Absurdity, Allegory and China

Earlier this week while China was (and still is) doing Copenhagen, climate change and carbon chits, Beijing and Tianjin were muffled in a thick toxic fog that held the wintry coal-smoky air low to the ground to mix with the normal, everyday dose of vehicular and factory air pollution. If the air were a hospital [...]

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The CCTV HQ project & site-specific graffiti. December 9, 2009 4:16 PM

Larger version here.

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Beijing 3:45 PM, December 9, 2009

Larger version here.

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The first time I walked down the tree-lined lane between Hujialou Xili and Nanli was in the late afternoon of March 24, 2008. The trees were all on the Nanli, the east side of the lane, though Nanli literally means “south neighborhood”. The short stretch of lane runs north from Chaoyang Lu. The first photo [...]

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There are lots of congrats being passed around on China’s turning 60, though I must say I am not in a “pass around comps” mood right now. In the process of greasing the skids for the happy face of holiday, they’ve gutted access to the internet, and I have an uncomfortable sense of certainty that [...]

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I have been quiet in here of late for a few reasons (excuses?), but my focus has temporarily shifted to creating more of a web presence beyond the blog by building a website to display photos and other content that is not necessarily blog-able. Doing this with a web connection that has done nothing but [...]

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I am unsure what more China Central Television (CCTV) can possibly do to damage their reputation with the people of Beijing, especially among the residents of Hu Jia Lou whose neighborhood is in the process of being razed to make way for business. Those who have not yet been displaced are awaiting their turn to [...]

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Two photos of the CCTV project
A few years ago we spent several weeks in Tuscany, mostly and delightfully in Florence, with several days in Orvieto and a week in Cortona. We returned to Florence for our flight back to Paris, and unfortunately were booked on Meridiana Airlines and spent more time in Florence than we [...]

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At sunrise this past Wednesday (July 29, 2009) the legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, an elected legislator from Beijing’s Haidian District and founder of the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng), was taken into custody by uniformed police officer and five plainclothes men. Evan Osnos at The New Yorker tells us why this is a big deal, as [...]

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The NYT ran a story a few days ago – a mother-daughter banter across a dozen time zones – entitled Swine Flu Diary: Caught in a Beijing Dragnet by Sheryl Gay Stolberg (mom) and Olivia Robinson (daughter). It is an emotional piece that documents a parent’s worst nightmare: being half-a-world away as your child is [...]

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