The World of Judge Dee
Di Renjie (狄仁杰) was a heroic figure in real life, but his fictional afterlife has been even more spectacular. Di (630-700) was one of the great judges and administrators of the Tang Dynasty (618-907),...
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When Chinese Goes Wrong
Learning Chinese is immensely difficult and the process often throws up its fair share of embarrassing mistakes. The fluent in Mandarin, former Liberal Democrat leader, Lord Ashdown tells a great...
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Man meets woman
A new series of pictogram-based infographics shows cultural and social differences between men and women’s thinking and behavior. Man Meets Woman is a series of simple pictograms by Beijing-born,...
View ArticlePutin biographies all the rage in China
In anticipation of the upcoming APEC meeting, biographies of certain nation’s leaders seem to be a hot trend on the Chinese mainland, with books on macho Russian President Vladimir Putin, and South...
View ArticleSelling Self-Help
In Legend of the Dragonslayer Sword (《倚天屠龙记》), a well-known kung fu romance set in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), protagonist Zhang Wuji is an average young man without good looks, talent, or great...
View ArticleQing Era Satire Has Lessons for Today’s Corrupt
Sometimes satire has a way of staying relevant for far longer than was originally intended. In the spirit of China’s current anti-corruption crackdown – as the exploitation and profiteering committed...
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Ancient Chinese Cinderella Story
The recent box office sensation Cinderella is one of Disney’s go-to princess tales, and written versions go as far back as Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone in 1634 and in Charles Perrault’s...
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Lao She’s London
During the 20th century, many a great foreign writer wrote excellent books on the Chinese experience, from Somerset Maugham’s eccentric vignettes in On a Chinese Screen (1922) through to Paul Theroux’s...
View ArticleTrekking Cat Country
It was condemned by the authorities, a commercial and critical flop, and even the author recognized it as a failure, but Cat Country has endured. Perhaps it’s because the criticisms of universal...
View ArticleTales of the Marvelous: Ma Zheng
Pei Xing (裴铏) was known as a pioneer of short fiction in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), largely because of his work Tales of the Marvelous (《传奇》), a three-volume collection of short stories. Each tale...
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