:: OOOPS THERE IT IS ::

This blog was gone for for most of the day...gone, I tell you! A few other blogspots were gone too, I noticed, like Lily's.

I went to the Blogger Status page and it seems as if they are switching over some of their servers, no doubt due to their recent purchase by Google.

A few minutes ago, I saw a new message that indicated some blogs are not appearing at their URL. (Yeah, like mine!) They aren't sure why, but they suggest re-publishing the entire site which is what I just tried to do, and it worked I think.

Anyway, any others reading this who have the same problem, go to your blogger account and re-publish everything. (If you're not sure how to do that, e-mail me.)

:: WE'RE NUMBER 3 ::

... NOT that I place much faith in rankings, afterall, U.S. News and World Report's College Rankings have been criticized since they first started ranking American Colleges and Universities, .....

... AND, in China, they love to rate things: tallest building, fastest train, longest bridge, most famous ANYTHING .....

... STILL, as a member of the faculty at Zhejiang University, I was happy to learn this week that Zhejiang University came in 3rd place out of the 591 universities across China offering undergraduate courses. Qinghua (Tsinghua) and Beijing (Peking) Universities were #1 and #2. You can see the rankings here. If you can't read Chinese, you'll just have to take my word for it.

My Chinese colleagues won't get too excited. ZJU is well-known for paying salaries on the very low end of the scale - both to foreign teachers as well as the Chinese faculty. The school's standard response is, "Well, yes, but you will be working at one of China's premier universities...."

Now they have the latest rankings to back them up. û°ì·¨ (Mei Ban Fa)!

:: MUST SEE TV: CHINA IN THE RED::

Wow!!! Powereful, powerful show! I just finished watching all 11 parts of Frontline's China in the Red. PBS is NOT blocked here, contrary to what their website says. You can catch all 11 parts by going here.

Judging from the comments the show received, it will certainly update or change many Americans' view of China.

I mentioned in the previous post that I spent 2 1/2 years living in Northeast China at the same time this show was recorded and it is a very accurate picture of what I saw and experienced there.

Stop reading this blog and immediately go watch the show here. That's an order.

:: CHINA IN THE RED::

PBS Frontline last night (2/13) ran "China in the Red" - a look at the ch-ch-changes in China from 1998-2001. Anyone watch it? Of course, I didn't because I'm here (China) not there (DuctTapeLand).

Here's the producer, Sue Williams on the website: "[O]ver the years of going to China, I was more and more struck by how little Americans know about China, and, in some instances, what negative perceptions they have about it."

And again: "And I really wanted to show Americans how ordinary Chinese live. So it seemed that if we followed people over a period of time, we could let an American audience get to know these characters and relate to them."

It focuses on 10 individuals from 1998-2001 - most from the north and northeast section including Mu Sui Xin the ex- (in all senses of that prefix) Mayor of Shenyang. I lived in that area in 1998 and again in 2000-2001. I am really interested to see how accurate Williams captures the life and times that I saw there.

According to the website, it'll be available for web broadcast at 11:00 a.m. Saturday morning China time. I'll be watching while my friends back home are duct taping their safe rooms.

:: YEAH, BUT CAN HE DRIVE THE LANE??? ::

Interesting profile on Yao Ming at ESPN Insider: Yao Ming:American Idol. The opening segment is funny - Yao is practicing driving his new Sequoia in the Rockets' parking lot surrounded (of course) by reporters. When a Chinese female reporter tells him "You can't drive really" (Chinese women can be SO direct), he tells her to hop in...and immediately slams his SUV into another parked SUV. (No harm, no foul - as we say in basketball.)

Luckily for all of us living here in China, we'll never end up in his cab. But the man CAN play hoops and he has acquitted himself very well thus far. Better than the naysayers had predicted. And the overall article makes Yao seem endearing Yao Ming:American Idol. I'll be watching the All-Star Game live in China tomorrow morning and rooting for Yao.

Yao Ming, Jia You!

:: WEBSITE UPDATED ::

As I mentioned in my very first post to this blog, this blog is simply an extension of the website I started way back in 1998 when I first came to China. Over the years, I have slapped stories and photos on the website until now, it has grown to over 50 MB with more than 125 pages and 1100 jpgs (at last count).

With 6 weeks of vacation, I decided to try to catch up with that site this week - all 50MB of it. And to make it worth your while to go visit it, I dusted off the Hangzhou chapter which has been sitting in my computer for months awaiting the re-design.

So go take a look at the refurbished Chuck@China. WIth it you get the Hangzhou chapter with sections on Hangzhou history, pictures of Hangzhou, pictures of West Lake, and an article on Hangzhou today.

Also new on the site is a section of photos from Adam and Heidi, two of my Zhejiang University teaching colleagues so their freinds back home can check them out.

Last and least, I will soon be moving this blog over to my main site because I am tired of having to proxy around the China Firewall to get to this site. I'll do that next week. The new address of this blog will then become . I'll let you know when that happens.