Chris Taylor

SE Asia, Taiwan and China. Associate partner, Access Asia Group, founder, ChinaDiction, occasional ADB writing and editorial consultant.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

Don't forget Bangkok. A city worthy of weeks/months/years. Tokyo, I lived there a year – returned time again, wrote the Lonely Planet guides in the '90s. Cities, the great ones, yield more the more you give them. London, my birthplace, gave me the gift of walking cities and falling in love ...

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

Of course Taiwan is a threat. It's existence is proof that diversity is a very real alternative to Xi's autocratic theories of governance. https://t.co/eojigl62Kt

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@zemotion I've dreamed so many times that I've faied, could I have not failed?

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@david__moser ... I've got a dental appointment tomorrow afternoon: first of what will surely be many excuses for a delayed Kingdom of Characters review – I've also heard whispers Jing Tsu thinks character simplification had an impact on literacy ... The horror, the horror

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@TheStalwart They didn't think that General Motors would really get it, be able to to really pull it off ...

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

Not entirely sure what your Chinese linguists are referring to, but I do tend to think that it's difficult for them to remain dispassionate because, what? Am I suggesting that Pinyin could (sacrilegiously) replace 漢字？What's the current verdict on Vietnamese? (constrained here, will attempt another review/think piece occasioned by JIng Tsu's "Kingdom of Characters.")

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

Interesting piece, but I'd push back on "no writing system is perfectly phonetic." Hiragana, katakana, and Pinyin are perfectly phonetic – in the case of the latter, diacritics (and lv) are features, not flaws. And that's precisely why character amnesia is accelerating. Pinyin works so well as a digital input method that the substitution for handwriting is essentially painless. The muscle memory loss is inevitable, not incidental.


[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

My ChinaDiction posts never get any traction here on X, but this review of David Moser's Billion Voices and how everyone in China ended up speaking "Chinese" is a genuine page turner, and at just 96 pages not a huge commitment.

https://t.co/J2EkrpnBVB

[Songpinganq @songpinganq]

Fun fact: 100 years ago, before Chairman Mao took China, the single biggest thing China bought from America is 'energy' too. China imported millions gallons of kerosene from America annually.

The first functional flat-wick burner designed to safely burn kerosene was patented in 1857 by American businessman Robert Edwin Dietz.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

My latest ChinaDiction, a review of Frank Dikötter's "Red Dawn Over China." Share with fellow readers, buy the book. One of the two best China books I've read and reviewed in the past year. https://t.co/bCa2OpOse8

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@MattooShashank Try flying in to India. I've done it at least three times – hectic as all hell. On one occasion, I spent two mornings in row queuing for an Indian visa in Kathmandu; it rained, then they set off a bonfire of expired paperwork, coving us all in ash, and then I just flew to Bangkok

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@1goodtern Nothing – no argument – is ever going to sell me on the idea that office work beats working from home, from cafes. I've spent most of my life avoiding offices and I know I'm saner than my commuting brethren working in spaces constructed without a thought to their well beings.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@Birdyword They're fed up with us and I don't blame them.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@PaintingsLondon This gives me serious thought as to whether I should be here too. The answer is almost certainly No, but as I consider that, Ioved your posts.

[Paintings of London @PaintingsLondon]

'Brolly and the Chocolate Factory', Southwark by Benjamin Hope
https://t.co/Js90BMhZ6S

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@OzmunC Just the words "socialism" and the "left" can trigger them. If I say I grew up in an old-school socialist, lefty family in England, some Americans look at me like I've said I was nurtured in the bowels of hell.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@TheStalwart @arrowintheblue @MeganNyvold I've been in and out of China most of my adult life and your questions are reasonable for someone who's not specifically engaged with the place. Good luck.

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@petergyang Wife: How about, "While I'm designing your next loop, you make yourself useful and take out the trash."

[Chris Taylor @ChrisVTaylor]

@BaldingsWorld Unfortunately, she seems to have the ears even of those who should know better and gets her say in moderate he-said, she-said, give-China-a-chance discourse.