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On my (continuing) walk across China, I have occasionally come across the kind of construction featured in the attached image — a farmhouse with a door half way up the wall, no stairs attached. I have previously assumed the house was still under construction, or perhaps they ran out of money before doing the stairs. But as I passed his one, in Guang’an county in the middle of Sichuan, last Saturday, it struck me that this is in fact a “panic room”, a way to seal off and protect the family and its assets in the top room, safe from marauders. A man I met on the road asked me how the law and order situation is in England compared to China. I replied: “I really have no idea.”
— Graham Earnshaw, author of The Great Walk of China: Travels on Foot from Shanghai to Tibet

To read an excerpt from The Great Walk of China, click the link above; to listen to Graham Earnshaw in dialogue with Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Zhang Lijia in Shanghai last month, check out this podcast at Popup Chinese.

“In queue to visit the Indian pavilion at Shanghai’s World Expo, the man in front of me purveys what will be another hour of standing in the drizzle. The barriers directing the queue were just narrow and high enough as to prevent any hope of escape.”

— Alec Ash, Six

Read Alec’s recent post on “The Evolution of Chinese Queues” here.

“Qingmu, a Japanese DJ who moved to Beijing shortly before the Olympics, spins an evening away in his Nanluoguxiang home – which also doubles as the headquarters for a Tibet tour company. The Chinese hip-hop scene, Qingmu says, is ‘just beginning’.”

— Alec Ash, Six