When I had finished my meal and was heading home, the landlady came over anxiously and said, "Last night seven police officers came looking for you, they said they were looking for someone from Beijing who spoke Mandarin; they are checking all the guesthouses in Nanba. They were pianjing [片警, a common nickname for...
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China Daily today has a headline that’s too hilarious in its understatement to keep from sharing with you: “Experts: US, China democracy different”. Wow, who would have thought? Thank God we consulted “experts”. Anyway, the New York Times also ran an opinion piece today by Roger Cohen about the potential for democracy emerging in...
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International human rights group Reporters Without Borders said, in terms of reporters, dissidents, netizens, and activists jailed for fighting for freedom of speech, China is far, far ahead of other countries. And it seems as though from China's large population and 56 minority groups, Tibetans seem to be far, far ahead of everyone else...
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I have always considered it rather unfortunate that the one part of Chinese history most Americans know something about — the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 — happens to be a part that many Chinese know little about. Granted, American knowledge doesn’t tend run very deep, people just know that students were killed, and...
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Three days later, Ai Weiwei’s blog is still silent. ChinaGeeks has confirmed that there was a brief update a few days ago that was quickly harmonized, entitled “Let Me Sleep a Bit Longer, Mom, I’m Tired”, which contained some updates and personal anecdotes about some of the students Ai’s project is attempting to memorialize....
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Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang recently learned the hard way that economic happiness and stability cannot erase a people’s historical memory entirely. According to Learning Cantonese, a recent question and answer section he participated in went something like this: Margaret Ng (a HK legislator): “On the 20th anniversary of the 1989 incident, many...
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