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Snapshots from Chicago
Chicago is a city I’d like to get to know better, but circumstances have only brought me there twice. The first time was last summer, when my mother and I rode the train across the country; we had a one-day stopover in Chicago. The second time was this past weekend, when the annual meeting of…
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The Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Past and Present
I spent last weekend in Chicago attending the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS, shorthand for both the association and the annual meeting). On the night before I left for the conference, my boss handed me something she had found in her office—the program for the 1971 AAS. Promising to treat it…
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Bookshelf: 13 Men
I made a brief mention in my latest LA Review of Books China Blog post of a new short book by Indian journalist Sonia Faleiro, 13 Men, and wanted to discuss that publication in a bit more depth. 13 Men is the most recent e-book from publishing collective Deca (it’s also available as a Kindle…
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LA Review of Books China Blog: “Inconvenient Truths”
I have a new post up at the LA Review of Books China Blog, about two documentaries that were recently censored in China and India: It’s not every week that China-and-India-watchers have parallel stories to chew over, but that’s what’s been happening for the last few days. In both countries, a documentary film about an…
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Winter in Beijing
China had just celebrated Chunjie, or the Spring Festival—otherwise known as Chinese New Year—when I arrived in Beijing in mid-February 2005, but spring felt very far away. Since Beijing and Philadelphia are at practically the same latitude, I hadn’t expected the winter weather to be anything I couldn’t handle. I’d packed a ski jacket, gloves,…
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Lights! Camera! Flowers!
My mother and I celebrated her birthday a month early with a trip to the Philadelphia Flower Show on Saturday afternoon. This year’s Flower Show theme is “Celebrate the Movies,” so the entrance is done up as a movie premiere, with a marquee and red carpet—and the smell of popcorn wafting through the air. Disney…
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Ten Years Ago In China
One of the side effects of finally moving into a (hopefully) semi-permanent living situation is that I can finally reclaim the random boxes of my belongings that have accumulated in my parents’ basement over the past decade. In unpacking one of those boxes, I found that it contained souvenirs from my first trip to China—a…
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Bookshelf: Midnight in Siberia
For me, a ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway would be an interesting vacation, and one I’ve long wanted to take. For Russians in the past, Trans-Siberian trains carried people away from their homes into exile. But for millions of Russians today, the Trans-Siberian is simply a mode of transport—the most cost-effective way to get from Point…
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LA Review of Books: Q&A with Michael Meyer, Author of In Manchuria
Now up at the LA Review of Books China Blog, my interview with Michael Meyer, author of a wonderful new travelogue/history/memoir about life in China’s Northeast called In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China: MEC: You write that you first voiced the idea of moving from Beijing to Wasteland “after…
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Suitable for Framing
Look what finally arrived! It wasn’t just a dream … I really am done. Now, tell me more about these “rights and privileges.”
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 