Thinking Blogger Awards

“I should think…,” I began one day over breakfast.“Well, I would hope so, Watson,” replied Holmes laconically. – Arthur Conan Doyle

A meme of sorts but perhaps a better one than “Name five different ways you’ve eaten peanut butter…”

By nature, all good blogs should make you think. It’s why we read blogs. It’s why (some of us) write them. This little hobby of mine has recently been tagged as something called a “Thinking Blog” by both The Peking Duck and China Law Blog, two blogs I greatly admire. Last month, another fabulous blog from outside the incestuous circle of the China blogosphere, Westminster Wisdom, was also kind enough to tag me as a Thinking Blog. I suppose that the game is up and I should set about jotting down my own list.

I should point out that I’m trying to avoid tagging the previously tagged, which is difficult as any list of “Thinking Blogs” would of course include TPD, CLB, and Westminster Wisdom right at the top. But I thought it best to expand the circle a bit.

1) Surf Putah: Wu Ming is a brilliant historian of Song-era China, but this blog deals mostly with his other passion.

Xinhua reports Mao Zedong’s son dead at 83.

Xinhua reports that the last surviving son of Mao Zedong,* has passed away. The reclusive Mao Anqing, the middle son of The Great Helmsman and his second wife, was 83. (中文)

From The Guardian:

Yesterday a brief notice in the China News Service recorded the death of Mao Anqing, who survived his father to live on into a new China that the dictator would not have recognised.

Mao Zedong’s second child, who died on Friday, lived through civil war, the execution of his mother, street life in Shanghai, and a journey to Paris and to Moscow, where he studied under Stalin’s surveillance. Eventually he returned to China, where he was largely ignored by his father.

It might go without saying, but being the son of Mao probably did not an easy life make. The middle of three brothers born to Mao and Yang Kaihui, Anqing’s childhood coincided with one of the most chaotic and violent periods in China’s history (and that’s saying something). Their father was frequently away on campaigns and while Mao often referred to Yang as his “great love” (who’d you think it was? Jiang Qing? That women could scare babies from 100 meters) it was

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