By Josh Chin (’07), Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
September 21, 2006

YIWU, CHINA – Two tiny Buddhist nuns drag an oversized plastic bag through a massive indoor market. Shoppers part as the pair shuffle down a corridor lined with a riotous parade of unnecessary items: knockoff Barbie dolls, NBA bobbleheads, figurines of scantily clad cartoon girls. What did they buy? “Souvenirs,” they say impatiently – and disappear into the climate-controlled labyrinth.

China International Trade City is the largest wholesale “small goods” market on the planet, and the consensus starting point for anyone hoping to take advantage of the famed “China price” on display at the market’s 19,000 booths. Once famous for being the place where half the world’s socks are made, Yiwu now bears a new distinction: China’s latest national tourist attraction.

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By Michael Zhao (’07), Forbes
Sep 18 ‘06
Good grief! Mass-produced Chinese art is making serious inroads in the U.S. market Want to own a Gustav Klimt? You may not have been bidding on the Austrian master’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” which went to Manhattan’s Neue Galerie museum in June for $135 million. However, you can get a reduced-size reproduction for $109 by clicking on OilPaintingsGallery.com or for $189 at Oceansbridge.com. Most reproductions of this sort come from China, where at least 30,000 painters earning $100 to $150 a week work in “oil painting villages” churning out copies of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” or Leonardo…

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China’s economic rise means the world has a new second language—and it isn’t English

Austin Ramzy (’00), Time
June 19, 2006

It’s Friday night in Ikebukuro, a Tokyo entertainment district full of cheap bars and pachinko parlors. As the office workers head to their favorite watering holes, three salarymen split from the crowd and enter a decrepit building that stands between a karaoke lounge and a tavern. Ignoring the sounds of sirens, drunken crooning and breaking glass outside, Hidetoshi Seki, Takashi Kudo and Yuji Yano huddle in a tiny room just big enough for a table for four, and open their Chinese textbooks. For the next 50 minutes the trio, all from a small trading company, practice describing their favorite foods and hobbies in Mandarin.

Despite their crumpled shirts and five o’clock shadows, they are having a blast. The young female instructor at B-Chinese Language School indulges them as they crack jokes and make fun of each others’ muddled pronunciation. Their language classes are the first lessons that any of them have taken since childhood, says Yano, 39. “We sort of unanimously agreed that Chinese would be a useful skill to acquire.”

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By Rebecca Ruiz (’06), WeNews
September 13, 2006
BANGALORE, India (WOMENSENEWS)–In her three years working at the Basavangudi all-women police station in Bangalore, Constable Mylaaiah Rangajura has taken hundreds of statements of women with dowry-related complaints. Some are freshly bruised, others have been starved for days and some fear that their husbands or in-laws will burn or strangle them to death, a tragically common end to a dowry dispute.

When a wife’s husband and her in-laws are called in for lengthy interviews, Rangajura listens as family members explain and often deny the accusations of abuse and harassment…

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[NOTE: This story came out of the Spring 2006 Covering India course taught by Carolyn Wakeman and The Hindu's Parvathi Menon]