Is the Shanghai Textile Museum the best museum in China?
The Shanghai Textile Museum 上海纺织博物馆 150 Aomen Rd; 澳門路150号(right near the M50 art district) is not one of the most famous museums in China. Lonely Planet dismiss...
Category: Public History
A brief note on Google Culture
Google Culture is apparently producing some original content: “A brief history of Kimono” https://shinpaideshou.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/fun-link-fr...
Immigrant Panics, then and now.
There’s not all that much to add to George Takei’s devastating response to Roanoke Mayor David Bowen’s attempt to rationalize refusing Syrian ...
Something new at the Old Summer Palace?
I was at the Old Summer Palace in Beijing (Yuanmingyuan) There was something there I did not remember seeing before.1 They have replicas of the zodiac heads out...
China's first statue?
I found this in 圖書日報, I think from 1910. It is a statue of Lin Zexu that may be China’s first public statue. It is of course not the first statue to exist...
Digital History and teaching
Yoni Applebaum has apparently taken a break from filming The Matrix 4 to record a clip on The Historian in The Digital Age. For those of you don’t know hi...
China's Museums
I have been reading China’s Museums, part of the Cambridge University Press series Introductions to Chinese Culture. I am finding the table of contents pa...
History and tourism in China
China File has been following the attempts of the town of Bishan to make itself into a tourist destination. Tourism is a rapidly growing industry in China, and...
Underage drinking in Southeast Asia
Apparently the Mint Museum of Toys in Singapore is worth seeing. Although I have not been, it seems that they currently have an exhibit up on “Guinness by...
The pure land of Tibet and the lothesome Han Chinese
Washington Monthly has an article up on Chinese tourism in Tibet. It is by Pearl Sydenstricker, who is a western (I assume) reporter who does not want to use th...
China in Cartoons II
The second volume of Understanding China Through Comics is out.1 I ‘reviewed‘ the first volume and concluded that Jing Liu is no Larry Gonick, but i...
Xi'an Walls
The city of Xi’an is in the process of re-building the city wall and adding four new museums, one each for the Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang dynasties. I was no...
1911 in 2013
I was going to do a post on how the Chinese world is remembering 1911, the overthrow of the Qing, and founding of the Chinese Republic. The answer seems to be t...
Chinese youth defending their rights
My historical methods course for the Fall will be looking at the Boxers, and I have been reading Jane Elliott’s book on the Boxers.1 It’s a really i...
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...