Adam has just updated the biography section of this website! In A Boyhood Among Zulus, Adam ponders his family’s South African roots. Click this link to read more – A Boyhood Among Zulus
A China Coast ballad for the Christmas season
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
I was reading a new book from the Earnshaw Press today. It’s called ‘China Rhymes’ and is a collection of Old China Coast poetry, written in the 1930s by the “poet laureate” of the Treaty Ports, Shamus A’ Rabbit. It has recently joined the growing collection of books published by the Shanghai-based entrepreneur and man-of-letters, […]
2009 Recommendations for 2010: Adam Williams describes the books that impressed him over the last year
Thursday, December 31, 2009
HISTORY Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War Volume III by Jonathan Sumption ( Faber and Faber) You have to wait ten years for each volume but Jonathan Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War between England and France is of a scale and scholarship perhaps only matched before by Edward Gibbon with his Decline and […]
Thoughts on Today’s Headlines: Akmal Shaikh
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
It’s sad when cultures cannot meet halfway. It happened after the Americans bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Every Chinese believed that it was deliberate while most Westerners thought it was an accident. The dislocation was surreal. No argument could bridge the gulf of understanding or mindset. Old friends and colleagues shook their heads and […]
A Christmas message from Adam Williams
Monday, December 21, 2009
Wishing you a tranquil Christmas and a Happy New Year Adam Williams Click here to watch footage of Adam and Hong Ying’s wedding in an Italian hill-top village!
China 2009: Teething pains of a superpower
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Last month China put itself on show when it celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC with a parade to end all parades in Tiananmen Square. The pride and delight of those lucky enough to get through the security screens to attend was shared by the hundreds of millions of ordinary folk […]
Wedding photos now available to download
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Rhodri Jones, an Italian-based documentary photographer, attended Adam Williams’ marriage to Hong Ying in Force, Italy on 22nd August 2009. Please see photos of the event HERE. If you would like to download images you’ll need to sign up for a Flickr account and then add Adam as a contact/friend. www.flickr.com _AdamWilliams’ Wedding Photos photoset […]
Adam watches England-Kazakhstan football match in Almaty
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Kazakhs are charming, softspoken and rather gentle people and this particularly came out during the England Kazakhstan soccer match. The Kazakh team was gutsy and energetic, fighting to the end and at first the crowd roared with delight at their oh so near goals against the English titans. But they were no match for the […]
Adam Williams recommends ‘Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao’ by Paul French
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The convulsive history of foreign journalists in China starts with the newspapers printed in the European Factories of Canton in the 1820s and ends with the Communist revolution in 1949. It also starts with a duel between two editors over the China’s future and ends with a fistfight in Shanghai over the revolution. The men […]
Ennio Morricone – an Italian sensation in Beijing
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Italy wowed China last night when the great composer Ennio Morricone conducted an Italian orchestra in a concert of his film music. The venue could not have been more prestigious: the Great Hall of the People next to Tiananmen Square in the centre of Beijing. Chinese film directors like John Woo and authors like Hong […]
