Last week the New York Review of Books published an article called China’s Way of Happiness, by Ian Johnson. The article is an interview of Dr. Richard Madsen, a scholar on religion in China, about his research on happiness in China. Here are some interesting excerpts from Madsen’s comments. On the subject of his next […]
Learning Chinese in the 1600’s
I love history, I love China, and I love maps. This explains why I am currently working my way through a book about the history of a Chinese map! It’s called Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer. Here’s the description on Amazon: In 2009, an extraordinary map of China […]
Beijing – Bursting at the Seams
A couple of weeks ago, Xinhua News Agency announced that the population of Beijing was more than 21 million: Beijing’s population reached 21.15 million at the end of last year, 2.2 percent up on 2012, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics announced Thursday. Permanent residents in the Chinese capital increased by 455,000 since the […]
A House on a Horse
Last week, after I wrote about the term “mashang” (on the horse) and how it’s being used to express the hopes and wishes for the Year of the Horse, a reader in China sent me this photo. It’s a play on the New Year’s Greeting, “mashang you fang,” which conveys the wish that this is […]
Getting Out and About — Beijing and Las Vegas
A few weeks back travel expert Kendra Thornton contacted me about doing a joint post on our favorite places to visit. It sounded like a fun collaboration, and this post is the result. I write about a few fun things to see and do in Beijing, and Kendra writes about one of her favorite destinations, […]
