International and Area Studies Commons^™

A Better Life In New Shanghai?, Maura Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

During the two years I recently spent in Nanjing as a student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Shanghai became an increasingly frequent choice when I needed to get away and wander the streets of China for a bit. With the introduction of CRH express train service in 2007, travel time between Nanjing and Shanghai fell to only two hours, and I rejoiced in the improved accessibility of Shanghai’s malls, restaurants, bookstores, and cultural events. However, I often found that I ended my Shanghai sojourns as eager to return to Nanjing as I had been to leave it only a day or …

China In 2008: What’S Inside

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

While our forthcoming blog-to-book, China in 2008, contains some content that regular China Beat readers will find familiar because versions of the pieces have either run or been linked to at China Beat (though many of these have been expanded or revised also), about one-third of the book is brand-new. Below, find the table of contents listing the essays included in the book’s fifteen chapters. Each chapter also includes additional, brief excerpts from the blog which are not listed here. China in 2008 will be published in early 2009.

A Narrative Of The March And Operations Of The Army Of The Indus In The Expedition Into Affghanistan In The Years 1838-1839, Under The Command Of H.E. Lieut. General Sir John (Now Lord) Keane (1865), William Hough

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Anglo-Afghan War, 1838-1839, Afghanistan History - 18th & 19th century, Dooranee Empire 1747-1840

Blogging China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One week ago, China Beat founders Jeff Wasserstrom and Ken Pomeranz participated in a conference at the University of California, Irvine called “Public Spheres, Blogospheres.” The day-long event mixed academics with bloggers (and a few people who could claim both titles) for a discussion about the past and future of blogging. You can download each of the day’s sessions here, and a full list of participants here.

The clip below is very lengthy. If you’d like to speed through to the parts about China, jump to 25:00 (to about 51:00). The session was a comparative one on blogging and the …

China On My Mind: Last Days Of Old Beijing

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few weeks ago, those of us based at UCI had the pleasure of hearing author Michael Meyer talk about his new book, The Last Days of OldBeijing. Accompanied by the evocative photos of Mark Leong, Meyer described his experience living in the ancient hutongs of central Beijing and how he tried to convey that experience–threatened by Beijing’s rapid development–in his recent book. Here, Tom Mullaney, who teaches history at Stanford, chats with Meyer about his book. Scroll down to enjoy Leong’s photos while you listen.

The character “chai” (to demolish) is painted on houses marked for demolition.

If you’d …

Wednesday Reading

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The tainted milk scandal has stayed on the front pages, particularly in recent days as the type of tainted products expanded yet again (to include eggs, see below). Here are a few readings on the subject, in case you missed them:

1. Anna Greenspan wrote this piece on the milk scandal for our forthcoming book,China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, but we’re delighted that its up for reading right now at The Nation. Check it out here.

2.Though most stories on the tainted baby formula have emphasized that its devastating impacts are the result of falling rates of …

Wow In China And The U.S.

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the most popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) ever created, with more than 10 million players worldwide—half of them in China. Before WoW launched in 2004, conventional wisdom placed the potential playerbase for MMOs numbering in the hundreds of thousands. WoW quickly broke those numbers, drawing in new gamers with its cartoonish graphics, tongue-in-cheek storylines, and mix of collaborative and solo player options. Stories on WoW in China a few years ago emphasized a phenomenon known as “gold farming”—sweatshop laborers in China playing the game to raise in-game currency to then sell for real …

1948 & 2008: The George E. Morrison Lectures And Beijing’S Years Of Great Significance, Geremie R. Barme

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The 69th Morrison Lecture, “Reporting the Olympic Year,” was presented by Jane Macartney, The Times’ correspondent in Beijing, on October 22, 2008. The Morrison Lecture is an annual event in the academic calendar and public program of The Australian National University in Canberra. As 2008 was a major year for China, and Beijing in particular (something that will be marked by an upcoming publication by the editors of China Beat, China 2008: A Year of Great Significance), the Morrison Lecture Committee invited Jane to make this year’s presentation. As Jane noted in her précis of the Lecture, “The Olympics were …

The Best Reporting On The Sichuan Earthquake You’Ll Never See, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Busan, Korea – Pan Jianlin’s documentary about the earthquake that struck Sichuan province on May 12 made a quiet debut on a Sunday morning, at 10 a.m., the third day of this year’s Pusan International Film Festival.

