Students in a Chinese classroom seem happy to learn English, or at least happy to be together. (Creative Commons-licensed photo by yewenyi)

Yesterday the New York Times featured an informative and fun-to-read story about outlandish edicts put forth by China’s legions of untrained local officials.

Sharon LaFraniere did a great job reporting on a nation-wide phenomenon by using lots of local examples. And it’s a balanced story, fair to all sides. While the news peg (“communism doesn’t work so well in this instance”) falls to one side, the actual story visits both and treats them with equal standing.

This is an important historical archive in the development of the largest country in the world. (Which is, in case you didn’t know, soon to be surpassed by India.)