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Thanksgiving Comfort Food
I have gotten pretty used to non-traditional Thanksgiving dinners. Since 2005, I have made it to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving with my family precisely once, and four of those years away have been in China, where turkey and stuffing can be hard to come by. Like The Atlantic’s Matt Schiavenza, I have turned to a Chinese…
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LA Review of Books: The UC System Is Failing Its Graduate Students
What I didn’t completely understand when I accepted UC Irvine’s offer of admission almost six years ago was that I wasn’t just enrolling in a school; I was marrying a university system. And the UC system, I have learned, is one of the most dysfunctional families imaginable. The latest episode to stir up graduate student…
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Nanjing in One Day
I lived in Nanjing for two years, from 2006 to 2008. During those years, the best thing that happened to the city, as far as I was concerned, was the introduction of high-speed rail service that cut the travel time between Nanjing and Shanghai in half. Nanjing is a fine city, and there are certainly…
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Bookshelf: Around India in 80 Trains
When I served as a chaperone for a group of UC Irvine students on a three-week tour of India in 2010, our in-country guide clearly had no intention of letting us step foot on an Indian train. Though trains running between Delhi and Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, cover the journey in only…
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The Invasion of the GIANT ANTS
I have seen a lot of bugs since moving to Shanghai, but never have I seen ants this big. Or this colorful. The giant ants comprise a small sculpture exhibit located outside a mall on West Nanjing Road (just west of the intersection with Huashan Road, if you’re in Shanghai and want to check them…
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Halloween in the ’Hai
Family and friends often ask me how Western holidays are celebrated in China. Christmas decorations are very popular here now, particularly in luxury malls, and young couples have embraced Valentine’s Day wholeheartedly. But Halloween hasn’t really caught on yet. One of the things that surprised me when I was in Hong Kong was seeing how…
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LA Review of Books: Hong Kong, Beyond the Neon Lights
I deliberately didn’t write much here about what I did during my Hong Kong trip in the middle of October, because I knew I wanted to save that material for my next LA Review of Books China Blog post. That’s now online, so here’s the story of my experiences walking two heritage trails in the…
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China in One Word: Mafan
Two years ago, Chinese author Yu Hua published a book called China in Ten Words. Each chapter is a short essay on contemporary China, the theme of which comes from the chapter’s title (“The People,” “Grassroots,” “Copycat,” etc.). It’s a wonderful book and has resulted in a party game of sorts for China academic types,…
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Partial Progress
Chapter 5 is now … uh, 76% done … but the Hitchhiker scarf is finished! I put it down on Sunday evening with only four (long) rows left to go, so after dinner last night I popped in a DVD and polished them off. If it weren’t unusually warm today (70 degrees and very sunny)…
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Still Life on a Sunday Afternoon
[Posted on a Monday morning because the Internet here was cranky last night and I only have so much patience—meaning, very little.] On the screen: Chapter 5 of my dissertation, about child welfare issues during the first years of the People’s Republic of China. Approximately 75% finished. On the needles: Hitchhiker scarf. Approximately 90% finished.…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 