Web Exclusives - Non-Fiction

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

While the tumble of past, present and future often confuses the issue of whether any progress is truly being made, the indomitable human qualities of imagination and perseverance occasionally coalesce to snap the pattern. The breakouts, we hope, may then lead to a future that is brighter and, dare we hope, more fulfilling.

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Joint winners of the ALR / LTIK 2018 Korean Literature Essay Competition were announced on Wednesday 27 June at the Korean Cultural Centre in London.

 
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Sandip Roy | Non-fiction

 

I was reporting on India’s 2014 general election, the one that would bring a tough-talking man named Narendra Modi to power. Sultanpur was a dingy, noisy town with narrow streets, filled with honking motorcycles and stray cows and donkeys eating garbage. Outside the congested lanes of the town, the country roads were potholed and meandered through villages with names like Teergaon and Isouli. Men here wore white turbans and women arranged their saris to veil their faces and buffalos dozed placidly in village ponds. This was what journalists always called the 'heartland of India'. It was my first time in the heart of the heartland. Born and raised in metropolitan Kolkata, I already felt like a fish out of water here.

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Michael Vatikiotis | Non-fiction

 

‘It’s nothing to do with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We just want to support our football club,’ one of the supporters told me with a broad marzipan smile. It was like visiting a film studio and wandering off a Southeast Asia set onto another recreating the deserts of Arabia. Over coffee in a restaurant overlooking Malioboro Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, a soft-spoken Muslim scholar, Muhammad Fajrul Fallah, tried to explain these puzzling changes to me....

Francis Wade | Non-fiction

 

Par Da Lek hadn’t seen any of this violence, but nonetheless there were strange rumblings in the village. Over the two days prior to 12 June 2012, men had been shuttled on buses to downtown Sittwe. Ko Myat would watch them go in wave after wave. They were goaded onto the buses and away, he said, by the village administrator, the chief authority there. For those two days, he had stood at the entrance to the village, where the road rises up on a bank above the busy marketplace. Buses would come and go; the men who stood there waiting empty handed would be given weapons – sticks and machetes – before climbing aboard.

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Tammy Ho Lai-Ming | Non-fiction

 

Liu Xiaobo is dead. That’s a fact. And that his death was at least indirectly caused by the cruelty and immorality of the Chinese government is obvious to anyone who has access to information about Liu and his imprisonment.

Read Liu's poem to his wife, Liu Xia: You Wait For Me With Dust.

 
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Miguel Syjuco | Non-fiction

 

'I know exactly how you feel. I see you at the brekkie table, reading a newspaper. You – a decent citizen, a reasonably informed voter, patriotic in your own quiet way. I know exactly, because I’m the same. Whether it was Julia Gillard and Labor who got your goat, or Tony Abbott and the Liberals who make you spew, the urge is universal: you sit at breakfast and poke your finger once, twice, thrice into the newsprint or touch screen. You turn, tongue-tied, head shaking, managing only to say to your spouse: What a dickhead!'

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Sarah Vallance | Non-fiction

 

Life sometimes has a way of chewing you up and spitting you out. After eleven years in Singapore and Hong Kong, I made the curious decision to move back to Australia. I left my home in a seething metropolis for a new home in a sleepy seaside village, and my world shrank to the size of a postage stamp.

Pearl Beach is a pristine strip of coast nestled beside thick bushland, an hour and a half’s drive north of Sydney. There is nothing here but a café, a general store, an upmarket restaurant with limited opening hours and a community hall offering seniors’ yoga, seniors’ stretching and seniors’ Pilates, depending on the day. The neighbouring beach towns offer little in the way of attractions, but each has a shop selling motorised scooters. Then there are the funeral parlours, each with slight variations on the same shopfront display: a vase of white flowers standing on a wooden coffin, set behind a wispy white curtain. I did not come here to die, but in the short time I have been here, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Ember Swift | Non-fiction

 

My mother-in-law, Wang Wei, has a key to our flat. She moved to Beijing when I was very pregnant with Echo, our daughter, but she didn’t move in with us as most Chinese mothers-in-law do. Instead, she rented a flat in the same compound, just a building over, because, she said, living with us would be bu fangbian (inconvenient). The unspoken reason was our cultural differences, but I didn’t care about the why; I just exhaled, gratefully.

