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Wanderings: Seattle

In mid-March, I spent 10 days in Seattle—the first half of the trip to work at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, the second half to enjoy the city. Contrary to my expectations, the weather was mostly beautiful during my vacation, and I only needed my umbrella on the very last morning. Seattle has…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 2, 2024

June! How nice to see you. At the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog, I continue my series of interviews with new authors, speaking with ethnomusicologist Ying Diao about her book, Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins. Recommendations China Stories ChinaFile Conversation, “The Future According to Xi…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 26, 2024

If you regularly scroll through Instagram, it’s almost impossible not to know that we’re in peony season. Explosions of pink and white and purple appear in post after post, everyone trying to find the best shot before the petals suddenly drop off and we’re once again peony-less until next spring. Maybe it was due to…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 19, 2024

Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Gordon Corera, “The escaped dissident still pursued decades on by China”Helen Davidson and Chi Hui Lin, “Lai Ching-te, the political brawler who went from a Taiwan mining village to the presidency” The truth of whether the Wangs were small-time innkeepers or a secret weapon in Beijing’s decadelong effort to…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 12, 2024

New this week: my review for the China Quarterly journal of Shanghai Tai Chi: The Art of Being Ruled in Mao’s China, by historian Hanchao Lu. Lu’s first book, Beyond the Neon Lights, was one of the works that set me off on the path of studying Shanghai’s history, so it was exciting to read…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 5, 2024
No post from me this week, as the combination of work, travel, weak wifi, and a spring cold has left me with only the sketchiest idea of what’s going on in the world. I do have one link to share—an interview that I conducted for the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog with Amanda Lanzillo,…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 28, 2024

My brain felt chaotic and restless as I walked through the Toledo Museum of Art yesterday morning, taking in the works surrounding me in each room but not settling on anything long enough to fully consider it. Scuffed parquet floors creaked underneath my steps as I moved through rooms offering a special exhibit on African…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 22, 2024

Ann Arbor is not an especially large place. The city occupies just 29 square miles, and without football game traffic no point is more than 20 minutes away from another by car. Yet those 29 square miles contain 162 parks—some just tiny patches of grass squeezed in among rows of houses, others expansive nature areas…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 14, 2024

Even though I don’t work at a university, a lot of what I do still accords with the rhythms of the academic calendar. The end of the spring term is fast approaching, which means campus events are happening at a rapid pace: last week I gave one talk and attended two others, and the weeks…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 7, 2024

As Willy Wonka said, “We have to get on, we have to get on! We have so much time and so little to do—scratch that, reverse it. This way, please!” First, I’m giving a virtual talk on Tuesday afternoon (Eastern Time) as part of the CHINA Town Hall program organized by the National Committee on…