A Chinese man is being scolded by the Internet for forcing his 4-year-old son to work out half-naked on the snowy streets of New York City last month. He Liesheng, who has been dubbed "Eagle Dad" because his tough child-rearing techniques remind some of an eagle shoving its young out of the nest, says he made his son exercise in the snow to get him to develop a "masculine temperament. I believe I am helping my son in this way, to force him to challenge limitations and exceed his own expectations." Here's video of the kid crying on the street in his underwear: more ›

With NYC Comptroller John Liu's campaign finances under scrutiny by the federal authorities (they arrested one fund raiser), the media has been trying to shed light on who has been helping him build a significant war chest to compete in the 2013 mayoral race. And it turns out it's two women—two CHINESE women. And we know how they can be. more ›

For this week's New York Times restaurant review, Sam Sifton goes deep into the heart of Manhattan's Chinatown, emerging victoriously with something that's actually quite useful: 456 Shanghai Cuisine, a cheap, convenient Chinese place with solid, non-scary Shanghainese food. more ›

While just last week we reported that Manhattan's Chinatown was losing its Chinese edge to Chinatowns in Flushing and Sunset Park, it turns out that we were forgetting one other nouveau Chinese hotspot...Harlem. more ›

Manhattan's Chinatown might want to think of a new name, because it's not actually home to the most Chinese people anymore, according to new city data. If you want to get in with the Chinese crowd these days, Sunset Park and Flushing are where it's at. more ›

Welcome back to another installment of Ethnic Eating Adventures, in which we travel far and wide to discover the hidden culinary delights of New York City. Inspired by the warm weather, today we're traveling to Brighton Beach to sample some Uighur food at Cafe Kashkar. more ›

Now that the weekend is almost here, and you can probably escape your desk for food, it's the perfect time to embark upon an ethnic eating adventure. Might we suggest hopping the R train to Sunset Park to check out Yun Nan Flavor Snack, one of the city's only purveyors of Yunnanese (the southern Chinese province bordering Vietnam) food? Don't expect much from the decor at this hole-in-the-wall, but do be prepared for some unique, strangely addictive noodles and dumplings for little more than the cost of the subway ride that got you there. more ›

Last year, NY State opened an investigation into whether Asian would-be customers—many of them Chinese—were being denied iPads at Apple stores because Apple employees were suspected the iPads would be resold overseas. Now, with the frenzy of the iPad 2's debut, the Post has found a "cutthroat Asian group" which "[scored] nearly every iPad 2 it can get its hands since the hot gizmo went on sale last week, to re-peddle at exorbitant prices here and in China." more ›

Donald Trump keeps talking about his presidential platform—if he actually does run in 2012—and last night, while appearing on CNN, he weaved his current distaste of China and the Chinese at length. Trump proposed a 25% tax on all Chinese products (sorry Wal-Mart shoppers!) and said he wouldn't give the Chinese leader a five-star meal at the White House, "If we don’t work out a deal [at my office], we send him to McDonald’s and send him home." Guess the Chinese are only helpful as investors when Trump has financial problems. more ›

From Daily Intel, a quote from fashion designer and icon (and CFDA president) Diane von Furstenberg during a 92nd St. Y talk: "The Chinese people are very individual. I mean, they are not like the Japanese that are obedient. They're very — they're like Jews, really, except that there is a lot more of them. And you know, I mean, try to think of governing a billion and a half Jews." Related: Last January, DVF decided, "My New Year’s resolution was to get known in China." more ›

This past week, Yale Law professor Amy Chua's controversial essay on Chinese child rearing in the Wall Street Journal has received a ton of attention, much of it decidedly hostile and negative. Appropriately, the Times has uncovered a public school where some of Chua's work-first, play-never philosophies are being hammered out. more ›

When the NFL postponed the Eagles-Vikings game due to the blizzard, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell complained, "We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything... If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down." Now, to explain why Chinese kids seem more successful than others, Yale University law professor and mother of two Amy Chua has written a controversial essay in the Wall Street Journal, "The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, 'Hey fatty—lose some weight.' By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue." more ›

"Fornino Park Slope is a throwback, the sort of restaurant that will appeal mostly to those who still think of Manhattan as 'the city,' and who rarely cross a river to get to work," says Sam Sifton in his one star review of chef Michael Ayoub's return to Park Slope. Despite its expansive menu, most critics have focused (unfavorably) on Fornino's grilled pizza. Sifton doesn't dissent, loving pretty much everything until he comes to that controversial item, which "may be the restaurant’s weakest suit. The pies at Fornino Park Slope have thin crusts, in some cases almost shatteringly so, and they can lack the purity of flavor that characterizes the wood-oven versions at the Williamsburg location. Sometimes they don’t work at all. A plain margherita pie, for instance, sits flat and crackly on its plate, devoid of yeasty flavor; it felt in the mouth a little like a pizza made with saltines." more ›

