Drip Drip

I miss water. In Peavine I loved living next to the river and being able to wake up and see the big river flowing by on its way to the Gulf. We have a river in Shanghai but I live far from it and besides, it stinks - literally. So I was pleased to wake up this morning and hear rain on the balcony. I slid the glass door open stuck my head outside and enjoyed a little rain in the face.

This evening I started reading a book hot off the press - "Will the Boat Sink the Water?" - an English translation of a Chinese book about the misery of life in the rural areas of China. The subtitle of the book "The Life of China's Peasants" doesn't reach out and grab you but it's a rare book because it is genuine investigative reporting by a couple of Chinese journalists. It's also rare because the Chinese version was published in China in 2004 and was a bestseller for two months until the authorities banned it and erased all mention of it from mainland China. Now it's made its way to the West and is getting a lot of attention. Exactly what the Chinese Communist Party didn't want.