Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium   May Fourth 2024 marks the 105th anniversary of a student protests in Beijing that have had a profound impact both on the political and cultural life of modern China.… Read

Intersecting with Eternity 絕境非凡境   Intersecting with Eternity is an occasional series in The Tower of Reading that features essays, poems, art works, music, video and miscellanea that speak beyond their time.… 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

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium 破舊立新 ‘As it turned out, it was capitalism after all.’ So goes the first line in Burn Book by Kara Swisher, journalist, entrepreneur and advocate of digital sanity.… Read

The Tower of Reading 興趣 This is a companion piece to On the Spur of the Moment, a chapter in The Tower of Reading focussed on an anecdote in New Tales of the World 世說新語.… Read

The Tower of Reading 乘興而行，
興盡而返。   In this chapter of The Tower of Reading we focus on a well-known anecdote found in New Tales of the World 世說新語. Wang Huizhi’s impulsive behaviour also provides us with a pretext to discuss some ideas that lie at the heart of an abiding Chinese tradition of quirkiness, taste and individuality.… Read