China Pictory: The Return of Real Chopsticks

Read the related article here.

 (photos by Josie Liu unless otherwise indicated)

China Pictory: One-Child Policy Challenged

(Photos by Josie Liu)

China Pictory: Look Familiar? Or Not.

Traveling in China, I was often surprised how similar China looks to America. Such an impression was mostly generated by American brand names and logos I saw all over the places. For people in China, globalization is definitely happening. Whether it is a good or bad thing depends on who you ask. Some Chinese people are bothered that China looks more and more like America, some are happy about it, and some don’t care.
But China is big, and very diversified. American brands are everywhere, and so are indigenous ones, especially in smaller, innerland cities like Xichuan, Henan, which is featured in the slideshow.
So what is really happening is the coexistence of global as well as Chinese commercial forces and cultural practices. It is what British scholar Stuart Hall described as going global and going local at the same time. What do all these mean to Chinese people? Again, it depends on who you ask. But I would say that for most, it means more choices, be it food, style, entertainment, values, or just about everything in life.

Have you got an e-bike?

The city of Kunming now sees hundreds of thousands of ebikes on the roads every day.

Now I am back in the city where I grew up, and I could no longer imagine going anywhere by riding a bicycle.

It is way too dangerous to do that now. There are still bicycle lanes on the roads, but these lanes are mostly occupied by a new type of bicycle: electronic bicycles. They look very much like motorcycles, only that they were powered by batteries. They are faster than traditional bicycles, but are considered non-vehicles and therefore run in the same lane with bicycles.

Worse, they compete with pedestrians for road rights, because as non-vehicles, they don’t have to stop when there is a red light, and they cross the street on crossing lines together with pedestrians.

Read the full story here.