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    Matt Sheehan

    Matt Sheehan

    Former China Correspondent, The WorldPost

  • Gay Marriage: What Would Confucius Say?

    When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to extend legal marriage nationwide to LGBT couples, it set Chinese social media abuzz with celebratory messages and rainbow flags. Chinese law does not recognize gay marriage, but recent years have seen the beginnings of an LGBT rights movement and broader public acceptance of it in the country. China doesn’t have any equivalent to the U.S. “religious right” -- a politically powerful constituency that vehemently opposes gay marriage on religious grounds.

  • Here's The Backstory Of Hong Kong's Failed Electoral Reform

    Pro-democracy members of Hong Kong's legislature blocked passage of a Beijing-backed proposal for electoral reform in the city on Thursday. The proposed reforms would have allowed the city's chief executive to be elected by popular vote in 2017, but only after candidates were screened by a Beijing-controlled nominating committee. Supporters of the plan argued that it would have marked a major step toward the city's first chief executive election with universal suffrage.

  • Cirque Du Soleil Enters China With Big Bet On Rising Middle Class

    Cirque du Soleil is coming to China, and the Canadian performance troupe will kick things off with its adaptation of one of the highest-grossing films ever to hit Chinese markets: “Avatar.” Flanked by hunchbacked clowns and dancers bedecked in blue boas, the leadership of Cirque du Soleil on Monday signed an agreement with Fosun International Ltd. -- who this spring bought a minority stake in Cirque -- that will bring performances to a newly built venue in Hangzhou in 2018. “China, for Cirque du Soleil, is our No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority for the next few years,” said Cirque du Soleil chief executive Daniel Lamarre during a press conference. Addressing the chairman of Fosun, Guo Guangchang, Lamarre went even further: “I have the feeling today, Mr. Chairman, that we’re becoming a Chinese citizen.” Cirque’s move into mainland Chinese markets makes it the latest in a long list of global entertainment brands betting big on the growing spending power of China’s rising middle class.

  • Alibaba Helps Chinese LGBT Couples Say 'We Do' in West Hollywood

    It took a trip across the Pacific, but this week seven Chinese same-sex couples finally had the chance to say “I do” in West Hollywood. In an event co-sponsored by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and the Chinese gay dating app Blued, the lucky couples won the chance for a destination wedding and star treatment in Los Angeles. The winning couples were chosen this February through online voting on Alibaba’s shopping site Taobao.

  • Chinese Rapper Shouts Out Uber And Calls Out Haters in Banned Track

    Chinese taxi drivers have been protesting, police have been raiding and politicians have been debating ride-hailing companies like Uber. In the four-minute flow that has since been censored from Chinese websites, a little-known rapper who goes by Melo tears into local taxi drivers, rival ride-hailing apps and regulators who are trying to stop him from taking his beloved Uber. “Where there’s oppression, there’s resistance,” Melo proclaims at the start of the song.

  • Good Samaritans Offer Homes, Cars And Kitchens In Cruise Ship Disaster Town

    As the Eastern Star cruise ship was fighting to stay upright in the midst of a storm on the Yangtze River, Xia Sougui was trying to crack open a locked door for an elderly woman in the nearest town. A locksmith by trade, 38-year-old Xia (pronounced "shyah") had driven through knee-high water to get to the partially flooded house. “It all came down so hard in one hour's time,” Xia said of the storm that night.

  • 'We Asked Her If She Could Return The Tickets'

    When Wu Yuanxin's mother told him she bought tickets for the Eastern Star cruise on the Yangtze, he asked her not to go. "The travel agency said we couldn't." So on May 28 they set off from their hometown of Nanjing for a scenic cruise up the storied Yangtze River, the longest in China. A week after their departure, Wu, a 38-year-old landscape designer, was in Jianli county, near the site of the ship that sank late Monday.

  • Ultimate Frisbee's Hippie-Go-Lucky Culture Hooks Chinese Youth

    The Ultimate Frisbee players running and diving all over these fields are too scrappy, too goofy and having way too much fun. Ultimate Frisbee (often called just Ultimate as “Frisbee” is a trademarked brand) is growing in China, and 17 teams gathered here in Beijing for the national championship in late May. Ivan Xu makes a diving grab in the semifinals of the 2015 China Ultimate championships.

  • American Students Return From China With Rosier Picture Of The Middle Kingdom

    A growing number of American students are studying in China, and they’re returning to the U.S. with more positive impressions of the country, according to a recent survey by Foreign Policy magazine. Educational exchanges between the U.S. and China have exploded in recent years, and Foreign Policy sought to measure the effects of these exchanges on Americans through a survey of current students and alumni. Seventy-eight percent of surveyed students said they left China with a more positive impression of the country than when they arrived. A whopping 97 percent of Americans who studied in China said the trip was worth the costs and hassle.

  • But Who Is Brother Orange?

    Li Hongjun is an unlikely hero for U.S.-China relations. Before a stolen iPhone, a chance selfie and a viral Buzzfeed story turned him into “Brother Orange” -- overnight celebrity and perma-smiling avatar of international goodwill -- he’d never made friends with anyone who wasn’t Chinese. If you have no idea what the above paragraph is about, check out the entire mind-bending saga by Matt Stopera, deputy editorial director at Buzzfeed.

