IHT Rendezvous: Builder of China's 'Great Firewall' Finds His Holiday Greetings Spurned

BEIJING — Fang Binxing is known here as the “Father of the Wall,” that is, the Great Firewall — the sprawling system of technological controls in China that has created a parallel online world, or “Chinternet,” where global favorites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are blocked.

In fact, it’s fair to say that Mr. Fang is unpopular among quite a few of China’s hundreds of millions of netizens, though he does have his admirers, including among those who support the government’s large-scale efforts to “weiwen,” or maintain stability.

Just how unpopular he is was demonstrated again over the weekend when his New Year’s microblog greeting was promptly bombarded with messages telling him to “go to hell,” according to netizens (it wasn’t possible to read each message, but Mr. Fang’s post had been forwarded over 23,000 times at the time of writing).

Pithily, in one word repeated again and again, the critics said: “gun,” or “滚.” (The word literally means “roll,” or, in an officially accepted slang variation, “beat it.”)

“Fang Binxing sends everyone New Year’s greetings! May all be joyful and successful in the Year of the Snake!” he posted on his Sina Weibo, or microblog, account, on Saturday, continuing with salutations to his university (he is the president of the University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing) and a poem.

“Yesterday, a university president wished everyone Happy New Year on his microblog account and the result was he got over 10,000 forwards saying ‘go to hell,’ ” He Bing, deputy director of the School of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law, posted to his nearly 395,000 followers on Sina Weibo.

“As long as people like this continue to be the presidents of universities there’s no hope for China,” Mr. He’s post continued. By Tuesday afternoon it had been forwarded about 3,700 times.

Mr. Fang acknowledged in an interview in 2011 that he had designed major parts of the Great Firewall. He is a lightning rod for protest among the Internet-savvy who want broader freedom of speech.

He’s had eggs and a shoe thrown at him, and in 2011 had to close his newly opened microblog after thousands of users left comments within hours — almost all of them critical, the populist newspaper Global Times noted.

“I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Fang as saying.

Attention is growing around the world on how the Chinese state uses the Internet, with The Washington Post reporting today on a new intelligence assessment in the United States. The newspaper writes that according to a National Intelligence Estimate, the United States is the target of “a massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign” and that China is “the country most aggressively seeking to penetrate the computer systems of American businesses and institutions to gain access to data that could be used for economic gain.”

The Post is one of a number of U.S. news organizations, including The New York Times, that recently reported having been subjected to cyberattacks believed to have Chinese origins. (The Times has been blocked in China since running a story last year about wealth accumulated by the family of the outgoing prime minister, Wen Jiabao.)

Back in Beijing, Mr. Fang hasn’t posted anything since his New Year greeting, so it isn’t clear how he feels about the reaction to it. Meanwhile, word continues to circulate that more “upgrades,” or tightening, of the Great Firewall lie ahead.

In December, several overseas-based companies that provide VPNs to both non-Chinese and Chinese users in the country (a VPN, or virtual private network, enables users to get around the Chinternet, or “cross the Wall” as it’s known here, by logging on via overseas servers) said their services had been interrupted.

In what some read as a warning, Mr. Fang appeared to tell Global Times that overseas-based companies offering VPNs to people in China must register with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

“I haven’t heard that any foreign companies have registered,” he said. Unregistered VPN service providers are not protected by Chinese law and any company running a VPN business should realize it has a responsibility to register, he said, according to Global Times.

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IHT Rendezvous: Sharper Tongues in China's Year of the Snake?

BEIJING — The Snake is determined and smart, according to traditional Chinese beliefs. Today is New Year’s Day in China, the first day in the Year of the Snake, and a good day to ask: Will Xi Jinping, a “snake” set to become president in March (Mr. Xi was born in a Year of the Snake, in 1953) bring change to China?

Whether or not one believes in feng shui – the thought system based on geomancy, astronomy and folk wisdom of which the 12-yearly animal cycle is part – many here swear by it, and that makes the confluence of the man and the year important.

As the rational economist He Fan said last year, at the beginning of the Year of the Dragon: Feng shui may not be rational, but it is “symbolic,” “and that’s important, because that’s how China’s political culture works.”

So as ordinary people across the nation settle into their hard-earned, weeklong holiday amid the thunder of festival firecrackers, some are wondering whether recent calls by Mr. Xi to attack corruption and “criticize sharply” the ruling Communist Party will bring unwelcome shocks to members of the privileged classes in China, including the party, the government and state-run companies, widely seen as too powerful and too corrupt.

Skepticism about real change is rife, for sure, but signs say maybe, at least to some degree. And if that sounds woolly, it is because making predictions in China is notoriously difficult. Yet it is also important as the nation grows in international stature: As Bloomberg News notes, 2012 may have marked the year when China became the world’s largest trading nation. China was last the world’s biggest economy during the Qing dynasty, Bloomberg noted (though back then it didn’t focus on trade, Bloomberg wrote).

Some say the change has already begun, amid a deepening campaign against corruption announced by Mr. Xi after he was appointed general secretary of the party in November. The state’s anti-corruption warnings are being taken more seriously now than at any time in the past decade because they come from Mr. Xi, who is regarded as potentially a strong leader fast establishing his dominance, already the most eminent member of the seven-man Standing Committee of the Politburo, China’s inner circle of power.

One sign: Traditionally lavish end-of-the-year parties thrown by powerful state-owned companies, and thus paid for from the public purse, have been canceled in large numbers, causing great satisfaction among ordinary people as high-end restaurants in Beijing are suddenly available for traditional New Year family dinners. In previous years, getting a booking was impossible. This year, it’s not.

Another sign: a recent call by Mr. Xi for “sharp criticism” of the Communist Party.

“Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the Communist Party of China (CPC) to be more tolerant of criticism and receptive to the views of non-communists,” Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported last week.

“The CPC should be able to put up with sharp criticism, correct mistakes if it has committed them and avoid them if it has not,” Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as saying, adding that nonparty members should “have the courage to tell the truth, speak words jarring on the ear, and truthfully reflect public aspirations.”

The call has been – what else? – sharply criticized, in fast and furious microblog postings showing just how deep is the well of resentment against the state’s heavy hand in some quarters.

Shortly after 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day, Ai Weiwei, the artist, snapped on his Twitter account: “First sentence of the New Year, release all political prisoners.”

The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, gathered more acerbic responses:

The venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee: “Will you stop silencing and shutting down microblog accounts?”

Xu Xiaonian, an economics professor: “Will you stop censoring books and media reports?”

Chen Tongkui, an academic: “Will you stop press censorship?”

Wang Xiaoyu, another academic: “Can you not delete the comments on this microblog post?”

The real estate magnante Ren Zhiqiang: “Will you stop criminalizing people’s speech and sentencing them to re-education through labor?”

Cui Weiping, an academic: “Will you put an end to police harassment” of activists and netizens?

And yet, for many ordinary Chinese, there is hope. Incomes are rising, and there is a whiff of, yes, change in the air. In a recent, colorfully presented survey by TNS, part of Kantar, an information and consulting group, 88 percent of people surveyed in China were positive about the Year of the Snake, the company said.

As Mr. He said of last year, which saw the dramatic downfall of the political scion Bo Xilai, seen by some as a contender for Mr. Xi’s position, amid a murder and corruption scandal: “Something happens in every Dragon Year, even if it’s just a turning point.” Often, the real action begins a year or two later.

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India Ink: Newswallah: Bharat Edition

Himachal Pradesh: Heavy snowfall for three straight days in the hill state has shut down several arterial roads in the interior areas on Thursday, affecting vehicular traffic, according to an IANS report on the NDTV Web site. In Shimla, a popular holiday destination, at least 10 people, most of them tourists, were injured while walking on the slippery roads, the report said.

Sikkim: The ecologically rich state, located in the lower ranges of the Himalayas, will host the International Flower Show from Feb. 23 to 27, according to an IANS report cited in the Hindustan Times. The state is home to almost 5,000 varieties of flowers, and Sikkim’s state government is keen to promote floriculture and related activities as an important source of livelihood in the coming years, the report said.

