Teaching the death of Mao Zedong
If you ever have to teach about the end of Maoism, Ai Qing‘s poem “On the Crest of a Wave” is a good thing to use. Ai was one of China’s...
Category: Maoist era (1949-1976)
Iron Man Wang
For your teaching pleasure, here is the story of Iron Man Wang, from China Reconstructs, Sept, 1977. I have a pile of old 70’s Chinese propaganda magazine...
Pinyin is coming to get you!
Here is a CIA report on Pinyin from, I think, 1961 or so. They lay out the history of pinyin as a method of romanization (or latinization) of Chinese, and from ...
Orwell and China
I have been meaning to blog about Ibisbill’s post on George Orwell and China, but as I have not come up with anything to say, I suppose I should just toss...
Socialism is good
Finally. Just in time for the end of the semester. I managed to find an on-line version of Socialism Is Good. Well, not just a version. There are lots of fairly...
Sinology and Simon Leys
New York Review of Books Classics has re-printed Simon Leys’ The Hall of Uselessness: Selected Essays. This makes him the first Sinologist to crack the NY...
What if it's a fake? What if it isn't?
Jeremiah Jenne pointed me to this most wonderful bit of French nonsense: Jean Levi’s claim that the terracotta army is a modern forgery. These famous clay...
Monumental Histories
Quite by coincidence, I ended up reading three books on Chinese monuments, but not until the third did I realize that what I was reading was a history of modern...
The Most Effective Kind of Education
While there are many historical problems worthy of exploring in the study of history, I personably believe that one of the most important is an attempt to under...
Private views of Chinese history
Recently I went to the Jianchuan museums, which are in Anren, just outside Chengdu. It is an interesting place first because it is huge, financed by mogul Fan J...
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...
Modern Archaeology
Great Leap Forward era backyard iron furnaces have been unearthed [via] and there is discussion about whether to preserve them as historical evidence, even a cu...
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...
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...