Jottings from the Granite Studio » Jottings in other places

Sinica Podcast: The Eulogy and the Aftershocks

Jeremiah — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:44:41 +0000

Kaiser Kuo has started Sinica, a much-needed podcast series bringing together people from academia, media, business, and other corners of the Sinosphere to discuss the issues of the day. This week’s episode featured Gady Epstein from Forbes Magazine, Tania Branigan of The Guardian, and I me talking a bit about Hu Yaobang, earthquakes, and, apparently, Song Zuying.

People new to the blog and who are interested in reading more on these topics might want to check out the following posts from the past:

“The Historical Record for April 15, 2009: The Death of Hu Yaobang” (April 15, 2009)

“List of possible embarrassing revelations in Ζhao Ζiyang Memoirs due out this summer (May 15, 2009)

And for those interested in earthquakes…

“The Historical Record for March 1: Zhang Heng’s Seismometer”

Enjoy and thanks to Kaiser for inviting me on the show.

Great article in the Christian Science Monitor today…

Jeremiah — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:59:10 +0000

Okay, maybe I’m biased since the author of the article is none other than Mrs. Granite Studio, but the article IS good and the topic, the culture of marriage and homosexuality in China, is definitely worth checking out.

New Global Times Column: Basketball and Sino-US Relations…no, really.

Jeremiah — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:34:04 +0000

Another week another column for The Global Times. (And in case you’re wondering, my soul feels no less decayed than usual.) This one is on basketball with a little foreign relations thrown in by way of metaphor. Enjoy.

Column in the Global Times

Jeremiah — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:04:47 +0000

This week I have a column in the recently unveiled English-language edition of The Global Times. This is a new gig and we’ll see how it goes. The first column is my thoughts on Timothy Garton Ash’s recent piece in The Guardian discussing overseas media coverage and China. My personal take is that quality of coverage ranges wildly and that even though writers should strive for objectiveness, everybody has their own biases and perceptions. That said, the way the foreign media is presented to Chinese audiences via Anti-CNN or, for that matter, newspapers like the Global Times*, dramatically oversimiplifies the diversity and complexity of the overseas media environment, and tends to subsume criticism of the criticism into paranoid fantasies of anti-China bogeymen. As I wrote in this week’s article:

There’s a lot of good coverage of China in the foreign media and too much bad coverage of China as well, but the idea that the “Western Media” operates as a giant cabal with the editors and producers of CNN, BBC, New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Lichtenstein Daily Bugler all gathering once a month in a secret underground bunker listening as a clone of Henry Luce strokes a white Persian cat and dispenses marching orders on how to destroy the Chinese nation is obviously ludicrous.

It’s a subject upon which I’ve written before, but one reason I keep writing about it is because I continue to encounter common misunderstandings regarding the role of the media and the way the media operates outside the PRC. I thought that this was a good opportunity to take my concerns to the source, if you will. I hope you enjoy it.

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*I was thinking of a way to describe a bit my feelings about working for this particular newspaper, but the editorial board surgically implanted the latest in Electro-Muscular Disruption (EMD) technology, programmed to shoot 150 KV of electricity into my lower spine if I deviate too far from the established line so…

China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance available today

Jeremiah — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:22:44 +0000

Okay, so I’m actually getting published somewhere that isn’t on a site I personally run. It’s going to be on paper, with ink, and in libraries and everything. So…yeah, that’s kind of cool for a grad student.

China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance is a collection edited by Kate Merkel-Hess and based on the successful group blog The China Beat. My own small contribution is an essay on Granite Studio fave Hua Guofeng entitled, drolly enough, “Hua Guofeng: Remembering a Forgotten Leader.” I wanted to call it “Hua Guofeng: I was a Chairman, too and Deng Xiaoping can kiss my ass” but the editors didn’t feel that fit the theme.

Not to let my own ego run amok, because the real reason to buy the book is the stunning collection of historians, China scholars, and noted journalists who contributed material: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Leslie T. Chang, Peter Hessler, Pankaj Mishra, Howard French, Xujun Eberlein, David Bandurski, Geremie R. Barmé, Kenneth Pomeranz, Timothy Weston…and I’m stopping there lest this start to sound like I’m a basketball announcer.

Check it out.

Film Review: The Passion of the Mao (2006)

Jeremiah — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:32:40 +0000

I have a review of the film The Passion of the Mao up at The China Beat website. Like Mao’s own revolution, this film has a good beginning but serious problems towards the end. You can check out the full review here.

