Category: Weekly Wanderings
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Weekly Wanderings: June 10, 2023
The theme for this week’s collection of links is summer. Readers who follow me on Instagram have probably noticed that between April and October, most of my weekends involve 5K, 10K, and even half-marathon races. This is a relatively new activity of mine; as I wrote several years ago (in a post that still reliably…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 13, 2023
Yesterday marked 15 years since a deadly earthquake hit Sichuan Province, causing the deaths of at least 85,000 people and revealing widespread corruption in the local government and construction industries. I wrote about the Wenchuan Earthquake on its tenth anniversary in this post (which I revisited yesterday, checking all the links and updating them as…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 6, 2023
The ongoing decimation of Twitter coincides with my own desire to get back into a daily writing practice, so I’m reviving this blog. I’m making a minimal commitment here: a photo and short gloss on Mondays, and a “Weekly Wanderings” round-up of five stories/thoughts/recommendations each Saturday morning. If and as I can, I’ll post occasional…
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Weekly Wanderings: Still Wrapping Up 2018 Edition
■ I have a minor flurry (a squall?) of new pieces to share this week, as several things I wrote in late 2018 got published all at once: At Dissent Magazine (subscribe!), I have a long review essay about new books by Carl Minzner (End of an Era) and Elizabeth Economy (The Third Revolution) that…
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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: Random Things I’ve Read Edition
A bunch of things I’ve read and want to share, with a bit of commentary here and there … ▪ Wait inside the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and you’ll notice the same announcement playing every ten minutes or so: a reminder (first in English, then in Japanese and Chinese) that Detroit is in…
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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…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 