Barbarians at the Gate

Two older gentlemen with expanding waistlines, staggering daddy issues, and a shared love of firing military brass meet in DC this week. And right on cue, the pundits leap forward to pontificate on the most important issues facing Sino-US relations today: What is Xi Jinping’s title in English?Many bytes and keystrokes are spent in social media wars between those who insist that Xi Jinping be...

Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Fifty years later, Jeremiah and David compare notes on a mostly quiet anniversary. Jeremiah reports that there were enough tributes to beat the over/under, but David argues that the Party would still prefer to keep things as ritualistic as possible. Mao is still dead. We will all bow. And moving on.David recalls how Mao was remembered in the 1980s, when Deng...

China’s last emperor (Puyi), his empress (Wanrong), and concubine (Wenxiu) spent two years sequestered in the Forbidden City before their expulsion in 1924. Around them were holdover dowagers, scheming eunuchs, corrupt officials, and two foreign teachers of English. Many people know Puyi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, either from Johnston’s memoir, Twilight in the Forbidden City, or from Peter...

In this Barbarians at the Gate x China Books Review crossover, Jeremiah Jenne is joined by CBR Associate Editor Alexander Boyd to discuss the latest addition to the China Archives: W. Somerset Maugham's On a Chinese Screen (1922), a collection of vignettes from Maugham's trip through China in the winter of 1919–1920.Maugham came to China and mostly found... the English. Missionaries who profess...

It’s the summer travel season, and one of the most popular sites here in Beijing is the Palace Museum at the Forbidden City. To talk about China’s most famous imperial palace, we are joined by Matthew Hu Xinyu, Trustee of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) and founder of the Courtyard Institute. Matthew provides us with updates on renovated sections of the Palace Museum...

We are honored to have Professor Neysun Mahboubi, Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, a program that provides a platform for talented U.S.-based China scholars to contribute academically informed analysis on the most important issues in U.S.-China relations. Neysun recounts his experiences as a legal scholar in China during the 1990s Reform and Opening Up period,...

Should we view today’s powerful AI language tools as intellectual crutches or as incredibly useful assets? Can they be safely integrated into our existing toolkit for business and academia, or should we approach them with justified caution? And why is the Western world terrified of AI, whereas China is already incorporating it into all sectors of society? Spoiler alert: The West views AI as a...

The Politburo had given Mao Zedong’s personal physician Li Zhisui a direct order: prepare the Chairman’s body so that he can be on permanent display. Li was aghast. It was not what Mao had wanted, and besides, “How to pickle your country’s leader” wasn’t one of the courses he studied in medical school. But after the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s death meant a potential political...

On this episode, we sit down with the one and only Jesse Appell—Chinese TV stand-up comedian, blogger, lecturer, tea entrepreneur, and passionate bridge-builder for US–China cultural exchange. In his newly published book, Jesse shares the unlikely story of how a Fulbright Fellowship to study the traditional Chinese humor form “crosstalk” (xiangsheng) launched him from student to television star,...

Mike Wester launched the first Burger Fest in Beijing 13 years ago as a scrappy response to the collapse of print ad revenue. Today, burger festivals run in third-tier cities across China, subsidized by local governments trying to drive foot traffic into half-empty malls. Hefei alone has four a year.In this episode, Jeremiah talks with Mike Wester, co-founder of True Run Media and publisher of...