Barbarians at the Gate

Neysun Mahboubi on the past, present, and future of US-China Academic Exchanges

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:42:00 -0400

We are honored to have Professor Neysun Mahboubi, Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, a program that provides a platform for talented U.S.-based China scholars to contribute academically informed analysis on the most important issues in U.S.-China relations. Neysun recounts his experiences as a legal scholar in China during the 1990s Reform and Opening Up period, focusing on his mentors and the legal scholars who were at the forefront of legal reform in the PRC. A passionate advocate for scholarly research on China, Neysun emphasizes the value of on-the-ground research, for those who are able to do so, in these increasingly complicated times.

Neysun A. Mahboubi is Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on Chinese history, law, and policy and hosts the China Studies podcast. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

AI Slop, AI Detectors, and Authentic Voice: A China-Tech Insider on Writing and Working With AI

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Should we view today’s powerful AI language tools as intellectual crutches or as incredibly useful assets? Can they be safely integrated into our existing toolkit for business and academia, or should we approach them with justified caution? And why is the Western world terrified of AI, whereas China is already incorporating it into all sectors of society? Spoiler alert: The West views AI as a possible extinction risk, to be monitored and controlled, while China pragmatically views it as merely a tool to improve the lives of ordinary people. In this episode, we’re delighted to welcome back Zhang Yajun, founder of Zhang Global Advisory. Yajun shares her insights on the rapidly expanding role of Artificial Intelligence in global business communication and academic research. Yajun offers a more measured and practical take. From personal experience, she knows that non-native speakers can effectively use AI to produce writing that is clear, idiomatic, and faithful to their original ideas — while still preserving their authentic "human tone" and avoiding the sterile, formulaic output that AI often generates.

China Books Review x Barbarians at the Gate: The Private Life of Chairman Mao

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:08:00 -0400

The Politburo had given Mao Zedong’s personal physician Li Zhisui a direct order: prepare the Chairman’s body so that he can be on permanent display. Li was aghast. It was not what Mao had wanted, and besides, “How to pickle your country’s leader” wasn’t one of the courses he studied in medical school. But after the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s death meant a potential political showdown between the Gang of Four, including Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. Dr. Li did not want to be caught in the middle. So Li and his team did the best they could. Spoiler alert: it involved a massage that nobody would want to give. Li Zhisui’s controversial memoir, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, was published in 1994. Readers were titillated by Mao’s sex life, questionable hygiene regime, and gruesome medical maladies. Defenders of Mao labeled the book pure propaganda. Dr. Li was a disloyal liar, and his collaborators and publishers were pushing anti-Mao agendas. Jeremiah is joined by Alexander Boyd, Associate Editor of the China Books Review, to discuss Mao Zedong, Li Zhisui, and Jeremiah’s recent retrospective essay about The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Who was Dr. Li? What did it take to survive in the courtyards of power at the peak of Mao’s paranoia? And did Dr. Li really witness all of the major events he described in his book?

This Was Funnier in China: Jesse Appell's Cross-Cultural Comedy Journey

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 05 May 2026 03:17:50 -0400

On this episode, we sit down with the one and only Jesse Appell—Chinese TV stand-up comedian, blogger, lecturer, tea entrepreneur, and passionate bridge-builder for US–China cultural exchange. In his newly published book, Jesse shares the unlikely story of how a Fulbright Fellowship to study the traditional Chinese humor form “crosstalk” (xiangsheng) launched him from student to television star, with his video clips capturing more than half a billion views on the Chinese Internet.

The Business of Burgers in Beijing: What Fast Food Festivals Reveal About China's Economy

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 04:12:29 -0400

Mike Wester launched the first Burger Fest in Beijing 13 years ago as a scrappy response to the collapse of print ad revenue. Today, burger festivals run in third-tier cities across China, subsidized by local governments trying to drive foot traffic into half-empty malls. Hefei alone has four a year. In this episode, Jeremiah talks with Mike Wester, co-founder of True Run Media and publisher of the Beijinger, about how burgers became one of China's fastest-growing new cuisines, what the food festival boom reveals about Chinese commercial real estate, and why a generation raised on McDonald's is now opening artisanal burger shops in cities that didn't have a KFC a decade ago. They cover the social-media arms race, producing photogenic and often inedible creations, and 13 years of memorable entries — including a Wagyu patty with goose liver, cinnamon, and apple, and a pig-brain burger from a man who built his fortune on braised pig brains.

Barbarians Remix: Do you really need to learn to write characters to study Chinese?

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 03:19:57 -0400

Warning: GEEKY CONTENT Hosting solo in this week’s episode, David takes a geeky deep dive into the digital revolution in Chinese language learning in conversation with Chinese language pedagogy expert Matt Coss. The Sisyphean task of learning to write hundreds of Chinese characters has long been the bête noire of Chinese language students. The explosion of digital devices and apps for processing Chinese characters is giving rise to a radical rethinking (no pun intended) of the handwriting and dictation components of Chinese language curricula. Matt Coss is on the front line of a new generation of Chinese language educators who advocate a drastic reduction, if not outright elimination, of the handwriting requirement for Chinese language learners. Topics covered include the disturbing drop in the number of American students studying Mandarin, the implications of AI tools such as ChatGPT for Chinese language learning, and the escalating problem of native Chinese speakers forgetting how to write common characters (“character amnesia” tíbǐ wàngzì提笔忘字).

The Many Lives of Da Shan: Mark Rowswell on Chinese Poetry, Performing Live, and Staging Shawshank in Mandarin

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 04:04:53 -0400

In this episode, we reconnect with an old friend of the podcast, Canadian performer Mark Rowswell—better known in China as Dashan, or “Big Mountain.” Mark reflects on his early career in China, where his remarkable fluency in Mandarin launched him from a young foreign newcomer into the world of xiangsheng (相声, crosstalk), and soon after into a highly sought-after TV host and cultural ambassador bridging East and West. He also shares insights into his latest creative project: a series of online videos featuring his recitations of classic Chinese poetry. What began during the pandemic with a relatively obscure Chu Ci (楚辞) poem that went viral has since grown to include well-known works by Li Bai and Su Shi, with Mark’s fresh approach—eschewing the traditional, formal style of langsong (朗诵) in favor of a more natural, conversational delivery—quickly gaining a wide audience. Over time, the project has grown increasingly ambitious, incorporating longer poems and rich musical collaborations, including performances with the Toronto and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras. Finally, Mark offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at his role in adapting The Shawshank Redemption into a Chinese-language stage production performed by an all-foreign cast. He discusses recruiting Mandarin-speaking actors, translating and culturally adapting the script, and the production’s warm reception among Chinese audiences.

Lee Moore's China Backstory: Why Saying "History Proves" Actually Means "I Haven't Done the Reading"

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Lee Moore's new book challenges both Chinese state propaganda and Western pundits on Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong with 1400 endnotes, and a drinking game for beheadings. A historian who writes about Ming emperors getting stabbed in the balls, a drinking game for beheadings in Xinjiang, and why almost everything politicians say about Taiwan’s history is wrong. In this episode, we talk with Lee Moore about China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read. It is often said that China is the most talked-about country that Americans know the least about. Lee’s book seeks to enlighten readers with a fresh perspective and a deep dive into four China-related topics that frequently appear in American media: Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong. Despite his academic credentials, Lee has chosen to write the book in an accessible style that Jeremiah characterizes as “making the complex simple and the simple complex — complicating narratives without complicating the language, and simplifying complicated histories without dumbing them down.” With this lively and occasionally risqué prose style (one chapter is entitled “The Most Important Motherfucker in Taiwanese History”), Lee challenges the simplistic historical narratives that often dominate both Chinese state propaganda and Western commentary on China. Our conversation explores several of the historical questions raised in his book. Was Taiwan always a part of China? It did not even appear on Chinese maps until the 17th century, and the Qing Dynasty did not take control of the island until a year after William Penn founded Philadelphia. Were the Uyghurs the first inhabitants of Xinjiang? The answer is complicated, but the region’s earliest known inhabitants may actually have been Indo-European. And is the Chinese Communist Party’s tight state control over the economy really the “secret sauce” behind China’s rise? Lee takes direct aim at Western pundits who have argued exactly that. Lee also explains how he makes extensive use of Chinese poetry — from Tang Dynasty border verse to Qing-era colonial writing — translated into colloquial English, to convey the emotions and states of mind of the historical figures who populate his book. Lee Moore has a PhD in Chinese literature. He is the founder of the Chinese Literature Podcast and has written for The Economist, the China Books Review, and The China Project. China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read is available from Unsung Voices Books wherever books are sold. Find the Chinese Literature Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Warning/Advertisement: This episode contains explicit language.

Décadence Mandchoue: The wild (and almost certainly fictional) affair between Sir Edmund Backhouse and Empress Dowager Cixi

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:55:15 -0500

It’s another Barbarians at the Gate crossover with China Books Review. This month’s China Archives column covers Decadence Mandchoue by Edmund Backhouse, edited and annotated by Derek Sandhaus. CBR Associate Editor Alexander Boyd and I sat down to talk about all things Backhouse and try to parse one of Sinology’s more controversial memoirs. Backhouse was the son of a British baronet who dropped out of Oxford, fled to Beijing in 1898, and spent the next four decades as a fixer, translator, and professional eccentric in the hutongs. He was also a forger, a fabulist, possibly a fascist sympathizer, and the author of what may be the most explicit expat China memoir ever written. His central claim: an extended sexual relationship with Empress Dowager Cixi. His central problem: almost nobody believed him. And there’s a good reason. He almost certainly invented the whole thing.The real question isn’t whether Backhouse was making stuff up. He was. A lot. The question is whether this gifted fabulist, writing from inside (or at least adjacent to) the world he’s fabricating, can still tell us something real about the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Join us as we explore the decadent world of sex, lies, and power during one of the most tumultuous periods of Chinese history.

Barbarians at the Gate x By Their Own Compass: Emily Hahn's Shanghai

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:47:00 -0500

Welcome to a special episode of Barbarians at the Gate. David and Jeremiah are off this week preparing for Chinese New Year, but as a special gift to our listeners, we are cross-posting this bonus episode about the life and China travels of the American writer Emily "Mickey" Hahn. This episode is from By Their Own Compass, a podcast looking at historical travelers and past journeys co-hosted by Jeremiah with travel expert Sarah Keenlyside.

Emily Hahn partied with poets (and her pet gibbon) at Shanghai soirees. Wrote biographies while dodging bombs in wartime Chongqing, and did her best to keep herself and her family alive in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. Along the way, she became famous (some might add “notorious”) for her affairs, including with Chinese writer Sinmay Zau (Shao Xunmei 邵洵美) and the head of British intelligence in Hong Kong, Charles Boxer.

Mickey lived through some of China’s most tumultuous moments. While many foreigners experienced these events, Mickey gave her readers an unvarnished look at what was happening, with a style all her own.

We hope you enjoy this special bonus episode. Follow By Their Own Compass at bytheirowncompass.com or search for By Their Own Compass on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or where you get your podcasts.

Links:

Books referenced in the episode

China to Me by Emily Hahn
Nobody Said Not To Go by Ken Cuthbertson (biography of Emily Hahn)
I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey by Langston Hughes
The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn

Tours & Resources:

Historic Shanghai - walking tours (Patrick Cranley and Tina Kanagarathnam)

Lost in Thailand: The New Chinese Diaspora from Bangkok to Addis Ababa

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:36:06 -0500

It’s high season in Thailand. The weather is perfect. But look around the hotel lobbies and the night markets, and you’ll notice something missing: the tour buses. For the last decade, Thailand bet the house on Chinese mass tourism. Now, that wager is looking shaky. The numbers are down, and the reasons go deeper than just a sluggish post-COVID economy. On this episode, David dials in from Addis Ababa and we are joined by travel writer Thomas Bird (author of Harmony Express), global strategist Yajun Zhang to try and figure out where everyone went and where Chinese travelers are going next. We look at the "scam center" panic that’s terrifying parents on WeChat, the shift from package tours to solo travel, and why a new generation of Chinese tourists might be skipping Bangkok for Singapore. Plus, we look at how the Chinese diaspora is changing the sound of the region—literally. From the streets of Bangkok to the markets of Addis Ababa, is Mandarin replacing English as the default second language of the Global South? In this episode: The Hangover: Thailand’s pivot from GI R&R spot to Chinese holiday destination—and the current crash. The Fear Factor: How viral stories about kidnappings and scam compounds are killing the vibe for mainland travelers. The New Traveler: Why the "flag-following" tour groups are being replaced by digital nomads and independent explorers. Diaspora Voices: Comparing the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia with the newer waves arriving in Africa.

