Finally read "The Great Reckoning" (www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...), and I'm struck by how the worldview the titular reckoning is said to challenge is not one I've ever held or encountered. Despite the subtitle, I learnt a lot more about what Americans tell themselves than I did about China.

“You’ll be visited by three spirits.” The three spirits:

A bilingual Dano-Norwegian/northern Sámi catechism from 1728, afaik the first printed book in Northern Sámi

The Useless Tree is back! At least for now. I just posted a long piece on my experience last year at the Tenth Nishan Forum on World Civilizations. Come for the politics of Confucian revival, stay for some jabs at Jeffrey Sachs. Good times! uselesstree.blog/2025/11/22/r...

piccola lezione la giacca che indossa Liu Jinsong non è quella alla Mao nota come "abito Zhongshan" segue per chi fosse interessato la spiegazione dettagliata del significato della "giacca alla Mao" le quattro tasche del vero "abito Zhongshan" simboleggiano le quattro dimensioni del paese 👇

As one who has spent much time these last few months glaring at texts I can partially decipher but cannot read, I am qualified to recommend this essay. Edging Toward Japan: What does being literate in Japanese really mean? - The Mainichi share.google/Gw4gLrPrnPyI...

Can we go back to the days when politicians said that they really wanted to help people but it’s very hard and takes time, rather than saying that they want to hurt people and can do it quickly?

Excited to say that my article on horse names in China's ancient postal system has been published with Early China! 🐎✉️🌿 Meet Skittish Fish, Calm at the Carriage, and, my personal fave, Cinnamon Stick, at the link below: #animalhistory

Finally someone that engages with what it actually means to learn from a Leninist one-party system.

OPHANIM אוֹפַנִּים (Optical Photon and Antimatter Imager) is a 3800 megapixel camera used in the AEgIS αἰγίς high-energy physics project at CERN. In this blog post The Owlet of Minerva tries to pick apart the scientific, biblical Hebrew, medieval European and Buddhist iconography of the instrument.

Very proud to have contributed a few chapters to this book on the past, present, and future of neon in HK. The process showed me how it’s so much more than just sappy sentimentality to mourn HK’s lost lights — and that despite everything… neon’s not dead. Consider backing our Kickstarter campaign ⬇️

Whenever anyone gives me a ‘head’s up’ my natural inclination is to keep my head down.

Super useful tool -- "Chronology of Early China: A Radiocarbon Databank for Chinese Archaeology” out here: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Our new manuscript estimating shares of late Qing degree holders who had kin other than direct patrilineal ancestors who held degrees, and within kin network correlations in degree attainment, based on a new dataset constructed from 同年齿录 and related records. 1/2 osf.io/preprints/so...

This is my non-Roman Empire

Monarchy spiralling downward with sense of inevitability. President Stephen Fry looking increasingly plausible.

Contact prints from photos by Frederick J. Foley 傅良圃. These photos were taken in Taiwan; we're guessing in the 1960s. The Ricci Institute has around 85,000 of Foley's photographic negatives that await digitization. They were given to us in 1985.

Why does so much of the literature on early agricultural states write as if these sequences of developments are already established and widely agreed upon narratives? Even a Graeber writes as if "as everyone knows." I just need one good "well these bozos over here think X bc Y" lit review.

I added a section to our Frog in a Well Primary Source guide to Korean History with some links to open access copies of volumes with Japanese statistics from colonial Korea - froginawell.net/frog/sources...

@chinabooksreview.com just published my review of Yu Hua's 余华 *City of Fiction*《文城》(2021, tr. 2025). "Along with other contemporary Chinese works with such graphic violence, Yu’s novel does political work by purging the traumas of China’s bloody 20th century." chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/30/f...

FYI: Print copies of my book Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke is now on sale for 50% at the Duke University Press website if you use the code: FALL25

My favorite use of 嗨： 自嗨 or 自high (“self-high”) 😅 This term started out as an internet slang around 2010 and is now widely used colloquially with a range of meanings—to get excited or hyper by oneself; to amuse or have fun by oneself; being self-indulgent or narcissistic 川普自嗨 Trump “self-high”

This may be my new favorite sign. (Seen today while walking around Hechuan.)

A wonderful personal meditation on East Asian literature and how politics seeps into life.

My theory is imposter Simba. The official story is that Simba miraculously escaped the stampede, went into voluntary exile and returned years later to claim the throne from his usurper uncle. How convenient for the new Lion regime! The truth is that Simba died in the stampede with Mufasa

Crunched some interesting data from a 1938 Buddhist book catalogue, 佛學圖書目錄. Of approximately 3467 books listed, nearly 3/4 were woodblock printed works. This old technology remained in widespread use through the modern era. crta.info/wiki/%E4%BD%...

interesting discovery... so the "ham" in "Nottingham" or "Birmingham" is not the same "ham" in "Durham". the first group is from Old English "ham" which is homestead. Durham is from Old English "dun" (hill) + Old Norse "holmr" (river island). a river island like Stockholm.

