The China History Podcast
Mar. 28th, 2021 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losI'm enjoying The China History Podcast, and I thought I might direct people to a few series within the ten-year-long project that I've found useful:
Daoism (Episodes 50-52): a three-part series, each ep about 30 minutes, that will give you a good basic grounding if, like me, you're fairly unfamiliar/it's been YEARS since you looked at this material. More focused on the historical development than the practices.
The History of Tea (Episodes 140-149): a huge undertaking on Laszlo Montgomery's part that tracks the historical development of both tea's production, consumption and place in Chinese culture and the broader politics of the domestic and international tea trade. Very approachable and engaging, though so far I wouldn't say it's given me a great idea of the kinds of Chinese tea consumed today. That may well be something I get a better sense of in the more contemporary episodes, however (I just finished 144, Part 5).
The History of American Chinese Cuisine (Episode 128): an easy one-off with a lot of great contextualisation for their lived experience/foodways that Americans will appreciate.
(I found it kind of annoying that the episode talked about the Americanisation of food and reception as a quite uniform process? Circa 1850, in east coast settings especially, it's really assumptive to think there's 'an' American palate this food engages with. What different food cultures are people from? That's going to change what they want or expect. Also, Montgomery discussed sugar addition as an American phenomenon, but what about Chinese regions where the food already has a sugar element (superborb mentioned Guangdong, for this)? That's not entirely part of the change-over, then, or if it is, it's being modified in a way that's consistent the grammar of the original food. Weirdly, that kind of sweet element in an entree is not very in keeping with continental european food. Granted, there are some dishes like midcentury mincemeat that were hugely popular in the US up through the early 20th century that retained sweet-savoury combinations from medieval Anglo cookery, but on the whole, it's not common (looked down on as 'muddled flavour' was by Franco cookery's discourses of purity and distinction--for ex Thai cuisine would have been right out by early Modern French standards).
I think the issue is, I wanted this episode to be food history. The guy is sound, but he's not a food history specialist, and I was getting frustrated by wanting him to have my specialisations. He was also talking about the reproduction of dialogue in NYT reportage as a purely racist bit. However in the 19th c British paper traditions this reportage derived from, rendering dialect in courts (conveying voices, almost as a form of entertainment) is quite standard and not specially adopted in relation to the Chinese speaker under discussion. Exemplar contemporary texts regarding court cases almost unfailingly attempt to convey dialogue, even to exaggeration. Arguably the practice is always classist, and racism can get grafted onto that, but it was intensely and universally baked in to how court reportage worked (that's why the a line 'he do the police in different voices, he do', borrowed from Dickens and referring to Sloppy reading out court case summaries in Our Mutual Friend, was originally the title of TS Eliot's polyphonic poem "Wasteland").
I guess that's an issue with any history programme attempting an ambitious range of topics or time, or Pop anything: they'll run into stuff they lack context for.)
The History of Chinese Philosophy (Episodes 184-192): I finished the first two of these, then thought I'd push a bit further with the dynasties overview before doing the next ones, to sort of hold them in context in my mind and supply a frame for these details.
The Dynasties Overview (Episode 14, the Xia, to Episode 42, the Review of the Overviews): I'm either in or got through episode 22, The Three Kingdoms and the Jin Dynasty (I'll re-listen to be sure). This is a very useful basic primer I intend to finish, but I'm having trouble thus far getting a sense of the history as causally linked, which is making absorbing all the information difficult. I went over and cheated with Tea and Philosophy to get some salient material culture I could remember, with its own internal logics and linkages. I think this will help me to productively process the rest of the dynastic overviews.
Future: I aim to finish the Dynasties, Tea and Philosophy series. Then there's an episode on the Kaifeng Jews I'm interested in, and another on the history of Chinese immigration and settlement in Mexico (this one will be specifically useful for a modern AU fic project). Also going to listen to another one-ep on the ancient history of silk, and the series on Tang poetry (Episodes 218-225). The martial arts history (Episodes 203-204) is also intriguing, though that's kind of a light treatment? There's an episode on Nushu script/women's Chinese, which sounds neat.
I'm sure other stuff will catch me as I go; I'm largely over-educated in dull 20th century history, compared to other topics, just in terms of what's been on offer at uni and elsewhere.
(I wonder if he's ever going to augment his treatments of Chinese-Vietnamese and Chinese-Thai international relations with something on Japan? I could go for that, because there's so much borrowing at work right now in cultural production. There's a *one episode* treatment very early, but that seems quite shallow for such a huge topic/compared with his far more substantial Vietnamese and Thai work.)
Daoism (Episodes 50-52): a three-part series, each ep about 30 minutes, that will give you a good basic grounding if, like me, you're fairly unfamiliar/it's been YEARS since you looked at this material. More focused on the historical development than the practices.
The History of Tea (Episodes 140-149): a huge undertaking on Laszlo Montgomery's part that tracks the historical development of both tea's production, consumption and place in Chinese culture and the broader politics of the domestic and international tea trade. Very approachable and engaging, though so far I wouldn't say it's given me a great idea of the kinds of Chinese tea consumed today. That may well be something I get a better sense of in the more contemporary episodes, however (I just finished 144, Part 5).
The History of American Chinese Cuisine (Episode 128): an easy one-off with a lot of great contextualisation for their lived experience/foodways that Americans will appreciate.
