Jottings from the Granite Studio

In a “mini-debate” posted at Dissent Magazine, Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer contend the question: Should the international community do more to support democracy in China? 
Bell establishes the parameters for the discussion by defining ‘democracy’ as ”free and fair competitive elections at the national level” and ‘promotion’ to mean “moral criticism of a non-democratic status quo.” Unsurprisingly, [...]

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I wanted to write this last week, but never found the time. I actually wanted to write it two weeks ago, but Xinhua waited before making Hua’s death ‘official’ to release the news.  There were, after all, medal counts to consider. And in the end, isn’t that fitting? Hua gets a couple of lines and [...]

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Peony has done an excellent job compiling this month’s Asian History Carnival at Tang Dynasty Times.  Be sure to check out Part I (already up) with Part II due next month. 

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From yesterday’s Lithuania-China game…

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I had heard a sad rumor last week regarding Granite Studio fave Chairman Hua Guofeng, and sent a message out through my new favorite procrastination device “Twitter”:
Hearing a rumor that former Chairman (and Granite Studio fave) Hua Guofeng has passed away in a Beijing hospital. Tracking… 10:56 AM August 15, 2008 from web [...]

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YJ and I went to the US-China baseball match last night at Wukesong Stadium. I was at Wukesong this past spring for the LA Dodgers-San Diego Padre AAAA international tour, and the experience last night was more or less the same…with the addition of a few thousand rowdy China supporters making up in exuberance what they might have [...]

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For a week one recap of the Beijing Olympics, check out Anthony Lane’s piece in The New Yorker, The Only Games in Town.  It’s snarky in a “David Sedaris does P.J. O’Rourke” kind of way:
On the principle that every Western visitor is a sucker, to be wooed into believing that the grass is greener inside [...]

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Tang Dynasty Times will be hosting the 21st Asian History Carnival starting on August 23rd.
The Carnival will appear in two parts.
August 23 (大吉）:        Part 1: Special Edition (Olympics & Hiroshima)
September 21 (大吉）　Part 2:  Notable Posts for Early Autumn

For more information and to submit your nominations (the more the better) for the carnival go to 21st [...]

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I took advantage of the sunny skies to do some urban hiking through the legation quarter, up through Tiananmen Square and back over to Wangfujing.  Some random TGIF thoughts:
Today was a BLUE SKY day.  We’re talking 蓝 freaking 天.  First one of the Games and well timed too as track and field preliminaries kicked of [...]

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Preparing for a walk in the neighborhood, I was looking at this old map of the Beijing legation quarter and playing a game to myself and trying to see if I could name all 13 legations as of 1912…US, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan (those are easy), then Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Italy make a [...]

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