Category: Travel

North Across China: Night Buses, a Bowl of Noodles, and a Rotund Sichuanese Migrant

February 3, 2013

I said a temporary goodbye to Beijing and boarded a night bus for Erlian, the Chinese Mongolian border town renowned for prostitution and gigantoraptor fossils. As the bus pulled away I was surprised by the English inquiry that greeted my unsteady approach to berth 37. There was a helpful tone to this young girl’s voice … More North Across China: Night Buses, a Bowl of Noodles, and a Rotund Sichuanese Migrant

Riding in the Chinese Countryside with Nietzsche

August 23, 2012

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

Museumized Signification, China and Representational Violence

July 31, 2012

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

Nanjing Sojourn

July 13, 2012

A while ago I spent a day in Nanjing. It was not planned. It did not go according to plan. Time misbehaved and light and dark collided. The tombs of revolutionaries, memorials and mausoleums were left unvisited. Green leaves distracted; shadows played furtively with themselves in the afternoon. I waited impatiently as passing buses never … More Nanjing Sojourn

Scenes from Urumqi, five days before 5 July 2009

July 5, 2012

Three years on from riots and mass arrests in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Chinese authorities continue to silence those speaking out on abuses during and in the wake of the unrest… New testimony reveals that dozens, if not hundreds, of the Uighur ethnic minority, many of whom were arrested in the wake of the … More Scenes from Urumqi, five days before 5 July 2009

Cuandixia the Cooking Pot: Sojourn, Hills, and Honey

May 3, 2012

Through dusty prairies and Northern landscapes of mostly brown and grey, intermittent hills carved millenia ago, passed few, small, scattered lakes and towns, nuclear reactors and the characteristic cirty-outskirt industries of China, the bus from central Beijing has been rumbling along for over two hours; you are about to arrive in the somewhat, if not … More Cuandixia the Cooking Pot: Sojourn, Hills, and Honey