Table displaying possible motivations for compiling accounts of anomalies (志怪) in the Qing dynasty, "Career Setback or exam failure, poverty, life setback, emotional misery, bad health, longing for literary fame, penchant for the six dynasties" (From Sheng Yang 盛洋 “The Revival of Zhiguai 志怪 Storywriting in the Qing Dynasty: In Search for Its Reasons” Monumenta Serica 63, no. 2 (2015): 295–326.)

They're just like me....
(From excellent 2015 article by Sheng Yang on movitations for compiling zhiguai collections in the Qing dynasty)

人工智能 vs 人肉智能, the force/matter binary... effort vs. flesh...hmm... yes... [brain expands to immense size, causing me to fall out of my chair]

Remembering Harriet Zurndorfer (1946-2026) - Association for Asian Studies Longtime Association for Asian Studies member Harriet Zurndorfer passed away on 18 March 2026 in Leiden. Harriet arrived at Berkeley to study Chinese history in the late 1960s. Her supervisor, Frederic Wakeman, would go on to have a major influence on the trajectory of her academic career. On Wakeman’s suggestion, Harriet spent time in Cambridge […]

Longtime AAS member, Leiden University historian, and NAN NÜ founding editor Harriet Zurndorfer has passed away. At #AsiaNow, her colleagues Anne Gerritsen, Ying Zhang, and Limin Teh remember Harriet's immense contributions to the field.

I did this, but was lucky enough to do the MA in a fully funded program (not sure how many are left). Not required for the PhD program, but important for me personally, coming from an unrelated undergrad degree. I also wasn't sure I wanted to commit to academia, but, well, here I am...

Are there any unclaimed/potentially interesting "[Verb]-ing like a state" premises that have not yet been explored? "Drinking like a state" appears not to have been written yet, yours for the taking

Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific Water Powers is an interdisciplinary collection that presents timely, original research on sacred aquatic animals—from dragons and nagas to crocodiles, eels, dugongs, and whales—and environmental c…

The panel will introduce/hype the forthcoming WATER POWERS: SACRED AQUATIC ANIMALS OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC in a series of lightning talks by contributors. If you can't make it in person, please look forward to the publication of this book later this year!

If you are heading to #AAS2026, please come hear me talk about a curious case of eel worship in early medieval China, as part of the panel "Sacred Animals and Environmental Change across the Asia-Pacific," this Friday at 11 AM, organized by @aikerots.bsky.social

Definitely preferable to "Random Works"....

But the 六國賢者 seems like it might carry some of the multiple authors/compilers connotation, the question/mystery being should we imagine this as the "attribution" on a book that existed before Han editors got to it, or just a label they attached to some stuff they decided belonged together

Absent any other evidence/details I would assume 雜黃帝 is more or less as OP said, "Here's a bunch of bits of writing that have something to do with the Yellow Emperor we found in the Han archives"

Expected response from one who spent way too long thinking about this: "It's complicated." In the title of bibliographic categories in Han-Tang (at least), 雜 may either mean 🤷‍♀️ or refer to compilations/multi-author works. In book & chapter titles it's harder to generalize, esp. since most are lost.

Should have seen this coming, but I'm really struggling to make sense of CTEXT dumping a fresh load of AI slop that we now have to wade through together forever. At least they give us the option to turn it off so I don't have to constantly feel pressure to provide free labor to make it readable

Happy Tuesday from adoptable kitties, Pearl and Brax! These Besties have the right idea on this snowy day, keeping cozy cuddly warm! Pearl and Brax are both wonderfully unique kitties and they are going to endlessly enrich their forever family’s life. Pearl is 1.5 years old and Brax is 2 years

happy lunar spring festival everybody

Mind and Psychology in Early China Cambridge Core - East Asian History - Mind and Psychology in Early China

New Cambridge Element, Mind and Psychology in Early China, by Lisa Raphals, out now! Download for free for the next 2 weeks at
cup.org/3MB22rz

JAOS The Journal of the American Oriental Society (ISSN 0003-0279) is published quarterly by the American Oriental Society.

The latest issue of JAOS has been published, #145.4 (2025). This will be the last one under the old name. Starting next year, the journal will appear under its new name, JASPA: Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia.
lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja...
@aspa1842.bsky.social
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Other exciting stuff in the issue: Milburn on Zuo Si's "Rhapsody on White Hair," Feezell on Yu Xin's "Pacing the Void" poems, and a forum of responses to Pearce's book on the Northern Wei. I'm honored to have my research in this fantastic journal, from which I've learned so much over the years.

New issue of Early Medieval China is out! I have an article in it on anomaly accounts 志怪 in the Liang text Jinlouzi 金樓子. Come for the unique treatment of strange tales as fodder for (very hard to translate) parallel prose, stay for Jinlouzi's own bizarre history of dissolution and recompilation...

Interesting...

Yes this one really confused me...

Interesting/funny question from a student in my Chinese class today... Does anyone know if the slang "ate" (as in "to do something very well") has made it into Chinese? Or, I guess, how would this be translated to Chinese if you had to...?

Simple prompt hack: tell chat to 述而不作 for guaranteed more accurate results

Before moving to Canada I'd have said absolutely not. But this has been the case every year since we got here in 2016, except for last year. And that was actually kind of disturbing...seems unlikely this year too!

I liked his book on Forests!

CFP: A Time of Monsters The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

In apps where I can control font, changing to one designed for traditional characters/use in TW fixed this, but for stuff in the OS/web browser display etc., I had to give higher "priority" to 繁體字, and now it seems to consistently display correctly.

So even when I was typing in 繁體字, the OS would default to displaying what I guess is the standard 'non-simplified' form in mainland China, rather than the one which is the standard form in HK/TW. I didn't know (or had forgotten...) that this difference exists, but it makes sense (I guess).

Ok-still don't really understand why it exists, but I realized that in my case at least the reason the 過 with a single 橫折 stroke from the left to the right then down was sometimes displaying instead of the other one was because I had simplified Chinese script "prioritized" over traditional script

Funny thing about learning/practicing Chinese, the best way to look up how to say many things is still to work backwards from Chinese-language sites focused on teaching English. So many more resources for studying Chinese now, but still so far behind...