（4）中国想真正成为超级强国，首要的条件是不是军事的强大？造航母是不是我们成为强国的一种指标？
Is being a military power a necessary condition to China becoming a superpower? And would be making aircrafit carriers be a benchmark of that?
　　那不是首要条件，但肯定是不可缺少的一环。一个超级强国，经济上要很强大，话说过来，经济上不强大军事上也强大不起来。科技上也要非常先进，这个世界上应该是科技创新层出不穷的，但我们确实就差得很远。在文化上面也要有影响力，这点美国就有这个架子，不管好莱坞大片水平高低，全世界人民都在看，我们就需要这样的东西。但我认为，文化的东西可以放在后面一点，但经济科技军事肯定是少不了的。
No, that isn’t a sufficient condition, but it is definitely necessary. A superpower has to have economic strength, and you could say that without economic strength you could never develop economic strength. [...]

As many know Jackie Chan’s recent remarks at the Bo Ao forum about CHinese people needing to be controlled against the chaos and messiness of democracy has aroused controversy around the world. The following is an open letter signed by twenty mainland Chinese intellectuals criticizing Jackie’s remarks. First is my rough translation followed by the [...]

作为一个词语“,活着”在我们中国的语言里充满了力量,它的力量不是来自于喊叫,也不是来自于进攻,而是忍受,去忍受生命赋予我们的责任,去忍受现实给予我们的幸福和苦难、无聊和平庸。
This is from the preface to YU HUA’s “To Live”, and was written by the author himself. The gist of it is that “to live” is not something you shout out, or something that is aggressive, outwardly defined, but rather means to suffer and persist through both the happiness, pain, joy and grief, boredom, mediocrity [...]

I was just reading in the BBC Chinese about a recently released report from the Chinese govt’s national audit office, whose job it is to figure out where corrupt officials are stashing their ill gained loot. Here’s the article in its entirety, so that if you are in China and don’t have access or are [...]

Some thoughts on China’s New Human Rights Plan
So China has just recently unveiled its human rights plan, marking the first time there has been a specific plan for human rights. The document outlines the Chinese govt’s overall strategy, and for the most part, observers have been positive about this development. Southern Weekend newspaper enthusiastically noted [...]

Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts:
I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last Tuesday. When the lights dimmed, a “documentary” about Tibet came on. As you know, this [...]

前天晚上去了豫园看灯会，观摩的主要是人海，但是喜气洋洋的，感觉还是不错。后来跟朋友在老城区溜达，久违的灵感也终于回来了，当然，这也跟我带新的相机出去也有关。谢谢长辈的提携以及各位朋友的支持！我要坚持拍下去！

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I’d love to have an iPhone but i think that I would settle for the Meizu M8, which bears a not so uncanny resemblance to the former. The 8GB version can be obtained for about 2400 rmb, making it a bit of a better deal than a new IPhone. I found some nice picture of [...]

I spent the week or so prior to the chinese new year in Anchang and the Beichuan area, which was one of the hardest hit and in which there are many quake victims living in temporary housing. I talked a bunch of them and in general just observed their lives there. I will write something [...]

This CNN article has the number of dead pegged at 4 but it seems that now the official number of dead has risen to five. What makes the whole thing much much worse is the fact that, according to one SIna report that we read, that problems were discovered a month ago. Check out what [...]