In the 1920s, Chinese teachers of the liberal arts were at pains to oppose what was known as the ‘partification’ 黨化 of education. The imposition of partisan ideology through the promotion of political songs, nationalist narratives and party propaganda (in this case of the Nationalist Party 國民黨) would, they feared, inculcate a new orthodoxy as well as a slavish mentality among the young making them thereby easy targets for political manipulation in the future.… Read

This latest addition to The Wairarapa Talks is an interview that John Minford, co-founder of our Academy, gave to a programme called ‘Ear to Asia’. The audio recording of the interview is available here, and a transcript is given below.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

The writer and translator Linda Jaivin gave the opening speech at an exhibition of photographs of hutong 衚衕, the unique (and all-but-disappeared, or destroyed by restoration) alleys of Beijing, by the artist Xu Yong 徐勇 at the Vermilion Gallery in Sydney on the 4th of May 2017.… Read

As the legend goes, the reign of Sui Yang-ti [r. 604-618 CE] was a great heroic age. The heroes were destined to fight either on the side of or against the great emperor to come, T’ang T’ai-tsung.… Read

International Children’s Day 國際兒童節, which is marked on various dates around the globe, was first declared as a national holiday in Turkey in 1929, although it had been celebrated from 1923 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of a modernising secular state.… Read