“… people who organize strikes at the production plant so that tanks are never built, and people who convert weapons factories into spaces that nurture and sustain life.”

🧵 To commemorate the 120th anniversary of Anna May Wong’s birth, @asiancha.bsky.social invites reviews of four recent books—that together explore her groundbreaking career, cultural legacy, and challenges to race, gender, and representation in performance.If interested, please email [email protected].

Only one of the smartest, most perceptive journalists ever to cover China. Snatch Shen Lu up quick. @shen-lu.bsky.social

When I took a job in HK frds worried abt the political situation for me. But it’s often not official orders that create a hostile or dangerous environment, but personal antagonism or self interest utilising political situation. My experience was similar to that of Chong’s and it’s not a coincidence

In her Facebook statement, the playwright Candace Chong Mui Ngam 莊梅岩 cautioned against private attacks, purges, & eliminations of dissidents under the name of National Security Law. A very Cultural Revolution moment in Hong Kong:

Hardship has long been praised in China as the road to virtue and success. Today’s youth are beginning to question this tradition, linking the pressures of school with the exploitation of labour and asking whether hardship should still be seen as a moral ideal. An essay by @humayun.bsky.social.

This week on Wed. Dial in. It’s important. @aarweb.bsky.social aarweb.org/event/future...

Memories of Hui Muslims during the Great Leap Forward: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3GpOPnOw-8...

u.osu.edu/mclc/2025/08... Backreading Hong Kong 2025 — cfp August 22, 2025 by [email protected] at 8:41am CFP – Backreading Hong Kong Symposium: Anglophone and Sinophone November 17-18, 2025 University of Toronto Call for Abstracts Deadline: September 7, 2025

Tammy Ho @myetcetera.bsky.social: The Monkey King’s Diasporic Reassemblage in Sinners: worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

New event! 📆30th Aug - 5th Oct @seajunction.bsky.social hold exhibition "Portraits of the Anonymous: Breaking Gender Stereotypes in Myanmar Spring Revolution" at the BACC pop-up in MunMun Art Destination Details: seajunction.org/event/portra...

HK activist Joshua Wong's second national security case will be transferred to the High Court, where he may face life imprisonment if convicted. In full: buff.ly/fAPdXvF

𝑷𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒄𝒊𝒓𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒘𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒚. 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐌𝐒—Voice & Verse, a Hong Kong-based bilingual print publication,invites poets/translators worldwide to submit original ENG-language poems & poems newly translated into English for their upcoming issue themed 𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗠. www.facebook.com/VoiceAndVers...

My essay on the "rise of China" meme just got posted by Chinese Literature and Thought Today. It's got two bits in it: one, historicizing where the "rise of China" idea came from and how it mutated over its 90-year history, and two, asking...(con't): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Backreading Hong Kong Anglophone & Sinophone November 17-18, 2025 Call for Abstracts—Deadline: September 7, 2025 Explores the entangled, and at times antagonistic, relationship between the 𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞 and the 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞 in the study of Hong Kong’s cultural & literary fields. backreading.com/2025-2/

This oral history archive on majie 媽姐, amahs/ domestic workers who often vowed to resist marriage thru a ritual of combing their hair (hence known as self-combing women 自梳女) is such a treasure well: repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collectio...

#CFP: New Directions in Taiwan History – Taiwan at the Center and at the Margins, February 26-27, 2026 at University of Washington, Seattle. Submit paper abstracts for consideration by October 10, 2025. buff.ly/yT3Mknw

Researching on women's history in HK, saw YIP Hon-ming 葉漢明 on her mentor Lucie Cheng 成露茜: "Cheng was Director of the UCLA Asian Am Studies Center...She not only introduced me to the field, her academic integrity &care for the public remain a lasting inspiration for the world." @chowleen.bsky.social

We are pleased to share the newly relaunched AAS Career Center! All AAS Members can use the Career Center to search jobs, share their resumes, and consult professionalization resources. Check it out today! careers.asianstudies.org

A tangent - during 2019, many HK student reporters were on the frontlines with the press. It was the HKU press that captured footage of police shooting a protester’s heart point blank The students reporters in fact did such a good job many student press unions have shuttered since NSL because…well.

“For all its heroic vigor, the project to live like free people is far from a victory march." Ed Pulford reviews "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause" and "I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/in-the-shadow-of-stalin/

💔 if in London:

Finally saw Superman after hearing great things abt the latest one. Unsatisfied w/ 1) the portrayal of ppl facing invasion & colonisation passively chanting superman their only saviour 2) Supergirl as a party girl, left out of the self-searching journey of alien-humanity & courageous heroic acts

Grammar of Racism: Religious Pluralism and the Birth of the Interdisciplines url: academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Chiara Formichi, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia: www.sup.org/books/asian-...

