http://www.froginawell.net/china The China History Group Blog Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:11:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As someone who is a member of an academic department and of two University-wide committees I think a lot about bureaucracy. Since I am teaching Modern China this semester I am also thinking about the history of bureaucracy. Actually, I’m not sure it -has- a history, since the basic principles seem to be timeless and [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/02/life-imitates-the-office/ Slate has a piece up on the Asian-ization of Western classical music. It’s more historically informed than you might think for a Slate piece, although it seems to be lurking in the author’s mind that Classical Music is a universal component of Western Culture. In fact  a lot of it was created for the aristocracy, [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/02/from-all-the-junks-the-one-i-need-more-is-music/ Ho-fung Hong has an interesting post up on the Wukan protests and the history of popular protest in Imperial China.1 While in the Western media protests like Wukun are usually presented as signs of the impending crack-up of China, Hong argues, correctly I think, that they need to be read as part of the history [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/01/wukan-as-history/ This week you run across dragons just about everywhere. President Obama welcomed the Year of the Dragon from the White House (here), while Paul French did likewise from his lively blog,  China Rhyming:  Welcome to the Year of the Dragon.  He has a particularly cool dragon from the cover of his real life murder mystery, [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/01/dragons-dragons-everywhere-but-they-dont-shake-the-world/ There is something of a tradition here of posting draft syllabi and asking for advice. It’s too late for advice to do me any good (although criticism always helps) So here is what I am doing for Modern China this semester.]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/01/syllabus-blogging/ The Year of the Dragon is upon us – should we be afraid? Around the English speaking world, magazine covers and editorial writers rely on the dragon as a colorful shorthand for “China”:  “the dragon is coming,” the “dragon is waking,” or  “the eagle and the dragon.” In the PRC, Xinhua, the official news agency, [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/01/dragons-in-the-news-is-a-long-a-dragon/ My local paper ran an editorial (version here) by Rich Lowry which gave readers more Qing dynasty history than they normally get.  As an American conservative his main point in the piece is that Europe is at last on the brink of collapse due to excessive state spending, just as the Lowrys of the world [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2011/11/the-good-old-days-of-empire/ I just got an e-mail asking me to subscribe to The Current Digest of the Chinese Press. Given the prices I don’t think I will, but you might want to consider it, as the free sample issue is pretty good. I would not mind it if they included the Chinese text, or at least proper [...]]]> http://www.froginawell.net/china/2011/10/those-who-keep-remembering-the-past/