Much of what we know of Gendun Chopel in the West must surely be due to the efforts of Donald Lopez, who tells us that he’s written six books on him; “I had not intended to write so much about him,” he says on the first page of this new book, but readers should be…
Every young pup sent to East Asia is probably given Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to read, especially if one is male, and especially if one’s boss is both male and Chinese. Anyway, I was.
It’s always been a pleasure to handle a Folio Society book, and having three of them at one time, all on Asian themes, was even better.
There’s a moment, late in Lillian Li’s debut novel, where one of the main characters shouts in frustration at her current situation and, in particular, at the owner-manager of the restaurant where she works:
Immigration reform’s prominence in global news doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. It’s an especially heated topic in the United States when immigrants aren’t filling such sought-after professions as nuclear engineers and information technology experts. Regardless of one’s position on immigration, however, it’s surely in everyone’s best interest for all immigrants to succeed…
The predominant narrative on Sino-African relations is relatively simple. After more than three decades of sustained economic expansion, China is an economic juggernaut, with trade and investment overflowing its borders and into the global market. One the one hand, China, with its overcapacity, seeks new markets and new places from which to secure natural resources…
Africa is, as far as development is concerned, the next frontier. China is leading the charge in setting up factories and businesses across the continent. McKinsey’s Irene Yuan Sun writes in The Next Factory of the World that this will help Africa become a “global manufacturing powerhouse” as it follows China’s path to industrialization. However…
The title of Daniel Kurtz-Phelan’s new book about US General George Marshall’s efforts to bring about peace between the Nationalists and Communists in China after the end of the Second World War should be “The Impossible China Mission”. Marshall’s ill-fated mission was the product of wishful thinking and hubris on the part of policymakers in…
Approximately 180km east of the Middle Kingdom sits an island state commonly referred to as “The Bicycle Kingdom”. If you live in Japan, Europe, or North America and own a bicycle, there is a good chance that a number of its parts were manufactured in Taiwan. From ultra-light carbon fibre frames and the latest electric,…
In January 2018, Australian Senator Sam Dastyari of the Labor Party resigned. It was the culmination of a year-long scandal involving foreign donations and influence peddling. In his support for China’s claims in the South China Sea, Dastyari disagreed with the China policy of both the government and the Australian Labor Party. It was revealed…
The internet was supposed to have delivered China into freedom by now. But that optimistic consensus has been proven wrong so far. In their books, academics Rongbin Han and Margaret Roberts, attempt to explain why.
The 2018 “Le French May” opened in Hong Kong with The Painting on the Wall from the Ballet Preljocaj. The inspiration for this new work is a Chinese fairy tale from the Qinq Dynasty-era Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, collected (not unlike the Brothers Grimm, except more than a century earlier) by Pu Songling…
Based on her performance at the 29 April Grand Finals Concert, Wu Hongni was declared one of the five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
Wu Changshi 吳昌碩 was an extraordinary artist and a major force in late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chinese art. A true literatus in a changing cultural landscape, he combined the traditional scholarly arts with popular subject matter in a manner that would revolutionize painting. The following series of “views” represent an accumulation of forays into an…
East is East, and West is West, but the twain did meet and influenced each other unpredictably. For instance, the post-colonial Asia encountered Christianity during its first interactions with the West. The fruit of such a meeting is the post-colonial religion that is practiced in different parts of the continent as Christianity. Jesus is a…