The Granite Studio in translation

Got a little bump in the old site stats this week. Seems a fellow blogger took the time to translate/summarize the post I wrote last week on the CCTV New Year’s Gala into Chinese. (Perspective on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala by an American in Beijing) I looked it over and they got the main points pretty much right. Though YJ’s professional eye found its nits, I’m not quite as picky. I was bummed that they missed my Song Zuying joke and clipped the Kayne West reference, but what the heck, no harm=no foul.

Anyway, thanks to the author of 东方文化西方语 for taking the time to do the translation and for the boost in my readership.

The Historical Record for February 12, 2008: The end of the Qing Dynasty

On this date in 1912, Yuan Shikai produced an official edict proclaiming the abdication of the boy emperor Puyi, marking the official end of the Qing Dynasty. The crafty Yuan had been playing the revolutionaries off against the court and biding his time to maximize his personal power, so when the revolutionaries agreed to let Yuan be president of the new republic, he then turned around and persuaded the regents at court that now was the best time to let it go. The revolutionaries offered Puyi a pretty sweet deal: a huge stipend, run of the palace, and a promise that the Qing tombs would go undisturbed, so as to preserve the dignity of the Manchu rulers. (All of which pretty much fell by the wayside by the 1920s, but by then Yuan was dead, Puyi was living it up in Tianjin, and nobody really cared.) Thus, on February 1, 1912, Yuan went to the palace and convinced the mother of Puyi to give her final assent to abdication, ending 268 years of Manchu rule.

One side note, it’s been 96 years since that day. Just doing some quick bad* math, but in the 96th year after American revolutionaries threw

Five Historical Events to Remember…(even if sometimes we don’t.)

The China Beat boasts an impressive club of historians and despite the contemporary focus of the site, history is never far from the contributors’ minds. Fittingly, Kate Merkel-Hess posts “5 Chinese historical events that don’t get much attention” with some interesting and well-argued choices. Definitely worth checking out. (PRC link.)

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