Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

No computers, downloads, or phone cards necessary. Just dial and talk internationally and pay local rates! How does it work? You give RebTel the phone number of a friend in another country, and they give you a local number for them. Save this number on your mobile so you can call your friend whenever you want at the local rate. And then they can call you back on a local number for them absolutely free!

If your understanding of Chinese is limited to takeout menus, you need a friend fluent in Mandarin. With a telephone interpreter and translation service, English-speaking visitors to China can get directions, make reservations and basically avoid embarrassment. We tested two interpreter services in the market: chinaONEcall, a British company started in 2006 that promotes itself as "the interpreter in your pocket," and Language Line Services, which was started by a former California police officer 25 years ago.

Following the recent earthquake in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, chinaONEcall is offering free help for victims of the Chinese earthquake, and for anxious family or others needing to contact them or the victims doctors / nurses in the affected area.

What's the fastest-growing industry in China? Mobile phones? Computer components? Toys? The last wouldn't be too far off, but not in the sense that the word toys is conventionally understood. Call them playthings.

Leisure and business travel to China is booming, mobile phones services have caught up to developed world standards and the Olympics, which China is expecting to attract half a million foreign tourists, are two months away.

In an effort to reduce the trade deficit and curb energy intensive exports, China has announced that they will reduce VAT rebates in nearly 3000 categories.

I have discussed this in length on All Roads Lead to China for the last week, and have the entire VAT reduction tariff on there as well.

If you are manufacturing in China for export, this will impact your bottom line.

It's 11 pm...the phone rings...you're tired, you have to be up the next morning at 7, you're ready for a good night sleep. You decide to ignore it...but then, 1 minute later, they call back again, and again, and again. Aiiiyaaa! Is there any logic behind the cell phone insanity?

Hitflip is a young and fast-growing company. We run Europe's biggest P2P swap platform for media products (DVDs, games, CDs, audiobooks, and books). Our aim is to excite our members by making the swap of media products as easy and cheap as possible. All our members have to do is enter which products they have and which ones they want, and Hitflip does the rest.

Hitflip UK
Global Strike Video Game

Kudos to Imagetheif for the title tips. A video from Sky News showing:
-Tigers being fed a big moo-cow to entertain Chinese onlookers.
-A Chicken Vending Machine.
-A new fuel-efficient bear-powered car.