Thongdao, an obscure town in southern Hunan, is where Mao started in December 1934 to play a prominent role in the ultimate victory over the…
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Month: September 2025
A critical analysis of Mao’s achievements – Part 1
Why is Mao revered and celebrated by so many when he is responsible for the “two political disasters” of the Great Leap Forward and the…
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How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
This 2016 book won two book prizes. It had been hailed as game-changing in its economic analysis of China from 1978 to 2016. Deng Xiaoping…
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China and Japan – Part 2
Japanese culture and arts only grew after absorbing Chinese traditions via Korea and China from 600 to 838 AD. Absorption was the most during the…
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The Rain, the Books, and the Boy in Pudu
Lazy Sundays, rainy afternoons. I recall fondly my lazy and quiet Sunday afternoons of my tender years between the ages of 4 to 6. In…
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Memoirs of Old China
I love reading memoirs of lives in China in days long gone. Here are two gems. One is by an American lady who went to…
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The Tibet Question
What’s the origin of the conflict between the 14th Dalai Lama and China? What is the history of the relationships between Tibet and the Mongols…
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When The Red Gates Opened – Part 1
Unless you are Arundhati Roy, whose memoir on her relationship with her difficult but distinguished mom, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ (published 2025), was reviewed…
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The Hungry Ghost Festival – Part 1
In Peking, 1939: Lu Hsing Yuan (HY Lowe) described how the Ghost Festival was celebrated in Peking in one of his installments in the English…
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Behind the Fall of the Gang of Four
Who prevented the Gang of Four from seizing power? When Mao died in 1976, it would appear to many that his wife Jiang Qing and…
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