Who is John Galt?

I am going to take a personal day off from the vacation days I have been spending on this blog. I have a date with a Ms. Ayn Rand in the sunroom (where there is sun for the first time since I came to Beijing), now that it’s not 40 degrees inside our apartment. Check back sometime later tonight–I’m sure that reading enough about Dagny Taggart will motivate me to write some words of my own.

Just to give you a taste of what’s to come though, here’s two photos, plus the obligatory preface.

One of the most fascinating and unique things about China is its history. As a country, China is unique in that virtually all of the conflict and turmoil up until the 17th century originated from within the country’s borders.  Unlike European countries, who throughout history had to defend themselves by protecting their from their surrounding neighbors, China’s biggest obstacle was controlling the people within its borders.  While this extended isolation ended up hurting China after the West landed on its shores, for millennia China was the largest and most prosperous country known to itself, bar none. The internal struggle that stemmed from various consolidations of power and borders interspersed with periods of glorious prosperity and extravagance have given birth to such things as the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Soldiers, and most famously the Great Wall, built more to keep the Chinese in than foreigners out. These monuments have made China’s history as rich as, well, the chocolate that these reproductions of them are:

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