Spring Festival at The Granite Studio

At the risk of slipping into what China Law Blog refers to as a “noodle” blog, I had some thoughts while wandering around Tianjin the last couple of days before the Spring Festival.

YJ’s mother is the sweetest human being on Earth. She really is. But like an evil genie, when you are in her presence you have to watch what you wish for. Two weeks ago, in the course of a conversation about food, I mentioned that I really liked hongshao rou. You can guess what happened. The next morning, YJ’s mom went to the market and bought two kg of meat. For the last fourteen days, hongshao rou has been served every lunch and dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I love hongshao rou, but a fortnight of marinated fatty pork is a lot for anyone. It’s getting to the point where I need a couple of EKG paddles and a heart stent just to get out of bed in the morning.

In order to compensate for my creaking cardiovascular system, I have taken up morning exercise namely, basketball. Each morning around 6:30, I pay my 3 jiao to play basketball at the local park. It’s early but the

February 16th, 2007

An African-American activist in the court of Mao: The life of Robert F. Williams

In the United States, February is Black History Month: that last bastion of separate (blacks aren’t part of US history in November?) and unequal (the shortest month of the year). But it did get me thinking about African-American influences in China. One notable example was Robert F. Williams, the civil rights activist and “militant revolutionary nationalist” who moved to China with his wife Mabel at the invitation of Mao Zedong in 1966. Williams and his wife lived in China for three years and if you think your average lao wai gets stared at now, imagine being a black man walking the streets of Beijing at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Williams returned to the USA in 1969, and in his later years this former autoworker and fugitive became a scholar-in-residence at the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies.

Williams was born in 1925 in Monroe, NC. In the 1940s, he moved to Detroit to work in the auto factories and it was there he met and married his wife, Mabel. After a hitch in the marines, Williams returned to North Carolina and in 1955 was named head of the Union County, NC chapter of the NAACP. He would

February 16th, 2007

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