With its not-so-great timing and grim title, Who Killed Our Children was a blip on the festival calendar’s 315 films and 85 world premieres. And if you happened to miss the documentary in Korea, it’s possible you will not have an opportunity to see it again.

Pan’s film’s subject is as simple as its title, examining the collapse of one of the many …

On The Train To Tibet

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As part of our on-going series of reading recommendations and conversations about Tibet and Tibetan history, we are today featuring a short excerpt from occasional China Beat contributor Alex Pasternack about his recent ride on the new train to Tibet. Pasternack writes regularly for Treehugger, where this essay was published in its entirety.

China’s – and the world’s – reach to the highest plateau on earth grew in summer 2006 with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Qingzang Tielu 青藏铁路). An engineering marvel that China itself once ruled impossible, the $4.2 billion line traverses an region known for earthquakes, low …

Wiki-Ing China: The Discussion Continues

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Charles Hayford shared the link to his recent China Beat pieces (Parts 1 and 2) on using (and altering) Wikipedia with the Asia Scholars listserv, H-Asia. A brief discussion ensued there, which included references to several new (to us) resources. Though we won’t mention names or specific discussions, we did want to share some of the resources we learned about as a result of listening in:

1. At this website, Vincent Pollard has written a student guide on internet credibility that could be easily adapted to an exercise on testing/editing/using Wikipedia.

2. One contributor noted a particularly outstanding Wikipedian (not …

China In 2008: A Year Of Great Significance

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last month, we announced our forthcoming book, China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in early 2009. With the manuscript beginning to take its final shape (and 2008 far enough advanced that we felt somewhat—but only somewhat, given what a crazy year it’s been so far—safe beginning to reflect on it), we thought we would share a little bit from the book with you. In the coming weeks, we hope to share with you a preview of the table of contents as well as perhaps snippets of other new pieces from the …

Greatball

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Taiwanese baseball has just been giving a powerful shot in the arm, with three consecutive shots out of the park by the Brother Elephants’ star player Peng Chen-min 彭政閔 during his team’s 7-1 victory over the LaNew Bears in the first game of their playoff series.

For video highlights, please click here. I especially like the announcer’s comments about a home run ball resembling a girlfriend who has just had a change of heart — neither is coming back (In the case of one of Taiwan’s 40-something superstars, Chang Tai-shan 張泰山, this is modified to include a reference to his …

Painted Skin: To Scare Or Not To Scare?, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It may come as a surprise that movies about ghosts and monsters are strictly speaking illegal in China, a land that has given us such an enchanting array of supernatural figures as the White Serpent Lady, the Weaving Girl, the three-headed Nuozha, and, of course, the delightful trickster Monkey. Gods and ghosts do show up on the Chinese screen, but they have to be framed as “characters” of folklore or fanciful creations of the “primitive” mind, something of ethnographic interest but no longer relevant to our sense of self and world. However, if they end up unsettling our secular confidence …

Fakeball

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Taiwan baseball world has been rocked by yet another game-fixing scandal, this time involving the dmedia T-Rex team. A total of three players (including a former MLB pitcher) are out on bail, while some bookies, gangsters, and team officials (including coaches, the assistant manager, and the team spokesman) have been detained. The guilt of those involved has yet to be proven, but there have certainly been some suspicious incidents. During one game on July 11, the dmedia’s normally accurate U.S. hurler lasted only three innings, managing just 32 strikes out of 84 pitches (an almost unheard of ball-strike ratio), …

China Annals: Factory Girls

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last weekend China Beat contributors—and longtime Beijing neighbors—Susan Jakes and Leslie T. Chang caught up to talk about Chang’s newly released book,Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. The book, which builds on stories Chang wrote as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal (and currently garnering glowing reviews and widespread coverage), follows the lives of young rural women making new lives for themselves in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan.