Assam: A review committee decided to sign off on the government’s decision to block 306 Twitter accounts after last year’s ethnic clashes in the Kokrajhar district of Assam, the Press Trust of India reported. The committee observed that the accounts could inflame religious tensions in the country.

Gujarat: On Wednesday, a candidate for a local village election in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district was arrested, along with his manager, for allegedly forcing 100 people to put their hands in boiling oil to prove their loyalty to him, The Hindu reported. The candidate, Dinesh Parmar, who lost the election, had allegedly told the people that their hands would not be burned if they had indeed voted for him.

Rajasthan: A village council in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district decided to impose a fine on those who consumed alcohol or hunted animals, the Press Trust of India reported. At a meeting of the village council, it was decided that the penalty amount would range between 1,000 rupees and 11,000 rupees (about $19 to $206).

Karnataka: About 26 members of Bangalore-based women’s rights groups were taken into custody Tuesday but were later released, The Hindu said. These activists held demonstrations in front of the Raj Bhavan, or the governor’s mansion, to protest the central government’s new laws to deter violence against women, which the activists said ignored important recommendations by a government-appointed committee.

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India Ink: Katherine Boo: By the Book

What book is on your night stand now?

I’m currently reading “Ways of Going Home,” by the Chilean novelist and poet Alejandro Zambra. If it’s only half as good as his novella, “Bonsai,” it’ll still be a fine way to lose a weekend.

What was the last truly great book you read?

George Saunders’s “Tenth of December,” as much as I hate to say so given that recent obnoxious headline in The New York Times Magazine [“George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”]. Saunders’s earlier books had left me faintly less amazed than I felt I’d ought to be, but “Tenth,” in addition to being funny and stylistically cunning, contains some of the best writing about the psychological toll of inequality that I’ve read in years. Plus, like Alice Munro, Saunders knows when to end his stories — the moment when the best choice a writer can make is to slip away and leave the reader to assemble the last parts on her own.

What is your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

When your work is nonfiction about low-income communities, pretty much anything that’s not nonfiction about low-income communities feels like a guilty pleasure. Among recent happy diversions were Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Junot Díaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her,” Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” and the poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, “Narcopolis,” about the drug-hazed Bombay of the 1980s. Fountain, Díaz, Strayed and Thayil have nothing in common except the most important thing, a total lack of pretension. They don’t beat you down with their self-seriousness, and it’s only when you’re done that you realize how much wiser you are for their books.

Were there any novels that helped prepare you to enter the world of the slums? 

What helped me prepare for the slum reporting was the immersion work I’d done in the United States. Though every community is different, my personal rule is pretty much the same: It’s O.K. to feel like an idiot going in as long as you don’t sound like an idiot coming out. 

Where novels come in, for me, is when the reporting stops and the writing begins, because fiction writers seem to know more than nonfiction writers about distillation — conveying their analytical or psychological insights with economy. Being intent on conveying the diversity of experiences in a single slum (and equally intent on not writing a 1,000-page tome), I paid particular attention to novels where points of view shifted quickly, among them “The Yacoubian Building,” by Alaa Al Aswany. I’m also obsessed with the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, who stays out of the picture and allows the so-called subjects of his work to emerge gradually.

Are there any Indian writers with recent or forthcoming books you’re especially excited about?

Aman Sethi’s “A Free Man,” about an itinerant laborer in a Delhi slum, is one of my recent favorites — an original sensibility joined to a passion for reported fact. I’m also eagerly awaiting Naresh Fernandes’s “The Re-Islanding of Mumbai,” which should be out by the end of the year. When deep in my work at Annawadi I found it difficult to meet people from more affluent parts of Mumbai because the disconnects were too great. But talking to Naresh was different. He’s a genuine humanist in an age of very few, and understands the conflicts inherent in a city like Mumbai better than anyone I know.

Do you ever hear from Corean and Kim, the two women you wrote about in your National Magazine Award-winning New Yorker piece, “The Marriage Cure”?

Kim’s not been in touch recently, but Corean is doing well, and still fighting like mad on behalf of her children and grandchildren. She’s one of several women I’ve come to know in the course of my work whose example and insight have helped me conduct my own life less ridiculously. In fact I hold her personally responsible for my marriage.

What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?

My sister and I loved Encyclopedia Brown, the fifth-grade nerd/observer who seldom took more than a day to unravel the nefarious conspiracies of childhood. Every child detective requires a sidekick, obviously, and I thought Encyclopedia’s sidekick, Sally Kimball, was way cooler than any of Nancy Drew’s. In addition to being smart, Sally was the only kid in town who could beat up Bugs Meany. About the particular criminals Encyclopedia and Sally outwitted, the only one I remember is a cheater in a disgusting-sneakers competition. But as a child I treasured the idea of this infinitely just place called Idaville. In Idaville the weak were rarely bullied for long, and the bad guys didn’t get away.

What was the last book that made you cry? 

I’m not usually one for leaving tear stains in the margins, but in recent weeks I caught myself sobbing twice — while reading a Saunders story and a forthcoming book by my friend David Finkel. Finkel’s first book, “The Good Soldiers,” followed a battalion charged with carrying out George W. Bush’s “surge.” The new book follows some of those veterans as they struggle to reintegrate themselves into American life, and it’s devastating.

The last book that made you laugh?

“Spilt Milk,” by the Brazilian novelist Chico Buarque. A deathbed monologue about class, race, love and political history has no right to be this funny.

What’s the best love story you’ve ever read?

Shakespeare’s underrated “Troilus and Cressida,” a story of flawed people in a transactional historical context that renders notions of pure love absurd. It’s a love story for our time that just happened to be written at the turn of the 17th century.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? 

I’m useless when I meet writers I love — I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe. So I’m happy, even in my fantasy life, to give the Great Ones their space. It’s enough to know them from what they put on the page.

Who are your favorite writers of all time? And among your contemporaries? 

My top-10 list is an unstable thing, with new favorites regularly charging in and threatening to unseat the venerables, but Joseph Roth, Herman Melville, and George Eliot and Orwell are always on it. First among my contemporaries would have to be the late Roberto Bolaño. “The Savage Detectives” and “By Night in Chile” double-handedly yanked me out of a depression several years back, and reading “2666” while reporting in the slums was like a little miracle. 

I was working my butt off trying to investigate the violent deaths of some homeless children, under circumstances that had been covered up by the police, when I reached the section of “2666” entitled “The Part About the Crimes.” It begins with a relentless, near-forensic account of corpses and injustices (closely based on the murders of poor women in Juarez) that opens out into this fevered exploration of both the psychological cost of paying attention to the tragedies of others and the social cost of looking away. That section of the book undid me so thoroughly that I’ll probably never reread it, even though I surely grasped only a sliver of what Bolaño was trying to say. And I suppose that’s the built-in sorrow of my life’s most profound encounters with books, beginning with “A Wrinkle in Time” in third grade. To reread what you loved most at a particular moment is to risk the possibility that you might love it less, and I want to keep my memories undegraded.

If you had to give reading assignments to an aspiring journalist, what books would make the top of your list? 

Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”; Anna Funder’s “Stasiland”; Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”; Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s “Random Family”; Philip Gourevitch’s account of the Rwandan genocide; Joe Sacco’s graphic reportage; “The Corner,” by David Simon and Ed Burns; and Denis Johnson’s nonfiction collection “Seek,” mainly for the piece about trying to meet Charles Taylor during the Liberian civil war. I could go on and on, but I’d probably end the list with Kathryn Schulz’s “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.” It’s about the animating power of doubt and correction, and a lack of self-certainty is something my favorite nonfiction writers seem to have in common.

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IHT Rendezvous: In Worldwide Soccer Corruption Scandal, an Asian Tie

BEIJING — Soccer is probably the world’s most popular sport, commanding billions-strong audiences from slums to palaces. It may also be the world’s most corrupt sport, with the epicenter of the global corruption in Asia, investigators said this week.

