Jottings from the Granite Studio

One of the factors in the sharp rise in population during the 18th century in China was the introduction of new crops from the Americas such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize and the peanut. High in calories, these crops could also be grown in poor soil or on terrain unsuitable to rice or grain cultivation.
An [...]

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UC Irvine history professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom has an article in The Nation this week about recent criticism of China. First off, let me say that I have enormous respect for Professor Wasserstrom and have enjoyed his essays a great deal. I also fundamentally agree with the general premise of his most recent piece.
Professor Wasserstrom argues:

I’m [...]

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The old Talk Talk China had a theory called the “cycle of China funk” to describe the oscillation that most foreigners here feel between loving and hating the place that we call home. This week I’ve been on a bit of a downswing, but no matter. YJ, who spent two years studying law in France, [...]

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There have been some fascinating postings on Asian history of late and a great place to check them all out in one easy click is the (mostly) monthly Asian History Carnival, this month being hosted by the excellent folks over at Frog in a Well. Check it out.

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Kick us out of the Forbidden City, will you? Hell, nobody’s been kicked out of there since Puyi. Is this how the Seattle coffee giant gets its revenge? (Revenge is a latte best served with foam?)

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I understand the concerns of food safety, poisoned baby formula, unsafe tires, lead in the toys and whatnot, BUT…it’s the little things about shoddy Chinese merchandise that get me most. By way of example: YJ and I recently purchased a few paintings–not an original Picasso to be sure, but not the sort of stuff you [...]

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I am finally moving the blog onto a non-blocked server. Expect something before Halloween. Until then, with both feedreader and blogspot on the wrong side of the GFW, I’ve had to take counter-measures.
I tricked the Chinese site feedsky into publishing my feed by anonymousing my blogspot feed. You can access that feed stream here:
http://feed.feedsky.com/granitestudio
Not sure [...]

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For those interested in Central Asian history, the Library of Congress has made available online a large collection of photographs from the 1860s. The original collection was compiled under the direction of Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman (1818-1882), the first governor-general of Russian Turkestan. The Russian had been steadily pushing into the region throughout the 19th [...]

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Many–if not both–of my readers know that one of my favorite political commentators is the former editor of Freezing Point, Li Datong.
Writing for openDemocracy.net on China’s leadership, Li argues that the status gap between the paramount leader and the rest of the party leadership has narrowed with each successive generation. Most notably, with every passing [...]

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Decent profile of Hu Jintao by Financial Times Beijing bureau chief Richard McGregor. I confess that I really don’t know all that much about Hu’s early life and career other than the c.v. type stuff and now I know it wasn’t just my own laziness. Reading the article, I was struck by the extent to [...]

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