eileen chengyin chow
@chowleen
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film, lit, fandoms, politics, chinatowns. @DukeU prof @DukeAsia DGS, @dukestorylab dir. Shewo Inst of Chinese Journalism dir. @LAReviewofBooks, 傳記文學 board. 周成蔭
Duke Story Lab/世新大學舍我紀念館
Joined March 2008
A thread on birthright citizenship I wrote in 2018, that unfortunately remains relevant. Where we are headed: Abolishing birthright citizenship for the non-white and non-rich. And why I teach on United States v. Wong Kim Ark every semester. Who was Wong Kim Ark? 1/
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The fourteen-hundred-plus years old ginkgo tree in Xi’an shedding its leaves
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“A photographer’s portrait in a mirror, a hundred years ago, Japan, ca. 1920.” . [Apparently from a cache of found glass plate negatives, via OldJapanesePhotos]
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First graders back to school in Hangzhou, with social distancing headgear. The long horizontal plumes on Song Dynasty toppers were supposedly to prevent officials from conspiring sotto voce with one another while at court—so social distancing was in fact their original function!
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Sharing one of my favorite poems since childhood. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, who was sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”
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These Chinese character homework pages have been making the rounds, and they amuse me
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Sharing my mom’s new automated mahjong table in Taipei as palate cleanser
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Winner of 2020’s new kanji contest in Japan: the character 座 (seat), ingeniously redesigned as a neologism for “social distance.” . Note the two 人(person) radicals in the original 座are now positioned farther away from one another! . Runners up:
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From my college roommate Kate Laird, from Alaska:. "We lit 545 candles on the breakwater for the children who aren't with their parents tonight. And for the parents who may never find those children."
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Dolly Parton on her favorite books 💖. “Not enough folks know what a great book ‘Kindred’ by Octavia E. Butler is. It’s kind of tricky to describe but somehow it all works — it’s about race relations and there’s time travel and romance. It’s powerful.”
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Sharing one of my favorite poems since childhood. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, who was sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, as that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”
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Paul Auster as a student participating in the 1968 occupation of Columbia University, as seen in Peter Whitehead's The Fall (1969). safe travels
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Just discovered the work of Taiwanese sculptor Hsu Tung Han 韓旭東 - wood sculptures carved as if pixelated . [Via his Flickr and @mymodernmet ]
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“I learned [how to plot In The Mood For Love] from the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. In his stories he is fond of the ouroboros structure - you know, a ring formed by a snake eating its tail.”. -Wong Kar Wai
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A thread of Michael Wolf (1954-2019) photography .-architecture of density
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So much to mourn in the passing of our greatest American writer. Remembering Toni Morrison by rereading her today, and by this wonderful picture of her and Angela Davis circa 1974.
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This is excruciating. Anne Carson on writing with Parkinson’s
‘I say to myself, it’s just a matter of attention; turn the page, pay attention, try again. I try again; I am wrong. Life slips one more notch towards barbarity.’. Anne Carson on trying to write with Parkinson’s:
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THIS SKorean protest is the kind of tactic U.S. media need to learn. Backbone. #StandTogether #TrumpPressConference .
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A catalogue of Taiwan mangoes: choose your fighter.#台灣芒果
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“My mother didn’t do anything wrong,” said Robert Peterson, 38. “And she deserves the recognition that she is a human, she’s a community person like everyone else. None of those people deserved what happened to them.” @ajc #YongAeYue .
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A visual guide to spring flowers in East Asia. Clockwise from top right, in Japanese, Korean, Chinese Mandarin readings. 梅 plum (ume/maehwa/mei).杏 apricot (anzu/salgu/xing).李 plum (sumomo/jadu/li).桃 peach (momo/boksung-a/tao).櫻 cherry (sakura/beotkkeot/ying). 🎨@mojacookie
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My grandparents met in a cafe in Paris in the 1920s - she was a foreign student studying French poetry at the Sorbonne, and he was a visiting journalist from Beijing. They eventually had five children, one of whom was my mother. So, happy #BastilleDay!
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My namesake, the Shanghai writer Eileen Chang 張愛玲, must rank high among the writers to whom I return obsessively. As it is her birthday today (and mine too), a reprise of some favorites. A few drawings that she made to accompany her and her friends' writings 1/
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Not only is this a devastating loss of life, #KyoAni is known for guaranteeing its animators a living wage, breaking from the exploitative practices of most anime companies. KyoAni was founded by a woman producer and w a large team of women artists, incl the great Naoko Yamada.
Terrible news from KyoAni - Kyoto Animation. At least 22 people presumed dead, 40 injured in suspected arson at Kyoto anime studio | The Japan Times
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Borgesian in more ways than one. The new spectacular bookstore in Dujiangyan, China #都江堰 #鍾書閣
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Mum Bett sued her master for her freedom & won in 1781. “Any time, any time while I was a slave, if 1 minute’s freedom had been offered me, & I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I wld have taken it – just to stand 1 minute on God’s earth a free woman – I would.”
