Rustic poetry
The contrast between the center and the periphery is a common theme in Chinese literature. To be an official sent from the capital to the provinces, or a sent-d...
Category: China
When the internet gives you bad historical analogies…..
From Washington Monthly using the Chinese exam system as an analogy for the S.A.T., referring to an essay from n+1. The anecdote that began the n + 1 piece disc...
If we want to revere China, there is no greater reverence than to put the Chinese ways into practice
Thanks to Columbia University Press I just got a copy of David Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute1 This is a very fine book, ...
Thurify yourself
One of the things we have read for the May Fourth class I am teaching is Liang Qichao’s On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the Peop...
Blood of the martyrs
The Chinese student group asked me to come out and talk at their showing of Jackie Chan’s 1911. As it was competing with the Stillers game attendance was ...
Fire and protest in China
The Atlantic has a nice set of pictures of the Great Wall up, for your teaching pleasure. The one I found most interesting is this. Is the Great Wall on fire? W...
Very superstitious
Above is a charm carried by a Chinese soldier in 1938, re-printed in the journal Youth Front in 1938. It seems to be a Communist publication, although this bein...
Reconsidering Marco Polo
“Marco Polo’s reports of China, now judged mostly hearsay….” Perry Anderson, LRB I got an email from a student who found my blog post in which...
Daiyou Islands: New Sources, New Clarity?
NYT reporter Nick Kristof brought in a guest blogger, Han-Yi Shaw of Taiwan, to examine some new mid-Meiji documentation about Japan’s relationship with t...
National Library of China- A fine place to do research
Most of our readers who might care already know this, but the National Library in Beijing is a fine place to do research on Republican China. It has it&#...
Celebrate the working class
So, today is Labor Day in the U.S.A., which means that you can celebrate the achievements of the working class without being a Communist. The rest of the world,...
Zhong Kui comes to Sunnydale High
Sigh… I try to keep my posts to this blog to at least a minimal level of scholarly-ness. At the very least I try to avoid doing too many posts on weird Ch...
Winning Over the Puppets: Conclusion
This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this ...
The Eight Great Disorders and the Oppose Treason Campaign
This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this ...