Firefighting #mascots from around #Taiwan: Q火喵 from Miaoli — a #cat whose name means both "cute fire" and "firefighter" in the Hakka language

Thanks for the reminder it's #WoodblockWednesday! Below, @sudasana.bsky.social shares a link to vols 1-8 of 32 from an incomplete copy of Shi Chengjin's (~1658-after 1739) 家寶全集. BSB also holds a second, complete, & lower budget edition produced later 1/ www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/search?fi...

The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purless Her Cat – a moving vintage fable about loneliness, love, and letting go www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/18/m...

It's #WoodblockWednesday again! Here's a bonkers book of 2000+ pp. in which the author records his thoughts on anything and everything under the sun, basically an 18th century literatus substack. Shi Chengjin 石成金 (1739-1795), 家寳全集, www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb0...

If you see this, quote the energy you bring to Bluesky

The original Canon logo from 1934 is really cool. I only just learned the name of the company originates with Guanyin AKA Kwanon (觀音) and only became "Canon" in 1947.

I don’t know why but this made me full on belly laugh

Me too, door, me too.

Me too, room, me too.

Alas, special collections at Leeds doesn’t allow social media posts of their holdings but my first day of three at the archives lived up to @berincole.bsky.social’s sticker- so much dust, so much fun! Yes my inky hands are in both pics but it’s the only way I get my hands dirty in this job!

When in Leicester, one obviously goes to visit the spot where they found the lost king! The museum was so cute, the cathedral next door small and lovely, and many elderly volunteers stationed around to provide even more facts and feelings.

My op-ed in the @chicagomaroon.bsky.social on the University of Chicago’s appalling plans to gut the humanities and possibly eliminate the South Asian studies department chicagomaroon.com/48353/viewpo...

Pausing for a moment before I return this book I got via ILL because when it first came to me in June, opening it to this page brought tears to my eyes. Twelve years ago, as a grad student worker, I packed this very book into a box for mailing from Dr Roy’s office to its new home at Notre Dame.

“Chicago has long helped to keep alive tiny fields & esoteric areas of humanistic study... Without the univ’s support, & the continued training of grad students who can keep these bodies of kn going, entire spheres of human learning might eventually blink out.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Followup review after he finished reading: "Your conclusion, I agree, is preachy, but you get preachiness naturally, it's a family hazard." It's true!

#TeamTaiwan wins the #LittleLeague World Series! Aided by 12-year-old pitcher Lin Chin-tse's 82 miles/hour fastball, the Tung-Yuan #baseball team (Wanhua, Taipei) competed in Williamsport as the Asia-Pacific champions. #Taiwan's last Little League win was 1996. www.littleleague.org/world-series...

New to me used bookstore find - The Five Thousand Dictionary, Chinese -English, 1942 edition

I hope that once I start writing new things, instead of working on publications that come out of the misery of my dissertation researching and writing days, I might be able to be less hard on myself. That day is not today, alas. Below, a collection of comments I left myself in the last week.

Early book review just landed in my inbox: “Your voice rings in my ears as I wade through the verbiage.” (Source: my dad 😂)

Aug 10th 1988 - Zero Cool was in the New York Times for crashing 1,507 computer systems. 📽️📅 Hackers (1995)

Indulging in reading tangentially related scholarship, this morning I'm enjoying Hanan's 2003 article "The Bible as Chinese Literature" and laughing out loud at the all too recognizable pettiness of the 1840s translation committee. Not bold enough to use Boone's excuse myself though!

"Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing" by @thianun.bsky.social is now available! Start reading here: doi.org/10.3998/mpub...

It's officially my book's publication date! The online open access version is available now, link below. Read online or download the pdf copy I want you to have, all without having to go to some shady website for a pirated copy! www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...