The problem is illegal gambling that is tied to corruption and match fixing, said Chris Eaton, a former head of security at FIFA, the world soccer organization based in Switzerland, and now the director of the International Center for Sport Security in Qatar. Asia was attractive to criminals in this area for its lax regulation, he said, and the biggest gambling houses each transacted $2 billion a week. “It’s all done with algorithms and machines, almost like any commodity house in the U.S. or London,” he said.

Soccer gambling “is bigger than Coca-Cola, which is a trillion a year. This is a global economy, a growing global economy, and it needs to be regulated and supervised, and governments aren’t doing this,” Mr. Eaton said in one of a series of Reuters reports this week documenting the scandal.

On Monday, European police said hundreds of matches, including some involving the World Cup, the European Championships and the Champions League, may have been fixed in a global betting scam largely run from Singapore, the Southeast Asian nation with a normally squeaky-clean image.

This colorful account on the investigative Web site Invisible Dog offers apparent details of a trail that it said began with a goalkeeper in an Italian third division team and led to gambling masterminds in Singapore.

If the brains are in Singapore, the three largest gambling houses in Asia, IBCBET, SBOBET and 188BET, are in Manila in the Philippines, Reuters reported. Their operations were “very opaque” and what was known of them came from talking to people familiar with their workings, as there was no government record, Mr. Eaton, the soccer security expert, told Reuters.

“You have under-regulated, gray-area gambling where the regulators are not really serious, transparency rules are not to best practice and government oversight is almost nonexistent,” he said.

Exactly how it works was explained by Laszlo Angeli, a Hungarian prosecutor cited by the news agency, who drew on an example of a member of a gambling syndicate in Hungary.

“The Hungarian member, who was immediately below the Singapore head, was in touch with Hungarian referees who could then attempt to swing matches at which they officiated around the world,” he said. Accomplices would place bets on the Internet or by phone with bookmakers in Asia.

So far, the German police have concrete proof of 8 million euros ($11 million) in gambling profits from the match fixing, but this is probably the tip of the iceberg, experts say.

In response, FIFA has set up an online reporting site that guarantees anonymity to whistleblowers.

But Asian nations must work together to counter the gangs that run operations, said an analyst quoted by Reuters.

“There has to be collective effort from law enforcement agencies in Asia and beyond to address this issue,” said B.C. Tan, head of organized crime research at World-Check, a risk analysis firm.

In January, 41 South Korean players involved in match fixing were banned for life from the game by FIFA, extending earlier sanctions against them (though 21 were offered a reprieve, according to reports.) Three South Koreans involved in the scandal have committed suicide, this report said.

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Tsunami Causes Damage, Possible Deaths, on Solomon Islands

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — A powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami that sent strong waves crashing into several South Pacific islands, with officials in the Solomon Islands fearful that some residents had lost their lives.

The earthquake prompted tsunami warnings and watches from several island chains to Australia and later New Zealand, but many of those were later canceled.

The low-lying Solomon Islands, however, were not spared. George Herming, a government spokesman, said the tsunami sent two nearly five-foot waves into the western side of Santa Cruz Island, damaging at least 50 homes.

The police commissioner of the islands, John Lansley, said his patrols reported that at least four people and perhaps more were likely killed by the waves and ensuing flooding.

Richard Dapo, a school principal on an island near Santa Cruz, told the Associated Press that he had been getting calls from families on the coast whose homes had been damaged by the waves. 

“I try to tell the people living on the coastline, ‘Move inland, find a higher place. Make sure to keep away from the sea. Watch out for waves,’” he said.

The earthquake struck around 11 a.m. local time in the Santa Cruz Islands. There were conflicting reports as to the depth of the quake.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the tsunami warning was limited to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, Kosrae, Fiji, Kiribati, and Wallis and Futuna.

A lesser alert, a tsunami watch, was declared for American Samoa, Australia, Guam, the Northern Marianas, New Zealand and eastern Indonesia.

The earthquake was not only powerful but also shallow, which gave it significant potential to cause damage, said Barry Hirshorn, a geophysicist with the National Weather Service in Hawaii. Moreover, it was a thrust earthquake, he said, meaning that the sea floor moved up or down, not sideways, contributing to the potential for a dangerous tsunami.

But after the earthquake, as scientists watched to see how far a tsunami might spread, there were few early indications of a major threat beyond the immediate area, Mr. Hirshorn said. A water rise of about three feet had been observed close to the quake, he said, still high enough to be potentially damaging but probably not big enough to threaten distant shores.

In New Zealand, thousands of people were at the beach, swimming in the sea on a glorious summer afternoon on Waitangi Day, a national holiday — quite oblivious to the potential for a tsunami. Tsunami sirens were set off late in the afternoon there, and people in coastal areas were being told to stay off beaches and out of the sea, rivers and estuaries.

The New Zealand Herald reported Wednesday afternoon on its Web site that tsunami sirens in Suva, the capital of Fiji, had been warning people to stay inside or go to higher ground.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site on Wednesday that the Solomon Islands’ National Disaster Management Office had advised those living in low-lying areas, especially on Makira and Malaita, to move to higher ground.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 5

NEWS Gen. Moisés García Ochoa was blocked from becoming defense minister of Mexico after American officials expressed their concern that he had ties to drug traffickers. Ginger Thompson reports from New York, Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

On Monday, confirming what many historians and archaeologists had suspected, a team of experts at the University of Leicester concluded on the basis of DNA and other evidence that the skeletal remains were those of King Richard III, for centuries the most reviled of English monarchs. John F. Burns reports from Leicester, England.

In a major victory for feminists and the rule of law, a Beijing court has granted a woman a divorce on grounds of abuse and made history by issuing a three-month protection order against her ex-husband — a first in the nation’s capital, Beijing, according to lawyers and the Chinese media. Didi Kirsten Tatlow reports from Beijing.

The Thai government faces the quandary of what to do with all the creatures it has saved — a sort of Noah’s ark of endangered species. Thomas Fuller reports from Khao Pratubchang, Thailand.

A strike by garbage collectors in Seville, Spain, is entering its second week and threatening to turn into a health and safety issue in one of Spain’s most touristic cities. Raphael Minder reports from Seville, Spain.

Days ahead of a summit meeting where leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states are to wrestle again with a proposed seven-year budget, a spokesman for the bloc’s executive body was forced to defend the salaries of some officials. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

It was only a few years ago that some economists were arguing that Europe was “decoupling” from its long dependence on trade with the United States, but German carmakers proved otherwise. Jack Ewing reports.

FASHION This month Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and Internet guru to the fashion world, will throw her might behind London Fashion Week. Suzy Menkes reports from London.

ARTS Song Dong gathered multitudes in Hong Kong and asked them to help complete his autobiographical “36 Calendars” project. Joyce Lau reports from Hong Kong.

SPORTS A 19-month investigation found that criminal groups had infiltrated European and international soccer with hundreds of people involved in match-fixing, global law enforcement officials said. Sam Borden reports.

It would be naïve to believe that soccer is beyond corrupting, or to doubt that the allegations by police investigators in the Netherlands on Monday are anything but the smallest ripples on an enormous global pond. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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India Ink: 'Lalla Roukh' at the Rose Theater

Richard Termine for The New York Times

Lalla Roukh Marianne Fiset and Emiliano Gonzalez Toro starred in this work presented by Opera Lafayette on Thursday at the Rose Theater.

On Thursday evening Opera Lafayette presented a graceful and witty production of Félicien David’s “Lalla Roukh” at the Rose Theater. This opéra-comique set in Mughal India had fallen into oblivion since its wildly successful premiere in 1862, well ahead of the wave of other French operas like Bizet’s “Pêcheurs de Perles,” Delibes’s “Lakmé” or Meyerbeer’s “Africaine.”

