Blog by Jim James

This week, I went to a talk by Sidney Rittenburg - a man who spent 16 years in solitary confinement in China - and I winced momentarily in an attempt to balance my ying and yang with a 4,700 year old Chinese medical practice. The author of ‘The man who stayed behind,’ Sidney Rittenburg has watched...

"Environmental renovation is a long-term task and we need to uphold the spirit of the Long March in the 1930's of the China Red Army to overcome every difficulty," says Chief Beijing Olympic organiser Liu Qi. But it would appear that most people in China don’t see the parallels between sav...

This week I decided it was time to look for a home in Beijing, with final registration of EASTWEST confirmed and awareness on my part that my insanity will be postponed by some separation between my personal and work space. I hadn’t realised that quietly in the background Judy was continuing to proc...

‘We are all insects on the back of motherland’ intones a Mongolian proverb, and over 5 days I was to learn why the 2.7m people could have believed themselves to be powerless victims at the mercy of the harshness of nature and their vengeful neighbours, but also to find a wonderful energy and emergin...

The week started more smoothly for me in Shanghai than for Mayor Chen -- who was denounced for a multi-billion yuan fraud -- as I went to the original home of the Communist party for the IPTV trade show and learnt about how millions of Chinese live on-line. Instead of talking about the marketing ...