Things read and noted:
- In the WSJ, Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews Hannah Pakula’s new biography of Song Meiling: The Last Empress. Given that the only other major work to focus on Madame Chiang Kai-shek is Sterling Seagrave’s wretched Soong Sisters you gotta figure that there’s no where to go but up for Ms. Pakula. On a side note, one of my students, fresh from seeing The Great Enterprise (建国大业), made a point of informing my history class that Song Meiling was by far the hottest part of the Chinese revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt put it perhaps more pithily when she remarked that Madame Chiang was a women who spoke so eloquently about democracy despite not seeming to understand it at all.
- More snow in Beijing. As a New Englander who feels that snow is an integral part of the winter (if not exactly November) experience, I’m loving this. Beijingers, many of whom purchased earned their drivers licenses in the past two years, not so much. Not a good week to be flying in and around North China either. Rumors abound about how much of this is the handiwork of Beijing’s weather gnomes…
- Finally, nothing to do with China but very cool nonetheless, officials in Copiah County, Mississippi are planning to restore the birthplace of legendary delta bluesman Robert Johnson and open the site to the public. For those who don’t know, Robert Johnson was the most talented guitar player to ever live. I will not debate this point. (Keith Richards once said “When I first heard him, I was hearing two guitars, and it took me a long time to realize he was actually doing it all by himself.”) Johnson’s freakish ability and haunting voice are said to be the result of a deal he struck with the Devil while waiting at the crossroads of U.S. 61 and U.S. 49. with Johnson’s mysterious and early demise in 1938 as the cost of this Faustian bargain.
Happy Friday the 13th.