Fair warning: this is rough and addled; I’m in a particularly manic phase of writing/research of my dissertation, which has spilled over into all sorts of areas of my life. But it usually manifests in the desire to write something – anything – other than my dissertation, and read something – anything – other...
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There is a wonderful quote in a book I otherwise think is fair-to-middling (if that – Edvard Radzinsky’s The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II): Nicholas kept a diary for thirty-six years without interruption. He began it at the age of fourteen, in 1882, in the palace at Gatchina, and ended...
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Research is a funny thing; you sometimes find connections where you least expect them. I’ve been trawling through the database Duxiu, checking up on a few things that have popped up in archival sources. I checked up on a common search (the dramatist Meng Chao – who really made his name as a poet...
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As if I didn’t have enough to do in my last two weeks in China, I enthusiastically accepted an invitation extended by a good friend of mine: come to Kunming (the ‘Spring City’ in China’s Yunnan province) and give a lecture on a topic of my choosing to his study abroad students in the...
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In summer the nights . Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is! (Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, trans. Ivan Morris) Summer in Shanghai is draining – it’s hot and very humid, and...
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Kris Ligman had a nice piece over at Pop Matters on class and games (RPGs, more specifically) – the class-blind, wonderful lands of opportunity that they are: Is there any ludonarrative dischord greater than the capitalist, white, middle-class attitudes of unrestrained play coming into conflict with issues of class and race so utterly failed...
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Immediately following on the heels of a family visit (and lots of Kindle reading!), I headed up to Beijing for a work-personal visit, which has actually been really great for work overall (and recharging my batteries in a different sort of way). Shanghai has been oddly isolating, particularly after coming off of three years...
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Being a Chinese historian – or, I should probably say, learning to be a Chinese historian – can be great fun, and also really frustrating, and fun and frustrating all at once. Like most things in life, I guess, but I’m occasionally confronted with obstacles that make me wish I’d taken my mother’s initial...
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We read a great essay (which I of course cannot find now) when I was taking my methods class as an undergrad; the gist of it was that doing history can make for the loneliest profession. We find ourselves growing attached to people who are long dead, and who don’t care about us (they can’t,...
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Part 2 of 2: On shanzhai products as an object of study Like Part I, a lot of this is simply my preliminary ramblings on the subject – I still have a lot more research to do (don’t we always), but this is a starting point for me, conceptually and otherwise. I’ve been getting...
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