Why are international travelers turning away from China?
Differing attitudes toward historical preservation and a surging domestic tourism market are among the reasons
Category: Columns
‘Absurd Accident’ is a Violent Comedy About Dumb People That Would Make the Coen Brothers Proud
Li Yuhe’s “Absurd Accident” is a well-executed exercise in what comic writers have known since Shakespeare: an audience loves knowing more than the characters.
Zhang Yang Takes a 1200 km Stroll Through Tibet in the ‘Road’ Movie That Isn’t
Zhang Yang’s 2015 work, Paths to The Soul, follows a group of Tibetan villagers on a 1200 km (or about 750 miles) pilgrimage to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. It’s probably not a documentary, though it damn well looks like one.
How Does a Tea Become Good?
We all know what a good cup of tea tastes like. It’s light and refreshing, yet complex and confident. But how does a cup of tea become good?
Vines, Magic and World Peace: My Astonishing Chinese Live Streaming Discovery
This week has been a bit of a game-changer.
Theory and Practice: Observing Modern Clinical TCM
The pulse TCM physicians are concerned with is a different pulse from the one you can measure with a cuff. The tongue tells them more information about the patient’s wellbeing than a biomedical professional might be able to glean.
Singing Back to the Steppe: Kazakh Poetry Battles in Contemporary Xinjiang
On a summer evening in 2015, when I was attending a friend’s wedding after-party in a small village in Mori in Northern Xinjiang, a professional aqin – an oral poet who improvises while performing – sat next to me playing his dombra (a Kazakh two-stringed instrument)
‘Fly With the Crane’: Li Ruijin’s Colorful Meditation on Death
Lao Ma, unlike you, spends most of his time waiting to die.
China’s Latest Proposal to Block Internet VPNs Still Doesn’t Make Sense
The “VPNs are going to be blocked in China” story seems to get written at least once a year....
The Sky Turns Black: Convincing My Chinese Mother-in-Law to Accept Me, Her Son’s Husband
I came home early. You had pulled all our furniture away from the walls, the better to scrub every vestige of dust from existence. But you weren’t scrubbing.
