Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

WITH pigs dying all over the country and the price of pork soaring, China has come under suspicion of attempting to cover up a dangerous outbreak of an infectious disease. It is not the first time such suspicions have fallen upon China

In a coals-to-Newcastle deal for the dinner table, Britain has signed an agreement to export pigs' trotters to the Chinese.

A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said today that the Chinese government is providing little information about it, or about the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused deaths and illnesses in other animals.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

In a weird twist of product bans, and perhaps to show that it works both ways - China has banned all chicken coming from Canada after a farm in Western Canada discovered some of their chickens infected with a strain of bird flu that (unlike the kind that killed a bunch of people in China) is not lethal to humans.

We all know Michael Scofield’s famous tattoo in Prison Break but tattooing The Great Wall of China, dragons, Olympic rings, symbols of Olympic sports and Fuwa? on your body sure comes close in some way.

There is, by my estimation, exactly one advantage to getting inked in the back of a Chinese laowai bar: the characters will probably be right. Fithi Garza decided to tattoo his late brother’s name in Chinese on his arm. He did it in a back room in Dalian’s Nepalese Bar.

This, the latest post at the Lost Laowai Blog, shows an easy and cost-effective way to bypass the sundry crowds eager to cheat you of your yuan with cheap souveniers, or just steal your view of the world-class skyline. A bunch of photos are included.

Southern Weekly newspaper is looking for foreigners' photos for their Spring Festival edition.

Submit your photos, get published and make some dough!

China is rapidly buying up Africa's oil, metals and farm produce. That fuels China's surging economic growth, but how good is it for Africa? Or more to the point, does anyone really care??