Visualizing Qing history
Liu Junde has created a data browser you can use to draw things from the CGED-Q database of Qing officialdom. Here is a description posted to Facebook by Camero...
Category: Qing
Dress and identity in the Qing
I have been reading Guojun Wang’s Staging Personhood: Costuming in Early Qing Drama. I am not particularly a student of drama, or of costume, but in the T...
Did Chinese women go to opium dens?
Since someone asked me if Qing women went to opium dens, I thought I would answer and put up some of my evidence. Short answer – I don’t think so, a...
Would the Boxers vote for Trump?
Of course not. They were not registered, and in any case that would be foreign interference in an election that would Hurt The Feelings Of The American People. ...
Yuan Mei, Food Network star
As Yuan Mei’s Garden of Accord Food Book is now available in English translation, I have been reading the whole thing. One of the things that strikes me is how...
Teaching Late Imperial Chinese cultural history
Update So I think I have figured this one out, with a little help from my friends, both here and via e-mail. I will be using Tim Brook’s Troubled Empire t...
Shen Fu vs. Zhang Daye
One thing I always have to do as a teacher is figure out what books to assign. Since I always find this hard to do, I thought I would think it out in terms of M...
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...
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...
City of big shoulders
So I spent some time at the library going through 圖畫日報 Although it is not a paper that lasted long (1909-1910) there is lots of cool stuff here connected to the...
Why go to college?
Tea Leaf Nation has a post up on a micro-trend of Chinese kids not going to college, or at least one parent not being willing to pay for it, on the grounds that...
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...
Nationalism sucks
A very sad post from the Economist on the problem of the zodiac heads. Basically, a wealthy Frenchman has agreed to donate two of the bronze heads stolen from t...