May 2011
1 post
A Quick Update
I know I haven’t posted here in a while. The reason for that is that I’ve actually started writing for the book instead of just writing for this blog. I’m a couple chapters in, and now I’ve reached a spot where I realized that I need to compile more information for a particular period of time before I can really write more. So that means more interviews with my dad and...
April 2011
1 post
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A History of Guangzhou Timeline
I haven’t posted to this blog in a couple weeks. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve actually been spending my time writing the book from which this blog sprang. I’m about one-and-a-half chapters in, and part of the first chapter includes a quick review of the history of Guangzhou. I’m using the my research in that area to build a Dipity timeline on the subject....
March 2011
1 post
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Radio Storytelling: Rediscovering A Slice of 1980s...
A few days ago, I was poking around in the iTunes Store for something new to add to the collection of podcasts on my iPod. I had caught up with the long-running, outstanding The History of Rome series, as well as the not-as-long-running-but-also-outstanding The History of China series, and I only had a scant two episodes left in the BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. Out of...
February 2011
3 posts
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When Does Guangdong = Indonesia = Kazakhstan?
When you’re talking about GDP. Check out this neat interactive graphic from The Economist comparing individual provinces in China to countries in economic terms. My home province of Guangdong leads China in GDP, exports, and population, but ranks a less impressive ninth in GDP per person, a category in which it, along with every other place in mainland China, lags way behind Hong Kong and...
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Meet: Uncle Kangtai
See and download the full gallery on posterous I haven’t done one of these “Meet the Family” posts in a while, so here’s a quick introduction to my uncle Kangtai. He’s the sixth of the eight children from my father’s generation of the Zhu clan. In the summer of 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, Uncle Kangtai and my father were sent to the countryside as...
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Guangzhou Wins Sustainable Transport Award
via itdp.org
I knew there was a reason I was impressed with the public transportation in my hometown when I went back for a visit. Also, love this dig at the U.S. from the director of the organization handing out the award:
The new BRT system is changing perceptions about bus-based and high quality mass transit. We hope all cities, not least those in the US, will be inspired by these...
December 2010
2 posts
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Country Cookin'
Rice paddies in Guangdong Province (photo by pawightm) I sat down for another two-hour session with my dad over the holidays, and this time, he talked about his experience as one of the millions of youths who were sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. There are, of course, many facets to that subject, and I’ll share some details focusing on one particular area...
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Teach A Man To Sell Fish ...
My research on 1980s Guangzhou led me to the discovery of a 1984 Chinese film called Yamaha Fish Stall (雅马哈鱼档). It’s a story about a trio of young people who start a fish stall in early 1980s Guangzhou, just as economic reforms were encouraging many people to start their own businesses (although judging by the way the main character, Ah Long, dresses and some of the hilariously bad...
November 2010
2 posts
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The Birth of Chinese Pop Sensations
The previous excerpt I translated from the book of interviews with pioneers in Guangzhou’s reform-and-opening-up period looked at one small Cantonese restaurateur’s experience. This time, I’ll offer a glimpse at one aspect of the cultural changes happening at that time by translating excerpts from another interview from the same book. This one is with Lü Nianzu, one of the...
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The Early Tiny Steps Toward Capitalism
I’ve started doing some research into China, and specifically Guangzhou, in the early to mid 1980s. It’s a particularly interesting time period for me in part because it comprises half of the 10 years I spent in China. Of course, it also happened to be the first years of my life, so even though I lived in Guangzhou then, I really don’t have a strong recollection of those days,...
October 2010
1 post
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A Good Podcast on the History of China
After being away in England for almost three weeks in late September, I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things, including work on the book. In the mean time, I’ve also discovered a nice podcast series on the history of China (the podcast page takes a few seconds to load the list of shows, so be patient). The man doing the podcast, Laszlo Montgomery, has shown himself to be...
September 2010
1 post
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The Other Side of Prosperity
via chinadigitaltimes.net
I grew up in Guangdong Province, which has the highest GDP in China. While it was nowhere near as prosperous when I lived in China as it is today, it was still a relatively wealthy place compared to other parts of the country. But here’s an interesting look at the flip side of that prosperity — people living in mud houses in a rural village in west...
