Barbarians at the Gate

By Barbarians at the Gate

Society & Culture History Places & Travel

What's Barbarians at the Gate about?

A semi-serious deep dive into Chinese history and culture broadcast from Beijing and hosted by Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Studying China in the 21st ...

11.19.2021

In this episode, Jeremiah and David have a long-overdue discussion with historian and writer Maura Cunningham. Maura was Editor-in-Chief of the classic blog China Beat, a fellow at the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, Program Officer at the National ...

Barbarians at the Gate episodes:

11.19.2021 Studying China in the 21st Century (What Everybody Needs to Know) with special guest Maura Cunningham In this episode, Jeremiah and David have a long-overdue discussion with historian and writer Maura Cunningham. Maura was Editor-in-Chief of the classic blog China Beat, a fellow at the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, Program Officer at the National ...
09.18.2021 "Yellow Jazz, Black Music" with Marketus Presswood This week Jeremiah and David catch up with an old friend, China history scholar Marketus Presswood., who has just released a documentary on jazz in China entitled Yellow Jazz, Black Music, available on Vimeo. Based on years of research and ...
07.29.2021 China Tripping 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 ...
06.06.2021 Elegy for the Eighties 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 ...
05.14.2021 Talking the Line between Culture Shock and Racism 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 (tieonline.com/article/2895/whats-the-line-between-culture-shock-and-racism-)?" Ruth is ...
04.22.2021 Jeremiah and David Have Got No Class On the show this week, Jeremiah and David dialogue about one of their long-term common missions: educating American study abroad students about the complex culture and politics of China. With the rise of the PRC as an economic power, it ...
02.11.2021 Chinese Funny Business In today's episode, Jeremiah and David meet up with legendary Canadian TV personality, comedian, and cultural ambassador Mark Rowswell, better known to generations of Chinese audiences as Dashan. On the eve of the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala, "the most-watched ...
01.07.2021 A Long Walk across an Expanding Beijing This week, Barbarians at the Gate offers another Beijing-themed podcast. Jeremiah and David talk with writer and long-time Beijing resident Jonathan Chatwin, author of the widely-acclaimed book Long Peace Street. The book is Jonathan's account of a two-day walk along ...
12.14.2020 Beijing Remixed In this episode, Jeremiah and David talk with Matthew Hu, former Managing Directory of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Co-founder of the Beijing Courtyard Institute, and a longtime activist for the preservation and restoration of historic Beijing architecture and ...
10.26.2020 The Destruction of the Yuanmingyuan Yuanmingyuan, the "Garden of Perfect Brightness," commonly referred to as the Old Summer Palace, was a Qing Dynasty imperial residence comprised of hundreds of buildings, halls, gardens, temples, artificial lakes, and landscapes, covering a land area five times that of ...
10.01.2020 China's New Youth In this episode, Jeremiah and David catch up with writer, editor, and journalist Alec Ash, to discuss the new US edition of his 2016 book (https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-New-Youth-Generation-Shaping/dp/195069156X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Alec+Ash&qid=1601539133&sr=8-1)Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China (https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-New-Youth-Generation-Shaping/dp/195069156X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Alec+Ash&qid=1601539133&sr=8-1). Alec’s book is an intimate portrait of ...
08.26.2020 Raising Little Soldiers: Education in China, Part II 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, ...
07.31.2020 Xi Don't Need No Education: Education in China, Part I 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 ...
07.08.2020 Are We Welcome Here, Part II In this episode Jeremiah and David are pleased to talk with veteran New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson (http://www.ian-johnson.com/). Ian is one of our most prolific and wide-ranging China writers, over the last decades amassing a ...
06.23.2020 Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai 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 ...
06.02.2020 Mandarin Mayhem, Part II: Dialect and Nationalism in China 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 (https://www.ginaannetam.com/home.html), Assistant ...
05.18.2020 Neither boxers nor a rebellion...Discuss! 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 ...
05.01.2020 Politics, Patio Furniture, and China History Pods 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 ...
04.10.2020 Mandarin Mayhem 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 ...
04.01.2020 Are we still welcome here? 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 ...
03.23.2020 The Language and History of Public Health in China 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 ...
09.15.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Are the Kids Alright? Joining 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 ...
08.03.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Yaqub Beg and the Provincializing of Western China 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.
07.13.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: China’s territorial claims on the rocks in the South China Sea 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 ...
06.30.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: Keeping up with the Khitans 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.
06.13.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: A couple of characters talking about Chinese characters 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 ...
05.28.2016 Barbarians at the Gate Podcast: The An Lushan Rebellion 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 ...