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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
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Life is full of surprises: good Chinese wine

By James Fallows

Sep 25 2007, 5:23 PM ET

Another discovery from the west of China: two Chinese-made red wines that can be called "good."

One, from Xinjiang autonomous region (the far northwest frontier of China), is Suntime Red Wine. Its Chinese-language site is here. Suntime comes from what I understand to be the biggest grape-growing operation in China. (Xinjiang, like the central valley of California, is grape paradise. Islamic Uighurs, from Xinjiang, are known among other things for selling grapes and raisins in big Chinese cities.) I've seen the wine only in a store in Urumqi*, biggest city in Xinjiang, where it cost less than $10 per bottle.

The other, more obscure, is Mogao Vineyards Pinot Noir, from Gansu province. I was told in Gansu that Mogao is considered "the home town of grape wine," because of discoveries of ancient winery operations nearby. This wine, below, is actually good. On sale in Gansu for about $24. By Chinese standards, very pricey -- but bottles of lamentable Great Wall wine cost as much.

I leave it to the wine experts from here on out.
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* "Urumqi" is example #97,408 of Why We Hate Pinyin, the system for rendering Chinese sounds in western script. The town's name is actually pronounced in Chinese more like "Wu-lu-mu-qi," and that is what the four characters in its Chinese name, 乌鲁木齐, amount to. And "Urumqi" is the best pinyin can do? [Update: see next post; there is actually a difference between the Mongolian and Chinese versions of the name. Sorry!] Sure, we understand that the English name "Worcestershire" is not actually pronounced that way, but no one ever advertised English spelling as a way to simplify pronunciation.

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