Perilous Prognostications for China in 2026 with Yajun Zhang

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 06:05:58 -0500

Following a tumultuous 2025, we gallop into the Year of the Horse. Tradition says it should be a year of dynamism and progress, but which way is the stampede heading? To help us read the tea leaves, we welcome back our occasional co-host, Zhang Yajun. As a global strategist and former innovation lead at the World Economic Forum, Yajun has spent over 16 years translating complex shifts—from AI to cultural narratives—for international audiences. She joins us to look past the headlines and offer a reality check on where China’s policies, social fabric, and daily life are actually going in 2026. Topics include: The Student Exodus: After American student numbers hit historic lows, can China lure them back? Is the "China Dream" for foreign talent dead, or can the country overcome deep-seated geopolitical friction to become a destination for career-building again? The AI Reality Check: Beyond the state-level hype, how is Artificial Intelligence reshaping the rhythm of the street? We look at how aggressive government promotion of the sector is filtering down to everyday life. The Death of the Dining Room: The delivery apps are winning. As take-out replaces the communal table, restaurants are closing at an alarming rate. Are we witnessing the end of China’s boisterous, public food culture? Character Amnesia: As digital input methods proliferate, muscle memory is fading. With fewer people able to write by hand, will the Ministry of Education double down on rote discipline, or is the era of handwritten Chinese officially over? Yajun Zhang, Global Strategy & Innovation Leader | AI & XR for Policy | East–West Connector LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yajun-zhang-strategist/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yajun_zhang Substack: https://yajunzhang.substack.com/

Barbarians Remix: Horse Racing, History, and the Final Champion's Day in Old Shanghai

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 03:49:34 -0500

Champions Day in the city of Shanghai, November 1941. The world was at war, but the clubhouse at the Shanghai Race Club (now People's Park) was packed with owners and punters cheering on the pony. The funeral of Shanghai's richest widow, Liza Hardoon, was a spectacle that filled the streets of the International Settlement. Japanese occupiers and their Chinese collaborators came together in a bizarre ritual to celebrate the birthday of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. The opening of a new movie featuring, of all subjects, Charlie Chan had folks lining up at the local cinema box office. The world had changed, but the "Lone Island" of Shanghai persisted, as it had since becoming a treaty port a century earlier. In this encore episode from 2020, historian James Carter joins us to discuss his fascinating book Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai. Carter brings to life the vivid tableau of an era coming to an end. By the end of the year, Japanese authorities would take control of Shanghai and the city would never again be the same. What did the end of the colonial era mean for Shanghai and its residents? Why were race tracks such powerful symbols? Join us as we discuss the history of horse racing, colonialism, and the last days of Old Shanghai.

The Dowager and the Dynasty: How did Empress Dowager Cixi rule China and should we blame her for bringing down an empire?

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 07:00:00 -0500

How does a teenage girl from Beijing’s hutongs end up ruling the world’s largest empire—without ever technically sitting on the throne? In this episode, Jeremiah traces the improbable ascent of Empress Dowager Cixi, who entered the Forbidden City as a minor concubine and departed as the most powerful woman in Chinese history. The story begins in imperial catastrophe: the Xianfeng Emperor dies in the wake of the humiliating looting of the Summer Palace, leaving behind a four-year-old son and a power vacuum waiting to be filled. Cixi, her fellow empress dowager Ci’an, and Prince Gong move quickly to take control, using the child emperor as both symbol and shield. Jeremiah explains the peculiar constitutional fiction known as “ruling from behind the curtain” (垂帘听政), a political maneuver that allowed Cixi and Ci’an to steer the empire while officially remaining in the shadows. When Cixi’s own son, the Tongzhi Emperor, dies at eighteen, she executes another audacious maneuver—installing her young nephew, the Guangxu Emperor, ensuring that the throne remains occupied by someone conveniently underage. For a brief period—one hundred days, to be exact—Guangxu confers with intellectuals like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, planning an ambitious series of bureaucratic and military reforms. Cixi, unconvinced that constitutional monarchy and radical modernization were viable at the time, pulls the plug. Jeremiah and David examine the mystery surrounding the death of Zhenfei, the Pearl Concubine, as well as the lingering question of whether the Guangxu Emperor was poisoned by his aunt. Finally, we weigh the verdict of history: was Cixi a ruthless “Dragon Lady” who strangled China’s chances at modernity—or a pragmatic, formidable ruler judged by a double standard?

Barbarians at the Gate x China Books Review: From Heaven Lake

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 20:08:00 -0500

In 1981, the Indian writer and poet Vikram Seth traveled from Nanjing, where he was studying literature, to his hometown of Delhi. Moving by train across China to Gansu, then hitchhiking southwest through Qinghai and Tibet, it was an itinerary that makes sense when a traveler has a surfeit of curiosity but a shortage of funds. Armed with half-decent Mandarin, a fistful of foreign exchange certificates, and a scrap of paper authorizing his route, he negotiated China just as it was emerging from the Maoist era. No WeChat. No Trip.com. No Google Translate. Just a student improvising his way home as the date on his travel pass crept ever closer: fording rivers in rickety trucks, suffering altitude sickness, dealing with roadside thieves and the occasional military checkpoint. From Heaven Lake, the book that came out of that trip, still hits hard. It’s sharp, observant, funny in places, bleak in others. A snapshot of a country trying to reinvent itself while one traveler tries to get home before his paperwork expires. In this Barbarians at the Gate crossover with China Books Review, Jeremiah sits down with Alexander Boyd to talk about Seth’s strange, scrappy journey, what travel in China looked like in 1981, and how a writer from India saw things Western visitors of the same era tended to miss in the early 1980s.

The Destruction of the Old Summer Palace (Remix)

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 01:00:33 -0400

Yuanmingyuan, the "Garden of Perfect Brightness," commonly referred to as the Old Summer Palace, was a Qing Dynasty imperial residence comprised of hundreds of buildings, halls, gardens, temples, artificial lakes, and landscapes, covering a land area five times that of the Forbidden City and eight times the size of Vatican City. This expansive compound, once referred to by Victor Hugo as "one of the wonders of the world," now exists only as a sprawl of scattered ruins on the northern outskirts of Beijing, having been thoroughly burned and looted by the French and British over three days in October 1860, in the aftermath of the Second Opium War. The razed remnants of the glorious gardens have been left in place by the Chinese government as an outdoor museum of China's "Century of Humiliation" at the hands of foreign powers. On the 160th (now 165th) anniversary of the destruction of Yuanmingyuan, Jeremiah and David discuss the political and cultural clashes that led to the action, the significance of the incident for China's national self-image, and the government's attempts to repatriate the massive amounts of looted artifacts found scattered among the museums of Europe and the West. The conversation also explores the changing symbolic significance of the ruins in the context of a rejuvenated and economically powerful China.

The Voyages of Zheng He

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 11:30:10 -0400

It’s just two guys talking China's naval history. In this episode, David and Jeremiah dig into the story of Zheng He, the 15th-century admiral who took China's treasure fleets halfway around the world as Western Europe was just starting to figure out ocean navigation. Here's a Muslim eunuch who went from prisoner to running the emperor's treasure fleets. The man brought giraffes home as diplomatic gifts and offered up Sri Lankan kings as trophies to his boss. His fleets dwarfed anything Europe had, yet China wasn't really interested in claiming territory, just showing up, trading, and reminding everyone who ran the seas. Then Beijing killed the whole program. Just like that. Done. Why'd they stop? That's the question. Because when China bailed on blue-water sailing, Portugal and Spain filled the gap. Different game plan entirely. Flash forward to 2025, David is in Addis Ababa this month watching Chinese construction projects in Ethiopia and he's drawing lines between Zheng He's trade missions and today's Belt and Road. Same waters, same connections, five centuries apart. What can a eunuch, a giraffe, and a fleet of enormous ships can teach us about the history of globalization?

Barbarians at the Gate x China Books Review: The Records of the Grand Historian

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:00:00 -0400

Picture this: You’re 45 years old, halfway through writing the definitive history of your civilization. Writing this history is the family business, and you’ve made a promise to your dying father to finish his work no matter what, when your boss, who happens to be the Emperor of China, gives you a choice. You can be executed or, if that doesn’t work for your schedule, how about castration? Sima Qian picked door number two. If you enjoyed this tale of commitment, consider subscribing or supporting the Substack. Your subscription will cost far less than what Sima Qian paid. We promise. In this special episode of Barbarians at the Gate, Jeremiah teams up with China Books Review’s Associate Editor Alexander Boyd to dig into the story of history’s most committed writer. Sima Qian didn’t just compile China’s first great historical work—he literally sacrificed his manhood to complete it after defending a friend got him sideways with Emperor Han Wudi. Jeremiah and Alexander explore what it means to speak truth to power when the consequences are real, why Sima Qian’s model of moral courage feels especially relevant in our current moment of “spiritual castrations,” and whether anyone today has the stones (so to speak) to make that kind of sacrifice for their work. Sometimes the classics hit different when the world’s gone sideways.

Barbarians Remix: Seeking News, Making China

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:33:51 -0400

In this encore episode of Barbarians at the Gate, first broadcast in March 2024, John Alekna talks about his fascinating new book Seeking News, Making China: Information Technology and the Emergence of Mass Society. In 20th-century China, the gradual importation and development of information technology had an enormous impact on the way news was disseminated and accessed by the general public. When radio first appeared in the early 1920s, fewer than 8 in 1,000 people had access to newspapers, whereas by the Mao period hundreds of millions of citizens were receiving daily news and information via radio, TV, and shortwave technology. This book provides an enlightening “meta-historical” account of the evolving communications technologies that fueled the May Fourth Movement, KMT and CCP propaganda campaigns during WWII, and the mass information campaigns of the Mao era, such as the Cultural Revolution. The book describes how the various interlocking information technologies, infrastructure, and communication channels—what Alekna calls the “newsscape”—affected popular opinion, politics, and state power. John Alekna is an Assistant Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Peking University.

AI-Laoshi Will See You Now: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Chinese Language Learning

Barbarians at the Gate — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 07:04:00 -0400

Teachers are an excitable lot prone to excessive consumption of caffeine and loudly proclaiming that [Insert New Technology Here] will doom a generation to intellectual oblivion. Whether it was television, computers, the Internet, Wikipedia, or now AI, we've seen this panic before. But in this episode, Jeremiah and David try to do a few deep knee bends and discuss what AI actually means for Chinese language learning. How do we teach when near-perfect translations are waiting on students' phones? How do we integrate AI into our work while putting guardrails on classroom use? AI might be the greatest learning tool since Pleco, but how do we keep the focus on connecting with actual humans, not impressing silicon tutors? An episode for language teachers, students, and anyone wondering if robots will eventually make them fluent in Mandarin.

Calling all China Nerds

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 02:10:38 -0400

Where are our nerds at? David Moser is on summer holiday, and stepping into David's seat for this episode is literary translator Brendan O'Kane. It takes about two minutes for Jeremiah and Brendan to go off the rails, over the edge, and back to the Amilal Courtyard in Beijing ca. 2010 (if you know, you know). In this wide-ranging conversation, Brendan and Jeremiah rate different levels of dynastic decline on the "fuckery" scale, Brendan reads a translation from Chinese philosopher Mencius, there's discussion of how to best gloss "laowai," if Xi Jinping is "president," "chairman," or something else entirely, a quick debate on whether Matteo Ricci had an eidetic memory or was just really, really smart, and Brendan's adventures battling ICE. Come with us for a wild ride of Sinological geekdom and summer-style freeflow scholarship.

