Jottings from the Granite Studio

Not since Michael Jackson’s combustible hair gel has the shoot for a Pepsi ad been so ill-conceived.
At the beginning of the ad, the Chinese fans would be interspersed between the international fans, but losing badly to the foreigners. The roars of the international crowd silenced their cheers for the Chinese national team. Then, the two [...]

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This month YJ and I moved from a monstrous soul-sucking xiaoqu near Guijie to a quiet little pingfang off one of the Dongsi hutongs. Never has moving two kilometers meant such a radical change in quality of life.  Note the phrase ‘quality of life’ rather than ‘standard of living,’ a distinction reinforced for me on [...]

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CDT last week posted a series of interviews with Chinese journalists, including one with a (more or less) anonymous Chinese journalist.  (Read other interviews here, here, and here.)  It’s a good read, as this particular journalist gives, to my mind, a pretty balanced perspective on the problems between Chinese nationalists and the Western media, while [...]

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Shameless promotion….
The Christian Science Monitor has a new blog, Olympic Glory, up and running.  Yeah, I know I’m biased (YJ works for the CSM), but for my money, the Monitor has consistently published interesting stories on China while avoiding some of the sensationalism and bias associated with the ‘foreign media in Beijing.’
Be sure to check [...]

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