I’ve mostly been resisting reading Chinese imperial history, for two reasons.

The smaller reason first: a lot of it is made up. Conquering dynasties tended to burn the records and rewrite the history of the previous dynasty. So it’s hard to tell how much we’re reading is anti-Yuan and pro-Ming rhetoric, or pro-Shu and anti-Wei rhetoric. Cao Cao was a great poet and general; even when we all know that he was the target of absurd libels, everyone still loves to hate him.

The more important reason: China did not trigger its own industrial revolution. The first imperial dynasty was established 2,000 years ago, and the civilization has something like 5,000 years of recorded history. Did life change much for the average person throughout most of that time?

Not really. Dynasties came and went, but the lives of most people changed little throughout millennia. The overwhelming majority of people earned a meager living by farming their small plot of land throughout the entirety of their short lives, just as their ancestors had done and as their descendants would continue to do. Some people would move to settle new lands; some people would be conscripted to fight enemies; some people would die in bouts of famine, disaster, or warfare. These are typical misfortunes that have afflicted people everywhere in the world.

The richer parts of China developed an impressive commercial culture and a sophisticated economy in arts and crafts. But given the lack of sustained industrialization, these offered only marginal improvements in overall living standards. I read somewhere that the populations of Nanjing, Suzhou, Beijing, and a few other cities had not grown from the Song to the Qing, a 1,000 year interval. Isn’t it astonishing that such a thing is even plausible? It makes clear the fact that the imperial era never really broke out of Malthusian dynamics: cities couldn’t keep growing because they weren’t raising productivity. Urban areas couldn’t generate sufficient surpluses to allow more people to leave farms, so all population growth comes from the opening of new farmland.

The lack of intense industrialization really until the 20th century is the best case I can make for ignoring imperial history. I much prefer reading about Germany, which offers such thrilling growth stories in sectors like chemicals and steel. History is always more interesting if it’s accompanied by the rise of companies, like BASF, Siemens, and Krupp.

After some investigation, my view has shifted somewhat. Mostly I hold on to the idea that learning about the dynasties is not terribly worthwhile, for exactly the reason I outline above. But I’ve been able to define a few narrower questions I find interesting and important to pursue. They’re driven by my thought that the study of imperial history is the study of innovations in social governance and political economy.

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There are many obviously interesting questions. For example: How did the country manage to get so big early on? How did state capacity evolve over all this time? How did it mostly hang together throughout millennia? There is plenty of scholarly treatment of these questions, mine are of more narrow personal interest.

As usual for my site, I don’t pretend that what I write here can be anything other than my own idiosyncratic views. I’m happy to proclaim on these and many other questions that I’m fundamentally ignorant, that I lack a grasp of the bigger picture, and that there are severe, critical gaps in my knowledge. With that disclaimer, here are some questions I find interesting.

How did the north keep the seat of power when the center of population moved south?

Until the previous millennium, China had mostly been a plains-based civilization of the north; to see how far north, look at the ancient capitals of Chang’an (Xi’an) and Luoyang, as well as the present-day capital of Beijing. It wasn’t until the Sui and Tang dynasties that the state seriously began to open up the south, by undertaking major drainage projects to transform the Jiangnan and Lingnan from swamp into farmland. Once it did so, people filled these areas up quickly, because these regions have more reliable rainfall than the north. Soon, their cities had become the cultural and fiscal centers of the empire. Hangzhou and Suzhou developed vibrant commercial systems and became richer than the north, which suffered chronic grain shortages.

And yet, aside from a few brief exceptions, China has always been governed from the north. Why this persistent divergence between the political and fiscal centers of the empire, even after a few dynastic cycles? Couldn’t southerners also raise horses? It seems like Germany is not the only country to have been ruled by its Prussia instead of by its Rhineland.

What should we infer from the sophistication of many regional cuisines?

If we accept the work of Kenneth Pomeranz, the Yangzi delta was about as rich as England and Holland by as late as 1800. Whereas the Yangzi delta and Pearl delta generated two of China’s greatest cuisines, can we say that the English and the Dutch did the same for Europe? We can let the other Europeans decide this one.

