Wall Street Journal – Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

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 occasionalContinue reading “Weekly Wanderings: May 6, 2023”

“Luxury Off the Rails”: The Peking Express Review

“For the rest of my life,” Lucy Aldrich wrote in the November 1923 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, “when I am ‘stalled’ conversationally, it will be a wonderful thing to fall back on: ‘Oh, I must tell you about the time I was captured by Chinese bandits.’ ” Aldrich might have written lightly of theContinue reading ““Luxury Off the Rails”: The Peking Express Review”

Wall Street Journal: Denying Historians: China’s Archives Increasingly Off-Bounds

Before I came to China to do research for the first time, I worried about how I would get access to the archives. I had heard plenty of war stories from historians who had done their dissertation research in the 1980s and early ’90s, when the archives had been opened to foreigners (unlike the MaoContinue reading “Wall Street Journal: Denying Historians: China’s Archives Increasingly Off-Bounds”

Writing, New and Old

No blogging here recently because I am in full-on DISSERTATION MODE as I careen down the home stretch. Ten days to go before I have to deliver the finished product to my committee—I’ll make it (I hope!), but working full-bore on the final chapter and editing the ones I’ve already written hasn’t left me withContinue reading “Writing, New and Old”

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. AllContinue reading “Wall Street Journal: Tiananmen Amnesia and Tiananmen Exiles”

WSJ China Real Time Report: The Vulnerability of China’s Left-Behind Children

At the end of January, I was visiting my aunt in Florida and the two of us spent a lot of time talking about what I would be doing once I finish my PhD this year. I said that I was planning to focus on freelance writing and a couple of bigger projects I haveContinue reading “WSJ China Real Time Report: The Vulnerability of China’s Left-Behind Children”