MATT KIRSCHNER discusses the impact of the DOJ’s China Initiative on Chinese Professors in the U.S. and the mass return of Chinese talent to China. On January 14, 2021 at 6:30am, federal agents stormed the home of Mechanical Engineering Professor Gang Chen at MIT. The agents woke his wife and daughter, handcuffed him and put Chen in jail. What crime could Chen—an esteemed professor who hopes … Continue reading Reverse Brain Drain – U.S. to China
ZILING CHEN discusses her original research into the tradition of funeral mourners in China. Professional wailers, or funeral mourners, are performers paid to present the eulogy at a funeral and lament the deceased through weeping and singing. Surprisingly, this seemingly out-of-no-where career has a history dating back 2000 years to the Han dynasty and is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture. On one hand, wailers … Continue reading Paid to Cry: Chinese Professional Wailers at Funeral
Discover a new translation of the correspondence of author Wang Xiaobo by XINNING SHAO. Translator’s Note For a long time, my most conspicuous quirk was to watch people sleep: a stranger next to me nodding away on a train, a security guard on night shift, hand-on-chin, giving in to exhaustion, a friend snoring on a sofa amidst booming party music. They curl up and soften, … Continue reading The Letters of Wang Xiaobo: A New Translation
AURELIA DOCHNAL considers the conception of foreigners in Tang dynasty China. (Image: Tang-era statue of a foreigner. Wikimedia Commons) The Tang dynasty is commonly known to have been a Chinese golden age, a period of vast wealth, cultural richness, and cosmopolitan cultural exchange in Chinese history. Foreigners visited the empire, shared their religious traditions and traded their goods, lending the Tang great prestige and influence … Continue reading At Legal Crossroads: Tang Law and Foreigners in Seventh-Century Turfan
by Tyler J. Hayward Introduction to the Text Huan Kuan’s (first century BCE) Discourses on Salt and Iron (鹽鐵論Yantie Lun) documents a series of debates held during the Shiyuan era (86-81 BCE) between the Lord Grand Secretary Sang Hongyang and the Ruist literati.[i] These debates, while initially focused on the usefulness of government monopolies in the salt, iron, and alcohol industries, open up into … Continue reading Discourses on Salt and Iron
秋夜雨中 崔致远 (857-900) 秋风唯苦吟，举世少知音。 窗前三更雨，灯前万里心 Rainfall in the Midst of Autumn Choe Chiwon (857-900) Translated by Jonathan Chan in the autumn wind i chant alone. no one on earth knows my voice. before my windows it rains throughout the night. sitting before a lamp, my heart takes a thousand leaps. Choe Chi-won 崔致遠 (857-c. 920) was a Korean philosopher and poet of the late medieval … Continue reading Rainfall in the Midst of Autumn
MATT KIRSCHNER reflects on Chinese-American relations from a historical and personal perspective. Liu Zhengde was seven years old when Japanese soldiers invaded his home in Wuhan, China in 1938. Leaving their belongings behind, Zhengde and his family fled Wuhan for Chongqing—the provisional wartime capital of China. Zhengde’s father worked to support his three children, wife, sister, brother, sister-in-law, mother, and aunt. Together they lived in … Continue reading Flying Tigers: U.S. and China
