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Guanxi Marketing
Last night, as I was cooking dinner, I received one of “those” phone calls. The ones you usually hope to avoid by signing up with the National Do Not Call Registry. As the seller started her sales pitch, I didn’t hang up. This time, I responded enthusiastically and placed a sizeable order. The difference? I…
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Review: Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop
Amazon just sent me Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. This cookbook exhaustively covers Hunan cuisine. Literally. I was exhausted from reading the cookbook. The introduction? 43 pages. Four paragraphs on bean curds. Two paragraphs on garlic. It all adds up. The first recipe is Sweet-and-Sour Spare Ribs. All recipes include the name in Chinese characters…
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Sony Dream Machine ICF-C218
I was looking for a cheap alarm clock. Real cheap. I found the Sony FM / AM Clock Radio Dream Machine on Amazon for $11.00. Yes, that cheap. Who needs a stereo alarm clock that plays CDs? Anyways, their marketers are good. On Amazon, the product is called an Automatic Time Set Clock Radio. That’s…
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Dennis Kucinich Pick-Up Line
I stopped by the local farmers market this morning and was bombarded by all the political activists hawking their own candidates. Among the Democrats, representatives from Hillary, Obama and Kucinich were present. For the Republicans, I only spotted the Ron Paul contingent. For the most part, all the reps kept to themselves, except for the…
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Time Magazine is Wrong About China
Time: Kentucky Fried Rice. Starbucks has the gall to sling its lattes for coffee connoisseurs in Vienna, and Budweiser peddles its brew in Belgium. So why shouldn’t Yum Brands–the Louisville, Ky.-based company that owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and more–sell dumplings in a fast-growing market where Chinese food is just called food? In an…
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KMT: The Pro-China Opposition Party?
Christian Science Monitor: Opposition Win May Bring Taiwan Closer to China. The resurgence of Taiwan’s opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), which picked up a majority in Saturday’s parliamentary vote, could usher in a significant thaw in cross-Taiwan Strait relations with China, especially if it goes on to win the presidency in March. It’s all relative,…
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Good Riddance Governor Richardson
Reuters reports that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is no longer seeking to be the 2008 Democratic candidate for President. No surprise here. With three strong candidates running ahead of him, it would be tough to catch one of them, let alone all three. I’m glad that Governor Richardson has abandoned the race since that…
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Beijing Olympics: Table Tennis
Chris Anderson calls the partnership between NBC Universal and Microsoft to broadcast over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content at NBCOlympics.com the first “Long-Tail Olympics.” This should be great news for table tennis fans in the United States. Sure, we can catch our regular basketball, track and field, swimming, diving, and gymnastics events on…
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China Has a Shadow Government?
By now, most people have heard about the recent tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo. As expected, the survivors who were attacked by the tiger have retained legal counsel. I was reading the biography of their attorney, Mark Geragos, and something stood out. In February of this year, Mark successfully won dismissal of all…