Jottings from the Granite Studio

While genetic evidence has shown that populations of Western Eurasians existed in Xinjiang, where their DNA persists in some areas to this day, National Geographic reports that a man exhumed from a 1,500 year old tomb in Taiyuan is evidence that such populations may have pushed even further east than previously believed
The man, named Yu [...]

[Read more →]

Two recent articles on historical preservation in China. The first is by Lindsey Hilsum of the New Statesman. Hilsum writes about Shanchang, a village near Macao and Zhuhai, where over 21 homes and buildings dating from the Ming and Qing dynasty have been torn down to make way for developers. The homes had [...]

[Read more →]

Via The Korea Times: You know this is the sort of thing that is going to get some attention over here. A history textbook used for SAT prep in the United States misidentifies the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.E.-935 C.E.) as Korea’s first kingdom while ignoring the Goguryeo Kingdom (37 B.C.E.-668 C.E.).
A South Korean civic group [...]

[Read more →]

This is not the kind of story that makes tenured faculty wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat clutching an empty box of ramen noodles…but for Ph.D. students, it’s a fairly commonplace tale of woe that offers all the encouragement of an iron bar to the back of the head.
Back [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been following the ongoing project to raise the Southern Song dynasty shipwreck known as Nanhai I from its watery internment off the coast of Guangdong. Not only is the ship itself a fascinating subject for study, but the wreck contains a literal treasure trove of 13th century artifacts. The People’s Daily calculates (somewhat optimistically) [...]

[Read more →]

Never mess with karma on the week of the Buddha’s birthday. The Boston Celtics openly tanked the last two months of the NBA season, convinced star Paul Pierce to go on an extended month-long vacation in which the Men in Green won only one game…all in the hopes of landing Ohio State man-child Greg Oden [...]

[Read more →]

From Variety: Producer Steven North is seeking approval from Beijiing authorities to use Chinese extras and locations to film “Challenging Heaven,” a movie about the rise of Mao Zedong and the creation of the PRC.
The screenplay by John Goldsmith is an amalgamation/adaptation of two books: Philip Short’s biography Mao and Sidney Rittenberg’s 1993 memoir The [...]

[Read more →]

In 1988, a geologist working in Ningxia stumbled across a treasure trove of several thousand rock carvings spread over a 15 km area. The very earliest scrapings at the site, known as Damaidi (大麦地), are between 20,000 and 30,000 years old. The most recent carvings date from the Western Xia period (1032-1227 AD) with the [...]

[Read more →]

Delightful–and frightening–story from an entertaining new blog, East-West Station (h/t China Law Blog) about a young interviewee for an English teaching post. I’m not sure, reading this post as a teacher of history, if I wanted more to laugh or to cry.

[Read more →]

From the “You find history in the weirdest places file,” Wells Fargo actually has its own history blog, and I suppose well it should since the company’s history is so intertwined with that of the US West and especially California. (Think: “The Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin’ round…”)
Two posts this week take the bank’s history [...]

[Read more →]