花崗齋雜記

Jottings from the Granite Studio provides commentary, analysis, and opinion on China and Chinese history. It is written by Jeremiah Jenne, a PhD Candidate at a large public research university in Northern California. Currently, Jeremiah is in Beijing teaching history, doing archival research, and working on his dissertation.

From the Granite Studio Archives

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Review: Peter Hessler’s Country Driving

Ed note: This is a guest post by Zhang Yajun.

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As a Chinese person, books written by foreigners about my country always intrigue me. Of course, some are good, others…not so much.  The bad books occasionally rate a mocking giggle, but the better ones are like mirrors that reflect the country, the people, and yourself. Peter Hessler’s [...]

Afternoon Tea: Yu Hua on public trust, China Beat on Yuanmingyuan, Young woman mounts Mao in public (no, it’s not what you think)

You know it’s cold in your little hutong home when your hibernating pet turtle wakes up, climbs out of his bowl, and is found huddling under the space heater.  Still not sure how he did it, we’re thinking he had an outside accomplice with our cat the most likely suspect.

Some hits from around the web on [...]

The New Republic: “No Country for Young Men”

Mara Hvistendahl writes in The New Republic this week about the possibilities of future unrest and social ills as unintended consequences of China’s One Child Policy.  I wrote a little something about this last year:

There are many factors that can contribute to social instability and political unrest, but having a large population of young, underemployed, and unmarried [...]

When the guests go home: China after the Olympics

There’s a new essay at OpenDemocracy by Kerry Brown, author of the book Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century. Brown argues that while the Olympics currently dominate both the headlines and the attention of Chinese government officials, the twin problems of corruption and inflation will remain once the spotlight has been turned off, the [...]

Voices from China’s Past: Li Xiaojiang on women in Chinese society

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 of [...]

Jeffrey Wasserstrom on the Shanghai Mag-lev Protests

In the wake of last week’s protests in Shanghai over construction of a new mag-lev train, historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom has a great piece in The Nation looking at the history of collective action in Shanghai.
It would be a mistake to ignore parallels between the current Shanghai protests and earlier events in the city’s history that [...]

When the grasshopper plays and it’s the ant who suffers

Heartbreaking story out of rural China via the LA Times: poor farmers defrauded in a pyramid scam involving–would you believe it–ants. Somewhere, a grasshopper is smiling a little too smugly.
The story illustrates the get-rich-now mentality here, the constant search for a new angle by those struggling to make a go of it with the communist [...]

Morning Tea: Unintentional Comedy on CCTV…Adventures in China PR…Chiang’s Diaries…cheng’guan…and stolen fruit

It’s been a busy week here in Beijing. The Olympic year is not yet two weeks old and China is already doing its damnedest to serve up a whole stir-fry of crazy.

First off, 2008 has thus far not been kind to CCTV. While the state-run station has never really considered itself either yellow or violent, [...]

Bare Sticks and Social Unrest: A Mutant Palm Critique

Dave at The Mutant Palm has posted a critique of the “guang’gun goin’ to hell” narrative that pops up every so often. The short form of that story is that sex-selection in family planning, exacerbated by the One Child Policy, is creating a bachelor bomb (a generation of guang’gun 光棍 or ‘bare sticks’) that will mean [...]

FP: Five Population Trends to Watch

Number four on Foreign Policy‘s recent “Five Population Trends to Watch” list cites China and India as leading examples of the “Too many grooms, not enough brides” trend:
Military experts have a saying: Amateurs study strategy; professionals study logistics. When it comes to geopolitics, professionals study demographics…

In China, a strong preference for sons and the country’s one-child [...]

The stupidity of things past (The tense relationship between the past imperfect and the present progressive)

Interesting post on the academic blog, New Kid on the Hallway (“The Glory of Progress“) about the tendency by students and even some scholars to assume that because people from the past didn’t write what we would write or think the way we would think, that somehow this means they were…well, not as smart as we [...]

Friday Morning Tea: Free Oiwan Lam…Forbidden City for stat geeks…Slate and Bushisms…PRI and Young China…HtWW and Lu Xun in Japan…Vote for us

Hong Kong-based citizen journalist and Global Voices Online contributor Oiwan Lam is facing charges of indecency in Hong Kong for posting an artsy topless photograph found on Flickr. She is facing a lengthy–and expensive–court battle and needs your help. The case has quickly become a cause célèbre in the China blogosphere. More information available [...]