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My favorite mooncake 🥮 is missing. Happy #AutumnEquinox #MidAutumnFestival #中秋節 all. [via cutfruitcollective]
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Yamashiro Ryūichi 山城隆一.Hayashi-Mori [Forest 森林] 1954. Designed for the Forest Protection Movement's tree-planting campaign, a counter-movement against rapid destruction of shrines and forests in the wake of the 1950s economic and building boom in Japan
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"My, what a cool and lovely autumn." - Xin Qiji. A poem I share every #autumnequinox. (Also included as an epigraph in @ewong's brilliant new book)
Sharing one of my favorite poems since childhood. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, who was sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”
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Lol I miss Taiwan. “Those are ducks. They are not our ducks. They are here for the air conditioning.”.
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Graduation season 2020. St Paul, MN.Photo of Deveon Joseph.By Nathan Aguirre
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“Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re past your prime.”.#MichelleYeoh, hero #Oscars #EEAAO
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This is true even for elite colleges like Amherst or Harvard, perceived to be filled with students with the means to do so. It makes it that much harder for students who don’t.
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The past few times I’ve spoken on immigration, I simply walk to the front of the room and start to deliver my lecture. in Chinese. (I’ve done this speaking on other topics too-incl to 200 1st years in the @DukeEnvironments masters program). Students: 🤔😦😅.bemused, alarmed. 1/.
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Resharing a small poem of longing, from a poet of the Chinese diaspora who spent the latter half of his life in Taiwan. He died there three years ago today, on December 14, 2017. Yu Guangzhong, "Nostalgia" .- in his handwriting, alongside my translation.#everynightapoem #余光中
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I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way —things I had no words for. Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue Nude, 1918
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One of Nabokov's most illustrious pupils: #RuthBaderGinsburg. “He was a man in love with the sound of words. He taught me the importance of choosing the right word and presenting it in the right word order. He changed the way I read, the way I write.”
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On April 1, 1960, Lorraine Hansberry wrote two columns in her datebook titled ‘I like’ and ‘I hate.’”. #everynightapoem #ofsorts
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"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." . Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) safe travels
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Reminded me of one of my favorite works by Duane Michals: . “This Photograph is My Proof” 1967-74.[Gelatin silver print w hand-applied text]
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Desires are already memories. —Italo Calvino. [Fan Ho 何藩, 1954]
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We received a most precious package today: masks! Distributed free of charge from the Ministry of Health to all citizens - the beauty of its universal health care system. Thank you Taiwan 🇹🇼
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New day, new month, new year. Happy 🐅 year!. [Mark Rothko, Red on Red, 1969]
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Yu Guangzhong 余光中, the great poet of the Chinese diaspora who spent most of his life in Taiwan, has passed away. Here is perhaps his best known poem (to his chagrin), “Nostalgia” 鄉愁 - in his own handwriting, alongside my quick translation. Safe travels. #everynightapoem
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hanami 花見🌸 from a different angle. [Tatsuto Shibata, Aichi Prefecture]
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Anna May Wong-“I left America bc I died so often. Pathetic dying seemed to be the best thing I did.”#whitewashedOUT
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“I think I know how many times one has to start again, and how often one feels that one cannot start again. And yet, on pain of death, one can never remain where one is. The light. The light. One will perish without the light.”. -James Baldwin.[w Avedon, Nothing Personal, 1964]
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Tonight is #GhostFestival (#中元普渡, #鬼節, #お盆) in Asian Buddhist/Taoist/folk traditions. Don’t drink, don’t swim or go near bodies of water, don’t wear all white, don’t shave your legs, don’t touch walls —lest you walk into hungry ghosts. [Anita Mui in 胭脂扣 Rouge, 1987]
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After every war.someone has to tidy up. Things won’t pick.themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove.the rubble to the roadsides.so the carts loaded with corpses.can get by. -Wisława Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning” (t. Cavanagh & Barańczak).#everynightapoem #war
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Finally, my favorite -for its simplicity, elegance, and emphasis of the visual nature of the action. The bottom half of the character 音(sound) has been slightly altered to incorporate 目 (sight, eye), to create a neologism for “sign language.”. This 1st grader wins in my book!
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Advice on Marriage to Young Ladies. [Pamphlet written by a suffragette in 1918, on display at the Pontypridd Museum in Wales]
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In memoriam. John Berger, most beloved, passed away 2 years ago today. "What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”
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So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, .I wanted to say, .in another life, .I would have really liked .just doing .laundry and taxes with you. –Waymond Wang . [Ke Huy Quan in #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce,.dir. Daniels, 2022]
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Summoning all my serene Mountain-Witch-Taming-Fierce-Tiger energy for the year ahead –. Happy #LunarNewYear #YearOftheTiger, all!. [Luo Pin 羅聘 (1733-99) Mountain Witch 山鬼圖, detail]
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John Berger, so beloved, passed away on Jan 2, 2017. "What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”.#everynightapoem
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@nhannahjones Same with mine (just turned 10). She finds it unfathomable that it’s all “really old men.”
