Absurdity, Allegory and China

I have taken to reading Ben Schott’s column in the NYT called Schott’s Vocab, “a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy.” It is hard not to love our words, since they are at the center of how we tell our stories. How they evolve is always [...]

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When I did a search on Chai Ling – the wannabe Empress of Tian’anmen – she was one of the leaders in the 1989 student protests which resulted in China’s great shame – I received the following 403 Forbidden message: We’re Sorry … but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus [...]

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The Haihe is the river the runs through the middle of Tianjin. Along with all-other things Tianjin, the riverside has changed dramatically over the past decade, though it is still, as it always has been, a great early morning place to wander and see the Tianjin seniors exercising, fishing, conversing or just strolling along forwards [...]

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Zud may be the next new word finding its way into the English vocabulary. Schott’s Vocabulary in the NYT linked to a Gordon Fairclough piece in the WSJ, The Global Downturn Lands With a Zud on Mongolia’s Nomads Falling demand for cashmere among recession-hit shoppers in the West is cutting into earnings among nomadic herders [...]

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Many U.S. readers interested in the Chinese drywall problems find their way here and ask me, both publicly and privately, what they should do. In the past I’ve pointed them in the direction of the Florida Department of Health’s page dedicated to this problem. Now they need to go to the China Law Blog and [...]

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There are moments in our lives that peg us to a position when an event of great weight unfolds. The afternoon of May 12, 2008 is one I will not soon forget. I felt ‘something’ that did not feel right, a noise of some sort as I lay in the bed reading. (I keep odd [...]

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It took eight (8) months, but I was finally able to get the Guardian to correct two stories from mid-August, 2008. I wrote about this incident both here and here. So, today they finally published a partial correction: A news story published during the Olympics in China reported that two protesters had abseiled down the [...]

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Much has been written over the past few years concerning rampant academic misconduct among the Chinese academic and research class. It has reached a level where it has become a major problem: China issues another crackdown on scientific misconduct. China’s Ministry of Education has stipulated seven acts of academic misconduct and how they will be [...]

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The MLB (Major League Baseball) season is underway again, and for some of us, that means some nebulous sense of order has been returned to the universe. Last year there were two pre-season MLB games in Beijing at the field at Wukesong. Good fun, really. I missed the first game when the PSB (Public Security [...]

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China Radio International, China to Investigate Drywall Exported to the U.S., is reporting (4 April, 2320) that China is contacting American authorities for information about its drywall exported to the United States in reaction to complaints that certain products are believed to be problematic, the country’s top quality supervisor said here Saturday. The General Administration [...]

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