Author: Alan Baumler
Shine on you crazy diamond
Have you been to the British Museum? One of the best museums in the world, largely because it contains the loot of empire, stuff the Brits brought back from all...
Sharing syllabi
As is becoming a timeless tradition here at Frog in a Well, I am posting my syllabi for comment and suggestions. Not much China stuff this semester. I am stuck ...
Working like a slave
I have been to busy to post much of late, as I have been very busy. Not quite working like a slave however, as the slave contract below shows. I use this in cla...
Virtual nationalism
Via ESNW I found this interesting post about anti-japanese attitudes in Chinese virtual worlds. http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/08/national_politics_within_vir...
The good life
I came across this story while reading the Liaozhai 聊斋 The Loyal Mouse According to Yang Tianyi, once he saw two mice coming out of a hole. One was swallowed by...
Yellow Peril
I’ve been re-reading some Jack London stories of late, and being struck by the Chinese in them. There are actually a lot of Chinese, as the areas he tended to w...
Voice of the people
One nice thing about Chinese history is that there is a long history of recording popular songs. From the Han at least it was assumed that popular songs reflect...
We’re not in Hebei anymore, Toto
A Chinese Peasant Pearl Buck has been getting a good deal more attention in China of late. Part of it is no doubt the fact that she wrote about China and won th...
Tibet by rail
It has been in the news of late that China has built a rail line to Tibet. It cost $3.2 billion, and the train cars have to be pressurized, but you can now get ...
Creating East Asia
东亚三国的近现代史 A History of Modern and Contemporary East Asia is a book that got a lot of press when it first came out, since it was written by a team of scholars fr...
Even Barbarians can become good
How does one become a good person? That is a question that crops up a lot when one reads the Confucians. In fact, for Confucians the processes of self-cultivati...
The World before Google
One of the reasons I write this blog is to preserve things, mostly for myself. I often come across something that might be useful to teach with later, and blogg...