On the cusp of the Chinese New Year and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Jeremiah and David record an Olympian episode of the podcast. The guest is Mark Dreyer, a veteran sports reporter, who has just released his new book, Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best . Mark has worked for Sky Sports, Fox Sports, AP Sports, and many other outlets and currently hosts the China Sports Insider Podcast . The conversation covers issues such as the historical importance of t...
Jan 26, 2022•41 min
In this week’s episode, we talk with Jean Hoffmann Lewanda about her father Paul Hoffmann’s memoir, Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience, recently published by Earnshaw Books. Paul Hoffmann left Vienna at the age of 18 to escape the rise of Nazism, arrived in Shanghai in 1938, and became a part of the historic stream of Jewish refugees who found a haven in China during WWII. His memoirs describe the harsh living conditions in the Hongkou Ghetto...
Jan 13, 2022•38 min
In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk with James Griffiths, Asia Correspondent for the Globe and Mail, about his new book Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language . This podcast can be considered the third installment of a trilogy of Barbarian at the Gate episodes that deal with the politics of language and dialects in China (see the links to the earlier podcasts below). Our previous guest Gina Anne Tam aptly sums up Griffiths’ research topic in her dustjacket review of the bo...
Dec 30, 2021•47 min
In this episode, David and Jeremiah talk to veteran China scholar Maura Cunningham about the perils and possibilities of researching China in the "New Era."
Nov 19, 2021•45 min
with historian and filmmaker Marketus Presswood
Sep 18, 2021•49 min
In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk about the foreign experience of travel in China, drawing upon their personal experiences over the years as explorers, educators, and tour guides. The two trade accounts of the rapid expansion of China’s travel industry in decades after Reform and Opening, the occasional brushes with anti-foreign sentiment, and the exploding domestic luxury travel market as the economy booms and overseas travel has been restricted. The discussion also turns to the new post...
Jul 29, 2021•48 min
In this episode (taped on the eve of June 4th), Jeremiah and David examine the zeitgeist of China in the 1980s through the lens of the historic 1988 documentary River Elegy《河殇》. The six-part documentary was a scathing critique of Chinese traditional culture and political philosophy, portraying hallowed icons such as the Great Wall and the Yellow River as morally repugnant symbols of barbarism and cultural self-deception. The TV series also touched upon previously taboo topics such as Mao's Great...
Jun 06, 2021•43 min
In this episode, we host Ruth Poulsen, Director of Curriculum and Assessment at the International School of Beijing and author of a recent article in The American Educator entitled " What's the Line between Culture Shock and Racism ?" Ruth is a long-term ex-pat, having spent much of her childhood and adult life in various countries in the Middle East and Asia. In the interview, Ruth shares her cross-cultural insights gained from her years working with teachers and students living abroad and offe...
May 14, 2021•41 min
8.7.3
Apr 22, 2021•46 min
8.5.7
Feb 11, 2021•50 min
8.5.5
Jan 07, 2021•42 min
8.5.5
Dec 14, 2020•41 min
8.5.2
Oct 26, 2020•47 min
8.4.3
Oct 01, 2020•43 min
Following on the previous BATG episode about the Chinese education system, in this installment, Jeremiah and David are pleased to continue this discussion with award-winning journalist and author Lenora Chu. Lenora is the author of Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School and the Global Race to Achieve, a melding of memoir and journalism that brings to light the enormous cultural differences between the Chinese and American education systems. In recounting the sometimes traumatic adjus...
Aug 26, 2020•41 min
In this episode, Jeremiah and David delve into the Chinese education system, focusing on the evolution of China’s universities. Starting with Trump’s recent ill-advised (and quickly rescinded) executive order to cancel the F-1 visas of a substantial number of 370,000 Chinese students studying in the US, the discussion moves to China’s multi-billion-dollar effort to enhance the soft power attraction of its universities by building world-class research institutes and recruiting top foreign academi...
Jul 31, 2020•40 min
In this episode Jeremiah and David are pleased to talk with veteran New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson . Ian is one of our most prolific and wide-ranging China writers, over the last decades amassing a vast catalogue of articles covering Chinese politics, religion, language, history and media. His most recent book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao is a fascinating in-depth account of the resurgence of religious activity in the PRC. Ian is one of sev...
