Harbin, Manchuria: Officials here seem reluctant to spotlight the Japanese germ warfare scientists and what they did to thousands of local inhabitants here in 1932 and beyond. Perhaps that’s the reason Harbin has built China’s greatest contemporary war museum, known formally as “The Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731,” in… Read More
I realize I never finished the story of Harbin, which I visited nearly a year ago. It began with my need to research this icy Russian-Jewish-Chinese enclave in Manchuria, home of the international ice festival, seat of the frigid Songhua River, intending to flesh out the frigid landscape for the novel I’m working on (interminably)… Read More
Just two blocks from my Charleston-style home on Bridges Farm Rd., I plunge almost every day into Lake Davidson, the horseshoe-shaped lake with the gooey clay bottom. On sunny days, when the water turns a pellucid blue-green, I swim as freely as the sparrows and Great Blue Herons swooping down from the trees. Immersed in… Read More
You think about the pit mix who was young once along with your children. They were all of a piece. The dog with the pointy ears and pink and black snout. The child with the pointy ears and the sudden way she darted across the room followed by the puppy. Now the puppy has rheumatism.… Read More
Charlotte, September 22, 2016. More murder, more anger, more confrontation between police in riot gear and protesters in the Queen City, the place my daughter and I call home. This is the city my neighbors have cherished for its easygoing manners, its kindness and conviviality. Now we have the death of another black man, 43-year-old Keith… Read More
January 11, 2016. As I stepped off the train at Harbin West station after an eight hour train ride across the Manchurian flatlands from Beijing, the station was moist and frigid with the Siberian wind and the night which had fallen hours before. It was -29 degrees Celsius as I dragged my two suitcases and… Read More
Yogyakarta in Central Java, Indonesia is a hidden jewel, the seat of Borobudur, the oldest Buddhist temple in the world. I was there two weeks ago at 5 AM, part of my end-stage tour of Indonesia after completing a Fulbright at Universitas Padjadjaran in West Java. The stupas of the 9th century temple are… Read More
Great Cold War debates happen in the most unlikely of places. West Java, Indonesia, March 26. Today I’m invited to a very dressy event. A Russian Ambassador to Indonesia along with a Vice Minister of Telecom and Mass Communication arrive at the university to attend a big do — a celebration of Russian language, media, and… Read More
It’s been three weeks so chock full of Indonesian experience. Each day new lectures, close encounters with medical and comm students, children, security guards, cooks, geophysicists, random athletes and mop-haired photojournalists and artists. It’s as though I’m being flooded with torrents of images, data, and experiences and I can’t stop the flow. Surprisingly, at… Read More
March 4 2015: First jet lagged impressions… It’s been quite a trip to Bandung, Indonesia: a 24 hour unexpected furlough in Japan, arrival at midnight in Jakarta, strange languages, 1 AM rides through shanty squalor fronted by modern highways. We drove down a single lane into a hotel courtyard, trees swaying with Christmas lights.… Read More