This week, Sinica features a chat with Ed Pulford, author of the recent book Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between. Kaiser chats with Ed about the Sino-Russian border and Ed’s anthropological travelogue exploring the border’s past and present.
What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast:
28:06: Ed describes some of the tensions and perceptions that exist in the borderlands between Siberia and China’s northeast: “I think the increasing presence of Chinese ‘things’ — whether it’s material objects, consumer goods, or people who are coming over as tourists increasingly but also for longer as traders in the post-Soviet era — it’s a big shock and it has [presented] a lot of worries about the osmotic potential for what would happen if things were balanced out in terms of population and land use.”
43:43: Ed talks about Leonid, a Nanai man (赫哲族, Hèzhézú) whom he met during his travels along the Russian-Chinese border, his own ethnic awakening, and others that are occurring (and not occurring) around the world. “Among many, many indigenous groups of the Far East, the Far North, and Siberia, the post-Soviet period has been one where interest in global indigeneity — whether it’s Native American populations, Maori, or any other global indigenous cause — [there has] been a huge boom.”
Ed explains that within China, conditions are different: “There’s been a lot of this inter-indigenous group communication and networking. Whereas in China, at least from the Hèzhé and other groups, including the Éluósīzú and other minority groups, they’re part of a Chinese world that is not so much a part of those same discussions.”
Recommendations:
Ed: The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle, by Kobayashi Takiji, and National Book Award finalist Pachinko, by Minjin Lee.
Kaiser: Ivanhoe, a 1982 film adaptation of the original work by Sir Walter Scott.
The Case Against the China Consensus, with Jessica Chen Weiss of SAIS
Space Debris: How Can the U.S. and China Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, with Nainika Sudheendra
Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations
The Chinese Game Industry’s Journey to the West — Rui Ma and Rob Wynne on the Success of Black Myth: Wukong
The Tragedy of Old School Beijing Hip-Hop with Olivia Fu
Does Beijing Really Want Trump?
The Swifts of Beijing, with Terry Townshend of Birding Beijing
Bonus: A Free-Range Father in a Tiger Mom World — Reflections on Chinese and American Education
China's Response to U.S. Semiconductor Export Controls, with Paul Triolo and Kevin Xu
Eric Olander on China in the Global South
A Letter from Beijing
Anthony Tao: The Poetry and Soul of Beijing
Sinica Unscripted: Wang Zichen of CCG with a Third Plenum Preview and more
Improbable Diplomats: Historian Pete Millwood on how Scientific and Cultural Exchange Remade U.S.-China Relations
Adam Tooze on the U.S., China, the Energy Transition — and Saying the Unsayable
An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 2
An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 1
Peter Hessler on his new book, "Other Rivers: A Chinese Education"
Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Sino-American Rivalry
Jonathan Chatwin on Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Southern Tour
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