By Alec Ash Fauna (a web name) is the founder and editor of chinaSMACK, a website that translates popular and …
February 2014
Equatorial Guinea’s Most Important Living Writer Forced Into Hiding
By David Shook Juan Tomás Avila Laurel is Equatorial Guinea’s most important living writer, but he’s often been persecuted by …
Remembering Jack London’s Oriental War
By Paul French “I am disgusted! I’ll never go to a war between Orientals again. The vexations and delay are …
Funny Bones: A Q&A with Jesse Appell About Comedy in China
Photo by Fernanda Fraiz By Alec Ash Jesse Appell is a young American in Beijing who performs comedy in Chinese – …
Technology, Entertainment, Design: SyFy’s Helix
DESPITE SOME B-grade acting and melodramatic character back stories which do not inspire me to take their emotional depths seriously …
Where in the World is Willy Vlautin?
By Juliet Suess Have you heard of Willy Vlautin? If you haven’t yet, and are in the Bay Area this …
What Foreigners Do in China
By Xujun Eberlein In the remote mountains of Yunnan Province, China, a middle-aged European ecologist gave up his high-level international …
Back to the Post-Apocalypse: Jericho on Economic Politics
By Jonathan Alexander SINCE 9/11, several SF television series, from the one-season Threshold (2005-6) to the more recent Continuum (2012-present) have …