Category: China
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#HongKong20 Reading Round-Up
In the United States, the past five days have been all about the Fourth of July holiday—an extra-long weekend this year that led many people (including me) to step away from the news for at least part of the time. But in Hong Kong, journalists were putting in overtime to cover the July 1 events…
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Screen: I Am Not Madame Bovary
Confession: I don’t often go out of my way to watch Chinese movies because I generally can’t relax and enjoy them. I don’t watch them as movies; I scrutinize them as texts. Questions fill my mind as I stare at the screen: What does this film say about Chinese society? What image of the country…
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Weekly Wanderings: Too Many Words Edition
▪ Usually, when I start skipping weeks here it’s because I’m too busy and/or traveling. Although I am, as always, looking at an overly ambitious to-do list and an overly crowded travel schedule, those aren’t what has kept me from writing as much lately. A lot of writers I know have spoken about running into…
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Weekly Wanderings: AHA FOMO Edition
▪ Four thousand historians descended on Denver this weekend for the annual American Historical Association (AHA) conference, but I wasn’t among them. Driven by a fear of missing out (FOMO), I went back and forth and back and forth about going to the conference, eventually deciding that I just don’t need to be there this…
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U.S.-China Relations under Trump: A Reading Round-Up
We’re now in Day 3 of reaction pieces to Donald Trump’s election to the presidency (a sentence I never thought I’d write; it’s certainly no secret that I was a strong Clinton supporter), and I don’t expect the spilling of ink to slow anytime soon. My Twitter feed has been full of posts about what…
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Weekly Wanderings: Leftover Halloween Candy Edition
▪ I think Halloween is a fun holiday. I haven’t dressed up in a long time, but I like seeing the costumes that people devise, and who doesn’t enjoy handing out candy to (mostly appreciative) children? As an adult, though, I haven’t lived anywhere with active trick-or-treating: I was either in grad student housing (Yale…
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Weekly Wanderings: Nittany Lions Edition
▪ I spent last Tuesday and Wednesday visiting Penn State, where history professors David Atwill and Kate Merkel-Hess (a fellow UCI History graduate) had invited me to talk with their grad students about getting a PhD and then going into a non-academic career. I also gave a presentation on the Zhang Leping biography that I’ve…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 30, 2016
▪ As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge Ghostbusters fan; were it not for the condo regulations in my development, I’d definitely have a 13-foot-high inflatable Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man on my front lawn for the next month. My brother assures me that my still furniture-free living room is large enough to accommodate him, but I…
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Three Weeks in China: The Dining Highlights
Almost as soon as I have a trip to China planned, I start plotting out my food agenda—old favorites I want to revisit and new places/things I want to try. Since this was a work trip, I spent a lot of meals sitting around banquet tables, eating dishes that were generally delicious but not necessarily…
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Taipei: I Want a Do-Over
I was so excited to go to Taiwan. I’ve only been there once before—for two wonderful weeks back in 2014, right after I finished my dissertation—and was thrilled that my Asia trip this year would conclude in Taipei. I added on a couple of vacation days after the work portion of the trip was schedule…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 