In my own opinion, there are about five great cuisines of Europe; and that figure approaches a dozen in China. (I hope the relative numbers here sound reasonable; if you disagree, let’s organize a culinary tour to settle this question.) Is there anything to infer from the idea that China has produced so many distinct and excellent regional cuisines?

Consider only noodles, of the kind we find for US$2 or $3 a bowl in small shops all over the country. They’re distinct in terms of taste, mouthfeel, and broth/sauce intensity. The noodles of Chongqing are tangy, in a soup so spicy it alters one’s auditory capacity; they’re different from the noodles of Guangzhou, chewy in spite of their extraordinary thinness, served in the lightest broth of them all; which are different from the noodles of Lanzhou, hand pulled, served with slices of beef and radish in savory soup; which are different from the noodles of Wuhan, which are coated with a slightly sweet sesame sauce; which are different from the noodles of Kunming, which are made of rice; and they’re perhaps most perfect in Xi’an, where they’re thick and can come in wide strips, slathered in different meat sauces.

How well do we feel that we understand imperial governance?

The Manchus bureaucratized themselves in the shape of the Ming before they successfully overran the empire. Chinggis Khan did the same with Mongolian tribes before he took on the Song. Each felt there was something to learn from imperial governance.

I’d like to read some comprehensive evaluations of the tactics of governance. I can find plenty of novel developments, like traveling circuits of censors, strategic grants of the salt monopoly, reliance on rites as a source of legitimacy, this list can go on and on. But I don’t really have a grasp of which governance methods were important and why. Which conditions prompted their emergence? How do we evaluate how effective they were? We hear a lot about the imperial examinations and rule by eunuchs; do we feel we understand these systems pretty well at each point in time?

How effective was the Great Wall?

We know that the wall was breached. And it was not fully contiguous, so invaders could simply ride around the fragments. But is it possible that it worked fairly well for most of its history? Even if it wasn’t effective 100% of the time, perhaps it was salient enough of a deterrent to push all but the most determined invaders out of the core of the country, and into Central Asia.

What did the various regions specialize in at different times?

The north, the east, the southeast, the central region, and the southwest all feel like places with distinct cultures. I know that there’s some literature on these macroregions. I’m interested in learning more about their relative status over time. What did each region specialize in to generate wealth? What was their relationship with the central government in different periods? How does economic geography shape their respective cultures? Was there any reason that Hunan cuisine must be spicy while Jiangnan cuisine should not be?

How did Korea remain independent?

It’s easy to look at a map of the Iberian peninsula and wonder how Portugal remained separate from Spain. If you’ve ever wondered that, it’s even more striking that Korea managed to remain separate from China. That’s especially the case since China’s capital has almost always been in the north; the state has managed to conquer peoples far to the west, southwest, and southeast without absorbing Korea. One Sui emperor invaded Korea four times, in what became a personal obsession that led to the downfall of his dynasty, so it’s pretty impressive that the peninsula has managed to hold out.

What can we infer from excellence in arts and crafts?

What should we infer from good craftsmanship, in porcelain, silks, and other fine goods? Anything other than “They were good at making porcelain, silks, etc.?”

How did the Ming hold on to power for so long?

Severe climate volatility disrupted European politics, prompted improbable invasions, and triggered accusations of witchcraft all over the continent. And yet the Ming managed to endure extensive weather volatility, which brought multiple famines and floods, before it was finally overrun by the Manchus. How did it manage to persist for so long?

Come to think of it, this isn’t the right question, because we should be asking it of every dynasty. How did the Tang, Song, Southern Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing each endure as long as they did? Each of them faced vast challenges. Consider the Qing. It managed to hold on to power for half a century after an apocalyptic band of religious fanatics occupied the fiscal center of the country, coinciding simultaneously with a foreign invasion led by gunboats.

Even the mighty Tang had trouble facing down huge threats, from Turkic peoples, Tibetans, Khitans, the Nanzhao Kingdom, to say nothing of a catastrophic internal rebellion. Song persisted under even more severe conditions. Each of these dynasties lasted a surprisingly long time given the scale of the challenges they had to face.