  • Signs of Life In China's Gleaming 'Ghost City' Of Ordos

    This is a city that was built too big for its britches. Rising up from vast deserts of northern China, Ordos is an oasis of 21st-century glamor, one that made international headlines in 2010 as a futuristic mega-city without a soul in sight. Located in the vast northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, Ordos is home to an estimated one-sixth of the country's coal reserves. Exploiting these massive coal deposits created hundreds of overnight millionaires and giddy local officials who poured money into the main storehouses of economic value in China: infrastructure and real estate.

  • Chinese Police Raid Uber Office Over Alleged Black Cab Operations

    Investigators visited the office and confiscated phones and other equipment, according to reports in the Guangzhou Daily, which obtained pictures of the raid. Ride-hailing apps have spread rapidly in China, but they tread on shaky legal ground. In January, Chinese authorities banned apps that connect passengers with private drivers operating “black cabs.” The regulations, however, contained some ambiguity, allowing for “premium” services and even praising some apps as innovative.

  • Shanghai Models Dress As Beggars To 'Protest' Ban And ... Sell Weight-Loss Supplements

    The models stood on the streets of Shanghai, dressed in ripped clothing with dirt smudged across their faces, carrying beggar's sticks and asking for food. Images from the highly photogenic protest on Monday garnered Chinese and international media coverage, but the reports missed one key fact: The women’s signs and social media postings were also acting as promotional materials for “Thin Kung Fu,” a weight-loss powder that promises to replace breakfast and dinner while helping people lose up to 15 pounds a month. Pictures circulating on the Internet in China show the women holding signs containing variations on: “I can’t be a car model!!! All that thin kung fu I practiced was for nothing!!!” As the participants spread pictures from the event on their social media accounts, they defended their actions as “performance theater” designed to draw attention to the plight of models.

  • Beijing's Air Becoming Slightly More Breathable

    Two years after the Chinese government declared “war on pollution,” the air in Beijing and surrounding provinces is showing some signs of improvement, according to a new report by Greenpeace East Asia. The report dissected a major new batch of official data, and found that Beijing saw a 13 percent annual improvement in a crucial measure of air quality during the first quarter of 2015. Hebei province, the coal-belching and steel-producing province that nearly encircles Beijing, saw a massive 31 percent drop in concentrations of PM2.5 particulates, the microscopic cancer-causing particulates that plague China’s air.

  • Inside a Chinese Startup's Smartwatch Hackathon

    It’s 11 a.m. on a smoggy Friday in Beijing, and a busload of computer programmers is abuzz with chatter about smartwatches. The Apple Watch is set to go on sale in four hours, and the most popular models will be sold out within minutes. The bus is carrying employees of Beijing-based startup Mobvoi to a 24-hour smartwatch “hackathon” in a scenic village outside the city.

  • Chinese, US Police Officers Send Touching Tributes To Officers Battling Cancer

    It was a rare and beautiful instance of pure, unadulterated goodwill in the relationship between the United States and China: For the past few weeks, police departments in China and the U.S. traded get-well wishes for two cancer-stricken police officers in San Leandro, California, and China’s southwestern Sichuan province. Police officers and family members used social media to send dozens of pictures of themselves holding up encouraging signs for two officers with cancer, San Leandro Police Captain Edward Tracey and Chinese traffic officer Zhao Xiaoli.

  • This Controversial Chinese Company Wants To 3-D Print Your Next House

    Views from the fifth story of a boxy concrete structure reveal a horizon typical of the outskirts of Chinese cities today: Clusters of construction cranes surround high rises sprouting from rice fields. WinSun (Chinese name: Yingchuang) says it wants to overturn that model. It was 3-D printed inside WinSun’s factory, using a machine that turns construction waste and digital designs into precisely layered walls.

  • Meet The Badass Transgender Talk Show Host Who Wants To Be China's Most Influential Woman

    They call her “poison tongue.” Jin Xing has verbally bitch-slapped TV hosts, stormed off sets and carved out a reputation as a straight-talker who does things her own way. “My words aren’t like massage oil -- they’re like acupuncture needles,” Jin Xing (pronounced “jeen shing”) told The WorldPost.

  • California Dreaming: Alibaba Helps LGBT Chinese Couples Get Married In Los Angeles

    Liu Xin and his boyfriend, Hu Zhidong, have opted for a destination wedding. Rather, in June they’ll be flying across the Pacific Ocean with nine other LGBT couples headed for Los Angeles, a place that offers something they can’t get in China: a marriage certificate. The 10 lucky couples are winners of the “We Do” contest hosted by Taobao, the online shopping platform owned by the Chinese Internet behemoth Alibaba.

  • China Targets Big Oil In Wars On Corruption, Pollution

    What do China's "war on pollution" and campaign against corruption have in common? Over the past two years anti-corruption squads have investigated dozens of high-ranking officials in coal and oil bureaucracies, with the latest detention announced Monday night: The vice chairman of China National Petroleum Corp., Liao Yongyuan, was placed under investigation for "serious violations of discipline," Communist Party-speak for corruption. In China, the announcement of corruption investigations virtually guarantees an eventual conviction.