Not the period drama you might expect.

“We must come to realize that if we live long enough, every one of us will experience disability. Instead of viewing those with disabilities or chronic illness as unproductive or no longer useful, we must fight for a society that measures its health by how well it cares for those who need the most.”

"Generations of Chinese women have been rendered voiceless by the patriarchy. Their stories refuse soft burials." So honored to have a review essay out in Banned Books Week @chinabooksreview.com on two of Fang Fang's most acclaimed novels, Soft Burial & The Running Flame, tr. @bairuiwen.bsky.social:

In this piece on "genre borrowing" I study why netizens use Sima Qian's "arrayed biography" (列传) form to write biographies of Li Wenliang & how the narrative devices of this ancient genre align with the logic of digital culture. Open access! @asc.upenn.edu journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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...

Very nice to see a piece by @laujessie.bsky.social of @nuvoices.bsky.social in @thetls.bsky.social

Incredibly thoughtful piece on the uses (or lack thereof) of AI. Historians will find this thinking relevant too.

“We are told by leaders that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.” Incredible speech by Violet Affleck who warned about the ongoing dangers of COVID & Long Covid, & advocated for masks and clean air at the UN today!

My tribute to Paul Cohen as historian & mentor to many www.asianstudies.org/in-memoriam-... cc @lmansley.bsky.social

This powerful essay by @yangyangchen is in the special section on Authoritarian and Resistance

Thoughtful interview with Stanford Prof Matthew Sommer (by @mauracunningham.bsky.social) about Sommer's new book, which is on my to-read list for the fall. Lots of insights and observations for further thought just in this q-and-a.

The Japanese editions of BETRAYING BIG BROTHER: The Feminist Awakening in China just arrived! My book has now been translated into Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Japanese. The New York Public Library named Betraying Big Brother one of its “essential reads on feminism”: bookshop.org/p/books/betr...

I'm excited to share that my first monograph, "China's Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II," is available for preorder through the University of Michigan Press, China Understandings Today series! China’s Date Debate press.umich.edu/Books/C/Chin...

Glad to see this reposted, gave me a chance to give shout outs for good books that were largely under the radar, eg a set of Liang Qichao essays, an accessible book by @katemh.bsky.social w/a great title:Women & Their Warlords, also includes an early plug for a 2025 book: by @emilyzfeng.bsky.social

🧵 I'm not doing a full-scale tour to promote my forthcoming very short trade book that discusses some inspiring activists in Thailand and exiles from Hong Kong and Burma globalreports.columbia.edu/books/the-mi... but I'll do events related to it in NYC June 9, DC June 10-13, some details below....

Smart piece by Violet Affleck on COVID, climate response, & disability activism: "The climate resilience our society needs to build relies upon the skills and systems of pacing that disabled and chronically ill people have built to manage both their own symptoms and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic."

If you're in the Bay Area, the @hooverinstitution.bsky.social book launch for my @stanfordpress.bsky.social biography of Xi Jinping's father will be on June 3: the day of the book's release. You can also join virtually. www.hoover.org/events/party...

Happy to report that I've got a new book out, The Raider.

I don’t do this often but I highly encourage yall to preorder my friend John Beck’s book; out next month. It’s extremely good; like a modern day but real life ‘The Americans’ “Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized” www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/774464...

This. We are currently in a situation where our national defense against pathogens is on the ropes. I will continue to mask indoors in public, because I can only control my choices and not anyone else’s.

Read Winifred Dongyi Wang's essay about Pai Hsien-yung's "New Yorkers" and immigrant identity: buff.ly/raPftnP

Your periodic reminder that we are experiencing a mass disabling event.

"We’re facing an unsustainable rate of reinfection for an unsustainable percentage of the population with a virus that carries an unsustainably high risk of long-term damage."

This is a very thoughtful piece from Benjamin Breen, reflecting on how we do history and why AI isn't up to the task.

The NIH recently published a study: one of every 22 covid infections triggers ME. People are not being warned that their whole life could just vanish. Journalism literally exists for situations like this. #JohnVsJonVsME #GreatestMEdicalScandal 💗💝💕💝💗 www.livescience.com/health/coron...

