May 2013
3 posts
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For Many in China, the One Child Policy is Already... →
Leslie T. Chang writes of a woman migrant worker: “She was ignored by the government, living at the margins — in China, that’s often the best place to be.”
April 2013
16 posts
What’s the fastest growing wine producing...
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China's Ancient Lifeline →
The 1,400-year-old Grand Canal is a monumental project that bound north and south China together. It’s still in use today.
by Ian Johnson with photos by Michael Yamashita
Censorship's Many Faces →
The newspaper Southern Weekend, based in Guangdong Province, for years published exposés on corruption and malfeasance, becoming one of China’s most popular news outlets. Shrewdly, it focused its muckraking on other provinces, with the result that local censors often cut it slack.
Author Yu Hua on the surprising ins-and-outs of film, book publishing and news in China — and what that...
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@tong_lam That’s amazing! How so?? cc @jwassers @annagreenspan @insideoutchina @alecash
— Angilee Shah (@angshah)
April 19, 2013
The stories show students how history works its way into contemporary life. Highly animated discussion.@angshah @jwassers
— Tong Lam (@tong_lam) April 19, 2013
narrative junkie: Two Chinese students in... →
chowleen:
A rare scholarly bright spot amidst a brutal week of news: today was the official launch of the Digital Public Library of America:
(From the NOBLE Digital Heritage collection, hat tip Rebecca Nedostop)
It is a treasure-trove of goodies, including this 1879 Boston studio portrait of Hong Yen Chang (aka Henry Chang or 張康仁), who was one of the first “overseas students” 留學生...
“It has always been her dream to come to America to study. While she was here,...”
– Letter from the Family of Lu Lingzi | BU Today | Boston University
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Ian Johnson: In China, the World’s Biggest Movie... →
Hengdian World Studios, in China, is the largest movie lot ever built. Some of China’s most iconic buildings have been erected on Hengdian’s eight thousand acres, giving the place the ersatz-historical feel of Colonial Williamsburg. On average, there are twenty movies or television dramas being filmed at Hengdian simultaneously.
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“Nepal used to be quite easy for Tibetans, to get jobs here and integrate into...”
– In The New York Times: China Makes Inroads in Nepal, Stemming Tibetan Presence by Edward Wong
Bold Remembrances for a Chinese Reformer →
Russell Leigh Moses writes in China Real Time:
April 15th is almost as sensitive an anniversary in China as the actual suppression of the protests that began on the evening of June 3rd. For years, the day passed with little mention of its significance in official media as the Party tried desperately to suppress anything that would revive positive memories of a movement it has always cast as a...
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Rahul Gandhi’s dragon cliché →
Ananth Krishnan in The Hindu on what the heir-apparent of the Congress Party in India got right and wrong about China.
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WatchFor analysis, read Evan Osnos in his New Yorker blog “Letter from China.”
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“Looking back on these four years, I know I did things I shouldn’t have done,...”
– Zeng Li, a censor at Southern Weekly, wrote in his farewell letter. Read more: The death of a news censor - China Media Project
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The Vatican and The Chinese Communist Party: More... →
Jeffrey Wasserstrom in The Atlantic:
They speculated on the likelihood that the new man in charge (no doubt about that the gender of the person selected in Rome would be the same as the one in Beijing) would be a “conservative” or a “reformer,” and also mused about whether his predecessor would fade away completely or exert some influence from behind the scenes. In both...
March 2013
3 posts
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Review on Amazon
I have been fortunate enough to visit China three times. I saw many changes from 2000 to 2006 to 2012. The book really captures the changing world within China. As an English teacher, I also fully appreciate the high quality writing. The writers/journalists who contributed to this book have written compelling beautifully written stories of their experiences in China. I loved Ian Johnson’s...
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“Is our law trying encourage homosexuals to marry heterosexuals? Won’t this...”
– PFLAG China (Majority Favor Same Sex Marriage in Sina Poll)
February 2013
16 posts
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Blogging the Slow-Motion Revolution: An Interview... →
By Ian Johnson in the NYR Blog
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Fuling, China: Return to River Town →
Peter Hessler returns to setting of his first book for National Geographic. Read more about Hessler’s first travels in China in this Q&A.
