Austin Ramzy writes: HONG KONG — President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on vice and corruption in China has gone after drugs, gambling, prostitution, ill-gotten wealth and overflowing banquet tables. Now it has turned to a less obvious target: golf. In a flurry of recent reports, state-run news outlets have depicted the sport as yet another […]
BBC’s Roger Hearing talks to Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, about China’s complicated relationship with golf. This segment aired on April 9, 2015.
There are no Chinese golfers participating in The Masters this week, and perhaps that is fitting. It’s already been a rough spring for “the rich man’s game” in China. On March 30, Chinese authorities announced the closure of 66 “illegal” golf courses — roughly 10% of all courses in the country — in an […]
TimeOut Shanghai said its year-end list of the best China books “taught us something remarkable about how China is changing in 2014.” Honored to be included on the list, which also featured works by Evan Osnos, Howard French, Amy Tan, and others.
Over the years, golf legend Jack Nicklaus has been one of the most prolific course architects working in China. But it’s clear the place has even the Golden Bear a bit befuddled. Speaking with Bloomberg’s Shelby Holliday recently, Nicklaus understandably appeared a bit frustrated by the current state of things in China, where the government […]
It’s impossible to report on China from Brooklyn. Things change so randomly and rapidly there that you really have to be in the thick of it to try and make sense of anything (and even then you feel as though you are only scratching at the surface of the truth). So, when I left China […]
Charlotte Middlehurst writes: Energetic, poignant and revealing, Washburn’s account expertly articulates how the ‘rich man’s game’ has become an instrumental force in realising the much vaunted Chinese dream. Read the entire review at TimeOut Shanghai.
Tom Carter writes: Washburn is not only a gifted writer, cleverly sketching out interconnected, character-driven portraits, but an empathetic reporter. These stories have heart, and it is clear from the first passage that the author has taken a deeply personal interest in the people he is profiling. The Forbidden Game is China writing at its […]
A lot of people have expressed interest in giving copies of The Forbidden Game as Father’s Day gifts. Since the book won’t be released until shortly after Father’s Day – June 19 in the UK and July 15 in the US – we created a nifty Father’s Day eCard that will allow you to send […]
According to a CCTV report, a “special kindergarten” in Shanghai is teaching its male students “how to be tougher” — and golf, apparently, is part of the recipe.
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