{"id":1700,"date":"2009-01-30T10:27:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T18:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2009\/01\/reading_keillor_in_china\/"},"modified":"2009-01-30T10:27:37","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T18:27:37","slug":"reading_keillor_in_china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2009\/01\/reading_keillor_in_china.html","title":{"rendered":"Reading Keillor in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is much to say about China. But I&#8217;m not the one to say it. The world there was more or less opaque to me. Not surprising, given the fact that I can&#8217;t speak Cantonese or Mandarin, or any of their other languages.<br \/>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shanghai\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt title=\"C'est moi on the Bund in Shanghai, with the Pudong skyline in the background greyed out by the mix of fog and smog. [Photo: Janet Leong Herman]\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/assets_c\/2009\/01\/MeInShanghai(220)-thumb-220x165-3300.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;\" \/><\/a><\/span>I did have a grand time in Hong Kong, a city that seems to me a combination of New York, Paris, and San Francisco. I&#8217;d been there before. It&#8217;s a place I could live &#8212; willingly. I liked Shanghai well enough to think I could live there, too, even with its soupy gray mix of &#8220;foreign correspondent&#8221; fog and smog. But only if I had to. Not Beijing, though. Despite my love of Peking duck, I found the city charmless &#8212; a not uncommon reaction.<br \/>\nWithout a laptop, I was largely out of touch. The news seemed far away. I did see CNN&#8217;s international broadcast on the tube, which was piped into my hotel rooms. It sounded like official U.S. propaganda. Nothing less. I don&#8217;t know why I was shocked. Maybe because it was so blatant.<br \/>\nI managed to cadge the International Herald Tribune a couple of times. That&#8217;s where I came across one of Garrison Keillor&#8217;s columns, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmsfeatures.com\/columns\/political\/liberal\/garrison-keillor\/25586104.html?articleURL=http:\/\/rss.tmsfeatures.com\/websvc-bin\/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=200901061500TMS_____GKEILLOR_ctngk-a_20090106\">THE PERILS AND JOYS OF SELF-ESTEEM<\/a>. It was worth going all the way to China for. I wouldn&#8217;t have seen it otherwise, although I didn&#8217;t really have to go that far. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmsfeatures.com\/columns\/political\/liberal\/garrison-keillor\/25586104.html\">Keillor&#8217;s once-a-week column<\/a> is syndicated every Wednesday by Tribune Media Services. Here&#8217;s another of his columns, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmsfeatures.com\/columns\/political\/liberal\/garrison-keillor\/25586104.html?articleURL=http:\/\/rss.tmsfeatures.com\/websvc-bin\/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=200812161400TMS_____GKEILLOR_ctngk-a_20081216\">HOW AN AIRPLANE TOILET CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE<\/a>. I&#8217;m still laughing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is much to say about China. But I&#8217;m not the one to say it. The world there was more or less opaque to me. Not surprising, given the fact that I can&#8217;t speak Cantonese or Mandarin, or any of their other languages. I did have a grand time in Hong Kong, a city that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-rq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}