Posts Tagged ‘China’

On the streets of Hong Kong in 1938

Hong Kong in 1938 was smaller in scale, more human, much poorer and more unjust

Lijiang, China as it used to be

One of the world’s most exquisite towns, now lost, captured on video the very year I first saw it

Li Xiaodong’s modest, radical architecture

The New York Times misses why a small library in rural China represents a great hope for the country


A couple of unbelievably bad ideas

Exhilarating to watch, but profoundly ill advised

Bruce Lee: Real? Fake? Whatever: I believe

Bruce Lee plays ping pong and lights matches with uncanny accuracy

An ex-Googler pokes China in the eye

An insider explains why tech companies can’t win in China and what it costs them to try


The ‘unexpected’ China slowdown was entirely foreseeable

Analysts profess surprise at the China slowdown that I saw out the car window in Fujian a year ago

Vietnam Chante revolutionary songs, Paris, France, c1967

Employing everything from martial chants to opera in support of revolution in Vietnam

The China boom is over. That could be good

Will young Chinese respond to slower economic growth by going into the arts? Or politics?


The last moment in history to see the tulou

The future is grim for China’s unique, centuries-old communal housing

What to make of this 19th C. Arab-Chinese-Peruvian portrait?

Long distance cultural exchange began much earlier than we sometimes imagine

More evidence the China building boom is ending

But here are the astounding numbers on what they’ve built


Macau’s architectural legacy

A schizophrenic policy of sacrificing new land to preserve old buildings

Newsreel: ’67 War and party balloons for Red China

Newsreels declare: US neutral in ’67 War in the Middle East and Red China fears party balloons

An art opening at Experimenta in Hong Kong

Unusually for Hong Kong, something unexpected might happen


You are not alone

Artist Corinne Vionnet captures the banality of seemingly unique travel experiences

The great China infrastructure build-out is almost over

China’s building boom has been going on for 20 years; a recent visit to Fujian shows that’s ending.

Little Red Book by Mao Tse-tung, second edition, 1967

The rare second edition of Mao’s famous book, with a foreword by Lin Biao before he fell from grace


Chemistry notebook, People’s Republic of China, 1976

A 1976 notebook found in Xiamen begins with Maoist political slogans and ends with chemistry notes

What happens when Chinese street artists draw a foreigner’s portrait

Street artists in China draw my portrait, though not well