Barbarians at the Gate
70 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★★ - 17 ratingsA semi-serious deep dive into Chinese history and culture broadcast from Beijing and hosted by Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser.
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Episodes
Raising Little Soldiers: Education in China, Part II
August 26, 2020 07:52 - 41 minutes - 39.7 MBFollowing 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 a...
Xi Don't Need No Education: Education in China, Part I
July 31, 2020 04:30 - 39 minutes - 43.3 MBIn 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 Starting with Trump’s recent ill-advised (and quickly rescinded) executive order to cancel the F-1 visas of a substantial number of 370,000 Chinese students studying in the US, the discussion moves to China’s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 aca...
Are We Welcome Here, Part II
July 08, 2020 08:42 - 33 minutes - 29.3 MBIn 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 ...
Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai
June 23, 2020 01:15 - 34 minutes - 29.6 MBChampions 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 movi...
Mandarin Mayhem, Part II: Dialect and Nationalism in China
June 02, 2020 07:46 - 38 minutes - 35.7 MBBarbarians 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 uni...
Neither boxers nor a rebellion...Discuss!
May 18, 2020 06:26 - 45.3 MBJeremiah 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 projec...
Politics, Patio Furniture, and China History Pods
May 01, 2020 08:00 - 57.6 MBJeremiah 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 th...
Mandarin Mayhem
April 10, 2020 10:41 - 35.4 MBIn 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, a...
Are we still welcome here?
April 01, 2020 08:13 - 32.4 MBChina 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 ri...
The Language and History of Public Health in China
March 23, 2020 21:56 - 25.8 MBThe 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 Jo...
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Are the Kids Alright?
September 15, 2016 04:12 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBJoining Jeremiah in this episode is Alec Ash, author of the book Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China to look at three of youth movements from the 20th century: The May Fourth/New Culture Era, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1980s.
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Yaqub Beg and the Provincializing of Western China
August 03, 2016 12:42 - 20 minutes - 18.3 MBJeremiah 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.
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: China’s territorial claims on the rocks in the South China Sea
July 13, 2016 00:20 - 9 minutes - 8.75 MBOn 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.
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Keeping up with the Khitans
June 30, 2016 10:36 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBIn 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.
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: A couple of characters talking about Chinese characters
June 13, 2016 00:25 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBDavid 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.
Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: The An Lushan Rebellion
May 28, 2016 00:35 - 33 minutes - 30.2 MBOur 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.