A Few Olympic Readings

Just in case you can’t get enough, here are a few more:

1. Geremie Barmé’s excerpt on Wang Shuo on Danwei is a fascinating twist on "sports competitions" and national humiliation.

2. Monroe Price has a recent piece up at the Huffington Post on internet censorship.

3. Check out this charmingly self-reflexive piece by the L.A. Times' Ching-Ching Ni on the experience of returning to Beijing and finding the city of her childhood gone.

4. Exhausted by the Olympics already? How can you feel this way when there’s 2016 to think about?

5. Find out “Who’s Your Buddha?” in this Howard French book review for The Nation.

6. Also worth a look (with nod to CDT for the tip): this satirical little news broadcast about "Are the Games a Trap,” from that trusty news source, The Onion.

China Beat Contributors around the Web

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 books about foreign countries today…are products of prolonged engagements”—and Mishra cites China Beat contributor Peter Hessler as a prime example of this.

5. If you are curious about Cantabs among the China watchers, take a peek at Harvard Magazine’s recent list of alums on the China beat. These include one writer actually on our China Beat, Leslie Chang as well as several regularly referenced here, like James Fallows and Evan Osnos

Susan Brownell Around the World

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 Louisa Lim: “Sporting Fame Comes with Limits in China,” and “China Trains Cheerleader to Rally the Masses.”

3. In this AP report, Brownell comments on the Chinese allocation of protest zones, an idea she discussed earlier in her #4 and #5 Olympic FAQs, originally posted at China Beat.

4. Brownell has talked about the Chinese Olympic training program in several places recently, including The Christian Science Monitor, The Macau Daily Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

5. Brownell has also been quoted in a number of pieces abroad, including papers in France, Hungary, Spain, and Sweden.

What We're Reading Today

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 an excerpt from the book Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China by Pallavi Aiyar. The excerpt considers the differences between development in China and India.

4. In May, we ran a piece by Steve Smith on disaster rumors in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake. In the weeks to follow, some Chinese began to speculate that the cute little Olympic mascots, the fuwa (the Friendlies), were actually harbingers of doom, each one predicting an Olympic year debacle. Today, Shanghaiist reports that their own creator has disowned the fuwas. Look here for the piece, along with links to spoofs on the fuwa and further explanation of their role as harbingers of the apolocalypse.

5. And, for a little lighter reading for those of you carefully packing and repacking your Beijing Olympic wardrobes, check out this Sartorialist-inspired blog of Beijing street-style, Stylites in Beijing.

Out and About

It's been a while since we've done a reading round-up--here a few things we've been reading (and writing) on the web lately:

1. If you've been picking up rumblings about "soy sauce" and "push ups" and haven't been able to sort out the details, the always savvy Sky Canaves (with Juliet Ye this time) at Wall Street Journal's China Blog sorts it out for you. Check out Time's report for the basics. As CDT reports, debates over the Wengan riots have turned to the topic of internet censorship, while EastSouthWestNorth notes that discussions of the incident are cooling down.

2. Looking for some last minute Olympic reading? Try Jeff Wasserstrom's recommended list at Huffington Post. (Kate Merkel-Hess and Jeff W. posted another piece there on the Chinese internet yesterday--please join us in mocking the little grey head cutouts). We have a few more China Beat-related pieces on the line at HuffPost soon, so we'll let you know when they go up too.

3. Tang Buxi over at Blogging for China continues his interesting work in a recent post on comparisons, corruption, and government buildings.

4. Danwei blogs that "China votes for Obama," in a posting by Thomas Crampton on the results of the Asia Society's survey (though it should be noted that this survey is neither scientific--it is a tiny sample--nor just about China--leaders from all over Asia were interviewed; in any event, the interviews are interesting).

5. The Olympics are coming, and so are the predictions for Olympic events. Not the sporting events, of course. The real betting surrounds what will go wrong, and in how many ways. As a report at Shanghaiist notes, Slate is running a "Summer Olympics Disaster Guide," an overly gleeful guide to August rubbernecking (The tagline: "What could go wrong in Beijing? Everything.") Other outlets have continued to flog the old standbys of pollution and Chinglish.

Mass (On)Line

Hu Jintao participated in an online discussion today (his first) with Chinese netizens where he answered questions about his online habits (he emphasized that he uses the internet to see what Chinese people think about the Communist Party—the mass line for a new generation). When NPR broadcast a report on Hu’s online summit this morning, they noted that Hu met with Chinese “netizens,” and then proceeded to define the term. Regardless of whether “netizen” is a new term to you, or you are a netizen, here are a few additional readings and source pages about the Chinese internet.

1. A roundtable discussion between John Palfrey, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jeremy Goldkorn, and Yan Sham-Shackleton on “The Struggle to Control Information.” It accompanied the broadcast two years ago of Frontline’s “Tankman.”

