chinaheritage.net/journal/the-... “Things will not go how you want them to. Unlike previous empires, America can’t even make a desert; everywhere it goes the world reverts to mere chaos. State collapse, ethnic war, tribal militias forgetting how to speak, stammering and babbling over the ruins.”

chinaheritage.net/journal/covi... Recalling the Covid-19 years, Dr Li Wenliang and exploring the origins of ’China Maxxing’:

chinaheritage.net/journal/24-i... We mark the anniversary of Ukraine’s War of Resistance Against Russia, which started on this day four years ago, with a tribute by the Beijing-based calligrapher Liu Chan.

chinaheritage.net/journal/on-h... The 遺民 yímín of the Xi Jinping era espouse values and promote ideas that Xi and his comrades have been at pains to contain, corrupt and obliterate. By comparison, the acquiescent majority are 順民 shùnmín, which is another hallowed term from the Chinese tradition.

chinaheritage.net/journal/fuck... The commentator Wang Liuyuan offers his observations on Tama/ 踏馬/ 他媽, an expression featured in a Spring Festival Gala 春晚 song that was widely perceived as being a surprise middle finger to the status quo.

chinaheritage.net/journal/who-... The purged Professor Xu on a new year’s meal that he can’t eat:

chinaheritage.net/journal/on-t... “During Bingwu and Dingwei years, China has repeatedly experienced major changes, be they threats born within the land or humiliations originating with the barbarians outside.” 丙午、丁未之歲，中國遇此輒有變故，非禍生於內，則夷狄外侮。

Mark Clifford in his 2024 book on the recently sentenced Jimmy Lai: “History is littered with examples of single individuals posing earthshaking threats to totalitarian regimes. … Jimmy Lai refuses to yield. That is why the Chinese Communist Party fears him.” chinaheritage.net/journal/subl...

In the late 1990s, Peter Thiel read a strange book called "The Sovereign Individual: How To Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State." It predicted the decline of nations and the rise of a "cognitive elite" empowered by a new digital currency. And now...(coming August 2026)

The artist-poet Lao Shu is anxious for the Year of the Horse to arrive, preferably at a gallop. chinaheritage.net/journal/lao-...

chinaheritage.net/journal/free... As it says in the Tao Te Ching: 夫唯不爭，故天下莫能與之爭。 ‘It is because he is free from striving that no one in the world can strive against him.’

chinaheritage.net/journal/othe... A list of things I’d rather do than ask ChatGPT Consult an oracle/ Ask a crow/ Dig out my old Magic 8 Ball/ Call my grandma/ Ask the void/ Ask a brain inside a jar/ … — Alex Dawson, 8 January 2026

chinaheritage.net/journal/wu-z... ‘I know I can be a good human being, but it’s impossible for me to be a good Party member too.’ — Wu Zuguang in an Appendix to “Bring on the Wine!” (chinaheritage.net/journal/brin...) devoted to his memory.

chinaheritage.net/journal/a-sc... Ian Dunt: “… you have to fight hard to avoid the F word. … You have to perform contorted intellectual gymnastics to avoid the one word which explains the phenomenon we see in front of our eyes.”

Thinking about Ai Weiwei’s recent trip back to the Fatherland:

“We would remind practitioners of Sino-Hasbara 中華大外宣, as well as eager students and promoters of China-is-the-futurology, that the People’s Republic has long been in an advanced state of ‘at least not zero’.” chinaheritage.net/journal/the-...

Wang Kang, a perceptive China Watcher, could see what fate had in store for China. As he observes in his 2015 poem: 魑魅魍魎出入紫禁城，如同公元前221年的倒影如同史前滅絕的恐龍死灰复燃！夜色倒灌白晝。陰霾從“海里”飄升，額前刺紅的城樓，腐鼠追逐蛤蟆，木乃伊握緊雙拳。 chinaheritage.net/journal/fare...

chinaheritage.net/journal/to-t... 在西邊有一東方大國

“We are asleep. Our life is a dream, but sometimes we wake up just long enough to realize we are dreaming.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein chinaheritage.net/journal/othe...

“Yesterday saw the first snow of the season and today the sun was out. Evening closed in quickly and the jackdaws crowing in the bare tree outside only added to my bleak isolation. So, I composed this doggerel verse, a soliloquy by and for me.” — Xu Zhangrun chinaheritage.net/journal/and-...

“Four legs good, two legs bad.” David Rowe in “The Australian Financial Review”:

The Chinese rubric of this chapter in our “Contra Trump” series — 親者痛，仇者快 qīn zhě tòng, chóu zhě kuài — may be rendered as ‘allies will shudder, enemies rejoice’. chinaheritage.net/journal/grea...

traffickers..

Here we mark Thanksgiving 2025 with Jianli’s Grace & Justice followed by an analysis of the poem by Ren Jingjing. chinaheritage.net/journal/no-t...

‘The tones of a ruined state are filled with lament and brooding: its people are in difficulty’ 亡國之音哀以思，其民困。 chinaheritage.net/journal/when...

chinaheritage.net/journal/on-t... “In his chronicle of the Yin-Shang dynasty, the Grand Historian of the Han dynasty Sima Qian remarked that its decline was ‘marked by endless sexual predation and disorder’ 淫亂不止. It’s an epitaph fit for Jeffrey Epstein and his class.”

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.” — John Le Carré, “The Honourable Schoolboy” chinaheritage.net/journal/othe...

New Rhyming Chaos podcast in which I interview CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward on reporting from a capital city as a horde of religious extremists take over—and I'm not talking about Washington D.C.!

A poetic critique of Trump’s Gatsby-esque Halloween bash in the style of pre-Qin obloquy: chinaheritage.net/journal/the-...