Operas like these, in which the West’s flirtation with distant locales is colored with condescension, can bring on a toothache in the stage director who has to choose between an unreconstructed eye-candy approach or a Splenda version that leaves an aftertaste of postcolonial embarrassment.

Here the director, Bernard Deletré, devised an unusual solution when he brought in an Indian fashion designer, Poonam Bhagat, and the exquisite Kalanidhi dance troupe choreographed by Anuradha Nehru to add vibrant touches of authenticity to the dress and movement of characters who otherwise seem less rooted in South Asia than in commedia dell’arte. The spoken dialogue was edited down to its dramatic essentials and delivered with great clarity by the glowing cast of singers, most of whom were native French speakers. Together with Ryan Brown, who conducted with a fine ear for flow and comic timing, they made a solid case for “Lalla Roukh” as an overlooked gem of more than historical interest.

The heroine is a princess from Delhi who travels to Bukhara to marry its king. On a mountain pass in Kashmir she is waylaid by a silver-tongued poet with whom she falls in love. She arrives at the court determined to throw over the royal match in favor of the penniless poet, but it turns out that he was in fact the king disguised to test Lalla Roukh’s heart.

The opera contains exquisite musical moments, like the ballet in Act I in which the chorus evokes the starry sky reflected in a clear mountain lake with filigree woodwind solos against caressing choral lines. The following ballet of bayadères is carried by lively rhythms on an array of exotic percussion instruments, here joined by the ankle bells of the dancers.

Although David’s Orientalism is never authentic, it is still rich in naturalistic touches. As a young man he spent two years in Cairo and his familiarity with non-Western modes comes through in finely wrought oboe solos, alluring chromatic vocal lines and, in one aria, pizzicato passages meant to imitate the sound of a guzla.

Marianne Fiset sang the title role with a glowing, well-supported soprano that brought out the Jane Austen-like independence and likability of her character. The tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro was outstanding as the poet-king Noureddin, bringing a scintillating array of nuances to a character who is by turns comic, regal and wistful. The role of Lalla Roukh’s quick-witted maid, Mirza, was sung by Nathalie Paulin with a honeyed soprano. Mr. Deletré, the director, stepped into the buffoonish role of Baskir, the king’s chamberlain, with conviction and comic abandon.

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India Ink: Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

As pilgrims flock to the Maha Kumbh, a mass gathering in which Hindus travel to bathe in the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, Soma Basu and Bharat Lal Seth examine the impact on the rivers and the surrounding areas. In their article in Down To Earth magazine, Ms. Basu points out that the large number of people drawn to the event help cause water pollution and demand a large number of resources such as waste disposal, sanitation facilities and basic amenities like food, water and electricity. She writes that despite the authorities’ claim that they are prepared for the pilgrimage, the region remains ill equipped to deal with such crowds.

In the second half of the piece Bharat Lal Seth writes that while temporary measures are taken to clean the Ganga during the festival, the river continues to stay dirty through the rest of the year. He writes, “Maha Kumbh is no Olympics, which leaves behind a legacy of infrastructure. Come March 10, the tents, stalls, offices, ghats and pontoon bridges will be dismantled. The 100 million people will leave behind a mountain of waste, excreta and plastics for the residents of the host city and downstream villages to deal with, for long.”

In Foreign Affairs, Sumit Ganguly analyzes the Congress Party’s decision in January to elevate Rahul Gandhi to the position of party vice president, a role that did not previously exist. The role, he argues, is an attempt to solidify the Congress Party’s position before the national elections in 2014. Mr. Ganguly suggests that as the Indian democracy matures and the Indian electorate demands a meritocratic leadership, this decision might backfire on the Congress.

In keeping with the dynastic politics that have dominated the Congress, the piece argues that Rahul Gandhi has long been groomed to take over the party’s vice presidency, while others among the party have been discouraged from attempting to take the Congress’s top position. However, Mr. Gaguly notes that if the party operated in a democratic manner internally, it is unlikely that Mr. Gandhi would have worked his way to the top position. He points to Mr. Gandhi’s ineffective public speaking, unremarkable career in parliament, inability to lead the Congress to victory in regional elections and lack of engagement with contemporary issues as evidence for this argument. “In the end, the party that has placed all its bets on him could well discover that his dynastic halo has less appeal in India’s evolving political order than it expected,” writes Mr. Ganguly.

In a deeply personal essay in Open, Rahul Pandita writes of the impetus behind his memoir, “Our Moon Has Blood Clots,” which talks about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990.  Speaking of his horrific memories from the time, he talks of the forced removal of Kashmiri Pandits from their homes and the experiences they faced in refugee camps. While the pain of the experience has never left him in the 23 years he has been in exile, Mr. Pandita writes that in the last few years he has become angrier over his fate because the story of the Kashmiri Pandit has been marginalized. His said his desire to write the memoir was fueled by his anger over the denial his community faced about the events leading up to the exodus.

The piece describes the events of the night of 19 January 1990 as experienced by Mr. Pandita. He writes:

“Ask any Kashmiri Pandit — any — who left the Valley in 1990, about the night of 19 January 1990, and he will tell you the same story. Of how Muslims from his neighbourhood assembled in mosques, intimidating him and his family with scary slogans. Of how it happened not in one locality or street, or one district, but in the entire Valley at the same time.”

Speaking of those who have tried to suppress the point of view of Kashmiri Pandits, Mr. Pandita says that as in any genocide, the witnesses play a crucial role in shaping public discourse. When the witnesses manipulate the facts for fear of reproach, truth is compromised. He concludes, “There will be some who will live in permanent denial, but the world will overwhelmingly learn and believe and not be able to disregard our story. The war may end, but it won’t be won against us.”

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India Ink: Selling ‘Midnight’s Children’ in India

“Am I allowed to mention the Rushdie word?” quipped the historian and author Tom Holland at the recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival. Mr. Holland was speaking of Salman Rushdie’s 1981 novel, “Midnight’s Children,” a book he called a contemporary classic.

His comment alluded to the political baggage attached to Mr. Rushdie in India, the country of his birth, because of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which is banned in India and sparked a death threat against him from Iran in 1989. Last year, Mr. Rushdie canceled a scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival because of an assassination threat against him in connection with the book.

Controversy over Mr. Rushdie flared up again this week, as he came to India to promote the film “Midnight’s Children,” directed by the award-winning filmmaker Deepa Mehta and based upon Mr. Rushdie’s acclaimed novel by the same name. Beginning on the eve of India’s independence from British rule, “Midnight’s Children” follows the country through its early years as a new nation through the lives of the children born at the stroke of midnight on Aug. 15, 1947.

On Wednesday, Mr. Rushdie was scheduled to attend a publicity event in Kolkata for the movie, along with Ms. Mehta. However, the visit was called off at the last minute, giving rise to speculation that the state government had canceled the visit because of pressure from Muslim groups.

On Friday, Mr. Rushdie said as much on Twitter. “The simple fact is that the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered the police to block my arrival,” he said. In a statement issued Friday, he clarified that he had been planning to take part in a session at the Kolkata Literary Meet, where he had been invited by the organizers to appear as “a surprise guest.” He also said that a police source had shared his itinerary with the press, thereby inciting trouble.

“What is happening in India nowadays is an accumulating scandal and a growing disgrace to this great nation,” said Mr. Rushdie in the statement. “I can only hope that the people of India have the will to demand that such assaults on freedom cease once and for all.”

However, Mr. Rushdie was able to attend the premiere of the film at Mumbai’s PVR Cinema in Phoenix Mills on Thursday. The theater was lined with nearly 50 police officers standing guard, and two truckloads of officers sat outside the gates of the mall complex.

The premiere was well attended by the actors in the movie, including Shriya Saran, Shahana Goswami, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Rahul Bose, and they were in a celebratory mood.

“I think that this is a bit of good news that in the middle of dark times for our creative freedom that this film is releasing here,” Mr. Bose said at the premiere. “I am sentimentally invested in the movie because it’s a movie I was supposed to be part of in a production 15 years ago. That one was stymied at the last moment, but this one wasn’t. And I’m playing a small role, but it’s nice to be part of it.”

