{"id":418,"date":"2009-07-17T11:04:46","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T11:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/07\/china-blogging-suffers-a-blow.html"},"modified":"2009-07-17T11:04:46","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T11:04:46","slug":"china-blogging-suffers-a-blow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/07\/china-blogging-suffers-a-blow.html","title":{"rendered":"China blogging suffers a blow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Johnson is leaving<\/a> McClatchy’s China Rises blog<\/a>. Tim shares some personal highlights:<\/p>\n

\n

In my day job, writing news stories for McClatchy, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel nearly everywhere in China. As I look at the map, I see I’ve been to every province and autonomous region except Guizhou. For beauty, little surpasses Guangxi with its fabulous karst limestone outcroppings. I loved the rugged beauty of inner Fujian province, where my grandparents lived for five years. I also have very much liked the outlying borders of China: the forested areas near Tumen (where North Korea, China and Russia meet), the anything goes feel of Ruili on the border with Myanmar, Manzhouli on the border with Russia. The Wolong panda preserve in Sichuan was a lot of fun to see.<\/p>\n

I regret not making it to the Dunhuang caves in Gansu Province, and to Heaven Lake up in the mountains near Urumqi in far west Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Some of the greatest fun were the cultural and social stories. When I inquired of the Sichuan Culinary Society for the spiciest food in the province, the chief promptly invited me to a feast of the best known and hottest Sichuan dishes<\/a>. When I was in Ningxia autonomous region, I heard that local Hui Muslims were in high demand as Arab translators<\/a>elsewhere in the country. That was interesting.<\/p>\n

A personal highlight was making it up to Everest base camp<\/a>. That made up for the numerous trips to Henan province, which seemed to invariably end up with my detention by local officials.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It sounds like it was the assignment of a lifetime. We will miss him, but I look forward to seeing his replacement take up the mantle. They have large shoes to fill! shiu shiu, Tim.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, there is still Wang Daiyu’s Islam in China blog<\/a> and Rebecca MacKinnon’s China-related posts<\/a> at her blog<\/a>. Also, Open Left is running a nice China travelogue called An American Griswold in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Johnson is leaving McClatchy’s China Rises blog. Tim shares some personal highlights: In my day job, writing news stories for McClatchy, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel nearly everywhere in China. As I look at the map, I see I’ve been to every province and autonomous region except Guizhou. For beauty, little surpasses Guangxi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[135,25,26],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-this","tag-china","tag-news","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nChina blogging suffers a blow - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China blogging suffers a blow - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tim Johnson is leaving McClatchy’s China Rises blog. Tim shares some personal highlights: In my day job, writing news stories for McClatchy, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel nearly everywhere in China. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}