I had been writing a reaction to the newly released movie trailer for the remake of the 1984 classic Red Dawn, when this morning I saw the trailer for Peter Navarro’s new documentary Death By China. Like a song that you can’t get out of your head, Death By China hijacked my thinking about Red Dawn. I couldn’t go on … Continue reading
I have a small collection of souvenirs collected on a shelf in my office. I they are not personal souvenirs, but a teaching collection that I use in a class I teach on the anthropology of travel: Pilgrims, Travelers, and Tourists. For this reason, I have tended to collect the most kitschy souvenirs I can … Continue reading
This morning I was invited by some of the folks that have been helping me with my research to go on a trip to visit the Jinling Buddhist Publishing House (jinling kejing chu) in downtown Nanjing. I can’t really say that I am that interested in ancient Buddhist texts, but I was looking forward to … Continue reading
While walking in some of the back streets of Nanjing just days before the Duanwu Festival I came upon a woman preparing zongzi for sale. I have eaten the bamboo leaf-wrapped rice many times over the past two decades, but until then had never seen how they were made. I was fascinated by how the … Continue reading
A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to receive my complementary copies of Walmart in China. Many of the papers in the collected volume were presented at a workshop on Walmart organized by Anita Chan held at Beijing University. The conference brought together a wide variety of scholars and activists from Australia, greater China, … Continue reading
For years I have adored hand-pulled Chinese noodles–how water and flour and a little magic in the hands of a master can become a tasty food. Many years ago a student of mine and I even went so far as to “intern” for a few months at a noodle shop in Beijing. Last weekend in … Continue reading
This evening I spent a number of hours playing around with Google Labs Ngram Viewer, a fantastic tool that graphs word frequencies found in the huge collection of scanned books amassed by Google Books. It is as easy as choosing some keywords, selecting a language collection, choosing a timeframe and hitting return on your computer … Continue reading
A friend of mine just posted a link on Facebook to a very interesting image that is also beautiful to look at. It is a visualization of Facebook friend data–ten million Facebook friend pairs, to be exact. Mapped geographically against a black background the pairs create a striking image. The image’s creator, Paul Butler, a … Continue reading
Before it can be nostalgically remembered as “Shanghai’s Old City” and before newly constructed “traditional buildings” can be experienced by both foreign and domestic tourists as authentic “Chinese culture”, historical structures must be cleared. This afternoon I came across a set of photos I shot in Shanghai in April 2006, which show just such a … Continue reading
One of my students came to visit me in my office this afternoon to share a Chinese animation that he found very interesting. The Adventures of Li Xianji (李献计历险记) was, in his opinion, amazing because it was a sophisticated animation done by a Chinese artist–most of the best coming of Japan. He also identified with … Continue reading
