Yesterday I posted a rant about how the Olympics ought to be depoliticized and treated as a game rather than a political spectacle. Of course this in itself is a naive aspiration, since (as one of the commenters to my post rightly remarked) by its very nature the Olympics plays into our atavistic nineteenth century nationalisms, with nations sending their best athletes to compete for a countable stack of medals, to be tallied up at the end like coins.
Read MoreTempests in Teapots: The Beijing Olympics and the World Press
“I wish we could go back to the Cold War so that the Olympics would be interesting.” Thus spakeAmerican actor John C. Reilly in jest during a mock interview with his co-star Will Ferrel for ESPN. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ILh9X2wRA) But the statement got me thinking about how the Beijing Olympics is being treated and mistreated by the international media. First, there is the false promise, made by who knows who, that somehow the Olympics would CHANGE China. I mean, let’s be serious. This is a country of 1.3 billion people struggling over a very limited set of resources. 1.3 billion, foax. Think on that for a minute. If you took the entire population of America and subtracted it from China, YOU’D STILL HAVE A BILLION PEOPLE to feed, house, and clothe. And you think a two-week sporting event is going to change their lives???
Read MoreBack on Track in Muggy Shanghai
Summer has hit Shanghai with a vengeance, slamming us bugs into the pavement like a great big fly-swatter. Having lived in Aus for all those years I’d forgotten how jarring four extreme seasons can be. It’s just hot as hell out there today. And humid—like a great big bowl of steaming wonton soup. Thank Buddha for air conditioning, even though it’s a contributor to global warming, which is just making the problem worse in the long run. But we humans, we’re short-term thinkers. Looking out for our own comfort without regard for the generations to come.
Read MoreGarden Memories of an Illustrious Past: A Weekend Visit to Suzhou
As everyone knows, Suzhou is famous for its Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) gardens, built by wealthy families as retreats from busy urban life and cultural centers for them to meet with their fellow elites (the best English-language academic study of these gardens is Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China). The name “garden” is a bit misleading. These large walled-in compounds were designed to be both living quarters for urban elites and miniature worlds, with complex yet aesthetically satisfying arrangements of mountains, rivers, oceans, and forests represented by well-placed rocks, ponds, creeks, and bonsai gardens. Thus, they represented the fantasy of man’s domination and control over the natural world, or if you prefer a more euphemistic term, man’s “harmony” with nature.
Read MoreBeaches and Buddhas: A Weekend Trip to the Zhoushan Islands of Shenjiamen, Zhujiajian, and Putuoshan
This past weekend our friends Paul and Stephanie organized a trip to the Zhoushan islands off the Zhejiang coast (see this nice map).
Read MoreAnother Sign of Old Shanghai Vanishing
This morning we were surprised to find blue skies instead of the usual rain. My mother and I took advantage of the weather and headed out for a walk. Our mission was to find the former address of an acquaintance of hers in the Boston area. Her friend, a 70-something year old man named Rolf Wetzell, grew up in Shanghai. He left in the late 1940s on the eve of the revolution, and never returned. He wanted my mother to find his old house, which he said was located at lane 189 on Kinnear Road.
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