It's new year's eve, and it feels as though we're in a war zone. The whole city is erupting with fireworks and firecrackers as big as bombs intended to scare bad spirits away before the new year. The smoke from the fireworks is hanging over the city already, waftin… more »

I meant to revitalize my blog at New Year, but I’m afraid that came and passed in a flurry of activity, and now I find myself suddenly arrived at Chinese New Year. The year of the rat will arrive, noisily, at midnight on Wednesday. This should be the one time in the year when China as a whole… more »

For anyone who got the version of the link that doesn't work, this one should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBlCtqsat-w
I was alerted to the Back Dorm Boys by Rebecca Mackinnon, who lectures in journalism at Hong Kong University, and who uses the Back Dorm Boys to illustrate the fact that th… more »

First a bit of a rant:
Tony Blair gave a speech at Dongguan in southern China last week. He charged 237,000 pounds. I haven’t seen the full text of his speech, and therefore I apologise if I do him a disservice. From the reports of the speech, it appears that his speech broadly praised the cha… more »

A few years ago, James and I went down to the streets surrounding the petitions office in Beijing. We found dozens of desperate people who had come on long gruelling journeys to the capital to plead with the authorities to listen to their tales of injustice. They could get noone to listen to them i… more »

My parents were booked to fly back to the UK today, but when I opened the curtains this morning I knew it was going to be one of those Beijing days which are a smoggy hell (blazing furnaces sound warm and jolly compared to the bleak desolation of a day wrapped in dirty bleached air.)
 … more »

Every time I go to the bank of China, I have to take a ticket and wait for up to 2 hours until I get to speak to a bank clerk. This drives me up the wall. It also makes me think some very dark thoughts about the institutions behind theworld's fastest growing economy.
Sometimes I nip out to do s… more »

When I wrote airily that I was off for a series of publicity events in Shanghai, you may have imagined me sitting for days on end at a table busily signing copies of The Pool of Unease while a queue of people snaked around the block awaiting their turn.
 
Well, I’d just like to state for… more »

I've just arrived in Shanghai to give a series of talks to publicise The Pool of Unease. I came on the sleeper from Beijing The timing is nice - I left just before 8 in the evening, and arrived in Shanghai at 7.30 in the morning. There are trains leaving Beijing for Shanghai just about every ha… more »

I'm sorry, but it's so lovely to get nice reviews (and so horrid to get bad ones) that  I just can't help myself.  So here goes, from the Literary Review, an extremely fine publication:
'Taken as crime fiction, Sampson’s third novel is original, fast pac… more »