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One I’ve shared before, though I’ve since made some minor translation changes. By Jiang Jie 蔣捷 (1245-1301), another favorite ci poet who bore witness to the demise of the Northern Song dynasty. “Listening to Rain” —on what changes, and yet what remains. #everynightapoem
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I wish I’d met you after everything had burned. -Dave Lucas, “Love Poem for an Apocalypse”.#everynightapoem #redux
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A cross-dialect bilingual moment!. For the SF bilingual ballot, @KamalaHarris was given the name 賀錦麗 ("He Jinli" in Mandarin) by friends in the local Chinese Am community. Memed in Taiwan bc in Hokkien, "hó-tsíng-lí" = 好整理 = liberally translated, "She's come to clean up."
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「小夜鶯，你忘了嗎？」. An ode to Ukraine, from a small group of ordinary people in southwestern China. [Arranged and performed by 紅花綠葉樂團 h/t my friend Tzu-I Chuang]
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“Most of the students concerned – among them Chinese, Japanese and Korean – have lived in Rome for several years, Italian newspaper la Repubblica reports. Several are second generation immigrants who have no relationship with their countries of origin.” 🤬
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Safe travels. Ryuichi Sakomoto 坂本龍一 (1952-2023)
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I like this one because it is a bilingual visual pun - a 76yo entrant transformed the bottom half of the character 会 (meeting) into a “Z” to make. you guessed it, “web conference” . (This could be a greater branding triumph for @zoom_us than even Kleenex or Xerox)
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A visual guide to spring flowers in Japan (and Korea). Clockwise from top right: plum (ume/maehwa), apricot (anzu/salgu), plum (sumomo/jadu), peach (momo/boksung-a), cherry (sakura/beotkkeot) .via Shi-Lin Loh 🎨@mojacookie
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Found poetry at Harris Teeter . (spotted by my friend John W)
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Her birthday, too. A few Shanghai sketches by .Eileen Chang 張愛玲
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This is what language is:.a habitable grief. —.which hurts .just enough to be a scar. And heals just enough to be a nation. -Eavan Boland. A fierce Irish poet in the grand tradition - safe travels. From my favorite poem of hers. #everynightapoem
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After every war.someone has to tidy up. Things won’t pick.themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove.the rubble to the roadsides.so the carts loaded with corpses.can get by. -Wisława Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning” (t. Cavanagh & Barańczak).#everynightapoem
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The first day after a death, the new absence .Is always the same; we should be careful. Of each other, we should be kind .While there is still time. Philip Larkin, 'The Mower'.#everynightapoem #time
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The first day after a death, the new absence .Is always the same; we should be careful. Of each other, we should be kind .While there is still time. Philip Larkin, 'The Mower'
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I always thought this was where it was all headed. Abolishing birthright citizenship for the non-white and non-rich. And why I am teaching United States v. Wong Kim Ark next week.
They served in the army, the border patrol and the police. They have official US birth certificates. But the government is denying their passport applications and telling them they aren't American citizens.
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So, here you are.too foreign for home.too foreign for here.never enough for both. "diaspora blues" by Ijeoma Umebinyuo.#everynightapoem
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I love this one from a 15yo entrant: the character 画 (picture, image) rendered 3-D and folded - to make the neologism for laptop/notebook computer! 😍 so clever.
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@emilyrauhala I agree, Emily - though it seems that Americans don't identify with the pain of their fellow citizens, either.
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A winter solstice 冬至 martial arts skating break from the news. [Wu Tongxuan 吳桐軒 by Jack Wilkes for LIFE, 1946. Wu was a long-time legend of the Beijing Beihai Park rink - in his youth he was part of a skating troupe for the Empress Dowager. Here he is in his late sixties.]
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I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories.–.Slowly I would get to pen and paper,.Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. Muriel Rukeyser (1913-80).#everynightapoem
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My beloved aunt the last time I was able to visit with her, and who passed away in Beijing this morning. Cheng Youshu 成幼殊 (1924-2021): Poet, wartime Shanghai Communist underground member, journalist, diplomat, UN envoy, Lu Xun Prize winner for poetry at age 81, opera lover.
This is my aunt Cheng Yushu (Youshu) 成幼殊 with her husband Chen Luzhi 陳魯直. They were career diplomats (and later, ambassadors) representing the PRC in India, Denmark, the UN. Here is a photo of their kids and others welcoming Premier Zhou Enlai to Delhi in 1960. 2/
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“The planet goes on being round.”. -Wendy Cope.“Differences of Opinion” . Shared this first two Novembers ago; sharing again. #everynightapoem
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