History Commons^™

Faq#7: Why Were Chinese People So Angry About The Attempts To Seize The Torch In The International Torch Relay?, Susan Brownell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have just returned from five days in the earthquake disaster zone in Sichuan province, where I was a member of the “People’s Olympic Education Promotion Team” that visited Deyang city to conduct “Youth Olympic Games Re-enactments” at six local primary and secondary schools. There I realized that for the people we encountered, The Torch is a sacred object. I call it The Torch because that is what they called it – 火炬 – as if there were only one, and no further adjectives were necessary.

The project expressed the mission of Donnie Pei, a professor at the Capital Institute …

Smoke And Mirrors: China And India

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After reading a short excerpt from Pallavi Aiyar‘s new book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, at Danwei.org, we wanted to ask her a few questions about her experience as a journalist and writer working in China (Danwei has also postedan interview with Aiyar, asking for her insights on the relationship of and comparisons between China and India; and additional reviews of the book have been posted at the WSJ China Blog and The International Herald Tribune). Here are her answers to our questions, followed by a short excerpt from the book.Smoke and Mirrors can be purchased at this …

Interview No. 1457, Custodio Navarrete Cárdenas

Combined Interviews

Custodio Navarrete Cardeas worked with his father caring for animals in the field. Navarrete was hired as a bracero in 1961. He traveled to Calexico in order to know his future work place. The first city where Navarrete worked was in King City, California cutting lettuce and carrots. Navarrete lived with all the other workers close to the work place. He played cards in his free time with other workers, sometimes he won money but sometimes lost the check. Mr. Navarrete went back to Mexico after his contract. Navarrete was shot and was not able to return to work as …

China Beat Contributors Around The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. Jeff Wasserstrom was recently interviewed about the Shanghai NIMBY protests for a Danish newspaper.

2. For visitors heading to the Olympics, Wasserstrom also recently published a few suggestions at Outlook India for a Beijing itinerary for “culturally-minded tourists.”

3. Contributor Richard Kraus was referenced recently in a New Yorker article on the classical music scene in China.

4. Pankaj Mishra (oft-referenced in these pages) published a short piece a few weeks ago in The Guardian on inter-war travel writing. Mishra mentions off-hand that, in contrast to the quickly seen and sketched travel writing of the 1930s, “the best non-fiction …

Susan Brownell Around The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat contributor Susan Brownell is showing up all over the web these days, as her special knowledge on Olympic and Chinese sports history is in high demand. Here is a list of some of her recent media appearances:

1. On PRI’s “The World,” Brownell talks about some of the differences between Western and Chinese notions of body and sports; the report also includes a short excerpt from Jonathan Spence’s Reith Lecture “The Body Beautiful,” which Xu Guoqi blogged about at China Beat earlier this month.

2. Brownell has also been cited in several NPR reports, including these two by …

Renders It Necessary That We Should Be Prepared' A Reexamination Of The Militant South Thesis In Territorial Florida, Franklin Nooe

All Theses

This thesis examines the effect of Native Americans on the martial tradition in the Old South. As proposed by John Hope Franklin, the proximity of Southern settlements to Indian tribes aroused grave apprehension regarding the safety of the settlers from hostile attack. This thesis seeks to illustrate a specific example of his assessment. Therefore, the work is focused on the events of the Seminoles in Florida and to a lesser extent the Creeks in Alabama and Georgia. Chronologically the thesis focuses on approximately 1800-1842. Geographically the text is concerned with Florida and the border areas. This thesis argues that the …

Securing The Olympics, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

More than any state-of-the-art sports complex or amazing athletic performance, many visitors will remember the Beijing Olympics as the world’s largest security event. In an effort to squelch any sort of protest or more serious terrorist act the government has instituted strict new rules and enforced many existing but hitherto disregarded laws. Estimates of total security personnel range from 250,000 to 500,000, depending on the criteria, but visitors should be either alarmed or comforted to know their every action is monitored and scrutinized.

