Spectres & Souls In the northern summer of 2018, a spark from a rancher’s steel hammer pounding on a rusty stake in a bone-dry field ignited the largest wildland fire in the history of California. … Read

Spectres & Souls Shortly after the demise of Mao Zedong in September 1976, Simon Leys observed that: ‘…in a normal everyday situation where “his giant’s wants prevent him from walking”, any Great Leader worth his salt has a strong tendency to stir up artificial gales in order to get some wind back under his pinions.… Read

The Best China Pierre Ryckmans, better known to readers under the pen name of Simon Leys, valued Jacques Pimpaneau as ‘a colourful character, original, a non-conformity, an oddball, cultivated, generous.’ (As quoted in Philippe Paquet, Simon Leys: Navigator Between Worlds, p.230.)… Read

Spectres & Souls In the late 1980s, Dai Qing (戴晴, 1941-) reintroduced both the word and the concept of the independent or liberal intellectual 自由派知識分子 to the Chinese reading public. It featured prominently in ‘Chu Anping and The Party Empire’ 儲安平與黨天下, her lengthy investigation into the case of Chu Anping (儲安平, 1909-?),… Read

Spectres & Souls The following essay is Part Two of ‘The Fog of Words: Kabul 2021, Beijing 1949’ and the Prologue to ‘The Xi Jinping Restoration’. It should be read in conjunction with ‘Prelude to a Restoration: Xi Jinping, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun & the Spectre of Mao Zedong’ (China Heritage, 20 September 2021).… Read

Spectres & Souls A few days after the death of Harold Bloom on 14 October 2019, I listened to an interview with him recorded by Phillip Adams, an old friend and a remarkable interlocutor, on Late Night Live, the program that Phillip has hosted on ABC radio for three decades.… Read

Spectres & Souls   The annual Double Tenth Day 雙十節 on 10 October commemorates the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, which led to the abdication of the ruling house of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.… Read

Spectres & Souls   As part of our commemoration of this anniversary year China Heritage is publishing a series of work about and by Dai Qing (戴晴, 1941-), a renowned writer and environmental activist who celebrated her eightieth birthday in early 2021.… Read

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

Spectres & Souls   ‘Yet again people throughout China — including the entire bureaucratic class — are suffering from uncertainty and they are experiencing a mounting sense of anxiety in relation both to the direction the country is taking as well as in regard to their personal security.… 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

Spectres & Souls The ‘centennial month’ of July 2021 highlighted many aspects of Communist Party ideology and practice that, superficially at least, seem germane to the Xi Jinping era (2012-). For those with a longer perspective, and more retentive memories, however, the underpinnings of this year’s pharaonic display  of pomp and circumstance were evident (unavoidable, in fact) long before the advent of the man we think of as the Chairman of Everything.… Read

Spectres & Souls   In 1949, in one of his first acts as the mayor of a ‘liberated Beijing’, PLA General Nie Rongzhen (聶榮臻, 1899-1992)  approved the establishment of two new territorial ‘exclaves’ of the city.… Read

Hong Kong Apostasy This is the second part of an envoi written for Apple Daily, until this day, 24 April 2021, the leading independent media outlet in Hong Kong, by Lee Yee, a renowned essayist, editor and journalist.… Read

Hong Kong Apostasy This is the latest chapter in an account of the former British colony, now a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. It consists of three excerpts from For the Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir From My City Under Siege, a book by Hana Meihan Davis published by Global Dispatches.… Read

Spectres & Souls   The following is part of a series focussed on China’s long century of revolution, starting with the Wuchang Uprising in 1911 and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.… Read

Spectres & Souls This is a companion piece to ‘In Memoriam — 4 June 2021’. In commemorating the Beijing Protest Movement and its bloody denouement on 4 June 1989, we reproduced a prose-poem by Xu Zhangrun and recommended a number of essays and articles, in particular ‘On the Eve, April 1989’, and ‘China’s Spring’, by Orville Schell.… Read

Spectres & Souls It is now over three and a half years since Xu Zhangrun called on the Chinese authorities to re-evaluate the tragic events surrounding 4 June 1989, the Beijing Massacre.… Read