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Tag Archives: history
Thoughts on Jia Zhangke’s 24 City 對賈樟柯新電影《24城記》之隨想
Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts: I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last … Continue reading
Movies I’m Watching: The Reader
[spoiler alert] Kate Winslet, as well all know, has had a big year with Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Both are decent films that I really would like to cheer for, though they never seem to reach beyond the B+ … Continue reading
Of Venetian and Gazan ghettos
I was just reading chapter from Richard Sennett’s book Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, a chapter entitled “Fear of Touching”, which was about the creation of the Jewish ghetto (and whence the term originates) … Continue reading
CCP: we’re stupid, it was the economy
I was reading an essay on People.com.cn about another essay: Here is what the People essay says about the original, which was written by aguy from one Zhou Tianyong, a scholar at the Party School*: 文章总结说，由于革命胜利后，党没有从一个工作中心为阶级斗争的“革命党”转变为一个工作中心为经济建设的执政党，对怎样搞社会主义经济建设并不熟悉，学习了苏联模式，而且在资源配置方式上实行了计划经济，生产资料所有制形式上采取了一大二公的国有制、城镇集体所有制和农村人民公社社队体制，在对外关系上走了自我封闭的道路，发展上倾斜于国防工业和重工业。其结果是劳动生产效率较低，科技人员和企业没有创新和技术进步的动力来源，技术进步缓慢，投资建设浪费较大，与整个世界各国经济社会发展的差距越来越大。可以这样评价：建国后的30年里，在全球经济社会发展的竞争中，我们走了弯路，延误了时机。 Which more or less … Continue reading
Qin Hui interview from Southern Metropolis Weekly: social justice and the urban poor in China
These are some excerpts that I translated from the original article in Chinese. 人物周刊：现在有一个现象，就是在城郊结合部农村集体所有制的土地上，建起了很多村民建的房，一租30年，相当于商品房。许多城里人因为买不起城里的房子，会向那边流动，把外来务工者可以租住的农民房的价格又抬高了。 秦晖：对，这个是国际上贫民住房的一个非常重要的问题。实际上政府也没有驱赶穷人，但是贫民区住的人多，价格抬高，穷人住不起就都走掉了。这是市场经济带来的问题，我觉得还是要靠国家福利来解决。 NFZK: Recently there’s been a phenomenon of city people moving outwards towards the countryside, living in homes that were intended for migrant workers and peasants, … Continue reading
Books I’m Reading: Paris: The Secret History
I looked up the word “flaneur” in the index of hte boojks and skipped straight to it: I’d heard this term first in books by and about Walter Benjamin, and the idea of these urban wanderers–poets, wastrels, misfits, outsiders, rebels–was … Continue reading
Life, books, literature, poetry, politics
19th c., balzac, baudelaire, culture, flaneur, history, intellectuals, literature, paris, poems, poetry, poets, revolution, secret, war, writers
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Books I’m Reading: 写给大家的中国美术史
Something’s been running around my mind since I started reading this book: the idea of the scholar-painter. Each of the early Chinese dynasties had court painters, but its during the first centuries AD, after the fall of the Han and … Continue reading
What is going to be said about the life and death of Hua Guofeng?
Hua died on August 20, and as you can expect w/ someone of his particular stature and role in history, obituaries are going to be terse at best: On Baidu news, the Olympics coverage dominated most of the top of … Continue reading
Terracotta warrior lights to debut during Olympics
The original article mentions that these terracotta warrior lights feature more than just the traditional warriors—there are also pregnant women and children, done in a similar style. There are 102 of them and will be displayed at some plaza whose … Continue reading
Maybe we ought to take out “earthquake insurance”
This Xinhua article comes up with some interesting statistics: in the last 300 years, there were 50 natural disasters that claimed over 100,000 lives, and of those, 26 were in China, with the total number of dead numbering 103 million, … Continue reading