Last Friday the publisher sent me ten copies of my new book. It feels good to finally hold it in my hands.
Read MoreLast night I attended a screening of an independent documentary film. Held at the Apartment, a bar-restaurant on Yongfu Road in Shanghai, the event was organized by the Royal Asiatic Society's Shanghai branch. The film is called The Poseidon Project. It tells the story of a British submarine that sank off the coast of Shandong Province near the town of Weihaiwei in 1931, and the efforts of an American journalist and scuba diver based in Beijing named Stephen Schwankert to learn about the fate of the submarine and its occupants. The locally based British filmmaking team of Arthur and Luther Jones produced and directed the film. The film is 82 minutes long.
Read MoreI listen to podcasts frequently, especially when I am traveling or commuting back and forth to work. Since I joined a business school as Associate Dean, my listening habits have changed somewhat. Here are my current top picks:
Read MoreRecently I was asked to participate in two radio programs produced by the BBC. The first program focuses on the history of Shanghai and the connections between the contemporary city and its colonial-era legacy. Naturally this is a subject that is right up my alley, so I was happy to be a part of the show.
Read MoreNotes on the Wang Xieda exhibition at James Cohan Gallery Shanghai
Read MoreSome words on the poetry of Chen Gongbo, former Mayor of Shanghai and Nationalist Government Ministry of Industry, who joined the Dark Side of pro-Japanese collaboration in the 1940s.
Read MoreA trip with my daughter to the Minsheng Museum to see the history of video art in China
Read MoreA congratulatory message to author Peter Hessler, who now covers news in Cairo for the New Yorker Magazine.
Read MoreI just watched a great film on that very subject, the Banksy documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" about the underground filmmaker Thierry Guetta (if you can call him that--film collector is more accurate) who turned his obsession for filming street artists into a career as a "street artist." I wonder if people who film documentaries about artists aren't themselves aspiring to be the artist in the film. Of course we can all agree that Jia Zhangke is already an accomplished "artist," in that the films he makes have an artistic quality to them.
Read MoreJJ's show opened on Sept 6 and I was there to witness his performance piece called "water". This involved the projection of several historical photos of famous Chinese political figures, including of course Chairman Mao, on a blank wall while JJ used water and a large brush to paint images on the wall. These images faded along with the projections and were then written over or juxtaposed with each other to form a watery impression of recent Chinese history. He used water as a motif throughout the performance, painting waves and also projecting images of waves on the wall along with the historic figures.
Read MoreLast Friday I took my Modern Chinese History students on their first field trip in Shanghai. Originally I meant to start at the Astor House Hotel just north of the Garden Bridge. Yet when we reached the Bund, I made a sudden change in plans and took them to the new Waldorf Astoria instead. We ended up going on an unplanned tour of the Waldorf Astoria, Shanghai's newest elite hotel. Guided by a young 20-year old Chinese hotel clerk, we toured the hotel, taking in the ballroom, library, several fancy restaurants, and the famous Long Bar. Sometimes the best part of these field trips is what happens outside your plans.
Read MoreOn Friday night I attended the release party of the Solitary Bird CD, recorded earlier this year by three musicians in Shanghai, Steve Sweeting, Jeremy Moyer, and Coco Zhao. I've known Coco since the late 1990s when he emerged as one of Shanghai's first Chinese jazz singers. In fact, Coco and his band played at my wedding here in 1999. Since then he has dedicated himself to jazz singing and lyrical composition and has greatly expanded both his repertoire and his skill set as a singer. Jeremy Moyer plays several percussion instruments as well as bowed instruments such as the erhu, and he plays them all very well. In this concert he was playing a coconut fiddle from Taiwan. Steve Sweeting is an American jazz pianist who has been living here in Shanghai for the past five years or so along with his family.
Read MoreA visit to the archive of Mr. Liu Debao, a Shanghainese collector of Mao era films and posters
Read MoreThe other day I had the pleasure to lead a tour of the Heart of the French Concession for a group of around 40 people who comprised the German-Chinese Graduate School of Global Politics in Shanghai. I was expecting a group of Germans and was surprised when the great majority of students in the group were PRC Chinese. I had not given a tour of the Concession to a Chinese audience before. Would they be as interested in the history of this quarter?
Read MoreI'm writing this entry in appreciation of fellow China scholar and Dartmouth alum Victor Mair's analysis posted on the MCLC e-list (see below) of the recent basketball game between the Georgetown Hoyas and Bayi Rockets, which ended in an orgy of violence involving the players and the mostly Chinese audience. It strikes me that the dark reading of this event by some Western media outlets e.g. "Basketball Brawl Symbolized Growing U.S.-China Tensions" goes a bit too far. Mair's analysis, putting the game into context with other similar events, has much greater explanatory value.
Read MoreLast night I returned to the House of Blues and Jazz to catch the band they've currently booked for a three-month stint. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to some of the musicians about their backgrounds and why they came to Shanghai. With a little help from friends, that's what happened.
Read MoreShanghai has a reputation worldwide--or had one at least--as a Jazz Age metropolis. Back in the 1920s and '30s, the city attracted great jazz musicians from all over China, Asia, Europe and the United States who played in dozens of ballrooms and nightclubs around the city. Back in that age, jazz was an integral component of mainstream nightlife in the city, and it was meant for dancing.
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