Keeping up with information from home

Living halfway around the world, a lot of people are worried not just about keeping in touch with friends and family, but also keeping abreast of news and developments from home. In reality though, it is not particularly difficult nor is it something many people experience problems with.

News – keeping up to date on news from home is important to many people, and as such many people will find themselves becoming way too familiar with the BBC website. Whilst the BBC website is quite good with keeping up to date, for comment pieces both the Guardian and the New Yorker have some interesting articles. In terms of newspapers, buying foreign newspapers in China is difficult at the best of times, though there are some English language Chinese papers such as The China Daily (it isn’t great though). Other than that there is a CCTV news channel that is in English which has both Chinese and world news.

Sport – CCTV5 is the Chinese sports channel, though whoever is in charge of programming needs to take a long hard look at himself. Despite having the rights for the French Open Final for example, they opted to play coverage of a friendly volleyball game between China and Turkey (the final was eventually aired once the volleyball game had finished). CCTV5 has quite good coverage of the NBA, shows the Bundesliga, will play SOME tennis matches (usually Grand Slams) as well as badminton and table tennis amongst others. Getting a VPN is definitely a good option for those intent on watching sport from Britain as it will allow you access to BBC Iplayer which has MOTD and the Football League Show.

TV/Film – There are one or two Chinese channels that show the occasional foreign film or show, but for the most part it is a no-go. Cinemas will usually be showing a couple of different foreign films at any time which tend to be blockbusters (art house fare gets pretty short shrift..). For those who prefer not to download things, Netflix can be a good option, though again you will need a VPN to use it.

Music – Visit baidu.com or music.google.cn and you will find that you can download songs through those platforms. I have no idea if this is illegal or whether China just does not care one bit about the copyright laws regarding music but one way or another –enjoy.

Whether it is news, sport, music or film there are a myriad of ways in which you can keep up to date. Whilst inevitably you will miss out on some things (what the hell is twerking?) for the most part it is not that hard to stay in the loop.