There’s a reason the Traveling Wilburys only released two albums: A Post-Mortem on Rectified.name
It's hard to keep a supergroup together. A look back at the year that was Rectified. [Read More...]
Archives
Patriots Day
A bombing is a tragedy always. But hitting Boston on Patriots Day is a blow to who we are. This is a day when everybody is out in the streets enjoying what is usually one of the first semi-warm days of the year. It’s the beginning of spring.
And some asshole or assholes decided to blow it up. [Read More...]
Passengers booted off of KLM plane
Flight attendants on international carriers are very particular about safety guidelines. Many upwardly mobile Chinese tend to believe that rules are for other people. Hilarity often ensues. [Read More...]
Sinica Podcast: Revenge of the Call-in Show
Last week I joined Kaiser and Jeremy for the second "Call-in" show in which the Sinica regulars take questions from the listeners. [Read More...]
On Sun Yatsen, 1912, and Han Han
Trusting Yuan Shikai to nourish a fragile young republican government was basically akin to dousing a three-year old in A1 Sauce and putting him in the care of a rabid honey badger, but the demise of the first republican experiment might not have been as inevitable as some believe. [Read More...]
Five people you meet on the Beijing metro…
I’ve been riding the subway more. I don’t know why. I’ve never before been particularly masochistic nor do I generally enjoy close physical contact with strangers. But it seems an economical way to get around the city now that every available road surface is jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. Having spent quite a few commuting hours below ground now, I’ve started to distinguish a taxonomy of my fellow passengers, including several species which I find it best to avoid. [Read More...]
Five Books about Qing History
Five great reads about the Qing Dynasty. [Read More...]
“To Tear out the Heart and Rip out their Eyes”
A ‘souvenir fan’ in circulation after [Read More...]
Old Wine, New Bottles Department: Rush Limbaugh, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the Taiping Rebellion
Rush Limbaugh's moronic comments about the LRA are hardly the first time somebody has been blinded by a lunatic leader's professed "Christianity." [Read More...]
The Wire Guide to the 1911 Revolution, Part II
Part II of The Wire guide to the 1911 Revolution and some closing thoughts on the significance of 1911 in today's political climate. [Read More...]
The Wire Guide to the 1911 Revolution, Part I
So, I spent the summer rewatching all five seasons of The Wire and the more I watched it, the more I realized that far from being the story of Baltimore, there was a timelessness and placelessness to the Wire that transcended one city. The sense of hope battling the reality of hopelessness, the way rhetoric and political transitions, however dramatic, rarely change the day-to-day lives of the people at the bottom, the thought of Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shikai taking swings at each other like Stringer and Avon, it occurred to me how much it reminded me of the years before and after the 1911 Revolution. So without further ado, The Wire guide to the 1911 Revolution, Part I. (Warning: Some strong language) [Read More...]
My 345th fail while living in China: Buying a basketball
I haven’t done a good “Dear China, WTF?” post in quite some time, so sit back and let me tell you about the "Adventure of Buying a Basketball." [Read More...]
Turning rumors into news: The non-death of Jiang Zemin
In today’s China, it is government censorship which gives credibility to unsubstantiated rumors, and that turns rumors into news. [Read More...]
From the Archives: 独立宣言–The Declaration of Independence in Chinese
Translating the seminal document on American freedoms into Chinese is a process fraught with difficulties, as much linguistic as political. [Read More...]
It’s a Mad Mad 90th Anniversary
A "Mad Men" guide to 90 years of the Chinese Communist Party [Read More...]