March 2012
57 posts
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A Collage of Chinese Values →
Evan Osnos on Chinese youth; interview with a photographer and some memorable photos.
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“(G)etting things wrong makes it easier than it should be for the Chinese...”
– Jeff Wasserstrom weighs in on L’Affaire Daisey, Chinese factory conditions, “This American Life,” and past cases when Western reports got some facts right but some others wrong. From the Los Angeles Review of Books blog.
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Behind Bo Xilai's Halo →
Xujun Eberlein, who is originally from Chongqing, where Bo Xilai gained fame as Party Secretary, looks at the local meaning of his fall.
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“But China, it turns out, is not so far away. Daisey’s fiction was predicated on...”
– CC contributor Evan Osnos, in his blog post “Apple, China, and the Truth,” which explores the meaning of Mike Daisey’s “This American Life” fabrications and the value of Rob Schmitz’s digging that exposed them.
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Red Songs, Black Boxes and the Tale of Bo Xilai →
A Chinese Characters co-editor weighs in on the Bo Xilai Story.
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“[T]he 2002 shift from party boss Jiang Zemin and his premier, Zhu Rongji, to Hu...”
– CC contributor Ian Johnson on Bo Xilai’s downward trajectory and what is says about the looming leadership transition; from “China’s Falling Star,” which appeared in the New York Review of Books blog
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Knight News Challenge: Filling Foreign News Gaps... →
Chinese Characters editors Angilee Shah and Jeff Wasserstrom have a proposal in the Knight Digital News Challenge. Reactions? Thoughts? Please leave some feedback.
newschallenge:
1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]
Fill gaps in foreign news by encouraging scholars on Asia to engage in social media and public discourse.
2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project...
“Sigh. Still the same thing,” wrote another microblogger. It’s just power, the...”
– A Chinese user of the Twitter-like weibo service on the blocking of “leftish” websites around the time of Bo Xilai’s fall; quoted in the Wall Street Journal piece: “Did Bo’s Ouster Knock Out China’s ‘Red’ Sites.”
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The Liu Wen Express →
Christina Larson, who profiles an environmentalist in Chinese Characters, shows her range with this New York Times Sunday Magazine profile of “China’s first bona fide supermodel.”
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“But as everyone is pouncing on this story [of Bo Xilai’s fall] as an...”
– David Bandurski of China Media Project on Bo Xilai’s fall as covered in the Chinese press—and how the story related to arguments about historical issues (the same ones highlighted in Xujun Eberlein’s chapter in Chinese Characters)
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India, China, and the Importance of Storytelling →
Chinese Characters co-editor Angilee Shah discusses Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and why great stories are so important for Miller-McCune.
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“China Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang has replaced Bo Xilai as the Communist Party...”
– Breaking news report by the Wall Street Journal, relevant to Xujun Eberlein’s chapter in Chinese Characters; changing of the guard in Chongqing.
The Slang Chinese Bloggers Use to Subvert... →
The Atlantic offers a nice primer, drawn from the invaluable China Digital Times, which takes the uninitiated through some choice word play (typically involving homonyms) that is used in Internet cat and mouse games between PRC netizens and those trying to rein in the net.
“Mandarin is an artificial construct that developed over time so that people in...”
– From a good Browser Q & A with Chris Livacarri of the Asia Society about “Chinese characters” (and language in general) that emphasizes diversity within the country and interconnections between China and other parts of the world (past and present), with 5 suggested books all worth...
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“Water in the twenty-first century could easily become what oil was to the...”
– Contributor Christina Larson writes of water politics in China (a theme of her chapter) and other parts of Asia in “Not a Drop to Drink,” an essay in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly.
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Michelle Dammon Loyalka on the Radio 3/13 →
“The short story is the ideal literary form for a country suffering so acutely...”
– Julia Lovell, a gifted translator and prolific writer on Chinese culture, in her Prospect essay “The Key to China,” which tracks changes in literary life since Mao’s time and claims less can be more when it comes to current Chinese fiction.
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“China’s troubled Railway Ministry on Monday lowered the top operating speed for...”
– From a New York Times report by Chinese Characters contributor Ian Johnson on the latest twists in the high-speed rail story—with comments at the end about a related “rare protest in tightly controlled central Beijing,” triggered by complaints about corruption in railway ministry...
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Kids, Your Great-Granddad Was 70% Right →
Chinese Characters deals in various chapters with the challenge of coming to terms with events of the past (including the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, the theme of Xujun Eberlein’s chapter); this Wall Street Journal blog post looks at the distinctive issue historical legacy present to the parents of Chairman Mao’s great-grand-children.
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“A final then and now contrast has to do with U.S. views of China. In the late...”
– From text by Jeff Wasserstrom accompanying a series of photos of a changing China by Tom Carter. 