Celebrating New Sinology 自擺烏龍 Paris taxi drivers are notoriously sophisticated in their use of invective. ‘Hé, va donc, structuraliste!’ is one of their recent apostrophes — which makes one wonder when they will start calling their victims ‘China Experts’!… Read

This is the sixty-first chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

Empires of Tedium 硅。熵。硅。熵。硅。熵。   Given who he is and what he writes, I realise how random my initial encounter with Sam Kriss was. It was in The New York Times — given his style it was the most unlikely of places — although the subject of his essay in the Times weekend magazine in September 2016 did make it make sense.… Read

Contra Trump 禍起蕭牆 In the midst of the Iran–US military crisis of June 2025, US President Donald J. Trump gestured towards a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence that he had ordered to be mounted on the wall of the Oval Office, and observed: [I] see the Declaration of Independence and I say I wonder if you—you know the Civil War?—it… Read

Contra Trump 以史為誡 In this chapter of Contra Trump — America’s Empire of Tedium, we consider the ‘judgement of history’ in the company of Nils Gilman, a historian and futurist. The chapter is divided into two parts.… Read

This is the sixtieth chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read