Barbarians Remix: The Year of the Boxers with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 11:30:07 -0400

Jeremiah and David are joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, historian of modern China and a longtime interpreter of the country’s shifting place in the world. Originally recorded in 2020, this conversation revisits the Boxer War of 1900—not through the usual lens of siege and rescue, but by examining what followed: the punitive occupation, the fractured international memory, and the long shadow cast by a global media frenzy. Wasserstrom’s reading reframes the Boxers not as an isolated burst of anti-foreign violence, but as part of a cycle of uprisings and reprisals that shaped modern China’s encounter with the West. He discusses why the term “Boxer Rebellion” obscures more than it reveals, and why “Year of the Boxers” may be a better way to understand the crisis—and its aftershocks. The episode also explores deeper patterns in Chinese history, including the 60-year cyclical mindset that links 1900 to 1960 and, by some accounts, to 2020. It’s a conversation about repetition, media distortion, and the uneasy symmetry between violence and remembrance.

Is America Beginning to Look More Like China?

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:03:25 -0400

In this episode we chat with Shanghai-based author and editor Jacob Dreyer, a China watcher who writes with great insight and nuance about the shifting landscape of China-US relations. We touch on questions such as: Is the China model of governance outperforming Western liberal democracy? Is China winning the AI and technology wars? (Spoiler alert: That ship has sailed.) How do the architecture and logic of surveillance and information control systems differ between the U.S. and China? Is the current China-US geopolitical chill drifting toward a hot war? And finally, we unpack the question posed in Jacob’s guest op-ed in the New York Times: Is Trump’s America beginning to look more like China?

Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:22:27 -0400

This week on the podcast, we explore the role of the horse in Chinese culture with author David Chaffetz, whose new book Raiders, Rulers, and Traders traces the sweeping impact of horse domestication across world civilizations. Chaffetz explains how equestrian cultures not only transformed warfare and mobility in China, but also reshaped the very boundaries of empire and cultural identity. Our conversation follows China’s long and complex relationship with the horse, from defending against nomadic cavalry along the northern frontier to importing prized horses through Silk Road diplomacy. Chaffetz recounts the challenges faced by Chinese dynasties in breeding horses to match the superior mounts of Mongol raiders. We also explore the echoes of China’s horse culture preserved in relics, from paintings and artifacts to the horse statues unearthed among the Terracotta Warriors.

Barbarians Remix: Mandarin Mayhem I

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 06:09:00 -0400

In this classic episode from 2020, we look at Putonghua, the spoken language most people refer to as Mandarin. David wrote a book in 2016 on the evolution of Putonghua in China. What's the point of Putonghua? What is a dialect and what is a language in China? And what's the difference between Mandarin as spoken during the dynastic period, "Guoyu" (National Speech) in the Republican Period, and Putonghua in the PRC? We also get an assist from Zhang Yajun who talks with David about the differences between the spoken language of Northern China, especially around Beijing, and "Standard" Putonghua.

Emergency Pod: The Trump Administration restricts Harvard International Enrollment as State Department Reviews Chinese Student Visas

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 06:39:35 -0400

In this special episode, we examine the Trump administration's ongoing attacks on higher education in America and their implications for the future of US-China academic exchanges. On May 29, the Department of Homeland Security banned Harvard from enrolling international students—a decision that is now being challenged in the courts even as the educational plans of nearly 7,000 students and post-grads are thrown into jeopardy.

This announcement comes on the heels of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's announcement last Wednesday that the State Department will start "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese students, starting with those with connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

David and Jeremiah convene an emergency meeting of the podcast to unpack these developments and how these announcements will affect the future of US-China educational exchanges, America's global influence in higher education, and economic competitiveness.

Spoiler alert: They're both quite salty about the subject.

The Six: Recovering the Lost Story of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 20 May 2025 01:20:49 -0400

In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, hosts Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser interview Steven Schwankert about his groundbreaking research into the forgotten story of the Chinese survivors of the Titanic disaster. Schwankert, author of The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors, details how he uncovered the remarkable tale of six Chinese men who survived the sinking in 1912—a story largely erased from historical records. The conversation explores how these third-class passengers achieved an extraordinary survival rate despite their disadvantaged position on the ship. Schwankert explains how their maritime experience as professional sailors working for the Donald Steamship line may have helped them make crucial life-saving decisions during the disaster. We talk to Steve about the thorough detective work he and his team carried out researching the lives of the six surviving Chinese passengers, including their challenges in identifying Romanized Chinese names that had been misread for decades. They also got hands-on, using a full-scale replica of a Titanic collapsible lifeboat built by students and teachers from the Western Academy of Beijing to test historical claims about how the Chinese survivors escaped. Throughout the episode, Schwankert addresses the discrimination and false narratives these men faced in the aftermath of the disaster, including libelous newspaper accounts claiming they had dressed as women or stowed away. The documentary based on this research received a wide theatrical release in China in 2021, bringing this important historical correction to audiences worldwide. Finally, we discuss racism, official policy, and historical bias, as well as Steven and his team’s work to recover the lost stories of the six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Dealing with Culture Shock when Studying and Living in China

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 01 May 2025 11:18:33 -0400

In this episode, Jeremiah and David explore a topic drawn from their many years of experience with American study abroad programs: culture shock.

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom with NPR Correspondent Emily Feng

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 04:24:03 -0400

In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, we talk with Emily Feng about her new book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting for NPR, Emily paints a picture of how state control has intensified over recent years, reshaping Chinese society, politics, and culture. Emily explains how she wove together personal stories into the historical, cultural, and political contexts, offering insights into the lives of Uyghurs separated by detention camps, human rights lawyers battling censorship, Mongolian educators struggling to preserve their language, and ordinary citizens whose acts of remembrance have become quiet forms of resistance.

Curating Chinese Internet Culture for Global Audiences with What's on Weibo founder Manya Koetse

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:36:00 -0400

This week, we catch up with Dutch sinologist Manya Koetse, the creator of "What's on Weibo," a platform offering in-depth insights into trends, events, memes, and social phenomena on Weibo, one of China's largest social media platforms, often referred to as the "Chinese Twitter."

As a bridge for non-Chinese speaking audiences to understand the dynamics of Chinese digital culture, "What's on Weibo" has evolved over the years, recently expanding to include a premium newsletter while maintaining its mission to decode Chinese social media for a global audience.

Manya explains Weibo's role in the increasingly fragmented Chinese online environment, discussing the evolving gender and class demographics of Weibo alongside other platforms such as Bilibili, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu (Red Book). She also talks about how Weibo functions as a social barometer reflecting the changing tides of Chinese nationalism, commercialism, social unrest, and anti-Western sentiment.

Is this America's Cultural Revolution Moment? with Chris Stewart of the History of China Podcast

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:41:00 -0400

In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, host Jeremiah Jenne speaks with Chris Stewart, the creator of the History of China podcast. They discuss Chris's transition from living in Shanghai to returning to Bozeman, Montana, his journey into Chinese history, and the challenges of podcasting. The conversation also touches on the impact of COVID-19, the cultural revolution, and the importance of historical context in understanding current events. Chris shares insights on audience engagement and the evolution of his podcast over the years.

Experiencing the World of Jazz in China

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 08:34:43 -0500

This week, we explore a topic close to our hearts: the world of jazz in China. Both Jeremiah and David bring their musical expertise to the table—Jeremiah as a rock and blues keyboardist, and David as an active pianist in Beijing's jazz scene. David takes us back to his experiences in the 1980s, a period of renaissance for jazz in Beijing, when Chinese rock musicians began to discover—or rediscover—this intricate Western genre. During China's early "Reform and Opening Up" era, musicians with little prior exposure to jazz and scarce recordings embarked on the challenging journey of mastering its fundamentals: the elusive "swing" rhythm, the art of improvisation over complex harmonies, and the pursuit of a unique musical "voice." For them, jazz represented a liberating contrast to the structured pop music of their youth, offering a sense of artistic freedom and boundless creativity. David reports that a new generation of post-millennial jazz musicians has emerged who, having grown up with the genre, are quickly ascending to world-class status, gracing stages at prestigious international festivals.

The Challenges of Foreign Reporting in China: An In-Depth Discussion with Jane Perlez

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 05:03:00 -0500

In this episode, Jeremiah and David welcome Jane Perlez, former Beijing bureau chief for the New York Times (2012-2019), to discuss the evolving challenges of reporting from China. Drawing from her firsthand experience, Jane details the gradual erosion of press freedom under Xi Jinping's leadership, including the 2018 expulsion of journalists and the ongoing obstacles faced by news assistants working for foreign media. The conversation explores both the creative strategies reporters now use to conduct investigative journalism from outside China's borders and Jane's latest podcast project, 'Face Off: The US vs. China,' which examines the deterioration of U.S.-China relations in the 21st century.

From the Archives: Xi Built This City

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 05:55:57 -0500

Happy Year of the Snake!

In this archive episode from January 2024, we chat with Andrew Stokols, who is researching varieties of digital urbanism globally, with an emphasis on China.

We briefly compare notes on the urban development of Beijing in the 21st century, including the contradictions between Beijing as a technologically advanced urban center and an ancient capital city. Andrew also provides updates on the progress of Xiong’an, the digital “smart city” being constructed in Hebei province, as a showcase for Xi Jinping’s vision for urban development. The urban plan was initially unveiled in 2017 to relieve pressure on Beijing and promote the coordinated regional development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, but what Xi has called a “thousand-year plan of national significance” has run into numerous setbacks and controversy.

We also hear from Andrew about how the Party is merging Marxist ideology with traditional Chinese culture in recent urban architectural projects, particularly the mammoth National Archives of Publications and Culture (Zhongguo guojia banbenguan 中国国家版本馆), described as a “seed bank” of Chinese civilization. These mammoth archives, being constructed in the four geographically significant locations of Beijing, Hangzhou, Xi’an, and Guangzhou, will house original and digitized editions of imperial archives such as the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (the Siku quanshu四库全书), as well as historical artifacts, music, and literature from the Mao era, thus effecting the goal of “two combines” (liangge jiehe 两个结合), Xi Jinping’s goal of “combining Marxist theory with China’s outstanding traditional culture.”

Andrew's own online archive: https://www.andrewstokols.com/

Shalama: An Epic Story of Family, Community, and Survival in Republican-era China

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 05:30:00 -0500

In this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Jean Hoffman Lewanda back to the podcast to discuss her new book, Shalama: My 96 Seasons in China, published by Earnshaw Books. Listeners may recall Jean's previous appearance, where she shared insights about her father, Paul Hoffman's memoir, Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai—A Memoir of Escape, Survival, and Resilience. That captivating memoir details how Paul fled Vienna at the age of 18 to escape the rise of Nazism, arrived in Shanghai in 1938, and became part of the historic wave of Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in China during World War II.

Jean's new book enriches this family saga by recounting events from her mother Shalama's perspective but presented as historical fiction. Drawing on firsthand accounts, including her mother's, Jean tells the story in Shalama's voice, tracing the family's journey from Harbin to Shanghai during the war-torn decades of the mid-20th century. The book interweaves the family's history with major historical events, including the Sungari River flood of 1932, the Japanese occupation, and the Communist takeover of China.

Links:

Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum

Historic Shanghai (Host of the Shanghai Book Club)

Dan Ben-Canaan, Tombstone Histories: Tales of Jewish Life in Harbin

Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

Dara Horn, "Cities of Ice: A dispatch from frozen Harbin, where Jews once flourished—and melted away," Tablet, April 19, 2019

Where have all the American China Experts Gone?

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 01:57:25 -0500

In this episode, we invite Rory Truex, an associate professor at Princeton University, to discuss a recurring issue on the podcast: the plight of the US-China academic exchange and the urgent need to attract more American scholars to do research in China.

