A Zealot and a Poet
I like to imagine him out there on his beast of burden, vast grey country on all sides and a book of poetry open in his hand. It is a romantic image and, when I think only of it, I can almost forget why he was there.
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Posts Tagged: China
Into the Tiger’s Lair
They’d been hiding in the jungle for two days, having fled their homes in Burma’s northern Kachin state to evade approaching firefights between the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
...moreRadioactive Mongolian Dinosaurs and the People Who Love Them
Here are some subjects with which this (extremely long) New Yorker article concerns itself:
...moreThe Journalist and the Censor
Eveline Chao has a fascinating longform article up at Foreign Policy about navigating government censorship while working at an English-language business magazine in China.
You can’t say “Tiananmen,” but “June 1989″ is all right. The headline “China’s ailing healthcare system—and the government’s plan to fix it” is unacceptable, but “The Chinese government’s plan to fix the ailing healthcare system” is fine.
...moreChinese Literature Making International Strides
This month, Mo Yan is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature, and the first non-European to win in the last decade.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, Christina Larson comments on the growing market for translated Chinese literature.
...more“Corpse Orders”
The newest addition to the Lapham’s Quarterly “Voices in Time” series unearths a text from c. 700 China instructing spellmen on unearthing jewels buried with the dead:
“Then proceed into a tumulus and select an adult male corpse—a body without the marks of boils or lesions on it.
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What’s in a Name? JCPenney and The Dunce Cap
A few weeks ago, a slim catalog from JCPenney arrived in our mailbox. It floated around the house for a few days. On its cover are printed these words:
littleredbook
fall trends 2010
I hadn’t noticed this until just the other day.
...moreMorning Coffee
Mystery lights in the Norwegian sky. I love the universe! (update: Bad Astronomy has gotten to the bottom of it!)
Photographing Las Vegas’ neon boneyard.
Gerry Canavan points us to this epic document of classic scams.
A family portrait of China’s 56 ethnic groups.
...moreMorning Coffee
Big Picture has some great pictures of the Berlin Reunion, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Not to glamorize crime or anything, but this plane stealing kid is pretty awesome.
on China’s Hakka “apartments.”
Austrian Stelarc is the most terrifying conceptual artist I’ve ever come across.
...moreHoping Things End Safely: The Rumpus Interview with Hyejin Kim
North Korean women risk their lives to escape across the border to China, where they often face lives of indentured servitude and the ever-present fear of being outed by the husbands they marry or communities they join and sent back to North Korea.
A Writer, a Traveler, and an Expat
I’m a congenital traveler, had been long before I wrote my first book. I took my first plane ride when I was two weeks old (taught me to travel light) and haven’t slowed since. Other than the frequency of travel (you want me to come to China and you’ll pay for it?
Counterfeit Smokes
“On first approach, Yunxiao seems like any other Chinese backwater caught in an uneasy industrial transition. Faded advertisements line the downtown streets, where motorcyclists wearing bamboo-frond hats vie for paying passengers in a riot of honking. A cheerful red banner in the city center exhorts citizens to develop the local economy.
...moreChinese Government Remembers Tiananmen Square with War on Internet, Umbrellas
Twenty years ago today, June 4, 2009, the Tiananmen Square massacre took place in Beijing, China.
...moreNo One Is Innocent
Yiyun Li’s arresting debut novel, The Vagrants, should be required reading for anyone interested in political fanaticism and state-sponsored tyranny.