Skip to main content

Chinese Platypus

No, there are no Platypi in China. Well, at least Platypi aren't native to China. So I'm down to my last paper. This one is on the Chinese response to European colonialism. I've been reading bios of Chinese reformers, revolutionaries, and treatises by Qing loyalists. Guess where the lion's share of my books are coming from? They're coming from Biola's library. The books evacuated from Biola's Chinese seminary are a snapshot of an age of intense turmoil and transition in China. Someone needs to do a serious scholarly study of that collection. It would actually be a meaningful contribution to the historical field. I guess Biola would have to find someone who speaks French and Chinese to get started though. French is as far as I've gotten and Latin and Greek have to come next. The Platypus speaks French. You can ask him about it the next time you see him...

Comments

Chris said…
Platypi...Jim, your choice in mascot is commendable if for no other reason than that it makes me laugh when I even think the word platypi.

Platypi. Ah.

Good to read your deep thoughts sir.
5:22 PM
James said…
Welcome Chris. Good to see you!
2:48 PM
luminarumbra said…
For someone who isn't much of a journaler, you seem to be doing pretty well with your blog. Mine averages a post a week, and I've been going for over a year now.

Heh, and you didn't *have* to actually use this blog to sign up for the Flinters one. You could have just deleted it after you got the invite.

But hey, you have an audience, and you seem to be having fun, so by all means, continue!
5:01 PM
James said…
Oh! I didn't know I could just delete it! Well, I am having fun...
11:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
10 comments
Read more

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more