Fifth Digital Appeal to Free Gui Minhai. Take part in the digital manifestation on October 17 which marks 10 years since Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was kidnapped and imprisoned in China. Join in standing up for him: internationalpublishers.org/fifth-digita...

“When an era sheds a speck of dust it might not seem like much, but when it falls upon the shoulders of an individual it feels like a mountain.” — Fang Fang This is Banned Books Week, an annual event that celebrates the work of writers whose voices have been suppressed. 1

If your Thursday needs a boost, can I recommend the delightful Jin Shengtan's 金聖嘆 "Thirty-three Nice Things", translated by @bokane.org? www.burninghou.se/p/whats-good — if that’s not nice, what is?

If you're new to the Warring States manuscripts, I published a piece with my colleague Li Yumeng which introduces the *Kongzi said and *Zhongni said manuscripts. And it's open access! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Urboardgame, if you will

For the Mid-Autumn Festival, I translated the 17th century failson, epicure, and memoirist Zhang Dai's account of the annual Mid-Autumn singing competition on Tiger Hill in Suzhou. www.burninghou.se/p/mid-autumn...

Hong Kong (late 1950's) by Fan Ho.

Brilliant new research from York's @mrmhurst.bsky.social on the 88,000 Hong Kong colonial government records that remain at Hanslope Park, contributing new insights on how outgoing colonial officials handled records towards at end of the British Empire. #history www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Coming (quite) soon reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/sons-of...

Ok, Aeneid discourse time because the statement below is correct, but also, I think, significantly incomplete in ways that understate how good Vergil is as an author (he is very good). Aeneas is supposed to be a self-righteous prig because Vergil is deeply ambivalent about the Augustan project.

There once was a guy on a boat Who found out that swords do not float. He pulled out his dagger With native Chu swagger And said “I’ll just make me a note.” (I copy this nice sino-limerick out in full because the last word has frustratingly been elided by the brig.gy fediverse bridge.)

And while we're discussing to subscribing things, I've got reviews of many if not most of these movies (and a whole lot more besides) over at thechinesecinema.com for significantly less than the price of a disney+ subscription (only $1/month or $10 for a year).

Picking just three underrated masterpieces from this list: Last Hurrah for Chivalry: Everything Woo would do in his Heroic Bloodshed films, but in the guise of a 70s wuxia film. School on Fire: Ringo's bleakest, and best, movie. Blind Detective: Every great Johnnie To film rolled into one movie.

I'm primarily thinking about the UK here, but it would also be interesting to know if there's been any work looking at this wrt/ industrialisation in China

Long shot: do I know anyone who knows anything about whether trauma studies has stuff to say about the after-effects of the industrial revolution, poorhouses/work houses etc on intergenerational trauma?

Still don't understand why they made the Hobbit movies when what the world really needs is a trilogy of films about Gandalf's 17-year archive trip to Minas Tirith.

I just finished 我的母亲做保洁 “My Mother is a Cleaner” by Zhang Xiaoman 张小满. The book portrays, in a blend of (self) biography, journalism and ethnography, the precarious lives of the author’s mother and many of her peers in the small army of migrant worker aunties and uncles that keep Shenzhen clean.

I just finished the Duolingo Mandarin to Cantonese course. I am a little annoyed that there wasn’t a nice achievement screen to screenshot and share. Wonder what to do next, Glossika, perhaps? I’m still far from being able to handle native content like movies and podcasts.

Hard to reconcile China releasing thousands of doves in the name of peace with kids watching this at school and my kid coming home to tell me they did army drills and played rifle games at school today. Mixed messaging to say the least.

With China set to host a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end, now’s an excellent time to preorder my book “China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II”! press.umich.edu/Books/C/Chin...

Now playing: Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated. Marc-André Hamelin (piano) Yes, this is ‘modern’ ‘classical’ music, but in this multifaceted work some passages sound jazzy, some sound like electronica and many sound like metal but for solo piano instead of rock band. 🤘🎹🎵

Andrew Rule lists his favourite Chinese fiction of the first half of 2025. His hot take: there actually is interesting Chinese fiction. I’m not nearly well-read enough to judge but the works he lists all sound appealing to me.

For my China studies friends here: new Wilkinson just dropped. 7th edition, huge news. On Pleco, too. If you don’t know what that means, do you even sinologize, bro? @pleco.com #Sinology🀄️📚