Category: China
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Weekly Wanderings: Away We Go Edition
• The “Weekend” alarm clock on my phone is set to go off at 7:00am (usually an ideal, not reality), but today my brain saw fit to nudge me awake at 5:30 in the morning. “Come on, get up, we have so much to do,” it whispered, bringing to the surface of my consciousness a…
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Weekly Wanderings: Give Me My Hour Back Edition
• Like nearly every other American commenting on the internet today, I hate the switch to Daylight Savings Time. There’s nothing more discouraging than waking up after getting a normal amount of sleep yet finding that it’s an hour later than it should be and I’m therefore already running behind. I need that hour. Not…
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Weekly Wanderings: Xi’s in it for the Long Haul Edition
• Since the third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know touches on current events, Jeff Wasserstrom and I knew that there was a chance something we discussed might require updating even before the book’s official publication date. My money was on Jiang Zemin going to meet Marx, but instead…
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Weekly Wanderings: Ringing in the Year of the Dog Edition
• 新年快乐！狗年大吉！(Happy New Year! Happy Year of the Dog!) Most of my Western New Year’s resolutions have already fallen by the wayside, but the Lunar New Year on Friday gave me the chance to start fresh all over again. My #1 resolution—a recurring one, I suppose—is to write here more, and to write more regularly.…
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Weekly Wanderings: Censored Bear Edition
▪ It’s not often that my longtime love of Winnie the Pooh has much to do with my career as a China watcher, but the two finally converged a couple of weeks ago, thanks to the PRC government’s decision to censor online images of one Silly Old Bear because he allegedly resembles President Xi Jinping…
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Weekly Wanderings: Heavy and Light Edition
This has been a very weird week for me: although I’ve been surrounded by a bright and cheery Michigan summer filled with fun things to do, I’ve also been preoccupied with the many dark and dispiriting news stories surrounding the death of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died on Thursday while still serving an…
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Weekly Wanderings: Roadblocks, Detours, and Roundabouts Edition
▪ How many times this spring did I tell myself, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll get up and start writing again. Tomorrow for sure”? Pretty much every day. But as the near-silence around these parts indicates, I never followed through. The #1 reason for this is that for the past several months I’ve found it nearly impossible…
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#HongKong20 Reading Round-Up
In the United States, the past five days have been all about the Fourth of July holiday—an extra-long weekend this year that led many people (including me) to step away from the news for at least part of the time. But in Hong Kong, journalists were putting in overtime to cover the July 1 events…
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Screen: I Am Not Madame Bovary
Confession: I don’t often go out of my way to watch Chinese movies because I generally can’t relax and enjoy them. I don’t watch them as movies; I scrutinize them as texts. Questions fill my mind as I stare at the screen: What does this film say about Chinese society? What image of the country…
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Weekly Wanderings: Too Many Words Edition
▪ Usually, when I start skipping weeks here it’s because I’m too busy and/or traveling. Although I am, as always, looking at an overly ambitious to-do list and an overly crowded travel schedule, those aren’t what has kept me from writing as much lately. A lot of writers I know have spoken about running into…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 