Hungry Ghosts – Finding The Past In Modern China

“Resolutely prevent not believing in Marx and Lenin and believing in ghosts and spirits.” – The Central Committee of the Communist Party, Opinions on strengthening the Party’s political construction, Xinhua News, February 27th, 2019   Above an ancient kiln, dating back over a thousand years, was the incongruous shape of a smokestack. Below at the...

The Secret of Reddit Island – Thoughts On Taiwan, Upvotes, And Social Media

The Secret of Reddit Island What does it mean, I wonder, to be ‘Reddit’? Sometimes I use that site, massively popular social media platform and enormous repository of threads, data, images, and disturbing nonsense. Not much. It’s not a bad place to be sometimes I guess, but my brain is addicted to habit – to...

Based And Juchepilled – North Korea And People On The Internet

“The physical life of an individual person is limited, but the life of the masses united as an independent social-political organism is immortal.… Only when an individual becomes a member of this community can he acquire the immortal social-political life.” – Kim Jong-il -INTRODUCTION: FOOTSTEPS- There are three countries called the Democratic People’s Republic of...

Your Memes End Here – Metal Gear, A Retrospective (Or, The Life And Times Of Big Boss)

! lots of spoilers ahead for basically everything metal gear ! “GO AHEAD, SOLID SNAKE!” – Beginnings – Metal Gear 1 and 2 In 1987’s Metal Gear for the MSX, you play as rookie soldier Solid Snake (lmao) of the special forces organisation Foxhound, deployed to the South African military base Outer Heaven on the...

Big White And People’s War – Thoughts on COVID In China, 2022 Edition

It feels a little like déjà vu. Early 2020 was the big one, do you remember? The Wuhan lockdown, Li Wenliang, all of China freezing in place. Cases in your country but not yet in your country. The heady days where you could publish an article entitled “Why Democracies Are Better At Fighting Outbreaks” and...

Jaroslav Kalfar’s Spaceman of Bohemia, A Review- On Visible/Invisible Places, The Czech Republic, And Mo Yan’s Diseased Language

Last year I read the novel Spaceman of Bohemia, a scifi tale of the Czech Republic’s first astronaut venturing into deep space for a dangerous solo mission, a man doing so trying to atone for his family’s communist past, who runs into trouble and meets an alien and thinks a lot about home. It was...

Disneyland with Chinese Characteristics – Culture, Capital and Splash Mountain

“Shanghai Disneyland is authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.” – Bob Iger There’s many restaurant chains in China that offer Sichuan-style spicy hotpot, and in the middle of dinner at one of them it’s possible you might get a surprise. As you’re choking on a piece of especially peppery beef, reassuring your Chinese friends -who are...

Carrying Pictures of President Sun – Political Ritual, Political Failure, And A Short, Inaccurate History Of The Kuomintang

So there’s this image I really love. It’s a picture taken by an American serviceman in Taipei, Les Duffin, and it depicts a street parade during Taiwan’s National Day back in 1965 – also Double Ten Day, anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution that brought down the Qing Dynasty and begat the Republic of China, whose...

Thoughts on The Road By The Subway Station

There’s a road I know – Dabei Road, it’s called. Cutting through the centre of Shiqiao vertically, it leads from here all the way to bustling Nancun Central Business District, giving way to the highway on Panyu Avenue where four-lane traffic forces its way past the gleaming towers of the banks, shopping malls and apartment...

Project Itoh’s Harmony – “The society that strangled you with kindness.”

-everyone agrees suicide is a selfish, shameless act - On the 20th of March, 2009, Japanese science fiction author Satoshi Ito, better known by his penname Ito Keikaku (Project Itoh), died of cancer at the age of 34. Ito had been struggling with cancer since 2001, long before his literary career took off, and at...