The Historical Record for April 18, 2009: A tale of two leaders

April 18th marks the beginning of two administrations in Chinese political history.  It was on this date in 1927 that Chiang Kai-shek established his government in Nanjing following the success of the Northern Expedition and a bloody purge of the Communists from the KMT ranks.  32 years later, Liu Shaoqi emerged from the political infighting in the wake of the Peng Dehuai Affair to become president of the People’s Republic of China.  

While neither was very successful in the short-term, their respective political visions would cast long shadows.  

Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government rebuilt urban infrastructure, attempted to impose order where there had been none, and at least tried to lay the foundations for a modern Chinese state upon the ruins of empire.  Whether he was successful or not depends a bit on who you ask and where you decide to set the goal posts.  Some point to the rampant corruption (KMT officials were often so crooked they had to screw their pants on in the morning), incompetent administration, and Chiang’s own Ahab-esque desire to root out political enemies at the expense of other goals.  

Others argue that Chiang’s government never stood a chance.  With a limited economic base, large chunks of territory

April 18th, 2009

Chow Yun-Fat to star as Confucius

From the BBC:

Best known for his gangster roles, Chow will swap his trademark trench coat for scholarly robes in the movie.

The film will be a joint production between Beijing-based Dadi Cinema and the state-run China Film Group, a Dadi Cinema official told Associated Press.

Filming is due to begin in three weeks. A release date has yet to be announced.

The movie comes amid a surge in interest in the philosopher, who was practically outlawed during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.

We’ve certainly come along way since this:

This was a case study in how obscure research into ancient history can screw a philosopher even though he’s been dead for thousands of years.   First you have Mao who liked to think of himself as a new Qin Shihuangdi [r. 246 BCE-221 BCE], ruthless but effective in unifying his country.  Qin Shihuangdi was advised by Legalists whose principle ideological enemies were the Confucians…burning the books, banning the teachings, and even hoary chestnuts (almost certainly apocryphal) of scholars being buried alive.  And of course there was the whole “associated with feudal culture, backwards thinking, etc.” that had been the main indictment of

March 17th, 2009

Worth Reading: Can China forget its own history?

If it feels like I link to China Media Project a lot, it’s simply because David Bandurski runs a damn good blog.  Allow me to do so again and recommend his excellent post “Can China forget its own history,”  a must-read for anyone interested in modern Chinese history and historiography.  The accompanying essay/translation will also have particular resonance for those familiar with the documentary Morning Sun, in which Song Binbin’s recollections feature prominently.

February 5th, 2009

From the Granite Studio Archives: Lao She’s 110th

February 3, 2009 marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of writer Lao She.  I wrote this short piece last year to mark the occasion of anniversary number 109, and I like it so much that I’m running it again. Enjoy.

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Originally published February 3, 2008:

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, his mother took to working as a laundry woman to support herself and her son. Remembering those years, Lao She would later write:

“During my childhood, I didn’t need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother’s stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family.”

As a young man, he worked as a teacher and

February 3rd, 2009

Online historical photographs: Cultural Revolution and Colonial Taiwan

Among the very cool history resources available on the web are the online exhibitions of historical photographs.  An increasing number of museums, universities, archives, and private collections are putting old photographs on the Internet, and as I hear about these through listservs and other means I’ll post the links here. 

The first for today is a new online collection of Xinhua News photographs from the Cultural Revolution era.  Compiled by Thomas Hahn, these arresting photographs fill a necessary gap in our visual history of China’s 20th century.

Two other online exhibtions feature photographs from colonial Taiwan. 

The Gerald Warner collection hosted by Lafayette College contains 340 photographs and postcards gathered between 1937 and 1941 by Warner, a US consul on the island.  Most striking about this collection is the diversity captured, “a snapshot of Taiwan’s hybrid culture of Chinese, Taiwanese, Austronesian, and Japanese influences.”

Finally, another collection on colonial Taiwan, also hosted by Lafayette, contains 59 sepia photographs from Taiwan from the period 1933-1938 digitized from a Japanese book edited by Yamaki Kinichiro.

Enjoy.

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h/t H-Asia

November 12th, 2008
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