Opium warlord dies
If you study the history of drugs in Asia1 the period right after 1945 marks an important divide. Down to maybe 1840 (or in some contexts much later) drugs (mos...
Author: Alan Baumler
American contempt for China
As it is the beginning of the semester, I went to dig up the famous quotes from Emerson and Adams on what is wrong with China. If you find yourself needing thes...
Underage drinking in Southeast Asia
Apparently the Mint Museum of Toys in Singapore is worth seeing. Although I have not been, it seems that they currently have an exhibit up on “Guinness by...
Historians fight against the sea
Our very own Konrad is featured in an Inside Higher Ed article on the digital embargoing of dissertations. For those of you who are not aware of it, the America...
The pure land of Tibet and the lothesome Han Chinese
Washington Monthly has an article up on Chinese tourism in Tibet. It is by Pearl Sydenstricker, who is a western (I assume) reporter who does not want to use th...
Teaching Asian Civilizations
As I was cleaning out my office I found a copy of Approaches to Asian Civilizations by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Anslie T. Embree.1 First published in 1964, the ...
New Years means time to cook a lot
Taiwan Constitution Day has come and gone, and I got some books. Most notably my wife got me Alford, Jeffrey, and Naomi Duguid. Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes ...
Sinology and Simon Leys
New York Review of Books Classics has re-printed Simon Leys’ The Hall of Uselessness: Selected Essays. This makes him the first Sinologist to crack the NY...
Pan-Asianism
Hey, I published something! It is a course reader entitled “Japan, China and Pan-Asianism” I did not write much of it, but it does have my name on it. The reaso...
Confucius does Powerpoint
There is an old Chinese story concerning three young men who are too lazy to study. Their father builds them a hut on a mountain figuring that isolation will h...
Portrait of the blogger as an old bore
As I have been asked by a junior faculty member if it is a good idea to join a group blog I thought I would write a bit about why I do this. I should note that ...
Happy birthday Dunhuang Project
Did you know that this is the 20th anniversary of the International Dunhuang Project? Neither did I. They grow up so quick these international scholarly project...
Picturing the 1911 Revolution
Via the comments1 to this post I see that Oberlin has posted an on-line version of History of China for 1912 in 52 cartoons These seem to be weekly cartoons pub...
City of big shoulders
So I spent some time at the library going through 圖畫日報 Although it is not a paper that lasted long (1909-1910) there is lots of cool stuff here connected to the...
How can students relate to Asia?
Miriam Burstein has a typically good post up on her frustrations in dealing with students who want to ‘relate to’ The Tempest. She was frustrated by...