Eastern Qing tombs under threat from illegal mining

Illegal iron ore mining is damaging the eastern Qing tombs. Actually mining is too delicate a word for the process—basically people are blowing up huge chunks of land and then looking to see if there any cool rocks that look like iron underneath.

According to the IHT, “China‘s heritage protection laws ban explosions, mining and drilling near protected areas, but local officials eager for tax revenue or bribes often turn a blind eye when the laws are broken.” I’m shocked, shocked I say, to find gambling in this establishment.

Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese-Americans

Tony Platt of Sac State reviews a new book by historian Jean Pfaelzer on the persecution of Chinese-Americans in 19th-century California.

Between 1840 and 1900, more than 2 million Chinese laborers left their homeland to work in plantations and mines around the world. Twenty-five thousand of them joined California‘s Gold Rush. By the 1860s, Chinese immigrants were a vibrant part of the state’s economy, accounting in some rural counties for one of every five residents. But by the turn of the century, more than half of a Chinese American population that once reached 80,000 was gone – deported, exiled or dead — and the survivors herded into urban ghettoes.

One particularly disturbing snippet from a review full of disturbing snippets:

In 1885, after a night of “exuberant violence,” a gallows was built in Eureka as a warning to any Chinese who stayed in town. “It took barely a century to virtually clear the coast of the redwood forest,” observes Pfaelzer. “It took barely a weekend to clear Eureka of the Chinese.”

Haven’t read it yet, but it’s definitely on my list.

Korea-China history wars, Part XIIVIWHOCARESXI

Why can’t everybody stop fighting? Can’t we just all get along? Oh yeah, I forgot…because in East Asia, the study of history and the need to save political face while symbolically shifting ancient boundaries around to meet contemporary geo-political exigencies go together like a horse and carriage, PB&J, and Harry & Sally.

Digital Chosunilbo goes to the mat against the “Northeast Project” of CASS….again. Seriously, I study this stuff for a living and even I’m starting to get beyond the point where I care. It’s like one of those reality shows where two contestants just can’t stand each other and at first it’s a huge ratings boost until finally it just becomes inane and shrill and they both get voted off the island.

Anyway….according to Chosunilbo (and this is their translation, I haven’t seen a copy of the offending paper yet) a soon-to-be published report by the Northeast Project claims:

“Just like Koguryo, a group of people from the Buyeo tribe, an ethnic minority in an ancient Chinese borderland area, established Baekje,” the book says. “As its people were of the same lineage as the Koguryo people, Baekje was a

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