Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Can you imagine what Taiwan looked like 50 years ago? Bob Ronald just celebrated his 50 years living in Taiwan, he shares here his first impressions when arrived to the island. You might be surprised as it might not be so far from one's more actual experience...

In November, 2007, the stock market bear, all too familiar to international capital markets, made one of its infrequent visits to China. In Shanghai, the market ended the month the way it began–in negative territory. Opening within a hair of 6000 at the beginning of November, shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange tumbled on the first day of trading, and the index fell by 1 percent to 5914. It was all downhill from there. By the time the dust settled on November 30, the Shanghai Index had fallen by almost 19 percent to 4872, the largest monthly decline since February 1995.

It is safe to assert the few Chinese have insomnia. On the contrary, the ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, is downright stunning.

We visit Englishman Nick Bonner, a Beijing-based filmmaker who has produced a series of documentaries about North Korea. His latest film, "Crossing the Line" is the story of an American Defector who has lived in Pyong Yang for 45 years after fleeing from a U.S. military court martial in 1962.

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.

There have been questions about Chinese prospect Yi Jianlian's age since Yi became a prospect. Chinese officials insist he's now 19, while there have been rumors he's actually three years older. And of course, three years is a long time in terms of basketball development. A raw 19-year-old is Andrew Bynum. A raw 22-year-old is... Kendrick Perkins.

The flood of expatriates into China in recent years has given pockets of the country a distinctive colonial feel. In the trendiest parts of Shanghai the nightlife is often dominated by foreigners living the semi-Chinese experience much as some British did in Africa and India during years gone by. True, colonialism brings to mind a military imposition that is decidedly missing from modern China, but there is still an uncomfortable reality that is plain to see.

During the first weeks of April, Treasury officials of the United States, Canada and Great Britain made trips to China to meet with top officials in the Chinese government.

Ignoring pro-Tibet protesters, who opposed the trip, Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Canadian province of Ontario, furnished the Chinese leadership with her personal support as well as the support of her country (historically friendly to the "People’s" Republic) at this time in which international public opinion is focused on the protests over Chinese oppression in Tibet.

Tomorrow will mark one year until the Beijing Olympics. The games, which have been called everything from China’s great coming-out party to the genocide Olympics, will undoubtedly put the country under a media spotlight the likes of which most people living here have never seen.