A Few Articles on Preservation and History in China that have Popped Up Recently
Posted: August 4th, 2012 | 1 Comment »Here’s a story about Pingyao and its preservation (or otherwise) from The Atlantic
Here’s a piece from the China Daily on the seemingly never ending debate about preservation of the Great Wall
The Global Times is also concerned about the Wall it would seem
I’ve mentioned the documentary currently being made by Arthur Jones and Steven Schwankert about HMS Poseidon, the British submarine that sank of the China coast in the 1930s. Schwankert’s also producing a book on the tragedy too apparently – “The Real Poseidon Adventure: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine”. Here he is interviewed about the project in The San Francisco Chronicle.
And here’s historian Valerie Hansen on what aspects of Chinese history most appeal to Beijing taxi drivers!
And if you’re looking for a summer read – there’s some recommendations here – including from me I’m afraid – in the August issue of Shanghai Talk magazine.
Re the HMS Poseidon, interesting how the San Francisco Chronicle (and/or the documentary) presents as a “startling discovery” the simple matter of a Westerner reading something PUBLISHED IN A CHINESE MAGAZINE FOUR YEARS BEFORE. (sorry for the shouting)
Reminds me of a court case about scientific papers and prior work, where the Western scientists argued that similar work by others didn’t really count as being published before theirs, simply because it had been published *in Chinese*.
(IIRC, the [American] judge rightly mocked the nonsense of such a claim. I wish I could remember more details so as to google up a link, but unfortunately both my memory and google-fu are failing me.)