August 2010
1 post
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Judging Books By Their Covers
I’m currently reading a book about the education system in China from 1960 to 1980. It kind of reads like somebody’s dissertation (which it probably was), but I’ve found it to be an interesting read with some nice insights (and it specifically looks at the schools in Guangzhou). One part of the book discusses how the classroom curriculum in the 1960s emphasized political ideology...
July 2010
2 posts
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A Couple of Interesting Items About the Chinese...
I’ve come across a couple news tidbits about the Chinese language in the past week or two that caught my eye. First, from the Los Angeles Times: Texting and typing are replacing the elaborate strokes that make up written Chinese. And when it comes time to jot down a few words, more Chinese are realizing they can’t remember exactly how. You can read more about my thoughts on this...
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Long Overdue Update
Sorry for the prolonged inactivity on this blog for the last month. I’ve been distracted by travels, some busy nights processing photos from those travels, and general inertia when it comes to the book. I’m going to try to rededicate myself to the work between now and our next trip in September. I haven’t abandoned all work on the book in the past month, however. I have been...
June 2010
2 posts
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Meet: Aunt Yanxian
Aunt Yanxian is the third oldest of my grandparents’ eight children. Like her two older siblings — Aunt Peici and Uncle Zhaohua — she also went into medicine and specialized in pediatrics. She used to work in Shilong but is now retired and lives with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law in a condo in Shenzhen, which is about an hour’s train ride from Guangzhou. She spends...
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The House in Shilong
During my last chat with my Dad for the book, he sketched out the layout for the house he lived in as a child in Shilong, which I’ve never seen and which has long since been demolished. I’ve reproduced the sketch here.
Basically the first floor served as my grandfather’s practice, while the entire family — my grandparents and their seven children (Aunt Peici, the oldest...
May 2010
3 posts
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A Close Call
After being sidetracked from working on the book for the last two or three weeks, I finally found some time this past weekend to talk to my dad for some more information. Among other things, he told me about a close call my grandparents had while fleeing to Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion of China.It was 1940 and the Japanese were marching around Guangdong Province. After months of...
Chinese Calligraphy, Explained
via smashingmagazine.com I came across this nice look at Chinese calligraphy tonight. It brought back memories from my childhood in China when I took calligraphy lessons in elementary school and had to write page after page of calligraphy on rice paper. It also brings to mind the smell of fresh ink, which I still love.
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Meet: Uncle Zhaohua
Uncle Zhaohua is the second oldest of my grandparents’ eight children and the oldest son. That latter status meant he had extra responsibilities while growing up. For instance, when the family moved from Shilong to Guangzhou in the 1950s, my grandfather moved to Guangzhou about a year before the rest of the family did to begin his job, and he didn’t go back to Shilong at all during...
April 2010
3 posts
1 tag
Vertically Challenged
While doing research for the book, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking through the stacks at Davis Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I’ve found a few pretty nice resources. I’ve also run into a bit of a stumbling block: A lot of the older books were written in the old style — vertically and from right to left. I can handle either one of...
1 tag
Vertically Challenged
While doing research for the book, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking through the stacks at Davis Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I’ve found a few pretty nice resources. I’ve also run into a bit of a stumbling block: A lot of the older books were written in the old style — vertically and from right to left. I can handle either one of...
1 tag
Meet: Aunt Peici
Aunt Peici is the oldest among my grandparents’ eight children and the first who followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and became a doctor. Though she’s now in her 70s, she looks and acts younger than her age. Like all her siblings, she can be loud and boisterous at family gatherings, and she has a little of grandma’s stubborn streak in her. She has stayed very active...
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Guangzhou "An Urban Cesspool"? Whatever, Laowai
I’m about halfway through Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost. I’ll write a full review when I’m done, but I just finished reading the part about his experience in Guangzhou, and I can’t help but be a little honked off that he called my hometown “an urban cesspool”. Hey, I’ll freely admit that I could be just a tad biased about Guangzhou, given I...
