Tea Leaf Nation

Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, in response to recent discussion of the mainland’s brewing conflict with the Philippines over the Huangyan Islands, user @有子如虎 recently tweeted his summary of military history this way: “I was thinking about recent history: U.S.: We strike whoever we want! England: We strike whoever the U.S. strikes! Russia: We [...]

The below are translated excerpts from a recent blog entry (Chinese) by China’s most famous young writer, Han Han.  Winds of the Pacific  Taipei stood before me like a labyrinth, just like any other city to any other traveler. My companion needed a new pair of eyeglasses, so we walked into a shop near National Taiwan University. [...]

Following blind rights lawyer Cheng Guangcheng’s daring recent escape from years of house arrest, observers waited with baited breath to see how China’s media would break its silence on the news. This morning, the relatively pro-party Global Times took the first step with articles in Chinese and English which, the Wall Street Journal reported, tried [...]

There’s been no better time to learn Chinese diplomacy-speak. With fled Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng likely now in United States custody, bystanders (including those at Tea Leaf Nation) have quickly begun to speculate on the incident’s diplomatic impact on U.S.-Sino relations.  But it’s not enough to know what China is saying, if a reader cannot [...]

Strap on your rocket boosters and get ready for hilarity. As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Disney’s China division and Marvel studios have agreed to work with the China-based DMG to film Iron Man 3 in China. Sir Ben Kingsley has reportedly confirmed he will play the Mandarin, one of Iron Man’s nemeses from [...]

CY Zone magazine (@创业邦杂志), a magazine covering the tech startup scene in China, tweeted about an interview of Hongyi Zhou, the CEO of the NYSE-listed Qih00360, who shared his view on why a Facebook has not emerged in China. Zhou blamed Tencent’s “Cloning + Bundling” model. “Back in the day Microsoft did the same to [...]

Tea Leaf Nation previously reported that Chinese netizens love Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog platform, with a capital L. So what do they want to say to their beloved Weibo on the day that the government ordered Sina and Tencent, operators of the two largest microblog platforms, to shut off their commenting feature–a feature that many [...]

Real-estate tycoon and well-known Sina Weibo microblogger Pan Shiyi (@潘石屹) recently tweeted this provocative question: “After finishing the day’s work, I’m thinking: If my Weibo account were blocked one day, how would my life change?” The question may not be an idle one. Pan recently penned tweets touching on highly incendiary rumors of a coup at the [...]

Xu Weihua (@徐卫华), a mobile Internet analyst, tweets: “I heard that Apple’s CEO Cook was very happy with his trip to China, because he saw a lot of people on the streets using iPhones. There are iPhone3, iPhone4, iPhone4S, as well as iPhone5 and iPhone6. There are [iPhones] with three-inch screens, four-inch screens, five-inch screens, single-screens [...]

Netizens have one word to describe their feelings about rising fuel prices: @#$%. On Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, public opinion about the largest hike in fuel prices in three years is perhaps best represented by a university student who has shot to (likely ephemeral) fame as “Brother Gas Price” (油价哥). This “brother’s” rise began after [...]