2. A report on the Wall Street Journal’s China Journal on Chinese bloggers’ tendency to challenge authority.

3. This story from last fall in the San Francisco Chronicle about virtual “cybercops.”

4. James Fallows’ March 2008 report on the Chinese internet (and its limitations) for The Atlantic.

5. A report on internet activism in China by Guobin Yang.

A Visual Top Five

For those seeking a little visual stimulation to perk up the mid-June doldrums:

1. A new online magazine called 1000 Words is currently featuring a set of images from Chinese artist Li Wei (follow the main link and then select Li Wei). The photographs feature Li as an irrepressible Superman with poor aim—head often buried (in the ground, through a car windshield, under ice), he appears to have hurtled forward without pause and Michael Grieves, who wrote the accompanying essay, draws analogies between Li’s captured falls and pell-mell Chinese development.

2. The Council on Foreign Relations has posted a slideshow on Politics and the Olympics, narrated by Frank Deford.

3. For fans of Old Shanghai, there are a few sites you might find of interest: Virtual Shanghai and the image section of Tales of Old Shanghai.

4. Reporter and photographer Howard French, has a website that features many stunning photos from China.

5. Another photographer, Edward Burtynsky, explores the intersections of nature and industry in his photographs of the Three Gorges Dam, recycling, shipyards, and other industrial settings.

Keeping up with “The China Beat”—5 Recent Developments

This is just a little list, for the "Frivolous Friday" feature, made up of tidbits about the site. It may have curiosity value for longtime readers, and it may serve to provide an overview of the blog to those who have just started tuning in.

1) Thanks to an off-hand remark by Don Sutton, whose insights on mourning practices appeared on this site yesterday, contributors to the blog now have an official name: China Beatniks. This has a nice ring to it and, according to Wikipedia at least, it has a special meaning for a blog that has been paying special attention, via Ken Pomeranz's postings, to things that happened in years ending in 8: it was coined 50 years ago in 1958.

2) We've been footnoted for what I think is the first time (though if anyone finds an earlier citation, please post a comment). The footnote I have in mind comes in Geremie Barmé’s latest article, a wide-ranging look at “Olympic Art & Artifice,” which appears in the July-August issue of The American Interest and is well worth reading, containing more than its fair share of the clever turns of phrase and deft moves to bring past and present together in meaningful ways that we've come to expect from its author. When mentioning the response to the torch relay, he points readers to his guest post on this site.

3) This veers from the “Frivolous Friday” theme toward the "Self-Promotion Saturday" one (so you might want to wait a day to read what follows), but it still seems worth mentioning that we’ve begun to regularly hit or top the 500 readers-a-day mark. As we’ve been “live” for just about 5 months, this suggests a growth rate of about 100 readers a month. Another number to note is that May was the first month we’ve been in operation when we had more postings (32) than there were days (31).

4) This month, we've gotten what I think are our first comments in the response section from journalists (though we've had posts before, of course, that were either by or based on interviews with reporters), a couple of whom responded to Pierre Fuller’s piece on clichés in coverage of China. And one of these came from a journalist, Richard Spencer of the Daily Telegraph, whose own blog many of those writing for “China Beat” read. This, to switch into academese for a moment, nicely reveals the “intertextual” and "dialogic" nature of the blogosphere--and also the international nature of it (as Pierre was writing from Irvine, California, while Richard runs his blog in Beijing and another journalist weighing in with a comment, Iain E. Marlow, is based in London). We’ve had one comment recently as well from someone (Adam Teslik), who has an interesting blog called “China Government Watch” that I hadn’t paid attention to until he posted his remarks, but now will check in on periodically.

5) If May was noteworthy for an increase in the sheer number of posts, June is shaping up as notable for an expansion of disciplines and types of writers heard from. When it comes to academics, we’re moving beyond the tendency for historians and anthropologists to dominate, though historians do still account for most of the posts from within the academy. We’ve gone philosophical lately, for example, with guest pieces earlier this week by two scholars from that field, Daniel A. Bell and Daniel Little. And via the latter’s piece on Charles Tilly, sociology has been brought into the mix for a second time--the first being through sociologist James Farrer's May posting on coverage of China in Japan. (Political science has also been represented in the past, in the form of a February interview that "China Beat" reporter Angilee Shah did with scholar in that field Benjamin Read, as has comparative literature in the form of David Porter's posts.)

Looking beyond the academy, we’ve run things in the past by official “Beatniks” and guest contributors with a background in free-lance writing (Leslie T. Chang, Peter Hessler, Caroline Finlay) and by one British journalist-turned-novelist (Catherine Sampson). But June has seen our first posting by a writer of fiction originally from China (Xujun Eberlein) and our first interview with the author of a memoir about growing up in in the PRC (Lijia Zhang). And, as a final comment and yet another sign of the lack of importance of geographical boundaries where cyberspace is concerned (aside that is from issues of censorship), we were delighted to see a Shanghai-based site called "The China Herald" point its readers to Irvine-based Nicole Barnes' "China Beat" interview with Beijing-based Lijia Zhang when encouraging its readers to attend a talk the author was about to give in its city.

Liu Si (6/4)--Part 2, Looking Forward

This is the second part of our commemoration of Liu Si. Here, instead of looking backward (though some links include information about the past), our focus is on the present and the future. We point our readers to pieces that take up the contemporary meaning of the 1989 protests and the crackdown that followed, or assess the current state of Tiananmen-related issues, such as patterns of protest and human rights.

