The Other China 花花来啦！   ‘Moo is on the prowl!’ 花花来啦！is the rubric of this chapter in The Other China. The artist Lao Shu introduces us to Moo, a cow cat 花貓 that lives in the courtyard of his apartment complex.… Read

Seeds of Fire at Forty Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium 無可奈何今昔 Following the conclusion of the Fifth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress in October 2026, in a note addressed to Anthony Lawrence of Dragonometry, I explained why I have featured the word ‘tedium’ in my series Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium.… Read

This is the ninety-first 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

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium 必也正名乎 As Xi Jinping, China’s party-state-army leader, consolidated power in 2013, he established more and more ‘special leading groups’ which allowed him to meld his role as the primus-inter-pares leader of the Communist Party with the functions of civilian government.… Read

Contra Trump   November 9th marks Stephen Miller’s first day as White House chief of staff. It is, an oddly fitting — perhaps even particularly chosen? — day for him to take over: November 9th marks the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the beginning of the anti-Jewish pogroms across Germany that presaged the Holocaust to come.… Read

Contra Trump 厭美疑美憎美反美   In The American Green Zone in Our Consciousness, an earlier chapter in our Contra Trump series, we featured Patrick Marlborough, a Perth-based comic writer and broadcaster who observed that: The greatest trick America’s ever pulled on the subjects of its various vassal states is making us feel like a participant in its grand experiment.… Read