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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…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 24, 2025
June is almost over, and I have no idea where the month went. Well, that’s not entirely true. June has been a morass of worrying about the world. Of enduring a violent heat wave. Of feeling like I should be taking advantage of the Michigan summer—but ugh, I have so much else to do. Of…
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Wall Street Journal: “Twins Torn Apart”
I’ve just published a new book review at the Wall Street Journal, about Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins, by journalist Barbara Demick: “You’re not allowed to keep this child,” a Family Planning official informed Xiuhua. Another man held her wailing 21-month-old niece,…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 15, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Review Recommendations China Stories Christopher Beam, “How I Accidentally Inspired a Major Chinese Motion Picture” Rachel Cheung, “The Hunt for an Heir” Over the past decade, applicants across the continent have traded prestigious academic institutions in countries like Britain and the United States for Chinese alternatives, attracted…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 