Barbarians At The Gate

Jeremiah and David discuss the current COVID-19 situation in China along with special guest Zhang Yajun (Wo Men Podcast). Jeremiah and Yajun have been confined to their apartment complex for (as of taping) 13 days after one of their neighbors tested positive for COVID-19. Jeremiah, David, and Yajun share stories of living with the current outbreak, how other folks are handling the situation, the response by local officials, and where China's Zero COVID policy goes from here.

As Covid-19 gradually recedes and China resumes domestic travel, we are pleased to interview Mo Yajun about her book Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912-1949, a fascinating history of the development of China’s travel industry during the Republican period. Professor Mo recounts how early tourism guides and photographic travel journals enabled Chinese people to expand the concept of quanguo 全国 ”the nation as a whole,” providing the public with an enhanced mental image of the vast scope and diversity of their “national space.” We also hear the story of Chen Guangfu, the father of China’s modern travel industry. He founded the China Travel Service during the tumultuous warlord period, partially responding to the hegemony of foreign travel services, which treated Chinese tourists as second-class citizens. Other topics covered include the issue of class in the tourism environment of semi-colonial China, cultural clashes with well-funded foreign researchers who traveled to historical sites such as the

with special guest host Yajun Zhang of the Wo Men Podcast

On the cusp of the Chinese New Year and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Jeremiah and David record an Olympian episode of the podcast. The guest is Mark Dreyer, a veteran sports reporter, who has just released his new book, Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best. Mark has worked for Sky Sports, Fox Sports, AP Sports, and many other outlets and currently hosts the China Sports Insider Podcast. The conversation covers issues such as the historical importance of the 2008 Olympics, challenges of Covid-19 in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese model of recruiting and training Olympic athletes, the PR disasters of Chinese athletes due to lack of media savvy, the quest for a world-class Chinese soccer/football team, and the nexus of geopolitics, economics and soft power in China’s Olympic endeavors. Dreyer also recounts many fascinating and telling anecdotes from his many years of interviewing athletes and covering Chinese sporting events.Other books and clips mentioned:Su

In this week’s episode, we talk with Jean Hoffmann Lewanda about her father Paul Hoffmann’s memoir, Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience, recently published by Earnshaw Books. Paul Hoffmann left Vienna at the age of 18 to escape the rise of Nazism, arrived in Shanghai in 1938, and became a part of the historic stream of Jewish refugees who found a haven in China during WWII. His memoirs describe the harsh living conditions in the Hongkou Ghetto during the Japanese occupation and the lifestyles of the multicultural, multinational community in Shanghai. Paul eked out a living teaching English and mathematics while obtaining a law degree from Aurora University (currently Fudan University). He worked for the American lawyer Norwood Allman (who was secretly the US spy chief in China). Paul remained in China during the communist takeover in 1949, managing the dissolution of his law firm, and witnessed firsthand the harassment, imprisonment, and expulsions to which

In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk with James Griffiths, Asia Correspondent for the Globe and Mail, about his new book Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language. This podcast can be considered the third installment of a trilogy of Barbarian at the Gate episodes that deal with the politics of language and dialects in China (see the links to the earlier podcasts below). Our previous guest Gina Anne Tam aptly sums up Griffiths’ research topic in her dustjacket review of the book: “Speak Not is a beautifully narrated and intensely smart global history of how languages are destroyed. From Hong Kong to Wales, Hawaii to South Africa, Griffiths artfully guides us through intimate stories of people fighting over decades, often in vain, to protect their linguistic heritage and identities, stories that, when taken together, reveal an oft-unexplored aspect of the ‘disasters wrought’ by colonialism, nationalism, and global inequality.” In addition to insights from the revitalization of Welsh, one of G

In this episode, David and Jeremiah talk to veteran China scholar Maura Cunningham about the perils and possibilities of researching China in the "New Era."

