Podcasts about southern china

I have a special episode for you today with visual artist Shuling Guo. In this episode we hear about her incredible story going from a very traditional, small village in Southern China, and her triumph against a very dominant patriarchal culture structure, to go to art school in Beijing, and ultimately to the United States to pursue her artistic path.  We learned about her spiritual influences from the women in her life and how that set the stage for her artistic journey.  -----------------------------------------Guo graduated from the Oil Painting Department of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (B.F.A.) in 2010. She moved to the United States in 2019, and currently lives between Philadelphia and aboard the Sailing Vessel Selkie. In 2012, she had her first solo exhibition in Beyond Art Space in Beijing. Since then, her work has been exhibited in New York, Beijing, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Platform Art.Her works have been included in the permanent collections of Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum (Beijing) and Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (Guangzhou). Her work has been selected to appear in New American Paintings, 2025 Issue 172.Mindy Solomon Gallery Shuling's Instagram Follow Martin Benson for more insights:*To stay updated on the podcast and related content, check out ⁠⁠⁠my Instagram⁠⁠⁠*To support the show and access exclusive content, consider subscribing for $0.99/month on Instagram (link above).Credits: Special thanks to Matthew Blankenship of ⁠⁠⁠The Sometimes Island⁠⁠⁠ for our podcast theme music!Support this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/martin-l-benson/support⁠

  Two fairy tales from Southern China. In the first, a man is lost in the jungle, and is crowned King of the Apes. The second is a little like a romantic fairy tale that is well known in the west.  Sponsored by Kaboom! Kaboom: An Audio Adventure Podcast An audio adventure podcast for the whole family to enjoy together

Did you know Magnolia essential oil in doTERRA's Citrus Bloom blend is hand-harvested by women in Southern China? In this episode, we go behind the scenes to explore how sustainable sourcing, innovation, and community impact come together in a single bottle of essential oil.   Join doTERRA's Emilie Bell as she shares the fascinating story of Magnolia sourcing from a unique low-tree growing method to the women who help make each harvest possible. It's a beautiful look into the heart of doTERRA's global mission and the real people behind the products you love.   What You'll Discover:   - Why Magnolia is a rare and delicate essential oil - How doTERRA works with local partners to harvest responsibly - The story of women earning income through sustainable agriculture - How Magnolia adds balance and depth to the Citrus Bloom blend - Easy ways to use Citrus Bloom in your home and daily routine  

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China broadly. For centuries, Chinese pirates raided merchants and coastal communities up and down the Chinese coast, taking advantage of weak imperial rule and safe havens like what's now present-day Vietnam. Robert Antony tells the story of pirates like Zheng Yi Sao in his recent book Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China (Hong Kong UP, 2024) Before retiring in 2019, Robert Antony was distinguished professor at Guangzhou University and recently visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. His recent books include Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (HKU Press: 2016), The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with Documents (Rowman & Littlefield: 2022), and Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes: Glimpses of China's Hidden Past (Rowman & Littlefield: 2023), also covered by the New Books Network. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Outlaws of the Sea. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Grace Lee Boggs said, “History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories – triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally – has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.” In our current chaotic time, it feels like we are intentionally ignoring history. Our lack of awareness feels like a de-evolution, as our education department is gutting, books are banned, and so many American institutions are at risk, it feels as though a critical analysis of history is being ignored.  