“The past is what happened, history is what is written about it.” This favorite quote from James Carter, Professor of modern Chinese history, has weighty implications for society and governance broadly. It also arises in less flashy, if not less important, venues. The questions raised are the same no matter the context. What is the past? Who gets to document this past in our histories for today and tomorrow? Spring Dawn over the Elixir Terrace, Lu Guang, 1369, Metropolitan Mu

Labels will be the death of us. They strip away humanity. They cloud judgment. They are weaponized in a zero-sum quest for dominance. They are devilishly effective and dangerous. Because of this, label warfare must be vanquished. America epitomizes this truth. The United States of America is fast becoming an oxymoron. We just celebrated a tense, politicized 250th anniversary. Society has suffered a collapse in civics. In this environment, Liberal, Conservative, Capitalist, So

As I am off the grid hiking in China, today's issue is a reprint of a recent article written by award winning journalist and author Pallavi Aiyar on her Substack, The Global Jigsaw . Pallavi is back in Beijing almost twenty years after her first, multi-year stint living there as a foreign correspondent. In How has China managed to make people mind their manners? Or has It? , she writes about changes in people's behavior, the software of China, that have accompanied the upgrad

The Fire Horse Year arrives today with celestial company. Today is the first new moon of the 2026 Lunar New Year, as well as a solar eclipse and the beginning of Ramadan. This is a time of family and community reunion and renewal, fresh starts, and the promise of tomorrow. In China, the Spring Festival is a joyous spectacle. The Chunyun travel rush during the extended holiday period in China is gravitational. To the tune of 9.5 billion trips being made across and around the

“Promote Civility and Cultivate New Social Norms” (Zhengzhou, China) “A successful society is one that is supported by a majority of the people.” This comment during a recent conversation led us down a new path. I would add that a successful society is also one in which the people are proud, confident, and satisfied with their place in the world. By this metric, the People’s Republic of China is currently more successful as a society than the United States of America. In othe

Who am I? How should I act? Why? These questions keep coming to mind lately. Maybe because I have now entered my seventh decade of life. So, I am stepping aside for a moment from the onslaught of daily news fraught with unrelenting disquiet. Pondering briefly the self in culture and belief on the long and winding road of life. What of the individual in the Confucian and Buddhist traditions of China? Landscape painting with poem alluding to virtuous and lowly men, by Gong Xian

The China Chronicle Snow buried tents, Gama Valley, Tibet No one died earlier this month when a rare, off-season blizzard struck remote Gama Valley on the eastern slopes of the Zhumulangma (“Goddess Mother of the World”) mountain during peak hiking season. Almost 600 hikers and 300 guides and porters who were caught in raging winds and trapped under 3.5 feet of snow were saved. If the same storm had hit the south side of Sagarmatha (“The Forehead in the Sky”) mountain, as M

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 31 Americans are taught to fear China through government and media...