I’m about 3/4 of the way done with a large piece of Orenburg lace. Much more and I won’t be able to photograph it on the chaise any longer. I really like the pattern, especially the edge.

On the door of a classroom just now. Not sure I know what the right answer is tbh.

Also I made soup noodles on a very not-souptastic muggy day (I blame the hurricane currently giving us a miss to the north, but also September and October are the hottest months here).

Gift from a student who really has my number. I thought this was going to be tea leaves but it is yellow millet for making my favorite breakfast porridge 小米粥

I have said it before: the best food is often the unapologetic mashup, the unholy marriage of tastes. This is a great town for fusion cuisine, and I have just learned that a local Italian-Asian joint has a dish called Gnocchi Mapolognese (Mapo as in 麻婆), which has gotta take some kind of prize.

It is really fun to be on the sidelines while my children discover the music of the second half of the twentieth century. They don’t listen to quite so much Queen any more, but they’re now on a Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits kick and it’s great to let them run the music while I’m driving.

Reposting so I can keep track of the replies, which are great. I'd like to listen to more good Mandarin music too, even though as a musician I spend most of my time in medieval/renaissance Europe. And I'm leery of admitting to what I do like, because I'm pretty sure it is kind of basic.

Medieval Buddhist of the Day: This is Lei Mingxiang, a donor I met at Yaowangshan this summer, and her late husband Tongti Qianchi, in 570. I guess by this point they are both late. Anyway the Yaowangshan stelae are all badly eroded so I drew their donor portraits from the rubbing.

THREAD - I stopped posting much about Chinese dramas because I haven't seen many with interesting historical connections, which is mainly what I want to talk about in this space (I haven't given up watching them, and am currently enjoying the Scooby Gang in "Seven Relics of Ill Omen"), HOWEVER:

Twin A makes bagels on a school night 🤩

I think my first choice would be an afternoon in the Northern Wei imperial palace at Luoyang in 510, featuring Lady Xie 謝氏, Wang Su's first wife; the senior princess of Chenliu 陳留長公主, Wang Su's second wife; Sengzhi 僧芝, a prominent Buddhist nun; and then-imperial concubine Hu Chonghua 胡充華.

My kids & husband watched “One Night in Miami” this weekend (Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown meet in the same hotel on a February night in 1964) and it got me thinking about a Chinese painting in an exhibition I organized a long time ago: it was a collective New year painting -

Somebody picked up a piece of palm leaf (the attachment of the leaf, which is like a fibrous sheet of bark) and doodled on it a bunch of little campus vignettes, then pinned it to a cork board near my office.

OMG now I want to see this 😆

New semester, new door card featuring a little guy from @dochackenbush.bsky.social [One word for pangolin in Chinese is… 鲮鲤 línglǐ]

My PhD alma mater. Crescat scientia, vita excolatur, huh? I mean, it's a private school; but education is a public good. We're not here to train workers; we're here to train citizens. Kudos to Clifford Ando for using his platform to great effect.

I successfully set up my courses in the new LMS (based on Brightspace). I know the people managing the transition are trying to do their best, but all the materials presuppose that you are teaching in the LMS and not in the classroom, even though the majority of our courses are face-to-face.

Living with teenagers, you get used to finding things in odd places, but I just found a yarmulke in the freezer and am still scratching my head.

My KID made BAGELS (from scratch). Also including some of his other recent hits (boule, fougasse, focaccia). He is fifteen. @seamus.bsky.social you are partially to blame, thank you for your service.

Actually I managed somehow to get to the finale of Nirvana in Fire, which I’ve been watching with @kateelliottsff.bsky.social and @aliettedebodard.com since January, and the finale of The Untamed, which I’ve been watching on my own since June, over the same weekend and WHOO BOY.

A near-perfect evening. @kateelliottsff.bsky.social came over and taught Twin A how to make aebleskiver, and then we watched the finale of Nirvana in Fire together. A++ 10/10 no notes 😁

Costco is selling the official salmon of the Qing imperial family (ok, it’s actually a Chilean company, but still).

A #TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED THAT COULD CAUSE DAMAGE ALONG COASTLINES OF ALL ISLANDS IN THE STATE OF #HAWAII. URGENT ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT LIVES AND PROPERTY. #TsunamiWarning #HawaiianIslands

Tuesday just got slightly more interesting. 🌊

Getting a possible foretaste of life after the kids go to college, as I attempt to resist fifteen years of experience and make Shabbos dinner for only two people, neither of whom eats like a teenage boy 😆

Monstera deliciosa fruit. Botany (and dessert) with a side order of geometry.

A crack in the pavement tile outside my apartment building looks extraordinarily like the head and neck of a bear. Tell me I’m not the only one who sees it. (Makes me think of the Madeleine books, in which “a crack on the ceiling had the habit of sometimes looking like a rabbit.” IYKYK)

It’s been a while since I watched a Chinese drama with any significant historical content, but my Chinese social media circles turned up the account of the real tomb-robbery that inspired the show “The Lost National Treasure” 护宝寻踪 so I thought I’d try it, and it starts…

An excellent focaccia, redolent of olive oil. Twin A is experiencing the downside of mastering bread, which is that we all fall on it like ravening wolves and he has to bake again the next day.

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

Another thing about returning home to my teenage children is that in the three weeks I was away I officially became the shortest person in the family.

I took a lot of taxis in China and many of them were very nice new inexpensive EVs which we should definitely consider importing (ha, some luck). If I were buying one I would be hard pressed to turn down the Qin model, which the First Emperor would have loved (I bet it has standard axles)…

Twin A (the one who’s into bread) leveled up while I was away. He even bought the pan with some of his birthday money.

On my flight home (with in-flight WiFi). The final tally: 19 days 8 cities 21 museums (counting cave temple sites) 4 grad students (3 current , 1 former) 1755 photos 8 new books

Nostalgic rainy morning departure from Beijing turned alarming when the rain became heavy with lightning and thunder. But the cabbie’s skill was up to it and we made it to the airport ok.

The Yecheng Archaeological Museum in Linzhang is also spectacular, since it holds all the finds from Beiwuzhuang 🤩

From the Northern Dynasties Archaeological Museum in Cixian, which is WELL worth the trip.

From Lingquansi, about an hour’s drive outside Anyang.

Some cool things I saw in Anyang, which weren’t necessarily beautiful.

Some treasures from the as yet un-opened Han/Wei City Museum in Luoyang, which we got to tour today. @wendyxu.bsky.social at least one is friend-shaped (the goose lamp).

Proof that medieval marginalia don’t have a monopoly on silly little guys (Western Han tomb mural, 2nd-1st century BCE).

Today we got to see some recently excavated stuff which we couldn’t photograph because it was not yet formally reported, but I gotta say, getting up close and personal with the artifacts is really living the dream 😍

Research esprit d’escalier: my article on material and permanence/impermanence in Buddhist sculpture is already in print and I just found a late sixth-century inscription that includes the phrase 物之坚固莫过于石 (“Of things that endure, none surpasses stone”) 😣

Wonderful things. (Xi’an Museum)

Beautiful things from the Beilin (again)

The art historian in action.

Some beautiful things from Yaowangshan and Tongchuan.

Some beautiful things from the Shaanxi History Museum.

Tabletop gaming in medieval China

Some beautiful things from the beautifully reinstalled and expanded Beilin Museum - what a collection 🤩