March 2010
7 posts
1 tag
Source of Pearl River drying up in Yunnan?
via danwei.org
From Danwei.org today:
On the front page of the Zhuhai Evening News (珠海晚报) is a picture showing the source of the Zhujiang River, or Pearl River, which is apparently near to drying up.
The photo was taken on March 25 in Yunnan province, Zhanyi county (云南省沾益县), and released by Xinhua. The caption informs that the water level has lowered significantly; the trace of the current...
Brush with PRC's Founding Fathers
I finally got back to transcribing more of my last chat with my dad for the book. Among the interesting nuggets was that when my grandfather moved from his hometown of Shilong to Guangzhou, his fame as a healer went with him and he was often sought out by government officials or foreign dignitaries who were in Guangzhou on business. Among some of those were a few people whom you would in a...
The Definition of "Safe"
I was chatting with one of my cousins in China via IM last night, and we got to talking about houses. When I used the word “住宅区” — neighborhood — she asked me if Americans’ concept of that term is the same as the Chinese’s. “Your ‘住宅区’ don’t have walls, right?” she asked. To show her what a neighborhood is in America, I sent her...
Ravaged by War
One thing I’ve learned in my research for the book is how much destruction Guangzhou suffered during the Sino-Japanese War during World War II, of which I had been largely unaware. From late 1937 to late 1938, the city was under constant air raids by the Japanese. Here’s a list I compiled from a book chronicling Guangzhou history:
1937
August 31: Japan conducts its first air raid of...
Meet: Zhu Jingxiu
From time to time, I’ll post an introductory post about a member of my family. The first one, aptly, is my grandfather, Zhu Jingxiu. He was a well-known Chinese medicine doctor in his hometown of Shilong and later in Guangzhou. I’ve been kind of surprised by the little tidbits I’ve found about him on the Internet just by googling his name: a mention by someone who used to go...
All In the Family
One of the things I’m trying to decide in regards to the book is whether to refer to my relatives by their Chinese titles or the nearest English equivalent of those titles. Whereas in English, a word like “aunt” or “cousin” can refer to multiple types of familial relationships, the designations in China are extremely specific. For instance, a term like “er gu...
February 2010
6 posts
Faces From Long Ago
As part of my information gathering for the book, I’ve been digging into material about the history of Guangzhou, my hometown. I’m learning a lot about the city that I called home for the first 10 years of my life. One cool tidbit I came across is the picture below of children of the Chen clan standing by the entrance to their ancestral hall. The photo was taken circa 1909. Last year,...
The Difference 30 Years Make
We’ve all heard about how much China has changed in the last 30 years since it began opening up to the West. I think the two pictures of the Zhu family below are a great illustration of how much people’s lives have changed. The first one was taken around the Chinese New Year in 1979, shortly before I was born. The second one was taken on New Year, 2009.
Of Water, Pot, Firewood, and Chinese Medicine
Note: I’m going to start cross-posting some blog entries about my book-writing process on this blog and my primary blog, Matters of Varying Insignificance.
A major figure in my book will be my paternal grandfather, who was a renowned practitioner of Chinese medicine in his hometown. The first time I sat down and talked to my dad about grandpa for the book, our talk quickly turned into an...
Home of the Zhus
I should give a quick geography lesson to give you an idea of where the Zhus are from and where they reside. My grandfather was born in Shilong (石龙), a small town on the outskirts of Guangzhou. Shilong is in Dongguan county, which is home to scores of factories that turn out a lot of the “Made in China” products.
My grandfather eventually moved the family to Guangzhou (广州), the third...
In Case You're Wondering ...
This is the Chinese character for my family name, Zhu. Just wanted to clarify since there are plenty of Chinese characters that sound alike.
Who Are You, and What Are You Doing Here?
Welcome. This is a blog chronicling my efforts to write a book about the history of the extended family on my father’s side, the Zhus. Some answers to questions you may have:
Who are you?
My name is John Zhu. I’m a designer, copy editor, writer, and a few other [fill in the blank]-ers who’s currently residing in North Carolina. I was born in China and lived there until I was...