China

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994–96) A high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained in China’s Xinjiang region.   June 20, 2020, By Sébastien Roblin (China 2013-15) Even when President Donald Trump finally manages to do the right thing, it’s rarely for the right reasons. Such was the case Wednesday, when he signed a law that allows for sanctioning as human rights violators Chinese officials responsible for running camps imprisoning up to 1 million Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang Province of western China. Trump’s been so inconsistent on what should be a core tenet of American foreign policy — opposition to large-scale internment of a minority population — that there’s some truth to claims from Beijing that Trump’s move this week was a hypocritical one motivated by a desire to weaponize the issue against China amid high-stakes trade negotiations. He . . .

IN MANCHURIA: DOCUMENTING A CHANGING CHINA EVENT | MARCH 30, 2015 New American Fellows In Manchuria: Documenting a Changing China Monday, March 30, 2015 12:15 PM – 01:45 PM 1899 L Street NW, Suite 400 Washington, DC 20036 RSVP Amidst news of the globalization and booming populations in China, the story of the country’s rampant development and fast-paced change often centers on the evolution of its cities. But that’s only part of the story. Nearly half of China’s massive population-about 700 million people-still resides in rural areas, and life in the village has not been insulated from the seismic shifts reverberating from the urban centers. In his new book In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China, author Michael Meyer chronicles three years he spent in a small rice-growing town in China’s legendary northeast territory. And the saga he tells is one that mirrors drastic change sweeping through many . . .

In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China by Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) Bloomsbury Press, $28.00 365 pages 2015 Reviewed by Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana 1961-63) Foreigners, especially Americans, living for a spell in China, often are overcome with an irresistible urge to explain China and the Chinese to their countrymen, especially Americans, who may ask a question about how much of a threat China is, then nod politely and change the subject to the latest baseball scores. Many of these same foreigners, especially Americans, after their first year of living among the Chinese, enthusiastically conclude, “why they are just like us.” Then, a year later, they conclude, “they are not like us at all.” Among the latest Americans to tell us about the Chinese is Michael Meyer. He is a writer who first went to China in 1995 as a member of the Peace Corps to . . .

Michael Meyer received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction after publishing his first book, The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. He has also held a Guggenheim Fellowship.  His stories have appeared in Time, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and on “This American Life.” In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China has just been published by Bloomsbury Press. Today, Michael teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh and spends his free semesters in Singapore. I recently interviewed Mike about his career, China, and his books. • Mike, where did you serve as a PCV and when? Peace Corps China 2; 1995-1997. . Q. Now you stayed on in China . . . was this so you could write Last Days? No, post-Corps, I moved to Beijing in 1997 . . .

In the current issue of The New Yorker (March 9, 2015) there is an absolutely wonderful and long piece by Peter Hessler on his return to China for a book tour last September. It is entitled “Travels With My Censor” and focuses on changing censorship in-country, but this piece really is much more than that. Peter spent a total of 11 years in China, first as a college teacher in Fuling, later as a journalist, and then later still to research and write his three books on China. Today, Peter and his family live in Cairo and he is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest book is Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. His Peace Corps memoir, and first book, is entitled River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Read it. The book is one of the best memoirs of the Peace Corps experience to come . . .