Car alarms are chirping, buzzing, screaming. The fire crackers have been going off regularly here in Beijing for the past fifteen days. It’s Chinese New Year. That doesn’t just mean the day; it means the first half of the lunar month, so 15 days right up until today, the full moon in the year of the Tiger. Even though this…   …read more.

I’ve spent the last two weeks translating in a tiny recording studio tucked into a heavily subdivided hutong (alley) here in the Beijing lake district called Hou Hai. The neighbours are curious about me and the tattooed collection of dreadlocked boys swarming about the mysterious blue door that regularly leaks grooves — new music — that has never before been…   …read more.

Newsletter Final Thought, December 2008 It’s only 4:17 but it is dark in Beijing. There’s no daylight savings time here. I just got home from the crispy cold of outside, having pedaled my bike back from the subway and then the post office. I ride a rickety old blue basket bike here that keeps me sitting upright like a prim,…   …read more.