The Hidden Land of Guizhou

FATE endowed China’s diminu-tive, landlocked province of Guizhou in its southern interior with an outsized significance to modern China. Several factors have conspired to largely shield the region from foreign eyes, and being one of Chi-na’s poorest provinces, it has been slow to modernize and shape its future. That is precisely what transfi xes certain kinds of travelers. The sense is that much of the region is "untouched," and that     

Chris Buckley： Extreme Textiler

EXTREME textiles is a name we might associate with a carpet that can report the footsteps of an intruder or the heat of a fire （don＇t laugh; they exist!）. But that＇s not the sort of extreme we have in mind when discussing Chris Bucktey＇s work. It＇s more along the lines of Mathilda McQuaid＇s lecture on high-tech textiles at the Copenhagen Conference ＂Avantgarde - Innovative Cooperation Between Craft and Businesses.＂     

Walking on Air

SKIPPING the bit where you spend years paying your dues, two young Western women with good enough credentials find themselves cresting the waves of China＇s media ambitions. Their ＂overnight success＂ at the expanding networks of CNC and Bon Live is being played out against China＇s desire to tell its own stories about itself to the world, and at the same time make room for constructive public criticism and uncensored coverage of sensitive topics.     

Defenders of Slow Culture

THERE’S a hutong brew pub in Beijing where owner and patrons drink cheerfully under Blitzkrieg-like conditions. They are making a stand on the front lines of beer culture, in the back alleys of a high profile, low-tech hutong heritage neighborhood. The Great Leap microbrewery     

DEVELOPING AND UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL CHANGE IN HM CUSTOMS AND EXCISE: THERE IS MORE TO DANCING THAN KNOWING THE NEXT STEPS

Increasingly, what was formerly known as public administration is turning itself into management, while management itself is fast becoming synonymous with the management of change. These two directions meet in government calls to change the culture of the civil service, and are to be found most clearly in the Financial Management Initiative (1982), and its successor, the Next Steps (1988). While each stresses a different aspect, the core policy idea which runs through them is one of improving performance by delegating power and responsibility down the hierarchy closer to the point of delivery. In this way the bureaucratic giants which comprise the various central government departments are transformed into more adroit organizations, to the extent that it becomes appropriate to talk of giants learning to dance (Kanter 1989). This article, through a discussion of 'experiments in change' conducted in one of the largest central government giants, HM Customs and Excise, argues that teaching giants to learn to dance is easier said than done. The main focus of the article is on what giants may need to learn in order that they can become more attuned to change and it concludes with the proposition that change in central government cannot be understood or be properly managed without an appreciation of the changing context of change itself.     

Who＇s Your Digital Daddy？

JESPER Lodahl and Victor Wong, expatriates and China transplants, are not technocrats nor techno-geeks; the partners who founded SmarTots met when Lodahl needed help building an online social networking application, and realized somewhere along the line that communication in families had radically changed since they were children, and not entirely for the better. Wong had a kind of epiphany at his own dinner table - "The phenomenon he     

Lost in Translation

LET＇S make sure we understand each other. That, in a nutshell, is the driving ambition of interpreters, translators and editors working in China. These are the folks who are responsible for the conversion of anything written in Chinese into your language： articles, novels, biographies and histories, those subtitles that allow you to enjoy television programs, films and opera. Others labor over professional, academic and press conferences, live at official meetings,     

Serve the Literati

ALEX Pearson bound a community of bookworms. Every March in China thousands of people who define themselves as avid readers surrender two weeks of their spare time - weekends, lunch hours, and after work - to their local Bookworm- a happy marriage of restaurant, library, bar and book shop.     

The Kids Are All Right

THIS column has been exploring what people come to China to do,and the unique perspectives they get on this rapidly developing country as a result of their work and passions. Much less has been said about the families that come with them. In Beijing,25 percent of all expats are estimated to be families with children,     

Pushing Granite

IF you want to look at what it means to be transformed by tech- nology, what better fast-track, hothouse case to consider than China, a society that has morphed itself in an alarmingly compressed window of time. That＇s what inventor and stone sculptor Daniel Henderson concluded. You likely use a piece of Henderson＇s work regularly; he holds the patent for wireless transmission of photos and video from cell phones. Having made a solid fortune manipulating the ethereal, it＇s not so surprising that he then gravitated towards stone.