Up until now, we thought the worst public punishment for shoplifting we'd heard of was the fictional stoning Larry David received in the 2nd season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but that seems almost quaint compared to the ruthless tactics currently being employed by some local Chinese emporiums. Some shopkeepers have been taking the law into their own hands by demanding money from shoplifters they have caught. more ›

In May there was some speculation about SoHo's Apple Store discriminating against Chinese people, with claims coming out that racial profiling was at work. Now word is that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the claims that those of Asian descent are refused iPads due to smuggling fears. more ›

Is SoHo's Apple Store discriminating against Chinese people? One Queens assemblywoman, Grace Meng, says some of the shop's employees are, and has written a letter to the company demanding an explanation. According to the Daily News, Meng says she was approached by a handful of customers making claims they were denied an iPad because they were Chinese. more ›

Flushing Assemblywoman Grace Meng is putting together an advisory board to encourage local business owners to display signs in English, not Chinese or Korean, as is common in the neighborhood. Meng says that the foreign signs often scare away potential customers, hurting business for the area. She told the Daily News, "I represent many constituents...who are not comfortable with not being able to fully understand signage outside of stores and inside stores." more ›

A Queens Chinese deliveryman is dead after being struck on his scooter yesterday by the drunk driver of an SUV. After hitting Jiangiu Chen, the motorist Richard Conreras allegedly sped off, and dragged the man briefly. Cops found the 28-year-old driver—who was previously arrested for DWI in September—on Greenpoint and Bradley avenues near his home. "I know I hit someone. I was in a vehicle accident, and I’m on my way home," he said at his arraignment today. more ›

This Chinatown surveillance video depicts a heated altercation between an NYPD traffic agent and a car owner on Lafayette Street around 3:15 p.m. on October 8th. The video appears to show irate traffic agent Twana Chapman striking driver Qiang Nian Zhu after he tried to cover his registration sticker, so Chapman could not scan it. A crowd gathers, and Chapman is seen getting in one bystander's face, as another traffic agent pulls her away. But because there is no audio, it's not possible to verify an allegation that Chapman also made racist remarks. more ›

The NY Times looks at recent census data that suggests an interesting trend in Chinese, Korean and Indian families in America: "If the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy... If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male. Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion." CUNY's Joyce Moy says even younger immigrants have held onto the idea that "Families depend on the male child for support," while Dr. Norbert Gleicher, director of a "fertility and sex-selection clinic in New York and Chicago, said that from his experience, people were more inclined to want female children, except for Asians and Middle Easterners." more ›

City Councilman John Liu wants an apology from Texas State Rep. Betty Brown for her comments earlier this week. Austinist, with video, explains that an advocate was explaining different Asian Americans might have problem voting under a proposed policy partly due to "confusion over differences between their transliterated names... and their 'common' English name," Brown cut in, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Liu posted his letter to Brown on his campaign (for City Comptroller) website: "It's outrageous and insulting for you to suggest it would 'behoove' us to adopt another name, to give up our birthright and a part of our own identity, in order to exercise our right to vote" and suggest she resign if she doesn't apologize. Brown said she doesn't think Chinese Americans should Americanize her names—she "didn't choose my words very well"— and that she apologized to the advocate. more ›

A Chinese man is charged with setting up four bogus companies to sell nuclear bomb-making materials to the Iranian military, and using several unnamed NYC banks to conduct the illegal transactions (supposedly without their knowledge). Manhattan DA Robert M. Morgenthau held a press conference today announcing a 118-count indictment of Li Fang Wei, who is not believed to be in the U.S. While acknowledging the charges could result in a relatively light prison sentence for Li, Morgenthau explained that "what we are doing is to make every effort to prosecute the company which is perhaps the largest supplier of weapons of mass destruction to the Iranian government, and also to let people know that the Iranians are deadly serious about acquiring materials for long-range missiles and for atom bombs." The indictment has certainly alarmed Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control; he tells the Times, "If exports of this magnitude are routinely going from China to Iran, then it’s clear that the United States has failed in its efforts to curb this kind of proliferation." more ›

