Trying to explain that a mummy known as the "Princess of Xiaohe" isn't a princess because she had high social status but because she's perfectly preserved and her features are striking, but without trying to imply that a mummy is hot, which would be weird as hell

Yáng's decision to write about Japanese colonial Taiwan was a response to the question posed by the 2014 Sunflower Movement: what is the difference between Taiwan and China? The colonial period, she concluded, was Taiwan's irreducible layer — the history that could not be appropriated or replaced.

My MA was on the Mu Family Genealogy 木氏宗譜 and these issues were really obvious there These (non Chinese) guys increasingly depicted themselves in the style of Chinese gentry scholars, and adopted cultural conventions of representing ideals rather than strict reproduction of appearance

Let's go back to a little while before AI and data centers. Does anyone know why a bunch of solar panel factories were popping up everywhere in Xinjiang? It's not just for the, er, 'cheap labour'

also, elon is literally running tesla factories in China and has maintained a cozy relationship with the chinese government this entire time

i resurrected han feizi but he keeps suggesting more "ice cream"

China has invested massively in area studies since BRI. While non-existing when I went to uni, in 2022 it was elevated to "first level discipline" in academic discipline classification. meanwhile area studies in the old empires are being dismantled. feels emblematic of imperial decline & ascendency.

East Asian Studies is being gutted at Sheffield - all staff at risk with 8.6 FTE proposed to go (a third of us). Biggest cuts in Chinese and Japanese Studies. We’ll be taking a few days to process. Solidarity to Materials and Chemistry colleagues who are also dealing with similarly bad news.

Really interesting teaching methodology, does the multiple level work of: 1. Teaching historical material 2. Teaching historical method 3. Showing that historical work requires specialists with specialist knowledge - ie vitally necessary prohistorian propaganda work

a few "American" theories have gained truth status in China: "the Thucydides trap" "clash of civilizations" Mearsheimer

This includes a reference to a booksellers’ street in Hankou 汉口 called 半边街, which has come up in my current research. The street itself no longer exists; has anyone else come across references to it?

When you want to practice the martial arts but also want people to know that you oppose the Meiji Restoration

Is that the Yongle Emperor? Did they put a hat on him?

I don't know where this bizarre idea that China has universal health care comes from, but it very much does not by any normal standard. It has a highly tiered system that brutally discriminates against rural patients and imposes often crippling financial costs.

“The two Republican delegates spent 13 minutes accusing Wu, who is originally from China, of being a spy for the Chinese Communist Party, pointing out things like his use of a Mac computer instead of a PC like most delegates. They also played a clip of his voice and mocked his accent.”

“Quick, off the top of your head, what are the three best thing about the US that the Chinese could never understand?”

I am once again putting together supplementary materials for my East Asia survey course! Please share with me any fun materials undergrads might enjoy for East Asian history! Anything from podcasts, to movies, to visual archives - do you have anything that students might find interesting?

And, as always, the only viable way forward is recognizing both teaching and research in all subjects is essential for a university. Intramural feuding only helps our mutual enemies that want to end higher education completely or turn it into pure job training.

Re-upping this again as bad arguments are circulating again that pit STEM against the Humanities. There's very little actual info on this, it all comes from one guy, and it's more like "everybody subsidizes the professional and engineering schools when all sources of money are added up.

Also, the speed with which the NYT (& every other outlet) has made Graham Allison's"Thucydides Trap" <the> central frame for understanding the 🇺🇸-🇨🇳 relationship illustrates a lot of unfortunate things, but among them is "Harvard is the only university in the country."

I am once again putting together supplementary materials for my East Asia survey course! Please share with me any fun materials undergrads might enjoy for East Asian history! Anything from podcasts, to movies, to visual archives - do you have anything that students might find interesting?

Pretty pleased that this short article I wrote for @globalvoices.org 10 years ago is still evergreen: globalvoices.org/2016/01/23/g...

