Drop Your Pants!
The Party Wants to
Patriotise You All Over Again
(Part III)   This is the third installment in Drop Your Pants!, our overview of the Patriotic Education Campaign launched by China’s Communist Party on the last day of July 2018, and the latest in our series of Lessons in New Sinology.… Read

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

Drop Your Pants!
The Party Wants to
Patriotise You All Over Again
(Part II)   ‘The Party Empire’ is the second part of Drop Your Pants!, our overview of the Patriotic Education Campaign launched by China’s Communist Party on the last day of July 2018, and the latest in our series of Lessons in New Sinology.… Read

‘Chrysanthemums’ 黃英 — ‘The Golden Flower’ — translated by John Minford from Pu Songling’s (蒲松齡, 1640-1715) Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異 is the latest addition to Nouvelle Chinoiserie 奇趣漢學 and Wairarapa Readings 白水札記 in China Heritage.… Read

Ruling The Rivers & Mountains
穩坐江山   This Lesson in New Sinology is published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the opening ceremony of the XXIXth Olympiad in Beijing (for an analysis of that event, see China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August 2008).… Read

This is the corrected and updated version of the bilingual text of Xu Zhangrun’s 24 July 2018 essay ‘Imminent Fear, Immediate Hope’, published in China Heritage on 1 August 2018. This material also features an expanded introduction and a link to an essay written by Xu Zhangrun to commemorate the third anniversary of his Jeremiad.… Read

The following essay by Gloria Davies 黃樂嫣 is from A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2017. We are grateful to the author, David Wang and to Belknap Press for permission to reprint this material.… Read

The following essay by Jie Li 李潔 is from A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2017. We are grateful to the author, David Wang and to Belknap Press for permission to reprint this material.… Read

The following essay by Susan Daruvala is from A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2017. We are grateful to the author, David Wang and to Belknap Press for permission to reprint this material.… Read

The following essay by Andrea Bachner is from A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2017. We are grateful to the author, David Wang and to Belknap Press for permission to reprint this material.… Read

  On the evening of 17 July 2018, China’s party-state media reported on a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. Chaired by Li Zhanshu 栗戰書, a member of the ruling Politburo and formal head of the National People’s Congress, the meeting hailed Xi Jinping’s statement that ‘Every era has a narrative arc; people of every generation have a mission’ 一個時代有一個時代的主題，一代人有一代人的使命.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXXI)   … the only thing that gave us security on earth was the certainty that he was there, invulnerable to plague and hurricane … invulnerable to time, dedicated to the messianic happiness of thinking for us, knowing that we knew that he would not take any decision for us that did not have our measure, for he had not survived everything because of his inconceivable courage or his infinite prudence but because he was the only one among us who knew the real size of our destiny.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXIX)   China Heritage launched the series Watching China Watching in early 2018 by quoting the observations of László Ladány and Simon Leys on reading the Chinese Communist press.… Read

  Before Cui Jian 崔健 rocked the Mainland, Lo Tayu 羅大佑 was making himself heard on Taiwan. *** In the 1910s, during the early years of the Chinese Republic, advocates in favour of replacing Literary Chinese 文言文 with the Vernacular Language 白話文 summed up the older written form of expression with a shorthand: zhi-hu-zhe-ye 之、乎、者、也.… Read

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

Watching China Watching (XXVIII)   It was at a Communist Party enclave northeast of Beijing in October 1996. The autumnal skies, as the cliché holds, ‘went on forever and the air shimmered’ 秋高氣爽.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXVII)   In The Battle Behind the Front (China Heritage, 25 September 2017), we noted: Through canny political alliances, tireless ingratiation with business groups and social elites, as well as by means of its cloying cooptation of cultural figures and student activists, the cadres working the United Frontier remain constantly vigilant, and forever combat-ready.… Read

‘Master Wei’ 韋公子 — ‘A Rake’s Progress’ — translated by John Minford from Pu Songling’s (蒲松齡, 1640-1715) Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異 is the latest addition to Nouvelle Chinoiserie 奇趣漢學 and Wairarapa Readings 白水札記 in China Heritage.… Read

Dog Days (VII)   On 16 February 2018, the First Day of the First Month of the Chinese Lunar Wuxu Year of the Dog 戊戌狗年正月初一, China Heritage launched a series of Dog Days.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXV)   On 26 August 2016, Zhang Peili: From Painting to Video, an exhibition of the video art of the Hangzhou-based artist Zhang Peili 张培力 opened in the gallery of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW).… Read

Wairarapa Readings   Wairarapa Readings 白水札記 celebrate the variety and vibrancy of China’s literary heritage. They introduce literary texts and translations aimed at students of traditional Chinese letters who are interested in the world that lies beyond the narrow confines and demands of contemporary institutional pedagogy.… Read

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

Wairarapa Readings   Wairarapa Readings 白水札記 celebrate the variety and vibrancy of China’s literary heritage. They introduce literary texts and translations aimed at students of traditional Chinese letters who are interested in the world that lies beyond the narrow confines and demands of contemporary institutional pedagogy.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXIV) This is one of three essays concerned with living in the New Epoch of Xi Jinping and the party-state of the People’s Republic of China. The following speech-turned-essay (‘蘊 — What Is & Isn’t Possible’), and ‘Staying Out of Range 彀外遺少’, which will appear on 25 May 2018, were published in 2008 and 2009 respectively.… Read

Dog Days (VI) ‘The Midget Hound’ 小獵犬 is the first in a new series of translations by John Minford from the stories collected in Pu Songling’s (蒲松齡, 1640-1715) Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異.… Read

The Best China (XII)   The Chinese authorities were on high alert in the lead up to and during the celebration of May Fourth China Youth Festival in 2018. The date was also used to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Peking University and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, whose philosophy is officially espoused by the Communist party-state.… Read