Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Coal is big, and getting bigger. As oil and natural gas prices soar, the world is relying ever more on the cheap, black-burning mainstay of the Industrial Revolution.

And nowhere is coal bigger than in China.

One of my students gave a short speech yesterday on the person who had most influenced her life. Like many others she named her mother as her personal hero. It was a great impromptu speech and I applauded her for her candor about one issue in particular: She lauded her mother for giving up a high paying managerial job to take care of her as she grew up, but lamented that her father was

What is the single most famous photograph in China? What is the message of the photo? What happened to the girl? The translated articles give the full story.

A woman in Nanjing, China fell off a sixth floor balcony and survived thanks to a pile of poop on the ground below. From Sky News:

"She landed in a 20cm thick heap of excrement," the Kuaibao tabloid newspaper gleefully reported.

"Workers happened to be emptying the building's septic tank, which had not been tended for a long time, and had regularly blocked sewage pipes.

Yongfeng Feng, a Beijing environmental journalist, writes that renewable energies and trees are critical to reducing greenhouse gases, but manmade, single-species forests fail at carbon capture and adversely affect biodiversity, from http://www.chinadialogue.net

Who or what should be targeted by Chinese netizens looking to vent their anger and frustration over the huge loss of human life in Sichuan? May I recommend the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas?

A new panda mother who gave birth to twins this week accidentally crushed one of her newborns in her sleep, state media said Friday.

Richard gives his detailed review of LiJia Zhang's book - Socialism Is Great, the story of a woman who was sent to work in a missile factory in post-Cultural Revolution China. Despite the hardships of the work, Zhang taught herself English and rebelled against the unfair practices of the factory. Not only does she pull herself out of the factory - but she goes on to be a writer and commentator on BBC and NPR. As Richard puts it - it trumps "just about every conceivable Cinderella story."

Photos of a huge rural wedding banquet with over 750 tables and thousands of people. Three days and three nights of celebrating? Probably very expensive.