Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Ten Years?!? Ten Years!!

I still think of myself as having somewhat recently moved to Michigan, but this past week marked my ten-year anniversary in the state. I’m a Michigander, I guess? Except I haven’t learned to say “furnace,” “pop,” or “tennis shoes” when I’m talking about a heater, soda, or sneakers.

I was thinking this morning about what has been best about living here and decided to write it down. So here, my non-exhaustive list of what I love most about the Mitten:

• Kayaking at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
• Ann Arbor District Library and its Summer Game
• Learning to camp and enjoying it
• The generous ice cream scoops at Washtenaw Dairy
• Walking on the Detroit Riverfront and looking at Canada
• Ten years of classes at Ita Yoga Studio
• Writing at Café Rica in Battle Creek
• The enormous state parks system/Ann Arbor city parks
• Working out at Advantage Strength
• Driving across the Mackinac Bridge
• Dinner at Palm Palace in Ann Arbor
• Representing Philadelphia sports fans when the Phillies or Flyers come to town
• 9pm sunsets in the summer
• Michigan in the winter—indoors

No place is perfect, of course: Ann Arbor is beset by real-estate development and increasing taxes, many parts of the state are Trump strongholds, and I can’t say I’m at all fond of Detroit-style pizza. (That last concern is obviously less important than the first two.) But having now lived almost a quarter of my life in Michigan, I’ve pretty much decided that this is where I’ll stay.

Thanks for joining me this week. 🌉

Recommendations

China Stories

Savannah Billman, “Rongbin Han on the Internet Writers Making China Great Again”

Zack Chiang, “Taiwan Conquest Film Shelved”

Brent Crane, “Geremie Barmé on the ‘Other China’”

Mia Fan, “The Avocado Lady Who Changed the Way Shanghai Ate”

Beimeng Fu and Caterina Morbiato, with photographs by Mahé Elipe, “In Mexico City, Young Chinese Women Are Becoming Their Own Bosses”

Yuan Gao and Micah S. Muscolino, “Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People” — interview about Muscolino’s 2025 book of the same name

Nick Holdstock, “The Death of Old Kashgar”

Leung Kai Chi, “History Printed on Cotton : The Story Hong Kong’s Civil Society Told Through Iconic T-Shirts”

Simone McCarthy and Fred He, “China doesn’t need the World Cup. It has the ‘Village Super League’”

The Economist, “Why criticism of the Qing dynasty scares the Communist Party”

Chris Tryhorn, “‘I thought it didn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell’: Andrew Ridgeley on Wham’s surreal trip to China”

Vimi Wang, “Ecological Demolition w/ Jia-Ching Chen” — interview about Chen’s forthcoming book, Ecological Demolition: Dispossession and Sustainable Futures in the Chinese Countryside

So while my expulsion stunned me, I wasn’t totally surprised. The Chinese government is opaque. We don’t know exactly why it chose to cancel my visa. But what became clear throughout my time in China is that the old assumptions about what is “sensitive” no longer apply. — Vivian Wang, “How I was kicked out of China”

Benno Weiner and Qianyu Ma, “The Fate of China’s Muslims”

Zhang Er, “The Missing Pages”

Wanderings Around the World

Carey Baraka, “The Gods Are Still Crazy: Separating truth from fiction in the most successful African movie of all time”

Over the course of the next hour, the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage hauled as much trash out of Lovells Pond in Barnstable as time and space allowed. They filled the storage compartments of their kayaks with it, strapped it onto gear loops, balanced it across bows. A fishing pole. Part of a white plastic lounge chair. A wooden pallet. A disintegrating car tire. After ferrying it all back to land, the women marveled at the haul. — Cara Buckley, with Photographs and Video by Billy Hickey, “Taking Out the Trash: These Old Ladies Are Cleaning Up Cape Cod”

Choe Sang-Hun, “A Family’s Daring Escape From North Korea ‘to Live and Stand Tall’”

Margaret Fuhrer, “Is This Man the Picasso of Pointe Shoes?”

Javier C. Hernández and Hisako Ueno, “Men in Shorts Are Shaking Up Japan’s Buttoned-Down Offices”

… although the statements in the new exhibit are individually factual, they’re put together in a way that’s fundamentally misleading. A few lines in Washington’s private correspondence and his posthumous emancipation orders are given far more weight than a lifetime of owning Black Americans as property—a misplaced emphasis that distorts the history and also robs his later act of emancipation of meaning. — John Garrison Marks, “How the Trump Administration Made George Washington an Abolitionist”

Arundhati Roy, “Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous: The student protesters who have swarmed Delhi are showing us a different future for India”

Ellen O’Connell Whittet, “Who Owns Women Detectives? Now that Miss Marple and Nancy Drew’s early novels are entering the public domain, what comes next for them?”

Standout Story

Although the movement had originally found its footing in antijingoistic anarchist communities, Esperanto can offer something different for many speakers today: a chance to showcase one’s culture in a language built for reciprocity, to take pride in one’s heritage without the attendant whiff of nationalism. —Katie Thornton, “Love Language: The undying dream of Esperanto”

Featured photo: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Munising, MI, August 28, 2023.