Susan Jakes: How did you decide you wanted to write a book about migrant workers in China? What did you want to try to figure out? …

Part Ii, Improving Wikipedia: Technique And Strategy For China Folk, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

How do we improve the coverage, reliability, and balance for China? With all the objections listed in my previous post, in the end, clearly we can’t achieve perfection, only make improvements. If you are already participating, you have doubtless come to terms with the culture of the natives; if you now join, remember to respect our perhaps outlandish ways. Like members of any other cult(ure), we have to live with each other. Some Wikipedians are nuts, some are smart and generous, most are trying to be useful, some are all of the above. Wikipedia enthusiasts simply accept that the project …

Living With Wikipedia: It’S Here To Stay, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My name is Charles and I’m a Wikipedia addict.

I can’t help myself, but then, neither can 75,000 other “active contributors.” We don’t just look things up: we create articles, correct and introduce mistakes, send each other notes, and fuss over issues great and obscure. Anonymity lends a carnival air of freedom and community since, as the famous New Yorker cartoon had it, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog” (and yes, the link is to a Wikipedia article).

Wikipedia is an internet galactic cloud of information. Nicholson Baker, who once crankily lamented the end of the library card …

In Case You Missed It: Tibet Special, Part 4, Robert J. Barnett

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There’s a nice thing about literature about modern Tibet, which is that it is wonderfully polemical. It’s not that I like polemic, which destroys lives and wreaks havoc with societies. But it does make it ever so easy to organize one’s books. So instead of tedious hours sorting them by topic or author, I can arrange my Tibet books according to two or three viewpoints, perhaps four at most. One case for the books with a China POV, some shelves for those from the exile perspective, a few for the “I was a Heroic Western Explorer and Discovered Totally Unknown …

China In Socal

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We don’t usually do posts about upcoming events, but there are so many involving China Beat-related folks (either contributors or people we’ve reviewed or referred to recently) in Southern California in the next few weeks that we felt remiss not mentioning them.

First, tomorrow (nothing like starting with the present!) USC will be hosting a day-long symposium on “Hong Kong, China and the World Art System.” It features many speakers, including China Beat contributor Richard Kraus.

The UCI Center for Asian Studies, in cooperation with several other units, will be hosting Michael Meyer, author of Last Days of Old Beijing, …

Coming Distraction: Factory Girls

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As faithful readers may recall, China Beat contributor Leslie T. Chang has a forthcoming book, Factory Girls: From Village to City in Changing China, which will be released October 7. The book has received positive reviews, such as this one at Publisher’s Weekly and this one from China Beat’s Jeff Wasserstrom writing in Newsweek. You can read the first chapter for the book as a preview at Amazon, but we wanted to share a short excerpt, from Chapter 4, with you as well. In this excerpt, Chang describes how a mobile phone is not just a desirable accessory for migrant …

National Days Past: Five Things To Read Or Look At

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

To complement the last post on revolutionary anniversaries, here are some places to turn to get a sense of how October 1 has been marked in China between 1949 and 2007.

1) Let’s start with National Day 1950: for an idealized vision of the celebrations held that day, look at this poster.

2) For a fascinating discussion of past National Days that combines memories of personal experience and analytical moves rooted in the discipline of art history, see Wu Hung’s excellent Remaking Beijing.

