YOU CAN CHECK ANY CHINESE DICTIONARY, there’s no word for romance. We say ‘Lo Man’, copying the English pronunciation. What the fuck use was a word like romance to me anyway? There wasn’t much of it about in China, and Beijing was the least romantic place in the whole universe. ‘Eat first, talk later,’ as [...]
Entries Tagged as 'China'
Chinese Romance – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo
January 19th, 2012 · No Comments · Chinese, Love, Quotes
Tags:China·love·Practicality·Romance
Two Big Steps – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo
January 18th, 2012 · No Comments · Description, Quotes
When I left my village, it was like I took a step with my right foot and, by the time my left foot came to join it, four years had passed.
Tags:China·Cities·city migration·prose
The Beginning of Youth – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo
January 18th, 2012 · No Comments · Description, Writing
MY YOUTH BEGAN WHEN I WAS 21. At least, that’s when I decided it began. That was when I started to think that all those shiny things in life – some of them might possibly be for me.
Tags:Asian·China·literature
Escape – “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” – Barbara Demick
September 21st, 2011 · No Comments · China, Communism, Economics, History, North Korea, Philosophy, Totalitarianism
“Dr. Kim staggered up the riverbank. her legs were numb, encased in frozen trousers. She made her way through the woods until the first light of dawn illuminated the outskirts of a small village.… Dr. Kim looked down a dirt road that led to farmhouses. Most of them had walls around them with metal gates. [...]
Tags:China·communism·economics·government·philosophy·policy·Starvation·totalitarianism
Dignity – “Democracy, an American novel” – Henry Adams
July 19th, 2011 · No Comments · China, Criticism, Culture, Politics, US Politics
Ratcliffe looked the character of Prime Minister sufficiently well at this moment. He would have held his own, at a pinch, in any Court, not merely in Europe but in India or China, where dignity is still expected of gentlemen.
Tags:China
The Final Verdict on Mao – “China: Its History and Culture” – Morton, W. Scott
April 4th, 2011 · No Comments · China, Communism, Extremism, History, Ideology
The Party’s final conclusion was that Mao had been correct 70 percent of the time and incorrect only 30 percent of the time and that his errors had mostly occurred near the end of his life.
Brainwashing Etymology – “China: Its History and Culture” – Morton, W. Scott
April 4th, 2011 · No Comments · China, Communism, Ideology
Feelings of guilt, shame, and “face” were used as manipulative devices in brainwashing (the literal translation of xi-nao).
Tags:China
Telling – “China: Its History and Culture” – Morton, W. Scott
April 3rd, 2011 · No Comments · China, Communism, Extremism, Ideology, Progressive Politics
“Individual small peasants, if not organized and guided, will spontaneously take the capitalist path” said a People’s Daily editorial in October 1953.
Tags:China
Dreaming His Own Dreams – “China: Its History and Culture” – Morton, W. Scott
April 3rd, 2011 · No Comments · China, Means and Ends, Quotes
..of the united front with the KMT to fight Japan during the Yanan days, (Mao) used an old Chinese saying, “Each dreaming his own dreams while sleeping in the same bed.”
Tags:China
The Opium War – “China: Its History and Culture” – Morton, W. Scott
April 3rd, 2011 · No Comments · China, Colonialism, History, Morality, War
One main cause of the war of 1839-1842, protection of the opium trade, makes this probably the least defensible war Britain has ever fought. But it would be an oversimplification to suppose that opium was the only issue at stake. The fluctuating exactions of the Canton officials, usually known as “squeeze,” have already been mentioned [...]
Tags:China
