Word counts don’t mean so much at the end of the day, the release of a big article manuscript into the hands of a capable editor should always be grounds for a minor celebration. It also seems clear that in writing as in life it is good to have a little bit too much of everything — of friendship, of commitments, of food, of music, and of words. So this morning I woke up and […]
[Update: Liberation has the most comprehensive overview so far available (in French, bien sûr).] Like me, you might have thought that you could just forget for a while about Sino-French relations. After all, hadn’t lovely first lady Carli Bruni silenced all the domestic critics and seduced the entire nation of China with her sashaying ways in Shanghai, her thoughtful entwinement with the little President under the trees in Beijing, her having been serenaded by a […]
This is, sadly, no food blog, but the following article from the New York Times has been giving me a great deal of joy lately and I thought I’d share: “Seattle has a thousand teriyakis,” Mrs. Ko said one afternoon. Her tone was dismissive, as if explaining the looming presence of the Space Needle to a not particularly bright child. “No Americans do the cooking. Koreans do.” “This is Seattle food,” she said, extending her […]
Alain Nogues, photojournalist, has a smorgasbord of images of North Korea on his homepage (click on the “2000s”) in anticipation of an exhibition this month in Paris. Here’s part of the press release: Du 11 au 29 janvier 2010, le comité régional Ile-de-France de l’Association d’amitié franco-coréenne vous présente “Visages de la Corée” à la Maison des associations du 16ème arrondissement de Paris (14, avenue René Boylesve, 75016 Paris), siège du comité régional francilien : […]
On a day when the Chinese Vice-Premier is meeting with the Japanese leadership, it seems appropriate to think about reconciling remaining differences from the Second World War. From my perspective as a sometime scholar of the Chinese past and its depiction in CCP propaganda, I view France and Germany as among the most active societies and governments on earth in coming to terms with the past. Yet there is still plenty to argue about. These […]
Ribiya Khadeer may have been rejected from a visit to the isle of Taiwan, but she continues to move internationally and stir discussion of Chinese policies in Xinjiang. This past week she has been in Paris, which I suppose can be considered, in its own fashion, and with apologies to San Francisco and New York, the center of the world. In Paris, Khadeer met with the French Ambassador for Human Rights, Francois Zimeray, with whom […]
Le Figaro‘s always-divergent China blog carries a high-society/CCP mash-up with a recent entry regarding Jasmine Li, the youngest daughter of Jia Qinglin, No. 4 in the Party hierarchy and one of the nine permanent members of the CCP Politburo. Jasmine Li, following in the footsteps of other “red princes” (wealthy scions of the revolutionary elite), spent last weekend at the Bal du Debutantes in the Hôtel de Crillon, on the rue Royale in Paris. […]
