Jottings from the Granite Studio

Yung Wing (容闳, 1828-1912) was the first Chinese graduate of Yale University (class of 1854) and went on to have a long and diverse career as an interpreter, tea trader, diplomat, educator, military procurement specialist, and writer.
In his autobiography 我在中国和美国的生活 My Life in China and America, he recounts an incident that took place in Shanghai [...]

[Read more →]

One new feature I’m trying to kick off here at The Granite Studio is an entirely biased and hugely subjective review of some of my favorite historians of China.  These are the writers and scholars who influenced me when I began studying Chinese history and who continue to serve as inspirations as I continue my [...]

[Read more →]

There’s a famous saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Franklin was arguing that there exist higher principles beyond the immediate and that is critical in times of strife not to allow the urgent to vanquish the important.
I’d be hard [...]

[Read more →]

One of the more persistent myths of Qing dynasty (1644-1912) history is the hoary old story of the Manchu conquerors realizing their inherent inferiority and meekly taking on the culture of their subjects. The essence of the argument is that the success of the Qing in conquering and ruling such a large empire was due [...]

[Read more →]

In August 1868, an angry group of Yangzhou residents burned down the home of Hudson Taylor, a British missionary who had arrived in the city with his family only two months prior and whom the local populace suspected of kidnapping children for nefarious purposes. Taylor and his family fortunately escaped the blaze, though they were [...]

[Read more →]

“People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.” - Somerset Maugham
“As a scientific truth, Marxism fears no criticism.” - Mao Zedong
Like so many other hasty marriages, by 1956 the relationship between Mao and the Party had begun to suffer from a seven-year itch. Still only in their first decade of rule, the CCP were [...]

[Read more →]

I have another post, based also on an observation by Liang Qichao, over at The Peking Duck which will likely generate a bit more commentary than this brief meditation on the joys of urban parks, but after a pleasant post-brunch stroll through Ritan Gongyuan, I thought parks to be worth a post of their own:
As [...]

[Read more →]

Professor Li Xiaojiang, of Zhejiang University, is a pioneer of women’s and gender studies in the PRC. She published Renlei jinbu yu funu jiefang (”Human progress and women’s liberation”) in 1983, one of the first scholarly articles in her field ever published in the PRC. In 1988, Professor Li wrote an essay analyzing the situation [...]

[Read more →]

Today is the birthday of the celebrated novelist, playwright, and also YJ’s favorite author, Lao She, born Shu Qingchun in Beijng, 1899. His family was Manchu, members of the Red Banner, and Lao She’s father was killed defending the city against the Allied Expeditionary Force sent to quell the Boxer Uprising. After her husband’s death, [...]

[Read more →]

In our program’s library, I came across a copy of Chinese Views of Childhood edited by Anne Kinney. I remembered reading (or at least skimming) the book a few years ago for a seminar, but since I had a couple of hours to kill proctoring a make-up exam from last semester’s history class, I did [...]

[Read more →]