On Tonight's APEX Express, Host Miko Lee focuses on Wong Kim Ark and the importance of Birthright Citizenship. She speaks with historian David Lei, Reverend Deb Lee and lawyer/educator Annie Lee and activist Nick Gee. Discussed by Our Guests: What You Can Do To Protect Birthright Citizenship Our history is tied to the legacy of Wong Kim Ark and birthright citizenship, and it will take ongoing advocacy to protect this fundamental right. Here are four ways you can stay involved in the work ahead: Invite a friend to attend an event as part of Chinese for Affirmative Action's weeklong series commemorating Wong Kim Ark. Take action and oppose Trump's executive order banning birthright citizenship. Learn about Wong Kim Ark and Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship. Sign up to join Stop AAPI Hate's Many Roots, One Home campaign to fight back against Trump's anti-immigrant agenda.   How you can get engaged to protect immigrants: https://www.im4humanintegrity.org/ https://www.bayresistance.org/ Bay Area Immigration: 24 Hour Hotlines San Francisco 415-200-1548 Alameda County 510-241-4011 Santa Clara County 408-290-1144 Marin County 415-991-4545 San Mateo County 203-666-4472   Know Your Rights (in various Asian languages) Thank you to our guests and Chinese for Affirmative Action for the clip from Wong Kim Ark's great grandson Norman Wong   Show Transcript: Wong Kim Ark Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Miko Lee: [00:00:35] Grace Lee Boggs said history is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past, how we tell these stories. Triumphantly or self critically metaphysically or dialectically, has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings. I. Well, in our current chaotic times, it feels like we are intentionally ignoring history. Our lack of awareness feels like a de-evolution. As our education department is gutted and books are banned, and so many of our American institutions are at risks, it feels as though a critical analysis of history is just being intentionally ignored. So welcome to Apex Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee, and tonight we're gonna delve back into a moment of history that is very much relevant in our contemporary world. Tonight's show is about long Kim Ark. There's a famous black and white photo of a Chinese American man. His hair is pulled back with a large forehead on display, wide open eyes with eyebrows slightly raised, looking at the camera with an air of confidence and innocence. He is wearing a simple mandarin collared shirt, one frog button straining at his neck, and then two more near his right shoulder. The date stamp is November 15th, 1894. His name is Wong Kim Ark. Tonight we hear more about his story, why it is important, what birthright citizenship means, and what you could do to get involved. So stay tuned. Welcome, David Lei, former social worker, community activist, lifelong San Franciscan, and amazing community storyteller. Welcome to Apex Express.    David Lei: [00:02:21] Thank you, Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:02:23] Can you first start with a personal question and tell me who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    David Lei: [00:02:31] I'm now on the board of Chinese Historical Society of America. Chinese American History is pretty important to me for my identity and the story of Chinese in America is American history, and that's where I'm at now.   Miko Lee: [00:02:50] And what legacy do you carry with you from your ancestors?    David Lei: [00:02:56] To pass on the wisdom they pass to me to future descendants. But I'm here in America, so I know after a few generations, my descendants won't look like me. Most likely they won't speak Chinese. They're going to be Americans. So. The lessons and values and wisdoms, my ancestors passed to me, I'm passing to America.   Miko Lee: [00:03:30] we are talking on this episode about Wong Kim Ark and as a community storyteller, I wonder if you can take me back to that time, take me back to Wong Kim Ark growing up in San Francisco, Chinatown, what was happening in San Francisco, Chinatown at that time    David Lei: [00:03:48] Okay, this is the end of the 19th century and we have the Exclusion Act in 1882 where Chinese were excluded from coming to America with few exceptions like merchants, diplomats, and scholars. So if you're Chinese and you're a laborer you just can't come. And there were concerns about. Going, even if you were here, there's a process for your return, the documents you will need. But even that was iffy. But for Chinese in general, there was birthright citizenship. So if you were born here, you have citizenship and that because of the 14th amendment. So many Chinese thought birthright citizenship was important 'cause you can vote, you have more rights, less chance that you will be deported. So the Chinese, born in America, right at 1895, formed a Chinese American Citizens Alliance. The concept of being a American citizen was in everybody's mind in Chinatown at that time. The Chinese been fighting for this birthright citizenship ever since the Exclusion Act. Before Wong Kim Ark, there was Look Tin Sing in the matter regarding Look Tin Sing was a CA federal Court of Appeal case. Look Tin Sing was born in Mendocino, so