1. The latest issue of China Rights Forum, a publication of Human Rights in China, is titled "June 4/2008" and combines retrospective and forward-looking materials. All of the poem, essays, and calls to action it contains are available in their entirety online, as are its useful FAQ and "Resource List" sections.

2. A thoughtful and comprehensive look at the state of civil society and patterns of urban protest in contemporary China--two topics that attracted a great deal of attention in 1989 and continue to generate important discussion within and beyond Chinese studies--is "Political and Social Reform in China: Alive and Walking," which appears in the latest issue of the Washington Quartlery. It is co-written by George G. Gilboy and Benjamin L. Read (the latter of whom was interviewed by China Beat's Angilee Shah back in February).

3. There have been many attempts to compare and contrast the "Tiananmen Generation" of Chinese youth to those of later years--a particularly interesting recent one is Chris Buckley's just-out report for Reuters, "China's '08 Generation Finds a Voice in Tumultuous Times."

4. A view from Hong Kong, which is still the only part of the PRC where open discussion of June 4 is allowed and commemorations for the martyrs of 1989 routinely occurs, is provided by Emily Lau, a legislator based in the SAR, in her openDemocracy essay on "Tiananmen, 1989-2008."

5. This year, not surprisingly, some efforts have been made to relate the earthquake and related current issues to the traumas of 1989, with a particularly noteworthy case in point being comments by Bao Tong, a former high-ranking official who remains under house arrest because of his outspoken stance on Tiananmen. For his remarks and links to interviews with both Bao and "Tiananmen Mothers" leader Ding Zilin, see this post by Rebecca MacKinnon.

Liu Si: Part 1—Looking Backward

Today marks the nineteenth anniversary of the massacre in central Beijing of protesters (who had been calling for an end to official corruption and greater political openness) and onlookers (who had turned out to support the demonstrators or simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time)--liu si, literally "6/4," the Chinese shorthand for the Beijing Massacre of June 4, 1989 (we don't refer to as the "Tiananmen Massacre" for a reason, namely, because the main killing fields were near but not actually on the Square).

In honor of the occasion, China Beat will provide two different sorts of lists of five. The first, offered here, is made up of links that provide a window onto the past, offering perspectives on and information about what happened in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989 and in the scores of other cities where major protests by students and workers took place.

The second, to follow soon, will be comprised of links that offer illumination on contemporary commemorations of June 4th or on the current state of issues associated with Tiananmen, such as patterns of protest and how generations of youths are defined and see themselves.

We’d encourage anyone interested in either of these two lists to turn as well to the superb collection of links provided yesterday (when the anniversary had already arrived in China) by one of our favorite blogs.

Looking backward:

1. One of the best general online sources for information is a website created to accompany “The Gate of Heavenly of Peace,” Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon’s award-winning documentary on 1989. It includes a transcript of the film, some internal links to full-text background reading, and many other things.

2. There are several excellent document collections that provide translations of wall posters and manifestos from the time, but one of the very best and classroom-friendly is Cries for Democracy.

3. The book and film mentioned above focus on Beijing, like most works dealing with China’s 1989, but for important events that occurred in many other urban settings, one of the few major works in English is The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces. And it does not ignore Beijing by any means, including as it does political scientist Tony Saich’s blow-by-blow account of developments in the capital as well as a lively and insightful first-person account of developments on the Square by recent China Beat guest-poster Geremie Barmé.

4. For those interested in social science approaches to collective action, Craig Calhoun’s Neither Gods nor Emperors is well worth checking out. It was written by a leading sociologist who, though not a China specialist, was on the scene and provides a thoughtful and sophisticated look at what transpired.

5. Finally, though there were important differences between what happened in China in 1989 and what happened in Central and Eastern Europe that year, there were also enough connections and similarities to make it worth including one link that deals with events such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall. A special tenth anniversary of 1989 issue of Index on Censorship, which includes a couple of pieces on China but mostly concentrates on Europe, is a good place to start.

Reading Recommendations

A couple issues have been generating a great deal of media interest lately: continued coverage of the situation in Tibet, and the political views (and demonstrations) of Chinese students. Here are a few recommendations for further reading on those two topics:

1. We referenced this piece in an earlier posting, but just in case you didn’t make the jump that time, we wanted to urge you to do it again. China Digital Times has this fascinating translation of a Qinghua student’s description of what happened when several Public Security Bureau officers dropped by his group’s Carrefour protest planning meeting.

2. James Fallows blogged recently on a Beijing exhibit on Tibetan history as a window onto how Chinese are thinking about Tibet’s historical relationship to China.

3. For a look at how one group of students (members of Guizhou University’s Kurt Vonnegut book club) are struggling with their visions of China’s future, see Mike Levy’s piece at In These Times.

4. For a great summary of the events in Tibet, see Robert Barnett’s review of Pico Iyer’s new book in the New York Review of Books.

