Getting your hands on good train tickets in any major Chinese city during the Spring Festival is without a doubt one of the most difficult tasks known to man. But what happens to those migrants workers who have moved to small cities that don't have train stations?

China is trying to find foreign help to go after overseas investors who ran away without properly attending to their obligations to employees and creditors of their failed businesses. China's ministries of commerce, foreign affairs, justice and public security has already jointly the guideline for cross-border investigation and litigation of fugitive foreign investors.

China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered an end for a certain type of television show -- the vulgar confessional talk shows. The broadcast regulator has a campaign against vulgar, coarse entertainment.

In August 2008 there were 2 stories happened in the Oct 2008, a sad and a happy stories. The sad story was a laowai’s passport and wallet were stolen. The happy story is of a marriage of love between said laowai and his Chinese wife. How did they find each other? How do they finish the marriage certificates? What is the biggest problem in these international and interracial marriages?

Unlike Ms McKinnon and others, not to mention entire nations, I don't have an axe to grind nor do I consider it my God given, unalienable right to assault the mind of every individual on earth that owns a computer and has internet access. Nor do I wish to impose upon them my views. This said, however, censorship in China is, at times, at the very least, annoying.

Yesterday evening I flipped on the television and saw an infomercial for what I thought at first was an iPhone. A male and female host went through the different functions of the phone that looked identical to the iPhone, but when they flipped the phone over to the backside I noticed that the Apple logo looked slightly different from what I recalled.

I thank God for my new life in China everyday. It’s funny, but most of the things about China that used to drive me crazy, I now embrace with an appreciation and a gratitude I never thought possible. It’s not that life in China has changed all that much in the time that I’ve been here, but the way I look at things today has—entirely.

2008 is by all means an extraordinary year for China’s sports. Not merely because this country won so many golds in the Beijing Games, there’re actually so much more interesting things beyond that if we comb back closely, either about its sports administration and regime, or simply the government itself.

In an effort to ease China's serious fertilizer shortage, Xinjiang has just finished production of the world's largest potash fertilizer plant in an area that was once mentioned by Marco Polo and is China's testing site for all nuclear bombs.

What could a lǎowài do in 2009 to better adjust to life in China? The list below contains some of the ideas I’ve collected, and I’m curious to hear what other ideas are out there. Bonus points for creativity, usefulness, and doability. Mucho uber bonus points if it’s Tianjin specific!