Annual

2014: Where’s the Ancient City of Nanking Going?

南京最后的古城往何处去姚远 Yao Yuan, who has born in Nanjing in 1981, has written extensively for the mainstream Chinese media about the threats to the architectural and cultural heritage of the city posed by developers, commercial ventures, Party programs and public neglect.… Read

The Australian Legation in Nanking

From July 1941 until October 1949, the Commonwealth of Australia maintained two diplomatic legations in the Republic of China. Frederic Eggleston, then one of Australia’s leading international relations theorists and an advocate who supported closer ties with Asia, was Minister of the first legation, located in the wartime capital of Chungking, until he was recalled in March 1944, and posted thereafter to represent Australia in Washington.… Read

The Hall of Deep Willows and Its Master

深柳大師與深柳堂 Wu Yankang 武延康 Translated by Frederick W. Mote 閒門向山處
深柳讀書堂 Editor’s Note The following is an account of the Jinping Buddhist Press, founded in Nanking following the depredations of the Lower Yangtze Valley, and the wholesale destruction of Buddhist monasteries, libraries and practice, during the pseudo-Christian Taiping Rebellion (1851-1865).… Read

The Age of Exuberance

David Hawkes The Chinese equivalent of the sack of Rome occurred in A.D. 311 when [the capital of the Latter Han dynasty] Luoyang fell to the barbarians. As many better-off Chinese as could get away fled south, where a Chinese court had established itself in Nanking.… Read

2015: Mayor Bulldozer

In 2015, Ji Jianye 季建業, mayor of Nanjing from January 2010-October 2013, was sentenced to fifteen years gaol for graft. Ji was known as ‘Mayor Bulldozer’ 推土機市長 for the widespread destruction of heritage sites in the city, radical building and development plans that lead to the wholesale felling of many of the city’s beloved trees, and a politically driven commercialism that laid waste to as much as it created.… Read

1959: This Land so Rich in Beauty

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a number of noted upcoming artists — their number included Lü Fengzi 吕鳳子, Xu Beihong 徐悲鸿, Zhang Daqian 張大千, Yan Wenliang 颜文梁, Lü Sibai 吕斯百, Chen Zhifo 陳之佛, Gao Jianfu 高劍父, Pan Yuliang 潘玉良 and Pang Xunqin 龐薰琹 — worked in the new national capital Nanking and were later identified as a kind of ‘ Jinling Artistic group’ 新金陵畫派, although they shared little in common.… Read