5. There are interesting quotes about the protests from Chinese students gathered by Monroe Price at HuffPost (and he links to Jeff Wasserstrom’s recent piece at The Nation’s blog near the end).

6. And finally, this commentary by Kerry Brown at opendemocracy makes the tongue-in-cheek argument that China’s recent bad news, from Tibet to the torch relay, will have the effect of lowering expectations for the Olympics—a correction Brown argues was much-needed.

Top Five language and literature sites:

Two weeks ago, we published a list of websites that provide lesson plans and other resources for teaching on China. This week, we promised an equally solid list of links for Chinese language and literature resources. Chinese language learning has been increasing in the U.S. in recent years and websites that offer resources for Chinese language learning are also increasing, though American interest in Chinese does not yet match Chinese excitement for English-language learning.

1. Few websites have made Chinese-language learning as approachable (and palatable) as Chinesepod. Its “newbie” to “advanced” podcasts are available for free at its website or through iTunes (one must become a monthly subscriber to access transcripts, worksheets, flashcards and other content), and the active user community further enhances the learning experience for dedicated listeners. Chinesepod’s success points to the desire among language learners for up-to-date content that covers current events (though the program steers clear of controversial political topics), pop culture, and slang.

2. For those interested in Chinese literature (in translation) or who want to use bits of primary documents in teaching Chinese history, the Internet East Asian History Sourcebook provides hundreds of links to translations of historical documents from ancient to contemporary China, as well as maps and images. This site could have fit equally well in last week’s list, but because of its emphasis on literature, we decided to include it here.

3. Those learning Chinese in the US will also learn the pinyin Romanization system. Pinyin.info has a variety of references to help with pinyin learning, as well as their interesting blog (which has further references for those interested in learning more about the “Crazy English” program discussed in the recent New Yorker article—link to this above under “Chinese excitement for English-language learning”).

4. Zhongwen.com offers a variety of tools for language learning as well as a learner-friendly feature of a handful of classic Chinese literary sources which are cross-referenced with a dictionary (in other words, as you read, if you don’t recognize a character, you can click on it and the definition appears on the right side of the screen). The website also provides a space where you can paste in Chinese text and the website will provide the same cross-referencing.

5. John Pasden helps with the intermediate and advanced lessons at Chinesepod, as well as keeping his own website, Sinosplice, which offers a variety of language resources.

These are only a small selection of available Chinese language resources on the web. Please share your own recommendations and experiences in the comments section.

Five Sites for Lesson Plans and Teaching Materials on China

Many of us who write for China Beat are also teachers. There are multiple web resources that we use, recommend, and, in some cases, have even contributed to. If you teach about China, or are interested in learning more about how Chinese history is being taught in the United States, take a look at these innovative websites and programs.

1. Asia for Educators: Based at Columbia University, this website provides a variety of background information for educators on Asia history topics like the Song Dynasty, China and Europe comparisons, Chinese religion, and the Mongols. The website includes images, literature selections, some clips of college professors discussing the topics (you need RealPlayer to view the videos), and links to lesson plans, teaching guides, and other resources. The Asia in the Curriculum bulletin board is also run by this organization.

2. The Asia Society: The New York-based Asia Society works to promote understanding and interactions between American and Asian institutions. Their “Ask Asia” website includes activities for kids as well as lesson plans for teachers at K-12 levels. Those who are looking for ways to integrate Chinese history into their world history curriculums are particularly encouraged to check out the Society’s Silk Road Encounters site. (For more on the Silk Road, see also the China Institute’s From Silk to Oil, downloadable online, and the interactive maps at the University of Washington’s Silk Road site.)

3. Expanding East Asian Studies: Also based at Columbia University, the ExEAS site includes detailed lesson plans, syllabi, and teaching guides on a wide range of East Asian history and literary topics. Mainly targeted toward the college-level, some of the material and activities could be adapted for high school classrooms.

4. Morning Sun: This is a phenomenal website for resources on the Cultural Revolution. Though the website does not contain set lesson plans, it does include translated materials from the 1960s, clips of movies and revolutionary operas, radio broadcasts, song clips, and many photos. (For another website that relies heavily on images for teaching, see Visualizing Cultures, MIT’s Visualizing Cultures project, run by Japanese historian John Dower and linguist Shigeru Miyagawa. Though mainly focused on Japan, one of the lessons is on the Sino-Japanese war.)

5. Visual Sourcebook of Chinese History: Historian Patricia Ebrey prepared this site which, like Visualizing Cultures, relies on images to cover social history topics like clothing, religion, homes, and gardens ranging in time from ancient China to the twentieth century.

6. And, as a bonus, a world history site, World History for Us All: Developed at San Diego State University to engage “big history” and provide resources to K-12 teachers of world history, this site features lessons on historical topics ranging from Out-of-Africa to globalization.

Coming next week: five stand-out Chinese language and literature websites.

Information on the Tibet Situation

Many of us here at China Beat have been following very closely the story on the recent uprisings in Tibet and neighboring provinces. These are the sources we’ve been reading; if you have other recommendations for solid reporting and commentary on this developing situation, please post them in the comments section.

