One or two readings on China per day, chosen by Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, editors of Chinese Characters
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09
Dec
Someone just said, ‘To reform is to court death; to not reform is to wait for death.’ This is a widely spread line. But one thing must be made clear: Whose death is it? If reformed, would the entire Chinese nation die?
30
Oct
We want a multi-party system! We want democracy!
17
Sep
Meet the contributors to Chinese Characters: Xujun Eberlein
Tell me about the first time you went to China.
The first time I opened my eyes, I was in China! But it was not until I was 20 that I realized life in China might not be the best in the world, and not until I was 40 that I missed China.
What was the most interesting thing you learned from working on your chapter for Chinese Characters?
My meeting with Zhou Rong, a Red Guard “hero” from my childhood in Chongqing, made me ever so much more so interested in the relationship between mob mentality and individual righteousness. That was why when I read Evan Osnos’s recent comment in his New Yorker blog, it sent chills through me. In a piece titled “A Diplomatic Incident in China: A Close Call”, Osnos wrote, “When the day comes — and I fully expect it will — some of the world’s great powers will discover that their fragile and carefully managed relationships now rest, more than ever, in the hands of the public.”
Where are you right now and what are you working on?
I’m at home in Boston, working on a memoir. Part of the memoir is a 1987 adventure along the Yangtze I took with an American man who later became my husband. The photo above is scanned from a photo taken in the spring of 1988, when Bob and I were dating in Chengdu. He is younger than me but Chinese people thought he was an old man because of his beard. A rural boy, for that reason, called him “big brother Marx.”
Xujun Eberlein is author of the award-winning story collection Apologies Forthcoming and the blog Inside-Out China. She is on Twitter @InsideOutChina.
04
Sep
A Chinese-language promo for the Chinese Characters book launch at the Asia Society on September 17.
Join co-editor Jeffrey Wasserstrom and contributors to this provocative new book for a conversation challenging familiar media stereotypes of China. In Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land, some of the most talented and respected journalists and scholars writing about China today create a multifaceted portrait of a remarkable country undergoing extraordinary transformations by portraying the immense variety of lives that ordinary Chinese people are living. Speakers include: writer Xujun Eberlein; journalist and translator Megan Shank; journalist and photographer of the book’s cover images Howard French; and media commentator, professor, and Asia Society fellow Jeffrey Wasserstrom. Followed by a book sale and signing.
Get tickets the Asia Society website. Not in New York? Watch the free webcast at AsiaSociety.org/Live at 6:30 pm ET.
09
Jul
When I first met He Shu, he wanted to know how my sister Ruo-Dan had died. He was painstakingly collecting historical facts and stories about the pitched battles between rival factions during the Cultural Revolution era in China, and he thought that my sister must have been killed in one such skirmish.
Read all of this chapter by Xujun Eberlein in Chinese Characters on the UC Press website.
21
Jun
Write Jillian C. York , Katrin Verclas and Lisa Goldman in Foreign Policy.
When Foreign Policy published its 2012 Twitterati 100 list, we could not help but be struck by the lack of women. Of the 100 tweeters Foreign Policy said “you need to follow,” nearly 90 percent are men. Given the strong presence of smart, powerful, influential women on Twitter, we found this a bit hard to take. So, beginning near midnight U.S. East Coast time on Monday, a group of women from around the world created a list of interesting and influential activists, journalists, analysts, economists, geeks and wonks. Within a few hours, we had more than 200 names and our list had begun to make the rounds on Twitter.
Included in the Twitter-crowd-sourced list are Chinese Characters contributors:
Xujun Eberlein (@insideoutchina) — A thoughtful and unique perspective on China.
Angilee Shah (@angshah) — Journalist covering local and international news, with an emphasis on Asia and globalization.
And in the original list:
Howard French (@hofrench) — Journalism professor; former New York Times correspondent in Africa and China.
Evan Osnos (@eosnos) — Staff writer for the New Yorker; former Beijing bureau chief and Middle East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.
Christina Larson (@larsonchristina) — Contributing editor at Foreign Policy and freelance journalist based in China.
Find more Chinese Characters contributors who tweet in a convenient list.
Xujun Eberlein tries to understand why so many Chinese writers willingly took part in a book project celebrating Mao’s words that would choke their art’s demand for independent thought and speech. She writes for the South China Morning Post.
(Source: scmp.com)
