Category: China
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Tiananmen at 25: The Weekly Reading Round-Up
As the June Fourth anniversary grows closer, security measures in China continue to tighten. The anniversary’s approach has also coincided with a spate of terrorist acts in China’s western region of Xinjiang, where explosive devices detonated in a market on Thursday morning killed 31 people and injured nearly 100 more. In Shanghai, a visit by…
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Overcoming a Fear of Chinese Banks
I’ve long had a deep-seated case of yinhangophobia, or the fear of Chinese banks (银行 yinhang=bank), and as a result done everything I could to avoid them. Part of my wariness came from direct experience: when I first arrived in China in 2005, I carried most of my money in traveler’s cheques, which had been…
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Tiananmen at 25: This Week’s Links
• There have been more detentions as the Beijing government works to ensure that no one is left voicing dissent on the day of the June Fourth anniversary. Anthony Kuhn of NPR News gives an overview of the recent crackdown in this Morning Edition report. Heather Timmons at Quartz has put together a list of…
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Wall Street Journal: Tiananmen Amnesia and Tiananmen Exiles
Now up at the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report blog, my new column on Rowena Xiaoqing He’s recent book, Tiananmen Exiles: In “Tiananmen Exiles,” Ms. He interviews Shen Tong and Wang Dan, both important figures in the Beijing protest movement, as well as Yi Danxuan, who was a student leader in Guangzhou. All…
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Leftover Women: In Pictures
I began reading Leta Hong Fincher’s eagerly anticipated Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China last night, and one chapter in, I now know that the Marriage and Family Research Association here classifies me as a Category 3 Leftover Woman (ages 31-35, dubbed the “Buddha of victorious battles” for achieving professional advancement—though a…
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Tiananmen at 25: Voices Silenced
Heading into this spring, other China-watchers and I occasionally discussed the widespread crackdown on dissenting voices that President Xi Jinping implemented over his first year in office, and we all agreed that things would probably tighten even further as the 25th anniversary of the June Fourth massacre approached. Unfortunately, that prediction has proven true—even more…
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Tiananmen at 25: From the China Beat Archives
There has already been, and there will be much more, written about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and June Fourth Massacre as the 25th anniversary approaches. As I said, I’ll do my best to stay on top of it all and post links to good material here on a semi-regular basis. But in addition to…
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More Tiananmen at 25 Events and Readings
When I edited The China Beat, I would put together weekly(ish) posts that rounded up the best recent stories on China in general, or on a specific topic in the news. Those grew less frequent as our Twitter presence expanded and we just posted links there, but I think the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square…
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Tiananmen at 25: A Symposium at Saint Joseph’s University
Today, April 15, is the 25th anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang. That’s a name that probably doesn’t ring a bell, unless you’re a China specialist, but Hu’s death in 1989 was the start of something big. A once-powerful government official who was purged in 1987, Hu had advocated for economic and political reforms…
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A Cold, Creamy Taste of Home
A lot of first-time visitors to China exclaim to me that they’re astounded to see so many familiar American chain restaurants. You can find McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks in all but the smallest cities (and even those will almost certainly have a KFC), but the country’s first-tier megalopolises (Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou) offer…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 