Absurdity, Allegory and China

I managed to score a free ticket to the US-China basketball game this past Sunday evening. My default resistance to being part of any crowded event usually keeps me far from large, snot-spitting sporting events where the object seems more about getting worked up into a common lather than it does about any higher ideals. [...]

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I’ve just arrived back in Tianjin from four days in Beijing, and there’s so much to talk about I hardly know where to begin. Photos of the CCTV Headquarters Building seems to be as good as place as any while I collect my thoughts.
There’s the bullet train from Tianjin to Beijing (and vice versa, though [...]

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George Bush is coming to town. For fun. And Games too. And to speak, as well, on religious rights (or right, as in, “When he fumbles the ball he’s ambidextrous, but in the church softball league he bats right.”), or so it looks from here. A duck, lame or otherwise, in Beijing in August 2008 [...]

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“The ultimate would be to compete in a couple more Olympics, hopefully break some world records and wind up my sports career with a couple of years in the WNBA.”
–Marion Jones
So much for dreams, Olympic or otherwise. Instead of attending the Beijing Olympics as a competitor, Marion Jones is serving six months in a Texas [...]

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Though it is highly unlikely that anyone hasn’t yet heard, the latest issue of the New Yorker with it’s trademark cartoon cover shows the Obamas in the Oval Office kitted out as rad-Muslims, a burning flag in the fireplace and an Osama portrait hanging on the wall. The Obama camp has called it “tasteless,” and [...]

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There are some things you do just because you do. And in retrospect you wonder why. Most Chinese weddings fall into this category. Visiting a relative on their deathbed just because you saw them once when you were five and they were, then, already older than dirt is another. Going to the Louvre in July [...]

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George Bush is coming to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing, and he’s more than happy to tell us why:
“The Chinese people are watching very carefully about the decisions by world leaders, and I happen to believe that not going to the opening ceremony for the games would be an affront to the [...]

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