3) For a look back at National Day 1984, when the 35th anniversary of the founding of …

Nebraska’S Live Stock Sanitary Commission And The Rise Of American Progressivism, David Lee Amstutz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the years after the Civil War, the United States experienced tremendous economic growth. Entrepreneurs such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie built giant corporate businesses that dominated entire industries. The practice of vertical integration- in which a single business controlled all aspects of production and marketing-drew workers from different areas together under the same employers. Moreover, the corporations conducted interstate commerce, and they became powerful enough to drive competitors out of business. With their smaller rivals removed, the corporations were free to market their goods across the United States. As efforts to foster economic prosperity continued into the …

Review Of Chickasaw: Unconquered And Unconquerable By Jeannie Barbour, Amanda Cobb, And Linda Hogan, Donna L. Akers

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This stunningly beautiful work by the Chickasaw Nation relates the fascinating story of the Chickasaw people, from ancient to contemporary times. Packed with simply gorgeous photographs and illustrations, it evokes the strength, endurance, courage, and determination of the Chickasaws in the face of relentless American colonization. The Chickasaw story of survival and persistence in the face of this aggression is an inspirational tribute to the ancestors, who not only endured dispossession and permanent exile but flourished in spite of the terrible tragedy of removal. This book addresses a popular audience, not an academic one, beginning with an overview of Chickasaw …

Review Of Axes: Willa Cather And William Faulkner By Merrill Maguire Skaggs, Ed Folsom

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Merrill Skaggs explains in her introduction that we are to hear her provocative title, Axes, in at least two ways: as the intersecting axes of these two writers' very different careers (as when Joseph R. Urgo termed Cather and Faulkner as "the horizontal and vertical axes of American literature"), but also as actual weapons, "battle-axes." Skaggs reads these authors' novels and stories as word-weapons they wielded at one another, hoping to wound. They may ultimately have judged each other worthy opponents, but they never laid down their arms, remaining combative until Cather's death and even after (her posthumously published story …

Review Of Diaspora In The Countryside: Two Mennonite Communities And Mid~Twentieth~Century Rural Disjuncture. By Royden Loewen, Hans Werner

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Royden Loewen's recent book displays all the insights and delicious ironies we have come to expect from him. In this study, Loewen compares the Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites of the Rural Municipality of Hanover, Manitoba, with those of Meade, Kansas, during a time of dramatic change in rural life. Loewen begins with an analysis of what historian John L. Shover termed "the Great Disjuncture" itself, the fragmentation and scattering between the 1930s and 1980s of a once unified rural society, followed by a chapter focusing more specifically on the environment: the image of the snowdrift for Manitoba and the dust bowl …

Notes And News- Fall 2008

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CALL FOR PAPERS

CALL FOR PAPERS

MISSOURI VALLEY HISTORY CONFERENCE

Review Of Living Blue In The Red States Edited By David Starkey, Greg Kosmicki

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

I swear I once read in one of my mother's Reader's Digests: "This is a book that all true Americans should be forced to read." Maybe that's a false memory from my youth, but Living Blue in the Red States certainly is one of those books.

Living Blue in the Red States should have a "No Spin Zone" warning on the cover-it could be dangerous for politicians to read. The pollsters and punsters would have us believe we live in the bowels of a Blue state/Red state monster, each political splinter group desperately clinging to its little wedge issue …

Title And Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 28 / Number 4 / Fall 2008

CONTENTS

NEBRASKA'S LIVE STOCK SANITARY COMMISSION AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM

CONTRADICTORY SUBTEXTS IN WILLA CATHER'S 0 PIONEERS! AND THOMAS HARDY'S FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

JEWISH COMMUNITY IN WICHITA, 1920-1970: SAME WAGON, NEW HORSES

REVIEW ESSAY: THE SPINNING OF THE WEST

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES AND NEWS

Review Of Beyond Madness: The Art Of Ralph Blakelock, 1847-1919 By Norman A. Geske, Abraham A. Davidson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

No one has studied the art of the American painter Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919) for as many years and as intensely as Norman A. Geske. After a telephone call from the artist's great-grandson in 1966, Geske was on board. In 1969, while Director of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, he launched the Nebraska Blakelock Inventory. This was to hold all known information on the artist-photographs of paintings and drawings, previous ownerships, prices paid, letters of family members and others, publications of scholars and notations of collectors, and so on. In 1969 and 1974 Geske directed four examination seminars to separate …