China From the Inside on PBS

This 4 part documentary series was pretty decent if you're curious about the communist party and some of the problems China faces like horrible pollution and its state control of religion and the press. This might be aired on your local PBS affiliate. See http://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinainside/ for the episode titles (the 4 things on the left). If you don't have a PVR, use the above site or sites like www.zap2it.com to search for showtimes.

I'm American born Chinese (ABC) and have never set foot in China. I was fascinated by the Tibetans as they didn't look Chinese and I couldn't understand their language a well as those in the Xinjiang region (borders Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and other countries) where there are a lot of Muslims. I'd known of Muslim Chinese before but these folks didn't look Chinese either and I also couldn't understand what they were saying.

I was also blown away by some of the descriptions of the judicial system. Some of the judges started off as cleaners or caretakers eventually becoming judges. They said in 2005, 49% of judges still had no college degree!