Greetings, eaters! As the holidays draw to an untimely close, we’ve steered our rickety old noodle wagon all the way down south. Two provincial neighbors at the bottom end of China - Guangxi and Guangdong - are on show today, both with rice noodle-based dishes, naturally. One of these is world famous, the other a bit of a bally old secret, chum. Enjoy.

Food scandals are so common in China that they no longer offer shock or surprise to anyone that’s been here for any length of time. To wake everyone up from that dull slumber Chinese farmers have truly outdone themselves this time – exploding watermelons. Add to that drugged fish and counterfeit duck to round out the latest list to watch what you eat.

When an 8.9-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami washing over Japan on March 11, several Beijing-based foreign correspondents headed off to cover the crisis and its aftermath, many of them ducking out of previously scheduled talks as part of the Bookworm International Literary Festival.

Now they’re back and ready to share their experiences – and footage – from their jaunts in Japan. Join freelance photographer Adam Dean and journalists Barbara Demick from the LA Times, Evan Osnos of The New Yorker and Jonathan Watts from The Guardian in a rare opportunity to hear about the situation on the ground this Thursday night, April 7 at 7.30pm at The Bookworm.

Back in July we reported that Beijing had scored the world’s highest rating on the “Commuter Pain Index,” with traffic five times worse than Los Angeles. That followed a Chinese Academy of Sciences report in June that found Beijing had the longest commute times in China. Now comes this news, reported yesterday in the People’s Daily: “Average driving speeds in the Chinese capital will likely drop below 15 km per hour in five years if the number of vehicles continues increasing while no further measures are taken.”

Early this decade British sitcom The Office hilariously dissected the inanities of office politics and garnered millions of fans around the globe. Local versions of the series have been produced in countries as diverse as France, Brazil and the US. On Friday series co-writer Ricky Gervais, who also played office boss David Brent in the original program, announced on his blog: “I have some amazing news… We are about to start work on developing a Chinese The Office. How cool is that?”