Dan Washburn is a writer I’ve followed since I arrived in China six years ago. Over the past couple of years Dan has shifted his focus to golf, a burgeoning sport that has attracted a certain amount of controversy in China. To say that few Chinese play golf would be a grand understatement- the percentage [...]
Living in Yunnan we’re treated to the regular spectacle of Chinese tourists from the coastal provinces arriving en masse to indulge themselves in a little å°‘æ•°æ°‘æ— exploitation. This New York Times article touches upon this subject, and includes a funny concluding section: At another table outside were two Han tourists from the city of Chongqing. [...]
China Hush has translated a rather long screed in the form of an open letter from an outraged Chinese to President Obama. The letter is interesting not for its unremarkable message but rather because it provides a useful archetype of how a Chinese fenqing, or angry youth, thinks. Much of the letter consists of a [...]
If I may take a break from my usual content, I’d like to direct your attention to this very moving profile of America’s finest film critic, Roger Ebert. Since a 2006 surgery, Ebert has not had a lower jaw. He has not eaten, had a drink of anything, nor spoken a single, solitary word since. [...]
So a week into the Google Buzz era and…I like it! Seems to be a nice recovery from the Google Wave debacle, which went over like a lead balloon. I think Buzz has the potential to be a nice addition to the social networking sphere- sort of a Facebook without all the extra crap and [...]
In Foreign Policy Christina Larson provides a useful reminder that Tibet is no ‘Shangri-La’. My own experience traveling through Tibetan parts of Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces confirms this; Tibetans aren’t the enlightened, beatific race imagined by the region’s more fervent supporters. Yet the Tibetans are, in fact, Tibetan and not Chinese. China likes to tell [...]
This afternoon I’ve stumbled across an interesting article (via Alec Ash) discussing the Chinese secondary and tertiary education system, a subject in which I’ve been interested since my days as a high school teacher in Lianyungang and Fuzhou. The basic conclusion? The Chinese system as it is designed fails to promote critical thinking skills. Added [...]
Who writes the textbooks we use in our schools? Who pays for them? From which point of view do they argue? How do our schools choose these textbooks? Do alternatives exist? To the last question, I can definitively answer yes. Not long after I arrived in college, a friend lent me a copy of the [...]
As I type, a string of firecrackers are going off somewhere on the street below. At various times in the past 48 hours, the streets of Kunming have sounded like a war zone, and the odd plume of smoke and stench of powder merely amplify this impression. This is, unmistakably, Chinese New Year in China. [...]
On the heels of a lazy Saturday day and a rare Saturday evening at home, here are a couple of links to brighten your weekend reading. I realize I talk about Peter Hessler a lot, but skeptics will know why after reading this wonderful interview the writer gave entited “Why I Write”. Well worth a [...]