Jottings from the Granite Studio

Last week Chinese authorities rescued 500 people–many of them children–from brick factories in Shanxi. The workers had been sold to these kilns by unscrupulous labor agencies and then kept there against their will as slaves, working 18 hours a day under the constant threat of physical abuse. All the while, authorities in the province [...]

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Before any of my colleagues back home get on my case…Yes, I do know that today is the 137th anniversary of the Tianjin “Incident/Massacre/Dissertation fodder.”
The lessons so far: Buying orphans is a bad idea because it makes people want to sell you other people’s children, Manchus make bad officials, the French are even worse, and [...]

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