Author: mauracunningham
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Weekly Wanderings: September 28, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Review Recommendations China Stories James T. Areddy, “Jerome Cohen, the First American to Practice Law in China, Dies at 95” Yangyang Cheng, “Being a Journalist in China” (audio) Eric Fish, “The ‘Iron Dam’ that became China’s deadliest secret” (audio) Francesca Regalado, “A Curator Flees Bangkok After China Deems…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 21, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Chang Che, “‘I have to do it’: Why one of the world’s most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China” Beijing’s white paper on national security, published in May, pivots from emphasising the pre-eminence of internal and regime security to lauding China…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 14, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories As the United States slides further into autocracy, the numbing freeze of fear is creeping back into my veins. I have accepted exile, but I’m not ready for imprisonment. I have left the old country, but I’m not ready to abandon the new…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 7, 2025
And we’re back! I, of course, thought that taking August “off” would enable me to get completely caught up on life. The books I would read! The closets I would organize! The freezer I would restock! Needless to say, most of my plans did not come to fruition, though I did clean out my garage…
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Bookshelf: Breakneck
The first copy of Breakneck I received looked like the quintessential fear-mongering China book. Against an inky black background a red graphic appeared—somewhat difficult to identify, but it seemed to be a towering building with cranes or construction equipment extending from its top. BREAKNECK, in white, stretched across the lower third of the space, and…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 27, 2025
A quick programming note up top today: I’m taking August off from Weekly Wanderings posts—this feels like a good time for a vacation, and I have a huge stack of novels calling my name. Thanks for joining me this week—I’ll see you in September! Recommendations China Stories Keith Bradsher, with photographs by Andrea Verdelli, “How…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 20, 2025
I didn’t plan ahead of time to take a week off from posting links and such, but seeing as how it’s 8:33pm on Sunday night and most of the stories I intended to share are still unread tabs in my browser, I think that’s how this is going to go. This weekend I went up…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 13, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories ChinaFile Conversation, “The Dalai Lama’s Succession” Amy Hawkins, “China’s human rights lawyers speak out, 10 years after crackdown” Amy Hawkins, with graphics by Harvey Symons and Lucy Swan, “China’s coal heartland fighting for a greener future” Betsy Joles, “The Chinese Men Seeking Pakistani Christian Wives” Calvin…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 6, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The Chinese students I spoke with were intently parsing official edicts in an effort to work out which course subjects were sensitive and which weren’t. What I detected from my conversations with them was their sense of being caught in a guessing game. A formerly innocuous…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 29, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories David Bandurski and Alex Colville, “Is Xi’s Grip Holding?” Edison Chen, “After Engagement w/ Orville Schell” John Delury, “How to Hide a Chinese Empire” Ross Perlin, “The Struggle Against Autocracy in Asia” Jemimah Steinfeld, “Death by a thousand cuts in Hong Kong” Rebecca Tan and Pei-Lin…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 