William Han

My book, "From the Wall to the Water," is now officially published! If you enjoy history, travel, or history-oriented travelogues, then pls consider buying and reading (and reviewing?) this account of my trip from China to Europe via the Silk Road. amazon.com/Wall-Water-Journe…

The province of Jilin, where Yanji is, is home to many of China’s dinosaur fossils, so it has its own dinosaur museum. Amused by these v Chinese names of extinct animals: Huaxia, Confucius, Wukong, Great Wall

My great-grandfather was a litigator during the late-Qing, something I didn't know before studying law myself.

Protestant church in Yanji, w the Lord’s Prayer in Chinese on the wall inside

完蛋，我都算是老幹部了😱

Korean dinner obv

Deer park. But I think the park keeper’s cat was just as much an attraction

Buses here go to Vladivostok & Ussuriysk, & shops sell Russian & N Korean products

It’s not hanfu 漢服 out here; it’s hanfu 韓服

Traded the 27-Celsius weather of Guangzhou for -7 on the North Korean border: Yanji, where half the ppl are ethnic Koreans & signs are bilingual Chinese-Korean.

Chinese dating lingo heard: 撈男 "scooping man": gold digger, male edition 螞蝗男 "leech man": same 中央空調男 "central air conditioning man": a man who is nice to all women around him 兩面三刀男 "2-faces-3-blades man": "2-faces-3-blades" is a classical expression for devious 一葉浮萍文藝男 "1-floating-duckweed artsy man": 一葉浮萍歸大海 "1 floating duckweed returns to the sea" is another classical expression; I take this to mean "artsy fartsy guy" 社畜男 "company cattle man": from Japanese "shachiku" meaning corporate slave 本土視覺男 "local vision man": I take to mean like country bumpkin? I can't keep up...

Alternatively, we can translate 胡 as adj/adv “chaotically, randomly, w disregard,” as in 胡亂，胡來, & 塞 as v. “to clog up,” in this case perhaps the Strait of Hormuz? 😅

The Qing era historian Zhang Xuecheng was a major force behind the local history movement, making county annals respectable & important

The robots were just pre-show for a festival of Patriarch Huaguang 華光祖師 marking his birthday. Huaguang is a god of fire. Tradition developed in Cantonese opera troupes to worship him to prevent theaters (or the red boats they used to perform on) from catching fire. There’s a sequence to how it’s done. After filing in, a lion dance, then representations of the 5 blessings, then displays of acrobatics & kung fu.

Clever 鯤

牛來！

Interested in these displays of folk religiosity, considered feudal superstitions a few decades ago

Hm is the Hudson Institute still saying how the Iran war is 5D chess that totally destroyed China?

Romance of the Western Chamber but robots, bc China