Diane Zhang, daughter of a Red Army officer, traces her own long march to know her father better:
“‘In school they made it, you know, a very heroic (journey). It’s like only God can do it,’ she recalls. ‘You never thought, you know, your dad, somebody you know.’

Zhang’s father was an officer in the Third Red Army Corps and one of the few who survived the entire 6,000-mile trek. Zhang still struggles to make sense of it.

‘You know, my generation was brought up in Cultural Revolution. We don’t give a damn to the older generation — you’re liars; you painted a perfect world but look at what the reality is (that) you gave us,’ she says.

Her father was later jailed during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and Zhang couldn’t understand her father’s loyalty to the party…”

A short video of American transplant Eli Sweet and Chinese rapper Coffee, performing and hanging out.

The energetic rapper Eli Stone, originally from Atlanta, enthuses about his life in China:
“One of the best things about living in China is there’s always a possibility that you’re gonna run into something today that you have never seen in your entire life. Today, I went to pick up my pants from the guy who had sewn them up, and he was sitting there on the street, and he had a bucket full of eels, and one by one he was taking their head and nailing it to a board, and then fileting it with an exacto knife. That’s something I’d never seen in my entire life.”

“The man labeled China’s biggest coward is a slight man with thick black glasses. He looks so unassuming, it’s hard to imagine one person could have unleashed such vitriol, such a bitter nationwide debate. Almost everybody agrees on one thing: his downfall was his honesty.”

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

China issues sweeping restrictions for foreigners, going back on promises of openness:

“No sleeping on park benches and no political protests.”