"Sky, clouds, hills and water were all an unbroken white in the fog and frost, and the only reflections in the lake were a slash of causeway, a dot of pavilion, a mustard seed of a boat and the two or three specks of ourselves aboard it."

New on Stories from a Burning House: A digression, and a favorite Zhang Dai vignette from 陶庵夢憶: burninghou.se/p/snow-and-the…

Chinese language folks can’t understand the city’s web page about the studies. “Arena” is translated as “coliseum” (think Roman Empire) and “the city” is translated as “New York City” It’s gibberish. When your community’s future is at stake, Chinatown deserves better than this.

For your weekend: A short vignette by Su Shi 蘇軾, from another Friday night a thousand years ago. burninghou.se/p/su-shi-cheng…

Among the many revelations of China's weekend protests are that young Chinese—GenZs and Millennials—aren't what people in the West (and even Chinese themselves!) thought they were. I think we're witnessing the emergence of a new political consciousness or nationalism. 🧵0/11

How to protests under 21st century authoritarianism. A thread 🧵

The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a piece in Chinese first the first time ever, in my translation, which is kind of cool. On the website today, and in the print edition Sunday. inquirer.com/opinion/comment…

the “you must kill lanternflies on sight” advisement in philadelphia is hilarious. i don’t think I’ve ever entered a city that gave me a side quest

also, going through some papers years ago, another friend came upon a typewritten translation of a Daoist ritual with a handwritten note saying it had been performed on X date by people including "N. Sivin" and "Allan Ginsberg," and I would pay very good money to know more