Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Living in China brings with it a number of occasions where most can do nothing but scratch their heads and say “WTF?” However, largely by the help of the English-language China blogsphere, we’ve started to create a dictionary that can assist in putting words to the weird, definitions to the disarray and captions to the confusing.

The LICtionary, or Life In China Dictionary, contains terms us expats have created to put form to the fiction that is life in China.

The Telegraph: I report on a statement released by a group of Chinese human rights defenders on those people still imprisoned following 6-4 - as the massacre on June 4 1989 is commonly known...

The government has vehemently denied that China has any political prisoners in its jails today and has dismissed any reports that it still jails people for participating in the 1989 movement as fabricated lies.

To ease and comfort the hearts of those prisoners whose families suffered big losses during the earthquake, the Sichuan Bureau of Prison Administration has initiated a campaign that allows prisoners to temporarily return to their hometowns to mourn their loved ones.

This cool video (got via Sinosplice) shows the demolition of an old building. Just when the building appears to never want to come down, it does - on top of the poor guy demo'ing it.

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Note: Remember, you can add your own videos to the Hao Hao Report. Just check out the FAQ for the details.

John, of Sinosplice/Chinesepod/ChinaBlogList fame, has hit the big time. Watch out Da Shan, John's more likable and (according to his limited female readership-and mom) much more handsome.

On his own blog John hits on a point about profiles like this and how Chinese English-language media are always gunning to get us laowai "in a corner" and interview us. I applaud John for getting in a good quote or two that don't just "sell up" China and Chinese culture.

Blogger Matthew Stinson gets some advice from Sinosplice's John Pasden and fellow Shanghai expat Micah Sittig on some must-see and must-do things when visiting Shanghai for the first time.

NOTE: This link has officially moved here.

Tongue twisters in a foreign language are always a very funny and effective way to improve one's pronunciation. Since Chinese is a tonal language, this adds another difficulty to the tongue twisters, because they also play around with in the tones while pronunciation eventually stays the same. Here is a popular and quite difficult example:

There is a new Chinese test for non-native speakers of Mandarin who are studying Mandarin.

The test will be for ...

What Will Moss calls "unfortunate" I consider quite insightful. Imagethief posts a chronological account of his more than 40 Twits that he made during last Friday's Olympic Opening Ceremonies.