Long Ling

What colour​ is a divorce certificate? I’d heard it was green – a neat visual counterpoint to the bright red marriage certificate. Red in Chinese culture is the colour of happiness, of joy and also of officialdom. Marriages are announced on red banners; gifts are enclosed in red envelopes. Brides wear red dresses and use red bedsheets, and there are red scraps of firecrackers in...

My generation​ has seen four paramount leaders: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and now Xi Jinping. Deng, the only one not to serve as general secretary of the Party Central Committee, initiated the market economy reforms of the 1980s and established Shenzhen’s Special Economic Zone. Jiang accelerated China’s economic integration into the global economy and established...

The first course contains ten hours of lectures, and the other eleven between three to six hours each. Where do I start? I click on the first course, which deals with the most important subject: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Since each general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC creates a ‘theory’ while in power and enters it into the constitution, the constitution’s second paragraph – the guide to action – gets longer and longer. Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought are followed by Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents of Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Outlook on Development (by Hu Jintao) and now Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想, or Xi Jin Ping Xin Shi Dai Zhong Guo Te Se She Hui Zhu Yi Si Xiang, abbreviated as ‘XJPXSDZGTSSHZYSX’). Whether or not Xi has surpassed his predecessors in the quality of his theory, he has certainly surpassed them in the number of characters needed to describe it.

On​ the evening of the fifteenth day of the seventh month, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, the gates of hell open, disgorging spirits to roam the earth for one night. It’s celebrated as the Zhongyuan (‘Hungry Ghost’) Festival. Last year hell had more inhabitants than usual, as was evident from the many small fires burning on the pavement of Zhuankou Street in...

One​ morning in mid-March, somebody knocked on my door. Since the apartment community where I live had been closed to the outside world for two months, this was unusual. Through the spyhole I saw a woman wearing a mask and a protective suit that looked a bit like a raincoat: standard gear in an epidemic. She was holding a folder and had a pen in her hand. I put on my mask and opened the...