A returning expatriate’s haphazard perspectives on the Middle Kingdom
Originally posted on Patrick Chovanec:
A surprising number of people in China have been writing and talking about “revolution”. First came word, in November, that China’s new leaders have been advising their colleagues to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic book on the French Revolution, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution),…
This morning the rusted scaffolding that had been clanging and crunching on the pavement, manipulated by the gloved and calloused hands of migrants workers as they assembled the hulking trellis to scale the side of my building, reached its first pinnacle of construction. With the early hour came the skull splitting, sonorous sound of drilling … More A Mingong Morning
The other day, a jaunt, a stroll, an aimless meandering through the lower hutongs of Qianmen, a Pekinese dérive from one microclimate to another, propelled by an uncertain impetus later framed by the symbol B-I-C-Y-C-L-E. Unsure at first of a theme I shortly found myself directed by the derelict, the discarded or neglected, the accumulating … More Inscriptions of two and three wheels in Qianmen
Last Monday, excited to seize the relatively unpolluted skies and appease my desire to escape the city, taking advantage of surprisingly temperate early August weather, I made plans to cycle out of Beijing and into the peripheral village district of Huairou, around 60 kilometers from my apartment near Yonghegong, the Lama Temple. First the home … More Riding in the Chinese Countryside with Nietzsche
This is the third entry in a series on semiotic analysis, Uyghurs, and public space in China. For earlier entries please see, Deconstructing ‘Minzu’, and Museumized Signification, China and Representational Violence. Or visit my index at the top of the page for all previous articles dealing with Symbolic Power, the politics of representation, China, Xinjiang, Uyghurs, and … More Perusing Walls in China: Posters and Symbolic Power
This is the second post in a brief series on symbolic power and minority representation in China. Although the ethnic group under specific discussion is the Uyghurs, the deconstruction of representations and symbolic power is apropos of other subaltern groups. The previous post dealt with briefly just with the notion of controlling the taxonomy of … More Museumized Signification, China and Representational Violence
“At least 25 people drowned in Saturday’s rains, the heaviest to fall on the city since records began in 1951. Six died in housing collapses, five were electrocuted and one person was struck by lightning,” reported Al Jazeera. Atlantic Cities has a nice photo essay. In the wake of the deluge a flurry of resentment … More BEIJING0721
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