After four thrilling years, our run has come to an end Ed: Please note this site is no longer active, but is archived here in full. – Alec Ash In September 2017 we launched the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, “for the sinophile and the sinocurious,” to fill in the white space of China coverage. Since then we have published nearly 600 essays, reviews, dispatches, podcasts and more on Chinese society, politics, culture and history, from a range of trusted voices. We’ve been ...| China Channel
One more round of recommendations for the road, from our editors Since the launch of the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel in September 2017, we have occasionally featured a staff picks column of recommendations from our masthead of editors and advising editors – from new China works to overlooked gems (even rice crackers and Finnish saunas). We’re resurrecting the feature for one final hurrah: recommendations of China sources of knowledge, from websites to podcasts, new newslette...| China Channel
Seeking enlightenment and energy drinks in Shangri-la – Alec Ash Listen to Kaiser Kuo read an audio version of this story The plane juddered in a stomach-turning lurch as it banked steeply to the left, clearing a hilly ridge to reveal Shangri-la. It was a moment we have all had: a sudden jolt of turbulence, or drop in altitude, that reminds us we are in a metal box miles above the hard ground – before a safe landing makes us feel like milksops for ever doubting. Yet here the irony was ...| China Channel
Robert Foyle Hunwick reviews Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China, edited by Harry Rothschild and Leslie Wallace, is a dirty baker’s dozen of essays featuring the kind of “impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, depraved poet-literati, devious scofflaws, and disloyal officials” needed for a broad study of medieval mischief. The period under scrutiny is fairly broad, beginning with the violent unification of China by Qin S...| China Channel
My accidental connection with Mao’s good soldier – Andrea Worden Each year, as March 5 – known in China as “Learn from Lei Feng” Day – approaches, I feel nostalgic. In the early 1990s, Lei Feng and I became inseparable. I’ve kept an eye on him ever since. China’s model hero of selfless service to the people and unwavering loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party has been used over the years as a tool to stoke the legitimacy of the Party. In 1990, Lei Feng, Mao’s “good sold...| China Channel
Courtney Han visits her ancestral home in China My Dad grew up in a small fishing village about two hours northwest of Shanghai. His stories about his hometown sound more like Mount Olympus than a poor Chinese village with a flooding problem. According to him, nowhere else in the universe was the air as sweet, the trees as lush and the jade-toned water as beautiful as in the laojia. I was born in Beijing, where my mother’s family lived, and moved to the US when I was five. My father’s e...| China Channel
Trouble on the plateau – an episode of the Little Red Podcast With the world’s attention on industrial-scale oppression in Xinjiang, developments in Tibet are passing beneath the radar. But activists are warning of a full-spectrum assault on the Tibetan way of life, as Tibetan language teaching is outlawed and urbanisation campaigns relocate nomads from their ancestral pastures. The CCP has underlined its determination to choose the next Dalai Lama, and Tibetans were recently urged by t...| China Channel
Jonathan Chatwin visits a new museum dedicated to Party Discipline in Wuhan “Do you know where Mao’s old house is?” the hotel receptionist asked his colleague. The screen of my phone was zoomed in on a small grey square, labelled ‘Comrade Mao Zedong’s Former Residence’. Neither of them had heard of it, so they called their manager over, and the four of us stood in the echoey, white-tiled reception of my cheap Wuhan hotel, reorienting my phone to try and figure out where I was goin...| China Channel
Darren Byler reviews The War on the Uyghurs by Sean Roberts In his recent book The War on the Uyghurs, Sean Roberts, a scholar of Chinese and Central Asian politics at George Washington University, describes how Uyghur responses to state violence have often been officially misrecognized as “terrorism” – and the way this has provided cover for a pernicious contemporary colonial project. The history of the “terrifying” of the Uyghurs is relatively recent: just nineteen short years. It...| China Channel
A selection of poems by Qiu Jin, in new translation by Yilin Wang Translator’s note: Qiu Jin (秋瑾) was a Chinese revolutionary, feminist, poet, and essayist who lived from 1875 to 1907. Defying the gender expectations of her time, she acquired a traditional scholarly education as well as learning martial arts, sword-fighting, and horseback riding. As she struggled within an unhappy marriage, she connected with other Chinese feminist activists, pawned her jewels to study abroad in Japan, ...| China Channel