It’s June 4th today. 20 years ago, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing a huge protest movement was violently suppressed. The numbers are disputed, but hundreds, if not thousands were killed in clashes with the military. Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 4 Incident, or just Six-Four — whatever you call it, the event had a big impact […]
Posts with the Anka Lee tag
good feelings and the Olympics
After visiting grand Shanghai and glittering Chongqing, it was in a taxi in Dongguan that my view of China took a small, but important shift. I was traveling with a friend to the South China Mall, down the main road that stretches from the city’s train station all the way out to the suburbs. It […]
Two Guangzhou Neighborhoods
In the last days of the Olympics, neighbors in Sanyuanli and residents of the Clifford Estates left their televisions on so that the final matches and last medal ceremonies set the backdrops of their daily lives. The neighborhoods are similar in many ways. They both sit on the edges of the megacity of Guangzhou. The […]
Olympics+
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people lately about how the world is covering the Olympics. Along with the palpable excitement and pride on the part of Chinese people, and intrigue and appreciation on the part of folks from other parts of the world, there is a lot of frustration out there. Is […]
joining The China Beat
I wrote my first post for The China Beat today. It was a Q&A with a political scientist, Benjamin Read, who has been studying homeowners associations in China. He put the recent protest in Shanghai in context: So I think we should guard against reading too much into this event. Howard W. French, in his […]