with historian and filmmaker Marketus Presswood

In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk about the foreign experience of travel in China, drawing upon their personal experiences over the years as explorers, educators, and tour guides. The two trade accounts of the rapid expansion of China’s travel industry in decades after Reform and Opening, the occasional brushes with anti-foreign sentiment, and the exploding domestic luxury travel market as the economy booms and overseas travel has been restricted. The discussion also turns to the new post-Covid-19 reality of quarantines, vaccination records, and issues with the ubiquitous health-record apps that have become mandatory additions to everyone’s mobile phone. The podcast concludes with cautious prognostications about the upcoming Olympics, vaccination passports, and the future of foreigners traveling, studying, and working in China. David also recommends the excellent new documentary about jazz and jazz-age Shanghai by Marketus Presswood, Yellow Jazz, Black Music now streaming on Vimeo.

In this episode (taped on the eve of June 4th), Jeremiah and David examine the zeitgeist of China in the 1980s through the lens of the historic 1988 documentary River Elegy《河殇》. The six-part documentary was a scathing critique of Chinese traditional culture and political philosophy, portraying hallowed icons such as the Great Wall and the Yellow River as morally repugnant symbols of barbarism and cultural self-deception. The TV series also touched upon previously taboo topics such as Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The documentary was highly controversial at the time yet was widely disseminated in State media such as the People's Daily, giving rise to an astonishingly frank public debate about the fate of China and the need for economic and political liberalization. The documentary was banned after 1989 but remains a cultural time capsule of the decade's relatively open political discourse. The podcast discussion examines the contentious intellectual currents of the 1980s and poses some

In this episode, we host Ruth Poulsen, Director of Curriculum and Assessment at the International School of Beijing and author of a recent article in The American Educator entitled "What's the Line between Culture Shock and Racism?" Ruth is a long-term ex-pat, having spent much of her childhood and adult life in various countries in the Middle East and Asia. In the interview, Ruth shares her cross-cultural insights gained from her years working with teachers and students living abroad and offers some strategies for coping with cultural shock, cultural misunderstandings, and negative stereotypes. Those new to the podcast might want to check out an earlier episode with Lenora Chu, which examined cross-cultural differences in the Chinese and American education systems.

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Following on the previous BATG episode about the Chinese education system, in this installment, Jeremiah and David are pleased to continue this discussion with award-winning journalist and author Lenora Chu. Lenora is the author of Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School and the Global Race to Achieve, a melding of memoir and journalism that brings to light the enormous cultural differences between the Chinese and American education systems. In recounting the sometimes traumatic adjustments of her young son to the academic environment of an elite Shanghai elementary school, Chu explores the complex web of social conditioning and parental cooperation that results in the high-achieving “little soldiers” in the Chinese system and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the East and West educational models. The conversation also touches on the gaokao, the controversial college entrance exam, the supposed “creativity gap” in the Chinese model, and the similarities in the phenomenon of “helicopter par

In this episode, Jeremiah and David delve into the Chinese education system, focusing on the evolution of China’s universities. Starting with Trump’s recent ill-advised (and quickly rescinded) executive order to cancel the F-1 visas of a substantial number of 370,000 Chinese students studying in the US, the discussion moves to China’s multi-billion-dollar effort to enhance the soft power attraction of its universities by building world-class research institutes and recruiting top foreign academic talent. The Chinese education system is in a state of constant flux. The podcast explores China’s experimentation with new education formats, the ongoing revisions to the gaokao college entrance examination, and the so-called “creativity problem” of the Chinese educational tradition. 8.0.3

In this episode Jeremiah and David are pleased to talk with veteran New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson.  Ian is one of our most prolific and wide-ranging China writers, over the last decades amassing a vast catalogue of articles covering Chinese politics, religion, language, history and media.  His most recent book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao is a fascinating in-depth account of the resurgence of religious activity in the PRC.  Ian is one of several veteran Beijing-based journalists who were expelled from China on March 17 of this year, a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration cancelling the visas for dozens of Chinese journalists working in the US.  On the podcast we discuss the challenges faced by China scholars and reporters in continuing to carry out research and reporting in the PRC under the new quasi-Cold War environment.  We also catch up with events in Ian’s life, including the arrival of his new-born son, and his future writing projects.