Jottings from the Granite Studio

A horrific story out of Guizhou this past weekend, as riots grip a county there over the death of a teenage girl and the severe beating of her uncle.  AFP has the details and Richard at TPD offers some thoughts and a space for discussion by the usual suspects inhabiting his duck pond.
It’s always tough [...]

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We’re old. Not chronologically per se, but simply in our habits.  Nevertheless, we decided to fight the gravitational pull of our couch and go out for the evening on the town with our friends B. & V.
Dinner was at El Fogoncito over by Wanda Plaza.  I grew up in New Hampshire, so I can hardly [...]

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Our lease is not up until after the Olympics, but we’re taking some time this month to look around and see what’s out there.  Even though I first thought it insane to even be looking at places right now, given the general avarice of the Landlord class with the big games around the corner, circumstances [...]

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Many, if not both, of my regular readers know that I am both a history geek AND a bit of a sports nerd, and one of the biggest events of the year for sports nerds was last night…the NBA draft.  As part of the tradition, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons does an annual ‘running diary‘ which–if [...]

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The always whimiscal Beijing Review this month extolls the importance of translators in bridging the cultural gap between East and West.  Given the stilted nature of the Review’s English-language articles, we were all wondering when they’d notice how important a good translator can be, but I digress:

The harmonious coexistence of different nations owes much to [...]

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It’s a disturbing trend that shouldn’t come as any shock to anyone in the circle of foreign-based China researchers: step over the line and risk losing your access.
Paul Mooney writes in The National (h/t CDT) about the problems certain academics face when they run afoul of the anti-intellectual hacks generally in charge of such things here [...]

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From a speech given at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, on April 29, 2008, at Flourence Gould Hall in NYC, and republished in the June issue of Guernica:
In a few words—and maybe we will discuss this more deeply in the conversation later—we are here facing a sort of perverse effect of three great [...]

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And it has come down from on high…the Beijing municipal government today unveiled its long anticipated if not especially eagerly awaited Olympic traffic plan. Odd number. Even number. It won’t matter. What does matter is that we can forget about getting a cab on a weekday downtown. Just start walking now, you’ll get to where you’re going eventually.

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Why Daqing? Well, the Party claimed it was the spirit of hard work, self-reliance, plus selfless devotion to party, country, and Mao Zedong thought which was responsible for Daqing’s incredible productivity. That said, it probably didn’t hurt that they struck oil there in 1959.

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In an op-ed piece published in today’s International Herald Tribune, Philip Bowring warns that for all the attention paid to popular nationalism among Chinese youth, nationalism in Korea potentially could be just as damaging to regional stability.
While the recent flap over imports of U.S. beef dominates the headlines and the US-ROK strategic partnership remains a [...]

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