Leaving on a jet plane, and lots of studying until then
Mkay. Tickets to China have been bought. We fly out on August 15, so it's official, and I'm starting to stress a little the closer we get to that date. And I don't stress, EVER.
I know I said I'd be moving to Taibei, but I just couldn't make myself not move to China. It is, after all, China I'm interested in, not Taiwan specifically. I want to be able to use my weekends to see the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army in Xi'an, the Forbidden City, etc. My wife and I thought about spending a month next summer seeing China after having spent a year in Taiwan, but we decided we'd prefer to just live in China.
I still don't know where we'll be living. I probably won't hear whether I won the scholarship or not until July, so we won't know until then. So our tickets are for Shanghai, since it was cheapest, and we'll just take a train to wherever we end up living. I've applied for a few schools so we have some options in case I don't get the scholarship. We're kind of leaning toward Harbin, even thought my wife has never lived further north than Dallas, TX. It'll be good for her, right?
In other news, I'm studying quite a bit these days. I'm working primarily on my conversation skills for Chinese, since mine suck and I'll need to be able to get around. I'm also working on my French and Japanese reading skills, since I'll need both (and maybe more) for research in grad school. There's a Qing historian who does research in at least 10 languages. That's Chinese, Classical Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Manchu, Mongolian, and Uyghur in addition to his native English, and he's published in at least four of those (English, Chinese, Japanese, and French). So I have some real catching up to do, since I'm strongly considering specializing in late imperial Chinese history. Maybe I should also add in German while I'm at it...
I'm also reading a fair amount of history. Right now it's Valerie Hansen's excellent survey, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. Once that's finished, it's onto Frederick Mote's massive (~1000 pages) tome, Imperial China, 900-1800. I've read bits of it, and it is quite good. I've checked out Pamela Kyle Crossley's The Manchus and Mark C. Elliott's Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World from the university library. These are two of the leaders of the "New Qing" history movement, and Dr. Elliott is the aforementioned reader of 10 languages. I haven't started either book yet, but they're both due by the end of the month so I'll get on them soon. Dr. Elliott's book The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China is checked out and overdue, so hopefully it will be back soon. I've read several papers by each professor and the New Qing approach is fascinating, so it's exciting stuff to read.
Other stuff I'm reading include Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities. It is also very good, and very informative for someone like me who went to a music college where few students go on to grad school. It has helped me tremendously in understanding what I'm getting myself into, and how to approach grad school in the right frame of mind. Another one is Getting What you Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or PhD, although it is more of a "grad school survival" book than a "get everything you can possibly squeeze out of grad school" book.
So that's what's up with me right now. It also explains the lack of blog posts lately (I'm a little busy). I'll try to do better though. 加油！
I know I said I'd be moving to Taibei, but I just couldn't make myself not move to China. It is, after all, China I'm interested in, not Taiwan specifically. I want to be able to use my weekends to see the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army in Xi'an, the Forbidden City, etc. My wife and I thought about spending a month next summer seeing China after having spent a year in Taiwan, but we decided we'd prefer to just live in China.
I still don't know where we'll be living. I probably won't hear whether I won the scholarship or not until July, so we won't know until then. So our tickets are for Shanghai, since it was cheapest, and we'll just take a train to wherever we end up living. I've applied for a few schools so we have some options in case I don't get the scholarship. We're kind of leaning toward Harbin, even thought my wife has never lived further north than Dallas, TX. It'll be good for her, right?
In other news, I'm studying quite a bit these days. I'm working primarily on my conversation skills for Chinese, since mine suck and I'll need to be able to get around. I'm also working on my French and Japanese reading skills, since I'll need both (and maybe more) for research in grad school. There's a Qing historian who does research in at least 10 languages. That's Chinese, Classical Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Manchu, Mongolian, and Uyghur in addition to his native English, and he's published in at least four of those (English, Chinese, Japanese, and French). So I have some real catching up to do, since I'm strongly considering specializing in late imperial Chinese history. Maybe I should also add in German while I'm at it...
I'm also reading a fair amount of history. Right now it's Valerie Hansen's excellent survey, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. Once that's finished, it's onto Frederick Mote's massive (~1000 pages) tome, Imperial China, 900-1800. I've read bits of it, and it is quite good. I've checked out Pamela Kyle Crossley's The Manchus and Mark C. Elliott's Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World from the university library. These are two of the leaders of the "New Qing" history movement, and Dr. Elliott is the aforementioned reader of 10 languages. I haven't started either book yet, but they're both due by the end of the month so I'll get on them soon. Dr. Elliott's book The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China is checked out and overdue, so hopefully it will be back soon. I've read several papers by each professor and the New Qing approach is fascinating, so it's exciting stuff to read.
Other stuff I'm reading include Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities. It is also very good, and very informative for someone like me who went to a music college where few students go on to grad school. It has helped me tremendously in understanding what I'm getting myself into, and how to approach grad school in the right frame of mind. Another one is Getting What you Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or PhD, although it is more of a "grad school survival" book than a "get everything you can possibly squeeze out of grad school" book.
So that's what's up with me right now. It also explains the lack of blog posts lately (I'm a little busy). I'll try to do better though. 加油！
Add "Learn Chinese" to iGoogle
0 comments :
Post a Comment