They train to smile with chopsticks wedged between their teeth and books balanced on their heads. They must be nearly as tall as the Miss China beauty contestants and produce smiles outlasting any beauty contest: 4 hours and 48 minutes aboard the new train from China’s capital to coast. Read more

While Japanese engineers battled to avert meltdown in Fukushima, thousands of panicky Chinese — on the mainland building nearly half the world’s new nuclear plants — were scrambling into supermarkets. Read more

What would a Beijing policeman think if he were to witness the raucous protest rallies that clog traffic in New Delhi during the Parliament session? Read more

India made its latest and most assertive point about Kashmir in a city called Wuhan at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers in central China. Read more

Ever heard of the World Expo before it was reborn in Shanghai in an Olympian avatar?

China on Friday opened its biggest-ever event since hosting the Beijing Olympics 2008, and spending nearly twice as much to showcase a powerful and shiny new Shanghai on the world stage. Read more

In the autumn of 2008, when I first landed in Shanghai at the Hongqiao airport, I missed the new Mumbai domestic airport terminal with its airy open spaces. Read more

A developer in Shanghai is building a replica of Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch on an island off the city’s coast. The news made a splash in the government-run China Daily newspaper this week, and set me thinking.

Where do I live? Read more

Here’s a nugget for India’s new railway ministry: In the first five months of this year, China built 1,942.5 km of new rail lines with an unprecedented 120 per cent increase in railway infrastructure investment compared to last year.

India’s railway network (63,327 km) is denser than Mainland China (79,000 km) but India is not yet building tracks for bullet trains hurtling at 350 kmph. Read more

It is Sunday morning and I want to fly 1,907 km away just for breakfast.

At 8 am, it is too early for the Indian restaurants in Beijing to open. But as I write this, Indians are walking into a restaurant to order the typical Maharashtrian fare of poha, upma and the sweet semolina pudding called shira. In China! Some of them will eat vada pav (spicy potato cutlet in a bun). In China! Read more

At this time last year I was on a flight from Mumbai where I had spent six years, to Beijing where I had spent six days on a previous recce trip.

I have now lived in China for one year, a year that seemed very long on my own in 21M. I like to think that the M in my apartment number stands for Mumbai and suburban Malad where I used to live. My only friend in this 42-storey apartment is a young professional migrant from Mumbai. Read more