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Weekly Wanderings: November 3, 2025

November. The penultimate month of a year that has often felt endless and yet flown by. November always seems like a month that people want to rush through, eager to get to the December holidays and end-of-year celebrations. Christmas commercials are playing regularly on TV now; one of the radio stations I usually listen to…
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Bookshelf: Silk Roads

As much as I love to cook, I’m hopeless at reverse-engineering recipes. I’ve eaten plenty of dishes that I wish I could replicate at home, only to be defeated by my lack of skills. (Also, probably, my unwillingness to use as much butter and salt as the original chef likely did.) I have little sense…
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On View: Infinite Images

Shifting, looping white lines scrolled across a black background, moving in seemingly random directions, on the video screen in front of me. Rhythmic electronic music played through the headphones I wore. The combination of visuals and music had me in a trance. Only an awareness of the other exhibition-goers who waited for their turn in…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 26, 2025

Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Chris Buckley, “In China, a Forbidden Question Looms: Who Leads After Xi?” Control over history has been exercised to an even greater degree in the Hong Kong case than others. As in other territories, colonial officials maintained the administration based partly on the extensive information they…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 20, 2025

Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “Laura Murphy on Enforcing America’s Ban on Uyghur Forced Labor” Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 12, 2025

The Phillies season has ended; the Flyers season has begun. Time marches on. Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Emma Belmonte, “A Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies” Yangyang Cheng, “No Country for A Woman” While men and boys are perceived to have more potential, are allowed more time,…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 5, 2025

Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Associated Press, “Overseas Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Nathan Law denied entry to Singapore” Chris Buckley and Adam Goldman, “How China’s Secretive Spy Agency Became a Cyber Powerhouse” Leslie T. Chang, “At the Chinese Table” Yet, the accolades the film has received are not so much an…
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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…