If it reclaimed its water system, Beijing could become a great city of canals.
The poverty of the institutional imagination: The case of Beijing’s moats and canals
Isham Cook
American essayist and novelist based in China since 1994. Writing philosophy: downmarket, big concept, provocative, discriminating, outrageous. Ballard, Beckett, Borges, Dick, Kafka, Hesse, Melville, Mishima, Sade are influences.
Multiply, cascade, explode: A theory of literary fiction
“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets” — Derrida
Questioning China’s “5,000 years” master trope
When measured against other ancient civilizations, China is not 5,000 years old but more like 3,000-3,500 years old.
A modest proposal regarding sex work: Why all sex should be paid for
The sexual fees levied on hubby would compensate working wives for the housework they do on top of their day job.
A Shakespeare sex-and-violence starter kit
It was not just Shakespeare’s obsession; we can assume virtually the entire audience attending his plays was syphilitic.
On harpsichords and white pianos: The challenge of music in China
Our distaste for the white piano stems from certain associated stars of the Easy Listening school (Liberace, Clayderman, etc.): music for people who don’t like music.
Theatrics of Japanese Noh, Kabuki, and the mixed-bathing Onsen
A visit to a nude mixed-bathing Onsen revealed more than passing resemblance to the traditional Japanese dramatic stage.
The Chinese-Japanese cultural chasm on display at Starbucks
Profound cultural differences epitomized by Chinese and Japanese Starbucks.
The high priests of medicine: U.S. and Chinese hospitals
The USA and China both bear the distinction of having the worst health care systems in the world not attributable to national poverty.
Black forest cake blues: The customer service problem
The idea of cake, a jokester’s cake for flinging in the customer’s face.
From struggle sessions to public dressing-downs: China’s continuity of psychological control
At the Revolutionary University, students vie with another to express how much they enjoy hauling night-soil feces.
The old Chinese bathhouse, circa 2000
That Chinese bathhouses draw families and their children while operating simultaneously as brothels is a phenomenon found nowhere else in the world.
Advanced love: An essay
We are taught not to be misers with our money. But when it comes to the body, we are misers through and through.
Newsex. A dramatic farce
X-rated dramatic farce set in a sexual re-education camp in a future Liberated California Republic.
Gu Cheng, selected poems (trans. Isham Cook & Zhao Shufen)
China’s mad poet who savagely murdered his wife.
