New Year’s holiday greetings and a night visit to the Old Town, the Bund, and Nanjing Road

Some reflections on the challenge of changing from a quantity-obsessed nation to one more focused on quality—quality of products, quality of life, quality of education etc.—while also having to deal with increased inequality in Chinese society. Partly inspired by our new book Polarized Cities.

Ten most popular blogs on shanghai sojourns by popular vote

I just completed Thoreau’s bio on the last day of 2018. One of the many revelations I gained from reading this wonderful biography Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls (2017) is what an amazing scientist he was and how keen were his powers of observation and analysis of the natural world. I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise—after all, this is the man who famously spent a year or more living in a cabin in the woods on the edge of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. And yet I’d been used to thinking of him more as a political philosopher and “transcendendalist” than a scientist.

 I promised myself that by year’s end I'd finish the massive bio of Brahms by Jan Swafford (Johannes Brahms, a Biography, Vintage Books, 1997), which I've been reading all year with great enjoyment. It's been slow going, since it’s such a huge compendium of knowledge and information about the life and times of Johannes Brahms and his many friends, colleagues, and relations over a long lifetime of music-making. Also, every time Swafford goes into an analysis of the music Brahms was composing during different periods of his life, which is often, I find myself stopping to listen to the works he's describing. 

An account of a recent trip to Luang Prabang in Laos where I attended a conference on service learning, mixed cement in a remote mountain village, and toured the temples of this UNESCO World Heritage site.

Some tips for urban travelers who want to get the most of the city they are visiting, from a Shanghai flaneur in Barcelona (kinda like an Englishman in New York)

A recounting of a week long trip to Barcelona for the first time, told by a Shanghai flaneur in the second person.

As the director of our new study abroad office at Duke Kunshan University, it was my honor and privilege to participate in the CIEE annual conference held this year from November 7-10 in Barcelona. It was also a great pleasure to visit this wonderful city for the first time (which I will write up in another entry to follow). The focus of the CIEE conference was on “educating global citizens in the digital age” and the conference included many insightful presentations and panels on a wide range of topics relating to the central theme.

Some musings on where Asia begins and ends, where is the center and what are the peripheries, and where does Southeast Asia fit in? With some reflections on my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore

Recounting the Duke Kunshan Cultural Crossroads Festival of August 2018

Occasionally a friend posts something online that is too good not to include in my blog roll. In this case, it's my former colleague in the UNSW School of History, Dr. Geoff Nathan, who posted a long piece on Facebook today listing his top 50 sci-fi films.

A review of the Radiohead and Thomas Dolby concert events in the Boston area in August 2018, along with some notes on the progress of my jazz and blues doc.

Some notes on the man who taught us to love 80s synth music

Notes from a conference trip to Tokyo and catching up with old friends in Nishiogi and Kamakura

A supreme indulgence: my childhood through the soundtrack of The Beatles

A plea to people to support my work—not through donations, but by buying and reading and reviewing my books and articles! (every academic dreams of a wider audience than we normally get)

A Q&A with writer Paul French about his latest book, City of Devils, a dark and delightful reconstruction of the city’s nocturnal side in its golden years

A mixed review of the new history museum, which starts out promising and ends with something left to be desired