Peking’s Choice

By Jonathan Mirsky on June 12, 1997

The recent sentence to six years in prison of one of Tibet’s supreme monks shows Peking’s determination to dominate all events in the region and bring to an end a period of intense confusion within the Chinese Communist Party. For a brief time the regime apparently attempted a reconciliation with the Dalai Lama; but that possibility now seems out of the question.

Holding Out in Hong Kong

By Ian Buruma on June 12, 1997

Flicking through the April issue of the Hong Kong Tatler, a glossy high life magazine modeled after the London Tatler, I was reminded of a story I once heard about the Rothschild house in Paris. When Victor Rothschild visited the Avenue de Marigny in 1944, to see what was left of his cousin’s mansion after four years of German occupation, he found not only Baron Robert’s old butler, Felix, on the premises, but also a fat guestbook kept by the Luftwaffe officers to record their social life. He saw to his consternation that their French guests were exactly the same people whom the Rothschilds had entertained before the war.