Despite the recent revival of several American academic programs in China, the post-COVID number of US students in the PRC is still woefully inadequate. Professor Truex gives an overview of some reasons for this deterioration of interest by American scholars and the challenges of doing meaningful research in the current Chinese academic environment.

We also discuss predictions about the new Trump administration’s possible effects on US-China relations, the implications for government support and funding of educational exchange programs, and the perception of Chinese and American exchange students as security risks. Rory also describes his path of development as a China scholar during the so-called "Golden Age" of the early 2000s in China, and the current difficulties of carrying out unfettered academic research in a new era of tightening restrictions.

Rory Truex is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses on Chinese politics and authoritarian systems. He regularly contributes to major publications such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and New York Times.

Mentioned on the podcast:

“Where have all the American China experts gone?"

Washington Post, January 3, 2024

Laws of the Land: Feng Shui in Chinese History

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:25:42 -0500

MIT professor Tristan Brown discusses his award-winning book on how Feng Shui shaped law and society in imperial China. From environmental regulation to social order, discover how feng shui had less to do with furniture placement and was more about power, belonging, and the control of space in a rapidly evolving society.

What can the end of the Ming Dynasty tell us about the election of Donald Trump and what comes next

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:44:22 -0500

Last week’s election of Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. President disappointed half of the American electorate and much of the world (outside the Kremlin). To help Jeremiah and David process what’s next, they’re joined by Brendan O’Kane— writer, translator, expert in the literature of the late Ming Dynasty, and a Pennsylvania voter.

Brendan explores the works of Zhang Dai (張岱 1597-1634), the Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, and other literary examples from the twilight of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). What was it like to witness the end of an era and the collapse of an entire state? Was the Obama era an American "restoration" (中興)? What do people do when the political order is overturned and the dynasty falls? We delve into Chinese history and literature, searching for insights to ease the pain and make sense of what lies ahead.

David also shares reactions from his students in Beijing on the election results—as well as rumors of a surprising (and unsettling) prank their peers in the U.S. may have pulled at campus polling stations.

Brendan O'Kane on substack

The Southern Ming by Lynn Struve, 1984

The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China by Frederic Wakeman, 1986

Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in the Tiger's Jaws. Edited and translated by Lynn A. Struve, 1993

Historical Battles: Rewriting China's Past to Shape the Future

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 02:06:50 -0400

"We can overestimate and underestimate how much things changed when Xi Jinping took power, but the intensity of concern over historical narratives has definitely grown under his leadership." - Jeffrey Wasserstrom

In this episode, Jeremiah and David are joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and a leading expert in modern Chinese history. We discuss the legacies of the Hong Kong protests, the rise of Xi Jinping's historical narrative control, and how academic engagement with China is evolving amidst growing geopolitical tensions.

Professor Wasserstrom delves into the shifts in how history is managed in China, particularly the tightening control under Xi Jinping’s regime. He elaborates on Xi’s new patriotic education law, which codifies the regime's control over historical narratives to align with national security. We also examine the challenges academics face when giving talks on sensitive topics and the growing restrictions on public discourse in Hong Kong since the imposition of the national security law.

Back to School 2: The View from the EU

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 09:50:41 -0400

In this episode of Barbarian at the Gate, hosts Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser are joined by special guest Karlis Rokpelnis, China country representative for the European Union's Euraxess Research Mobility Initiative. Together, they delve into the evolving landscape of international education in China, discussing the factors influencing the decline in student exchanges and the varying approaches of American and European institutions. Karlis offers his unique perspective on the changes he's observed over the past decade, from a gradual decline in short-term exchanges to a rise in long-term study programs at top universities.

The conversation also explores the differing cultural and political dynamics between the U.S. and Europe when it comes to studying in China, including the impact of xenophobia, political rhetoric, and international relations on academic exchanges. The trio reflects on what motivates students to come to China, how they engage with their studies, and the future of China-related scholarship. With a blend of humor and insight, this episode captures the complexities of navigating education and politics across borders, offering listeners a thoughtful and engaging look into the current state of studying China from abroad.

Back to School?

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 05:48:00 -0400

As David at least gets set for another semester, he and Jeremiah reconnect to catch up on a mix of timely topics from China and the US. They explore the declining number of Chinese students studying in the US and the cautious return of American students to China, offering insights and practical advice on how to introduce China to American students in nuanced ways. They discuss the difference between fostering an appreciation for Chinese culture and people versus endorsing government policies.

The conversation also delves into the current US presidential race and how it’s being portrayed on Chinese platforms like Weibo, focusing on reactions to Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s China ties. Finally, they wrap up with a lively discussion on Beijing’s North-South axis being added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, considering what it means for the city’s identity and global recognition.

Edge of Empire with author and journalist Edward Wong

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 15:35:00 -0400

In this episode, Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent and former Beijing Bureau Chief for the New York Times, joins us to discuss his new book, Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China. Edward’s father, Yook Kearn Wong, lived through the Japanese occupation and the Communist Revolution in China. Captivated by Mao’s vision of a powerful China, he served in the People’s Liberation Army during the Korean War and later served in Xinjiang. By 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made a daring escape to Hong Kong.

Wong’s book is one part a family memoir and one part a reflection of Edward's experiences in China both as a student and as a journalist. We discuss the legacies of empire, China’s frontiers, what the Qing Dynasty means for China today, and how memories of the past continue to be used and misused in the PRC.

There and Back Again: Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour and the Legacy of Reform and Opening in China

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 04:28:44 -0400

In this episode, we welcome back a friend of the podcast, Jonathan Chatwin, to discuss his new book, The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future.

Since the Emperor Kangxi made his southern tour in 1684, many emperors and Chinese leaders have undertaken similar inspection tours, including Mao, Deng, and Xi Jinping. Deng’s southern tour took place in the backdrop of contentious debates about his radical restructuring of the economy in the Reform era. Jonathan describes how Deng used the tour to reinvigorate his market reforms amidst the turmoil after 1989 and the difficulties with squaring the tenets of socialism with the new agenda of wealth creation.

Our conversation also covers Deng’s legacy, Xi Jinping’s attempt to downplay Deng’s role in the historic reforms, and the obstacles of publishing a China book in the current Sino-skeptic environment.

Publisher’s link for The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future

Our previous episode with Dr. Chatwin discussed his book, Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China

Deng-zilla Poster! from Chineseposters.net

From Firefly to Fox News: The Evolution of "Chimerican" Media

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 05:12:11 -0400

This episode features a lively conversation with Fan Yang, Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, about her new book Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements.

The term “Chimerica” is a portmanteau word, blending “China” and “America.” The neologism denotes the economic, political, and cultural entanglements of the two countries. Fan Yang uses the concept of “Chimerican media” to explore how the conflicts and tensions between the world’s two superpowers are played out in movies, television series, journalism, and media products that are often viewed by people in both countries.

Drawing upon media examples such as House of Cards, The Martian, and Firefly, Prof. Yang shows how the tendency of American media to portray the Chinese state as a racialized “other” tends to complicate the two countries' increasing geopolitical entanglement. The conversation also touches on the reconceptualized Netflix version of The Three Body Problem and the complex reactions on both sides of the Pacific to the depictions of Cultural Revolution violence in the series.

What happens after a Barbarian walks away from the Gate?

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 09:17:00 -0400

This episode represents a new direction for the podcast, recorded on the eve of Jeremiah’s move to a new home base in Geneva. We start with a retrospective snapshot of the podcast’s beginnings – with many episodes recorded under the backdrop of COVID-19 – and then segue into our perennial concern, the plight of academic exchange in China, for which our consensus was “cautious optimism," while accepting an unsatisfying "new normal.” We sign off with future plans and ideas for the next phase of Barbarians at the Gate.

Seeking News, Making China

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 05:23:52 -0400

In this episode, John Alekna talks about his fascinating new book Seeking News, Making China: Information Technology and the Emergence of Mass Society. In 20th-century China, the gradual importation and development of information technology had an enormous impact on the way that news was disseminated and accessed by the general public. When radio first appeared in the early 1920s, less than 8 in 1,000 people had access to newspapers, whereas, by the time of the Mao period, hundreds of millions of citizens were receiving daily news and information via radio, TV, and shortwave technology.

This book provides an enlightening “meta-historical” account of the evolving communications technologies that fueled the May 4th movement, KMT and CCP propaganda campaigns during WWII, and the mass information campaigns of the Mao era, such as the Cultural Revolution. The book describes how the various interlocking information technologies, infrastructure, and communication channels – what Alekna calls the “newsscape” – affect popular opinion, politics, and state power.

John Alekna is an Assistant Professor of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Peking University.

The publisher’s link for the book Seeking News, Making China: Information Technology and the Emergence of Mass Society.

The Mountains Are High with author Alec Ash

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 04:43:15 -0500

In this episode, we welcome back to the podcast our good friend, Alec Ash, who has written a fascinating book recounting a year spent in the city of Dali, Yunan Province. Unlike Alec’s previous book, Wish Lanterns, his new book, The Mountains are High, is a highly personal account of his attempt to find solace and healing after a pivotal emotional crisis and his decision to disentangle himself from his urban Beijing life and escape to a simpler life in mountainous Yunnan Province. But Alec’s life in Dali was not completely hermitic. Quite the contrary, Alec found his new life interwoven with a peripatetic group of fellow escapees, a kaleidoscopic array of religious seekers, hippies, stoners, and disenchanted white-collar elites, all seeking solace or salvation through Buddhism, psychedelics, New Age mysticism, or just a simpler, more meaningful life.

We discuss the process of writing the book, the challenge of living off the grid, the struggle to resist the distracting allure of the Internet, and the hard work of transforming oneself to achieve a sense of contentment and peace.

Previous episodes featuring Alec Ash:

“China's New Youth” October 01, 2020

“Back to the Land: Author Alec Ash on escaping to Dali, rural retreats, and a return to England” October 30, 2022

Alec’s website information about The Mountains Are High

Exile from Expat-ville

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:22:15 -0500

In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, our guest is Michael Wester, founder and publisher of True Run Media and The Beijinger. Mike is a long-time resident of Beijing, and we talked with him about running the city’s most-read expat publication, his experiences in organizing the “Safe and Sane” WeChat communities during the pandemic, and what the future holds for the international population of China’s capital. Later, Jeremiah surprises David and Mike with an announcement.

Xi Built This City

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:30:44 -0500

In this episode, we chat with Andrew Stokols, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at MIT researching varieties of digital urbanism globally, with an emphasis on China.

On the podcast, we briefly compare notes on the urban development of Beijing in the 21st century, including the contradictions between Beijing as a technologically advanced urban center and an ancient capital city. Andrew also provides updates on the progress of Xiong’an, the digital “smart city” being constructed in Hebei province, as a showcase for Xi Jinping’s vision for urban development. The urban plan was initially unveiled in 2017 to relieve pressure on Beijing and promote the coordinated regional development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, but what Xi has called a “thousand-year plan of national significance” has run into numerous setbacks and controversy.

Andrew's own online archive: https://www.andrewstokols.com/

No Laughing Matters: The State of Stand-up in China Today

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 21:45:00 -0500

Has the Chinese government killed stand-up comedy in China?

In May of 2023, a popular standup comedian made an innocuous joke in which he mentioned a phrase used to laud the fighting spirit of the People’s Liberation Army. The next day, a complaint from a nationalistic netizen resulted in the Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media Company being fined a whopping $2 million and the temporary shutdown of virtually all the standup TV shows and comedy clubs in China’s major cities.

The immediate aftermath of the incident also cast a pall over other entertainment venues, leading to increased scrutiny of music and live entertainment in clubs and bars. In this episode, we talk with reporter and freelance writer Chang Che, who initially reported this incident and has been interviewing comedians and promoters grappling with the repercussions in the entertainment industry. Chang Che provides insights into how comedians, musicians, and creative media workers must function within a system where the lines for acceptable discourse are nebulous and ever-changing.

