Tag: history

Historical artifact: 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker)

Posted on by Jason Li
A view of the box package for 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker) from the top. The box is green and has various designs combining typography and illustrated playing cards.
Some photos of cards, showing how they might be combined by placing the cards next to or on top of one another.

I purchased this children’s educational card game in Penang, Malaysia in 2023. Its name is 汉字组字扑克, which roughly translates to “Chinese character combination poker.” This box set did not come with any instructions, but its name and design suggests it’s a kind of “扑克 [poker]” game where cards (with Chinese characters/radicals written on them) are grouped together into Chinese…

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Correcting the record (and oriental gaze) on Radiolab’s China Mixtape episode

Posted on by Jason Li

A soldier with red star cap and uniform holds up a casette tape and a machine gun, drawn in the style of a Communist China propaganda poster from many decades ago.
A still from Radiolab’s trailer for its Mixtape series (from Youtube)

Many moons ago, Krish Raghav raised some serious concerns about a Radiolab episode on the emergence of the rock music scene in China. “Framing China’s musical lineage as ‘Revolutionary operas to John Denver’ is such a frustrating half-truth,” he said, “[and]…

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Virtual China

The Virtual China Archives: blogging from heady 2006-2008 days of the Chinese internet

Posted on by Jason Li

Screenshot of Virtual China from April 2006

88 Bar began life as a blog for one of the Institute for the Future’s research programs. This was back in 2006, and our blog was called Virtual China. With it, Lyn and I set out to document our “exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.” Many of our posts had an excited “look…

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The History of Chinese Typewriters Needs Your $upport

Posted on by Jason Li

Photo of Chinese Typist
Chinese Typist In 1928

1950s Propaganda Poster Featuring Chinese Typist
1950s Propaganda Poster Featuring Chinese Typist

Tom Mullaney (professor of Chinese history + technology at Stanford) is running a Kickstarter campaign around exhibiting and preserving the fascinating history of the Chinese typewriter. One highlight of his exhibition will be centered around how Chinese engineers cracked the puzzle…

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Chinese Comics Review

A Borrowed Life: a superb comic memoir of a flawed Taiwanese patriarch

Posted on by Jason Li

Cover of A Borrowed Life

In A Borrowed Life, esteemed Taiwanese writer-director Wu Nien-jen pays tribute to his working-class father by telling the latter’s life story. His story was made into an award-winning movie way back in 1994 (also called A Borrowed Life), and now it has been retold in comic form. The graphic novel has a grand, sweeping, filmic quality…

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Book Review

Book Review: Understanding China through Comics, Volume 3: The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Posted on by Jason Li

UnderstandingChinaThroughComicsVol3

The third volume of “Understanding China through Comics” continues Liu’s epic quest to chronicle all of ancient Chinese history in comic form. As with the first two volumes, the book zips through Chinese history, in this case 907 to 1368 AD, with text and illustrations.

Liu spends more of the third volume explaining Chinese cultural ideology and geopolitical context than…

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