I fear that my first blogpost back here may have sounded like something from the ever-rosy China Daily. Of course all is not perfect. People here are bedraggled by the end of a long semester, cold weather, mounting political pressures - and, of course, the air. Still, I'm glad to be back in the thick (as it were) of it. I'm happy to see people, and they seem happy to see me too. I'm also glad, to put it another way (or perhaps this is another point), to have a chance of a second go at this. With a sheaf of introductions from folks in Hong Kong, and a new clarity coming from my rather brilliantly sequenced sojourns in HK, Macau and Japan, I'm already seeing farther than I did when I left in late November.
