Does your family have an interesting story to tell?

Can you help, or know anyone who can?

The BBC is making a 60-minute documentary about family life, to broadcast early next year as part of BBC Two's prestigious Wonderland strand.

The film will feature families going on car trips in the UK this summer. You could be going on your holiday, or for a weekend break - to visit friends or family, or even just for a day-trip. We'd film you on your journey to and from your destination, but while you are away we will leave you alone to have a good time.

We want to make a film that reflects the diversity of the modern British family and we are on the look out for a British-Chinese family to be part of this.

We want to get to know you over the course of the trip - who you are, and what life is like for you as a family. The biggest thing for us is just that you would be happy to have us along for the ride, and want to tell us your story.

If you are going on a car journey of longer than 2 hours between July and September this year, and would like to find out more about our documentary (with no commitment necessarily to taking part), please do drop me a quick e-mail or give me a call whenever is convenient.

Please get in touch with Rebecca Arnold on 0208 008 5587 (rebecca.arnold@bbc.co.uk)

Have you spotted any 'Frozen in Time' places?

A request to bbc blog readers: Have you noticed any 'Frozen in Time' Chinese restaurants or takeaways where you are? If so, please take a pic and send it in! I'd love to add to the ones already posted.

'Frozen in Time' is a bbc blog celebration of Chinese establishments that have stood the test of time and kept their original look in an age of constant revamping and updating.

Click here to see what I mean.

Big Spenders from the Mainland - two sides of a story

Just as the UK's Daily Telegraph publishes a wide-eyed article about the extravagant shopping habits of China's newly wealthy tourists, there comes a viral video from Hong Kong that shows a tour guide berating her party of Mainland guests for not spending 'enough' during their visit to the SAR.

The Telegraph article - which to be honest could have been written any time in the last 5 years - paints Chinese tourists as potential saviours of a struggling UK economy whilst at the same time pointing out some of the eccentricities of the new Chinese rich:

Nowhere is China’s confidence seen more clearly than in its demand for luxury goods. Last year the People’s Republic overtook the United States to become the second biggest market for the luxury sector; and by 2015 it will have overtaken Japan, with a market projected to be worth £11 billion annually.

...The eccentricity of Chinese buying habits takes other forms. Fine wine may be a status symbol in the high-end restaurants of Shanghai but many locals are not so enamoured of the actual taste.

“The Chinese used to water down the cheap wine they first encountered and now consider that the normal way to drink it,” says Mr Grant. “Which can be a bit of a shame when you’ve just opened a nice Margaux.”

The flip side of this story comes in the form of the viral video, in which a tour guide called Ah Zhen - thought by some commenters to be a Hong Kong based Mainlander herself - does a 'Bus Uncle' by launching into a long, insulting tirade against her clients who seems remarkably quiet whilst being chastised.

Some of the choice quotes being reported in the press are:

"It's you who owe me here, not me owing you. I provided you with food and accommodation but you people will not give."
"If you don't repay the debt in this life you will have to repay it in your next life."
"It's OK to be poor at home, but you can't act like this when you are outside. Don't tell me you don't need [the jewellery], I say you don't need to eat either. Tonight I will lock all hotel room doors, because you don't need accommodation."
"We don't do this for charity. Let me be responsible for charity. I donated 10,500 yuan [HK$12,027] for Sichuan earthquke victims."
"Why did you bother to come to Hong Kong?"

All this an not one person threw anything at her. What a polite group of tourists!

Who knows, if the UK economy were to decline even more maybe we'll start to see rants like this on the streets outside Prada and Gucci? Well, maybe not :)



Guide video via Living In Hong Kong

UK shopping article via The Daily Telegraph

Profile of a Walled City

Imagine a city with 30 times the population density of Manhattan. Imagine it was a lawless den of vice in which drugs, prostitutes and illegal gambling were all available. Imagine it sat directly under the landing path of one of the world's busiest airports.

That's Kowloon's walled city, as profiled by a number of websites listed over at oobject.com

...with no streets and little daylight, it was a rat infested, cockroach ridden filthy labyrinth. KWC was a no-man’s land that fell neither under British Jurisdiction nor Chinese

It had 161 unregulated doctors and dentists along with food producers from whole pig roasters to the suppliers of most of Hong Kong’s fish balls. Most of the people that lived in KWC never left.

Via: oobject

The hidden Tiananmen commemorations

Photos: CND.org

21 years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the issue is still too politically sensitive to be commemorated in China. But on the internet, discussion about what is obliquely referred to as 'May 35th' can still take place and ensures the events of June 4th 1989 will never be forgotten.

Twenty-one years have passed, how much longer must we keep commemorating this in a virtual space [instead of being allowed to do it openly]?

Gradually aging comrades, we must tell the story of what happened 21 years ago to the next generation. We cannot let these seeds, thirsty for freedom, be extinguished. We can not let our sons and grandsons continue to be slaves.

Link: Chinageeks.org

Two Chinese men and 'suspicious liquid' spark air alert

Here's an intriguing little story.

A US-bound Delta Air Lines flight turned back to Japan after two Chinese passengers locked themselves in a toilet with what authorities said was a container of suspicious liquid.

The pilot of the Boeing 747-400 with 407 passengers and crew bound for Minneapolis turned around three hours into the flight from Tokyo after the two men refused to leave the toilet.

The pair, both in their 20s, had boarded the flight during an earlier stop in Shanghai.

So the question must be: What was the liquid that two Chinese men would want to take into a toilet? Would anyone care to guess?

Story: Hong Kong Standard

Use a rice cooker to make bread!

Yes, it's true! I saw it on the internet!

Apparently if you own a modern rice cooker i.e. one with a timer function, not the old fashioned ones that that just have an On/Keep Warm button, you can actually 'hack' it to turn it into a breadmaker. And if people's comments are to be believed, the results aren't even that bad.

Get the lowdown from The Lazy Chef.

Differences Between Chinese and Japanese Women

A cheeky (and slightly narrow) examination of how Chinese and Japanese women differ, as found on Chinasmack.com

But what would the list for Chinese and Japanese men be like, I wonder? :)

Link: 14 Differences Between Japanese Women & Chinese Women