Megan Shank is an editor, writer and translator living in Shanghai, China.
The years have gone by so quickly. It’s time again for another changing of the guard. The pig roots and wiggles its way to the front. Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Dog, Pig… It’s my fifth one… Chengdu, Jiaozuo, Shanghai, Harbin, Shanghai. This year quieter, without Chinese friends or a Chinese family or Adam to spend it [...]
My whole life feels like a picture of a sunny day… (Sleater-Kinney)
Lots of stuff to catch the folks up on:
1. Put to bed the March issue of NWS, which shaped up to be full of compelling, insightful content. I was especially proud of the story I oversaw on homosexuality in Shanghai. I had a great [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about snobbishness recently. I’ve come to this working conclusion:
Snobbery is a reaction to:
1. an abnormally overwhelming phobia of the imagined depravity of humanity’s natural state.
2. the horror of not living up to one’s own divine expectations of self.
But what would someone like YOU know?
SIDEBAR FOR TEN IDEAS TO ADVANCE CHINA, NWS FEB. 2007
What do people in the know predict for 2007? Some of their answers may surprise you, while others inspire.
* The “micro-finance” policy that encourages peasants into independent entrepreneurism will be promoted as part of a strategy to transform impoverished rural areas. - [...]
FOR NEWSWEEK SELECT FEBRUARY 2007: I took lead edits on this story and wrote the intro, and NYC loved the piece.
By Zhoumin, Huang Guangbin, Huang Xiaoyin (Beijing), Megan Shank (Shanghai)
Newsweek Select February 2007
Recent years have defined China as a powerful world player, but how can the nation evolve into an equitable, lawful and innovative global [...]
Here’s a Hot List I wrote for our Feb. mag.
Drink
the newly available Italian Allegrini winery’s 2001 Amarone (RMB1,350.) It’s certainly not as sweet as your lover’s lips, but it’s almost as good.
Buy
your baby a star for as low as RMB375 (starregistry.com). The inclusive close-up photo of that burning orb will speak for [...]
My friend Dan Ouyang has started a pretty funny blog — read the girl is the next Gish Jen, but better — and she has recently written about one of my more anti-climatic moments here.
This is fun news. I’ve been working on and off with a guy named John Kennedy, in Chinese 冯三七, who is actually Canadian, despite what this article says, for a couple years now. I first had contact with him when I wrote a fiction piece for a start-up literary publication called Dongxi he started. Later, [...]
Adam writes me funny little reviews sometimes. Here’s one of “The Black Dahlia,” which we both watched on our respective Friday nights. I used to write for the Columbia, Missouri Vox entertainment rag, so Adam is making a joking reference to his efficiency apartment in Iowa City and playing on words.
As Adam Feeney, of [...]