Saving Face

One of the things you hear the most about China is that people are obsessed with “face”. I’ve always thought this was a bit Orientalist, since it suggests that we (i.e. Chinese) are only concerned with superficial things. But sometimes, “face”, understood a strange intangible honour system, shows up in unexpected places in China. There…

Yellow Skin, White Masks.

I stood in the piazza, surrounded by tinkling espresso cups and beer glasses. This wasn’t Europe – this was Tianjin, a city near Beijing where I was visiting my aunt and uncle. This was “Italian style town”, an area of in the old Italian quarter of the city.[1] “Italian style” was a bit of a…

The Great Firewall and the Political Power of Porn

“But how will you do research?” This was one of the most common questions I got before going to Beijing. Research in a think-tank requires having access to a large range of sources, much of it political. Yet a lot of popular sources remain blocked in China by the Great Firewall – Google, the BBC,…