For years, Jottings from the Granite Studio has been one of my favorite blogs. It is written by Jeremiah Jenne, “a PhD candidate at a large public university in Northern California” who is “currently in Beijing teaching history, doing archival research, and working on his dissertation.” If you have an interest in Chinese history (and you should), you have to be reading Granite Studio.
I have always bemoaned the fact that the voices of Chinese bloggers are almost exclusively non-Chinese. There are and were a few blogs written by Chinese-Americans, but it seems like the best of those (i.e. China Esquire and CN Review have pretty much gone dormant) and those that remain do little more than act as cheerleaders for whatever China does.
I have seen a few English language blogs written by Chinese nationals in China, but most of those are badly written to the point of distraction; if the writing is so bad that I notice, I have trouble enjoying the blog.
There has been one exception out there, Inside-out China. That blog is beautifully written by Xujun Eberlein, who grew up in Chongqing, but then moved to the United States, got a PhD.d from MIT, worked in high tech for a while, and then became a writer. Yes, a real live novel writing writer, and trust me, she can write. Her posts on China are must-reads not only because they are excellent, but because they are those of a Chinese voice writing in English.
Anyway, about a month ago, Jeremieh took a brief blog hiatus (I love using words like that) and gave his “lovely wife and co-conspirator Yajun” a guest posting slot (can you say Wally Pipp?). Her first post, entitled, “Diversity When? A Guest Post by Yajun,” was so well written and insightful, I immediately wrote Jeremieh requesting he pass on my compliments. Yajun is a Chinese national living in China.
Yajun just wrote yet another excellent post, this one entitled, “The Sino-Japanese Relationship: (apologies to Facebook) It’s Complicated.” It’s a must read.
I think it important that those who do business with China (and those who don’t) understand where China is “coming from” and that includes where China is “coming from” on such issues as Japan. I have received criticisms for even writing about this topic (see my earlier post, “China’s Reaction to Japan’s Earthquake“), as though my not writing about it will somehow make it all go away.
I do not purport to know how the “average” Chinese person feels about Japan or how the “average” Japanese person feels about China, but I have many times been struck by the almost blind hatred the two countries have for each other. Totally rational, urbane, sophisticated, and worldly Chinese lawyers have said horrible things about Japan and vice-versa, that I see as completely out of character for them.
It doesn’t take me to note that there are obviously very deep-seated hatreds between those two countries that cannot simply be swept under the rug. This will be the second (and last) time I raise this issue, but I do want to highlight the really good writing on this from a Chinese perspective (note how I say “a” and not “the”). Go read Yajun’s post and while you are at it, you should also check out Jeremiah’s more historical post on the same issue, entitled, “Envy and Antipathy: Chinese historical attitudes toward Japan.”
What do you think?
UPDATE: Colin Spears, over at the World Affairs Blog Network, just did a really good post on “Chinese Responses to the 2011 Japanese Sendai (Tohoku) Earthquake.”
