Cover art is by the renowned satirist Badiucao If you transcribed every twisted, bitter, sick thought you ever had about China, tied it to a brick, then repeatedly smashed it into someone’s skull, you might give them an experience akin to reading Arthur Meursault’s debut novel Party Members (Camphor Press). There is no more unrelentingly savage satire of modern China ever written, and perhaps deserves more attention than it received. The book traces the journey of Yang Wei, an unremarkable junior official (“one of a billion, not in a billion”) in a third-tier ci ..read more

The current president of China is Xi Jinping. “Uncle Xi” is most-known for his nationwide crackdown on corruption. Who was president before that? If you said Hu Jintao, you’d be right. Hu is remembered mostly for how unremarkable he was – he oversaw a ten-year period of consistent, if unexciting, growth for China, making little noise along the way. But can you recall who held the presidency before Hu’s term? Ladies and gentlemen, we have Jiang Zemin – “the elder.” Jiang Zemin was a pretty popular president in his own time. Though not without criticism, his term marked a breaking point in the ..read more

Ever the Quiet Burier of Ledes, Global Times published a news item Monday that surely qualifies for Hideous China Story of the Year (Relationships Edition)… although GT went for the more casual “Mom jailed for covert contraceptive.” It’s a Turducken of a tale – one that gradually reveals more unpleasant layers with every sentence until, eventually, everybody loses. The action begins in 2015 with a young graduate, Zhang Yang, whose girlfriend, “Yanzi,” is pregnant. Unfortunately, Zhang’s mother Zhang Xiuqin does not approve of the match, and not only pressures Yanzi into getting an a ..read more

SHUO says he’s one of only two people in all of China making this kind of stencil art. “First, [people] just don’t have the awareness. Second, they don’t know what this is”   This piece originally appeared on the China digital media platform Radii, and this edited version is republished here with permission. It’s the kind of balmy Sunday afternoon that makes you want a cold drink, and the Chinese street artist known as SHUO is taking me on a stroll through the hutongs after showing off one of his pieces. “Did you see that?” he suddenly asks on our way to get milkshakes. A ..read more

Per usual, no idea about post frequency, etc. But there it is. We’ve entered the cashless society ..read more

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded 90 years ago on August 1, and to commemorate this round-number anniversary, there was a massive military parade at the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base in Inner Mongolia on Sunday, featuring 12,000 troops and a special message from president Xi Jinping about readiness and party loyalty and winning battles. You don’t care about any of that, though. You want to know about this: Yes, that is Donald Trump in a PLA uniform. No, that is not a real photograph — we have People’s Daily, a Chinese government publication, to thank fo ..read more

Editor’s note: On July 23, the writer Zhang Wumao published an essay called “In Beijing, 20 Million People Pretend to Live” to his public WeChat account. As of the following morning, it had accumulated more than 5 million views and nearly 20,000 comments.  Of course, the article was removed that very afternoon. But by then, the essay had attracted thousands of responses. As our correspondent Megan Pan wrote for Radii: Though the hubbub online has died down, the essay, a meditation on varying facets of life in Beijing, has since spawned over a hundred t ..read more

Ten hours ago: Oh, bother. https://t.co/KZBz255r0c — Dissident Pooh (@DissidentPooh) July 17, 2017 I really hope the person behind this account has “Pooh” and “Tigger” on Google Alerts, if only to run an experiment to see how many times characters from Winnie the Pooh will be mentioned in relation to China: Let this be the start of a beautiful thing… and not one of those two-week Twitter fads. Follow @DissidentPooh now ..read more

Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Prize laureate and one of China’s finest, died tonight in a hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province, having never been officially released from his 11-year sentence for state subversion. He served more than seven of those years behind bars. Today was a good day in Beijing, weather-wise, if not a bit on the hot side, and humid. There were blue skies and white clouds. Moments after Liu Xiaobo’s death, this was the scene: Liu Xiaobo will be remembered by the Chinese people — someday, even if it’s not today or in the near future — as a man of immense dignity and unyielding ..read more

The first authorized English production of Yasmina Reza’s Art begins its four-day Beijing run from tonight, May 11. Since the London premiere of Christopher Hampton’s translation, with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott as the three principals, Marc, Serge and Yvan, Art has raked in over $250 million worldwide, showcased innumerable all-star lineups, stunt casts (including The League of Gentlemen), and award-winning performances. This latest China-based production of the comedy is not about money, stars, or even an Expat in Chinese Film and TV Award: It’s about the art. To learn more ..read more