Month: August 2008

  • Olympics Journalists Say More About Their Home Country Than the Host

    What have the Olympic Games done to affect the world’s discussions about China? Perhaps, very little. Instead of delving into the diversity and complexity of “China,” journalists focused on sports, especially the journalists’ home team. Cultural reporting, too, reflected the journalists’ national identities. John Burns, a veteran foreign correspondent for The New York Times remembers…

  • China's New Anti-Ship Missiles and U.S. Forces in Japan

    China is working on the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, according to some defense analysts. Tobias Harris writes that the ASBM may be based on an existing missile that has a range of 1,800 km, and he notes that such a missile would threaten U.S. ships based in Japan. While it may be hard to…

  • Photographer Michael Wolf's Hong Kong 'Architecture of Density'

    This picture is stolen from photographer Michael Wolf’s website, where he as lots of great work, including this series on Hong Kong architecture called “Architecture of Density.” The work has been shown at Beijing’s 798 Photo Gallery among many other places. Check out much more of his work at his website. [via Coudal]

  • Foreign Reporters and Scoripions at Beijing's Wangfujing

    Many people from outside China marvel at what Chinese eat—or, more accurately, what you can order at tourist locations. At Wangfujing’s Snack Street in Beijing, you can order a scorpion skewer. Jim Boyce, Beijing’s leading nightlife blogger, has been tracking media mentions in horror. The truth, of course, is that virtually no one eats scorpion…

  • On the multiplicity of individuals in China

    James Fallows got worked up over David Brooks’ ignorant musing about Chinese and Asian collectivity. The product was this excellent paragraph, which follows part of Brooks’ words. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If…