Contra Trump
— Spectres & Souls
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride … and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well … maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.… Read
Journal
Watching Taiwan from Australia — Eight Reminders for the Year of the Snake
Watching China Watching
The series Watching China Watching features essays and reflections on studying the Chinese world and approaches to understanding the Chinese People’s Republic. Our method is underpinned by New Sinology.… Read
Sisyphus in 2025 — Lao Shu’s New Year
The Other China
新年自示
Just as we bid farewell to the year 2024 with the art and poetry of Lao Shu, we also greet the year 2025 in his winsome company.… Read
Keeping Ahead of the Game — Lao Shu Farewells 2024
The Other China
遙遙領先
Lao Shu 老樹 is the nom de plume of Liu Shuyong (劉樹勇, 1962-), a Beijing-based artist, writer, critic and professor in communications. His artistic voice is unique and personal, its tenor, whimsy and profundity evoke what for decades we have called The Other China — a cultural noosphere that is as undeniably local as it is universal.… Read
1954 — China’s Dark Enlightenment, Hu Shih & the Nobility of Failure
Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium
Chapter XXXIII
唯物懟唯心
History is the most valuable guide we have to the behaviour of human beings in the present; but this is not because it offers neatly tailored lessons of the kind that Thucydides or Machiavelli were prone to celebrating.… Read
Other People’s Thoughts LII
Other People’s Thoughts
This is the fifty second chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read