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Snapshots

An eye on sci-fi

2012-11-02 10:31

In Ken Liu's Hugo Award-winning short story The Paper Menagerie, a Chinese mail-order bride literally blows life into tiny paper animals folded for her American son. The story, which also won a Nebula Award in 2011, puts Liu in exclusive company with Harlan Ellison and only a few other prestigious science fiction authors who have won both awards.

On otters, opium and tea

2012-10-19 10:45

After the colonists of New Netherland introduced tea to what would eventually become New York, the import spread quickly through the American colonies.

First writes

2012-10-05 07:16

It's very rarely that a young writer gets a novel published, even more so that it goes on to be a big seller and a film.

Filmed memoir strengthens bond between mom, daughter

2012-09-28 10:35

For Lisa Xia, who moved to the United States at age 4, her mother's story was one more symbol of the distance between them, an account of a history that felt worlds away. So when a documentary-film maker interviewed the two women in hope of adapting the book for the screen, it was clear that their relationship should play a pivotal role in the story.

Mining literary material

2012-09-21 13:31

If you introduce yourself as a friend of Liu Qingbang in mining areas across China, people will treat you to a glass of white liquor. Author Wang Anyi learned as much during a trip to a coal mine in Shanxi province.

When 'livvylong' is Chinese

2012-09-21 13:31

Finnegans Wake, a hugely complicated work by Irish author James Joyce, will get a reception from Chinese readers in September.

Truer than truth

2012-09-14 09:50

The British author David Mitchell has presented such ambition, depth and vision - rarely seen in contemporary Chinese writers - that Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group has published four of his books in Chinese, while a fifth is being translated.

Cross-cultural 'baby'

2012-09-07 10:30

A veteran British publisher and a Chinese writer share their views on the type of Chinese books that appeal to Western readers.

Under the looking glass

2012-08-31 10:46

Steve Tappin has been looking at Chinese bosses under a microscope for more than four years, and he likes what he sees.

'Di the Pretty'

2012-08-24 09:18

Guo Jingming and Han Han have long been considered as representatives of the post-1980 writers, who emerged from the New Concept Writing Competition, an annual event initiated by Shanghai-based Mengya magazine in 1998.

Quotable

2012-08-24 09:18

"If I have to choose one person that best represents my generation of writers, that's Di An. In terms of the capability of telling heart-gripping stories with exceptional techniques, I'm 200 percent sure that none of our generation could do better than Di An. If you have any doubt about this, find the answer in the Memory in the City of Dragon trilogy."

Drawing lessons from The art of War

2012-08-17 11:15

For more than 2,000 years, Sun Tzu's The Art of War has been revered as a tactical guide applicable not only to military combat but to politics, social navigation and business.

Murder and mayhem in Old Peking

2012-08-03 11:13

In 1937, the threat of Japanese attack hovered above Beijing. The mood was tense and uncertain, and the city's expat community waited for signs that they would be allowed to remain. When the body of Pamela Werner, the 19-year-old daughter of a high-ranking British diplomat, was found mutilated at the foot of the Fox Tower, the reaction seemed to echo around the world for what it might mean for diplomatic relations between two countries poised to fight encroaching forces.

Games of change

2012-07-27 12:18

In the years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the city was in frantic disarray, preparing to present an idealized version of home - as any host might before a grand celebration. But the tension between what was intended as performance for a global audience versus the reality of what it meant to be a resident of Beijing at the time could be particularly revealing, says Tom Scocca, author of Beijing Welcomes You.

Act of honor

2012-07-20 12:23

Lawyer's pro bono work helps right historic injustice done to Chinese.

High hopes

2012-07-13 12:35

When Zhao Ruirui retired from volleyball in 2010 she surprised her family and friends by publishing the fantasy fiction novel Moshi Huanxing (Awakening the Doomsday, published by Shenzhen-based Haitian Publishing House) in March 2011.

A sensitive subject

2012-07-06 12:30

Sheng Keyi's novel Northern Girls: Life Goes On, tells of a migrant woman worker who has to deal with men's perception of her sexuality and the struggle for survival.

The voice of a generation

2012-06-29 12:52

Post-1970 writers have long been considered a shadow generation, falling behind both the literary quality of their predecessors born in the 1950s and 1960s, and the market influence of their post-1980 successors. Praised by literary magazine Master as "the glory of the post-1970 writers", Xu Zechen says his embarrassingly sandwiched cloud has a silver lining. "Being the antagonists of the literary scene renders us more patience to toil in silence," the 34-year-old says. His silent toiling has given voice to the equally silent social classes struggling on the boundaries of the country's urban landscape.

Readers sink their teeth into A Bite of China

2012-06-29 12:52

The popular TV documentary series A Bite of China has gone into print.

From the frontlines

2012-06-22 16:59

A group of Israeli soldiers broke into a house in Delin village in Palestine late one night in 2003. The homeowner, a Palestinian college student who was showering, rushed out - wrapped in a towel - to meet the intruders.

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