CDS essay: As I Please

As I Please
8th March, 2007
I would like to use my final column for this newsletter as an opportunity to review our visions for it at the start, how I felt it worked out, and some personal reflections on my writings. I hope others will continue and improve this newsletter next year, and perhaps the following [...]

CDS essay: But Who Maketh Manners?

But Who Maketh Manners?
6th February, 2007
In a curious move, the authorities in Beijing have imposed a new legislation, effective from this month, outlawing rude shopkeepers. It will become a criminal offence to vent one’s anger, act impatiently, glance at customers disdainfully or act absent-mindedly. Meanwhile, citizens in Shanghai will have to mind their language, or [...]

CDS essay: A Dream of Red Scarves

A Dream of Red Scarves
27th January, 2007
It was recently brought to my attention that although the China Development Society kindly employs me as their resident writer, about four people in the committee actually know who this “John” person is. I have always had underwhelming records with student organisations.
When I entered primary school in China, I [...]

CDS essay: Neither good nor bad enough

Neither good nor bad enough
11th January, 2007
I occasionally wish that someone would just publish the novel “Red Flower Swans of the Sky Daughter Falling” and get it over with. If the title sounds curiously familiar, then it is because Chinese expatriate Literature has been such a success story. And at its heart is one big [...]

My job market paper

Virtually ungoverned
17th December, 2006
China is becoming the new frontier for those studying the internet’s encroachment into the physical world. Even the country’s central bank feels insecure: in November 2006, Li Chao, spokesman for The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said that virtual money had become such a worry that the central bank is drafting regulations [...]

CDS essay: In Defence of Chinese Cooking

In Defence of Chinese Cooking
29th November, 2006
The title seems odd: Chinese cuisine is generally very popular the world over, so why would it need any more support?
Well, it was recently reported that the medical team from the Beijing Olympics Organising Committee told an Olympic food hygiene conference that most of the dishes on offer to [...]

CDS essay: Going off-course

Going off-course
21st November, 2006
It is openly-admitted that the West has for many years attracted a large number of students from across the world to its top universities, and China is the biggest exporter of students in absolute numbers, accounting for 10% of all those studying abroad. However, the annual “Open Doors” report published this month [...]

Interlude

I have been busy lately with a fresh round of applications to extract myself from my job, which I have been doing for barely seven weeks. I have not written a proper journal entry for a long time, but I hope to post a new essay fairly soon. The new piece has been badly neglected [...]

Alma Mater

There is but one serious question that comes to us every time we make a clean break, and that is to ask: what happens when one disappears from memory? My presence effectively disappeared from this blog for months and I am sure I have already lost 99% of my readers for good. That is perfectly [...]

Affirmative action

It has come to my attention that despite my best efforts, my recent writing has been drifting towards matters relating to China/Chinese culture just a bit too much. A certain degree of specialisation or even bias is perhaps inevitable, but letting it go unabated would be unforgivable. It would be a criminal waste of money [...]