Common culture
China Gateway has some pictures, with translation, from The Dianshizhai Pictorial the famous late 19th century Shanghai illustrated paper. I say famous because ...
Author: Alan Baumler
What do you really think Mr. Jiang?
Chinese museums are one of the best places to look at the changing interpretation of historical figures and events. Last weekend I went to Famen temple outside ...
Save the Pandas
A couple of years ago before I left for a trip to China an imperial princess told me to get a picture of a panda. I pointed out that there were a zillion pictur...
Indiana Jones -Busted
The people in the reading room at Shaanxi Provincial Archives are really nice and helpful and professional. Unlike some archives they will let you look at thing...
Distressing China
Xian has a historical district. Actually it has several, and all of them are sort of new. I was not here 20 years ago, but I assume like elsewhere in China the ...
Looking behind the curtain
Inside the Archives One day after lunch when I returned to the Shaanxi Provincial Archives one of the employees asked if I would like to see the documents they ...
Happy Birthday New Policies!
2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the New Policies (新政) reforms of the late Qing. Well, not really. The Late Qing reforms are increasingly seen as more import...
Teaching Confucianism
Guess who’s in Bejing! Well, not me anymore since I just left1 I snuck away from my conference for a bit to go to the Confucian temple and the Yonghe temp...
China, where totalitarianism works
Daniel Drezner has been watching the coverage of the current show trials in Iran, and points out that they are not working very well in cowing the population, a...
China is now Japan
It’s official. China is now Japan. Or, more specifically China is now the country that poor countries in the third world are supposed to be emulating. Whe...
Old pots
Rachel at AHC has a nice post up on her visit to the Hua Song Museum in Singapore, and what they are doing with one of the largerst marine archeology finds ever...
Transvestite chickens late at night
I’ve been reading Cao Naiqian‘s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night. It’s an odd sort of book, and you can see wh...
My Dear Revolutionary Comrade-in-arms
Sina has a collection of Chinese love-letters going back to the 50s (via CDT) The ones from the 60’s and 70’s are the most interesting. Lots of Maoi...
Weird Orientalism
The kids and I have been playing a game called Great Wall of China, which is a German board game1 (actually a card game) designed by Reiner Knizia, who judging ...