Blog
Young Lives in China – review of Alec Ash’s “Wish Lanterns”
Originally published in LA Review of Books: Dec. 2, 2016 https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/young-lives-new-china/#! AMERICANS ARE OFTEN highly opinionated about China, yet reveal an embarrassing ignorance about the Chinese. Alec Ash’s new book Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China is the antidote […]
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China’s Forbidden History, Subjects, Ideas
Along with the jaw-dropping economic and technological transformation in China over the past two decades, has come an Orwellian load of forbidden history, subjects and ideas. Aided by a Party-censored and self-censored traditional and social media these forbiddens are maintained […]
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The Big Chill—Missing Hong Kong Publishers
January 24, 2016 There’s a big chill moving through Hong Kong as publishers are reported missing. On October 7, last year, Gui Minhai went missing from his Thai resort house, his daily medications that he was sorting left on the […]
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Nicole Mones: Desire, identity and love
Reading and writing interweave like lovers in a small bed. While working on Forbidden Fruit – 1980 Beijing, a Memoir friends often asked, Are you reading everything on China? The answer often surprised them. No. Since I was trying to […]
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Zhang Hongtu – A Retrospective at The Queens Museum
It takes a long time to find your way in a radically different culture, language and place. It takes humility and fortitude to figure out where you are and whether who you are will survive the disruption of transplanting. It […]
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Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home – Ellipsis or Omission
You could say that Zhang Yimou’s new film Coming Home has been forty years in coming home. Powerful emotionally, Coming Home, portrays the heartache, pain and suffering within families caused by Chinese government policies during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. […]
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