consumer, but also for our fragile economy and for our politicians trying to wrangle with the American Debt

We just saw a pretty good ‘official’ unemployment report for February, wherein for the first time since April 2009 the official unemployment rate dropped below 9.0% (to 8.9%). However, the real unemployment rate, which is the only rate that really matters, remains at 17.8%, including all categories of the 28.4 million out-of-work Americans. The all-important “jobs gap” that needs to be filled in order to be at full employment in real terms is a staggering 20.4 million, and the number of workers unemployed a half year or longer is at least 10 million. Each of these figures is unprecedented in modern

The World Trade Organization has a long history of anti-American actions. They’ve just handed us another one, and in the process handed a big freebie to Chinese state capitalism.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, huge sections of our nation’s trade policy aren’t set in this country anymore. They are set by panels of WTO judges in Switzerland, to whom we have signed over the right to rule on the legitimacy of our policies.
At issue in a WTO ruling handed down last Friday is how much scope the U.S. is entitled to in trying to level the playing field for American companies competing against companies subsidized under China’s system of state

“And she never had dreams, so they never came true”
-J. Giles Band
As a structured settlement consultant, I go to meditations and settlement conferences with people who anticipate receiving large sums of money. I ask every person the same question. “Forget about what is going on

This past Saturday, Premier Wen Jiabao delivered his 2011 “Report on the Work of the Government” to the 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing for the National People’s Congress. The report, delivered annually, is comparable to U.S. President’s State of the Union Address, laying out the successes of the past year and the direction the government plans to take in the next year. But, as this is a year that the Congress will issue the next Five-Year Plan (the 12th), Wen’s report looks beyond 2011, down the road as far as 2015.
Parsing the “Report on the Work of the Government” is no easier than parsing the State of the Union

Our new man in China, Gary Locke, will have a big, bilateral economic mess to help clean up. The United States posted a record $273 billion trade deficit with China last year. China continues to slow-walk the Yuan’s appreciation against the dollar. And, China shows few signs of easing up on its mercantilist and protectionist policies that help to keep our export outs, and give Chinese production an unfair advantage in our market and others around the world.
Secretary Locke — announced by the president today to become our next ambassador to China if confirmed by the Senate — compiled a pretty good record at the Commerce Department on these

Japan as an Economic Counter-Weight to China
The recent signing of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between India and Japan will soon make each country the other’s largest trading partner. Both remain concerned about the rising power and influence of China, now the world’s second largest economy, projected to surpass the U.S. in size as soon as 2020. India has for some time been alarmed by China’s military links with Pakistan and its growing presence in the Indian

I was walking down Beijing’s Sanlitun Village when I heard a voice call out, “Meinu! (Pretty girl) Meinu!” I turned around to see a young woman exclaim, “I’ve been following you since the traffic light, meinu! Are you single?”
It was an odd question, but as a matter of fact, I was, so I answered honestly. She smiled and introduced herself quickly. She worked for a company called the Golden Bachelor Dating Agency, which finds matches for “high-caliber men.”
How high-caliber? To join this dating service you need a wealth of at least RMB 2 million (approximately USD $292,000) or a background, when I later checked the company website, that is “extremely superior, wealthy and aristocratic”. And suppose you don’t have millions in the bank? You could try being “young, talented and beautiful.”
She continued,

In testimony to Congress last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the existence of an ongoing “information war” that the United States is losing. In addition to saying that “Al Jazeera is winning,” Clinton pointed to the major investments in international broadcasting being made by China and Russia.
The Chinese effort is of particular importance. As Secretary Clinton said, “We are in a competition for influence with China; let’s put aside the moral, humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in, and let’s just talk straight realpolitik.”
China has designed a significant part of its public diplomacy as a means of courting countries that are sources of natural resources that China

Sometimes, it takes art to bring an issue alive. Sometimes, what it takes, in fact, is a play. Two weeks ago, I saw a play that was so beautiful, and so thoughtful, that it reminded me what theatre was for. It was called The Blue Dragon, and it was, as well as being, like all good art, about love, and life, and hope, and disappointment, about living in a globalised

Despite the power and allure of nuclear weapons, only nine nations in the world today have nuclear arsenals. Why aren’t there more?
The main reason: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, which went into force 41 years ago today, has provided strong incentives for nations to give up their nuclear weapons programs – or not pursue them in the first place. Over 30 other nations have the technological ability to make nuclear weapons, but they chose not to do

China may be the epicenter of the global environmental crisis. Along the Yangtze, Yellow and Pearl rivers, fragile ecosystems meet the world’s largest population and most rapacious economy. In an epic journey, Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s Asia environment correspondent, has visited the places where the world’s factory is bursting at the environmental seams. In a new book, he reports what he has seen.
On his journey, Watts passes through the logging towns of China’s far North and the cancer villages of industrial

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We are all becoming Chinese farmers. Gao Jitian, a farmer in eastern China’s Shandong Province, is about to lose her entire crop due to drought. Gao lives in Nanyang village of Linyi City in southeastern Shandong, one of China’s major grain-growing regions parched by the lingering drought.
“The village has not seen any rain or snow since September and I have not experienced such severe drought in my life,” says the 55-year-old Gao.
Gao is just one of 2,000,000 million Chinese farmers currently infected by the climate epidemic. Every day the epidemic claims new

Some sweet irony in the referral of the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court.
As court-watchers well know, longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi long has been a thorn in the ICC’s side.
It’s not just that Libya’s not a party to the Rome Statute that governs the decade-old, Netherlands-based ICC. The same holds true of many of Libya’s Arab neighbors — not to mention a number of very large states east and west, like China, Russia, and the United States.
Rather, Libya’s particularly prickly relation to the ICC stems from Gaddafi’s efforts to exerts his brand of leadership on the African continent.
To cite an example: It’s no accident that, as Pittsburgh Law Professor Charles Jalloh, among others, has noted, the first African Union resolution condemning the ICC’s pursuit of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir occurred at a meeting in Libya. (Bashir remains under ICC indictment on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to government attacks on the people of Darfur.)
Libya also is a member of the Human Rights Council, formed in 2006 as a means better to promote human rights within U.N. member states and throughout the world.
The Human Rights Council broke with Libya on

“What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?” – Jack Kerouac
The Great Ride Forward was a simple idea at first. Working at the USA Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, my friend Hans and I had the opportunity to meet a world’s worth of people in a few short months. From the exotic architecture of the Saudi Pavilion to Thailand’s 3D films, the restaurant at Peru to the sprawling showcases of China’s provinces, the Expo was a hard place to not get excited about traveling the globe. We soon had friends scattered across continents, and the stories they shared fueled our need for