A summary that causes useful displacement. Graff is engaging here in a practice some historians have referred to as "reciprocal comparisons"--using the standards applied to an "other" (or generated by an other) to assess the control (usually an idealized model) against which it is normally compared.

I, however, Have such meagre power, Clutching at a Moment, While you control An hour. But your hour is A stone. My moment is A flower. -Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot" #everynightapoem Resharing for all the wins and losses of this hour

A small action you can take today; took me less than 5 minutes to do this (I got answering machines in both cases). If you are in PA, your senators' direct contact info is: John Fetterman: (202) 224-4254 David McCormick: (202) 224-6324

This thread is very good. One of the critical lessons from modern Chinese history (by which I mean post-roughly 1500) is that good governance that encourages human flourishing correlates to state legitimacy and longevity.

One of the easy things in Chinese history class is that ‘天災人禍’ is always a right answer to ‘how did this dynasty end’

The Rednote discourse can be a bit ridiculous, but I propose instead of mocking the wide-eyed innocents we encourage them all to start studying Chinese! Let's light a candle instead of cursing the darkness (and, as a bonus, improve college Chinese enrollments)...

Another great piece from @juliadoubleday.bsky.social: LA's slow response to protect the health of its citizens from the dangers of smoke/particulate inhalation reflects the politicization of masking and the concerted and ongoing effort to deny airborne transmission of disease.

David Lynch spent the last portion of his life in isolation. He said it was due to being high-risk and unable to risk getting COVID. He’s not the only person with disability or illness who’s been left behind. Everywhere you go without an n95 is a place you’ve decided disabled people don’t belong.

Boy with his very impressive kite, Chihli (Hebei), c.early 1920s by JT McGarvey for the National Geographic

Balinese female leader in Chinese community in the Dutch east Indies: after the death of Captain Yan Erguan (颜二观, or Gan Djie) in 1666, a Balinese concubine of his was appointed by Governor-General Van der Lijn as the new Chinese captain. 1/3

Yesterday's daily poem from The Poetry Foundation (Beehive by Jean Toomer) feels resonant: "And I, a drone, Lying on my back, Lipping honey, [...] Wish that I might fly out past the moon And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower."

Really interesting sidebar on 1957 and 1968 influenza pandemics, and the scientific impacts of communist China being excluded from WHO / FAO. Maybe an interesting historical parallel to what an H5N1 pandemic starting here (or suspected to have) could look like in a T2 presidency after WHO withdrawal

Taking a break from eating mince pies to get started on reviewing proofs for Selling Sexual Knowledge today. I don't think I've mentioned what this book is actually about on social media (and I need to psych myself up to get started on this), so here's a little 🧵 about it if you're curious:

8th-century #Chinese #poetry presaged social media: 新鬼煩寃舊鬼哭 天陰雨濕聲啾啾 New ghosts complain; old ghosts weep. Cloudy sky, wet rain, sounds of tweet tweet. - Du Fu 杜甫, "Soldiers Ballad"《兵車行》 translation & watercolor @sabinak.bsky.social

#history #book @fivebooks.com @jwassers.bsky.social also praises * #Women and Their Warlords*: @katemh.bsky.social tells of "people who believed in different things and had different ideas about how to strengthen the country—an ongoing concern of #Chinese political leaders from the late Qing on."

Post from Yale’s Long Covid blog w/ Lisa Sanders on economic impacts of LC drawing lots of findings in coherent narrative. It’s hard to get my mind around the long term reverberations because it seems so potentially destabilizing.

Test, mask, stay home if sick. Do it for your own health, do it to protect those who are vulnerable.

Big congratulations to Professor Tristan Brown and Professors Haiyan Lee and Michael Ng for their well deserved recognition!

Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870-1948) Snow at Nezu Shrine Series:Tokyo Views #japanese #woodblock

Thinking for some reason about my teacher, Jonathan Spence. With the third anniversary of his passing (Christmas day) approaching, I would like to share this remembrance of him (and my favorite book of his) that I wrote for my @thechinaproject.bsky.social column thechinaproject.com/2022/01/26/t...

Jeff chose my new book as one of his five for 2024! I’m beyond flattered to be in this great company. (Michelle King’s book is amazing - highly recommend; and my review of Westad & Chen’s book will be out w/TLS soon - I loved it too.)