Viewpoint
02.03.22

Keeping the Flies Out

Anne Stevenson-Yang
from Mekong Review

The first time I rode a public bus in China, in 1985, a young woman came up to me and ran her hand up and down my arm to feel the body hair. Foreigners were like rare animals then: precious, strange, probably dangerous. Surveillance was constant...

The NYRB China Archive
03.26.20

The Flowers Blooming in the Dark

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

It’s possible to identify another period that might surpass the 1980s as China’s most open: a 10-year stretch beginning around the turn of this century, when a rich debate erupted over what lay ahead. As in the past, many of those speaking out...