Well, it seems that blogger (and everything related to Google except it's Chinese version) is currently being well and truly blocked. But when I came back to have a look at my good old blog here on Livejournal, it seems that it is no longer blocked by the censorious hounds unleashed--for the past two years or so--upon it by the Chinese government. ( Read more... )

I'm sorry folks, but the Chinese government (and a website redesign by the LJ crew) have made posting onto this blog from China entirely impossible. Perhaps you had already guessed that fact, seeing as I haven't posted anything in about two or three months. May the scorpions of my belated wrath haunt the Chinese Communist Party's dreams for ( Read more... )

Although I've reassured various friends over the past couple weeks that the flooding of Chongqing--which they've seen footage of on the TV, here in China,--has mostly been restricted to the countryside around the city proper (the countryside has much less infrastructure and so various villages and towns get routinely swept off the cliffside by ( Read more... )

Alas, our school here in Chongqing seems to be well on its way to the realm of the Dodo bird or at least the Cloud Leopard, probably due to the extremely timid funding of our promotional activities by our Singaporean boss/franchisee owner. To be fair, having a foreign assistant manager (me) without any prior management experience--and only six ( Read more... )

So let us say that you wished to bend a particular government around the pinky finger of your chosen issue--in this case I'm thinking of the natural environment, its degradation, and the reversal of such ( Read more... )

I saw my first demonstration, earlier this week ( Read more... )

Below my window ( Read more... )

I recall the powerful lamps trained onto cat skulls and milk conchs, illuminating gaunt art-student fingers scratching away at creamy sketch paper with 3B, HB, and 6H pencils in the quiet darkness of the Scientific Illustration room. Even the treacheries of pen & ink hatching, or the threat of carbon dust painting cannot quell my nostalgia for ( Read more... )

The next day we reached the village of Banzai after much consternation and bureaucracy resulting from a directive to protect Mao Zedong-related historical sites from marauding foreign. tourists/terrorists. Banzai is a collection of ancient stone--and newer cement--above a valley of rice fields, mountains gathered like teeth along each side. A great ( Read more... )

Nevermind that the owner of the Chongqing Aston, a Mr. Lee of Singapore, is a big fan (as am I) of that precocious book, "The World is Flat", but I have this phrase on my mind for an entirely different reason. That reason is the state of my life here in Chongqing ( Read more... )