Chang Che’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and he was formerly with the New York Times reporting on tech in Asia. His first article on this subject of the podcast can be found at this link:

No Joke: China Fines a Comedy Firm $2 Million for ‘Insulting’ the Military

Chang Che’s website

Our earlier episode on comedy in China:

Chinese Funny Business with Mark "Da Shan" Roswell

Art with Altitude

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 03:10:00 -0500

On this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, I talk to Kristel Ouwehand, also known by her Tibetan language name, Tenzin Dolma, the founder of Snowland Academy in Gansu province where she lives with and teaches young Tibetan artists.

Beginning at age 17, Tenzin traveled across Central America, Europe, parts of the Middle East, and the east coast of Africa before settling in India. She stayed in India for 11 years, mastering the traditional art of thangka painting. She also learned to craft butter sculptures and sand mandalas, contributed as one of 30 artists painting a new prayer hall, and even organized and translated for a year-long fundraising arts tour in North America from 2005-2006.

In 2007, Kristel relocated to China, initially living in Sichuan until the earthquake in 2008, and then in Qinghai. In 2010, a pivotal moment occurred when a monk approached her, seeking art lessons. In the summer of 2014, she settled in Labrang (Xiahe), Gansu, where Snowland continues to operate today.

Link to Snowland Art:

http://www.snowlandart.org/about-us/

History Wars: The PRC pushes back against unsanctioned views of the past

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 19:49:00 -0500

Jeremiah kicks off the podcast with news that the decades-long Qing History Projectn being carried out by, among other institutions, Renmin University and the Chinese Academy of Social Science(CASS) seems to have been "put on ice" after the draft document produced by the team of Chinese historians was deemed as “politically unacceptable” by the authorities.

One of the specific objections to the project’s content was that it was “overly influenced by the New Qing History,” referring to a group of prominent Western historians who have used Manchu-language sources and new perspectives to offer an interpretation of Qing history that departs from earlier narratives that emphasized the "Sinicization" of the Qing Empire.

In the podcast, we discuss how the PRC government attempts to rewrite history to promote current-day political narratives, including revisionist attempts to downplay Mongol and Manchu influences in the story of China.

Mentioned in the podcast:

China Digital Times, Qing History another front against Western Influence

Young Tsu-wong review of Qingchaoshi de jiben tezheng zai tanjiu: Yi dui beimei xin Qingshi guandian de fansi wei zhongxin 清朝史的基本特徵再探究: 以對北美新清史觀點的反思為中心 [A New Look at the Fundamental Characteristics of the Qing Dynasty History: Focus on Rethinking the Views of the New Qing History School of North America by Zhong Han

Guo Wu, New Qing History: Dispute, Dialog, and Influence

The Art, “Blocked show on Genghis Khan finally opens in France,”

Christian Henriot, "Who owns China's Past? American Universities and the Writing of Chinese History"

Jeremiah’s review of Ian Johnson’s new book Sparks: China's Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, on the China Project

Riding the "Harmony Express" with author Thomas Bird

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 23:59:13 -0400

In today’s episode, we talk with journalist and travel writer Thomas Bird about his latest book, The Harmony Express.

Entering an uncertain new chapter of his life several years ago, Bird decided to embark on an exploration of the People’s Republic of China via the country’s vast web of railroad lines. In the spiritual footsteps of travel writers such as Paul Theroux (Riding the Iron Rooster and The Great Railway Bazaar), Bird took the trains as his trajectory, exploring and documenting the diverse ethnic, geographical, linguistic, and culinary worlds of China by rail.

With solid Mandarin skills, an intrepid, often foolhardy willingness to immerse himself into unfamiliar surroundings, and an ethnographer’s voracious intellectual appetite for detail, Bird gives the reader vivid accounts of the diverse places and personalities he encounters in his journey.

We also talk about his impetus for writing the book, the evolution of train travel from the 绿皮火车 lüpi huoche “green trains” to the new sci-fi-style bullet trains, and what has changed – and not changed – in China.

Thomas Bird, Harmony Express. (Earnshaw Books, 2023)

Amazon Link

Do you really need to learn to write characters to study Chinese?

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 04:09:30 -0400

Warning: GEEKY CONTENT

Hosting solo in this week’s episode, David takes a geeky deep dive into the digital revolution in Chinese language learning in conversation with Chinese language pedagogy expert Matt Coss. The Sisyphean task of learning to write hundreds of Chinese characters has long been the bête noire of Chinese language students. The explosion of digital devices and apps for processing Chinese characters is giving rise to a radical rethinking (no pun intended) of the handwriting and dictation components of Chinese language curricula.

Matt Coss is on the front line of a new generation of Chinese language educators who advocate a drastic reduction, if not outright elimination, of the handwriting requirement for Chinese language learners. Topics covered include the disturbing drop in the number of American students studying Mandarin, the implications of AI tools such as ChatGPT for Chinese language learning, and the escalating problem of native Chinese speakers forgetting how to write common characters (“character amnesia” tíbǐ wàngzì提笔忘字).

Matt Coss holds a BA in Hispanic Linguistics and Asian Studies (Chinese) and an MA in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Maryland College Park. Matt has taught Chinese classes at George Washington University and Georgetown University and has worked as a Second Language Acquisition Specialist on the STARTALK project at the National Foreign Language Center. He is currently a PhD Student in Second Language Studies (Michigan State University)

Mentioned in the podcast:

Transforming L2 Hanzi Teaching & Learning in the Age of Digital Writing: Theory and Pedagogy (《电写时代汉字教学的理论与实践》) published by Routledge 2023

https://scholarworks.brandeis.edu/esploro/outputs/bookChapter/Save-Your-Strokes-Further-Studies-on/9924210987301921

L1: First language (i.e., native language)

L2: Second language

“The New Paperless Revolution in Chinese Reading.” Olle Linge’s Hacking Chinese Site. https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-new-paperless-revolution-in-chinese-reading/

“Character Amnesia Yet Again” Victor Mair, Language Log, April 28, 2022.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=54465

Hanzi Yingxiong 《汉字英雄》 “Chinese Character Heroes” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoxdiwKaHo&t=337s

Zhongguo Hanzi tingxie dahui《中国汉字听写大会》”Chinese Character Dictation Competition.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=insD5qbJw2g&list=PL0eGJygpmOH4xEZ7Gu2IluCL07GYcHiZu

A Career of Change Making: A Conversation with Isabel Nepstad of BellaTerra Consulting

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 21:59:00 -0400

Isabel Nepstad’s passion for nature, food, and agriculture can be traced back to her childhood growing up in Belém, a city on the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Her connection to China dates to Isabel’s experience studying Chinese at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and economic development and environmental science at Yunnan University while still an undergraduate. For over 11 years, Isabel has worked in the food and agriculture industry in the United States, Brazil, the Netherlands, and China. From 2011 to 2012, she worked as an Analyst for a Brazilian NGO, Alliança da Terra, in Cuiaba, Brazil, and as a Program Manager for Solidaridad Network based in Beijing. In 2021, she founded BellaTerra Consulting to provide sustainability consulting in the food and agriculture supply chains, bridging China and the world.

Isabel takes time out of her busy schedule to drop by the Barbarians at the Gate studio to share her career journey, give advice to those looking to pursue their professional lives in China, and discuss the challenges and opportunities in the environmental and agricultural sectors in China and around the world.

Have Tunes, Will Travel: The Musical Adventures of DJ Bo

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 22:51:25 -0400

On this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, Jeremiah talks to Brian “DJ Bo” Offenther. From being the FKFDJ (First Known Foreign DJ) to play in Pyongyang since 1945 to putting together the first Elvis Festival in Mainland China, DJ Bo has been at the center of China’s music scene for over a decade. The self-proclaimed "Shanghai's #2 DJ" is a DJ and event producer based in Shanghai who has performed in 29 countries and 42 cities around China. He’s involved in many cultural activities, including lecturing at universities, hosting the streaming The Critical Music Club, producing ARTGER, presenting public domain events, writing/editing, and more. DJ Bo also created a wonderfully curated Spotify playlist that accompanied past BATG guest Andrew Field’s book Rocking China.

With David off on summer shenanigans, Jeremiah flies solo as DJ Bo, in town for a couple of gigs, regales us with his adventures performing across China, what drives his passion for music, and makes a case for Shanghai, that other city, as the true birthplace of Rock n’ Roll.

One From the Vault: Ideology and Education in China with Educator Jiang Xueqin

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 16:48:17 -0400

David and Jeremiah are on holiday this week, but we hope you enjoy this encore episode with educator Jiang Xueqin, originally released in February 2022.

Contrary to the common stereotype that Chinese education is regimented and mired in tradition, the education system in China is actually one of the most dynamic sectors of Chinese society, with core aspects such as the gaokao college entrance exam constantly in flux. On the podcast, this week to discuss the evolution of Chinese education is Jiang Xueqin, an educational consultant who has worked with schools throughout China to promote the ideas of creativity and critical thinking skills.

Topics include the new emphasis on ideology in the curriculum since the ascent of Xi Jinping, the massive effort to turn elite Chinese universities into “world-class” institutions to compete with schools such as Harvard and Oxford, and the plight of cross-national educational projects and international schools in these years of Covid-19 shutdowns and US-China “decoupling.”

Jiang Xueqin has published two books: Creative China, which recounts his experiences working in the Chinese public school system, and Schools for the Soul, which presents his approach to fostering creativity in secondary education.

Jiang’s articles have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Chronicle of Higher Education.

A Great Leap Backwards?: The Closing of Cultural Spaces and the New Normal in Beijing

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:40:02 -0400

This episode of the podcast addresses a worrisome question: Is China’s “cultural space” shrinking?

The recent crackdown on stand-up comedy content and the scrutiny of foreign musicians performing in bars have raised worries that other artistic domains will soon be targeted. Over the past decade, there has been a perception of a “death by a thousand cuts,” as increasing scrutiny and tightening regulations have slowly sanitized, squelched, or strangled many areas of artistic and cultural expression.

The once vibrant LGBTQ scene in Beijing, characterized by thriving queer film festivals and active “tongzhi” websites, is now virtually moribund. Venues such as the Bookworm, where freewheeling literary festivals and public talks were tacitly allowed, are now a thing of the past. And the numerous academic exchanges that collapsed during the COVID-19 years do not show signs of reviving soon.

In the podcast, we discuss questions such as: What are the implications of this trend for Chinese soft power? Can alternative “safe spaces” allow creative activity to continue? And what are the ramifications for the foreign exodus from China, as many ex-pats find the country less welcoming than in times past?

Rocking China with Historian Andrew Field

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:58:00 -0400

In this episode, we welcome back Andrew Field to discuss his new book Rocking China: Rock Music Scenes in Beijing, Shanghai and Beyond.

While having already conducted valuable research into the history of Shanghai jazz, in 2007, Andrew began a deep dive into the nascent Chinese underground rock scene of the early 2000s with the passion of a rock fan and the intellectual fascination of an anthropologist. He spent years haunting the indie rock bars and performance venues of Beijing and other cities, interviewing the performers, observing the audience reactions, and taking extensive “field notes” (pun intended), all documenting this explosive chapter in the evolution of rock music in the PRC.

Andrew followed seminal groups such as the Carsick Cars, Subs, and Hedgehog, giving first-hand accounts of the performance ambiance and providing fascinating portraits of performers like Yang Haisong, Kang Mao, and Wu Hao.

