Safe From Harm
Yesterday morning in Kunming, two buses exploded, killing two people and injuring fourteen. The attacks occurred on the same bus route, spaced sixty-five minutes apart, at 7:05 and 8:10 a.m. What’s clear is that the attacks were planned; what’s unclear is by whom and to what end.
Olympics Go Home
I respectfully request that the Olympics leave China. Please take the Olympic flame back to Athens. Instead of bringing the joy, prosperity, and openness that was promised, the Games have brought us nothing but headache. Our lives have been made more complicated and wearying, so I make this appeal of behalf of foreigners in China, and not a few Chinese as well: Olympics go home.
The Myth of the West: Part 1 – Kaifang
Orientalism is a powerful idea in Western culture. It has associations with being strange, foreign, or representing the Other. It conjures up images of an ancient society, filled with narrow-eyed, inscrutable men; willowy women with painted faces and silk dresses; and benign septuagenarians with fists of steel and a mouth full of riddles. It is a compelling image, one most Westerners treat as phantasmagoria; a myth with little substance in today’s reality. In China, there is an equally compelling myth called xifang, or Western. But unlike Orientalism in the West, this myth is still very much alive and relevant to today’s Chinese.
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