As the crowd vied to get a view of Mr. Rushdie as he entered, he gamely posed for photographs with fans and greeted friends and well-wishers. Also in attendance were the actress Nandita Das, the director and screenwriter Dev Benegal, the film director and screenwriter Sudhir Mishra, the cricketer Yuvraj Singh, the columnist Anil Dharker and the actor Arunoday Singh.

While film adaptations of books, particularly those considered classics, are always tricky, “Midnight’s Children” elicited a largely positive response. “I think Midnight’s Children is a pretty impossible book to make a film of, and this one is a fantastic effort,” said the Indian stage and film actor Gerson da Cunha after the screening. “I just hope that it works in India because, well, it is a difficult film.”

The performances by each of the actors drew wide praise from the audience, who clapped enthusiastically at the end of the film. “The search for identity as depicted by the actors was very touching,” said Dolly Thakore, a veteran theater actress.

“Midnight’s Children,” which had its worldwide premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, is opening in India in 250 theaters and 15 cities, a wider rollout than in Canada in November (120 screens) and in Britain in late December (180 screens). A release in the United States is slated for April.

Distributed in India by PVR Pictures, the film is opening across a “good number of screens,” said the company’s vice president of marketing, Arun Nair.

“As a nondubbed, nonaction film, it’s a big opening for an English film,” Mr. Nair added, noting in comparison that other similar English-language films, like last year’s “Killing Them Softly,” starring Brad Pitt, opened in only 75 screens. (Big-budget Hollywood movies, typically dubbed in local languages, open to much larger audiences. “The Amazing Spider-Man,” for example, opened in 1,250 screens while “The Avengers” opened in 1,100.)

While there was initially some uncertainty about the film finding a distributor in India, when PVR purchased the movie rights in October, Kamal Gianchandani, the company’s president, told Reuters that he was not expecting any trouble. “We don’t think the film is controversial,” he said.

Apart from the canceled Kolkata event, “Midnight’s Children” seems to have elicited a muted response from the public so far, which is surprising, considering Mr. Rushdie’s involvement and the book’s criticism of Indira Gandhi and her imposition of emergency powers in India between 1975 and 1977. Three years after the book was published, Mrs. Gandhi sued for defamation in Britain, over a single sentence that implied she was responsible for her husband’s death. The case was settled out of court, with Mr. Rushdie deleting the sentence.

The Congress Party, which reveres Mrs. Gandhi as an icon, has said nothing publicly. The film passed the censors without any cuts.

The movie was shot in Sri Lanka, somewhat secretly, said Ms. Mehta, who has been the target of protests by Hindu fundamentalists. “He’s got the Muslims, and I’ve got the Hindus,” she told the The Globe and Mail two years ago. Production was briefly interrupted because the Iranians protested, but was allowed to go ahead after the intervention of the Sri Lankan president. The filmmakers changed the title to “Winds of Change” for the remainder of the shoot.

A somewhat stealthy marketing strategy by PVR Pictures appears to have paid off for “Midnight’s Children,” which opened throughout the country Friday with little incident. “With Salman Rushdie, we did not want a repeat of Jaipur 2012,” said Mr. Nair.

“Controversies only create awareness for a film. What we were aiming for was ‘intent to watch,’ ” he said. “We avoided all controversy by keeping his plans in India under wraps. We targeted specific media, the six news channels and English-language press and specific cities.”

In Mumbai earlier this week, the venue for a promotional event for the movie was shifted from the Landmark bookstore at Infiniti Mall, in suburban Andheri, to south Mumbai’s National Center for the Performing Arts. Ashutosh Pandey, the chief operating officer of Landmark, said in a press release that the move was due to “security concerns.”

The new venue was the Little Theater, a 114-seater tucked inside the center’s compound, with plenty of police personnel and plainclothes officers in attendance. Anil Dharker, who heads Literature Live, a local literary festival, later said that he was asked to organize a new venue four days before the scheduled promotional gig. “I knew the N.C.P.A. would support it. I said, ‘We will keep it for people only I know.’ We sent out no invites.”

Mr. Rushdie may be the sharpest assessor of why “Midnight’s Children” appears to have avoided attracting the screaming hordes. Last March, he told a spellbound audience at a conclave organized by the news magazine India Today: “I have this theory that the Indian electorate is smarter than the politicians and sees through them. Yes, people can sometimes be whipped up, as they were by the religious extremists in Jaipur. But how many people? How big are these mobs? How representative are they? These attacks, whether upon my book or people’s films or plays or paintings or whatever, these are not things that come from the bottom up.”

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Fireworks Cause Deadly Highway Collapse in China

BEIJING (AP) — Fireworks for Lunar New Year celebrations exploded on a truck in central China, destroying part of an elevated highway Friday and sending vehicles plummeting 30 meters (about 100 feet) to the ground. State media had conflicting reports on casualties.

The huge blast collapsed an 80-meter (80-yard) stretch of a major east-west highway in Mianchi county in Henan Province. It scattered blackened chunks of debris and shattered the windows of a nearby truck stop. There was no immediate word on the cause of the explosion.

A Communist Party spokesman for the nearby city of Sanmenxia, Nie Jianyin, cited provincial officials as saying that five people were confirmed dead and eight hospitalized. The Xinhua News agency reported four dead. Earlier reports by China National Radio and some other outlets of up to 26 people killed were later removed from websites.

Photos posted on the website of a Henan newspaper, Dahe Daily, showed a stretch of elevated highway gone, with one truck's back wheels perched at the edge of a shorn-off section of the highway. Other photos showed firefighters below spraying water on scorched hunks of concrete, wrecked trucks and flattened shipping containers.

The location is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Luoyang, an ancient capital of China known for grottoes of Buddhist statues carved from limestone cliffs.

Fireworks are an enormously popular part of Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. To meet the demand, fireworks are made, shipped and stored in large quantities, sometimes in unsafe conditions.

A result is periodic catastrophe: In 2006, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, a storeroom of fireworks exploded at a temple fair in Henan, killing 36 people and injuring dozens more. In 2000, an unlicensed fireworks factory in southern China exploded, killing 33 people, including 13 primary and secondary school students working there.

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Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says

Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

In East Jerusalem, Israelis distributed gas masks on Wednesday as worries about security spread. More Photos »

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.

The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Israel had notified the United States about the attack, which the Syrian government condemned as an act of “arrogance and aggression.” Israel’s move demonstrated its determination to ensure that Hezbollah — its arch foe in the north — is unable to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to bolster its arsenal significantly.

The predawn strike was the first time in more than five years that Israel’s air force had attacked a target in Syria. While there was no expectation that the beleaguered Assad government had an interest in retaliating, the strike raised concerns that the Syrian civil war had continued to spread beyond its border.

In a statement, the Syrian military denied that a convoy had been struck. It said the attack had hit a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs that was used to improve Syria’s defenses, and called the attack “a flagrant breach of Syrian sovereignty and airspace.”

Israeli officials would not confirm the airstrike, a common tactic here. But it came after days of intense security consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the possible movement of chemical and other weapons around Syria, and warnings that Jerusalem would take action to thwart any possible transfers to Hezbollah.

Thousands of Israelis have crowded gas-mask distribution centers over the last two days. On Sunday, Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in the north, near Haifa, which was heavily bombed during the 2006 war with Lebanon.

Syria and Israel are technically in a state of war but have long maintained an uneasy peace along their decades-old armistice line. Israel has mostly watched warily and tried to stay out of Syria’s raging civil war, fearful of provoking a wider confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah. In November, however, after several mortars fell on Israel’s side of the border, its tanks struck a Syrian artillery unit.

Several analysts said that despite the increased tensions, they thought the likelihood of retaliation for the airstrike was relatively low.

