There are not a lot of birds to be seen in China and we were frustrated in our attempts to identify birds there. There do not seem to be any bird books in China and we say this after having searched several large bookstores in Beijing. Several times we asked a Chinese person, "What kind of bird is that?" The result was always identical. The person would study the bird carefully for ten or fifteen seconds, then turn to us and reply, "That's a Chinese bird." We have no idea what this long-tailed bird is.
Most birds that we saw in China were caged, as this one is in Suzhou, west of Shanghai. Again, we weren't able to identify it.
Perhaps some kind of canary, this bird was singing from its wooden cage in a courtyard.