新年快乐 and 恭喜发财 to one and all as we kick off the Year of the Dragon.
At the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog, I have two new interviews with authors to share:
And at Goodreads, I reviewed The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen, a compelling and beautifully written novel about the members of a Sámi community living in northern Scandinavia in 1851.
Recommendations
China Stories
Kelsey Ables, “Pigeon accused of spying for China freed in India after 8-month detention”
Alexander Boyd, “Interview: Perry Link on His New Book, I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo”
Chris Buckley, “Fear and Ambition Propel Xi’s Nuclear Acceleration”
China File Conversation, “What Will Newly Increased Party Control Mean for China’s Universities?”
Mei Mei Chu, “Beijing’s butchers a glum bunch as Lunar New Year meat sales slow”
Jordyn Haime, “New Security Measures Curtailing the Study of China Alarm Educators”
Jessie Lau, “Beijing accused of using spying, threats and blackmail against Tibetan exiles”
Lyric Li and Christian Shepherd, “Thai haven draws Chinese tech bros, moms and stoners seeking freedom”
Hong Kong’s government has no constructive solutions to the city’s problems and tends to resort instead to exerting control. Article 23, as it is proposed, will provide another instrument for doing so. The consultation document lays out a wide range of new offenses and expands those already on the books. One subsection titled “Barbaric and gross interference from foreign governments and politicians in China’s internal affairs,” neatly captures the general tone of the document. In a lengthy chapter dealing with espionage, state secrets is less an umbrella term than a circus tent.
Timothy McLaughlin, “Hong Kong Is Self-Destructing”
Katrina Northrop, “A Crackdown Comes for Healthcare”
This is The Long Season, not only one of the greatest Chinese dramas ever but one of the best TV shows of the last year made anywhere—and now, months after its original release on Tencent Video, it is available on Prime Video for U.S. viewers. It’s a twisty, bleak noir about murder, revenge, and loss that jumps between different periods (including a tertiary plotline in 1997); it’s also frequently hilarious, humane, and masterfully written and has the best de-aging effects and acting I’ve ever seen, with most actors playing both their 1998 and their 2016 selves. It has fantastic music, handpicked by director Xin Shuang, once a well-known punk rock guitarist, and beautiful cinematography in the slow, red Northeastern fall. This is a must-watch show, and it’s amazing that it got made in today’s China.
James Palmer, “How Did This Brilliant Chinese Rust Belt Noir Get Made Under Xi?”
Liyan Qi, “How China Miscalculated Its Way to a Baby Bust”
Amy Qin, “Lost at Parkland: ‘Peter Was Always My Translator’”
Scott Savitt, “Cui Jian on the Power of Rock ‘N’ Roll”
Vivian Wang, with photographs by Gilles Sabrié, “Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers”
Wanderings Around the World
Melissa Hellmann, “‘Unlike 9/11, we’re fighting back’: Arab Americans in Dearborn are resilient in the face of Islamophobia”
Ginny Hogan, “Thru-Hiking Through Climate Change”
Ismail Ibrahim, “How the Tenement Museum Got a New Tenant”
Nina Jankowicz, “Sabra Ayres on Being Named the AP’s Chief Ukraine Correspondent—And Being Fired 22 Days Later”
Feliz Solomon, “Aung San Suu Kyi’s Son Wonders if He’ll Ever See Her Again”
Erin L. Thompson, “Return the Stolen Artifact, But Keep the Museum Label”
Standout Story
Last Monday evening I went to a special screening of 20 Days in Mariupol hosted by the University of Michigan’s Wallace House Center for Journalists. The film is easily the most graphic and horrifying documentary I’ve ever seen: AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov has cut together his footage from the 2022 siege of Mariupol to show the grim realities of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The viewer follows Chernov into hospital emergency wards and operating rooms, into basements and makeshift air-raid shelters, into encounters with people whose lives have been destroyed by the invasion. It’s raw and often painful to watch—and an urgent, convincing argument for wholehearted support of Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
Watch on the PBS/Frontline website.
Feature Photo: Lion dance at the 2023 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Boston, Massachusetts.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 
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