Other People’s Thoughts, XVII

Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

Hong Kong Outsiders

The Best China XVIII The following essay was inspired by Ying Liang’s 應亮 recently released film A Family Tour 自由行. It appeared on 21 December 2018 in ‘Ways of the World’ 世道人生, the regular column Lee Yee 李怡 writes for Apple Daily 蘋果日報.… Read

Parthenogenesis

This is another ‘letter from a godless grandfather’. As John Minford noted when we published ‘Easter Resurrected: a letter from David Hawkes’ (China Heritage, 13 April 2017): In the 1980s, after completing his monumental translation of the first eighty chapters of The Story of the Stone 紅樓夢, David Hawkes retired with his wife Jean to an old stone farmhouse called Bryn Carregog (Stony Hill), in the mountains of Mid-Wales.… Read

The Alpha and Omega of Personality Cults

This is another ‘letter from a godless grandfather’. As John Minford noted when we published ‘Easter Resurrected: a letter from David Hawkes’ (China Heritage, 13 April 2017): In the 1980s, after completing his monumental translation of the first eighty chapters of The Story of the Stone 紅樓夢, David Hawkes retired with his wife Jean to an old stone farmhouse called Bryn Carregog (Stony Hill), in the mountains of Mid-Wales.… Read

The Kremlin Then, Zhongnanhai Now

Watching China Watching (XXXV) The following essay is the latest addition to Watching China Watching, the theme of China Heritage Annual 2018. In it Robert Conquest — a noted historian of the Soviet Union who Timothy Garton Ash said was ‘Solzhenitsyn before Solzhenitsyn’ — defends Kremlinology as a viable approach to the study of the Soviet Union.… Read

Living with the Tao

The Tao and the Power 道德經, attributed to Laozi 老子 (5th or 4th century BCE), is one of the most famous Chinese works. Previously, China Heritage has introduced chapters from a new translation of this classical text by John Minford.… Read