In her recent Salon piece, “Advice from a J-school dropout,” Lea Aschkenas has a point. Journalism schools are not for everyone — evidently, at least, not for her. Indeed, whether I myself was cut out for a journalism school was…
Category: Articles
Softening the Intractable: Tibet, China, and Ethical Pressure Whole Earth Review
The prospects for Tibet entirely depend on how things go in China. China has been very obdurate, emphasizing the reunification of what they view as the motherland, which is really the previous dynastic aggregation of Han Central Chinese with Manchus,…
China’s Spring The New York Review of Books
To stand, in early May, atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which guards the entrance to the Forbidden City, and look across the vast crowd of people jammed into Tiananmen Square was to have a historically new sense of what…
Once Again, Long Live Chairman Mao The Atlantic
WHEN Mao Zedong died, in 1976, and his wife, Jiang Qing, was arrested as the leading spirit in the Gang of Four, the Great Helmsman’s legacy presented Deng Xiaoping, his reform-minded successor, with a dilemma. To de-emphasize Mao’s legacy in…
New World Man Cigar Afficionado
Each day as lunchtime approaches, the faithful begin to hive toward the old Bank of China building overlooking Statue Square in Central Hong Kong. Files of young men carrying smart leather briefcases and sporting double-breasted Italian suits converge with clutches…
Tunnels That Run Deep, In Earth and Memory New York Times
WHEN I first visited Cu Chi, in 1962, I was a young journalist who had driven the 21 miles from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) with a South Vietnamese Government official to ”inspect” the area’s strategic hamlets, newly built…
Once Again, Long Live Chairman Mao The Atlantic
WHEN Mao Zedong died, in 1976, and his wife, Jiang Qing, was arrested as the leading spirit in the Gang of Four, the Great Helmsman’s legacy presented Deng Xiaoping, his reform-minded successor, with a dilemma. To de-emphasize Mao’s legacy in…
Human Rights in China The New York Review of Books
On the anniversary of the “June 4” incident, we again express our gravest concern for the fates of those who have been persecuted for their support of democratic progress in China. We hope that the Chinese government can abide by…
Keeping the Faith by Fang Lizhi The New York Review of Books
On June 4, the day after the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on the citizens of Beijing, the distinguished Chinese astrophysicist and dissident intellectual, Fang Lizhi, reluctantly sought refuge in the American embassy in Beijing with his physicist wife, Li…
Letters from the Other China The New York Review of Books
During the student demonstrations that swept China toward the end of 1986, the brilliant astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who was then vice-president of the University of Science and Technology, emerged, through his speeches to student groups, as the country’s most forceful…