We are sorry to hear of the death of Chinese environmentalist Liang Congjie who died in Beijing recently of a lung ailment. He was 78. Liang was the founder of Friends of Nature, the first legally-recognized environmental group in the People’s Republic of China. Historian and teacher Liang and three of his colleagues decided to establish a citizens’ environmental group in 1994. He said in a 2000 interview, “We knew from television about Greenpeace, but there wasn’t anything like that in China. My friends and I began wondering, why not here? We decided to try.” Friends of Nature has worked on important campaigns to preserve China’s forests and its indigenous wildlife, including bird species and the rare...

Along with visiting friends and family, exploring potential business opportunities, and partaking in the local cuisine and culture, an ulterior but no less significant motive for us to return to China this year is bald-faced, superficial, unapologetically-wanton materialism. Like many of her Chinese contemporaries, Yan is a very, very petite individual – just barely five foot one teetering on her tippy-toes, stretching for the top shelf. Subsequently, in the States, it’s exceptionally difficult for her to find a pair of pants, a shirt, a nice coat, or even a comfortable pair of sneakers that didn’t originate in the bargain bin of the kids’ section. This acute failure of the American marketplace to meet th...