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Scholarship and education
A head above the pack is still behind?Posted by Ralph Jennings on Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 9:04 PM
 Model rises above the cookie cutter at Beijing auto show Short. Heavy. Dark skinned. Over 30 without a spouse. Over 40 without a child. Your co-worker who eats lunch after 2 p.m. These mutants might as well start their own TV quiz shows for all the questions they've got coming in China. This woman’s complaint about her unusual height, for which she was looked up to like the recent solar eclipse, describes the deep fixation with looking alike. Student letters to a foreign agony uncleDear Ralph, I'm a really tall girl, 177 centimeters, far exceeding the average female height in China. As a result, I have lots of trouble almost every day. I have to struggle to get used to the strange light from the eyes of most people who I encounter. Everybody wants to know about my height to fulfill a curiosity. My roommates never give up kidding me by asking such questions as "what's the height of your boyfriend in the future?" What's more, sometimes a boy who is shorter than me may suddenly murmur behind my back, "it's too unfair." I don't know whether I want to laugh or cry. Would you give me some advice on how to deal with these embarrassing situations? -Amy, Beijing June 2001 |
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 The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
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+ Korean history doesn't fly on Chinese TV screens (2007.09): SARFT puts the kibbosh on Korean historical dramas. + Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet. + David Moser on Mao impersonators (2004.10): I first became aware of this phenomenon in 1992 when I turned on a Beijing TV variety show and was jolted by the sight of "Mao Zedong" and "Zhou Enlai" playing a game of ping pong. They both gave short, rousing speeches, and then were reverently interviewed by the emcee, who thanked them profusely for taking time off from their governmental duties to appear on the show.
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