One or two readings on China per day, chosen by Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, editors of Chinese Characters
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10
Oct
Ian Johnson talks to one of the most influential spiritual figures in China — who happens to be banned from entering China.
04
Oct
01
Oct
Sinica: An evening at the Beijing Bookworm
Jeremy Goldkorn hosts Chinese Characters contributors Ian Johnson and Christina Larson in a discussion about the book and what Johnson calls “the rise of the individual in China.” The discussion was hosted live at the Beijing Bookworm on Sept. 13, 2012.
21
Sep
The Asia Society’s new site China File excerpts from Chinese Characters:
The “voluntary” insurance at the entrance had cost just two yuan, about thirty-five cents, but I had been fleeced all the way from Beijing and somehow this was the final straw. Why did everything have to be so crass and commercialized? I whined to myself. I knew the answers—all the nuanced reasons why so many religious sites in China had been reduced to a carnival—but was in too foul a mood to be rational. The view didn’t help either. Once one of Taoism’s holiest mountains, Mount Heng in Shanxi Province was a denuded wreck, seeming to consist of nothing but broken slate. I grumbled epitaphs as I climbed the steep trail wondering why I had bothered to come.
Then he appeared on the ridge above me, like something out of a Chinese kung fu thriller: a Taoist priest clad in a blue robe, white breeches, his hair up on his head in a bun.
06
Sep
It took eight years, but you can now read a Chinese translation of Ian Johnson’s amazing book: 苛稅、胡同和法輪功：底層中國的緩慢革命 － Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Morden China @ 金石堂網路書店
29
Aug
At The Bookworm bookstore: Though China is currently in the global spotlight, few outside its borders have a feel for the tremendous diversity of the lives being led inside the country. Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land is a collection of compelling stories challenges oversimplified views of China by shifting the focus away from the question of China’s place in the global order and zeroing in on what is happening on the ground. The collection includes profiles of people who defy stereotype - an artist who copies classical paintings for export to tourist markets, Xi’an migrant workers who make a living recycling trash in the city dumps, a Taoist mystic, an entrepreneur hoping to strike it rich in the rental car business, an old woman about to lose her home in Beijing, and a crusading legal scholar – written by some of the most talented and respected journalists and scholars writing about China today. Join us to celebrate the publication of this new collection and hear from contributors Ian Johnson (Wild Grass), Christina Larson (Foreign Policy), Evan Osnos (The New Yorker) and Ananth Krishnan (The Hindu) on the profiles they contributed.
20/30rmb, 7:30pm
Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road,
Chaoyang District, Beijing
100027, P.R China
09
Aug
I admire Ye Shiwen’s performance but wonder more about why the country’s swimming coaches get paid almost as much as the central government spends on preserving the country’s dying folk culture. I think Phelps is a great physical specimen but wonder why Americans are getting fatter and fatter. And I look in bemusement at Great Britain’s sudden rise up the medals table—the telltale sign of a country with an inferiority complex that has decided to spend lots and lots of money on attention-getting elite sports: modern-day penis envy.
18
Jul
In the West, if people know anything, they might think of him as conservative. For example, he supported Reagan and, later, George W. Bush’s Iraq War. He was very similar in many ways to the Republicans.
Yu Jie discussed his new biography of Liu Xiaobo with Ian Johnson For the New York Review Blog.
16
Jul
Chinese Characters contributor Ian Johnson reports for The New York Times
28
Jun
So you can see that once you enter the system, you need to become bad. If you don’t become bad, you can’t survive.
