Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

For all the talk of spring cleaning, mid-September is when I like to get organized. I’m full of back-to-school energy, determined to wrangle my to-do list into submission and read through the stack of library books I’ve renewed multiple times already. I’m doing some actual cleaning, too, filling a bag for Goodwill with t-shirts that have fallen out of my clothing rotation and moving furniture around to reach every nook and cranny with the hose of my vacuum cleaner.

After a hot and sticky summer, I love waking up to cool but sunny mornings, reading on the couch with the porch sliding door open and a fuzzy throw wrapped around my legs to block the chill. The baseball season is still going and hockey players have arrived at training camp; this is a time when it’s perfectly logical to bake both a frittata filled with fresh vegetables and pumpkin pie bars on the same day (that day would be today, in my kitchen). It’s the best of both worlds.

In time, I know that the weather will turn brown and damp, and I’ll stop waking up energized by the crisp sunlight that marks this crossover season. In the meantime, I’ll continue to feed off these mid-September late-summer/early-fall vibes.

Recommendations

China Stories
Julian E. Barnes and Edward Wong, “In Risky Hunt for Secrets, U.S. and China Expand Global Spy Operations”
Chris Buckley, “China’s Defense Minister Has Not Been Seen in Weeks, Fueling Intrigue”
Liuyu Ivy Chen, “My Chinese classroom celebrated 9/11. The shame came later.”
Ho-fung Hung, “Young People in China Can’t Find Work, and Xi Jinping Has Only One Response”
Thomas Kellogg and Charlotte Yueng, “Three Years in, Hong Kong’s National Security Law Has Entrenched a New Status Quo”
Alexandra Stevenson, “Paid Late, or Never: Painters, Builders and Brokers Hit by China’s Property Crisis”
Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie, “Xi’s Tight Control Hampers Stronger Response to China’s Slowdown”

Wanderings Around the World
Ted Anthony, “Kim Jong Un’s train travel has a storied history. His father and grandfather did the same thing”
Nina Pasquini, “Feminism Without Borders: On Hawon Jung’s ‘Flowers of Fire’ and Aviva Wei Xue and Kate Rose’s ‘Weibo Feminism’”
Adam Taylor, “Inside Kim Jong Un’s luxurious — and slow — armored train”

Standout Story
John Ruwitch, “How a man’s sorrowful public piano song helped console many in China”

I know I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: so much of the English-language reporting about China these days focuses on politics, the economy, and international relations. Although all of this is important (and, as you can see from my recommendations above, I read plenty of those articles), a lot of the stories we get are missing insight into what life is like for the average person on the ground. There are very good reasons for this—fewer foreign journalists in the country, and more restrictions on their work—but I miss having greater texture and variety in the China stories I consume. All of this is to say that I really enjoyed this NPR report by John Ruwitch, in which he shares the story of one average man doing an extraordinary thing.

I also learned that there’s a 1983 movie “starring David Bowie and set in a Japanese Army prisoner of war camp in World War II,” which is a sentence that I never thought I’d hear.

Feature photo: Along the Nature Trail at Lake St. Clair Metropark, September 17, 2023.