Renowned scholar Jacques Godechot is, indeed, correct in stating that by the end of the 18th century, the Bastille had emerged as more than just a prison. The infamous site had become a reminder of a feudal system that had grown increasingly obsolete, given its arbitrary power. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, is regarded as dec…
It is 2009, a year after the Beijing Olympics, and I have made my way across northern Beijing, past one of the massive ring-roads, to a large block of office buildings that sits not too far from the Olympic axis — a long stretch of asphalt, greenery, and event buildings that cuts across the city in an extension of the old north-south connection that the Forbidden Ci…