Warning: This piece is written with irony. If you were born without an irony gland, or had it removed, it is best you read no further. No animals were made…
One of the many attractions that continue to lure me back to Hong Kong is that it is a city that has raised signage to a high art and lowered…
In last month’s posting on “Thugs and Bullies” [70.4] I raised the question of whether, in instances in which there are tyrannical heads of state such as Mubarak and Gaddafi…
It was a bit reminiscent of a decade ago; people in the streets wrapped in stars and stripes, the strains of God Bless America, but this time with triumphal shouts…
Recently, in a movie theatre in Hong Kong I watched the excellent, award-winning The Kings Speech. Seated around me were Hong Kong people who had lived under royal hegemony until 1997.*…
When Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth in 1931 China was still such terra incognita to virtually all Occidentals that when casting was done for the movie version in 1936 the lead…
Historians have used different dualities to describe history and its periods: BC/AD, Dark Ages and Enlightenments, Kings and Battles, the Clash of Civilizations, and various revolutions. But current events incline…
Awakened by the mounting ambient noise of a Hong Kong morning my night fogged mind reminds me that I am having my sixth birthday in this exotic city. I lay…
Veteran journalist Sebastian Junger and videographer Tim Hetherington spent an embedded year with an American combat unit posted to a remote hilltop—eventually named “Restrepo” for its fallen medic—in the Korangal…
My dear, departed friend and collaborator, movie director Denis Sanders used to love to tell jokes impugning people with elitist social class pretentions. One in particular that I remember (that…