Jottings from the Granite Studio

Report out of Tianjin, the city by the sea, only 80 miles east and 20 years behind Beijing…residents are doing what they can to alleviate the bad luck of China’s annus horribilis by, what else, setting off firecrackers to blow away the bad luck.
In particular, there are fears that certain gods might be interested in [...]

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It’s always exciting to move into a new house. That sense of expectation, of planning where to arrange things, that glorious feeling of being home. It’s probably less thrilling if you’ve moved into your new home because the bank foreclosed on the old house. Even less so if the new place is half [...]

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Excellent piece in today’s NYT by Choe Sang-hun on the fallout from Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s decision to lift a five-year ban on imports of American beef.  As Choe argues, this was always about far more than food safety, a point that seemed lost on US Ambassador Alexander Vershow, who poured gasoline on the fire by suggesting that fears [...]

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Professor Daniel A. Bell spoke at the Beijing Bookworm on Tuesday night in support of his latest book, China’s New Confucianism. Professor Bell is a noted and respected scholar who has published several books and articles, as well as numerous essays in the online and print media, and I was curious to attend the talk. [...]

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