Tombs, Teleology (and Texas)

Today’s People’s Daily reports that archaeologist working in Sichuan province have uncovered a 4200-year old grave at the Sanxingdui site in which the remains appear to be a man and a woman embracing each other.  It might be in keeping with my habits to wax poetic on the permanence of love (or the horrors of live burial) but then  my train of thought was derailed by a patch of teleology and bad history.

Archaeologists believe that the Sanxingcun site was once a large ancient settlement in the Chengdu Plain in China’s ancient Shang and Zhou dynasties. There have always been settlers on this land over the past 4,000-plus years.

Apparently the idea of contemporaneous but independent civilizations existing in the space that is now the PRC is a little too wacky and wild for the journalists at the People’s Daily.  Repeat after me reporters from The People’s Daily and dentists from Texas: History is messy and full of contradictions, it doesn’t need to be a set of neat compartmentalized facts bundled and packaged to justify the present.

No, really…it’s not.

March 26th, 2010

More historical photographs and images of China

Undated photograph Portable Restaurant in Tianjin, one of many excellent historical images at China Postcard

Courtesy of Malcom Moore,  I tumbled into this wonderful collection of old photographs and postcards gathered together through the Flickr account China Postcard.  The curator, who is anonymous, has a well-organized collection of images dating from 1900-1949 as well as some press photos from the PRC era.

@MalcomMoore also clued me in (God, I love Twitter) to the website Virtual Shanghai.  Organized by Christian Henriot, Virtual Shanghai is another treasure trove of historical photographs, images, and even a few old maps of that other Chinese city.

Both are great resources for those interested in snippets of life from China’s past or for those of us who are always looking for good visual aids in class.

March 26th, 2010

Evan Osnos on "Life after Google"

One of my favorite journalists working in Beijing today is Evan Osnos, who has acquitted himself most ably  carrying on the tradition of excellent China writing in The New Yorker.  His vignettes on the Letter from China blog are always a must-read and today’s short piece, entitled “Life after Google“, concludes on a rather elegant and poignant note:

There is, however, a deeper, more troubling sensation. As Americans living in China at this moment in its history, many of us have fashioned an image of a country that is moving—in its own shambling pattern of fits and starts—toward something better for itself and the world. Sure, it thrashes around a lot along the way, but on many days it seems to end up a fraction of an inch closer to a better, healthier, more humane way of life. But this is not one of those days. A superpower that is willing to jettison a tool so central to life as a global citizen begins to look less like a calculatingly pragmatic steward of its people’s interests and more like an addled Goliath.

Well said.

March 26th, 2010

Another prominent Chinese academic in limbo...Cui Weiping denied permission to travel to United States

What is it about the American Association of Asian Studies annual meeting this year?

Yeah, I know — other than the fact that I SHOULD be there if only to network with Important People in my field, if only so they can keep reminding me that my future employment prospects rank somewhere between “Dinosaur wrangler” and “Tiger Woods’ PR guy.”

Yesterday, Wang Hui, who is in Philadelphia this week as a keynote speaker at the conference, was accused of plagiarism. Today AP is reporting that film professor Cui Weiping has been denied permission to travel to the United States to attend the conference.

Cui Weiping had her Chinese passport, U.S. visa and airplane ticket to Philadelphia in hand when, she said, officials at the Beijing Film Academy where she works called her in Sunday and told her to cancel the trip. Though they gave reasons for the denial — she has classes to teach, her conference panel was not related to her academic discipline — those were excuses, she said.

The unstated reason, she said: last year’s commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and her recent outraged Twitter posts at the jailing of a peaceful political activist. “Really, they

March 26th, 2010

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