Category: China
-
Weekly Wanderings: March 8, 2026
Happy International Women’s Day! And boo to daylight saving time. This is not a weekend when I can easily lose an hour—because on Tuesday I’m flying to Vancouver for the start of my own personal Super Bowl, the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. My AAS colleagues and I are in full-tilt “get it done…
-
Weekly Wanderings: March 1, 2026
Does anyone else feel like the first two months of 2026 have included enough activity and events for a whole year? I suspect I’m not the only one who has already maxed out. Let’s keep the chaos and upheaval to a minimum in March, hmmm? Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews This…
-
Weekly Wanderings: February 22, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Susan Blumberg-Kason, “Social Mobility and Stagnation: How the university entrance exam and residency permits structure life for in China.” Omkar Khandekar, Emily Feng, and Pankaj Dhungel, “India has long promised ‘vibrant’ border villages, as China speedily builds up” (audio) Joseph Torigian, “Did Peng Zhen Rebel Against Mao?” Decades…
-
Weekly Wanderings: February 16, 2026
I love to write book reviews. I find it incredibly enjoyable when I’m reading a book and feel something spark—an interesting bit of history, or a new perspective, or a wonderful turn of phrase—that makes me impatient to tell everyone else about what I’m reading. I get excited about a book and I want other…
-
Weekly Wanderings: February 8, 2026
I have a new review at The Wall Street Journal, discussing a wonderful and very engaging book by journalist Yi-Ling Liu, The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. I’ve written a lot over the years about the Chinese Party-state’s imposition of internet controls, so it was a refreshing change to…
-
Weekly Wanderings: February 1, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The AI race is being waged with the top 1% of the 1% of talent in China; the rest of the 99.9% and the humanities majors have much less to look forward to. In the fourth and fifth-tier cities, one of most arresting problems in China…
-
Weekly Wanderings: January 25, 2026
WHAT A WEEK We’ve truly made the final transition from news cycle to news tornado. As the number of links below indicate, I spent way too much time every evening sitting on my couch doom-scrolling on Bluesky. I need to do less of that, but it’s hard not to feel an obligation to read and…
-
Weekly Wanderings: January 18, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories The conviction of Lai, the self-made entrepreneur and pro-democracy media publisher, was in fact an anti-climax — a footnote in a long and carefully orchestrated exercise to silence one of the Party’s most stubborn and effective critics in the nominally autonomous special administrative…
-
Bookshelf: Mission to Mao
The U.S. Army Air Force C-47 transport approached a dirt airstrip in North China, an informal ground crew guiding it in for landing while bystanders watched on a late July day in 1944. As the plane’s wheels touched down, all initially seemed well—until a loud boom sounded, the aircraft veering sharply to its left and…
-
Weekly Wanderings: January 12, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “Cheng Lei On Life in Chinese Prison” Jenny Huangfu Day, “Ice Hockey in China” David Frazier, “Aircraft bunkers in Taiwan’s Yilan county shines light on little-known kamikaze outpost” After Xiaomi launched an online lottery last January for public access to its highly-automated facility on…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 