can speak Putonghua, altough there are foreigners in China who are much more fluent than I. Chinese TV is extremely boring, it is censored and controlled by the state like I said, a point you convieniently overlooked. As for Chinese radio, that is even worse: I have listened to a heap of radio in Wuhan and Nanning, I spent a lot of time in taxis there: Mostly it is boring traffic reports, some stupid quiz about Chinese language or history, and weather reports.

Real issues, eg, religion, sex, politics, are never discussed. The government is always right and never criticized. Talkbalk radio in Sydney or Brisbane is ten times more intersting than Chinese radio. There will never be a John Laws or Alan Jones in China.

Plenty of stuff which is not affected by politics one way or another, Silverboy...like i saw a film which sticks in my memory of a migrant worker humping his dead comrade from one side of China to the other so as he could be buried in his home town- him and the corpse got into some rare scrapes- or one I saw recently where a mugger amd his victim was trapped in one of those cash machine enclosures all night- they had nothing else to do but recount their lives to each other- lots and lots of good stuff available without any reference to politics. Some of it has a French flavour-do you watch French stuff?