Chinese youth defending their rights
My historical methods course for the Fall will be looking at the Boxers, and I have been reading Jane Elliott’s book on the Boxers.1 It’s a really i...
Author: Alan Baumler
Manchu underwear
So, I was reading the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, specifically the entry on China. For those of you who don’t know it, the 1911 edition is co...
The Birth of Chinese Feminism
Columbia University Press sent me a copy of a really good book, Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl and Dorothy Ko. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transn...
On academic publishing
Above is a post on Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl and Dorothy Ko. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Columbia Univ. Pres...
A clash of symbols
In the introduction of Julia Lovell’s The Opium War she discusses an incident from November, 2010. David Cameron had gone to China, and it being November ...
Why are the Chinese atheists?
Sam Crane, at Useless Tree, comments on the recent study that shows that China has a higher percentage of atheists than anyplace else in the world. Sam suggests...
Nationalism sucks
A very sad post from the Economist on the problem of the zodiac heads. Basically, a wealthy Frenchman has agreed to donate two of the bronze heads stolen from t...
History and hats
One book that I use in my classes is Bickers’ Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai. The book is the story of William Tinkler, an Englishman wh...
Seek truth from facts
The Atlantic has a post by Matt Schiavenza entitled “What’s with the Chinese Communist Party and Slogans” It’s a nice little piece on th...
Land of rice, without fish
There has been a some talk about China and fish of late, and while I generally don’t like me too posts, I think China’s relationship with fish is in...
Yellow Peril 3.1
Via Cameron Campbell’s Facebook feed I found a link to How Social Darwinism Made Modern China: A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom ...
Going Native
Here is something from Edward V. Gulick Teaching in Wartime China: A Photo-Memoir, 1937-1939. 1 When Gulick came to China he was a young, idealistic part of the...
The over-populated, misery-ridden East
I was reading Leyland Stowe’s They Shall Not Sleep Stowe was a WWII journalist, and I was interested in his time in SW China. While on the Burma Road he ...
Teachers as sages. Also, Tibet
Here is something wonderful from Donald Lopez’s Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West1 If you have not read it, it is a very good book on...
China becomes air-minded
So, I presented a paper at AAS in San Diego. Obviously the high points were meeting Konrad Lawson in person and eating really good fish tacos, so I could taunt ...