The Short Sweet Song of Chinese Democracy

The main square in Nanjing, China is called the “Gulou,” named after a five-hundred-year-old bell tower that used to warn the city’s Ming subjects of impending attack. Today, the bell tower still stands, but is little more than a traffic island. In the shadow of the Gulou there is a little patch where old men come with carefully crafted, cloth-draped wooden bird cages. They hang the cages in the few sycamore trees near the bell tower and then uncover them. The birds inside, ...