We hurriedly cleaned up the studio and tried to set a bit more of a romantic tone this week, a feat accomplished mostly by positioning small candles and trays of potpourri by the microphones. And why else than because our subject today is sex and marriage, and perhaps more of the former than the latter. So join us for a show about who wants it, who gets it, and exactly how far some researchers will go when doing work on the Chinese sex industry.

Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn on Sinica this week are Tricia Wang and Christina Larson. Tricia is an up-and-coming ethnographer whose focus is on the lives of China's down-and-out population. Christina is a long-time guest returning to Sinica this week to talk about dating and sex in China, and who we try to convince to give us an advance peek at a forthcoming piece of hers in Foreign Policy.

Enjoy Sinica? Since there may be some among you who feel life would be easier if Sinica just showed up automatically on your iPhone each week, we make it possible to subscribe to Sinica through RSS. If you use iTunes, you can do this simply by clicking on the "Advanced" file menu and selecting the option "Subscribe to Podcast". When prompted copy the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica into the box. Alternately, you're also welcome to download the show as a standalone mp3 file and share it with others.
 said on
April 28, 2012
(Off-topic)

A title like this - David, are you stress-testing your servers?
 said on
April 29, 2012
I'm telling all my male students Monday that if they don't study hard there's a 25% higher chance they won't find a wife. Great episode.
 said on
May 1, 2012
Could you put up the recommendations, especially links to the URLs nobody could remember?
 said on
May 1, 2012
Ask and ye shall receive! (Along with apologies for our tardiness.):

Mentions

Tricia Wang's blogs: blog.triciawang.com and bytesofchina.com

Liumang Yan's QQ blog: http://user.qzone.qq.com/452598814/blog/1326349739#!app=2&pos=1326349739

Daguu, a mobile internet job search site for migrant workers: http://daguu.com/

Recommendations

Christina Larson:

Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World by Thomas Campanella

http://www.amazon.com/The-Concrete-Dragon-Chinas-Revolution/dp/1568986270

Tricia Wang:

McKinsey Report on Social Media in China

http://www.mckinseychina.com/2012/04/25/chinas-social-media-boom/

Kaiser Kuo:

Absolution by Patrick Flanery

http://www.amazon.com/Absolution-Patrick-Flanery/dp/1594488177/ref=lp_B006T9NGOI_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335500452&sr=1-1

The New Yorker review by Philip Gourevitch that inspired the recommendation (subscription required)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/04/30/120430crbo_books_gourevitch

Jeremy Goldkorn:

Bababa group blog (八八吧)

http://www.88-bar.com

University of Leiden's 'Weibo Corpus'

http://lwc.daanvanesch.nl/index.php

 said on
May 5, 2012
Excellent post.
Mark Lesson Studied