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Some of these questions should be easy to Google and answer. Right now I’m resisting doing the easy thing, because I want to come across them more naturally through books and papers. I think it’s useful to record the questions one has as an amateur, and not be too bothered about getting them right away.

I think that the educated person should know the broad strokes of Chinese history. And that it’s fine to stop after acquiring some of the basic knowledge, because it’s not terribly profitable unless one wishes to become a specialist. The value I personally get from reading imperial history is that the knowledge enriches my visits to different cities. If I were not regularly traveling to China, I’d be focusing most of my energies on reading pre-1930s German history.

My overall thought is that there’s not high value in reading Chinese history unless one is eager to learn about governance and political economy. If so, the history there is very rich indeed. Have you ever wondered what would happen if the state imposed military service in perpetuity, so that every generation of descendants has to serve? Well, let’s look at how well that worked out in the Ming. Imperial history is a rich mine for information on how a state imposes order, how it spreads ideology, and how it renews itself after a crisis. But if these don’t sound like interesting questions, then go read about other places instead.

I’m most interested in the works of three contemporary scholars on these questions: Mark Koyama, Debin Ma, and Kenneth Pomeranz. I haven’t yet read much of Fukuyama’s work, it’s on my list to study.

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Now is a good time to discuss one of my favorite recent essays: The Chinese Attitude Towards the Past, by Simon Leys, which can be read in its entirety here. (Actually my entire essay was originally triggered by this piece, and what I am trying to do here is merely to provide a comment to it.)

It’s difficult to find evidence of historical monuments in Chinese cities today. Most large Chinese cities look similar in the same ugly way, with big apartment blocks, wide avenues, concrete everywhere. How is it that the splendid cities of the past have all been reduced to such dreadful streets and buildings? Contrast that mess with the well-preserved cities of Europe, which have kept the churches, monuments, and sometimes even whole streets in as marvelous conditions as when they were first built.

Disregard of the material past is a tragedy for the modern traveler. What did the Tang capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang look like? We have to use our imaginations and be guided by the texts, for these cities offer very little guidance when we examine them today. But Leys argues that this failure to maintain historical monuments is in fact a sign of vitality: “The past which continues to animate Chinese life in so many striking, unexpected, or subtle ways, seems to inhabit the people rather than the bricks and stones. The Chinese past is both spiritually active and physically invisible.”

My heart trembles with nervousness whenever an essayist invokes geist. But perhaps Leys is on to something here, and instead of trying to grasp Chinese history by seeing, we ought instead do so by listening.

How good are monuments as guides to the past, really? Perhaps very little at all, and the continuation of intangible traditions is more valuable instead. Most Chinese know the same sets of stories and parables everyone is told growing up; the actions we see in paintings and read in books follow a logic that still makes sense; I’m personally struck that I’m familiar with the characters in centuries-old scrolls, unchanged throughout millennia.

Instead of building magnificent pyramids and cathedrals out of stone, Chinese have accepted that time wears down all structures. Eternity can inhabit not the building but the spirit. Thus, in addition to mostly neglecting to maintain structures, Chinese have been extraordinarily active in burning, vandalizing, and utterly destroying the material heritage of their past.

I like Leys’ thought that the physical existence of any object is beside the point once we’ve elevated it into an idea expressed through a poem or a painting. He cites a Ming essay pondering the necessity of gardens: Many famous gardens of the past exist no more but in literary form; given how perishable gardens are, why not skip the fragile stage of actual existence, and go straight to the permanence of literary existence? Millennia later, words are all that we can hope to pass on.

It’s tempting to associate Europe’s intense efforts to preserve old buildings with its current economic malaise. That feels facile, and the connection is from me, not Leys. Having spent some time living both in Europe and Asia, I have to say that the nice cities of Europe feel much too nice. Perhaps on the margin, Europe can use a bit of Chinese disregard of its material heritage, so that it has to think about how it will build the future. There’s no end of old stuff to preserve if one wants to, and eventually we wouldn’t be able to have room for anything else at all, so why not focus our efforts on phasing out the old to bring on the new?

