Jottings from the Granite Studio

A Qing historian reads the newspaper…

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Morning Tea: Kim Jong-Il’s son in Macau, Dell and Chinese Exceptionalism, Rebecca MacKinnon on thinking globally

February 1st, 2007 · 2 Comments

If your father was the secretive dictator of a pariah state, where would you go? Well, first you might try Disneyland and if that doesn’t work….why not hang with your buddies in Macau? Tim Johnson at China Rises has a great account of Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-nam as the latter parties it up in [...]

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Tags: Chinese History · morning tea

The travels of Zheng He revisited

February 1st, 2007 · 4 Comments

From the TLS, Jonathan Mirsky reviews Ming historian Edward Dreyer’s new Zheng He book, China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty 1404–1433. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read it yet but based on Mirsky’s review, I’m looking forward to doing so as soon as I can. If nothing else, it [...]

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Tags: Chinese History

This Date in History: Koxinga and the liberation of Taiwan

February 1st, 2007 · No Comments

Today marks the 345th anniversary of the liberation of Taiwan from the Dutch by the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong, better known in the West as Koxinga. (The latter name derived from the Hokkien pronunciation of his title, “Bearer of the Imperial Surname” 国性爷: guo xing ye in Mandarin and approximately kok-xing-ah in Hokkien/Min Nan hua.)
Born [...]

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Tags: Chinese History · this week in history