One of the funniest things about a certain brand of Chinese intellectual is that they do the same ”We can understand this alien Civilization through close reading of their Classics” that incompetent anglophone orientalists do with Confucius or Sunzi or whatever

Damn

Teaching a class has really made me appreciate how critically important quality translations are to history education

Jerry's girlfriend wants to go see big character posters for every date. George has to write a report on using Mao Zedong Thought to hit home runs. Elaine thinks her boyfriend is too old to be a Red Guard. Kramer tries to convince Premier Chou En-Lai that stoplights should turn red for go.

So save American academia or lose it. And in the meantime, take research from non-anglophone countries more seriously.

UW Madison! We’re great!

This is a paranoid fantasy that the media encourages but it’s actually not true. The US produces a very educated populace. It’s just that the sheer scale of our R&D requires drawing on the finest talents of a far larger population base via immigration.

This is very much in keeping with the elite "free speech" movement of the last decade, which has almost exclusively been focused on questions of hierarchy and institutional fealty, and the reassertion of authority by superiors over their inferiors.

The only real solution is to retreat from society as it crumbles & live amongst the mountains and caves in relative seclusion, sending cryptic missives out occasionally to inform everyone that they're Doing It Wrong™ & that the emperor has no clothes. As is sacred tradition.

Not necessarily surprising, but 🙃.

If you're curious about a snapshot of where Chinese workers are now and what they're worried about, I got you there as well the-haters-guide-to-international-politics.ghost.io/the-chinese-...

This probably is broadly true (my job is knowing past not future lol), But for those people China only exists as a cypher for their hang ups re the US, not as its own place with its own history

At 70 Doing As His Heart Wishes Without Crossing Any Lines

Check out our 1792 copy of the Manchu-Mongolian-Chinese dictionary 三合便覽: Handwritten annotations in all three languages, in red & black ink, and punctuation added across all 12 volumes—Always inspiring to trace someone’s study of a full dictionary. #MarginaliaMonday #Sinology

One of the lowest bars people need to clear to be taken seriously is: “Do you take the Japanese Empire’s claims of Asian liberation at face value?” If you cannot correctly answer this question, you are not a decolonial thinker

One of my go-to “if you could get a big budget history movie set anywhere” locations Central Asian intrigue! The Tang! Umayyads! A lot going on

The part in Total War games when you have effectively become too big to fight and steamroll the map are pretty fun I like taking every province and upgrading them all as far as they can go! It’s great to see the little trade ships/carts move between your glittering Huge Cities! I don’t wanna fight!

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

I’ve been replaying Pokemon in Chinese and Japanese for language practice and it’s actually great. Yeah sure I learn a bunch of useless gimmick words, but also I’m just spending time with the language in a low effort and fun way

Dark Souls isn’t fun. Not bc it is hard, but because your guy takes forever to do anything. Whole game is in slow motion Sekiro, on the other hand, is incredibly fun despite being kinda harder. You get to run and jump around!

The Pokemon Gen 2 post game where you go to back to Kanto and redo the first game was extremely cool. Unbelievably hype as a 8yo, which is who those games are for Still fun as an adult!

Dragon Age II is the most fun game in the series. Best plot, most interesting companions, most fun gameplay loop Origins is very cool but the design makes everyone looks like a bizarre troll and the clothes/weapons are mostly even worse.

Excited to share my new article in Philosophy Compass! Here I propose using an institutional approach to study the philosophy of Classical Chinese thinker Zhuangzi, exploring political and economic systems that enable ordinary people to “wander” (you遊) freely in society. Enjoy!

Book Giveaway - a few copies of Betrayal in Paris: How the Treaty of Versailles Led to China’s Long Revolution (2014) as part of the Penguin series commemorating the centenary of WW1. As ever reply here - it’s 1st come, 1st served and I can mail anywhere except the PRC & the USA…

ever walk around old tombs and think about how sad it is that their occupants never got to experience a single pizza