One final note on this topic: I’ve already conceded the point that most parts of large Chinese cities look alike. But there’s one aspect of intangible culture that is different in each region: food. The ingredients and the methods of cooking are different and combine in mostly wonderful ways; see my notes above on noodles.

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I find the most brilliant of Leys’ essays to be the one on calligraphy: “Poetry and Painting: Aspects of Chinese Classical Aesthetics.” Unfortunately I cannot find a copy online, you’ll have to purchase his set of collected essays: The Hall of Uselessness. It’s an excellent guide to taste in Chinese aesthetics.

I find paintings to be the easiest entry point into Chinese high culture. Previously I’ve found paintings boring, now I seek them out. There’s a great deal of feeling in the restrained use of the brush; some of the most compelling scenes are ones with large patches of blank space, with brushstrokes not even especially fine. I’ve come to see that it is precisely the restraint that shows evidence of great feeling… how delicate each brushstroke feels when we compare them to European paintings, which tend to have such heavy oils ladened on the canvas. I find Chinese paintings to go along well with the type of melancholy framed by Laszlo Foldenyi.

No longer do I find it a mystery that the chief art critic of the Times once wrote: “There is no art in the world more passionate than Chinese painting. Beneath its fine-boned brush strokes, ethereal ink washes and subtle mineral tints flow feelings and ideas as turbulent as those in any Courbet nude or Baroque Crucifixion.”

If painting is not your thing, I suggest looking at porcelain. The best works from the Ming and the Qing are very fine, and one needs only to gaze closely to appreciate their details and sheen. I find the blue and white Ming ceramics to be pretty boring. Instead, I like to look for bolder colors, as well as the pure white porcelain from Dehua, which look almost like they’re made of white jade. My two favorite ceramics exhibits are at the Asian Civilizations Museum and the Shanghai Museum, I believe both are permanent exhibitions.

The deepest art is calligraphy, and that remains mostly beyond me. I can sense only the faintest glimmers of intense feeling behind the strokes, and I haven’t practiced it enough to sense that more strongly.

***

Zhu Da, 1626-1705, drew nice fish and birds.

The best set of books on imperial history is the one edited by Timothy Brooks, via HUP. My favorite is the one on the Yuan and Ming, written by Brooks himself. Not only is it good history, it’s marvelously written, and organized in a very clever way.

I want to conclude by switching gears. Instead of telling me what I should know about imperial history, I wish to solicit suggestions for something different: Japanese industrial policy in the latter half of the 20th century. Japan was a trailblazer. It had some astonishing successes, but also a lot of failures. Let’s say I’m familiar with Chalmers Johnson’s book on MITI. What are the books and papers I should be reading instead?

(Thanks to RM, WFY, PYZ, SC, and CS for some discussions on the history.)

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I thought to write a post on some of the things I’ve learned in the past year, along with some recommendations on what you should see and read.

Here’s a general principle I’d like to put forward: That learning, broadly defined, ought to accelerate over time. It’s an analytical error to analogize the growth rate of knowledge (and I’m going to be vague about this) to something like the growth rate of a country’s GDP. Instead of expecting it to slow over time, we should spend our days trying to accelerate the growth of our knowledge base.

My observation is that most people expect learning to decelerate. It’s not uncommon to see this attitude among fresh college grads: “I’m done with school and it’s time to join the workforce so that it’s time to implement all the stuff I’ve learned.” They tend to tie learning together with being forced to read books and attend lectures, and since they no longer need to do these things, therefore they don’t have to keep learning. The result is that they more or less lose interest in improvement.

Countries generally can’t maintain high growth rates, but that doesn’t equally have to affect individuals. I’d like for people to think in different terms. The world is big enough, and any individual is small enough, that we can accelerate learning over time. And I submit that positive belief that this claim is true would make it so.

Let me try to justify this in more analytic terms.

• Network effects. Learning more facts increases the value of the facts that one already knows. In other words, learning a new fact can increase the value of older facts you know. When you know more, you can identify a greater number of themes and form new theses. At certain levels of abstraction, you feel that you’re able to form novel insights, that things you didn’t previously understand have moved within your grasp, that a point you dismissed previously as mundane is in fact quite deep.
• Positive returns to scale. The more you learn, the easier it is to learn. You can start skipping over stuff you’ve read before, because you’re familiar with the ideas or the methods of argument. (Do we still need to read that paragraph explaining, say, comparative advantage?) Thus one skips over the familiar stuff to get straight to the unfamiliar ideas.

Okay, maybe these are saying the same thing: they boil down to a claim that knowledge can compound. I’d like for us to think more about how to accelerate the growth of learning. The traditional method of reading more books and trying to improve professionally are good starts, but it’s not enough to stop there. One can learn more by traveling to new places, being social in different ways, reading new types of books, changing jobs or professions, moving to a new place, by doing better and by doing more. Writing stuff out and putting ideas out there helps too, and I wish that my friends wrote more.

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Speaking of writing, I regret to have posted only six essays in 2017. It’s a low figure and I wish to do better. On the other hand, I’m pleased that each of them made some small impact in a few circles; more importantly, overall I’ve been pretty happy with their quality.

My two best pieces have been Definite Optimism, a proposal for developing a concrete vision of the future, as well as the importance of maintaining an industrial base; and Girardian Terror, which describes the problems that come from focusing our gaze on each other, instead of matters of the world. I’m delighted that Definite Optimism became my most well-read piece of the year. I don’t often write from the left, and I was pleasantly surprised that the packaging didn’t detract from the message.

It’s only this year that I feel that my posts have started to develop greater forward and backward linkages. That is to say, instead of most posts being idiosyncratic and unrelated to each other, more of them are cohering together into themes. Some people have remarked negatively upon the length of my posts. But there’s a way to think of them as very short indeed. I break my posts into sections, marked by asterisks, and I’d like to think they’re all modular upon my overall thought. While posts may look like they’re organized under distinct titles, my hope is that each individual section is a fractal for all my other views.

I kicked off the year with a piece on what I find so bizarre about California, and I present there a framework for viewing the world. My review of The Complacent Class has a lot to do with my review of the Three Body Problem, which makes sense since both are commentary about China. Why so few people major in computer science was the second most read piece of the year. Girardian Terror coalesced various themes of this site since its beginning, while Definite Optimism is commentary on my change in perspective since I moved from New York to Asia.

One should never be all that explicit when writing on the internet, so I’ll stay silent on the implications of my Girard and California pieces. I’m happy however to bring out a few questions I’d like more people to consider from my definite optimism post:

1. Why not let’s ask for the US to reach and sustain 3 percent GDP growth by 2020?

2. Are we sure that rich countries aren’t themselves suffering their own premature deindustrialization?

3. Why don’t we focus more on developing the developed world?

Certainly I wish to write more than six pieces a year. But I have to contend with the fact that I have a full-time job after all, and writing essays here is supposed to be for fun. (I don’t make much income from this site, nor do I ever intend to.) And while I wish I wrote shorter posts more often, much of my quick writing has moved to email correspondence with friends, so these posts end up more as polished final products rather than spontaneous thoughts. It’s the wrong tendency, I admit, for the blogosphere. But I think these kinds of thought-out posts work better for me, and therefore I won’t make any promises of higher output this year.

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It’s time to talk about books.

Most people don’t have a very high-level understanding of the mechanics of China’s economy, generally speaking. You can be part of the solution and not part of the problem by picking up Arthur Kroeber’s book, China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know. It offers an overview of the main drivers of the world’s second-largest economy, including the property cycle, urbanization, the fiscal system, industry and exports, demographics, and more. (I should note at this point that I’m biased because Arthur is the head of research at my firm.)

I reviewed two books in these pages this year that I’m happy to recommend again. Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem series, and Tyler Cowen’s The Complacent Class. If Three Body Problem is not your cup of science fiction tea, then I’m also happy to recommend Seveneves and Snow Crash, which I read back to back this year. (Though if you haven’t yet read Cryptonomicon, I say pick that up first.)

Much of my reading has been China-focused recently. I enjoyed Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, not only because its title is sublime; although it’s not really conceptually driven, it reads quickly, almost as if it were a novel. Unlikely Partners, by Julian Gewirtz, gives a good sense of how post-reform policymaking happened: through extensive arguments by different factions trying to hammer out a written document, which becomes policy for all. I’m enjoying making my way through the HUP series History of Imperial China, edited by Timothy Brook. They’re good because they’re more conceptually driven than chronologically so. (Thanks to Simon Cartledge for lending me all six books in the series.)

The most Chinese book I read this year was Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Man. It opens with the virtuous head of a merchant family, and then moves on to his more carefree and less competent descendants, who fritter away the family’s fortune and good name. It’s shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in four generations, culminating in death induced by typhoid. I thought it took great daring by the author to set the novel in Lübeck and Hamburg instead of Hangzhou or Beijing, but it worked well. By the way, I found Buddenbrooks to be much more easygoing and enjoyable than The Magic Mountain.

Two nonfiction books:

The Second World Wars, by Victor David Hanson. At some point one has to stop reading books about that war, and for me this about does it. The book is less about individual battle scenes and generalship; instead it’s a case for why the Allies had to win, based on a better grasp of strategy as well as far greater capacity for industry.

How Asia Works, by Joe Studwell. It’s the best story of the East Asian economic miracle. Should you meet anyone who doubts that this subject is worth studying, I suggest responding with this quote: “Whereas Hegel saw the 19th century Prussian state as a manifestation of God’s will in history, I am assigning a comparable (but secular) place of importance to the East Asian economic miracles. The word ‘miracle’ truly does apply.”

In a sense, the best nonfiction I read this year was the Financial Times. It’s only this year that I finally had a subscription to the FT, and I wish I signed up years ago. Its culture section is excellent, and I feel that it delivers the most intelligent way to approach news. I like its tech coverage a great deal too, and I’d recommend my Silicon Valley friends to take a look; it most consistently focuses on the things that matter.

I didn’t do a great deal of fiction in 2017, and I intend to remedy that in 2018. I had wished to re-read the Proust series, but failed to finish. One piece of good news is that the second half of the new Penguin translations ought to be released in the US this year, so that fresh translation will provide an impetus.

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I watched only a single TV show this year, which I really enjoyed: Big Little Lies on HBO. The shots are beautiful and the drama is compelling; it was a significant inspiration for my piece on Girard. I regret to have mostly ignored TV as a creative stimulus this year, and concede that my imaginative capacity has possibly suffered as a result.

The very best movie I watched this year was The Florida Project, so good I saw it in theaters twice. The premise: Motels outside Disneyland in Orlando are pretty cheap, and they take on more or less permanent guests, most of whom don’t have very good jobs. And that’s all I’ll say. Some parts were really funny, some other parts were very moving, do try to go. (I thank Eugene Wei, without whom I would not have heard about this movie, for taking me to see it.)

Three other movies of note:

Mountains May Depart, Jia Zhangke. I’d say that this is now my favorite Chinese movie. It and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom have the best names in this post.

Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade. It’s terribly uncomfortable, and that’s part of the humor. At other times it’s very sad indeed. The magic of both Toni Erdmann and The Florida Project is that they make one sit very still in the theater, transfixed, with no idea how the current scene will resolve, nor what the next scene will bring.

Youth, Feng Xiaogang. This is straightforwardly a propaganda film. I say it’s worth watching for what Chinese reminisce about, and its production values are higher than most propaganda films out there. Its first minute is quite good, you can watch a Youtube clip here.

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A question I like to ask when I travel: “What would I be like if I grew up here? Would I be very different if I spent my childhood here rather than in Kunming, Ottawa, and Philly?” I find that asking it prompts better thoughts, and it encourages me to be more observant of the things around me.

One good thing about Hong Kong is that it’s very easy to leave Hong Kong. I don’t merely mean that the airport infrastructure is set up very well here; about half of humanity is within a six hour flight of this city. This year, I had the chance to visit every part of the Sinosphere (or places where people are majority Chinese): I live in Hong Kong, and I’ve visited mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Vancouver, and Singapore.

