Category Archives: education
Late Demise of Classical Chinese in Vietnam
From A Story of Vietnam, by Truong Buu Lam (Outskirts, 2010), Kindle Loc. 2744-2761: The cultural changes of the period under study [1900-1925] are dominated by one phenomenon: the replacement of classical Chinese by quoc ngu [国語 national language] as … Continue reading
Filed under China, democracy, education, France, language, literature, nationalism, Vietnam
Rosa’s Route to Apostasy
From Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America, by Alma Guillermoprieto (Vintage, 2001), pp. 33-35: [Rosa's] family was well off by the standards of the provincial backwater she was brought up in, but her father, a devout Catholic, had strong … Continue reading
Capt. Cook, Guugu Yimidhirr, and Kangaroos
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 182-184: Guns weren’t the settlers’ only weapons. Aborigines had little resistance to Western disease, or to alcohol. Chinese immigrants introduced opium, which Aborigines … Continue reading
Cameroon Tales: The PTA Meeting
After spending our first night in Cameroon in a hotel in Yaoundé, we changed money with a friendly Nigerian Igbo at the Hilton, went shopping for food at the central market and for baguettes at a suburban bakery, then drove … Continue reading
Kapuscinski meets a member of Ghana’s New Class
From The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, trans. by Klara Glowczewska (Vintage, 2002), Kindle Loc. 144-179: Baako enjoys great prestige among the young. They like him for being a good athlete. He plays soccer, cricket, and is Ghana’s … Continue reading
Filed under Africa, democracy, education, Ghana, nationalism
Tokugawa Internationalists in Shizuoka, 1870s
From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), 159-160: In mid-November 1871, [Edward Warren] Clark arrived in Shizuoka as the first westerner free to teach Christianity outside the treaty concessions. In the early 1870s, … Continue reading
Filed under anglosphere, education, Japan, language, nationalism, religion
Legacies of Clara Hepburn’s Juku in Yokohama, 1863
From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 59-60: Before he rented it out in May 1864, Hepburn had taught students Western medicine in his dispensary. Among those whom he taught was Yamanouchi … Continue reading
Interpreting Sino-Soviet Border Clashes, 1969
From: The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill, by Molly Worthen (Mariner Books, 2007), Kindle Loc. 1202-26: It remained unclear whether Beijing was simply using the Soviet border threat to galvanize internal party unity, … Continue reading
Wordcatcher Tales: Yakinokori-zei, Yoyū-jūtaku-zei
From The Magatama Doodle: One Man’s Affair with Japan, 1950–2004, by Hans Brinckmann (Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 99-100: She had contracted tuberculosis towards the end of the war, and had spent her teenage years in hospital and at home to … Continue reading
The Making of “Uncle Goat”
From: Comfort All Who Mourn: The Life Story of Herbert and Madeline Nicholson, by Herbert V. Nicholson and Margaret Wilke (Bookmates International, 1982), pp. 137-140: We sailed for Japan on the Flying Scud with two hundred fifty goats. Dick Clark, … Continue reading
