ZGBriefs
ZGBriefs | January 16, 2025
How China’s Lunar New Year Travel Rush Is World’s Biggest Annual Migration (January 14, 2025, Reuters) Hundreds of millions of Chinese criss-cross the country during the Lunar New Year holidays each year to reunite with families back in their hometowns or for sight-seeing during an extended festive period, making it the world's largest annual human migration. The Lunar New Year travel rush, known as Chunyun in Chinese, is often seen as a barometer for China's economic health and a pressure test for its vast transportation system.
ZGBriefs | January 9, 2025
Podcast - What’s In a Name? Peter Hessler on What English Names Can Reveal about China (December 23, 2024, Chinese Whispers) Why do so many Chinese people choose such curious English names? You must have come across this phenomenon – whether they are names from a past century, or surnames, nouns or even adjectives used as first names, or words that aren’t real at all. [...] You might think this is a bit of a trivial question, but I think the question of English names goes deeper than just some odd words. I think these names reveal something about the China that gave rise to them.
ZGBriefs | January 2, 2024
Carter made the decision to establish relations with China (December 30, 2024, NPR)One of Carter’s most enduring foreign policy legacies was his decision to establish formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China at the start of 1979 —– nearly 30 years after the Communist Party seized power. The establishment of ties […]
ZGBriefs | December 26, 2024
63 Chinese Cuisines: The Complete Guide (November 19, 2024, Chinese Cooking Demystified)I don’t think it’s exactly fair to tear down The Big Eight without building something to replace it. After all, it’s still a better starting point than One Country, One Cuisine! It’s just incomplete. But then… if not eight, how many cuisines […]
ZGBriefs | December 19, 2024
China Extends Visa-Free Transit Stays to 10 Days (December 16, 2024, Reuters) People from 54 countries including Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, "who transit from China to a third country (region), can enter China without a visa from any of the 60 open ports in 24 provinces and stay in the specified area for no more than 240 hours," it said.
ZGBriefs | December 12, 2024
Video – Christian Architecture in Contemporary China: Orthodox Form and Metabollic Practice (December 4, 2024, Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics)With the founding of the People’s Republic, the construction of churches by missionaries came to a halt. Existing churches were expropriated, and it was not until 1979, with the readmission of religious […]
ZGBriefs | December 5, 2024
Video: China’s Crisis of Faith and the Struggle Over Moral Authority (November 19, Asia Society, via YouTube) As the crisis of faith has raised alarms in Beijing and the country's leaders have cracked down on unsanctioned religious expression, a panel of experts discuss how the faithful have responded with resilience and determination. Speakers include Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ian Johnson, Duke Divinity School Professor Xi Lian, and Whitman College Assistant Professor Yuan Xiaobo.
ZGBriefs | November 21, 2024
Video - A Pilgrimage to China’s Noodle Capitol (November 15, 2024, Saint Cavish) An obsession with Lanzhou's hand-pulled noodles takes me to the grave of the man who started it all.
ZGBriefs | November 14, 2024
Guangzhou: “I Truly Love This City” (November 7, 2024, China Partnership) Guangzhou, a city of about 19 million, is one of the most important trade cities in China and the world. The city sits near the head of the Pearl River Delta, and for many years has been the means through which foreign influence first entered Mainland China. Guangzhou is famous for its Cantonese culture, and believers in the area say their city is comfortable, laid back, and simultaneously treasures its history while being an up-to-date and modern metropolis.
ZGBriefs | November 7, 2024
Meet Ms. Hu: She Built a Garden From Chongqing’s Discarded Past (October 30, 2024, Sixth Tone) A dinosaur’s head peers out from a tangle of wildflowers. Half a horse stands watch beside saplings and scattered blossoms. These fragments are part of Ms. Hu’s hidden garden in Chongqing’s Shibati scenic area—once the heart of commerce in this megacity in southwestern China. This unlikely garden, crafted from scraps and relics collected from the city’s streets, seems worlds apart from the surrounding construction site, where trucks and cranes relentlessly reshape this 1,000-year-old neighborhood.