For those who missed AAS this year, or went to one of the other amazing sounding panels on Saturday morning that were scheduled at the same time as ours, here's a recording of my paper: Paper abstract: In Liu Xiang baojuan, a popular Qing religious performance text, when exemplary protagonist Liu Xiangnü is likened to…Read more Embodying Guanyin, Embodying yaojing
Chinese popular religion
Foreign bones on Taiwan soil: the Princess of Eight Treasures (part 2)
(part 1) Having read about the Princess of Eight Treasures online years ago, when we were in Kenting for a night at a resort in late December 2015 (thanks parents!), I made sure to go see the temple in person. Granted, my pictures shared here are little different from what you can find yourself via online…Read more Foreign bones on Taiwan soil: the Princess of Eight Treasures (part 2)
Audio recording of my paper presentation from the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2015
Click here for the paper abstract. Click here for the full panel abstract. For the sake of turning this into a movie for upload to Youtube, I included some of the images shown during my presentation. They aren't cued to the talk, however, so you needn't worry about following along. All images are also located…Read more Audio recording of my paper presentation from the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2015
Ten Thousand Treasures of 1895
Printed in 1895, the Newly Expanded Druggist's Ten Thousand Treasures Encyclopedia (新增懸壺萬寶全書) contains far more than medical advice. Even if you can't read a word of Chinese, the charming illustrations alone lead me to recommend that you take a couple minutes to browse through the work anyway. There's a lot more going on in it…Read more Ten Thousand Treasures of 1895
Remarkable likenesses of Liu Xiangnü
While I don't think this is intentional at on the part of whomever put together this text, I find it hilarious that in describing its heroine, the narration accounts for the ill-conceived frontispiece illustrations that would grace so many editions of this text. "A clever illustrator would have difficulty sketching her, her remarkable likeness could…Read more Remarkable likenesses of Liu Xiangnü
Lord of Thunder, Mother of Lightning
Maybe I've been working with low cost 19th century woodblock editions of books for too long, but the truth is that I love their illustrations, probably much more than virtuoso paintings from the same era. Here, again from the Illustrated Stories of Twenty Four Filial Women , 1872 edition, are the Lord of Thunder (雷公)…Read more Lord of Thunder, Mother of Lightning
Filial modern women buy our towels!
I've included pictures from Yu Zhi's Illustrated Stories of Twenty Four Filial Women here before. Those illustrations come from the 1872 woodblock print edition, available via Google Books*. The University of Chicago library also has two editions of the text, with illustrations purportedly redrawn by none other than Wu Youru, the famous Shanghai lithographic print…Read more Filial modern women buy our towels!
Mother Gu Temple 辜婦媽廟 (2)
(1: Tainan local women, Taiwan local religion) Let's begin with Gu Fuma's story, since she's the center of a number of stories to follow. Surnamed Lin (林) with no given name on record, her husband Gu Tangchun (辜湯純) died when she was twenty two. Lin was left to manage his meager estate, consisting of his…Read more Mother Gu Temple 辜婦媽廟 (2)
Far From Formosa 