The epicenter for Olympic security is Tiananmen Square. Since 1989 and even more so since the Falun …

Brother Dennis Victory Brown

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

A Defense Of Jiang Rong’S Wolf Totem, Timothy Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have a confession to make: I was moved by Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, think it’s an important novel and that it’s well worth reading. The reason I say I feel a need to “confess” as opposed to just being able to state this is because recent postingson The China Beat, as well as some of the reviews referenced in those postings, attack the book with a sharpness and thoroughgoingness that initially made me question my own taste and to think that I was politically incorrect for liking and being impressed by the novel as I read it. But after …

From Memory To Honor: Stories Of South Carolina's World War Monuments, Amy Matthews

All Theses

Out of the South's defeat in the Civil War emerged proponents of the Lost Cause and a desire to remember and perpetuate the South's honor in the war. This desire to commemorate fallen loved ones and to preserve their memory continued into the twentieth century, most notably the era following the First and Second World Wars.
Based on the South's strong sense of military tradition and remembrance established after the Civil War, a scholarly debate has emerged in recent decades over the meaning of military commemorations and monuments. One side of the argument views World War I commemorations as a …

What We’Re Reading Today

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are a few themes we’ve been tracking lately at China Beat, including growing Chinese nationalism, middle class protest, and India-China comparisons. Here are a few stories we’ve noticed around the web this week that address some of these issues:

1. For a thoughtful take on the fenqing phenomenon, check out Evan Osnos’s recent New Yorker piece, “Angry Youth: The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists.”

2. Financial Times ran a recent piece on the efforts to stop construction of a nuclear power station in Rushan (southeast of Beijing)–see “China Pressure Groups Learn to Tread Carefully.”

3. Earlier this week, Danwei.org ran …

Ward Family Papers (Mss 59), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 59. Papers chiefly of Hezekiah and Richard Ward of Ohio County, Kentucky. Promissory notes, 1857-79 (14 items); tax receipts, 1864-68 (4); telephone receipts, 1913-34 (44); and miscellaneous receipts, 1824-1937 (40); legal papers, 1873-1939 (14); essay and play, 189?; and genealogical data (2).

Rocking Beijing, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Like almost every aspect of Beijing life in the past five years, the live music scene has undergone rapid but uneven development. Beijing has always prided itself on the gritty originality of its live music compared to the dominance of cover bands in Shanghai or the saccharine Canto-pop of Hong Kong. The recent opening of new, modern venues on both sides of the city has allowed dozens of new bands and a newly affluent urban youth to establish a flourishing but still shallow live music scene.

For live music, particularly rock and hip hop music, the Olympics are bringing challenges …

Ccu Newsletter, July 21, 2008, Coastal Carolina University

Coastal Carolina University Newsletter

Coastal Carolina University's weekly on-campus newsletter.

Beijing’S New Flame, Rob Gifford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The essence of Beijing has always been found in its buildings. The city has no major river, no coastline. There are some hills to the west and the north, with the Great Wall stretched across them, but there is none of the geographic razzle-dazzle that created towns like Hong Kong or San Francisco or Sydney or Istanbul. As the historian Arnold Toynbee noted when he visited in the 1930s, Beijing as a city owes little to nature and everything to art.

The art of which Toynbee wrote was contained within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, where the emperor …

Cayce, Delbert Durwood, Iii, 1924-2014 (Sc 1712), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1712. Copies of two letters related to the Quarles family, Christian County, Kentucky; copies of two letters written by Delbert Durwood Cayce III to the Edgar Cayce Foundation concerning the production of a movie based on the life of Edgar Cayce, a Christian County native. Also, Rabold and Quarles family genealogical notes.

James Gordon Sr.

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Faq #6: Are The Beijing Olympic Games Being Used As A Propaganda Campaign To Prop Up The Communist Party?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Olympic education” is the IOC’s label for the educational efforts that are supposed to be an integral part of the Olympic Movement as required by Fundamental Principle #1 of the Olympic Charter, which states that Olympism is a philosophy of life that blends sport with culture and education. Since 2005 Chinahas been carrying out the largest-scale “Olympic education” campaign in history.There have been academic and professional conferences, textbooks and courses for public schools and universities, educational television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper essays, websites, and more.

In fall of 2007 I was added to the “experts team” of Beijing …

China Around The World: Australia, Rowan Callick

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s hard for me to compare how Australians and others cover China, in part because we rarely actually meet each other to swap notes, except for the occasional encounter via the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (an admirable organization, but one without formal standing in China because it lacks—for obvious reasons on both sides—the sponsorship of a party or government body) and in part because the whole structure of journalism in China does not bring reporters together frequently, as it does in most other countries.