Andrew has become one of the go-to documentarians of popular music in China:

Rocking China: Rock Music Scenes in Beijing, Shanghai & Beyond

Spotify playlist for Rocking China by DJ BO

Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2010

Documentary: A Century of Jazz in Shanghai

Andrew Field's website

http://shanghaisojourns.net/

Mentioned on the show:

China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music

Jeroen de Kloet (IIAS Publications series)

Tik-Tok-for-Tat: Jeremiah and David try to Fix US-China Relations

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 15 May 2023 23:20:55 -0400

Fueled by too many red bulls (Jeremiah) and some pretty good pharmaceuticals following an emergency root canal (David), our intrepid cohosts throw caution to the wind and attempt to fix US-China Relations in a single podcast. For those outside of China, the ups and downs of this troubled bilateral relationship are sometimes felt as a rather abstract quandary. Still, for those of us who have invested decades of our lives in this China, the often juvenile skirmishes between the two superpowers have existential consequences. In this episode of BATG, Jeremiah and David describe the deterioration of US-China relations brought about by an ongoing series of reciprocal clashes. The conversation includes media bias, tit-for-tat sanctions and expulsions, what-about-ism, ideological silos, historical grudges, diplomatic standoffs, national humiliation, and “face,” -- all problems for which we provide absolutely no solutions, but for which ranting can be cathartic. Grab a red bull (or four) and/or your favorite pharmaceuticals and join the conversation.

What Xi Said: Comedy and Cross-Cultural Communication with Performer and Content Creator Jesse Appell

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 03:04:00 -0400

This week we catch up with Jesse Appell, an English-Chinese standup comedy star better known to his more than 3 million Chinese followers as Ai Jiexi 艾杰西. Jesse talks about how he parlayed his Fulbright Fellowship research on Chinese humor into a stellar comedy career in China. Stuck in the US for several years during the Covid-19 crisis, Jesse had to find ways to continue his successful comedy career outside China. Jesse recounts how he began to make a name for himself in the media environment of the vast number of diaspora Chinese living and working in America and other countries. We explore the cultural differences between these more Westernized diaspora audiences and those of mainland China. We also hear about the struggles of maintaining a successful career as a standup comedian in the world of Chinese media.

Jesse on Instagram (comedy): @whatxisaid

Jesse on Instagram (tea): @jessesteahouse

Jesse's Tea House

Jesse's World Podcast

The Peking Express with Author James Zimmerman

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 04:00:57 -0400

In this episode, we are delighted to talk with James Zimmerman about his new book, Peking Express: The Bandits who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China. The book is an enthralling account of a largely forgotten chapter in Chinese history, the harrowing 1923 raid on a luxury train by Chinese bandits and the ensuing 37-day hostage standoff. Jim fills us in on the backstory of the incident, based on the treasure trove of diaries, newspaper accounts, and personal testimony, which he skillfully knits together into a fascinating narrative of a China in turmoil, contrasting the poverty-stricken villages caught in the crossfire between bandits and warlords with the opulent lifestyles of the elite group of western tourists.

Jim Zimmerman is a lawyer who has lived and worked in Beijing for over 25 years and served four terms as the chairman of the Beijing American Chamber of Commerce.

Getting Elevated in Qinghai with Entrepreneur and Mountain Guide Ben Cubbage

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 05:45:40 -0400

In this episode, we are joined by Ben Cubbage, who calls in from the lofty heights of Xining, the capital of Qinghai province. Ben co-founded Elevated Trips, an organization that offers specialized tours in the remote regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Mongolia, and Gansu provinces. As a passionate advocate for eco-friendly tourism, Ben emphasizes principles such as respect for local cultures, providing sustainable economic value to local communities, minimizing visitor impact, and prioritizing biodiversity. We explore Ben's mission to offer travelers life-changing experiences, whether it's gaining a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy and material culture, admiring the breathtaking beauty of the Qinghai and Tibetan landscapes, or catching a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of the elusive snow leopard that calls the Tibetan plateau home.

https://www.elevatedtrips.com/

The Official Elevated Trips Intro Video, Eco-tourism on the Tibetan Plateau

An Interview with Ben Cubbage from Elevated Trips

The Forbidden City with Matthew Hu

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 18:00:00 -0500

This week’s topic is the Forbidden City, and our tour guide once again is Matthew Hu Xinyu, Trustee of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) and founder of the Courtyard Institute. Matthew provides us with updates on recently renovated sections of the Palace Museum previously inaccessible to tourists, such as the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility (Cining Gong 慈宁宫), where the Empress Dowager celebrated her birthdays and worshipped the Buddha, and the living quarters of the imperial concubines located north and west of Longzong Gate. Matthew also gives us a fascinating overview of the complex task of renovating the centuries-old compound and the challenges faced by the Palace Museum in restoring, protecting, and exhibiting the museum’s 1.8 million artifacts.

Palaces, artifacts historical figures mentioned on the podcast:

Hall of Mental Cultivation, Yangxin Dian养心殿

Palace of Established Happiness建福宮Jianfu Gong

jinzhuan金砖 ”metal/gold bricks”

Dr. Shan Jixiang 单霁翔, curator of the Palace Museum from 2012 and 2019

Imperial Fasting Palace Zhai Gong斋宫

“Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” Fuchun Shanju Tu 富春山居圖, famous Yuan Dynasty painted by Huang Gongwang (黃公望, 1269-1354). The painting was divided into two pieces after being rescued from a fire. The two sections were later separated, the main section is now housed at the Taipei Palace Museum, and the smaller section, referred to as “The Remaining Mountain,” 剩山圖 Sheng Shan Tu, is part of the Beijing collection.

“Precious Works of the Stone Canal Pavilion” 石渠宝笈 Shiqu Baoji. A vast Qing collection of paintings and calligraphy by emperors and famous artists, divided into categories such as books, paintings, scrolls, and calligraphy.

Hall of Three Rarities Sanxi Tang 三希堂

“Reign behind the curtain” Chuilian tingzheng垂帘听政

Retirement Lodge Juanqin Zhai倦勤斋

Palace of Longevity and Health Shoukang Gong寿康宫

Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City by Adam Brookes. “The gripping true story of the bold and determined museum curators who saved the priceless treasures of China’s Forbidden City in the years leading up to World War II and beyond.”

“Masters in the Forbidden City” Wo zai Gugong xiu wenwu 我在故宫修文物. State media documentary on the ongoing restoration projects of the Forbidden City. Available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw6awYYu_6s

CCTV Follies with Journalist and Author Philip Cunningham

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:39:00 -0500

In this episode, we welcome to the podcast journalist Philip Cunningham, freelance writer for newspapers such as South China Morning Post and Japan Times, and was a former Knight Fellow and Harvard Nieman Fellowship recipient. Philip is currently posting a daily Substack entitled CCTV Follies, which provides a visual chronicle of the daily CCTV evening news report Xinwen Lianbo《新闻联播》, accompanied with running commentary that is illuminating and humorous. Phil talks about the program’s quasi-ritual role in defining the boundaries of political discourse and its overt and subliminal influence on the framing of news stories in the Chinese information environment.

Philip is also the author of the book Tiananmen Moon, a first-hand account of the 1989 protests in Beijing.

When will China re-open its doors for study abroad and educational exchanges?

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 19:15:00 -0500

In this episode, recorded on Jan 13, 2023, Jeremiah in Florida and David in Taiwan touch base and exchange updates on the evolving Covid-19 situation in China and elsewhere. We compare and contrast the foreign media accounts of China’s current Covid struggles with the reports from friends and family within China. David gives an account of his wife’s bout with Covid-19 in Taiwan. We also offer a quick update on the gradual opening of student visas for study in China and provide prognostications on the prospects for restoring academic exchanges with Chinese universities and educational institutions.

One from the Vault: Touring China with Historian Mo Yajun

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 16:10:00 -0500

David and Jeremiah are both traveling this week, and in that spirit, we offer a rebroadcast of one of our favorite episodes from the archives. In this episode from March 2022, we spoke with historian and author Mo Yajun about her book Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912-1949. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

As Covid-19 gradually recedes and China resumes domestic travel, we are pleased to interview Mo Yajun about her book Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912-1949, a fascinating history of the development of China’s travel industry during the Republican period. Professor Mo recounts how early tourism guides and photographic travel journals enabled Chinese people to expand the concept of quanguo 全国 ”the nation as a whole,” providing the public with an enhanced mental image of the vast scope and diversity of their “national space.”

We also hear the story of Chen Guangfu, the father of China’s modern travel industry. He founded the China Travel Service during the tumultuous warlord period, partially responding to the hegemony of foreign travel services, which treated Chinese tourists as second-class citizens. Other topics covered include the issue of class in the tourism environment of semi-colonial China, cultural clashes with well-funded foreign researchers who traveled to historical sites such as the Dunhuang caves to study – and often purloin -- cultural relics, and the effect of the new technology of the personal camera on the perception, promotion and imagining of China’s historical sites.

Notes from the Medical Tent: Beijing Learns to Live with COVID

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 17:57:25 -0500

In an abrupt reversal, On December 7, China announced a rollback of most of its most draconian anti-COVID-19 restrictions, including limiting lockdowns, mass testing, and health app requirements for public transportation. About that same time – it had to happen sooner or later – Jeremiah caught COVID-19. In this episode, we talk about what it's like to deal with the virus at this historic juncture, joined by our frequent guest Zhang Yajun – who also has COVID-19. In addition to the first-hand experiences of Jeremiah and Yajun, we also discuss the possible consequences of the explosion of cases, the public uncertainty and anxiety about the reversal, and the motivations of the Chinese government in making this sudden change from the "zero-COVID" policy to a ZERO "COVID policy."

Zhang Yajun is an executive living and working in Beijing and co-host of the WǑMEN PODCAST, an English podcast featuring Chinese people's daily lives from a female perspective.

Standing Up to Zero COVID: The View from Beijing

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 21:09:43 -0500

This episode of BATG provides a “time stamp” and an initial reaction to protests in several major Chinese cities on November 26 and 27, events that are still developing at the time of this recording. After a week of growing frustration over renewed lockdowns amid a spike in Covid cases, and increasing anger over the death of 10 people in a fire in Urumqi, Chinese citizens took to the streets in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, and other cities to protest the continuing disruptive effects of the “zero Covid” policy. Expressions of rage and disillusionment expanded from complaints about the mishandling of the epidemic to furious calls for Xi Jinping to step down.

We cover questions such as: What factors triggered these protests? Will the protests continue after this tumultuous weekend? What will the government’s next move be? Will the public dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the epidemic lead to a collapse in public support for the Party and an undermining of the implicit “performance legitimacy” justification that has been the basis for CCP state control?

For those interested in following the protests and the response, we highly recommend the Chinese Twitter feed 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele).

Lockdowns, Legacies, and Looking Back with Journalist Melinda Liu

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 21:22:29 -0500

In this week’s podcast, we are delighted and honored to talk to Melinda Liu, legendary journalist and long-time observer of post-Mao China. In addition to her long-time stint as Beijing Bureau Chief for Newsweek, Melinda has also covered the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the 1991 liberation of Kuwait, and the fall of Saddam Hussein. The conversation begins with updates on China’s “zero Covid” strategy against a backdrop of a new set of lockdowns in Beijing. Melinda then provides a journalist’s overview of the evolving censorship mechanism in China since Deng’s reforms, tracing the periods of relative openness and transparency and the increasing totalistic information control paradigm in the new era. Melinda also recounts the fascinating story of her father’s involvement during WWII as translator and go-between for the Doolittle Raiders, the small group of American pilots who conducted a bombing raid in Tokyo and were forced to land in an occupied area of China.

Back to the Land: Author Alec Ash on escaping to Dali, rural retreats, and a return to England

Barbarians at the Gate — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 05:15:00 -0400

In this week’s episode, we catch up with our old friend Alec Ash, writer, journalist, and author of the Wish Lanterns, a portrait of six diverse members of China’s “post-80s” generation. Having resided in Beijing since 2008, Alec migrated to the mountain valley of Dali in Yunnan province in 2019, where he encountered other like-minded Chinese and ex-pats who had fled the big cities for the relative tranquility of the Chinese countryside. His experiences in Yunnan became his latest book project, which depicts the aspirations and lifestyles of this diverse group of migrants. The podcast conversation covers the results of the recent 20th Party Congress, the evolution of Beijing under Xi Jinping, and China’s ongoing Covid-19 policy (what else?).