There’s fantastic variety to these places. Singapore is a remarkable city, and it takes only one visit to see that. Out of all these places, I had the most fun in Taipei, which I found to be the place best optimized for eating and leisure. Macau certainly does the latter, but to proportions that approach the grotesque, while meal for meal, nothing beats the inventiveness of Taiwan.

My favorite travel experience was in China itself. It’s so easy to find accounts extolling holidays in places like Japan, Thailand, or Bali. They’re easy to appreciate, either because of their natural endowments or because they’re already so good at catering to tourists. I’d argue however that China delivers the most rewarding travel experience of all, precisely because there are so many weird frictions.

I submit that really every part of China is worth seeing, not just Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan are very different from Guangdong and Fujian, which are not at all the same as Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, which are so distinct from the Jiangnan, and on and on, to say nothing of the far west. Each Chinese province has roughly the population of a large EU country; there may not be as many differences between each province as there are between European countries, but they’re still huge.

One can’t so easily find accounts of how much fun it is to travel around China. Those who haven’t ventured far beyond Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing underestimate the sheer number of totally random stuff that happens to you. In stores, traffic, restaurants, and on the streets, I regularly come across behaviors and fixtures that I had no idea were a thing. You might be driving along miles of farmland, when suddenly a massive high-tech factory with the logo of a well-known foreign company looms up on the horizon; in a restaurant, I was asked one time to help with the cooking because chefs had to go out to buy more ingredients; you never know who might come up to you and tell you an interesting story. The lack of professionalism in nearly all things is sometimes frustrating but mostly hilarious.

There are many interesting stories from Chinese that we’ll never know. That’s true not only because in general we won’t know most interesting stories, not even in a single city block, but it’s especially the case in China, which has seen intense changes but few records. Most people who grew up through 1979 have had some extreme experiences, both happy and unhappy, and I wish that more of their stories can be recorded for posterity. A secular version of a monastery, say, supporting scholars whose sole jobs are to take down oral histories from ordinary people.

Here’s something underreported: how good the consumer experience is today in most of Asia. Retail and restaurant marketers should come over to Shenzhen, Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo to see how sophisticated the consumer experiences are for young people. These stores make shopping and eating a fun experience, with their combination of good service, fun stuff to do while you wait, and inventive new foods.

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This year, my taste in music veered toward the conventional. I’ve found myself listening to a great deal of Beethoven, especially the third symphony—his most perfect of all—and to the string quartets. I’m not sure why exactly I’ve gone to them this year, I attended no live performance that rekindled this interest.

I attended a few memorable performances. I loved the Tristan from the last season of the Met, with Nina Stemme as Isolde and Simon Rattle as conductor. Strauss’ Salomé works well on disc, but it was fun to see it extravagantly performed live. Also at the Met, Jenufa and L’amour de loin were very enjoyable.

Usually I listen to Philip Glass when I write, and this year I got to attend a live performance. It was the premiere of his 11th symphony, by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, which Glass attended as well on his 80th birthday. And the very best musical event of my year was a performance of Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem, performed by the Rundfunkchor Berlin, as part of the Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival. We stood in a chapel in the Upper West Side, as the choir emerged from the audience, finding ways to engage with us throughout the singing, deploying constant surprises in the dark space. I thought it was sublime, and the good news is that the ensemble performs it elsewhere, so perhaps you can catch it too.

I had a lot more Wagner this year. I find that Tristan and Das Rheingold work well on disc, and Parsifal too, especially the third act. Strauss as well, whose operas are exceedingly fine, most of all Daphne and Der Rosenkavalier. Verdi’s Otello is sometimes spoken of as comparable to Shakespeare’s play, but hardly anyone says the same about the respective Macbeths. Verdi’s Macbeth is not frequently performed, but I think that its ruminative parts are excellent reminders of why it is we love Verdi.

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(I enjoyed this cyberpunk series of Hello Chongqing)

On Hong Kong I shall write more later.

To conclude, why not let’s ask for the US to reach and sustain 3 percent GDP growth by 2020?

Are we sure that rich countries aren’t themselves suffering their own premature deindustrialization?

Why don’t we focus more on developing the developed world?

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