Category: Michigan
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Weekly Wanderings: December 14, 2025
Two housekeeping notes to start: (1) If you’re in Clawson, Michigan, on Sunday, January 4, I’ll be the discussant for a talk by Joseph Torigian on his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (read my write-up of the book from earlier this year). Tickets are free,…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 7, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Keith Bradsher, “The New York Times Marks the Centennial of Its Shanghai Bureau” Violet Du Feng, “How to Find a Date in a Country With Over 30 Million Extra Men” (video) Oliver Holmes, “‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you’: Beijing summons journalists in Hong Kong after…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 30, 2025
Black Friday Sale! Small-Business Saturday Savings! Maura’s Cyber Monday Mania! Wait, no, that’s not right. I’ve read those words so many times in the past few days, I forgot that I’m not here to sell anything. Nor do I have a holiday gift guide to share. There’s nothing to buy here, just a handful of…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 25, 2025
In the Michigan running community, Memorial Day weekend means one thing: Bayshore. It’s a shorthand, an in-the-know reference to the start-of-summer event officially called “Traverse City Track Club Bayshore™️ Presented by Munson Healthcare.” There’s a full marathon, a half marathon, and a 10K, and all three usually sell out. This year, that meant a total…
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Out With the Old, In With the New
Happy New Year! I decided to ring in 2025 by signing up for a New Year’s 5K duo: Out With the Old (December 31) and In With the New (January 1). The course loops around Bloomer Park in Rochester, MI; the first day’s race goes counter-clockwise, the next one clockwise. While it was cold both…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 1, 2024
The final train departed Detroit’s Michigan Central Station on January 5, 1988. The Beaux Arts building had been an architectural marvel when it opened 75 years prior—designed by the same firms that had collaborated on Grand Central Terminal and, at 18 stories, the tallest train station in the world at the time. At its peak…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 16, 2024
A few years ago I ate dinner at The Delft Bistro in Marquette, the largest city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I could guess from the large marquee outside and the film-themed decor inside that the building had once been a movie theater, and that the restaurant’s owners had decided to pay homage to that history…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 19, 2024
Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Gordon Corera, “The escaped dissident still pursued decades on by China”Helen Davidson and Chi Hui Lin, “Lai Ching-te, the political brawler who went from a Taiwan mining village to the presidency” The truth of whether the Wangs were small-time innkeepers or a secret weapon in Beijing’s decadelong effort to…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 10, 2023
At the AAS #AsiaNow blog, I interviewed sociologist Bin Xu about his 2021 book, Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China. In the later years of Mao’s rule, 17 million young Chinese were sent out of their urban homes to labor with and learn from rural peasants, in what was termed…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 3, 2023
It’s a long weekend here in the United States as we mark Labor Day and the unofficial end of summer, and I’ve been on vacation for the past week. So in lieu of chatter and recommendations from me, please enjoy some snapshots from my wanderings around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Feature photo: Waiting in line to…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 