Isabel Hilton: When I heard the news of the death of Pierre Ryckmans, better known by his pen name, Simon Leys, I began to hunt in my bookshelves for the now yellowing and grimy copies of Chinese Shadows and The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, both published in English translation in 1977.
Zhu Shenghao.
Lin Shu anthology.
Oberon (played by Pierre Adeli) in a performace of A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, June 10, 2014.
The United States "has become the top destination for Chinese fugitives fleeing the law," the China Daily newspaper said, citing Liao Jinrong, director general of the ministry's International Cooperation Bureau.
A Shanghai court sentenced British corporate detective Peter Humphrey to 2.5 years in prison for illegally obtaining private information on Chinese citizens for pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.
Chinese regulators appear to be energetically expanding enforcement of the antimonopoly law, and foreign companies fear that they could become easy targets.
At the end of a rollicking production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—directed by Tim Robbins and staged in China in June by the Los Angeles-based Actors’ Gang—the director and actors returned to the stage for a dialogue with the Beijing audience.
The questions ran the normal gamut from accents to costumes to staging, and then one woman asked which Shakespeare the Gang planned to perform next. The affable Robbins turned the question around, asking what she would like to see.
“Macbeth,” came the answer.
This week on Sinica, Jeremy and David welcome back Kaiser to remember the life and lessons of his father, Jenkai Kuo (Guo Jingkai) (郭倞闓). He was an upstanding man who spent much of his life dedicated to his passions, none more important than his family. From the beginning, he formed a strong self-identity as Chinese and, after raising his family in America, dedicated himself to building bridges to China.
While the extent of China's soil pollution crisis is becoming clearer, the consensus on what to do next is still lacking.
The results of the state soil survey earlier this year were damning: 16.1% of sampling points nationwide were in breach of soil quality standards, with farmland suffering the highest failure rate at 19.4%.