1. James Miles (Beijing bureau chief for the Economist and the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray, on China in the aftermath of 1989) is apparently the only Western journalist who is or was in Lhasa. He's published good reports like this one on the Economist's website and in the Times (London).

2. An NPR report in which they interview Miles and also Luisa Lim, NPR’s Shanghai correspondent.

3. Here's a good news round-up (to which China Beat’s Jeremiah Jenne has contributed).

4. For those curious about the cyberchatter the situation is generating, check out China Digital Times’ coverage. For translations into English of Chinese web chatter about Tibet, go to the Global Voices Online coverage here.

5. For those who would like to learn a little more about Tibet, here's a list of seven things Westerners often get wrong about Tibet by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., author of Prisoners of Shangrila.

Five Chinese Historical Events That Don’t Get Much Attention

After Jeremiah Jenne recently posed a question about "the most important Chinese historical figure most people have never heard of," I got to thinking about the vast expanse of Chinese history that is so often neglected in favor of the (admittedly sometimes more-relevant) post-49 events. In chronological order, here are my five nominations for Chinese historical events I wish were more often talked and written about. What events make your list?

1. The An Lushan Rebellion
Led by the rogue general, An Lushan, the civil war that riled the Tang Dynasty from 755 to 763 caused death by violence and famine of over ten million people. But the An Lushan Rebellion is not on this list because of its high death toll. The rebellion also destabilized the Tang political regime and the aristocratic clans who supported it, reshaping a system that relied heavily on pedigree for advancement. Histories of China’s imperial exam system often note that it existed (in some form, though off-and-on) beginning in the Han. But until the An Lushan Rebellion, hereditary position mattered more than merit. In the post-rebellion upheaval, however, the state centralized the process of appointing officials, a process that would become increasingly regulated and transparent in the following centuries (and particularly with the reforms of Zhu Xi in the 12th century). Until the end of the Qing (and beyond, but that’s another story), most officeholders were, indeed, from the wealthy families that could afford to support their sons as they studied decades for the exams (exam passers were often in their 40s or even older), but there was the possibility—and some famous examples of—poor men who rose to high position. China’s meritocratic officialdom—the world’s first meritocracy—had enormous ramifications for the bureaucracy itself, but its greatest impact was to create a national elite culture whereby well-educated men from around China, despite linguistic tradition or family background, participated in a shared intellectual tradition. Notably, this intellectual life took deepest root in the wealthy southern Yangzi Delta, an area whose population and economy grew rapidly after the An Lushan Rebellion as a direct result of the southward migrations that resulted from the rebellion’s upheaval. The nouveau riche landlords who emerged in this area found the revised exam system a particularly effective way to convert their wealth into officially-recognized status.

2. The Founding of the Yuan Dynasty
Most people even a little familiar with Chinese or world history have heard of Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis), the founder of the Yuan Dynasty, which ruled China from 1271 to 1368. The Mongol conquering and governing of China, however, had more implications than just the spread of the plague and the introduction of new warfare techniques. Sinologists have traditionally seen the Yuan as an exception in Chinese history—foreign, nomadic rulers who practiced Tibetan Buddhism (as well as their own animist traditions) who were not, unlike the Manchus, successfully “sinicized.” Recent revisitations of this history, however, have provided new ideas about the legacy of the Mongols. On the one hand, there are the accidental implications—the incursions of northern nomadic peoples, even before Genghis’s military sweep, sent many northern Chinese south during the preceding few centuries (as did Mongol clearing of lands in northern China to make room for more pastureland). These settlers not only turned southern wilderness to arable land, but established the cultural and economic heartland of China. Politically, the Mongols centralized power, strengthening the control of the emperor over the bureaucracy and over local elites. Perhaps most importantly, the Mongols in many ways set a model for the Qing dynasty—not only as nomads governing an agricultural empire (as Mark Elliott argued in The Manchu Way, the ruling Manchus—rightly or wrongly—used the weakening of Mongol nomad customs as the explanation of their downfall, and used that fact as a rallying cry to maintain their own culture against the incursions of the attractive, but supposedly soft Chinese culture), but also as a unified multicultural empire that encompassed under a single state structure a variety of religious and ethnic groups. These geographic boundaries and ethnic diversity were ideas that early twentieth century reformers worked hard to maintain, and homages to them can be readily seen in today’s Chinese culture and politics.

3. The Single Whip Reforms
Arguably of greater importance to world history than Chinese history, the Ming Dynasty Single Whip Reform of 1581 ordered that all land taxes in China be paid in silver. One in a series of reforms (referred to in their entirety as the “Single Whip Reforms”; 1581 is perhaps the most important of them) that increasingly monetized the Chinese tax system, the changes impacted even the lowliest Chinese peasant—who could no longer pay his taxes in kind, but instead had to purchase silver in order to do so. The reform could not have been implemented without the large amount of silver pouring into China from Spanish Empire (South American) mines, and the resulting domestic need for silver pushed up its global price. It has even been argued by Dennis Flynn that without Chinese demand pushing up silver prices, the Spanish crown would not have earned enough from its New World possessions to keep governing them, much less finance decades of warfare in Europe itself. And it’s also worth remembering that under the Song and Yuan Dynasties, China actually had a functioning paper currency system—the world’s first. Had the Ming restored that rather than following the private sector’s turn to silver (after the late Yuan and especially the early Ming destroyed confidence in paper currency by over-printing it) both Chinese and global history might have been quite different.

