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Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality. In the space of about 36 hours the skies have transformed from the Olympic blue we all got perhaps ...

Those who live in Beijing and commute on the subway will know that bags are now X-rayed on the way into the station. The security is already fairly porous in several ways. For instance, they only seem to cover one of three entrances at the station by my office. However, as I was heading home last night, I spotted a particularly Olympic-themed ...

Imagethief realizes that he and much of the journalistic and blogging community have been doing a grave disservice to our readers who don't live in Beijing. We beg your forgiveness. Living in Beijing is such an all-consuming experience that we sometimes forget there is a world beyond the fifth ring road. Although we are, of course, tangentially ...

There is no such thing as a dull year in China. 2008 is well underway and already looks like another whopper. We're only a month in and we've already had the biggest storms in half a century. The Olympics, the mother of all China events, is now a scant seven months off. God only knows what will happen in between. But before we get too far into ...

A good friend of mine pointed out that a post I put up the day I got back from Italy and that remarked on a soaring fistfight that broke out near my apartment has disappeared. I didn't even realize it. Lest anyone feel that this was a craven act of self-censorship or a craven act of imposed censorship, don't worry about it. As near as I can ...