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Tag: China

I checked the headlines on China’s role in Afghanistan. This is what I found

After ten days of scanning the coverage of China’s potential role in Afghanistan, it’s clear that there is one voice missing from western media reports: the Afghans themselves. In no article did anyone consider the concerns of the Afghan people, what they might want or expect from a future where China will certainly play a prominent role. This only echoes the US led intervention, where, as always the local people only ever play a walk on part in a plot…

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China vs Tajikistan: the toilet design challenge

Few competitions can be as eagerly awaited as this, so wisely, the start had been rescheduled so as not to clash with that only marginally less popular international fixture: the Football World Cup. How would the plucky newcomers, tiny Tajikistan, whose performance I laid out recently in Top 10 toilets of Tajikistan – http://insideotherplaces.com/2014/06/19/top-ten-toilets-of-tajikistan/, fare against the might of imperial China. Would this be a foregone conclusion or an epic battle of David vs Goliath. Lets view the evidence from…

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The signs of China

No doubt anyone visiting China could rustle up a selection of amusing manglings of the English language on signs and shop fronts, so I make no grand claim to originality here but just wish to celebrate the country’s touching faith in translation software and piss poor, old dictionaries someone found at a garage sale. People may concentrate on obvious errors but often they just have a special charm in expressing something in a way that a native English speaker never…

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Xinjiang, museums and the Big Lie

IMPORTANT NOTE – in the many years since writing this piece my understanding of the situation has evolved. I hope to resolve my misunderstandings with a future visit to the region but until then I am content to leave this here to receive any constructive comments With free entrance, quality exhibits, largely comprehensible English information and staff out numbering visitors, the museums in Xinjiang offer, at first glance, a quality experience outstripping the majority of that of  their Central Asian…

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Park life in Xinjiang

The niggling possibility of getting hacked to death by axe wielding terrorists has, for some strange reason deterred some tourists from coming to Xinjiang, so the streets of the region’s capital Urumqi were hardly awash with foreign faces. Locals are obviously made of stern enough stuff to not let such a trifling matter interfere with their daily routine and for many this means going to the park. In Urumqi the security concerns for patrons of the People’s Park were subtly…

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Kashgar: manufacturing history

IMPORTANT NOTE – in the many years since writing this piece my understanding of the situation in the region has evolved somewhat.  Although I stand by the basic issue of the destruction of history here, I hope to resolve the issues with a future visit to the region but until then I am content to leave this here to receive any constructive comments I arrived late in Kashgar, about ten years late, to find two thousand years of history bulldozed…

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The Chinese highway code

Eschewing the conventional wisdom of issuing road users with a booklet describing good practice for drivers and pedestrians, the Chinese authorities prefer the medium of roadside murals to convey the more salient points of the subject. This has the additional benefit of providing employment for semi-skilled artists rendered unemployed by advances in creative computer software. I have provided a convenient translation of the images for those unfamiliar with Chinese, cultural, automotive norms. 1. Headbutting is a particularly ineffective means of…

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