Yesterday ChinaFile published a short collection of responses from journalists, academics, and politicians expressing their analysis and illustrating what they see as the correct path forward regarding the non-renewal of journalist’s visas in a piece called: Will China Shut Out the Foreign Press Here is my immediate reaction: I think Bill Bishop‘s remarks are the … More Foreign Journalist Reprisals in Beijing
Out along the high speed rail lines, somewhere between Beijing and Tianjin is the Italian themed outlet mall Florentia Village. The pastiche of Roman, Venetian, Florentine and Chinese styles, facades, walkways, and faces is replete with a miniature canal ride fit for a low budget Disneyland ride, a pizza chain, and Costa coffee. The stores … More Florentia Village: Pastiche halfway between Beijing and Tianjin
Amid the usual frenetic pulsing throngs of passing subway patrons, Beijing denizens and tourists rushing from the sliding doors of subway cars to be the first ones up the escalator to make their connections or meetings, I examined my reflection in a glass partition waiting for the train to pass. After the train rushed away, … More Toothless Tigers in the Subway: An Animal Rights Campaign in China
Last week a few friends and I cycled out to Wonderland, an abandoned amusement park on the way to the Badaling Great Wall. Planned by the Thai property developers The Reignwood Group, this Disney World clone usurped farm land from the locals of Chenzhuang Village in Nankou Town, the Changping District of Beijing. Based on … More Wonderland: Derelict Amusement
From the uneven dormitory courtyard of an old fireworks factory where I live, scattered paper remnants of the New Years will cluster for some time, vivid red and almost rufous with the dust. A charcoal frost accumulates bits of sand, the odd discarded cigarette and seed shell. The nighttime’s popping, multicolored war zone of a … More As the Fireworks Still Rumble
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
“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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