When Ernest Hemingway somewhat presciently referred to Paris as a movable feast (“wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you”) he captured the concerns of the long-term expat rather concisely. So why does everyone like to compare life in Beijing to Paris in the 1920s? And what are the writers in our midst producing?
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by the editors of While We’re Here: China Stories from a Writer’s Colony, a compilation of short stories, poems, and more that have been lovingly assembled by Alec Ash and Tom Pellman of The Anthill.
Recommendations:
- “China’s Bold Push into Genetically Customized Animals,” Christina Larson, Scientific American, November 17, 2015
- Dispatches from Pluto, Richard Grant (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
- “Logical Thinking (Luoji Siwei),” Luo Zhenyu
- The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages, M. A. Aldrich (Hong Kong University Press, 2008)
- Voice Map (Smartphone app)