Friend Tricia Wang is spending a year in China doing fascinating research on poor migrants and their use of technology.  She recently shared an excellent write up regarding her experience undercover as a migrant on the Beijing subway. I’ve lived in China for several years, most of which have involved riding the subway around Chinese [...]

Last fall, the New York Times published an article describing the rising importance of Mandarin in Chinatown. This seemed to offend travel writer Daisann McLane, an avid student of Cantonese.  She insists that Cantonese is flourishing and cites her time with certain infamous Hong Kong politicians in New York’s Chinatown as evidence of such Cantonese.  [...]

You should be worried when the CEO of Beijing’s largest real estate company Zhang Xin has this to say: My view is that the real estate business has a lot of asset bubbles, but even with asset bubbles it doesn’t mean that we are getting out of the business. The strategy is not giving up [...]

Quick post as I wait for my 12 inch 1/2 chicken curry 1/2 pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut to be delivered here in Guangzhou: I was reminded tonight, yet again, by Papa John‘s nationwide delivery hotline why Pizza Hut does so much better in the China market. They accept credit cards. It is 2010 folks…even [...]

Google’s threat to leave the China market was not made because of some higher moral calling but instead was a carefully crafted business decision to make one last attempt to generate interest in their China services before throwing in the towel and doing so without hurting the Google brand’s image of inevitable success.