A New Sinology Jotting The Fifteenth Day of the Eighth Month of the lunar calendar, a day that in 2021 falls on the 21st of September, marks the Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節.… Read

Spectres & Souls The following essay was drafted in the first days of September 2021 and revised on 9 September, the forty fifth anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong. On 9 September 1986, the date of the tenth anniversary of Mao’s demise, I found myself in Austin, Texas, and I celebrated the occasion in the boisterous company of loved ones by drinking a margarita for every year of the post-Mao era.… Read

Spectres & Souls This chapter in China Heritage Annual 2021, the theme of which is ‘Specters & Souls — Vignettes, moments and meditations on China and America, 1861-2021’, is reprinted from ‘Max’, Unf*cking the Republic Newsletter, 9/11 2021.… Read

Spectres &  Souls The following essay by Simon Leys was published in early 1987, in the wake of student demonstrations that, having originated in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui, rocked Shanghai in December-January 1986.… Read