(I found it kind of annoying that the episode talked about the Americanisation of food and reception as a quite uniform process? Circa 1850, in east coast settings especially, it's really assumptive to think there's 'an' American palate this food engages with. What different food cultures are people from? That's going to change what they want or expect. Also, Montgomery discussed sugar addition as an American phenomenon, but what about Chinese regions where the food already has a sugar element (
superborb mentioned Guangdong, for this)? That's not entirely part of the change-over, then, or if it is, it's being modified in a way that's consistent the grammar of the original food. Weirdly, that kind of sweet element in an entree is not very in keeping with continental european food. Granted, there are some dishes like midcentury mincemeat that were hugely popular in the US up through the early 20th century that retained sweet-savoury combinations from medieval Anglo cookery, but on the whole, it's not common (looked down on as 'muddled flavour' was by Franco cookery's discourses of purity and distinction--for ex Thai cuisine would have been right out by early Modern French standards). I think the issue is, I wanted this episode to be food history. The guy is sound, but he's not a food history specialist, and I was getting frustrated by wanting him to have my specialisations. He was also talking about the reproduction of dialogue in NYT reportage as a purely racist bit. However in the 19th c British paper traditions this reportage derived from, rendering dialect in courts (conveying voices, almost as a form of entertainment) is quite standard and not specially adopted in relation to the Chinese speaker under discussion. Exemplar contemporary texts regarding court cases almost unfailingly attempt to convey dialogue, even to exaggeration. Arguably the practice is always classist, and racism can get grafted onto that, but it was intensely and universally baked in to how court reportage worked (that's why the a line 'he do the police in different voices, he do', borrowed from Dickens and referring to Sloppy reading out court case summaries in Our Mutual Friend, was originally the title of TS Eliot's polyphonic poem "Wasteland").
I guess that's an issue with any history programme attempting an ambitious range of topics or time, or Pop anything: they'll run into stuff they lack context for.)
The History of Chinese Philosophy (Episodes 184-192): I finished the first two of these, then thought I'd push a bit further with the dynasties overview before doing the next ones, to sort of hold them in context in my mind and supply a frame for these details.
The Dynasties Overview (Episode 14, the Xia, to Episode 42, the Review of the Overviews): I'm either in or got through episode 22, The Three Kingdoms and the Jin Dynasty (I'll re-listen to be sure). This is a very useful basic primer I intend to finish, but I'm having trouble thus far getting a sense of the history as causally linked, which is making absorbing all the information difficult. I went over and cheated with Tea and Philosophy to get some salient material culture I could remember, with its own internal logics and linkages. I think this will help me to productively process the rest of the dynastic overviews.
Future: I aim to finish the Dynasties, Tea and Philosophy series. Then there's an episode on the Kaifeng Jews I'm interested in, and another on the history of Chinese immigration and settlement in Mexico (this one will be specifically useful for a modern AU fic project). Also going to listen to another one-ep on the ancient history of silk, and the series on Tang poetry (Episodes 218-225). The martial arts history (Episodes 203-204) is also intriguing, though that's kind of a light treatment? There's an episode on Nushu script/women's Chinese, which sounds neat.
I'm sure other stuff will catch me as I go; I'm largely over-educated in dull 20th century history, compared to other topics, just in terms of what's been on offer at uni and elsewhere.
(I wonder if he's ever going to augment his treatments of Chinese-Vietnamese and Chinese-Thai international relations with something on Japan? I could go for that, because there's so much borrowing at work right now in cultural production. There's a *one episode* treatment very early, but that seems quite shallow for such a huge topic/compared with his far more substantial Vietnamese and Thai work.)
no subject
Date: 2021-03-28 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-29 07:39 pm (UTC)I don't know if you're in this but it's SUCH a useful resource:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordsymposium
no subject
Date: 2021-03-30 02:15 pm (UTC)Thanks for the rec! I was vaguely aware of the Oxford Symposium, but I haven't been involved at all. Unfortunately, I probably won't be at this point since life has taken me in an entirely different direction (healthcare), but I do like to poke around at what I'm missing sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-31 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-28 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-29 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-30 07:06 pm (UTC)I've listened to I think the first 10 or so eps of this podcast but stopped because....uh, I think actually because losing my mind about philosophy of science happened instead, likely bc that's easier to stick on and listen to while I do Legal Clerking things but for the HoC one I had to *concentrate*.
I v much feel you on the dynasties and what I ended up doing was (accidentally?) developing some anchor points: like I watched Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty - actually called 成化十四年 ie 'the 14th year of the reign of the Chenghua Emperor' - and noodled around looking things up, realised a bunch of real people are featured and also why the title is as it is in Chinese: in terms of resonance/legibility to a Chinese audience it seems to resemble something like 'the last year of the reign of Richard III'.
And before that I'd read a bunch about the Zhou dynasty - the big early one - via the YiJing and then it was sortof easy enough to slot other things in around those prominent bookmarks. Idk. You don't need to know my learning processes necessarily but I'm never NOT gonna recommend 'get really into something specific and then broaden out' as a life choice.
Anyway, thank you for this reminder to get back into this podcast! I do really like it even if the early episodes feature some *weird* mandarin pronounciation. Which isn't like a failing, it's just I'd have to pause and look up the tones to make sure I knew what was happening, and I gather he's fluent now.
ETA, feeling very silly: apparently we were listening to 2 completely different podcasts!!! I was listening to 'The History of China' which also seems pretty good, although since we didn't get to anywhere I already had background knowledge of I'm not actually sure. I'll give this one a try!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-31 12:30 am (UTC)