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Category Archives: Reports

Soft focus, soft censorship, self-censorship: “Poetry,” “China,” and Biz Journo Expats

As much of a pleasure as it was to appear at the Shanghai International Literary Festival with Jen Bervin, Jen Hyde and Wen Jin, it was one mixed — as is always the case for me here in Shanghai — with significant measures of the odd and the off. Don’t get me wrong: One of the things I like about life in […]

Target One

no thing clever to say isn’t nothing enough to have said and been done with

Virtual Panoptical Network

US American friend says of the VPN service she’s using on her visit to Shanghai that it seems legit, that they seem legit, as, you know, a little company, not — if I get her implied meaning right — something necessarily obliquely sponsored, facilitated, or even outright run by a covert arm of US-Western power. The company’s website felt legit to her because of […]

Shanghai report No. 2 for Lungfull! Magazine

Missed the fireworks in Shanghai as the Year of the Rabbit hit. Instead, Malacca, staying first in a hostel just down the street from a 18th century Kampung Kling mosque and a riot of Chinese temples full of incense and oranges. Malaysian tourists everywhere for the New Year holiday. Checked the situation in Egypt daily on my Kindle. […]

Shanghai report No. 1 for Lungfull! Magazine

Shanghai’s spitting out poetry at a tremendous rate. In English. China recently became the world’s largest English-speaking country and is slated to be the world’s largest English-speaking country by 2025 (Google it) and the poetic forecast looks… well… kinda like deironized Flarf. Of course, stodgy traditionalists complain that Chinglish can’t match authentic American Flarf in nuance, […]