“Walking the Pearl River Delta,” Here! Dongguan Magazine
INTREPID OR INSANE, IT’S HARD TO SAY, BUT HERE!’S ROGUE HISTORIAN DECIDED TO TRAVEL FROM GUANGZHOU TO DONGGUAN TO SHENZHEN…ON FOOT [Read More...]
Archives
“The Secret Sexual Life of Zhou Enlai and the Limits of Historical Knowledge,” LA Review of Books China Blog
Retroactively outing a historical figure remains problematic, not because of the sex — Zhou Enlai may well have had erotic relations with other men — but because such studies are often methodologically flawed. Too often, contemporary understandings of romance and sexuality, gay or straight, are read into texts from another time period. But doing so can prejudice the data and lead to shaky conclusions. It is an error of perception when we use present-day standards to judge or categorize evidence of past behavior. [Read More...]
Imperial Politics, the Lantern Festival, and Yuan Shikai’s Balls
How a misunderstanding over the name of a glutinous rice ball panicked a would-be dictator [Read More...]
“Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Part IV”
In one of the great ironies of history, none of the treaties directly deals with the cause of the war: opium. It would take another conflict, the Arrow War of 1856-1860, which resulted in the occupation of Beijing and the looting and burning of the imperial summer palaces, to finally legalize the trade in the narcotic. [Read More...]
In Memory of David Bowie: The China Girl Running Diary
In Memory of David Bowie, a running diary of the 1983 Orientalist classic "China Girl." [Read More...]
“Out of Autocracy, Off the Shelves”
It is an unfortunate axiom of publishing in China that the best way for your book to gain international attention is to have the Chinese government make it unavailable to domestic readers. Such is the fate of Out of Imperial Autocracy (Zouchu dizhi), the latest book by the eminent public intellectual and economic historian Qin Hui, published earlier this year. [Read More...]
“Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Part III”
The HMS Nemesis was 56 meters long and 29 meters wide. She sailed for the China coast in 1839 carrying two guns that fired 32-pound rounds and four that fired six-pound rounds, plus a launcher for rockets and torpedoes. She could operate by either sail or steam, and her shallow draft meant that she could move as effectively on inland rivers as she could in open ocean. Her hull was protected by iron and designed with watertight compartments to keep the ship afloat even if the outer hull was breached. She was a devastating weapon of war. [Read More...]
The Perils of Advising the Empire: Yuan Shikai and Frank Goodnow
New post by me at ChinaFile. The Perils of Advising the Empire: Yuan Shikai and Frank Goodnow. [Read More...]
New Post on World of Chinese: Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Part II
I started writing a little post for the World of Chinese website on The Opium War. The project has since mutated into a multi-part macro history of drugs and violence on the Chinese coast. I'm having a lot of fun writing it. I hope you enjoy reading it! [Read More...]
New Post on The World of Chinese: “Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”
I have a new writing gig, I’ll be [Read More...]
Kissing the Smog Monster
An FAQ for family, friends, and interested parties on how we cope with Beijing's "Patriotic Mist/Toxic Miasma of Doom" [Read More...]
Sun Yat-sen: The Love Doctor
Excerpts from the letters of George "Morrison of Peking" Morrison. The revolutionary Sun Yat-sen is in the midst of mid-life crisis and the head of the YMCA, and family friend to Sun's intended paramour, reaches out to the famous journalist. [Read More...]
The Christmas Convert
My wife is a serious professional, with a high pressure job. She is one of the brightest and most rational people I've ever met, well known for her dry and ironic sense of humor. But something about Christmas just brings out the whimsy. [Read More...]
Great Mustaches in Modern Chinese History
November is a month for mustaches in Beijing and around the world. Who wore the craziest mustaches of modern Chinese history? [Read More...]
From the Archives: The Wire Guide to the 1911 Revolution
Since November 12, 2015 is the 149th anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen, it seemed like a good moment to drag this one out of the archives. [Read More...]