That didn’t stop her from entering our flat first thing in the morning and not leaving until after dinner every day. You see, in Chinese culture, a child’s home must be fully accessible to his or her parents. But for twelve hours a day? There were no boundaries...

 

Jessica Faleiro | Non-fiction

 

Nobody tells you how vulnerable you’re about to become. The plane lands and your emotions start  to heighten once you pass through immigration. Even if someone is waiting for you in Arrivals, you know somewhere deep within that your whole   world is about to change. You just have no idea how, or how much.

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

The Spring 2016 issue of the Asia Literary Review is a celebration of contemporary Korean literature from the country's most exciting young writers. 

This issue also includes an essay on Korean Literature by Deborah Smith, translator of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. Click here for launch events and PHOTOS.

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Jemimah Steinfeld | Non-fiction

 

Viktor and his friends are in thrall to Beijing’s new hedonism. They symbolise the possibilities open to Chinese youth who choose to experiment. Viktor is the lead singer in a Beijing-based band called Bedstars and is immersed in China’s underground rock scene. Describing themselves as ‘doomsday rock’, Bedstars’ influences range from the Rolling Stones through the Libertines.

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

We've had an exciting collaboration with Australia's Griffith Review in putting together a joint issue. For a taste of our selection, scroll down to enter the world of Stress Management in call centres with Glenn Diaz, find out why Prodita Sabarini won't Let Bygones be Bygones after the Indonesian purges of 1965, and discover the poetry of Manan Karki and ko ko thett.

Read all about Issue 28 in From the Editors, and there's more here.

Yang
ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

For a taste of what's in this issue, scroll down to visit Jeremy Tiang's Beijing Hospital, explore The Sinking City with Bill Tarrant and sample the poetry of Imtiaz Dharker and Song Lin.

Find out more about Issue 27 in From the Editors.

To read the rest, take out an eBook or joint Print+eBook subscription - and we'll deliver four issues right to your door almost anywhere in the world. 

Single copies are now available both in print and as an eBook.  More...

Fan Dai | Non-fiction
 

‘I won’t blame you if you look for a lover,’ I said tentatively.

‘You won’t?’ A barely detectable smile came to Uncle Renfeng’s face, exposing the little gap between the two central upper teeth, his eyes searching for and avoiding mine all at the same time.

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Nighat Gandhi | Non-fiction
 

A mountain-blue, hot September day. I reached Abbotabad from Lahore two days ago. Today I am embarking on a journey from Abbotabad to Oghi. I say embarking because it feels like I’m going on a pilgrimage. The village I am going to is close to the Taliban belt, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, renamed as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2010.

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

We're delighted to announce that the new issue of the Asia Literary Review is out and annual subscriptions are now available - and there's a taste of what's on offer right here. Tap or click the cover for more.

For an eBook subscription to the Asia Literary Review, please visit our eShop - and for a single copy of Issue 26 or other recent issues, click or tap here: UK / US.

Prefer paperback? Click here. Print subscriptions will be available shortly. More.....

Yu Xiaobo | Non-fiction

 

As a mainlander in Hong Kong, I constantly feel the prejudice and ill will against us but also understand the helplessness that underlies these feelings. For many years, I have lived with the awkwardness of being stuck between two worlds; but tonight I picked a side. Tonight I stand by you, because you are doing what I never dared to dream.

'I have to say to you that what you have now – your courage and hope, solidarity and discipline – are so precious. You have no idea how people in the dark corners of the world, me included, covet it. It is an honour and a blessing. Hold on to it, for your own hopes, and for ours too.'

