When I returned to Beijing in the fall of 1986, after an absence of six months, it was hard not to feel disoriented by the sudden change in political climate. During the previous spring and summer, political and intellectual life…
Category: Articles
Glimpses of Old China in Modern Beijing New York Times
EVERY TIME I RETURN TO BEIJING AND SEE its skyline growing with cell-blocklike high-rise apartments, drive through its charmless streets and have to breathe the polluted air, I am reminded of how far the city has drifted from its past…
Seeing China Like a Capitalist New York Times
From the inside of a 23-foot 3-inch-long blue-black Fleetwood Brougham Cadillac stretch limousine with a 5-liter V-8 engine, vinyl roof, whitewall tires, air-conditioning, push-button (and tinted) windows, color television, AM-FM radio, dual refrigerators, bar stocked with Gorham lead-filled crystal glasses,…
Letter from China: To Get Rich Is Glorious The New Yorker
LETTER FROM CHINA about the boom in illicit publishing and the opening commercial Radio & TV channels in China. WriterJia Lusheng, survivor of Tiananmen Square crackdown, is in the forefront of a new style of Chinese journalism, known as baogao…
An Oasis of Privilege in China New York Times
Each evening a middle-aged woman in a simple print dress sits down at a large grand piano set to one side of the hotel lobby and begins to play Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin from sheet music that is so aged…
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Off The Grand Canal, A Simple Vevetian Inn
”It’s not necessary for you to be saying, ‘Grazie, grazie, grazie,’ all the time,” Adriano Carrettin is saying to a pretty young painter from Kansas who is struggling to arrange for a room in Italian. ”You see, it’s us men who should be saying ‘thank you’ to all the women like you for just being beautiful.” Laughing, Mr. Carrettin reaches across the small marble bar in front of him and clasps the flustered young woman on the shoulder.
Free the Czechs The New York Review of Books
In the spring of 1979 these eleven men and women, all professionals and leaders in the human rights movement in Czechoslovakia, were arrested: Otta Bednarova—journalist, television editor; Jarmila Belikova—psychologist; Dr. Vaclav Benda—philosopher, mathematician, Charter ‘77 spokesman; Albert Cerny—actor; Jiri Dienstbier—journalist,…
Working in China The Coevolution Quarterly (Whole Earth)
Each day I work with Master Chang toying copper coils into large D.C. electric motors at the Shanghai Electric Motor Factory. We arise at six, begin the work day at 7:00, have an hour for lunch in the factory canteen…