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 […]
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Is listening to tech entrepreneurs a mistake for students?
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 […]
Dunhuang Presentation II
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 […]
An Awesome Canto-Mandarin Ad, or, 最牛的廣告
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.
A Plague of Locusts in the 940s
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 […]
Bilingual Knock-Knock Joke
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!
Disclaimer: Criticism of Stephen Owen
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 […]
Last Remnants of a Lingering Miltonism
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 […]
The Poetry of Thought
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 […]
G. K. Chesterton on China
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 […]