Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Always figured it would be a bit tricky to get my hands on some english magazines while travelling around China, but wasn’t sure how tricky. So, after having a pretty decent look around Xian (with 8 million people), and Chengdu (with 13 million people) and not being able to find much more than some out of date National Geographics, I was a little disappointed but not overly surprised.

In Japan for instance, English magazines were freely available, but could only be found in a few select bookstores due to the lack of demand (simply not many English speaking customers). In China’s case though I’m thinking it’s not just the lack of English speakers, but its famous control over all media including the entire Internet, aka the Great Firewall of China (see eg. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_434051.htm).

Then again, looking at my “magazine wishlist”, I might have been able to guess the outcome…

• The Economist May 3rd 2008, with special Feature called “Angry China” (http://www.economist.com/printedition/index.cfm?d=20080503)
• National Geographic May 2008 “Inside the Dragon” (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/table-of-contents)

Then again, The Economist I have founds generally provides a strikingly balanced view of events in China especially the latest involving Tibetan protests. We also definitely saw the National Geographic in question in a few spots, but in Chinese. Perhaps it is just a lack of demand after all…?