CoCo19 and the Quarantines: The Scene from Beijing

Barbarians at the Gate — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 20:58:00 -0400

Post-Covid China border closings, the expulsion of western journalists, and suspensions of academic exchanges have resulted in a woeful lack of foreign “eyes on the ground” to provide updates and insights into the current situation in China. While the like-minded community of foreign journalists and China watchers often constitutes an insular community whose reportage devolves into group-think and fixed narratives, the presence of knowledgeable China-based reporters and researchers is essential for dispelling the Twitter-fed misinformation and hackneyed western media tropes. In addition to the podcast’s perennial topic of the “information asymmetry” between China and the US, Jeremiah and David also touch upon current Covid-19 restrictions on the eve of the 20th National Party Conference and the thorny question of whether or not foreigners should agree to appear as commentators on Chinese state media.

Beijing Calling Taipei

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:49:15 -0400

In this episode, David phones in from Taiwan to share some of his impressions of the current mood of the beleaguered island. The discussion touches on the recent visit of Nancy Pelosi, how the Taiwan people cope with their geopolitical plight, how the Taiwan health authorities have handled the COVID-19 crisis, the lack of Taiwanese voices in both Mainland and Western media, the influence of mainland China pop culture and media in Taiwan social life, Taiwan food culture, and the evolving ethnic self-identity of the younger generation of Taiwanese.

The Destruction of Yuanmingyuan (One from the Vault)

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 23:03:25 -0400

David and Jeremiah are on vacation this month, which means, like the days of summer TV (pre-Internet and pre-InfiniteStreamingNetflixVerse), we are replaying one of our favorite earlier episodes. We hope you enjoy this one from the vault, and we'll be back with fresh episodes later this month.

This episode was originally posted on October 26, 2020.

The razed remnants of the glorious gardens have been left in place by the Chinese government as an outdoor museum of China's "Century of Humiliation" at the hands of the foreign powers. On the 160th anniversary of the destruction of Yuanmingyuan, Jeremiah and David discuss the political and cultural clashes that led to the action, the significance of the incident for China's national self-image, and the government's attempts to repatriate the massive amounts of looted artifacts found scattered among the museums of Europe and the West. The conversation also explores the changing symbolic significance of the ruins in the context of a rejuvenated and economically powerful China.

It's a Matter of Trust: Social and Political Confidence in the United States and the PRC

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 20:33:40 -0400

with special guest Zhang Yajun of the WOMEN podcast

Writing about China for the World

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 03:04:00 -0400

This week we talk with Hatty Liu, Managing Editor of The World of Chinese. This bi-monthly magazine explores all aspects of Chinese culture and society, providing vivid storytelling accounts of the experiences of Chinese people from all walks of life. We discuss the publication’s editorial mission and target audience and the challenges of conveying complex Chinese social issues in an accessible way to foreign readers. Whether it be topics of consent culture, Chinese UFO hunters, or the plight of migrant workers under the Covid-19 restrictions, Hatty and her multicultural writing staff are bringing to light fascinating glimpses of Chinese life that are seldom featured in the mainstream press.

Teaching Values: Ideology and Education in China with Jiang Xueqin

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 06:03:00 -0400

Contrary to the common stereotype that Chinese education is regimented and mired in tradition, the education system in China is actually one of the most dynamic sectors of Chinese society, with core aspects such as the gaokao college entrance exam constantly in flux. On the podcast this week to discuss the evolution of Chinese education is Jiang Xueqin, an educational consultant who has worked with schools throughout China to promote the ideas of creativity and critical thinking skills.

Jiang’s articles have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Chronicle of Higher Education.

Pride, Politics, and Pandemics: Understanding China's Nationalism with Peter Gries

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 17 May 2022 05:24:37 -0400

What do we know about Chinese nationalism? Do nationalistic sentiments manifest differently among different demographic groups, as is often the case in Western democratic countries? What kinds of global situations can provoke bouts of nationalism? And to what extent does grassroots nationalism influence China’s foreign policy? We explore these questions with this week’s guest, Peter Gries, Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Manchester, and the Lee Kai Hung Chair of the Manchester China Institute.

“Nationalism, Social Influences, and Chinese Foreign Policy” in China and the World. Shambaugh, D. (ed.). Oxford University Press, 2021.

China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, University of California Press, 2004.

Peter Hessler. "A Teacher in China Learns the Limits of Free Expression," The New Yorker, May 16, 2022

Lockdown 2: Shacked up in Shanghai

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 11:08:00 -0400

No sooner had Jeremiah’s lockdown experience come to an end when Shanghai announced plans to shut down the entire city as cases of the Omicron variant skyrocketed. Now entering its third week, Shanghai’s historic citywide lockdown has imposed unprecedented restrictions and sacrifices on its 25 million people.

Among the hapless homebound residents was our longtime friend and colleague, Andrew Field, who – unfortunately for him -- had plenty of free time to talk with us about his experiences during these turbulent few weeks. Andrew reports from the nearby suburb of Kunshan on the mood of residents in and around Shanghai (spoiler: it’s foul), the administrative and policy fiascos of the city government, and his ways of coping during the shutdown (Andrew has left us a special musical treat at the end of the episode).

Andrew Field is Associate Professor of Chinese History at Duke Kunshan University and the author of three books, including Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics 1919-1954. Andy is also a documentary filmmaker, having produced several films exploring China’s underground rock scene and the world of Shanghai jazz. We’ve wanted to get Andrew on the podcast for some time and will definitely invite him back on soon to discuss other topics – hopefully maskless and in the same room.

Andrew Field’s blog Shanghai Sojourns

http://shanghaisojourns.net/

Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics 1919-1954

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/shanghais-dancing-world/9789629964481

Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (with James Farrer)

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo20298865.html

Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo37857676.html

Locked Down in Beijing!

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 20:26:13 -0400

Jeremiah and David discuss the current COVID-19 situation in China along with special guest Zhang Yajun (Wo Men Podcast). Jeremiah and Yajun have been confined to their apartment complex for (as of taping) 13 days after one of their neighbors tested positive for COVID-19. Jeremiah, David, and Yajun share stories of living with the current outbreak, how other folks are handling the situation, the response by local officials, and where China's Zero COVID policy goes from here.

Touring China with Professor Mo Yajun

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 05:06:59 -0400

Communication Breakdown: Asymmetry, Decoupling, and the Information Deficit affecting China and the World

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 03:22:02 -0500

with special guest host Yajun Zhang of the Wo Men Podcast

Sporting Superpower: China's Olympic Dreams

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 03:16:49 -0500

On the cusp of the Chinese New Year and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Jeremiah and David record an Olympian episode of the podcast. The guest is Mark Dreyer, a veteran sports reporter, who has just released his new book, Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best. Mark has worked for Sky Sports, Fox Sports, AP Sports, and many other outlets and currently hosts the China Sports Insider Podcast. The conversation covers issues such as the historical importance of the 2008 Olympics, challenges of Covid-19 in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese model of recruiting and training Olympic athletes, the PR disasters of Chinese athletes due to lack of media savvy, the quest for a world-class Chinese soccer/football team, and the nexus of geopolitics, economics and soft power in China’s Olympic endeavors.

Dreyer also recounts many fascinating and telling anecdotes from his many years of interviewing athletes and covering Chinese sporting events.

Other books and clips mentioned:

Susan Brownell (1995) Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic

Mao Zedong (1917) "A Study in Physical Education"

Yao Ming, "You can't f------ stop me" Video

From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resistance

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 02:20:00 -0500

In this week’s episode, we talk with Jean Hoffmann Lewanda about her father Paul Hoffmann’s memoir, Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience, recently published by Earnshaw Books.

Paul Hoffmann left Vienna at the age of 18 to escape the rise of Nazism, arrived in Shanghai in 1938, and became a part of the historic stream of Jewish refugees who found a haven in China during WWII. His memoirs describe the harsh living conditions in the Hongkou Ghetto during the Japanese occupation and the lifestyles of the multicultural, multinational community in Shanghai.

Paul eked out a living teaching English and mathematics while obtaining a law degree from Aurora University (currently Fudan University). He worked for the American lawyer Norwood Allman (who was secretly the US spy chief in China). Paul remained in China during the communist takeover in 1949, managing the dissolution of his law firm, and witnessed firsthand the harassment, imprisonment, and expulsions to which the foreign community was subjected.

After rediscovering her father’s memoirs, Jean Hoffmann Lewanda edited the text, weaving in the various photographs and documents Paul left behind. The result is Witness to History, a gripping and sometimes harrowing memoir of a man who was caught up in the tides of one of the most tumultuous periods in history and lived to tell the story.

Mandarin Mayhem III: The Cantonese Conundrum

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 18:08:34 -0500

In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk with James Griffiths, Asia Correspondent for the Globe and Mail, about his new book Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language. This podcast can be considered the third installment of a trilogy of Barbarian at the Gate episodes that deal with the politics of language and dialects in China (see the links to the earlier podcasts below). Our previous guest Gina Anne Tam aptly sums up Griffiths’ research topic in her dustjacket review of the book:

“Speak Not is a beautifully narrated and intensely smart global history of how languages are destroyed. From Hong Kong to Wales, Hawaii to South Africa, Griffiths artfully guides us through intimate stories of people fighting over decades, often in vain, to protect their linguistic heritage and identities, stories that, when taken together, reveal an oft-unexplored aspect of the ‘disasters wrought’ by colonialism, nationalism, and global inequality.”

In addition to insights from the revitalization of Welsh, one of Griffiths’ native tongues, the podcast delves deeply into the recent plight of Cantonese in Hong Kong and the mainland minority languages of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia.

Links to:

“Mandarin Mayhem” April 10, 2020

“Mandarin Mayhem, Part II: Dialect and Nationalism in China” June 02, 2020

The Great Firewall of China

“A residential school system in China is stripping Tibetan children of their languages and culture, report claims” The Globe and Mail December 7, 2021

David Moser, A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language (Penguin, 2016)

Studying China in the 21st Century (What Everybody Needs to Know) with special guest Maura Cunningham

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:20:56 -0500

In this episode, David and Jeremiah talk to veteran China scholar Maura Cunningham about the perils and possibilities of researching China in the "New Era."

"Yellow Jazz, Black Music" with Marketus Presswood

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 20:04:15 -0400

with historian and filmmaker Marketus Presswood

China Tripping

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 06:16:00 -0400

In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk about the foreign experience of travel in China, drawing upon their personal experiences over the years as explorers, educators, and tour guides. The two trade accounts of the rapid expansion of China’s travel industry in decades after Reform and Opening, the occasional brushes with anti-foreign sentiment, and the exploding domestic luxury travel market as the economy booms and overseas travel has been restricted. The discussion also turns to the new post-Covid-19 reality of quarantines, vaccination records, and issues with the ubiquitous health-record apps that have become mandatory additions to everyone’s mobile phone. The podcast concludes with cautious prognostications about the upcoming Olympics, vaccination passports, and the future of foreigners traveling, studying, and working in China.

David also recommends the excellent new documentary about jazz and jazz-age Shanghai by Marketus Presswood, Yellow Jazz, Black Music now streaming on Vimeo.

Elegy for the Eighties

Barbarians at the Gate — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 06:17:58 -0400

In this episode (taped on the eve of June 4th), Jeremiah and David examine the zeitgeist of China in the 1980s through the lens of the historic 1988 documentary River Elegy《河殇》. The six-part documentary was a scathing critique of Chinese traditional culture and political philosophy, portraying hallowed icons such as the Great Wall and the Yellow River as morally repugnant symbols of barbarism and cultural self-deception. The TV series also touched upon previously taboo topics such as Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The documentary was highly controversial at the time yet was widely disseminated in State media such as the People's Daily, giving rise to an astonishingly frank public debate about the fate of China and the need for economic and political liberalization. The documentary was banned after 1989 but remains a cultural time capsule of the decade's relatively open political discourse. The podcast discussion examines the contentious intellectual currents of the 1980s and poses some counterfactual questions about how China's reforms might have progressed if the free-thinking trajectory of River Elegy had continued to exert an influence.