She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality url: academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Shi Yongxin 释永信, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, vp of the Buddhist Association of China, 3-time member of the National People’s Congress, is finally under investigation for alleged “illicit relationships w several women” & having “illegitimate child.” He was 1st exposed on the internet in 2015 but

“Precious traditions” - Confucianism - family (ancestral) rituals - unpaid unrecognised labour of women

2) In other words, “modernity” was interpreted through a double coloniality & the popularity of Ueno today, in many ways, double-decolonised the conception of modernity in East Asia.

On translating Japanese feminist scholar #UenoChizuko #上野千鶴子 as reinterpreting modernity in East Asia - previously interpreted by male elites based on a particular racial & gender hegemony from the West 1) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Tony Judt, 2010:

Martial arts manuals from a pound shop:

Really glad that my chapter, #HongKong thru a #Religious Studies Lens, is forthcoming in the Handbook of Hong Kong Studies! In the emerging HK studies, religions are notably neglected while Christianity stands out w/ almost singular attention, w/ a dichotomy b/t Christianity and Chinese religions,

Honored that #Religion, #Secularism, and #Love as a Political Discourse in Modern China is included in this list among excellent titles 🙏🫶

After 7 yrs, I finally became a permanent resident in Hong Kong. Most outsiders wouldn’t know the diff b/t Mainland (ID) & HK(ID), that Mainlanders need visa to even enter hk, that while hk is subject to the PRC’s authoritarian rule, ordinary Mainlanders are subject to hk’s neoliberal policies.

醬園弄 (She’s Got No Name), a missed opportunity for feminist narrative. Grand statements are injected regardless of context, violence sensationalised, police brutality, corruption, gender inequality blamed on the “feudal old society”/ pre-CCP era. Tho the irony: free speech in Japan-occupied era when

Looking for a new China read? Check out the latest book list from China Books Review editor Alec Ash: chinabooksreview.com/2025/07/15/n...

Hong Kong's Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine is accepting submissions of previously unpublished English-language poems or poems newly translated into English on REPARATION until 1 August 2025. Call: tinyurl.com/ReparationCall Accepted so far: tinyurl.com/ReparationPo...

This coming Sun morning UTC/ Sat evening EST, I’ll have the pleasure of chatting with Charlie on our recent books on #affective #governance in contemporary China & the #grassroots resistance in #Sinophone & #Transpacific Asia. Join us online! chinesefeminism.org/2025/07/13/w...

June marked 5 years since the Beijing-imposed national security law was enacted in HK. Chief Executive John Lee and his ministers warned of "soft resistance," and the League of Social Democrats (LSD) announced its disbandment. In full: buff.ly/T6ilVWd

Vivian Kong, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 (Cambridge UP, 2023): podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/n...

Accidentally rewatched The English Patient ard #canadaday & #july4th, didn’t realise #MichaelOndaatje, the Sri Lankan-Canadian author wrote the original novel against white #nationalism that demanded “minorities” to “integrate” eg Sikhs to stop wearing turbans: www.theguardian.com/books/2018/j...

Such a delight to be on @techwontsave.us again to talk with @parismarx.com about Huawei, what its path reveals about China's development, innovation vis-a-vis intellectual property, and why a Cold-War framework obscures the real harms of surveillance capitalism. 🎧 www.techwontsave.us/episode/283_...

Important conversation not only b/c it’s Jeremy Tiang & one of the best contemporary Hong Kong writers Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹, also b/c such transnational conversations are precious when political powers threat to end them:

Last winter after a talk at UofT, an audience who shared the difficulty of finding community said, “but you’re here now; I don’t feel alone anymore.” I remain grateful to that heartfelt comment. It warms my heart to think that I’ll be (re)joining UofT next year & reconnecting with this community

socialist motherland’s neoliberal, worker-hurting policies & cutthroat platforms infringing upon labour rights in neoliberal Hong Kong

Chinese artist & environmental activist Nut Brothers 坚果兄弟 & his collaborator curator Zheng Hongbin went missing:

Published by indie publisher 51人, this graphic book documented 51 street vendors (hence 51攤) of all trades, ages, genders, ethnicities (incl a Uyghur uncle with ‘warm smiles’) in Shanghai and their lives during COVID & lockdown

A labour rights group for delivery workers has ceased operations after local media reported that Hong Kong lawmakers had been cautioned against discussing platform workers’ rights. In full: buff.ly/CSMBbLP

Happy father’s day, John: