Tomorrow I’m taking off for a five-day history class trip to Hangzhou and Nanjing. My students seem reasonably enthusiastic about the overnight train trip (some of them have already had train adventures traveling over the break) but then most have never had to sleep in the middle bunk with five Chinese businessmen getting drunk and playing cards by flashlight until three in the morning.
(On the other hand, I’ve seen more than a few haggard and weary Chinese business-types eagerly switch out of a berth containing five energetic liuxuesheng playing Uno…although the students are not usually doing so after hours and not (so far as I know) drunk.
We don’t really get to spend that much time in Hangzhou. It’s an “arrive on Thursday morning/leave on Friday afternoon” situation, but this is the shorter of two Mobile Classrooms (as we call these trips.) The longer ones will happen in April when one group will study the affects of China’s economic development on habitat preservation, air/water quality, and bio-diversity in Yunnan and a second group will travel to Zhongdian (Shangri-La) and then into the mountains of Southwest Sichuan for a two-week class on Tibetan culture. Those are the epic hauls, this weekend is a mere warm-up, a jaunt to slightly warmer climes.
On Friday we head north to Nanjing and do the “Southern Capital Trifecta” (Nanjing Massacre Memorial/Presidential Palace/Sun Yat-sen Memorial). I’m a big fan of Nanjing. Other than the fact that flagging down a cab in that town requires either Jedi mind tricks and/or possibly a grenade launcher, Nanjing is one of my favorite cities in China. Full disclosure though, I’ve not been there in July when I understand it’s hotter than two rats f—-g in a wool sock under a wood stove (can you tell I’m from New Hampshire, yet?) but if reports from this week hold true, it should be a nice winter weather respite from the cold gray of China’s capital.
I understand closing the comments, but wanted to say, “Sun Yat-sen versus Barack Obama: The Breakdown”, was excellent.
Have a good trip. Hope one day to be able to see some of China for myself.
What sites in HZ are you visiting? Hangzhou is my old stomping ground…
Be sure to check out the 先鋒書店 at 鼓樓區廣州路173號五台山體育館地下車庫. Not necessarily the largest selection of books, although they do quite well, but a cultural centre just the same.
No need to feign ignorance, all of the Tarim Basin knew ergoutou was present when one M.T. (Ed note: name redacted to protect the not so innocent. Those of us who were on the Silk Road trip know who this is) got draw four-ed for the third consecutive turn and started spewing expletives with a vigor not seen since Ron Artest brought some Brooklyn justice to the stands of Detroit
My dear Mr. Jenne,
I wish you of course the best of everything on this short trip. When you return, perhaps you could spend up to 30 seconds and think about one China history book that is well-written and fairly comprehensive and post its name here?
Today I was looking to expand the realm of my reading habits, and as I do tend to spend an inexcusable amount of time posting on China blogs (inexcusable given the pitiful amount of actual China knowledge within my cranium) I thought, well, why not spend some time on getting comfortable with basic historical data on The Middle Kingdom.
Is there any equivalent to Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall…”? (By which I mean an outrageously well-written history spanning thousands of years – never mind issues of datedness?) Perhaps there is at least some volume on China that will not put you to sleep through and through within the first 50 pages? I am not asking for much – merely that the author is fairly knowledgeable, well-intended, and could get at least an A- in a freshman writing seminary. Surely there must be someone out there who writes better than Peter Perdue? (Not that Perdue is bad given his pack, but he is no Tacitus.)
I’m merely asking for a statement of personal preference, and I will not be any less grateful should I spend a few hundred dollars on a work of history on your recommendation and then promptly toss it out the window upon discovering that our requirements are vastly different. So – if anyone were to read just one book on Chinese history (ma foi! or three books! or ten! write about as many as you like) which one would that be?
respectfully,
The Resident Poet
Mr Duck Poet, may I offer a suggestion before Jeremiah returns, and that is to say you might want to check out Jaques Gernet’s ‘The Chinese Civilization’. It is a 900+ volume covering all of Chinese history and culture and whilst quite dated in parts, is a good intro to the main themes of the Chinese past.
Enjoy Nanjing – as a former resident there is such a wealth of interesting historical sites of different periods there they could be assembled in many different ways for an educational program, so its a great place to take your students. Also nice to get them to a major prosperous city that isn’t Beijing or Shanghai to see a style of Chinese modernity that isn’t either of those two somewhat self-absorbed places.
The southern part of the city offers an interesting set of sites as well highlighting several historical aspects of the city – large fortifications from Ming, the whole Fuzi Miao which even if somewhat touristified is broadly similar in layout and scale to one of the most storied pleasure quarters dating back to the Jin (the first one), as well as a huge Communist memorial complex to political prisoners of the nationalist in grand socialist realist style.
Poking around the mountain near the Sun Yatsen tomb is itself quite an interesting slice of different periods of Chinese history – there is the site of the villa where Wang Anshi retired, various tomb complexes of KMT dignitaries, and of course the Zhu Yuanzhang’s tomb which is an interesting mirror to Sun’s – a nice reminder of how the dual image the Nationalists built of themselves as Westernizers but still connected to classical tradition. There is also the site of the tomb of the unfortunate Wang Jingwei, which was destroyed after the end of the Pacific War.
Some very interesting Muslim sites in the city as well, as the community dates back to the Ming when Central Asian astronomers were brought there to to run the Ming observatory.
The local restaraunts are a good introduction to history as well – good Muslim food as well as some localized Sichuan dishes brought back by the officials who decamped up river during the war.
Peking Duck Resident Poet,
This probably deserves its own post, so I’ll offer a few here and then maybe save the others for a longer reply:
Search for Modern China, still the most readable of the ‘modern’ histories of China, though I also enjoy the level of detail found in Immanuel Hsu’s Rise of Modern China.
I like Perdue, but if you found his Xinjiang tome a bit weighty, then you might want to check out James Millward’s Beyond the Pass. Similar ground covered, about half the size.
Five of my must-reads, and mind you that some of these might be a bit specialized:
- Soulstealers (Philip Kuhn)
- Precious Records (Susan Mann)
- Treason by the Book (Jonathan Spence)
- History in Three Keys (Paul Cohen) Note: Cohen’s Discovering History in China is a great extended historiographical essay on American writing about Chinese history and is also quite good.
- The Great Divergence (Ken Pomeranz)
There are many, many others. I’d start here.
Finally, if you check the back episodes of the Sinica Podcast, there was an episode from last year with Kaiser, Jeremy Goldkorn, and I discussing our favorite China books. Might be worth checking out.
Thanks for stopping by.
Steve,
I always enjoy Nanjing and there are so many cool places worth checking out. Thanks for some of your tips, I’ll try to incorporate them into next semester’s itinerary.
@Jeremiah, Jiong
Muchas gracias. Getting on it now.
As another ex-NJer the only other place I would add is 江心洲, very good for a relaxed summer-time strawberry-picking trip.
Most of the clubs I used to frequent (Stupid Bird? The Red Balloon? 天堂戈壁?) are long-since closed, but I think Castle Bar near 鼓楼 is still open, and of course 1912 (which opened properly just after I left in ’05) has a ton of places to go. Behind The Wall on 上海路 is (I think) still open, and wasn’t a bad place for a pre-club drink, and I don’t think Blue Sky just down the street from there will ever close so long as there are still middle-aged expat engineers looking to get hammered.