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ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

At the ALR we welcome comments from our readers. Click on the image to get started. Blog posts have individual comment threads, and other pieces open to comments have a link at the bottom of the article.

James Borton | Non-fiction

 

Increased tensions between the Chinese and Vietnamese governments make waves in the South China Sea for Dang Van Nhan and thousands of local fishermen.

Maria Carmen Sarmiento | Non-fiction

 

'In this land of 7,701 beauty contests, Filipinos are assured that women occupy the highest places of honour and that the best Filipino man is a woman.'

Maria Carmen Sarmiento

Jan Morris | Non-fiction

 

CHINA! The name of the world’s Number One State strikes me as properly onomatopoeic, especially perhaps in English. China! It rings grand, and big, and sonorous, like a great copper gong, but to my mind there is something mysteriously discordant to it, as though the alloy is defective. Of course this interpretation is ridiculously subjective ...

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

ALR Staff | Non-fiction

 

Subscribers can read the whole of this issue through our online reader. 

Not a subscriber? You can read lots of free-to-view articles on the website and a selection of pieces from each issue in our Preview Reader. If you'd like to subscribe, visit our Subscribe page or go to the Shop and Subscribe menus on the red main menu bar.

Carla Camille Mendoza | Non-fiction

 

The first child of a second wife will always have issues. And when a girl too beautiful and too smart spends the formative years of her life sleeping on a cardboard mat by the family Cadillac, habitually deprived of Lady’s Choice sandwich spread on her morning pan de sal and amidst many a drama of hapless parenting, expect that something in her head will be seriously messed up...

Ilyas Khan | Non-fiction

 

My friend Gore Vidal, who died this summer, was a writer whose acerbic wit, perhaps exemplified in his autobiography, Palimpsest, will be celebrated for a very long time.

Saleem Farrukh | Non-fiction
 
Makhdoom Shahabuddin, now federal minister for the textile industry, is accused of approving the import of large quantities of ephedrine, a chemical used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, while he was minister of health, and of taking kickbacks from the transaction. The Anti-Narcotics Force has frozen twenty-two of his bank accounts and he is currently on bail awaiting trial.
 
Down the food chain, Pakistani milkmen routinely adulterate their milk with detergents, urea, boric acid, starch, hypochlorite and salts. In a recent national survey on the perception of corruption, our land revenue officers were ranked as the most corrupt, followed by the police, taxation department, the judiciary and the electricity distribution sector. The military and education sectors came in as the least corrupt, in ninth and tenth places...

 

Audra Ang | Non-fiction

 

I once offered to cut off my arm in exchange for a tour of an illegal noodle-making operation.

I reached this peak of desperation in 2007 while on assignment in the southern port of Xiamen, where I was trying to capture the clandestine nature of China’s countless unregulated manufacturers...

Dilip D‘Souza | Non-fiction

 

Allow me to introduce you to Madhukar Sarpotdar. On 11 January 1993, when Bombay was reeling after weeks of fatal rioting, an army detachment apprehended Sarpotdar in one of the worst hit areas of the city. He was in a jeep, along with nine other men including his son and someone called Anil Parab. Also in the jeep were several swords, sticks and two guns, one of them unlicensed: at the time, even carrying the licensed one in a riot-hit area was a violation of the law.

The army turned Sarpotdar and his pals over to the police...

Jiahomg He | Non-fiction

 

How much corruption is there in China today? This is a difficult question to answer properly. But we can start with the two methods for assessing the state of corruption in a country or region: the objective method and the subjective method.

 
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Pearl River Poem Art Festival: including Eddie Tay, Kit Kellen, Duo Duo, Zheng Danyi, Martin Alexander, Wang Xiaoni, Shu Ting.
Zheng Danyi | Non-fiction

 

IT WAS A TIME of deep disaffection and despair. Those who had experienced the agony of the Cultural Revolution were filled with uncertainty about the future of China.