CHINA & BEYOND

The Once & Future Taiwan: A Reflection*

During the 1970s, when America recognized Taiwan as the “real China,” an exemplar of free market economics and bulwark against Maoist Communism, I lived in Taipei as a young reporter…

Why China Won’t Hold Kenya to ‘Debt Trap Diplomacy’

In late October last year, about six weeks after I arrived in Kenya, I interviewed a Chinese minister and commercial counselor in Nairobi.  Dr. Guo Ce bowled me over with…

Sex and The Velveteen Rabbit (in Nairobi)

What a Nairobi radio hostess who busts marital cheaters can teach us about love. Yes there has been a huge hiatus in my writings here.  Since my last post, I’ve…

The Great Nairobi-Chinese Railway Bazaar

A few weeks have passed.  After awhile the string of conversations and interviews begins to blur. The faces don’t, exactly, but the impressions they make are something like Georges Seurat’s…

“I Had Three Farms in Africa…”

My 24 year old landlady, the R&B rapper, Wangechi Waweru Mwende, survived a horrific car accident four years ago. Today she’s rebuilding her life and career without much fuss or desire…

On Nairobi’s Ngong Road, Nothing is as it Seems

Try making judgements about human beings and groups and tribes and nations just by what you read in the media. Then, go out into the streets. Hire a bilingual  Uber/Littlecub/Taxify…

Not Quite Prepared for Hazards in Paradise — Indonesia Suffers Again from Tsunami Buoys that Don’t Work

I wrote the story on Indonesia’s attempts at natural disaster warning and prevention for Earth magazine last April, based on reporting I did in Indonesia in late December. Now with…

Rambo in Tanzania

After staying in Nairobi 24 hours on no sleep, I took a flight to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania  to attend a conference entitled Africa-Asia:  ‘A New Axis of Knowledge 2.’ …

Beginning again in Nairobi

Dawn: Mwingi Rd., Kileleshwa, Nairobi. My Lufthansa flight -an Airbus A340-300 — touched down last night at 8:11 pm local time.  It has taken me an entire summer to prepare…

The Asian Bucket List II. Harbin in Sun, Ice and Blood

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…