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China: What It's Actually Like

 

A beyond-the-media presentation by a media guy, about the world's (second?) most important country. What's it like to live there, as native or not? Are you oppressed? Free to move about? What inspires the average person to get out of bed? Ralph Jennings was born and raised in Portland, graduated from Cal, and later pursued an MA in Taipei. A lifelong journalist, he now works for the South China Morning Post (scmp.com) covering the Chinese economy: prices, consumption, talent, labor, aviation, shipping, trade – and once in a while the king of fruits, durians.

 

Further reading:

    "50 Useful Tips on China" by Ralf Jennings

     https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXJDLDPX.

 

Why do Chinese people do so much voluntary overtime at work? Who is the key mastermind behind traditional marriages, and how come their jokes are funny but yours are not? 50 Useful Tips on China helps to unravel the many mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. The author, Ralph Jennings, isn’t Chinese and while that gives him a certain objectivity, it also inevitably leaves him partly in the dark. He put in his time, but how far did he really get in figuring things out? A lot further than most.

 

Presenter : 
Ralph Jennings
Date: 
Sunday, August 10, 2025
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