Caste and Culture in Kolkata’s Chinese Leather Trade
In eastern Kolkata, a Hakka Chinese community carved out an economic niche in leather production amid stigma surrounding purity and caste hierarchy.
The Wedding Ritual Where Brides Wept in Song
In southern China, weddings once began with a ritual that let brides speak the unspeakable.
When Mao’s Mango Mania Took Over China
A fleeting cult built around a mango exposes the logic, and illogic, of Mao’s personality cult.
When the Dust Settles in Colonial Manchurian Writing
Takagi Kyōzō makes heavy use of natural imagery to decry the miserable status of the settler colonist population in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
The Chinatown Novel That Wasn’t
Examining Lin Yutang’s 1948 novel Chinatown Family, Richard Jean So reveals the ways in which literature is shaped by editorial interventions.
The Chinese Question in Australia
The local British tried to bar Chinese traders from Australian shipping routes. Louis Ah Mouy, Lowe Kong Meng, and Cheong Cheok Hong had something to say about it.
The Chinese Movie Theater in Shanghai’s “No Man’s Land”
The Isis Theater of pre-war Shanghai occupied a unique space as a Chinese-run cinema in an international “contact zone.”
Building Notre Dame in Beijing
Chinese church architecture progressed from initial setbacks to reflect a two-way transfer of design and building techniques as East met West.
On The Fragility of Our Knowledge Base
Historian Glenn D. Tieffert shows how state interests in the People’s Republic of China can be protected by editing online databases and collections.
Industrial Policy via Women’s Magazines
In the early 1900s, women’s magazines helped both women and men grapple with China’s fast-changing world of technology and industrial activity.