We liberal Americans of Kunming are getting mighty excited about the election, given that everyone and his mother expects Barack Obama to win. A good friend of mine, John, wasn’t so sure. He’s in his 60s and has lived abroad much of the last 40 years after growing up in Georgia and North Carolina. To [...]
The other day I walked into a little çƒ©é¥ joint near my office for lunch. The place was chock full of young Chinese people, most of whom students from the nearby high school. As I took my seat, I took out my iPod and book and waited for my 宫ä¿é¸¡ä¸ç‚’é¥. A second later, a guy [...]
A friend of mine recently told me that, if the US presidential election were decided amongst American expats in Kunming, Obama would win by about a 10 to 1 margin. I thought about it for a minute, and then disagreed. “You’re forgetting the people on the other side of town,” I said. Unlike cities like [...]
Hu Jia, an AIDS activist currently imprisoned in China for the crime of subversion, was recently awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. The Chinese government was displeased, reverting in their criticism of the award to their usual tropes of “interference in domestic matters” and “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”. The former [...]
Yikes…an e-mail from my sister reminded me that I’ve been silent in this space for a bit longer than usual. Apologies! Work has been busy and I’ve been occupied by other things, but keeping fresh content on this site remains a priority to stay tuned. Before I write about my trip (I’ve got a bit [...]
Two new additions to the blogroll: 1. Sinoscape- this is the blog of my friend and roommate Matt Burton, an Australian who has lived in Yunnan for more than three years. Matt’s a very good amateur photographer and he already has uploaded quite a few great photos of the province and of China at large. [...]
This year, to quench my thirst for constant political news and updates, the website FiveThirtyEight has become my primary source. Nate Silver, who earlier in life created an accurate and valuable system of predicting baseball statistics, runs 10,000 simulations each day based on an aggregation of polling numbers. Here are some of his findings on [...]
An important story The Uighurs are among the silent victims of the Global War on Terror. In 2001, the Chinese government used the aegis of the GWOT to round up Uighur dissidents, most of whom had a tenuous (if best) link to global jihadism and were simply agitators for Uighur autonomy. Those that strayed into [...]
I recently finished reading Jonathan Spence’s brisk biography of Mao Zedong, published ten or so years ago. Unlike other biographies, Spence kept his focus narrow; he merely documented Mao’s life and eschewed long ruminations on his legacy. Spence also conveys a sense of who Mao was as a person, analyzing his poetry and his personal [...]
I’m watching the town hall debate between McCain and Obama right now on the New York Times, though my curiously fluctuating internet connection has made this experience more frustrating than it ought to be. With five minutes left and my internet pretty much kaput, I’ll make it as much of an informed comment as possible. [...]