This week the Times's Frank Bruni piles on Shang, a restaurant in the Thompson LES Hotel helmed by the acclaimed, formerly Toronto-based chef Susur Lee, whose first mistake is making Bruni exercise: "The staircase was the first befuddlement and miscalculation I encountered — and a clue that the evening and restaurant might not be all I’d hope for. It’s a long, drab, foreboding rise of steps from the sidewalk to the host station, an entrance less inviting than aerobic. I’ve gone on runs that didn’t leave me as winded." As for the menu, some dishes are "intensely pleasurable," but overall it's "inconsistent and uneventful. The magic that Mr. Lee reputedly made in Toronto hasn’t followed him here." more ›

New Senator Kirsten Gillibrand may be called a flip-flopper, but her command of the Chinese language is considered just fine. At least to NY Times reporter David W. Chen, who observed the upstater at the Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown two weeks ago. Gillibrand, an Asian studies major at Dartmouth, studied for six months in China and Taiwan: "Ms. Gillibrand’s Chinese is rusty now. But she tells her 5-year-old son, 'Man man yi diar,' or 'Slow down a little,' and calls chopsticks 'kuaizi,' out of habit." Yan Tai, a reporter for Chinese-language newspaper The World Journal who spoke to Gillibrand told the Times, "she definitely understood what I was saying, and she had good pronunciation. Actually, I was very impressed.” (Bonus: Gillibrand's Chinese name is "Lu Tian Na".) And Gillibrand, now on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Times, "Our relationship with China is extraordinarily complicated, and when you do understand the culture better, having that appreciation means you can hopefully find compromises." more ›

The Employees Only crowd have joined forces with David Waltuck (chef/owner of Chanterelle and 2007 James Beard Award winner) to open Tribeca's Macao Trading Co., a big funky restaurant packed with antiques to evoke "the 1940s portside feel of Macao’s red lantern district." The space is bi-level and the menu's bi too, with Macao's history as a Portuguese colony reflected in both Chinese and Portuguese versions of ribs, bass tripe. Meals are served family-style in the 82-seat dining room and bar; other dishes include African fried chicken ($18), Portuguese Style Grilled Prawns with vinho verde & garlic butter ($28), and Chinese Style grilled sirloin with oyster sauce & Chinese broccoli ($32). more ›

Inside Park: According to the Times, the café terrace at St. Bartholomew’s Church on East 50th Street proved so popular they decided to convert the chapter house into a year-round restaurant. Judging by the photo on Grub Street, the renovated space definitely looks appealing, with soaring ceilings and candle chandeliers. Formerly of Savoy, chef Matthew Weingarten has been “pickling everything he can find at the Greenmarket to serve as the season cools.” Beyond pickles, the menu features dishes like Heritage Breed Pork Chop Mushroom Fricassee and Caraway Dumpling, as well as Hand Cut Pappardelle Mountain Style Rabbit Ragu. 109 East 50th Street, (212) 593-3333. more ›

James (pictured), in Prospect Heights, specializes in farm-fresh French-American cuisine. It's said that chef James Calvert once catered a nightmarish photo shoot for the demanding Britney Spears, who dismissed his buffet and demanded BLTs. She then sent those back, insisting upon BLTs sans mayo. Irrevocably scarred, Calvert went on to open what Frank Bruni at the Times describes as "the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to personalize things, to work on a scale that doesn’t require or invite the meddling of too many outsiders...It’s also an example of how quietly sophisticated the food at restaurants fashioned as affordable neighborhood bistros has become. No bigger, brasher restaurant around town served me an heirloom tomato salad this summer that I enjoyed any more than one at James." more ›

A march from the Brooklyn Bridge through Chinatown to celebrate the Beijing Olympics is exposing a big rift in Manhattan's Chinese immigrant community. Opposed to the celebrations are older Chinese-Americans from Taiwan and Hong Kong who've seen their ranks diminished; on the other side are newer immigrants from the mainland who've poured into Chinatown in recent years. A 74-year-old business consultant tells the Sun,"The mainland government, they're Communists, and we don't like that. The new immigrants came from China in a happier time, so they like it more than I do." Jimmy Cheng, an organizer of this weekend's festivities, says, "People who protest about human rights in China, they don't get it. China needs to do what it needs to do." more ›

Chai Park and Jin Hee Lee, a law student and a lawyer, were stuck on line at a Manhattan Pinkberry last summer when they spotted the product seen here, an Alessi “Mandarin Citrus Juicer” that the frozen yogurt chain sells at some locations. They found the designer’s characterization of Chinese men as smiling toadies whose heads are great for squeezing juice a tad offensive. Though the Korean owners of Pinkberry insist the juicer has offended "no one," according to Racked it's no longer sold at that particular location in Koreatown. more ›