Blog by Jim James

Somehow two weeks have passed in what feels like one and I wonder where life is going, the answer no doubt lying in the increasing amount of email, travel and concentration on the company; finding myself on Xmas eve in Beijing realising that this western tradition is becoming a part of Chinese popu...

‘It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way,’ says psychologist Rollo May, but getting lost isn’t a good strategy for a marathon, especially one in the tropics, and on Saturday 2nd December I couldn’t sleep until 2 o’clock on Sunday morning , my legs twitching and ...

Sometimes it is hard to see the way forward in China, but it is comforting to know that the warm Chinese folkways have elements of continuity in all the rapid changes that are taking place. I have been trying to figure out how to get money from the Company bank account at the China Construction Bank...

I missed writing last week’s diary, I was simply too tired by the events of the week and of the day, all of which ended up with me acquiring a set of keys, symbols of my increasing sense of permanence in Beijing. I took possession of keys for my new apartment, which strangely came with mixed emoti...

This week I was given two insights: (1) East West and North South negotiations are being challenged by South South cooperation and (2) while the Chinese Government still controls when the heating will be turned on in the city, there are parts of life here beyond the administration. “I wish that the...