Absurdity, Allegory and China

It’s been another busy Spring 2012 Chinese news week as the final days of Hu and Wen have finally become the gift that keeps on giving. The latest story is the escape of the world’s most famous blind man, Chen Guangcheng, from extrajudicial home detention while under the watchful eyes of a Chinese ‘security’ detail [...]

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The Master of Bigness by Martin Filler in the May 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books is well worth a look for two good reasons. One is the publication itself, the NYRB, which is always worth a look. Two, it’s a very good piece on Rem Koolhaas and his architectural team at [...]

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The China Daily ran a story this morning (h/t @kinablog) entitled “The meat athletes eat can get them branded as cheats“. An official from the General Administration of Sport of China (GASC) denied reports that athletes were banned in January from eating untested pork, beef and lamb in an attempt to avoid doping scandals in [...]

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I had to make a quick trip to Guomao this morning, so, of course, I brought along my camera. I wanted to follow up on a story from a couple of days ago. Late Friday morning, December 23, 2011, during the demolition of a building near the CCTV Headquarters Building, a part of said building [...]

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Here’s a shot from late last week in Beijing when the air was somewhat clear, the man was somewhat short – though longer than the bed of his trike – and the Hyundai Elantra was max shiny. And the CCTV Bldg was the CCTV Bldg., since it’s hard for it to be anything else. (click [...]

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This morning I’m in pain. I take little comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one in Beijing suffering from the same symptoms: pounding headache, sore throat and burning eyes. It’s the air pollution that’s got us down, physically, spiritually, mentally and every other -ally I can possibly think of. I have my curtains [...]

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Below are some shots I’ve taken over the past 8 days. When a friend comes to Beijing you find yourself going to places you normally wouldn’t go, though many of the sites are too good to pass up for a one time trip to the Jing. I also ended up taking a couple of spins [...]

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Melissa Chan at Al Jazeera does great reporting of CN. Her story The Lumbini project: China’s $3bn for Buddhism is a fine piece on Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Prince Gautama Siddhartha, and the current target of a Chinese business man (with no help from the government! Really!) who wants to turn the sacred site into [...]

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In an essay in the East Asia Forum today, China’s jasmine crackdown and the legal system, Donald C. Clarke, law professor at George Washington University succinctly explains the current state of Chinese law, vis-a-vis the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vs The People: When the Chinese authorities detained human rights lawyer Teng Biao last year, they [...]

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“We shall soon put aside some of the things we know well and be compelled to do things we don’t know well. This means difficulties. ” –Mao Zedong, 1949 On May 12, 2008 I was working at my home in Tianjin. At two in the afternoon I lay down to take a break, more rest [...]

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