One of the most exciting approaches in the contemporary study of China is emerging from work that brings together archaeological and historical modes of reading texts and material objects to tell a story about the past. In Ancient Central China: Centers and Peripheries Along the Yangzi River (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Rowan...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Henrietta Harrison‘s new book is the work of a gifted storyteller. In its pages, the reader will find Boxers getting drunk on communion wine, wolf apparitions, people waking up from the dead, ballads about seasickness, and flying bicycles. You will also find a wonderfully rich account of three centuries of...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

For a patient choosing among available forms of healing in the medical marketplace of mid-20th century South Korea, the process was akin to shopping. In Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea Since 1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013), John DiMoia explores emergence of that marketplace in the context...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

What does the everyday experience of Muslim minorities look like? We have often heard about what Muslims deal with in the West. But what about Muslim minorities in the East? This was one of the questions Paul O’Connor, professor in the Anthropology department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

During the interwar period (1918-1937), the city began to take its modern shape in Japan. At the same time, development in the Japanese provinces became a capitalist frontier in a new phase of industrial revolution. In Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan (University of California...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle the newborn. It’s an arresting way to begin an inspiring new book by Fabian Drixler. Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization:...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China  (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative objects connect us, visually and physically, to the world around us. In many ways they think with us, and an experience of pleasure...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

John Osburg‘s new book explores the rise of elite networks of newly-rich entrepreneurs, managers of state enterprises, and government officials in Chengdu. Based on extensive fieldwork that included hosting a Chinese TV show and spending many evenings in KTV clubs with businessmen who were entertaining clients, partners, and state officials, Anxious...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

James A. Milward‘s new book offers a thoughtful and spirited history of the silk road for general readers.The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013) is part of the Oxford “A Very Short Introduction” series. The book is organized into six chapters that each take a different...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies