Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Ai Weiwei: A game of chess and China’s elemental flaw
Ai Weiwei’s self portrait for the Time Person of the Year issue I have been fascinated by Ai Weiwei, the 54-year-old provocative artist and voice of dissidence in China, since May, when I heard an interview with his English translator on one of the my favorite podcasts. He was detained and questioned and kept by the government for 81 [...]
December 26th, 2011On people, or: “I didn’t want to start with an issue”
Peter Hessler, former English teacher in China and author of several books on Chinese life and people, both historical and modern, is a 2011 MacArthur Fellow and long-form journalist. In his interview in reception of his prize, he spoke on what it is to write about China and Chinese life, to him: “There’s always been [...]
November 26th, 2011If the Chinese middle class permits
The expanding Chinese middle class has more money to spend on tourism, like this family in Nanjing, June 2007. Bill Saporito’s October 31 Time article said it best: “Consider the cosmic irony: wobbly Western economies are depending on the Chinese Communist Party to save their capitalist bacon. Likewise, the Chinese government’s grand scheme to rebalance its economy [...]
November 14th, 2011Oral history in practice: find the people, and a project becomes real
Lots of kiddos at Best International School in Zhengzhou, China, May 2007 I’ve started putting into practice the things that up until this point in my oral history class have only been discussed, that existed only in theory, as things we would eventually have to do. I’ve begun the process of cold-calling a list of [...]
October 5th, 2011Tell it right, and a western can make me cry.
I have always been a sucker for a good story. The simplest tale, told in the right way, brings me to tears. It is almost silly how often I have found myself sitting in the movie theater at the end of a great film, or even a mediocre one, and suddenly, some small trigger in the narrative, [...]
June 23rd, 2011Instead of reading for class…
… I’ve been reading a good old travelogue, like those which sustained my interest for a few years, when I first discovered the Travel Essays section of the bookstore, until I realized that mostly, that shelf does not have new releases very often, and I had read all the best ones already. The rest, I [...]
June 12th, 2011Shaolin Temple in the spotlight, and its role in one of the best days of my life
This morning I was reading my copy of the current National Geographic, and the standout piece was the story and photographs of the Shaolin Temple, which stands in the midst of the Song Mountains in Henan Province, China. The temple is serving as both an important component of a resurgence of popularity of kung fu and martial [...]
March 4th, 2011A fluid sense of family: on adoption and the global diaspora of orphaned Chinese girls
It’s become a family joke of sorts that I may someday have a family that looks rather like that of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s. That is, a multicultural bunch of kids, a collection of orphans that I’ve taken under my wing. Whether this becomes a reality will remain to be seen, but I most [...]
January 6th, 2011Modern-day “Peril”? Chinese language in American classrooms, and that long-standing friend-or-enemy dilemma
China has the second-largest economy in the world, a fact that looms ominously over the shoulder of El Numero Uno: the United States. And when you are as connected economically as China and the U.S., it behooves each side to attempt friendliness; it also means it would be nearly impossible for either side to start [...]
October 7th, 2010Beijing’s vanishing charm: for a buck, for better living conditions, and for a hefty price
Chicken coup, built atop a home inside a Beijing hutong It’s a bit mysterious to me how my fascination with China began; this far into it, I cant quite retrace the steps back to the beginning. But one of the first books I read about the country was journalist Ian Johnson’s Wild Grass: Three Portraits [...]
July 21st, 2010