China Watching — Language Wars, from Montreal to Beijing

Watching China Watching (XXXIII)   In January 2018, when we launched Watching China Watching, the theme of the year’s China Heritage Annual, we said that in producing this series we have been: interested in the professional China Watchers, a once nearly-defunct claque of people working in government for national political ends, journalists, academics, ne’er-do-wells, as well as the talented curious and literary dilettantes.… Read

Speaking for the State

The Best China (XIV) In The Best China we introduced readers to essays, literary works and art produced in Hong Kong. The veteran journalist Lee Yee 李怡 (李秉堯) was the founding editor of The Seventies Monthly 七十年代月刊 (later renamed The Nineties Monthly).… Read

Homo Xinensis Militant

Drop Your Pants! The Party Wants to Patriotise You All Over Again (Part V)   ‘Drop Your Pants! The Party Wants to Patriotise You All Over Again’ is a five-part overview of the background and significance of the Patriotic Education Campaign launched by China’s Communist Party Central on the last day of July 2018.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts, XIV

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

Mao Haijian and the Beginning of the End of Dynastic China

Mao Haijian (茅海建, 1954-) is a noted historian of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) based at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In March 2018, an English translation of The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty 天朝的崩潰, Mao’s celebrated account of the First Opium War (1839-1842), was published by Cambridge University Press.… Read

Three Dreams

Three Dreams 鳳陽士人 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