Advertise your account with a gif

My set came in the mail last week (preordered months ago) and it’s beautiful and thought provoking for all my uncertain days

Research assistant isn’t so sure about being my sewing assistant. “Shouldn’t you be writing?” #sewsky

Sample time

Vale @babelstone.co.uk (reposted from Sinologists FB group). 嗚呼哀哉！

In Paris for the next couple days for this intense conference - Beyond Civilizational Clash: The Coalescence of Human Civilizations glorisunglobalnetwork.org/gs-forum-2025/

CFP: New Voices in the Study of Chinese Religions: for recent PhDs and ABDs to present their work at the @AARWeb.bsky.social meeting in Boston (Nov. 22–25). Please send proposals and/or inquiries to Elena Valussi ([email protected]) & Megan Bryson ([email protected]) before July 1, 2025!

Couldn't make it to London for @sudasana.bsky.social's UKABS (@ukabs.bsky.social) presentation early today but I caught this busy scholar presenting at a SECOND conference (buddhism.arts.ubc.ca) this afternoon on Buddhism's role in the early PRC!

Author copy fresh out of the box! I'm shaking! @uofmpress.bsky.social made the publication process so smooth! And huge thanks for hosting an open access version, which will be available on my official publication date: August 5. But if you'd rather buy a hard copy, use code UMWEB30 for 30% off!

Assume a spherical research assistant cat.

Help I’m a literature professor and this has been my afternoon (no it’s ok, this is 8th grade level units conversion and also I had a science major in undergrad 😅)

Cackling, what the actual? No gazetteer has ever actually been that exciting

Summer research brain - in the last week I've wandered on tangents through: monetary chaos of 1800s China, treaty port customs reports, anti-sex morality texts, accounts of the devastating 1845 Canton theater fire, UK libraries that may have more texts for me to wander through - where next?

I don’t talk about my sewing habit much on this account because it’s more for work stuff, but this is really worrying. Even though I mostly buy vintage patterns from secondhand sources occasionally I get some new ones too that are a lot of fun to work with. What happens now?

The recording of our 6/5/25 event is now up: youtu.be/t7Khs05XP6s?... thank you again to Michael Berry @bairuiwen.bsky.social for convening us and the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies for hosting

JOB> Lecturer in Chinese Studies, one year fixed term. Looking for someone to cover research leave in my programme www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Lol no, this is a wild mistranslation... Now imagining some shocked Victorian students picking up 肉蒲團 after reading about it in this 1876 guide to Chinese books in the Bodleian and suddenly having a lot of new thoughts about China and Chinese literature... (but not about meat or spinach)

I should be writing (really, I let a deadline zip past me last week) but first, some bits from Chinese dialogues by W.H. Medhurst, 1861 reprint of 1844 textbook published in Shanghai catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/01011... because I find them charming, amusing, or inadvertently profound

Seen at the thrift store but not coming home with me: kids’ blanket with one side in this printed fabric from the ancient past when the internet was still fun

In response to Marco Rubio's recent announcement that the US will "aggressively" revoke Chinese visas, Beijing's spokesperson responded by saying how this action “lays bare the US lie of its so-called freedom and openness”, I absolutely agree. (1)

The arguments that this is hurting U.S. national power and global standing are all correct, but these are first and foremost attacks on actual people whose lives are being upended for no justifiable reason

A favorite #birddivination. Available as a print at bit.ly/herondivinat... and part of the deck of 100 (along with the story behind this labor of love) at almanacofbirds.org

Our access to COVID vaccines is under attack. It’s more important than ever to make our voices heard by making public comment to the FDA by May 23 at 11:59 PM EST. Use our template available on our substack at peoplescdc.substack.com/p/vaccine-ac...

A woodblock printing kit I bought from the gift shop of the National Library of China!

Google translate bringing some real "how do you do, fellow kids?" energy today to its misreading of the preface I'm transcribing

#VEDay commemorative clothing. Dress printed with Allied flags, planes, Churchill's head. Wooden-soled sandals with "V" on sole and appliqued on the front straps www.iwm.org.uk/collections/... augusta-auction.com/search-past-...

Transcribing some prefaces so I can work with them more easily. Process simplified by using Google Lens OCR as the first step, then correcting its errors with a line-by-line comparison. And, sometimes, for the hilarity of it all, seeing how poorly it renders the text into English.