I sometimes go for weeks without encountering another journalist. For China has few press conferences, …

Uggla's Ugly Adventure: The All-Star Game, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Some will remember it as Uggla’s Ugly Adventure. Others will remember it for its record length in both innings and time. Some will remember it as nearly replicating the game of 2002 in Milwaukee when the managers ran out of players and someone (the Commissioner) had the good sense to stop the game. That was the infamous tie. Tuesday night it was beginning to look as though another tie, the third in All-Star History, was in the offing. In fact it was probably only an inning away.

Reverend Dr. David Lee

African American Funeral Programs

Funeral program for Reverend Dr. David Lee on July 19, 2008 at The Rock Church of God

Mr. John A. Middleton

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Ford, William Barry, 1832-1880 (Sc 1682), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid, scans and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1682. Three letters to Ford, Scottsville, Allen County, Kentucky, from John H. Blue, Brunswick, Missouri, related to land owned there by ancestor John Bright, and a letter of information from Bright’s daughter in Texas. Also, the answer of defendants to a petition filed in Barren County, Kentucky Circuit Court by C. C. Stark, administrator of James Stark, disputing the value of three slaves stated to have been mortgaged to James Stark by Ford on 4 May 1865. With respect to one enslaved woman, the defendants claim …

Duelling Dreams At The 2008 Beijing Olympics, James Leibold

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This year is China’s year. On the 8th day of the 8th month at 8pm, it will light the flame of the 29th Olympics Games—bringing not only the world’s athletes to Beijing but also thousands of foreign visitors and millions more through the massive global media contingency that will descend on the capital.

What will the media spotlight capture? The luster of an ancient civilization and emerging superpower as many in China hope; or the darker, seedier corners of an authoritarian yet fragile party-state as many in the West suspect.

According to the Chinese government, the Olympics games have never …

Kung Fu Panda, Go Home!, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It seems that boycott fatigue has finally hit the Chinese, in a year that has lurched from one boycott to another—against such entities as a French supermarket chain, a Hollywood star, and an American cable channel. When the latest clarion call was issued by a performance artist named Zhao Bandi赵半狄 against Kung Fu Panda, he was greeted with jeers and mockery. Zhao presented his case in a blog: Hollywood is morally corrupt for churning out loathsome personalities like Sharon Stone (who betrayed schadenfreude over the Sichuan earthquake as “karmic retribution” for Tibet) and Steven Spielberg (who quit his role as …

Things We’D Rather You Not Say On The Web, Or Anywhere Else, David Bandurski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I love words. And I thank you in advance, dear citizens, for obeying mine. Words are dangerous and slippery things. Some people in the West will tell you that words are playthings, and that we should all be free to do with them as we please. But I want to tell you that words are really all we have – and this is why the Party has troubled itself to choose them so carefully on your behalf.

You will have heard, I suppose, that Article 35 of our nation’s constitution guarantees that you enjoy “freedom of expression.” You will no …

Gardner, Tandy Thomas, 1865-1963 (Sc 1697), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Small Collection 1697. Teacher's register, 1883-1897, kept by Tandy Thomas Gardner, Green Hill School, Warren County, Kentucky. Also, printed examination questions for teachers, 1905; news clippings about Gardner; and his obituary.

Interview 13 Punchbowl Activity, Lynnita Brown, Murdo Maclennan

MacLennon, Murdo

No abstract provided.

From Lovers To Volunteers: Tian Han And The National Anthem, Liang Luo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As the clock counts down towards the opening of the Olympic Games at 8 p.m. on August 8, 2008, the Chinese government and many ordinary Chinese citizens are hoping that one particular song will make an impression on television viewers in all corners of the globe: “March of the Volunteers,” the country’s National Anthem. Not only will it play during the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony, but also every time a Chinese athlete wins a gold medal, and expectations are running high that this will happen a lot, thanks largely to the high caliber of the women competing for …

Interview 12 Clarifying Interview 11, Lynnita Brown, Murdo Maclennan

MacLennon, Murdo

No abstract provided.