Trump's re-election disappointed many in the U.S. and abroad. To help them process, Jeremiah and David talk with literary translator and Pennsylvania voter Brendan O’Kane about Zhang Dai, the Ming-Qing transition, and living through an age of upheaval.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom joins Barbarians at the Gate to discuss the legacy of the Hong Kong protests, Xi Jinping’s patriotic education law, and how Beijing’s control over historical narratives is reshaping academic engagement with China.
How China transitioned from imperial rule to Chinese Socialism and all about the key characters whose opposing visions for China's future created so much chaos along the way.
A supernatural crisis pits an anxious autocrat against his own functionaries when a hunt for soul-stealing sorcerers turns into a political witch-hunt among 18th-century China’s “deep state.”
In this episode of Barbarians at the Gates, Edward Wong of the New York Times joins David and me to discuss Ed's new book, At the Edge of Empire. We discuss frontiers, what the Qing Dynasty means for China, and the different generational perspectives on China's recent past.
As ships sank and the sea off the coast of Guangdong filled with corpses, the Mongol ships approached the vessel carrying Zhao Shi and his court. According to legend, rather than hand the boy over to the enemy, Lu Xiufu, a prime minister in Zhao Shi’s court, grabbed the young ruler and jumped into the sea drowning them both.
In 2015, The Guardian reported the Pearl River Delta region had overtaken Tokyo to become the world’s largest urban area in both geographic size and population. To find out what that looks like at ground level, I would walk 100 km from Guangzhou East Train Station to Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport.
