Li Keqiang, the ‘Empty Boat’ of the Xi Jinping Era

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium Chapter XXVII 虛船觸舟   ‘Frustrated in life, enfeebled in death’ 活得憋屈,死得窝囊. This was an epithet for Li Keqiang 李克强, China’s former premier who died on Friday October 27 at the age of 68, offered in an elegiac couplet (輓聯 wǎn lián) attributed to an anonymous author at Peking University, Lǐ’s alma mater, that circulated widely within hours of the announcement of his death.… Read

Old Landscapes in New Beijing — photographs by Lois Conner

The Other China 杳如黃鶴   It’s over twenty years since Lois Conner and I first met at her Gramercy Park apartment in Manhattan. It was the height of the northern summer of 1996 and I was coming to the end of three months as a visiting professor at New York University.… Read

A Cathedral of Pretence in the Pusillanimous Heart of Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium Chapter XXXII, Part 1 畫地為牢   The gestation of Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, a series in China Heritage devoted to the dolorous rule of the man whom I dubbed the ‘Chairman of Everything’ in 2013, started with the release in November 2021 of ‘Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century’, the third ‘history resolution’ published by the Chinese Communist Party since it was founded in 1921.… Read

A Note from The Tower of Reading on the Double Tenth, 2023

The Tower of Reading 石如飛白木如籀   The 10th of October Festival 雙十節, also known as Double Tenth or Double Ten Day, commemorates the start of the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911 which led to the fall of the Qing dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China in 1912.… Read