simple, wonderful lines

We were first immigrants, and then we were expats, and now we are like inhabitants of some extraterritorial, jurisdictionally unclear space.

These days, I mostly interact with China through a veil of mixed media. I put Youtube walking tours and drone videos of Chinese cities on my second monitor, expansive vistas of night skylines set to cyberpunk music. I read Chinese books and research Chinese history and watch Chinese movies. I study memes from the Chinese internet. Gathering all thi... See more

high school kids in the brief exciting limbo between school and home

“The old people? They die. Now it’s young people with the social media. After corona, pew! The internet!”

As a good urbanist, I know I’m supposed to put the physical city experience first: nothing substitutes for the sidewalk ballet, never bet against New York, touch grass, convert offices to housing, if you are tired of the city you are tired of life.

how to profile people on the 7 to predict which stop they’ll get off so you can snag a seat

an exuberant story about how developing-world grit met the magic freedom dirt of America

Perhaps it was the inflated self-importance, a sense of straddling the only two countries in the world that mattered, Middle Kingdom egocentrism meets American exceptionalism.