Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium 籠中放鳥，屎上雕花   On New Year’s Eve 2023, the online journal Matters published the latest entry in ‘Recording History in Calligraphy’ 用書法記錄歷史, a regular column featuring the work of Liu Chan 劉蟾, a Beijing-based artist and writer.… Read

The Other China 畫餅也能當飯喫？   Lao Shu, having farewelled the Year of the Rabbit —

Lao Shu’s Fall, 12 December 2023

Lao Shu’s New Year, 4 January 2024

Lao Shu’s Farewell to the Year of the Rabbit, 31 January 2024

Reflects on life in the Year of the Dragon.… Read

The Tower of Reading 木猶如此，人何以堪。   This is the first chapter in Zhong Shuhe’s selections from New Tales of the World 世說新語 in Studying Short Classical Chinese Texts. It offers a meditation on the fleeting nature of time and the mutability of human existence.… Read

The Other China 上元 This essay was originally written as a New Sinology Jotting in The Year of the Rooster (2017). It is reissued here, in the 2024 Year of the Dragon, in our series The Other China.… Read

The Tower of Reading 無用之用 This is the eighth selection from Zhuangzi in Studying Short Classical Chinese Texts by Zhong Shuhe 鐘叔河，念樓學短·莊子十篇之八》。Here we focus on the expression 無用 wú yòng, ‘useless, impractical, futile’ and the phrase 無用之用 wú yòng zhī yòng, ‘the use of the useless’.… Read

The Tower of Reading 不可奪志 This is the third selection from the Analects of Confucius in The Tower of Reading, or Studying Short Classical Chinese Texts, by Zhong Shuhe 鐘叔河，念樓學短·論語十篇之三. Here the focus is on the term 志 zhì, which Simon Leys translates as ‘free will’.… Read