history and memory… Notes on the Sinchon Massacre 16 May 2015 The death of North Korean civilians at Sinchon is significant on a few levels. On the one hand, it calls our attention to the always fractious topic of war crimes…
China… Old Chapters, New Chapters: The Memory Wars in East Asia 17 Mar 201517 Mar 2015 From the very beginning of the so-called ‘post war,’ the territorial and temporal parameters of the memory wars between China and Japan were never drawn particularly cleanly. The war ended…
Art… Report from the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, Sichuan (Die Zeit) 17 Oct 201117 Oct 2011 Last year I made two trips to the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Sichuan, the PRC's only private collection of museums and facilities which are completely ground-breaking in their somewhat individualistic…
Chinese communist party… Republican Reading for the Day 10 Oct 20117 Nov 2011 ...is on YouTube. And the online essays on the meaning of the 100th anniversary (today!) of the Chinese republic by Jottings from the Granite [or was it 'Gangster'?] Studio and…
Chinese communist party… Sino-Japanese Sehnsucht 7 Jul 2011 This post is my own small commemoration of July 7 in the Chinese context; it is a bit of a centaur in that the first half is rather traditional scholar-style…
China… Contested Era, Blossoming Memory: Reconsidering the Early 1950s in the Present PRC 1 Nov 201014 Feb 2014 In walking around Chinese book markets, perusing Chinese newspapers, talking to Chinese scholars and intellectuals, and just plain thinking here in the PRC, the remarkable fact emerges of the enormous…
history and memory Walls and Apertures 20 Aug 201020 Aug 2010 In tacking along the North Korean border with Liaoning province for most of the day, it occurred to me that construction of barriers is simply part of life. One has…
Cello… Octotonic Teuton Remix // 为记得柏林墙的说唱歌 15 Dec 2009 rimer, verb intransitive, to rhyme. Rimer avec = to rhyme with //[German] sich reimen... Steam on black monuments when again the Wall tumbled//Sleep-garbled China ripped her clock from the wall//…
East Asian modernity… Postwar Meditation: Berlin/Tokyo 18 Sep 200919 Sep 2009 Postwar is post-nothing: it is the beginning of something. "Ach!", trained instinct cries, "but what of 'tragen', to carry heavy burdens, of its simple past trug? Do not ponderous and…
Adam Cathcart 