Month: June 2011

  • Reading SCMP for free, on the iPad

    The South China Morning Post is one of the best reads in English on East Asian news. Based in Hong Kong, it is a full-blown operation with reporters all over China. Its content is, however, trapped behind a paywall on its own website. Strangely, the iPad app “SCMP” has what I’m pretty sure is the…

  • 'Chinese' proves U.S. citizenship by speaking Chinook

    Sometime in the 1870s, a Chinese man named Ling Fu was brought before Judge Cornelius Hanford in Seattle’s courthouse, accused of not having the proper citizenship papers. Facing deportation, Ling Fu argued that he did not need to carry papers: he had been born on Puget Sound. To test him, Judge Hanford quickly shifted his…