Chapter 5 of my dissertation is now just over 6,300 words (of an estimated 10,000—I’m getting closer!). Some of those words are (I think) pretty good ones; others I already know I will want to sweep into the dustbin before this whole thing is over. The vast majority of them I have written while half-aware … Continue reading I Do What the Tomato Tells Me
Official Member of the Sanmao Paradise Club
Many thanks to Sue Anne Tay of Shanghai Street Stories, who knows of my interest in Zhang Leping’s Sanmao comics and picked up this pin for me when she spotted it one day in Shanghai. The pin is a replica of one that I’ve seen on display at Song Qingling’s house in Shanghai. Such pins … Continue reading Official Member of the Sanmao Paradise Club
Keeping Busy
At the beginning of 2013, I set a goal of writing one blog post a week. Halfway through the year, I’ve obviously fallen short. I don’t necessarily lack for things to talk about, but some weeks it’s nearly impossible to find the time and energy to organize my thoughts, sit down, and write. It’s amazing … Continue reading Keeping Busy
Change of Pace
The Urbanatomy website used to run a series of interviews with China-connected authors under the title “Why I Write” (unfortunately, it seems that the archive is no longer online). But the series title was actually a little misleading: authors not only answered questions about why they wrote, but also how. Almost invariably, they cited the … Continue reading Change of Pace
THATCamp@Penn: Thoughts on the Day
When I was a kid, my parents sent me to the Summer Arts Camp at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. SAC was a six-week program focused on the arts, where other campers and I chose from different courses taught by CHC faculty and independent artists—usually, I think, taking four or five courses a summer. SAC … Continue reading THATCamp@Penn: Thoughts on the Day
Illustrating the Elevator Talk
Like every grad student out there, I frequently hear the question, “What’s your dissertation about?” At this point, I have a pretty good 30-second answer, which goes something like this: I’m working on children’s cartoons in twentieth-century China. I’m especially interested in the Sanmao comic strips, which ran off and on from 1935 to the … Continue reading Illustrating the Elevator Talk