Jul 08, 2020•34 min
Champions Day in the city of Shanghai, November 1941. The world was at war but the clubhouse at the Shanghai Race Club (now People's Park) was packed with owners and punters cheering on the pony. The funeral of Shanghai's richest widow, Liza Hardoon, was a spectacle which filled the streets of the International Settlement. Japanese occupiers and their Chinese collaborators came together in a bizarre ritual celebrated the birthday of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. The opening of a new movie fe...
Jun 23, 2020•35 min
Barbarians at the Gate returns to that ever-relevant and contentious topic, language reform in China and the fate of fangyan , the various local speech forms referred to as “dialects.” Joining us on the podcast is Gina Anne Tam , Assistant Professor in History at Trinity University, and the author of the recent book Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960 . Picking up the threads of the recent podcast “Mandarin Mayhem”, we explore with Gina issues such as the central role of language unifica...
Jun 02, 2020•38 min
Jeremiah and David welcome historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom to the show. Jeff is Chancellor's Professor of History at the UC Irvine, and is not only a prolific academic scholar, but also one of the most sought after China analysts appearing on mainstream news media outlets such as BBC and NPR. His most recent book, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink , documents the recent political unrest in Hong Kong, putting the movement into historical context. On today’s show, we delve into Jeff’s current project, w...
May 18, 2020
Jeremiah and David catch up with China hand and old friend Laszlo Montgomery, who is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the China History Podcast. Laszlo describes the evolution of the podcast, how he chooses and researches the topics, and his current project on the history of Xinjiang. The trio also retrace the course of the US-China trade relation via Laszlo's first-hand experience with the "Made in China" supply chains, the Chinese manufacturers of the cheap products that have lined the she...
May 01, 2020
In this episode, we look at Putonghua, the spoken language most people refer to as Mandarin. David wrote a book in 2016 on the evolution of Putonghua in China and we discuss his research and the recent controversy over the app Douyin penalizing users who post videos in other Chinese languages, especially Cantonese. What's the point of Putonghua? What is a dialect and what is a language in China? And what's the difference between Mandarin in the Qing Dynasty, Guoyu in the Republican Period, and P...
Apr 10, 2020
China has a long history of inviting barbarians in when useful, trying to civilize them, and then kicking them out when those barbarians prove difficult to domesticate. As US-China relations sink to a new low and both powers seem obsessed with scoring propaganda points in the middle of global pandemic, Jeremiah and David discuss their lives in Beijing and what the future might hold for those folks living, writing, and working in China. First, David looks back at the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of ...
Apr 01, 2020
The outbreak of Covid-19 has drawn attention to public health in China and around the world. In the early stages, there was considerable criticism of China's initial handling of the outbreak. This criticism drew an emotional response in China. In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser look at the intimate link in Chinese history between public health, hygiene, and modernity. Note: In the podcast, we mention China's expulsion of Wall Street Journal reporters Josh C...
Mar 23, 2020
Jeremiah and James look at the life and times of Yaqub Beg (1820-1877) and what his legacy means for Beijing's relationship with Western China and Central Asia today.
Aug 03, 2016•20 min
On Tuesday, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled that China’s attempts to claim almost the entire South China Sea as sovereign territory had no legal basis. In a special emergency podcast, Jeremiah and James talk about the implications of the decision at the Hague, the reaction here in Beijing, and the use (and abuses) of history in establishing contemporary territorial claims.
Jul 13, 2016•10 min
In this episode of Barbarians at the Gate, James and Jeremiah discuss the history of the Khitans, their empire and their legacy with a little help from the Godfather Trilogy and Dragon Barbie from Game of Thrones.
Jun 30, 2016•41 min
David Moser (Beijing Capital Normal University, Sinica Podcast) and Brendan O'Kane (Paper Republic, University of Pennsylvania) join Jeremiah to discuss David's new book, A Billion Voices, the history of language reform and national unity in China, the best way to learn Chinese, and the debate over whether it's okay to hate on Chinese characters.
Jun 13, 2016•46 min
Our inaugural episode looks at An Lushan: the outsider who charmed his way into the court of the Tang Dynasty in the eighth century and who almost succeeded in bringing down the empire. It’s a story made for imperial slash fic: The aging emperor, his rotund but sexy concubine, and the foreigner who came between them.
May 28, 2016•33 min
