Revising history: Brief notes
Quick hits: It’s one of the most difficult periods of modern history to teach, and I love using primary sources for the tough times, so I’m always g...
Category: Civil War
A sinologist in Iraq
Graham Peck’s Two Kinds of Time has been re-issued. This is good news for everyone, and especially for those of us who got a copy for Christmas. (Thanks S...
Newspaper Digitization at Shandong Provincial Library
I am currently spending my days at a microfilm machine in the basement of Shandong Provincial library, looking through old wartime newspapers from occupied and ...
Yang Tianshi on the Chiang Kai-Shek Diaries
Jonathan Benda reports on a talk by the historian Yang Tianshi on Chiang Kai-Shek’s diaries given at Tunghai university in Taiwan. Professor Yang is a ver...
"President" Chiang Kai-shek
So, what is the current status of Chiang Kai-shek in China? He is the most troublesome of the Republican era-figures for the mainland to figure out. Anyone who ...
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...
My Great Helmsman is Charlton Heston
In an interesting article on the gun trade and state control of weapons in Guangdong province in the 1920’s Qiu Jie and He Wenping make an interesting argument ...
Long March Revision: Diminishing Sources
Christian Science Monitor has a substantial article about Sun Shuyan’s new book Long March (previously noted here), leadng this time with the book’s...
Women on the Long March
Natalie Bennett reports that a new oral history investigation of the Long March experience is being published. Over 10 months, travelling mainly by bus and trai...
51st State?
From a formal legal standpoint, the United States never ceded possession of Taiwan [via Simon World], which it took from Japan in 1945, to the Nationalist gover...
7/7 and a Wartime Dictionary
While I’m spending the summer studying Korean in Seoul, one of the books I brought with me for some recreational reading is a Chinese wartime dictionary (...