“It is necessary and correct to prepare for deterioration — that scenario exists,” Danny Yatom, a former chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told Ynet, a news Web site. “But in my assessment, there will not be a reaction, because neither Hezbollah nor the Syrians have an interest in retaliating.”

Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, “is deep in his own troubles,” Mr. Yatom said, “and Hezbollah is making a great effort to assist him, in parallel with its efforts to obtain weapons, so they won’t want to broaden the circle of fighting.”

In the United States, the State Department and Defense Department would not comment on reports of the strike.

Russia, which has carried out a vigorous diplomatic battle to deter foreign military intervention in the Syrian conflict for more than a year, issued a statement of concern early on Thursday, describing the strikes as “an attack by Israel’s air force on objects in Syria, near Damascus.”

“If this information is confirmed, this is an unprovoked attack on the territory of a sovereign nation, which blatantly violates the U.N. charter and is unacceptable and unjustified whatever its motives,” said a statement posted on the web site of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Moscow said it would take immediate steps to clarify what had happened, and reiterated its longstanding insistence on a political solution and “the unacceptability of any kind of external intervention.”

The episode illustrated how the escalating violence in Syria, which has already killed more than 60,000, is drawing in neighboring states and threatening to destabilize the region further.

Iran has firmly allied itself with Mr. Assad, sending personnel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force to Syria and ferrying military equipment to Syria through Iraqi airspace.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard, Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Ellen Barry from Moscow; Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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India Ink: India Ink Is Taking Your Questions for Thomas Friedman

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman has been a regular visitor to India for a decade.

During his travels here and in China, he developed his widely followed theory of the inevitability of globalization, and the need for businesses and individuals to adapt to the accompanying changes. In India, he met former Infosys chief executive Nandan Nilekani, who coined the phrase “The world is flat,” which became the title of Mr. Friedman’s best-selling 2005 book.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Friedman was a correspondent in Washington, Beirut and Jerusalem before leaving the news side of The Times for its editorial side, becoming the paper’s foreign-affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995.

This week, Mr. Friedman is in India on what has become an almost annual pilgrimage, meeting with a wide range of business executives and government officials. He will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Development conference in New Delhi on Friday.

Later this week, Mr. Friedman will also take questions from India Ink readers about India’s role in the global economy, and the changes he has seen in that role in recent years.

Have a question for Mr. Friedman? Please leave it in the comments below, or send it to IndiaInk@nytimes.com.

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India Ink: Five Questions (Plus a Few More) for Selma Dabbagh

Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian fiction writer based in London. Her first novel, “Out of It,” which is set in Palestine, was published in 2011. A lawyer and mother of two, she is also working on her second novel, about expatriates, which is coming out next year. She spoke to India Ink at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which she was attending for the first time.

What are the occupational hazards of being a writer?

Compared to a lot of Palestinian writers, I have a big advantage of living in Europe and having a European passport, so I don’t face threats on a daily basis. I think I am more likely to get criticized because of my subject matter, or have people take objection to my politics, rather than my writing.

What is your everyday writing ritual?

I like to work in the morning. I try to have big chunks of time where I’m doing nothing else, and I try to keep administrative work to the evening. I still work part-time as a lawyer and I have two children so my time is very splintered.

Also, writers now have to do quite a lot of work for the publicity of a book that is out, so the administrative side and the publicity side impinge on your time. When I’m actually writing, I have a sofa that I go to in a room that has no Wi-Fi. I close the door, I have my notes on the side on a small easel, and that’s where I write and that’s when I’m happiest.

How do you deal with your critics?

I had one review which was quite strange. He made it sound like I was trivializing the Holocaust by something one character had said in the novel. He misinterpreted it and said it was offensive rubbish. I was so upset and angry with my first review because I felt that he got it wrong. Your sense is to respond to correct the record. To trivialize the Holocaust is actually a statutory offense in some countries. I did try and draft a response against the advice of everybody.

It [the review] came out in The Independent, and it was also odd because they put a strapline which said, “Aren’t you a bit too young for this conflict?” I was eight years older than the reviewer. And then I realized there is actually no dignified way of responding to a review. You have to just leave it.

You do get these knee-jerk reactions from people who are very supportive of Israel. Just the minute you say you are from Palestine, that in itself is offensive enough. So it doesn’t really matter how you are dressing it up.
That means you get quite cautious in the way you speak. You qualify everything, you talk with your footnotes, you have to make sure that you are really not going to say something in a panel or a session which is going to be filmed or played on YouTube and then get distorted.

Do you self-censor?

I don’t think it is self-censorship. It is extreme caution in how you say things and making sure that you know absolutely where something is coming from.

One of the tests as a writer is that you should follow what interests you. Often that is the behavior of your own people. Rather than thinking “this is what I should write about; this is the way we should be positively portrayed,” find your interest, find your passion as honestly and truthfully as possible.

What advice would you give to people who are interested in conflict writing?

History is very important. So is putting things into perspective so you are not just dealing with the immediate conflict. The back story is always relevant; it always needs to be clear. Even if it is not going to fit into your word count, it has to be very clear in your head why something has happened, whether it was a fictional event or a real event.

If you are portraying negative aspects within your own movement or your own people, one thing I often find is useful is to make sure that I have a good understanding as to why that person is behaving in a way they are, what is their history.

People are inherently the same. They are responding to circumstances. They have the same capacity of good or evil in them; it is just how they get driven into that position. It’s critical to have some sort of sympathy being built up, even if the end result is not one that you would condone.

Could you tell us a little bit about your book “Out of It?”

It’s a very specifically a Palestinian book in some ways. It is about a very specific set of circumstances, but the issues in it are very universal. The particular thing that was interesting to me was the idea of political consciousness, and how people in conflict situations deal with what space they should allow their personal lives when the political may be dominating.

The characters in my book are very middle class. They are exiled and are returnees to Palestine. They are very educated, and they want to change their country, and they want to somehow engage. But they find it very difficult to find a place between the sort of extremist opposition and the defunct leadership that is in place.
I wrote the book before the Arab Spring, but I was writing it to show a class of Arabs who are multilingual, urban, politicized urbane that were not being depicted in the media. I felt like this is a whole view of the Arab world which was just not coming across. And then when the Arab Spring started, and suddenly, there were my characters.

How is your upcoming book different from your previous one?

It’s different because it’s not about Palestine. It is a novel about living in a compound in a situation where there is a political conflict outside. It’s about how we can turn a blind eye on a crisis that is surrounding us. It’s different in terms of setting, but I think in terms of theme it is similar. It should be hopefully coming out next year, and the title is “Here We Are Now.”

Why does the Jaipur Literature Festival matter to you?

I think among writers there’s no festival you’d rather go to than Jaipur because it’s very international. It attracts the top writers of fiction and nonfiction as well as new writers, so it’s a great sort of hub to meet people. It’s a combination of being high-powered and yet very relaxed and friendly at the same time.

You’ve mentioned before the need to talk to the world outside as a sort of impetus that drives your work. How important do you think it is to talk to writers from different parts of the world?

I’m a great admirer of Ariel Dorfman’s work, and I think there are very few writers who have written in this specific zone of having to engage in politics and writing literature because a lot of people see it as a big tension. The presumption of Western literature is that it’s not political; the presumption of Palestinian literature is that it is political so you have this great tension between the two things. So to meet people who have somehow resolved in their minds the little tests they use is critical in terms of being able to write.

In terms of their take on the Palestinian issue and whether they are going to be sympathetic, you always hope that this is going to be a consequence meeting people or them reading your book, but you can never know what other influences they are exposed to and where they ideas come from. It’s a slow process to get somebody engaged with an issue that does not directly affect their lives. Writers are curious about the world, but most people are fairly incurious about things that don’t directly affect them.

Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, always wanted to be writer but my dad wouldn’t let me. He said, “You have to have a vocation; you can’t just go and study literature.” I’m one of three girls. My older sister is an architect, my younger sister is a doctor and I’m a lawyer. My dad just sort of decided — “you’re like this kind of character and you’re like this” — and we never really challenged it.

