The death of free Hong Kong was planned in Beijing, but Carrie Lam will go down in history as its chief executioner. On Monday she said she won’t seek a second five-year term as the city’s chief executive, but her legacy is secure. A career civil-servant who prospered under British rule, she was obliged as … Continue reading Carrie “Lapdog” Lam: Fit for House Arrest in a Mong Kok Coffin Apartment?
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Quote of the Week: Shanghai Gets a Taste of Beijing’s Zero-Covid Policy
上海疫情持续严峻，上海市新冠肺炎疫情防控工作领导小组27日晚间无预警宣布，为了“尽快实现社会面动态清零”，决定“在全市范圍内开展新一轮切块式、网格化核酸筛查”，自28日清晨起上海将采取分区、分批封控。 (德国之声中文网 2022.3.28)
Author Sheng Keyi’s “Ukraine Series” of Paintings (盛可以 画)
Her painting aside, Sheng Keyi (盛可以) has also authored several works of fiction, including Northern Girls (北妹) Wild Fruit (野蛮生长), Death Fugue (死亡赋格), The Metaphor Detox Center (锦灰), The Womb (子宫), Paradise (福地), and Nostalgia for the Homeland (怀乡书). Her writing has appeared in languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Japanese and Korean. … Continue reading Author Sheng Keyi’s “Ukraine Series” of Paintings (盛可以 画)
Pic of the Week: Russian Interior Design
Quote of the Week: Book Banning in Amerika
So it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I learned some American high school teachers assign “The Sympathizer” as required reading in their classes. For the most part, I’m delighted. But then I worry: I don’t want to be anyone’s homework. I don’t want my book to be broccoli. I was reassured, however, when a … Continue reading Quote of the Week: Book Banning in Amerika
Surveillance in the People’s Paradise: Update on Henan Province
In Chinese province targets journalists and students in planned surveillance system, based at least partly on a Reuters' new item, we learn that China's Henan Province has commissioned a state-of-the-art surveillance system: A 29 July tender document published on the Henan provincial government’s procurement website details plans for a system that can compile individual files on such … Continue reading Surveillance in the People’s Paradise: Update on Henan Province
Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature: One African Publisher’s Take
During the immediate aftermath of the naming of Zanzibar-born author Abdulrazak Gurnah as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, it seemed that much of the Sinosphere coverage was either scholarly papers penned a few years back by Chinese scholars and reheated for the occasion, or translated snippets of English-language wire service reports pasted … Continue reading Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature: One African Publisher’s Take
Quote of the Week: Yan Lianke Nomination for the Newman Prize
Throughout his career, Yan Lianke has held fast to the notion of the writer as a voice of social or moral conscience, a notion that in China under Xi Jinping appears at once quaint and deeply subversive. (Excerpted from Kirk Denton's nomination of Chinese author Yan Lianke (阎连科) for the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature)
Writing Fiction: “A Degree of Possession”
Whether or how much a book draws from real life isn’t strictly quantifiable . . . Part of this mystery is due to the chaotic consciousness native to the novel-writing process, which requires a degree of possession . . . To dig a book out of the ground can be backbreaking, hand-tearing work; you need to forget what you … Continue reading Writing Fiction: “A Degree of Possession”
“Let a thousand translations bloom”
Mridula Nath Chakraborty on the controversy arising from the resignation of Amanda Gorman’s Dutch translator: Translators ferry across the meaning, materiality, metaphysics and all the magic that may be unknown in the mediums and conventions of their own tongue. The pull of the strange, the foreign, and the alien are necessary for acts of translation. It … Continue reading “Let a thousand translations bloom”
Altaic Storytelling 