4. The White Lotus Rebellion
Arguments about China’s nineteenth-century “dynastic decline” often begin with the White Lotus Rebellion, a sectarian uprising from 1796 to 1804, arguing that the rebellion exposed the inherent weaknesses of the ruling Manchus and the Qing dynasty. While it is true that there were a range of symptoms that, retrospectively, indicate the coming problems for the Qing (the increasing neglect of the waterways over the course of the nineteenth century, for instance), the Qing response to the White Lotus Rebellion was not one of them. Recent research (for instance, the doctoral research of my colleague, Wensheng Wang) argues that the Qing government dealt effectively and flexibly with the White Lotus Rebellion, countering the notion of a static, out-of-touch court too steeped in tradition and luxury to respond to contemporary events. In this reading, the White Lotus Rebellion becomes instead an example of the continued vibrancy of Qing rule into the nineteenth century, and raises further questions for Chinese historians about what events were most important to the “downfall” of the Qing.

5. The 1911 Chinese Revolution
Overshadowed in twentieth century history by the 1949 Communist Revolution, the 1911 Chinese Revolution proceeded from a remarkable series of localized events. It was not the result of an inevitable march towards “Westernization” as it is sometimes portrayed in shorthand, but rather reflective of two strong late nineteenth century trends: increasing nationalism and increasing localism. Both were extensions of shifts grounded in the elite efforts to suppress the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century. As Philip Kuhn described in his 1970 landmark book, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China, the central government’s inability to suppress the Taiping rebels forced local (mainly southern) elites to band together their own militias to protect their cities and counties. These militia, in turn, became the recruiting grounds for full-blown armies (which unlike militia, would fight away from home for long periods) under regional commanders; this was an important step toward the warlordism that would wreak havoc in China in the 1910s and 1920s. This tendency, which grew into a full-blown self-government movement in the first decade of the twentieth century, moved alongside a growing fin de siècle Chinese nationalism (exemplified, for instance, in the Boxer Rebellion). Both came to a head over a nationwide push to repurchase railroad rights (which is one of the primary issues around which the Wuhan New Army member, who actually touched off the Qing overthrow, had organized). In the wake of that event, local elites—some military leaders, others old-school gentry—declared their independence from Beijing. The resulting tensions of growing nationalism but also militarized localism plagued the young republic and reverberations of these tensions can be traced down to the present day.

Images:

"Tang Scholars," by Han Huang, active 723-787

Portrait of Kublai Khan.

A Top-Five List of Shanghai Urban Legends

From the World’s Biggest Fishing Village to Bruce Lee’s Most Famous Kick....

As routinely happens with famous cities, there are many things that people think they know about Shanghai—that turn out to be false or only half-true. Hence this “top five list” of myths, which I have come across continually while researching the book that I am finishing up for Routledge, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010. The first three items are unlikely to cause controversy, but the final two might cause a bit of fuming in some quarters. At least, that’s what happened when Robert Bickers and I tried to lay these two legends to rest in “Shanghai’s ‘Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted’ Sign: History, Legend and Contemporary Symbol,” an unexpectedly controversial piece we did for the China Quarterly back in June of 1995.

Legend #1: Before the Opium War (1839-1842), Shanghai was a mere “fishing village.”

No, no, no! This canard keeps being repeated, but “fishing village” just won’t do as a descriptor of a community containing a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants, made up not just of people who farmed and yes fished, but also of people who worked in shops and restaurants, went to sea, taught at academies, tended lavish gardens, kept up temples, you name it. Shanghai’s history was changed forever when, immediately after the Opium War, it became a subdivided international treaty port with special zones set aside for trade and settlement by first Britons and then other foreigners. But before the Western gunboats came it was already a bustling walled town (see this 1817 map) with a port that served as a major transshipment point for goods circulating between China and Southeast Asia. (Why do you think the British wanted a piece of it so badly?)

Legend #2: Shanghai was built on reclaimed swampland.

This was true of the Bund, the most famous section of the city throughout the century-long treaty-port era (1843-1943) and beyond. But even before the rise of Pudong (East Shanghai) across the river, the Bund was just part of a sprawling metropolis, much of which was built on what had always been dry land.

Legend #3: Only Westerners lived in the International Settlement and French Concession.

These foreign-run enclaves were supposed to be just for foreign residents, but they quickly became places where Chinese far outnumbered everyone else. And even among foreigners, by the early 1900s there were many more Japanese than Westerners living in them (see this 1915 census).

Legend #4. A big sign banning “Dogs and Chinese” stood at the gate to the best park.

