How and Why to Learn Classical Chinese
Recently, a friend asked me how to go about teaching himself classical Chinese. He works for the U.S. State Department and speaks Mandarin very well, but now he wants to […]
Recently, a friend asked me how to go about teaching himself classical Chinese. He works for the U.S. State Department and speaks Mandarin very well, but now he wants to […]
Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla recently published an essay in Medium titled “Is majoring in liberal arts a mistake for students?” He posits that understanding technology, coding, and statistics are more […]
I was very excited to be able to present some of my recent research at a conference on Dunhuang Manuscripts. I received a lot of excellent feedback and suggestions from […]
At Language Log, Victor Mair answers another one of my questions on Chinese linguistics, this one about an advertisement combining Mandarin and Cantonese. Check out the post here.
In A Portrait of Five Dynasties China, Glen Dudbridge translates and comments on dozens of brief memoirs written by Wáng Rényù 王仁裕 (880-956). Among them are this vivid account of a […]
I came up with this one around 10 pm last night. -Knock knock. -Who’s there? -不在 -不在 who Happy year of the snake!
Anyone who’s happened upon this blog will notice that I devote a large amount of space to analyzing the works of Stephen Owen. You may also notice that much of […]
Yesterday, I came across a project I had long forgotten about. In the summer of 2006, between my junior and senior years at Calvin College, I earned a fellowship that […]
Book Review The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan by George Steiner George Steiner is a syncretist in the best sense of the word. Like Fredric Jameson, his main powers […]
To the prolific English writer G. K. Chesterton, China was beyond comprehension. Take this passage from The Everlasting Man (1925) for example: Far away to the east there is a high civilisation of […]