This comes via Blackberry message to my Atlantic colleagues, whom I've asked please to post it. On my last reporting trip to rural China before our long-planned repatriation from Beijing to DC later this month, I discover that the place I am visiting has neither internet connections nor net cafes. For more on several outstanding topics, or if you sent me an email in the last, oh, year and wonder where it went, next time to stare at the inbox is maybe Monday US time.

Every time you go to a new part of China you see something you hadn't imagined before. That principle has held up well through three years here and is holding up this last time,  deep in Shaanxi. But I suppose we should have that sense of expectation about any place we go. Enough thumb-destroying Bberry work for now.