Category: Taiwan
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Weekly Wanderings: December 8, 2024

On the morning of Tuesday, December 3, I got up early and started writing right away. I was working on a book review and had suddenly hit the zone where words were flowing, so my focus was unusually unshakeable. At 9:00, I reluctantly left that document and switched to Zoom, where I spent the next…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 22, 2024

Happy Sunday and happy fall—allegedly, as I am writing this with a fan trained on my face and a glass of ice water at hand. Despite the continuing summer temperatures, there are hints of the season’s impending change: a touch of red and gold on the trees, pumpkin spice everything in stores, the beginning of…
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Weekly Wanderings: August 4, 2024

Happy August, and thanks for reading. Recommendations China Stories James T. Areddy and Chun Han Wong, “Kamala Harris’s Record Offers Only Hints of a China Worldview” Migratory grief stems from the losses experienced when one moves away from home. These span both the physical and the intangible, which makes the grief a complicated process. The…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 23, 2024

Recommendations China Stories “From Xinjiang With Love: China Show Tries to Give Region a Rosier Image” James T. Areddy, “Mandarin Leaves a Manhattan Courtroom Lost in Translation” In some ways, “vigilantes” are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working…
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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: June 2, 2024

June! How nice to see you. At the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog, I continue my series of interviews with new authors, speaking with ethnomusicologist Ying Diao about her book, Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins. Recommendations China Stories ChinaFile Conversation, “The Future According to Xi…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 22, 2024

Ann Arbor is not an especially large place. The city occupies just 29 square miles, and without football game traffic no point is more than 20 minutes away from another by car. Yet those 29 square miles contain 162 parks—some just tiny patches of grass squeezed in among rows of houses, others expansive nature areas…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 21, 2024

How is it still January?? This month has felt an eternity long, and yet I’m still getting emails that start out “Happy New Year!” Time seems to be moving slowly in 2024. Last week I wrote about “China’s Southern Paradise,” a special exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art that highlighted the artistic lineage of…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 14, 2024

On Friday I published a reading round-up previewing Taiwan’s presidential election, which took place yesterday. Lai Ching-te (William Lai), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate and current vice-president, came away as the winner, securing more than 40 percent of the vote. While the DPP will now hold the presidency for a third consecutive term, it lost…
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Reading Round-Up: Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential Election

A few hours from now, voters in Taiwan will begin heading to the polls to cast their vote in this year’s election. Three candidates are competing for the spot of president, in a race that appears to be too close to call at this point. (Taiwan implements a blackout period on opinion polls starting 10…