Jottings from the Granite Studio

We are still in Beijing and I would describe today’s weather as “ashen grey.”

Laowiseass presents an interesting ethical dilemma that won’t be unfamiliar to foreigners living in China. Read about his night out on the town with the local taxation official and his internal debate over the exact ethics and etiquette of such a [...]

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I’m in Beijing right now and will be until Saturday. Richard at The Peking Duck was so very kind to put together a (last minute, my fault) dinner for bloggers, commenters, and lurkers on Friday night near the Kerry Center in Beijing. Leave a comment or send me an email (address is in my [...]

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If your father was the secretive dictator of a pariah state, where would you go? Well, first you might try Disneyland and if that doesn’t work….why not hang with your buddies in Macau? Tim Johnson at China Rises has a great account of Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-nam as the latter parties it up in [...]

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一．Powerful essay by Ma Jun posted on the China Dialogue website, “Participation not markets, will help China’s environment.” (中文) Ma argues that the market reforms of the past 15 years have had some success but that the market alone cannot resolve the country’s ecological crisis or the explosive economic inequalities that have accompanied China’s economic [...]

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ABC news reports that over 1100 cultural relics were unearthed last year at construction sites for Olympic venues in and around Beijing, including several tombs dating from the Ming dynasty located a few hundred yards away from the proposed site of an Olympic shooting range. So far over 700 tombs dating from the Han through [...]

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There are a lot of myths about the Great Wall that need to go away. First of all: you can’t see it from the moon. Second: While portions of the wall have been constructed and linked and rebuilt in stages since before the Qin dynasty, the Great Wall that most people see today [...]

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From Ryan’s Life in Suzhou Blog and ESWN: One woman dared to do what almost every foreign visitor to China’s cities wishes they could do at least once in their life: She took the law into her own hands, put her bike on the line, and enforced the traffic laws. A driver trying to sneak [...]

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Hu Jintao has put forward a bold vision for a harmonious society, promising to clean up the environment, end corruption, and bring economic prosperity to all–a veritable chicken in every hot pot. But as this excellent overview from the Economist points out, the devil is in the details and despite Hu’s utopian vision, nobody’s actually [...]

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Some random notes courtesy of the History News Network:

A recent study shows important DNA and linguistic links between the native peoples of Taiwan and those of the Pacific Islands.

“The 12 original tribes of Taiwan are Austronesian by language and culture, as are the great majority of the island peoples who settled the Pacific islands. [...]

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In the news on Wednesday:
The French government is seriously considering a ban on smoking in public places–including restaurants and bars–to take effect as early as next year. Some French seem resigned to it, others are annoyed that they won’t be able to continue their unbridled support for large, greedy, American tobacco corporations. (Je deteste le [...]

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