I’ve been meaning to recommend this report issued annually by the Committee of 100, an 16-year-old U.S. association of Chinese Americans leaders that works both on domestic issues and on U.S.-China relations. “US-CHINA: Public, Elite Attitudes Reflect “Hope and Fear” was issued last month and is packed with important detail. This fits perfectly with […]

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I’ve just come across Doing Business in China, How to profit in the world’s fastest growing market by Ted Palfker, published a couple of months ago by Warner Business Books. It looks a little light-weight (lots of exclamation points, too, something at which my 18-year-old daughter would turn up her nose, and that seem a […]

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I have joined Facebook as a social networking experiment. Posting about it on my publishing blog, but this struck me as fascinating and relevant to Guanxi:
白人看不懂 - Yes, we’re Chinese. Envy us.
Global
Information
Group InfoName:
白人看不懂 - Yes, we’re Chinese. Envy us.
Type:
Just for Fun - Outlandish Statements
Description:
The name of this group is a cultural reference taken from Phil […]

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Destination Chungking, the 1943 memoir I wrote about in my last post, ends with a paean to the coolies of China, written during a time when the Communists, led by Mao, were beginning to challenge the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek (whom Han Suyin’s husband served under in Chungking). Han is sympathetic to the Communists, though […]

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From the time a friend said our online forums and blogs would be rè nào—‘hot and noisy’ I’ve had the phrase in mind. My son Tom mentioned it first when he took us to a restaurant in New York. He was disappointed with the meal but also with the atmosphere. It wasn’t Chinese, he said, […]

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I was buying fish in Guido’s, the Great Barrington equivalent of Balducci’s (or, for a London comparison, hm–Waitrose? Borough Market?), and trying to tune out the whiny tones of the summer crowd. But I couldn’t help listening to one conversation between the fishmonger and a woman who wanted to know where a particular fish came […]

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I’m getting lots of book recommendations from the China hands I meet and will be sharing them here. For starters, an intriguing one from contributor Frank Kehl:
Arthur Miller’s “Salesman” in Beijing, circa 1984, is a great read by a great writer; a subtle observation of general Chinese culture, post-Cultural Revolution culture, Chinese Western-style actors’ culture; […]

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This educational tool, Searching for China: a series of Web activities, developed by AT&T is for schools and libraries, may be a little old-fashioned but it emphasizes the importance of learning about China and that there are different perspectives from which one can look at current issues. Guanxi readers will probably find it intriguing, and […]

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Guanxi: The China Letter now includes an introduction to Chinese proverbs relevant to the issue’s theme in a regular feature written by Beijing-based journalist Frank (Anhui) YU. We include this because learning proverbs is an ideal way to start to understand Chinese culture and connect with Chinese colleagues. In the forthcoming September issue on “Social […]

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