I enjoyed doing law, and I still practice as a lawyer. It gave me a way to work in places to get the material for the book, and that’s what I wanted with it. I felt I didn’t want to just study literature and then come out and work as a writer without ever having done much else. I always wanted to write, but it took me until my 30s to actually start doing it.

(The interview and been lightly edited and condensed.)

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IHT Rendezvous: In Beijing, No Tears Over Clinton's Departure

BEIJING — It’s a badly kept secret in Beijing that quite a few Chinese officials, including very senior ones, never warmed to Hillary Rodham Clinton. How much of that is because she is an outspoken supporter of women’s rights is unclear, but it is almost certainly a factor: China is run by men (literally — there is not a single woman in the inner circle of power, the Standing Committee of the Politburo), and women have little policy input, whether on domestic or global issues.

China’s Communist Party mandarins have been wary of Mrs. Clinton since at least 1995, when she was a key figure at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women here in Beijing. Those of us present at the meeting heard her tell delegates that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” That language is in the declaration, which said: “Women’s rights are human rights” (Article 14 of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action). It was a major moment for the women’s movement in China and around the world.

Yet that was after officials had exiled the lively N.G.O. groups in attendance to the distant suburbs of Huairou, fearing the mind-opening impact they would have on its citizens. China in 1995 was a more socially conservative place than today, and feminists calling for health care for prostitutes, or wages for mothers, or lesbian and gay rights, profoundly shocked officials.

So recent talk from some leading academics within Beijing’s foreign policy establishment that China is looking forward to seeing John Kerry succeed Mrs. Clinton as the U.S. secretary of state comes as no surprise.

Jin Canrong, an international affairs professor at Renmin University of China, said Mr. Kerry would be less aggressive toward China than Mrs. Clinton has been, according to China Daily.

China disliked Mrs. Clinton’s central role in the Obama administration’s turn toward Asia, which has been interpreted by many here as an effort to contain China.

Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said Mrs. Clinton’s role in the administration’s “pivot to Asia” and her tough stance toward China were arguably “her greatest and most memorable contribution” as secretary of state, as my colleague David Rohde reported.

In contrast, Ruan Zongze, a former senior Chinese diplomat in the U.S. and the deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies, views Mr. Kerry as “professional, calm and pragmatic, and expects him to initiate strategic dialogues between China and the U.S., which will wield positive influence on Sino-U.S. relations,” China Daily wrote.

“Among the challenges facing Kerry will be to improve ties between China and the U.S., which have worsened since Washington’s rebalancing policy in the Asia-Pacific region,” the state-run newspaper said.

“China-U.S. ties have deteriorated through a series of high-profile measures by the U.S. aimed at rebalancing, especially the over-emphasis of military action, which triggered great antipathy from China,” the paper quoted Mr. Ruan as saying in December, after Mr. Kerry’s nomination became known.

Last week, Mr. Ruan had more to say, Global Post reported.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, he said that “America’s pivot is sending the wrong message” to its allies, encouraging them to “become more bellicose and provocative,” according to Global Post. “An unstable or weak China would be very dangerous,” he added.

Yet over the weekend, China praised Mrs. Clinton’s four years at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, in words from a key interlocutor of hers over the years, Dai Bingguo, a deputy minister of foreign affairs and a key voice in China’s foreign policy.

“Over the last four years,” Mr. Dai told Mrs. Clinton in a telephone call on Saturday evening, according to a statement on the Web site of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “China-U.S. relations have been generally stable and have made major, positive progress.”

Both sides should continue to steer towards a new type of relationship between big powers based on mutual respect and partnership, said Mr. Dai.

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Real' Life in North Korea

BEIJING — With North Korea in the headlines again amid concerns it could explode a third, more powerful nuclear device, many people around the world may be wondering: What are they like?

North Korea is “a real country with real people,” wrote John Everard, a former British ambassador to Pyongyang, in The Independent on Sunday.

“Above all, North Koreans are sharply differentiated human beings, with a good sense of humor and are often fun to be with,” wrote Mr. Everard, who lived in the North Korean capital from 2006 to 2008 and is the author of a recent book about his time there, titled, “Only Beautiful, Please.”

Their everyday concerns “are often not so very different from our own: their friends, how their children are doing at school, their jobs, and making enough money to get by.”

Mr. Everard’s stay in Pyongyang took in the time of North Korea’s first nuclear test. As this article on 38 North, a Web site that follows the country closely, shows, the rest of the world is watching to see whether another nuclear detonation is imminent.

Tensions have grown since North Korea launched a rocket in December, provoking a new U.N. Security Council resolution last week condemning the launching and calling for a tightening of sanctions against the country. In a sign it’s really serious, even China, the North’s longtime ally, voted for the resolution.

In response, North Korea “bluntly threatened the United States, saying North Korea had no interest in talks on denuclearizing itself and would forge ahead with its missile and weapons development, with the goal of attaining the capability to hit American territory,” my colleagues Choe Sang-hun and Rick Gladstone wrote.

Against this nasty background, Mr. Everard shows the human dimension of citizens living in Pyongyang, focusing on a group of people he says he got to know fairly well; not the inner circle of power, but not the poor of the countryside, either. “They were executives rather than leaders.”

As nknews.org wrote last year, “Foreigners are allowed within a 35 km radius of Pyongyang, and Everard took every opportunity to visit and document within this area.”

So what were they like?

Over all, “Their lives would seem very dull to most Westerners,” Mr. Everard wrote. “They revolved around daily rituals of carefully phased breakfasts in overcrowded flats, tedious journeys to work (often prolonged because Pyongyang’s rickety public transport so often broke down), and generally tedious work days.”

Tedious, maybe, but “relaxed.” Yet, working day done, getting home wasn’t always easy. “Some of my contacts refused to use the Pyongyang metro because of the risk of a power cut while they were in a tunnel.” Some chose to walk home.

They were curious about the world. “I once lent one a set of DVDs of ‘Desperate Housewives’ and met the same person the next day with big rings under their eyes. They had sat up all night and watched the entire series in one sitting,” he wrote.

More fun, perhaps, than a visit home: “My contacts spoke of their parents with respect rather than affection, and chafed at the Confucian authority that they exercised. Visits to their homes seemed to be a duty rather than a pleasure, particularly when they involved dressing children up in their best and crossing Pyongyang (especially in autumn, when the city gets muddy – a difficult time to deliver clean children to grandparents),” he wrote.

Intriguingly, “Alcoholism and prostitution were rampant within the capital,” nknews.org reported, from a talk Mr. Everard gave last year.

And, “Although they all had access to showers, none could remember when they had last had one with hot water. Taking a cold shower in the Pyongyang winter, when temperatures can fall to -20C, is not fun,” Mr. Everard wrote in The Independent.

Most people he mingled with had enough food – but it wasn’t varied or tasty. “These people did not eat well, but at least they ate regularly,” mostly rice and boiled vegetables. And kimchi.

“Evening life at home revolved around chatting with family members and watching TV,” he wrote. “Sometimes there would be a film on. Even though North Korea had hardly produced any new films for some years before my time there, so that my contacts had seen almost all the national repertoire several times, they would still sometimes watch repeats. But the best time was the half-hour of (heavily edited and slanted) international news on Sunday evenings. Everyone watched that, and questioned me about what they had seen.”

While the anti-American propaganda the state puts out is powerful, not everyone believed it, wrote Mr. Everard.

“They had been taught to hate Americans, but most of them did not. One of them told me that they had worked with Americans during one of the thaws in relations with that country, had liked them and hoped that they would return,” wrote Mr. Everard. Of course this all was based on experiences that ended in 2008, but it’s unlikely attitudes have changed fundamentally since then, despite the latest round of threats to target the United States.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Jan. 26

NEWS Ordinary investors are falling in love again with the stock market after nearly five years of bitter separation. More money has poured into stocks worldwide in the first three weeks of January through mutual funds than in any comparable period since 2001. Nathaniel Popper reports from New York.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the man who was once Nelson Mandela’s chosen successor, is returning to government in South Africa, this time as a business tycoon. Bill Keller reports from Johannesburg.