Bruce Lee kicks such a sign in half in a memorable cinematic scene, but Bickers and I provide a lot of evidence in our China Quarterly article to back up the idea that the sign is best treated as an urban legend. And historians based in Shanghai have begun—albeit sometimes grudgingly—to concur, to the point that even the more carefully done Chinese language guidebooks sometimes refrain from breathing new life into the old tale. Last time, I checked, even Wikipedia was going with the urban legend line, directing readers to our article for evidence.

5. The Western populations of the foreign-run districts were not prejudiced.

A second point of our China Quarterly piece is that, while a sign that humiliatingly paired “Dogs” and “Chinese” didn’t exist (at least not for decades in a prominent place), the kind of prejudice it has long been said to symbolize definitely did. Not every Shanghailander (as Western residents of the International Settlement were called) viewed Chinese as less than fully human. But many were content to see local Chinese treated like second-class citizens—and to have all Chinese other than Amahs looking after foreign children kept out of the best local park (until the rules for access were changed in 1928). Some of those who couldn’t get past the policemen guarding the entrance to the “Public Garden” in the late 1800s and early 1900s were, to add insult to injury, middle class Chinese whose taxes helped pay for the upkeep of the grounds!

Daily Reads—The Second Sequel: Five Global Sites with Good China Content

As the last in our trilogy (for now) of nods to internet resources we rely upon, we offer up five valuable sites that deal with globalization (some are exclusively devoted to that topic, others just have a lot about it). They are on our radar screen because each fairly regularly brings China into the picture in interesting ways. To illustrate this, as with the last list, we provide first a link to a homepage and then a link to a China story.

1. Yale Global
This site was founded and continues to be run by Nayan Chanda, whose credentials as a commentator on global issues are impeccable (born in India, educated in Paris, covered Vietnam as a journalist, and so on). But so, too, are his credentials as a China specialist, as he studied Sinology in France and worked in Hong Kong as editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. So, not surprisingly, he has run some very good pieces on China, such as Anita Chan and Jon Unger’s insightful recent commentary on lead paint and toys.

2. Salon
Andrew Leonard tracks globalization for Salon on this site. He often turns his attention to China, generally focusing on its role in contemporary global flows. But here’s an example, particularly relevant for China Beat readers, in which he moves between the global past and the global present via the subject of porcelain.

3. Foreign Policy
This is the blog of a magazine devoted to international issues, which a few years ago underwent a dramatic redesign (becoming a jazzier looking periodical) and also began paying increased attention to the cultural as well as economic and political aspects of globalization. The magazine itself has done a lot on China (including a cover story, cleverly titled “Chairman Yao,” on the country’s most famous basketball player). For a sense of how the blog handles the PRC, here’s a piece on mining disaster.

4. The Globalist
A daily online publication devoted to globalization, The Globalist features pieces by many different kinds of area experts and people looking at worldwide trends. Here’s a useful rundown on international investment and China by its editors.

5. World Changing
World Changing: Change Your Thinking is a site that, to be honest, we’ve just become aware of, but some of its postings relating to China have caught our attention. With a heavier emphasis on technologies of communication and the environment than the other sites, it also has something unusual for a globalization blog—a regular contributor based in China. She’s a freelance writer named Mara Hvistendahl and here is one of her postings on Chinese environmental issues.

Daily Reads—The Sequel: Five Valuable More-Than-Just-China Asia Sites

Last week, our blog-list focused on sites specifically devoted to the PRC or Taiwan, but astute commentaries on and information related to China Beat topics sometimes shows up other kinds of places on the web. With this in mind, we’ll be doing at least two sequels—this one on sites we value that have an Asian focus but are not China-specific, then another later on that deals with sites that have a global purview (but periodically have insightful things to say about Chinese themes).

1. Japan Focus
Since this site’s editor, Mark Selden, is the author or co-author of several important books on China, it is no surprise that, despite its title, it often carries pieces that move between Japan and its biggest neighbor. If you want to go directly to one of these, a good place to start is with Geremie Barmé’s smart take on anti-Japanese sentiment in the PRC.

2. Rconversation
This site has geographical breadth—again, no surprise, given who is behind it, as Rebecca McKinnon did stints as CNN’s Beijing and then Tokyo bureau chiefs, has been a close follower of North Korean affairs, and is now based in Hong Kong. China Beat has already linked to one of her PRC pieces, but for a sample of something else she’s done, check out her take on Yahoo and the ethics and practicalities of policing internet use in China.


3. Far Eastern Economic Review Forum
This is the recently launched companion to the former-weekly magazine that was revamped several years ago as a monthly journal of opinion. Its goal is to generate debate via mini-essays, and the editor, Hugo Restall, is not above contributing his own provocative forays into this genre, such as this look at colonialism and Hong Kong’s past.


4. AsiaMedia
Based at UCLA and largely run by students, this impressive site offers original content and links to news stories on various parts of the continent, including China. Tom Plate writes a lively regular column for it (here's a recent sample), and others who have written for it include China Beat’s own Tim Weston and Jeff Wasserstrom, as well as Chuck Hayford, who wrote this piece on the Bingdian (Freezing Point) controversy.

