Confucius at Eighty: Sufficiently Decayed or Ready for a Great Xi Change?
Kong Qiu, Kongzi, or Master Kong, known in English as “Confucius,” marked the passing of the decades: At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.At thirty, I had p...
Author: C. W. Hayford
Grand Centennial Best Opening Vignette Contest!
Jonathan’s “On the Opening Vignette” is so fresh and smart that the only response is to turn it into a contest: who can write the best opening...
Trump Promotes Chinese Food: Egg roll on White House Lawn
In an unusual move, last Monday the White House lawn was given over to egg rolls. The Italian Ambassador contributed to the moment by bringing “ciao mein....
Articles/Authors/Books/China/China-U.S./Christianity/East vs West/Foreign Views/Frog in A Well/Historiography
China from “Over There” to “Back Then”: A Second Helping on E.A. Ross
Alan Baumler’s juicy February 19 post “Edward Alsworth Ross and The Good Old Days of Scholarship,” inspired me to look back through my notes.1...
Wikipedia: Do Your Bit, Or, Mao Zedong Gets 100,000 Hits
Catching up on my reading, I came across a Wilson Quarterly post about Wikipedia, “In Essence: The Wikipedia Way,” which reports on an article by Ri...
Seek Truth from Farts
My passing comment on Alan’s Seek Truth from Facts mentioned that I once saw “Seek Truth From Farts.” Maybe it was a misprint, maybe a comment...
Pigs in the News and In Wikipedia: Or, Lipstick on a Frog
Vladimir Putin is on a roll. He has been having a fine time poking the US in the eye over the Edward Snowden kerfuffle, but at a news conference he declin...
What Do Lin Yutang and Lin Biao Have in Common? They Were Both Memory Holed
Global Voices, a quite useful and smart blog, on January 30 posted Two Versions of Mao’s China: History Retouched as Propaganda, which has an set of uncanny ...
Ungraded Love or Double Standards? Stanley Fish, Stephen Asma, and Confucius
Stanley Fish, no stranger to controversy, has a piece on the New York Times online blog, Opinionator, Favoritism Is Good (January 9, 2013). Fish is known for su...
Credentialism and Other Modern Traditions: It's a Post-Authentic World
A note to those who are imprudent enough not to follow the Japanese side of Frog in a Well: Jonathan Dresner has a smart, witty, and informative piece, Credent...
Who's Afraid of Chop Suey? Or, The Politics of Authenticity
I humbly report that I have a piece — “Who’s Afraid of Chop Suey?” — in the most recent Education About Asia (Winter 2011)...
Dragons, Dragons Everywhere! But They Don't Shake the World
This week you run across dragons just about everywhere. President Obama welcomed the Year of the Dragon from the White House (here), while Paul French did likew...
Dragons in the News: Is a Long a Dragon?
The Year of the Dragon is upon us – should we be afraid? Around the English speaking world, magazine covers and editorial writers rely on the dragon as a colorf...
Names and Dates In English and Chinese
I recently discovered Beijing Time Machine, run by Jared Hall. His recent piece Time over Place: Naming Historical Events in Chinese (ironically, it is not dat...
Year of the Hare… um "Rabbit"?
February third is the Lunar New Year, celebrated in East Asia as the New Year or Spring Festival. The Reuters article “Chinese Ready for Upheaval, Sex in ...