The Berlin transmediale is, to my knowledge, one of the very best annual conferences (a “convergence” is more the appropriate word) which exist on Planet Earth. I was very fortunate to have been able to attend the 2011 sessions, where, among other things, I was able to learn about “book sprints” (whereby a book, having been researched, is collectively authored and printed by 5 or 6 people in three or four days in a single […]
Mainly for the hell of it, I recently spent $4 (about 26 RMB) on a big red “Jon Huntsman for President 2012” bumper sticker. It arrived in my mailbox, and I promptly stuck it on my South Korean automobile, which I park in the guts of an old Japanese bathhouse in Seattle’s Chinatown and mainly drive up and down the I-5. I’m an American, and I can vote for whomever the hell I please, especially […]
Amid the bad news from Libya, one really needs to be keeping an eye on China and developments there. On February 21, a few abortive demonstrations were broken up by Chinese police, as reported by McClatchy and by Associated Press. The People’s Daily in Beijing basically argues that the Chinese people are too stupid to understand the confusion of information on the Internet and should basically accept the fact that Xinhua will tell them what […]
North Koreans in border regions are doing more military drills than usual (click here for Chinese version), but so too are their counterparts on the Chinese side of the border. In Hunchun, peasant militias are getting into gear: In Dandong, everyone is making money and trying to get the North Koreans involved. National news publications, not just the Embassy in Pyongyang, are reporting on the meetings between North Korean officials and Dandong city leaders, facilitated by outgoing Chinese […]
Amid the obligatory fury at the Chinese government for restricting the flow of information into China, it’s worth noting that articles like this one are increasing in prevalence: a Tianya translation of a CNN article about Andrei Lankov, Curtis Melvin, and the wonders of mapping North Korean gulags on Google Earth. According to statistics the article has been read over 10,000 times; let’s hope the current dispute doesn’t potentially rob all 344 million Chinese internet […]
Some of us had hopes for a broader improvement in Sino-Japanese relations with the arrival of the Hatoyama government and the recession of the LDP into minority status. After all, when you have a new political party that isn’t barnacled by the historical stigma of Sugamo-scented folks like Kishi Nobusuke and Shigemitsu Mamoru, it’s easier to talk about apologizing and looking forward. And hopes can thus legitimately be raised that the Sino-Japanese relationship can hone […]
In honor of the baseball playoffs in the United States, I thought I might just recommend a few hundred pages of reading for those intrepid souls for whom Monday means giant injections of prose. *** China’s court system is settling accounts with a public trial of the instigators of the Guangdong brawl that sparked the prairie fire of riots in Xinjiang (New York Times). It’s sure to be a stern judgment. As they said in […]
