Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium Chapter XXXIII 唯物懟唯心   History is the most valuable guide we have to the behaviour of human beings in the present; but this is not because it offers neatly tailored lessons of the kind that Thucydides or Machiavelli were prone to celebrating.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts This is the fifty second 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

Hong Kong Apostasy Shortly before Christmas 2023, Jimmy Lai (Lai Chee-ying 黎智英, 1947-), a former pro-democracy media tycoon went on trial in Hong Kong under a Beijing-imposed national security law. He had been in custody since December 2020.… Read

Empires of Tedium 天下大亂 形勢大好   On Halloween 2024, we joined Randy Rainbow, one of America’s most artful political satirists, to mark the crescendo of the 2024 presidential election in the United States.… Read

The Other China 翩然而去   Lao Shu 老樹 is the nom de plume of Liu Shuyong (劉樹勇, 1962-), a Beijing-based artist, writer, critic and professor in communications. His artistic voice is unique and personal, its tenor, whimsy and profundity evoke what for decades we have called The Other China — a cultural noosphere that is as undeniably local as it is universal.… Read

Empires of Tedium 有沒有希望   The uplifting message of We’re Not Going Back—Or, Are We?, an essay by John Pavlovitz reproduced here as part of the series America’s Empire of Tedium — Trump Redux 2024, is as vital as it is familiar.… Read