5. Asian Review of Books
Due to the enormous amount being published on Asia in English alone, having a website devoted to timely reviews of works on Asian themes in that language intended for general readers is of great value. The reviews tend to be positive (though this doesn’t mean they are devoid of criticisms or suggestions for improvement) and are written with readers based in Asia in mind. A good place to start checking out the site is with a review of Love and Revolution, a novel focusing on the lives of Sun Yat-sen and even more so the post-Sun years of his widow Soong Qingling.

5 Good Short Reads on China Beat Topics--All by People Who Aren't China Specialists

Academics focusing on China, like other area specialists, tend to place a high value on formal training in the language and culture of the place we’ve devoted ourselves to teaching and writing about. We think (and I’m no exception) that most of the best scholarly work on Chinese issues has been done by people with this kind of training. And the people outside of the academy that we pay the closest attention to—journalists, free-lance writers, business commentators, policy analysts, etc.—tend to be those who have had some training in Chinese studies, or know the language and have demonstrated a primary interest in China. This is an understandable position. And it is likely, and I believe defensible, that most of the publications on China to which contributors to this blog will draw attention (positive attention, at least--what we pan may be another story) will end up being by people who fall into the categories just described.

Still, there’s always a danger of a guild mentality setting in. So, it is important for us to acknowledge from time to time just how valuable a different sort of perspective can be, whether it is offered by Chinese writers who are not China specialists or by non-Chinese scholars and journalists who have a recent or just passing interest in Chinese topics. Sometimes a journalist just posted to China, without much background on the place, will come up with fresh insights, noticing something to which others were blind. And within the world of scholarship, I can think of several people based outside of Chinese studies who have made major contributions to topics that interest when they’ve turned their attention, even if briefly, to China. Judith Stacey’s work on gender in China, Saskia Sassen and John Logan’s comments on Chinese cities, and Barrington Moore and Eric Wolf’s studies of comparative revolutions—these are just a few “outsiders” with insights who come to mind.

This explains the reason for the list below, which points readers to five worthy short works by non-China specialists who have contributed to debates on fairly recent (I go back as far as an insightful eyewitness account of Tiananmen by a sociologist, Craig Calhoun, who admitted at the time to having a very limited knowledge of Chinese) topics within the purview of China Beat. Some have a serious ongoing interest in China (manifested in going there regularly, writing more than occasionally about, in one or two cases even taking lessons in the language), but part of what they bring to the subject that is useful is an immersion in the history and present dilemmas of other parts of the world.

The people I’ve chosen are a widely varied lot: Calhoun and also Perry Anderson straddle the line between sociology and history, Amartya Sen’s a philosophically minded economist, Andrew Ross is a specialist in cultural studies, and Pankaj Mishra is best known as a novelist and author of thoughtful pieces of travel writing and reportage. And the sample publications I provide links to below are about disparate subjects, from the Tiananmen protests (Calhoun), to Shanghai as a center for outsourcing (Ross), to the concept of “Asian Values” (Sen), to China’s “New Left” (Pankaj Mishra), to Taiwan elections (Anderson).

One thing they have in common for me is that each is someone whose writings on topics unrelated to Chinese affairs I had already read—and appreciated—before I came to the works listed below. Two have whole books devoted to China that are definitely worth reading (Calhoun and Ross), while the other three have excellent books that include chapters on Chinese themes—if, that is, these samples leave anyone wanting more.

The list (to which I hope followers of this blog will add by sending in a comment with a link to a favorite in this category) is provided below. When you click on each name, you’ll be taken to a complete short article from a political magazine or literary review, except in the case of Ross—with him (because the best comparable thing by him was a "for subscribers only" contribution to the Nation), you’ll be taken to an online excerpt from his latest book:

1. Craig Calhoun
2. Andrew Ross
3. Amartya Sen
4. Pankaj Mishra
5. Perry Anderson

Our Daily Reads: Best Of China Blogs

The contributors at The China Beat read a lot of China blogs. Here is a primer of a few of our collective favorites. We welcome you to add your own must-reads (or plug your own blog) in the comments section.

Best One-Stop Source of Information: China Digital Times
Best Media Blog: A tie between Danwei and China Media Project
Best Industry Blog: China Law Blog
Best News Blog: Beijing Newspeak – Written by Chris O’Brien, a language polisher/rewrite artist for Xinhua, a fascinating and frequently hilarious look behind the scenes of Chinese media.
Best Issue Blog: China Dialogue: Chinese and English articles on environmental and human rights issues.
Best Translation Blog: EastSouthWestNorth: A daily stop for most bloggers and journos in China; collects and translates a selection from China’s media and blogosphere.
Best Journalist Blog: This one is a toss-up between China Rises and Richard Spencer.
Best PR Blog: Imagethief, fabulously written blog by Will Moss, a PR professional in Beijing.
Best Personal Blog: Life in Suzhou. A fixture in the China blogosphere for a long time, this blog’s author still brings a fresh and unique perspective to his daily observations of life. Another strong one, with anecdotes from a working journalist, is Spot-On by Jonathan Ansfield.
Best Regional Blog: Opposite Side of China: Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in Xinjiang and central Asia.
Best Taiwan Blog: Michael Turton’s The View from Taiwan.