Round Table China

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we are bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. This is a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Zhang Junnan, the translator behind the blockbuster Once Upon a Time in the Middle East, about what gets lost an...

You ask your kid to help clean up and they look around like there's nothing to do. It's not attitude, but a glimpse into something researchers call cognitive labor, the invisible load of noticing what needs to be done before anyone asks. That same divide shows up between partners, often without anyone realizing it, yet there are practical ways to bring everyone onto the same page. On the show: Ste...

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we are bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. This is a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Robert Dubrovsky, coach of the baseball team from Cornerstone College in Iowa, and Xia Mofeng, a student from Xi...

You nailed the interview. Then came the follow-up: a data analysis, a full presentation, a mock campaign, all unpaid, all before anyone says "you're hired." Turns out most job seekers know this drill. For plenty of them, the real frustration isn't the extra work, it's the silence that follows. So where's the line between proving yourself and getting used? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we're bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. It's a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Elyn MacInnis, founder of the Kuliang Families and Friends Groups, about a little-known chapter in the history of Ch...

Imagine paying good money to send your kid somewhere with no Wi-Fi, no electricity, and a whole lot of manual labor, on purpose. That is not a punishment; that is the pitch. It is called "eat bitterness" camp. Are these hardship camps actually building character, or just selling a feeling? On the show: Steve, Yushun & Yangyang.

As part of our National Day holiday special, we are bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You, a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience and understand each other. Today's episode features a conversation with three Yale University students who are members of the Whiffenpoofs, one of the world's oldest collegiate a cappella groups.

For years, shared bikes have made short-distance travel easier in Chinese cities, but they have also brought familiar headaches. This September, regulators moved to fix that. A new national standard for internet-based rental bicycles has been approved, setting out, for the first time in one document, exactly what operating companies must do, from hiring and training staff, to equipping bikes, to h...

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we're bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. This is a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Jeffrey Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, about the history of the Flying Tiger...

With Mid-Autumn and National Day bookending a rare calendar gap, travelers are pouncing on what might be 2026's biggest escape window. Domestic hotspots are surging, but overseas demand is climbing fast, too. So what is really driving this rush, and where is everybody going to go? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan.

Consider all the small conversations you did not have today. The barista, the neighbor, the colleague you passed without stopping. On their own, each one seems like nothing. Together, they add up to thousands of words that were never spoken, and a new study suggests this is becoming the new normal. So what have we traded away without noticing, and is there any reason to want it back? On the show:...

Beijing is crawling with a problem you cannot ignore. American white moth caterpillars are raining down from trees, blanketing sidewalks, and turning a simple walk into something close to a nightmare. The city's answer sounds like science fiction. Release hundreds of millions of parasitic wasps and let them do the work. Why has this year's infestation exploded and can this tiny-winged counterattac...

The fishing boats are back and the ports are buzzing with fresh seafood heading to market. What you will not see on your dinner plate is the millions of tonnes of aquatic food lost or wasted every year. On September 29, the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, we follow the catch from ocean to table and ask how much of the fish we pull from the sea never actually makes it to our...

Have you ever cried at a song whose words you never understood? That wordless pull toward beauty feels deeply human, yet AI now writes poetry, scores films, and paints portraits that move people to tears. So does it truly feel beauty, or simply mimic everything we've always called beautiful? On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

What if the job you'll hold next doesn't exist on any official list yet? In China, that list just grew to include robot trainers, sustainability planners, and even incense-making artisans. Work you never knew existed is now being formally recognized as a legitimate career. The line between a passion project and a profession is thinner than it looks. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

There is something comforting about knowing the moon on September 25th is the same one that has watched over this festival for generations. It will shine down on family dinners and quiet apartments, on people coming home and people who cannot. Life moves, cities change, and we scatter further from where we started, but the moon keeps showing up. So what still makes a Mid-Autumn celebration feel li...

Living on campus has long been a standard part of university life in China, but that is now starting to change. Instead of staying within campus walls, many students are moving into residential buildings, as universities across the country buy or lease existing apartments and convert them into student dorms. For the students, it means perks like balconies and round the clock hot water. For the peo...

In Shanghai this week, the WorldSkills Competition has brought together around 1,400 young competitors from 68 countries. They are repairing cars, programming drones, and working with a level of precision that comes down to half a millimeter. It is the biggest celebration of vocational skills on the planet, and the energy is electric. On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yushan

Deep in the Italian Alps lies a course so punishing that it has broken some of the world's best athletes. This year, it was conquered by Zhao Jiaju, a Chinese runner who once delivered takeout for a living. A year earlier, the same mountains handed him his worst defeat. This time, he did not simply finish the race. He rewrote the record book and became the first non-European ever to win. On the sh...

China is pushing harder to remove phones from classrooms, and a new Chongqing regulation marks a notable escalation. Schools there can now ban smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, but this measure sits inside a juvenile crime prevention law rather than an education policy. That raises difficult questions about the link between screen habits and criminal behavior, and whether real evidence justi...

Every text you send, every search you run, every question you ask an AI passes through the same quiet piece of software beneath your fingertips, and it is watching all of it. In 2026, China's biggest tech companies are fighting to control that software, and the stakes go far beyond convenience. The battle to reinvent the keyboard may be the fiercest front in the AI competition, hiding in the one p...

China has now approved the world's first national standard for BCI medical devices that use AI to interpret brainwaves, setting rules for how brain data is collected and accessed. The question now is whether that standard makes the technology safer for patients, and whether BCIs are finally entering everyday medicine. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

In 45-degree heat, air conditioning is a luxury millions can't reach, so researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology are building something you wear instead. Round Table's Yushan sits down with Ji Wenjie and Fu Ying, from the team behind a cooling vest that could change who survives the heat and who gets left behind. 

Bringing someone into your home to clean or care for your family feels like a private arrangement. In China, it is also a thirty-million-person industry, one that has long run on informal deals, unclear hours, and unanswered questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong. Now nineteen new measures aim to change how that work is done, covering everything from training and insurance to...

You walk into a room and find a stage waiting for you. Someone hands you a presentation you have never seen before. The slides make no sense, the crowd is waiting, and your only job is to keep talking. In Beijing, Shanghai, and a handful of other Chinese cities, this is a game that turns everything you know about professional presentations upside down, and once you hear why people keep coming back...