Category: History
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Bookshelf: Her Lotus Year
After the relationship between American two-time divorcée Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII became public knowledge in December 1936, rumors about Simpson’s past flew thick and fast. One alleged source was the so-called “China Dossier,” a British government file (likely apocryphal) said to include prurient details about the year Simpson had spent in Hong…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 31, 2024
Sometimes … well, sometimes a week is more like 10 days, which feel like a month. Can’t explain it, time works in mysterious ways. Thanks for reading. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories David Bandurski, “Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media” Cate Cadell, Nick Miroff, and Li Qiang, “Walk the Line: Chinese migration surge…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 21, 2024
Recommendations China Stories Amy Hawkins, “‘Garbage time of history’: Chinese state media pushes back on claims country has entered a new epoch” Amy Hawkins, “Wall Street Journal fires new chair of Hong Kong Journalists Association” Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, “Code of Silence” Timothy McLaughlin, “When the Press Turns Its Back on Press Freedom” John Ruwitch, “5…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 15, 2024
No note from me up top this week because (a) What a wild weekend we’ve just had in the United States, and (b) I flew back from Indonesia on Friday-Saturday so my brain is nothing but mush at the moment. I do have a new piece of writing to share. The Wall Street Journal has…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 7, 2024
Greetings from Jakarta! I am in Indonesia for the briefest of long-haul trips—on the ground for six days, down to the hour—to work at the AAS-in-Asia conference this week. I arrived Saturday afternoon and will leave for the conference in Yogyakarta tomorrow morning, giving me one free day for some quick tourism. I walked around…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 23, 2024
Recommendations China Stories “From Xinjiang With Love: China Show Tries to Give Region a Rosier Image” James T. Areddy, “Mandarin Leaves a Manhattan Courtroom Lost in Translation” In some ways, “vigilantes” are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working…
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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: 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: February 4, 2024
Yesterday I got to attend a preview of a new exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts, “Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971.” Previously on display at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, “Regeneration” is now in Detroit until late June, and I hope it will travel to museums elsewhere. Telling the many stories…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 