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Via Boing Boing, Ethan Persoff's website of political and counterculture cartoons (and other interesting things) has an excellent gallery of 35 late '50s and early '60s Chinese political cartoons. Unfortunately the cartoons are not translated, but the images generally speak for themselves. If you're interested in Chinese propaganda art or Cold War ...

Two or three weeks ago the New Yorker carried a good article by Evan Osnos on the phenomenon of China's ''angry youth'' (fenqing). Much of the article was a profile of one young man in particular. In truth, he sounds more passionate than angry. It's worth reading the whole thing, but there was one section I found particularly interesting:When ...

Despite years as a college radio DJ, Imagethief has never had much time for Bjork. I find her pretentious to a degree not entirely compensated for by talent. But, then, I think the future of pop music died when Led Zep broke up, so you may want to control for my tastes. Despite my inclination to be dismissive of all things Bjorkish, I was ...

There is no such thing as a dull year in China. 2008 is well underway and already looks like another whopper. We're only a month in and we've already had the biggest storms in half a century. The Olympics, the mother of all China events, is now a scant seven months off. God only knows what will happen in between. But before we get too far into ...

From time to time someone will ask me why I left Singapore for China. This is a fair question. I lived there for nearly a decade, Mrs. Imagethief is Singaporean, and I have great affection for the place. Usually I give some longish explanation about various professional and personal frustrations that were beginning to set in. From now on, however, ...