How Victor Mair got his Mummies

I wrote a few weeks ago about the kerfuffle at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  The museum was set to be the final stop in a three-city tour of artifacts from the Silk Road, which included priceless mummified remains excavated from the Taklamakan Basin. Just as the show was about to open, Chinese officials abruptly refused to allow the display of the mummies, sending museum and university representatives, including Victor Mair who is closely associated both with the study and the controversies surrounding the mummies, into a Michael Vick-worthy scramble.  Notices were sent, refunds issued, meetings arranged, stunt mummies deployed.

Now comes happy word from Professor Mair that the exhibit has reopened, with the actual mummies this time, as of this past Friday.

From Friday’s press conference:

On opening day, neither Museum officials nor visiting Chinese dignitaries would explain why the objects were initially blocked in Philadelphia, only saying there was a “miscommunication.”

They are now on display thanks to a desperate trip to the Chinese embassy by Mair, begging to display the mummies, if only for three weeks. The exhibition was planned to run until June, and will be open without the mummies for three

February 20th, 2011

A guest post from the Granite Studio Online Shopping Expert, Yajun: Why Groupon is flailing in China

I confess. I love tuangou (团购 Chinese for “group buying”) and frankly, how could you not? A four-course Cajun dinner with wine for two people only cost 116 RMB, one third of its original price. A movie ticket in a downtown cinema can be purchased for less than half what it would cost to walk up to the ticket window. Once you get a taste of it, you just cannot stop. Or maybe it’s just me. I’ve always loved shopping. And sales. And online stuff.  Basically, I am a group buy website’s dream demographic – a professional urban Chinese girl with a decent salary and an eye for bargains.

And apparently I’m not the only one. Within the last year, over a thousand Groupon-style websites have opened in China. They provide deals on everything you need in life (and some of the things you don’t need, but want to buy anyway), from delicious meals in fancy restaurants to imported high-end makeup products, to hotel rooms in nice resorts to cameras and electronic equipment.

For me, surfing the tuangou websites is like opening presents at the Christmas, except it happens every day and you can choose what you want and skip the ones

February 19th, 2011

Diversity When? A Guest Post by Yajun

(Ed Note: With several major projects in the works and with a gig next week guest blogging for James Fallows, I asked my lovely wife and co-conspirator Yajun if she’d like to help out for the next few weeks.)

I was born in a country where 90% of the people share a single ethnicity, where we have no national religion, but where we do have the stomachs to eat any living creature on earth.  So it came as a shock to me, later than it probably should have, that some people may not eat certain things out of choice or because of their religion. Sure, China has Hui people who are Muslim and who eat Qingzhen (Halal) food, but prior to university I’d only met a handful of Chinese Muslims in my life. And even in school, it wasn’t that I didn’t respect my friends’ aversion to pork, but it was just completely outside my own upbringing.  I don’t think I lacked sensitivity, just a sense of perspective about what diversity means.

This problem is even harder for my mom. During Spring Festival, some of my husband’s students came to our place for a dinner party. One of the students

February 17th, 2011

Manchukuo Soft Power: Japanese Propaganda Film from 1932

From the always excellent Archive.org via a twitter tip by the always alert C. Custer.

No…really, Manchukuo is wonderful. It’s Manchu Homeland 2.0 and we have brought all kinds of new industry and infrastructure to this poor benighted land.  Yeesh.

Original can be found here.

Also see this propaganda poster from roughly the same period.

February 16th, 2011

Traveling in the South, while watching the skies back North

Hangzhou

I am a restless traveler. This is less a statement of pretentious wanderlust then it is an admission that I very rarely sleep well staying in hotels and I’ve never been able to sleep on the overnights train. While China trains are an incredibly convenient and cheap way to travel, I spend the night fitfully trying to find the right body configuration to keep out stray light, odd noises, and, on occasion, even odder smells. Possibly (probably) I’m just getting old.

I managed a few hours on the overnight from Beijing to Hangzhou but this afternoon necessitated a 45-minute nap before I felt human enough to brave the misty shores of West Lake. I love my students, but after 36 hours of close contact, I decided to disconnect myself and head out on my own. Right now I’m bathing in fast WiFi and hiding in plain sight at – of all places – the lobby bar of the West Lake Park Hyatt.

The rain postponed a planned hike in the hills above the lake. The kids were gamers, but I thought spending the first afternoon of a five-day trip wandering around in freezing rain to be more whimsy then

February 10th, 2011
« Newer Entries  
  Older Entries »

日历

February 2011
M T W T F S S
« Jan   Mar »
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28