2009: A Year of Some Significance

Jeremiah — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:22:51 +0000

2009 is shaping up to be a great year. The dissertation is humming along, I’m teaching a class on Modern Chinese history for about 20 American university students studying here in Beijing as well as a seminar on Chinese philosophy. The classes start on Thursday and I’m almost done with finalizing the syllabus (I’m an inveterate, compulsive tinkerer). This is the fourth time I’ve taught the philosophy seminar and this is the fourth syllabus I’ve used. I always begin the process of revision by “wanting to tweak a few things,” but as an academic there’s a hint of shade-tree mechanic in me, and I can’t resist just pulling the whole thing apart and putting it back together again. The Modern Chinese History class is a little more straightforward (1911-2008) and we hit all the high and low points: May Fourth, Nanking Decade, World War II, Liberation, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Reform and Opening, that thing that rhymes with Schmiananmen, and the problems and possibilities of the present day. It’s a fun class to teach, needless to say.

Along the way in the past year, I also managed (almost by accident) to have several pieces published in books which have either just been released or are due out soon. The first is an essay on Hua Guofeng for the book China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield this spring. This is the in print result of a year in the life of the blog The China Beat, and the list of contributors makes me a bit humble to have my name alongside theirs in the table of contents. While I never meant to become the “Hua Guofeng guy,” I was happy to add my own little bit to this wonderful project.

On a more local note, December saw the release of the latest iteration of the Beijing Insiders Guide, published by True Run Media (the good folks who bring you The Beijinger magazine). I have some short pieces in there, including the preface. It’s a book we buy every year, without fail, and I keep a copy on my desk here at school as a crutch for the fair number of obscure questions I get from students about how to get to where that thing is.

So while the world (and my university) awaits the final completion (and eventual publication plus seven-figure movie deal) of my dissertation, this will suffice. Hopefully I can get a few more things out there this year as well. Until then…there’s always the blog.

New post over at The Peking Duck

Jeremiah — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:31:24 +0000

I’ve written a post over at The Peking Duck on the BBC’s decision to broadcast protests should they occur during the Beijing Olympics. Feel free to join in the free-wheeling discussion/online shouting match which is sure to ensue.

Western media bias on Τibet?

Jeremiah — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:51:32 +0000

In response to a comment left on an earlier post, I’ve posted a new essay at The China Beat on western media bias and the ongoing situation in Τibet. (Mainland link)

“It’s true that following the outbreak of unrest on March 14, many in the foreign media dropped the ball, in some cases due to lazy or mistaken reporting, in others as the result of preconceived notions of the situation and a misunderstanding of the complexities in the Sino-Tibetan relationship. Meanwhile, coverage in the Chinese state media was little better in its histrionic attempts to portray the Dalai Lama as a demonic mastermind bent on splitting China and “re-imposing a slave society” on Tibetans. Chinese netizen response was sparked by justifiable outrage at faulty and biased foreign coverage of the event, but was also the product of an environment where the Party line is the only possible interpretation of either historical or contemporary ‘reality.’ Unfortunately, I fear this is not the last time in this Olympic year that competing expectations and perceptions, by the Chinese state and public on one side and the foreign media on the other, will result in unpleasantness.”

Once again, I’m going to suggest that rather than leave comments here, readers can go over to The China Beat website, read the essay in its entirety, and join in the discussion there. (Though obviously if the GFW makes that problematic, feel free to leave a comment here.)

New post on The China Beat

Jeremiah — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:17:18 +0000

I have a new post up at The China Beat on Chinese reactions to foreign criticism, “Prejudice Made Plausible: Foreign Criticism and Chinese Sensitivities.”

Why does concern about the Olympics, criticism of Chinese government policies, or even a news story about the effect of air pollution on athletes, provoke such a visceral response from many Chinese?

Obviously no one set of reasons can cover the gamut of reactions, everybody perceives issues in different ways, but in perusing the comments section of China blogs and the threads on Chinese BBSs, I sense three main themes: the close integration of state/nation/party in both PRC ideology and the minds of the Chinese people, genuine pride at China’s rise in the world and a belief that many countries in “the West” seek to undermine China’s development to satisfy their own selfish strategic goals, and finally, barely smoldering resentment born out of a history of foreign imperialism in China.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

(Mainland link)