ChinaFile Recommends
06.12.17China Drive to Relocate Millions of Rural Poor Runs into Trouble
Financial Times
Villagers return home after struggling with lack of jobs in urban apartments
Green Space
02.16.16
Gorging on Gadgets
Documentary filmmaker Sue Williams is finishing up her latest documentary about our beloved electronic gadgets, Death By Design. I was involved in the project and traveled with Williams to south China’s Guangdong province, to the the town of Guiyu,...
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06.25.15Outcry in Russia over China land lease
Financial Times
Plans to hand a stretch of remote Siberian territory to Chinese investors triggers protests in Russia, underlining how the relationship between both countries is undermined by deep-rooted distrust.
Earthbound China
03.02.15
Village Acupuncture
On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest...
Video
12.15.14
Down to the Countryside
The world has heard much of late about the scale and scope of China’s mass migration from the poor rural countryside to its booming cities. Some think the number of these migrant workers will soon reach some 400 million souls. They have created...
Earthbound China
12.15.14
A Map of China’s Back-to-the-Land Efforts
In our short film “Down to the Countryside,” Sun Yunfan and I follow Ou Ning, an artist and curator who moved from Beijing to the village of Bishan in rural Anhui province in 2013, where he experiments with preserving and revitalizing local heritage...
Earthbound China
01.10.14
Historical Value: A Chinese Town Appraises Its Past
The once-grand entrance of the Mingxian Hall is locked and hidden behind splintered boards and overgrown greenery. Wang Shouchang, a sixty-seven-year-old farmer from Bishan village, leads us into the cramped kitchen of the farmhouse next door and...
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05.21.13Five Years After Quake, Chinese Cite Shoddy Reconstruction
NPR
Five years after the massive Wenchuan quake in China’s Sichuan province left about 90,000 dead and missing, allegations are surfacing that corruption and official wrongdoing have plagued the five-year-long quake reconstruction effort.
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08.06.12Polymath’s Paradise: Artist and Cultural Promoter Ou Ning Confronts China’s Out-of-Control Urbanization
Blouin Artinfo
When I ask Ou Ning how he would answer that perennial dinner party question, "What do you do?," he laughs. It’s not easy for one of China’s true polymaths, but he gives it a try. “I’m a cultural worker,” he offers modestly,...