In an unusual display of direct diplomacy, the U.S. Commerce Department is lobbying in Brussels on behalf of the Obama administration against sweeping new privacy controls that could hurt the U.S. technology industry in Europe. Kevin J. O’Brien reports from New York.

Although women in the United States armed forces have routinely shown bravery under fire, the question that is now facing the Pentagon is whether female soldiers can perform ground combat tasks day in and day out now that they are allowed to take part in combat duty. James Dao reports from New York.

As Brazil and Argentina lose some of their luster, are sub-Saharan African nations on the rise? Billionaire dealmakers who have gathered in Davos, Switzerland, want to know. Liz Alderman reports from Davos.

ARTS Portraits by the artist Jusepe de Ribera, hidden up high and in the darkness of a church in Naples, Italy, are, like the city, expressions of the spiritual embedded in the profane. Michael Kimmelman reports from Naples, Italy.

SPORTS At the Australian Open, Andy Murray finally outdueled Roger Federer in a major event and heads to men’s final. Christopher Clarey reports from Melbourne.

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India Ink: David C. Headley Gets 35 Years for Mumbai Attack

CHICAGO — David C. Headley, an American who confessed to helping plan the deadly 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, was sentenced here on Thursday to 35 years in prison, the maximum sought by federal prosecutors.

Balancing what was described in court as a “very heinous crime” and “very significant cooperation,” the ruling came after lawyers for the government and the defense urged Judge Harry D. Leinenweber of Federal District Court to downgrade Mr. Headley’s punishment from life in prison. They said he had cooperated with the authorities and provided useful information about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group with which he had worked.

“No matter how good our intelligence is, no matter how technologically advanced our investigative techniques are, we need witnesses,” Gary S. Shapiro, the acting United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said after the decision. “And the only way you get witnesses in this world is by threatening to prosecute them and then offering them some real incentive to provide you with that information.”

According to court documents, Mr. Headley, 52, attended Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan between 2002 and 2005. He later admitted to scouting targets in Mumbai for the group before the raids in November 2008, in which 163 people and 9 gunmen died. Six of the victims were American.

After his arrest at a Chicago airport a year later, Mr. Headley pleaded guilty to 12 conspiracy charges over his involvement in the Mumbai attack and a proposed terrorist plot against a Danish newspaper that published cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Prosecutors said that Mr. Headley immediately began sharing information that led to criminal charges against at least seven other people. He also testified against his co-defendant, the Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, who last week was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In exchange for his cooperation, which is expected to continue while he is in prison, prosecutors also agreed not to seek the death penalty or extradite Mr. Headley to Pakistan, India or Denmark.

But on Thursday, some expressed concern that Mr. Headley was getting more leniency than he deserved.

Standing before the court, Linda Ragsdale, who was injured in the Mumbai attack, fought back tears as she described the gunfire she witnessed at a hotel that was raided in the militant attack.

“I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child,” she said.

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IHT Rendezvous: Cat Rescues in China Raise Host of New Questions

BEIJING — The crazy meowing from a truck crashed on a highway outside Changsha, in central China, told rescuers this was no ordinary cargo; inside, over 1,000 cats and kittens were crammed into bamboo cages, headed for restaurant tables in the southern city of Guangzhou, Chinese media reported.

Some cats were badly injured in the nighttime accident two Sundays ago. Some were dying of thirst. Some were giving birth. Some were adopted by animal lovers who rushed to the scene, alerted by text message, telephone or microblog posts, said participants. In all, about 200 cats died; about a dozen are still in animal hospitals in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, according to local media reports.

But in a new twist, 800 cats released by rescuers into the city are now causing a different kind of concern: how will they impact on the local environment? As well as dealing with hundreds of new, potentially fast-multiplying cats in the neighborhood, some rescuers are afraid the animals have simply escaped one fate for another and will soon be caught and sold again by the cat trappers and traders. As the Sanxiang Metropolitan News, a local newspaper, wrote, the fate of these cats is “an awkward fate.”

China has a different “cat problem” from the one my colleague, Gerry Mullany, wrote about yesterday in a post about a New Zealand economist who wants cats to be removed from his country because of their threat to the native bird species.

In China, in a brutal trade, cats are widely eaten, as are dogs. But increasingly, ordinary citizens are acting to stop it, carrying out “animal rescues” like in Changsha. The trade is a barely regulated free-for-all, and rescuers, well-wired, can be quick on the scene. There have been at least five major rescues over the last two years, according to Chinese animal rights activists.

In the case of Changsha, the cargo was reportedly worth about 50,000 renminbi ($8,000 US), according to some Chinese media; to get the cats away from the drivers at the crash scene, animal rescuers paid between 7,000 and 10,000 renminbi, according to people there (the detail remains a little unclear.)

A man who asked to be identified as Hunter, who works for the Changsha Small Animal Protection Association was there that night.

“The truck was badly destroyed and some of the cages broken, some cats escaped but we don’t know how many,” he said in a telephone interview.

“It was crowded and a mess, very smelly and dirty,” he added. “When we got there about 25 cats had already died and some were very weak or injured.”

“About 50 animal lovers came to the truck to rescue the cats and many people brought one home, or called their friends to adopt a cat,” he said.

In a recent article, the Sanxiang Metropolitan News interviewed an animal welfare volunteer called Ms. Tian who recently had become concerned about the fate of the 800 released cats.

“Cats reproduce fast,” she said. “It’s very possible that it could cause alarm among people living in the community and lead to disaster for the feline ecosphere,” she said.

As the newspaper wrote: “From a journey to death to a journey to homelessness, from the table to the street, luck will determine which cats live.”

“Though neither their rescue nor their current conditions are ‘perfect,’ yet when seen from the point of view of living creatures, every good heart that protects life is worthy of respect,” the paper wrote. “Cat traders, cat catchers and cat eaters cannot escape people’s pursuit of morality.”

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India Ink: India Undermined by Lack of Long-Term Vision

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Finally, the debate over overhauls and policy is muddied by mainstream political parties that have no clear economic vision. Instead, every party prefers to take stances that are inconsistent but that are perceived to serve it well in the short term.

In 1991, the finance minister Manmohan Singh opened up the Indian economy by relaxing many import and foreign investment restrictions and simplifying a byzantine licensing regime. But as prime minister since 2004, he has been far more timid in pushing through a second major round of policy changes.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which headed India’s coalition government from 1999 to 2004, used to pitch strongly for economic liberalization, promising to, for example, allow greater foreign investment in India’s retailing sector. Now that it is in the opposition, however, the party has resisted the passage of that very same measure for retailing — resisted it so strongly, in fact, that it refused to let Parliament function for days on end, claiming that big-box retailing chains would hurt small shopkeepers.

“There may have been some rationale for it in 2004,” Arun Jaitley, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, said vaguely by way of not quite clarifying his party’s reversal on the policy.

Such policy reversals have drawn sharp criticism from both foreign and domestic analysts and investors. In 2006, the Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill ranked India a lowly 97th in the world by potential risks to growth, below Brazil and the Philippines. In his 2011 book “Growth Map,” Mr. O’Neill said that the country’s problems boiled down to a lack of leadership.

Last April the steel baron Lakshmi Mittal said that India was “low on the investment priority list of countries.”

Ratan Tata, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Tata Sons empire, told The Financial Times in an interview that even though he was “bullish about India’s potential,” Indian companies could not help but look overseas, where “you wouldn’t have an eight-year or seven-year wait to get all the clearances for a steel plant.”

Late last year, in a rare moment of plain speaking, Mr. Singh, the prime minister, acknowledged that his government needed “courage and some risks” to see India through the policy logjam.

Pashmina shawls and loaded iPods will not do the trick any more.

Samanth Subramanian is the India correspondent for The National. He is working on a book about the Sri Lankan civil war.

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