A Cirque du Soleil performance left a Beijing audience audibly shocked when a banned image of the iconic Tiananmen "tank man" protester was displayed on giant screens in front of 15,000 people. The politically-charged image -- of a sole, unarmed protester blocking a line of tanks during a 1989 government crackdown in Tiananmen Square -- was displayed for about four seconds as part of a montage of protest imagery during a performance of Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us," according to a post on That's Beijing magazine's website.

In a recently televised broadcast of Chinese Character Dictation Conference — China’s equivalent of a spelling bee — the nation’s best and brightest were asked to write, in its traditional form, a word that stumped 70% of the teenage contestants and a startling 90% of the grown-up audience (who, as voluntary spectators at a spelling bee, were probably no literary slouches themselves). The word that eluded this extremely well-read crowd was toad. Pause and consider that for a moment.

Though things sure aren’t looking good for US universities, Wisconsin has it unusually bad. Decades of plummeting investment in higher education has left it among the US’s 10 worst states. Fear of debt mean Wisconsin students are balking at paying for college, denting revenue even more. But what can Wisconsin universities do to drum up funding? The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a plan.

Japan’s public diplomacy hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister. In recent months, the country has specialised in foreign policy gaffes that seem designed to give maximum offence to its Asian neighbours while causing maximum embarrassment to its western allies. Last week provided another example.

In the last few weeks of July, the story of a young transgender couple who transitioned together, which had previously gone viral in the Western media, trended on Sina Weibo, China's popular microblogging platform. Although some Chinese people were puzzled by the story, many praised the couple for their bravery and the quality of their relationship. Chinese reactions to the story on Weibo were generally positive. Wrote queer news organization @淡蓝同志新闻: "Everyone has the right to love. Be yourself! Good luck! Others can learn from your experience as a #genderswapcouple."

As Chinese citizens are tempted by these governments to invest and relocate abroad, China has been experiencing an influx of immigrants as well – many of whom have come from Africa. Guangzhou, one of China’s largest cities and a main manufacturing hub in the Pearl River Delta, is home to over 20,000 Africans who hail from West African countries such as Nigeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Guinea.

In May 2010, when the Washington Post Company put Newsweek up for sale, it called for bids from interested parties. One surprising entry into the race was Southern Media Group, a Chinese media conglomerate that publishes the relatively liberal newspaper Southern Weekly, among other products. I was a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek at the time, and I remember several Chinese people asking me, with a mixture of pride and apprehension, whether I thought Southern Media Group had a chance. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no.

For the last year, the North Korean government has been trying to convince anyone who'd listen that its tourism industry is booming. With North Korea's long history of fibbing, those reports were a little suspect ... until stories emerged about the country is having the same problem as many popular tourist destinations: dealing with crude Chinese tourists.