Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Just links this week—I’ve been in Philadelphia, visiting with family and friends, and am getting ready to head home to Ann Arbor.

China Stories
Keith Bradsher, “Anger Builds in Towns Deliberately Flooded, in Part, to Save Beijing”
Chang Minxiao and Fan Yiying, “In China’s Dance Schools, a Dangerous Obsession With Weight Loss”
Kit Fan, “‘I don’t know if I can ever return’: the photographer capturing a forgotten Hong Kong”
Katrina Northrop, “John Delury on the CIA’s History in China”
Victor Shih, “What the Qin Gang Episode Tells Us”
Han Zhang, “The Art of Telling Forbidden Stories in China”

Wanderings Around the World
Michael Clair, “In the mountains of the world’s most remote country, baseball takes hold”
Mariya Manzhos, “Ukrainian Is My Native Language, but I Had to Learn It”
Shoshi Parks, “Ornamental Hermits Were 18th-Century England’s Must-Have Garden Accessory”

Standout Story

For those who have never been through something like this, our tragedy is probably difficult to imagine. A decade ago, I couldn’t have imagined it myself. When catastrophe came for us, it crept up so gradually that at first we couldn’t see it for what it was. That’s how it often comes.

Tahir Hamut Izgil (translated by Joshua L. Freeman), “Let the Tragedy in My Homeland Be a Lesson.”

This essay is adapted from Izgil’s new book, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide. At the New York Times, Tiffany May profiles Izgil and Barbara Demick reviews the book; if you’d prefer an audio profile, listen to this short interview of Izgil by Emily Feng of NPR.

Feature photo: Garden and exterior of the Falls of Schuylkill* Library in Philadelphia’s East Falls neighborhood, August 1, 2023.
*Pronounced “Skoo-kill”