Link to a segment of River Elegy on YouTube

Moser, David, "Thoughts on River Elegy, June 1988-June 2011" (2011). The China Beat Blog Archive 2008-2012. 904.

Talking the Line between Culture Shock and Racism

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 14 May 2021 04:06:26 -0400

In this episode, we host Ruth Poulsen, Director of Curriculum and Assessment at the International School of Beijing and author of a recent article in The American Educator entitled "What's the Line between Culture Shock and Racism?" Ruth is a long-term ex-pat, having spent much of her childhood and adult life in various countries in the Middle East and Asia. In the interview, Ruth shares her cross-cultural insights gained from her years working with teachers and students living abroad and offers some strategies for coping with cultural shock, cultural misunderstandings, and negative stereotypes. Those new to the podcast might want to check out an earlier episode with Lenora Chu, which examined cross-cultural differences in the Chinese and American education systems.

Jeremiah and David Have Got No Class

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:54:27 -0400

8.7.3

Chinese Funny Business

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 02:33:00 -0500

8.5.7

A Long Walk across an Expanding Beijing

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 17:17:07 -0500

8.5.5

Beijing Remixed

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 01:43:54 -0500

8.5.5

The Destruction of the Yuanmingyuan

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 03:23:21 -0400

8.5.2

China's New Youth

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 04:04:45 -0400

8.4.3

Raising Little Soldiers: Education in China, Part II

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 03:52:15 -0400

Following on the previous BATG episode about the Chinese education system, in this installment, Jeremiah and David are pleased to continue this discussion with award-winning journalist and author Lenora Chu. Lenora is the author of Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School and the Global Race to Achieve, a melding of memoir and journalism that brings to light the enormous cultural differences between the Chinese and American education systems. In recounting the sometimes traumatic adjustments of her young son to the academic environment of an elite Shanghai elementary school, Chu explores the complex web of social conditioning and parental cooperation that results in the high-achieving “little soldiers” in the Chinese system and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the East and West educational models. The conversation also touches on the gaokao, the controversial college entrance exam, the supposed “creativity gap” in the Chinese model, and the similarities in the phenomenon of “helicopter parents” in the two cultures. As a commentator, Chu has appeared on NPR, CBS, BBC, and the CBC, and her articles and op-eds have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Cut, and Business Insider, among others.

8.1.2

Xi Don't Need No Education: Education in China, Part I

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:30:00 -0400

In this episode, Jeremiah and David delve into the Chinese education system, focusing on the evolution of China’s universities. Starting with Trump’s recent ill-advised (and quickly rescinded) executive order to cancel the F-1 visas of a substantial number of 370,000 Chinese students studying in the US, the discussion moves to China’s multi-billion-dollar effort to enhance the soft power attraction of its universities by building world-class research institutes and recruiting top foreign academic talent. The Chinese education system is in a state of constant flux. The podcast explores China’s experimentation with new education formats, the ongoing revisions to the gaokao college entrance examination, and the so-called “creativity problem” of the Chinese educational tradition.

8.0.3

Are We Welcome Here, Part II

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 04:42:34 -0400

In this episode Jeremiah and David are pleased to talk with veteran New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson. Ian is one of our most prolific and wide-ranging China writers, over the last decades amassing a vast catalogue of articles covering Chinese politics, religion, language, history and media. His most recent book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao is a fascinating in-depth account of the resurgence of religious activity in the PRC. Ian is one of several veteran Beijing-based journalists who were expelled from China on March 17 of this year, a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration cancelling the visas for dozens of Chinese journalists working in the US. On the podcast we discuss the challenges faced by China scholars and reporters in continuing to carry out research and reporting in the PRC under the new quasi-Cold War environment. We also catch up with events in Ian’s life, including the arrival of his new-born son, and his future writing projects.

8.0.1

Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 21:15:57 -0400

Champions Day in the city of Shanghai, November 1941. The world was at war but the clubhouse at the Shanghai Race Club (now People's Park) was packed with owners and punters cheering on the pony. The funeral of Shanghai's richest widow, Liza Hardoon, was a spectacle which filled the streets of the International Settlement. Japanese occupiers and their Chinese collaborators came together in a bizarre ritual celebrated the birthday of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. The opening of a new movie featuring, of all subjects, Charlie Chan, had folks lining up at the box office of the local cinema. The world had changed but the "Lone Island" of Shanghai persisted, as it had since becoming a treaty port a century earlier.

Historian James Carter's fascinating new book Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai brings to life the vivid tableau of an era coming to an end. By the end of the year, Japanese authorities would take control of Shanghai and the city would never again be the same. What did the end of the colonial era mean for Shanghai and its residents? Why were race tracks such powerful symbols?

Professor Carter joins us as we discuss the history of horse racing, colonialism, and the last days of Old Shanghai.

7.0.3

Mandarin Mayhem, Part II: Dialect and Nationalism in China

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 03:46:45 -0400

Barbarians at the Gate returns to that ever-relevant and contentious topic, language reform in China and the fate of fangyan, the various local speech forms referred to as “dialects.”

Joining us on the podcast is Gina Anne Tam, Assistant Professor in History at Trinity University, and the author of the recent book Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960. Picking up the threads of the recent podcast “Mandarin Mayhem”, we explore with Gina issues such as the central role of language unification in the task of nation building; the tension between the goal of national unity and preserving China’s rich cultural diversity as manifested in fangyan; the future survival of the many local speech forms in the face of China’s ongoing national Putonghua promotion policy; and even a brief discussion of Chengdu rappers and the sociological implications of Sichuan dialect rap.

7.0.3

Neither boxers nor a rebellion...Discuss!

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 18 May 2020 02:26:56 -0400

Jeremiah and David welcome historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom to the show. Jeff is Chancellor's Professor of History at the UC Irvine, and is not only a prolific academic scholar, but also one of the most sought after China analysts appearing on mainstream news media outlets such as BBC and NPR. His most recent book, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, documents the recent political unrest in Hong Kong, putting the movement into historical context. On today’s show, we delve into Jeff’s current project, which is a reevaluation of the Boxer War of 1899-1901. The conversation draws parallels between the xenophobia and anti-foreign sentiment in China during the Boxer incident and thenationalistic and racial divisions between China and the West engendered by the Coronavirus crisis.

-----

Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Cunningham, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know

Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn, Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn

Zi Zhongyun, "Viral Alarm" (translated by Geremie R. Barmé)

7.0.1

Politics, Patio Furniture, and China History Pods

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 01 May 2020 04:00:55 -0400

Jeremiah and David catch up with China hand and old friend Laszlo Montgomery, who is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the China History Podcast. Laszlo describes the evolution of the podcast, how he chooses and researches the topics, and his current project on the history of Xinjiang. The trio also retrace the course of the US-China trade relation via Laszlo's first-hand experience with the "Made in China" supply chains, the Chinese manufacturers of the cheap products that have lined the shelves of the big box retailers such as Wal-mart for the past 30 years. The discussion concludes with a diagnosis and prognosis of Covid-19's impact on the US-China relation, some lamenting and gnashing of teeth about the recent deterioration of the bilateral relationship, but also some cause for optimism with the rise of a new generation of dedicated China hands.

6.9.1

Mandarin Mayhem

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 06:41:10 -0400

In this episode, we look at Putonghua, the spoken language most people refer to as Mandarin. David wrote a book in 2016 on the evolution of Putonghua in China and we discuss his research and the recent controversy over the app Douyin penalizing users who post videos in other Chinese languages, especially Cantonese. What's the point of Putonghua? What is a dialect and what is a language in China? And what's the difference between Mandarin in the Qing Dynasty, Guoyu in the Republican Period, and Putonghua in the PRC? We also get an assist from Zhang Yajun, host of the Wo Men Podcast on Radii China, who talks with David about the differences between the spoken language of Northern China, especially around Beijing, and "Standard" Putonghua.

It's not just for Chinese speakers or students as we also tackle some tricky questions of competing national and regional identities in Chinese history.

Recommendations:

Gina Anne Tam, Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

David Moser, A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language (Penguin, 2016)

6.9.0

Are we still welcome here?

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 04:13:00 -0400

China has a long history of inviting barbarians in when useful, trying to civilize them, and then kicking them out when those barbarians prove difficult to domesticate.

As US-China relations sink to a new low and both powers seem obsessed with scoring propaganda points in the middle of global pandemic, Jeremiah and David discuss their lives in Beijing and what the future might hold for those folks living, writing, and working in China.

First, David looks back at the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of the foreign celebrity and how access has changed for researchers in the PRC. Jeremiah and David then reflect on their time as teachers here working with international university students studying in Beijing and discuss the closing of the remaining pockets of relative academic freedom that once existed. Finally, as the Chinese government expels foreign journalists and some stores and bars in China literally have closed their doors to foreigners, Jeremiah and David ask: Are we still welcome here?

Ps. We're still getting the hang of taping from two different locations. At about 20 minutes or so, Jeremiah's mic levels jump a few decibels. You may want to turn down the volume at that point. We'll get this right eventually.

6.8.0

The Language and History of Public Health in China

Barbarians at the Gate — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:56:00 -0400

The outbreak of Covid-19 has drawn attention to public health in China and around the world. In the early stages, there was considerable criticism of China's initial handling of the outbreak. This criticism drew an emotional response in China. In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser look at the intimate link in Chinese history between public health, hygiene, and modernity. Note: In the podcast, we mention China's expulsion of Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin, Chao Deng, and Philip Wen. Since we taped the podcast, the situation has escalated and last week the government pulled the press cards of all US citizens working as reporters in China for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. Local employees at those bureaus have also been pressured to leave their jobs. We don’t mention those events here, but we will be discussing the situation on an upcoming podcast. Here are links to some of the articles, books, and websites mentioned during the podcast: Walter Russell Mead, China is the Sick Man of Asia, Wall Street Journal (February 3, 2020) Jeremiah Jenne, Empires of Disease: Why the Coronavirus is an emotional issue for China and the World, Radii China (February 10, 2020) Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (2004) Mao Zedong, “A Study of Physical Education” (New Youth xin qingnian, 1917) Karl Taro Greenfeld, China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic (2009) Chinese Propaganda Posters website Poster: "Everybody must take precautions against epidemics" (1952)

Poster: "Less births, better births, to develop China vigorously" (1987) 6.8.0

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Yaqub Beg and the Provincializing of Western China

Barbarians at the Gate — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:42:36 -0400

Jeremiah and James look at the life and times of Yaqub Beg (1820-1877) and what his legacy means for Beijing's relationship with Western China and Central Asia today.

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: China’s territorial claims on the rocks in the South China Sea

Barbarians at the Gate — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:20:13 -0400

On Tuesday, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled that China’s attempts to claim almost the entire South China Sea as sovereign territory had no legal basis.

In a special emergency podcast, Jeremiah and James talk about the implications of the decision at the Hague, the reaction here in Beijing, and the use (and abuses) of history in establishing contemporary territorial claims.

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Keeping up with the Khitans

Barbarians at the Gate — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 06:36:46 -0400

In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, James and Jeremiah discuss the history of the Khitans, their empire and their legacy with a little help from the Godfather Trilogy and Dragon Barbie from Game of Thrones.

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: A couple of characters talking about Chinese characters

Barbarians at the Gate — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 20:25:50 -0400

David Moser (Beijing Capital Normal University, Sinica Podcast) and Brendan O'Kane (Paper Republic, University of Pennsylvania) join Jeremiah to discuss David's new book, A Billion Voices, the history of language reform and national unity in China, the best way to learn Chinese, and the debate over whether it's okay to hate on Chinese characters.

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: The An Lushan Rebellion

Barbarians at the Gate — Fri, 27 May 2016 20:35:09 -0400

Our inaugural episode looks at An Lushan: the outsider who charmed his way into the court of the Tang Dynasty in the eighth century and who almost succeeded in bringing down the empire. It’s a story made for imperial slash fic: The aging emperor, his rotund but sexy concubine, and the foreigner who came between them.