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Dancing in Empty Beijing →
Ian Johnson on Lunar New Year exodus for the New York Review of Books blog
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Watch(via Matteo’s American Folk Played on Traditional Chinese Instruments | PRI’s The World)
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In China: Valentine’s Day and the Business of... →
One 25-year-old woman in Guangzhou, who has just recently started dating her first serious boyfriend, a colleague in a different department at work, said her beau may not be the most exciting or attractive, but more important: ‘He is very intelligent and disciplined, which I like. I think we can have a comfortable life together.’
Christina Larson reports on love in the PRC...
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The Artist and the Factory
lareviewofbooks:
Image © Li Liao
by Alec Ash On October 9th 2012, 30 year old Li Liao reported for his first day’s work at a Foxconn factory in southern China. The colossal electronics contract manufacturer, which makes our iPhones, Kindles and Wiis, provides a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of poor Chinese. It was also the center of controversy after a spate of worker suicides in...
The Island Fight Nobody Wants →
Robert Keatley in The National Interest on the Diaoyus/Senkakus debate:
Fortunately, the chances of intentional war are exceedingly slim. The two countries are headed by intelligent men who know full well what the costs of combat would be. And both sides realize that serious fighting could not possibly settle the ownership issue or create the peaceful international atmosphere the two nations...
China’s Telecommunications Giant Huawei Under... →
Mary Kay Magitad reports for PRI’s The World
China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation →
Bloomberg News report:
“It is remarkable that an economy that is only a fraction of the size of the U.S. economy has a larger trading volume,” Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an e-mail. The increase isn’t all the result of an undervalued yuan fueling an export boom, as Chinese imports have grown more rapidly than...
In China, a Vast Chasm Between the Rich and the... →
Tensions and disagreements told in text and photos by Sim Chi Yin in The New York Times
Former Guantanamo Detainee Now Making Pizza in... →
A update on the story of a Uighur from China who was held in Guantanamo Bay for four and half years because he had no where to be sent when the United States decided they were not actually enemies of the state.
Watch
Watch Chen Guangcheng Reflects on Future of China on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
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January 2013
18 posts
3 tags
Feb. 6: Book Discussion at Stanford University →
At the Center for East Asian Studies, Chinese Characters editors Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Angilee Shah will join contributor Michelle Dammon Loyalka for a noon discussion of the book, collaborations and China. Please RSVP.
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The World on a String: Guitars come to China →
When did the guitar come to China? Western missionaries may have brought lutes, vihuelas and other guitar-like instruments to parts of China already by the 16th century, but their memoirs mention only the keyboard instruments and bowed string ensembles. There’s a record in the Vatican archives that papal legates to the Kangxi emperor brought two guitars by the maker Pietro Franchi to...
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Is China’s Communist Party Choking? →
The country’s growing smog crisis is a threat to the regime’s right to rule, writes Jeffrey Wasserstrom in Slate.
Storytellers
My most painful memory involved going out in the collective’s field with Mother to glean ears of wheat. The gleaners scattered when they spotted the watchman. But Mother, who had bound feet, could not run; she was caught and slapped so hard by the watchman, a hulk of a man, that she fell to the ground. The watchman confiscated the wheat we’d gleaned and walked off whistling. As she sat on the...
“Imagine if the restrictions on migrant access to social welfare and social...”
– Xin Meng, an economics professor at Australian National University who conducted a survey of China’s migrant work force tell China Real Time: What Worker Shortage? — Xin Meng on the Real Story of China’s Migrants
In China's Cyberspace, Dissent Speaks Code →
Want to escape the censor’s scrutiny? Call the regime a ‘heavenly dynasty.’ Just don’t get ‘happiness-ified’. Xiao Qiang and Perry Link explain in the Wall Street Journal.
The Dead Children of Guizhou →
Since the discovery in mid-November of the bodies of five young boys in China’s Guizhou province, the Chinese leadership has sought to distract attention from the case. Reporting on the deaths by SPIEGEL was also hindered.
Heteroscapes of Chongqing →
Bo Wang photographs a city in transition for China File
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Chungking Mansions, the Hong Kong meeting place of... →
“But what made it truly interesting, dare one say important, was its place in the trade of the dominant consumer technology of our time: the cellphone.”
-Howard French describes “a massively hulking apartment block of heavily weathered concrete” in “Upwardly Mobile” for Caravan
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“The work of the American press in China has become so contentious, and so...”
– Evan Osnos in China, the American Press, and the State Department for The New Yorker