he's American born. He assumed he was a citizen. His parents sent him back to China before the Exclusion Act, and when he came back after the Exclusion Act, of course he didn't have the paperwork that were required , but he was born here. So to prove that he was a citizen. He had to have a lawyer and had to have white witness, and it went to the federal Court of Appeal, ninth Circuit, and the Chinese sixth company. The City Hall for Chinatown knew this was important for all Chinese, so gave him a lawyer, Thomas Den, and he won the case. Then in 1888, this happened again with a guy named Hong Yin Ming. He was held and he had to go to the Federal Court of Appeal to win again, then Wong Kim Ark 1895. He was stopped and. This time, the Chinese six company, which is a city hall for Chinatown they really went all out. They hired two of the best lawyers money could buy. The former deputy Attorney General for the United States, one of which was the co-founder of the American Bar Association. So these were very expensive, influential lawyers. And because Wong Kim Ark was a young man under 25, he was a cook, so he was poor, but the community backed him. And went to the Supreme Court and won because it was a Supreme Court case. It took precedent over the two prior cases that only went to the Court of Appeal.    Now you might think, here's a guy who has a Supreme Court case that says he's an American citizen. Well, a few years later in 1901, Wong Kim Ark went to Mexico to Juarez. When he came back to El Paso the immigration stopped him at El Paso and says, no you are just a cook. you're not allowed to come in because we have the 1882 Exclusion Act. Wong Kim Ark Says, I have a Supreme Court case saying I'm a US citizen, and the El Paso newspaper also had an article that very week saying they're holding a US citizen who has a Supreme Court case in his favor saying that he is a US citizen. However, immigration still held him for four months in El Paso. I think just to hassle. To make it difficult. Then by 1910, Wong Kim Ark had a few sons in China that he wants to bring to the us so he arranged for his first son to come to America in 1910. His first son was held at Angel Island. Interrogated did not pass, so they deported his firstborn son. So he says, wow, this is my real son, and he can't even get in. So this is dealing with immigration and the US laws and the racist laws is unending. Just because you win the Supreme Court case, that doesn't mean you're safe as we are seeing now. So it takes the community, takes a lot of effort. It takes money to hire the best lawyers. It takes strategizing. It takes someone to go to jail, habeas corpus case oftentimes to test the laws. And even when you win, it's not forever. It's constantly challenged. So I think that's the message in the community. Chinese community had push back on this and have pushed for Birthright citizenship from the very beginning of the Exclusion Act.    Miko Lee: [00:09:48] Thank you so much for that. David. Can we go back a little bit and explain for our audience what the Six Companies meant to Chinatown?    David Lei: [00:09:57] From the very beginning, there were a lot of laws racist laws that were anti-Chinese, and the Chinese always felt they needed representation. Many of the Chinese did not speak English, did not understand the laws, so they formed the Chinese Six Companies. Officially known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. most Chinese come from just the six districts from Guangdong Province. They're like counties. However, in China, each counties most likely will have their own dialect. Unintelligible to the county next to them. They will have their own food ways, their own temples. almost like separate countries. So there were six major counties where the Chinese in America came from. So each county sent representatives to this central organization called the Chinese six companies, and they represented the Chinese in America initially in all of America. Then later on, different states set up their own Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, so they would tax their own membership or get their own membership to pay fees. They had in-house lawyers to negotiate with city government, state government, federal government, and they would raise the money. They were the GoFundMe of their days. Almost every month they were hiring lawyers to protect some Chinese, somewhere in America against unfair unjust laws. The Chinese six company was very important to the Chinese in America, and they were the first to really push back on the Chinese exclusion Act between 1882 and 1905. 105,000 Chinese in America after the exclusion Act sued a federal government more than 10,000 times. This is about 10% of the Chinese population in America, sued the federal government. I'm not including state government, counties nor municipalities. This is just the federal government. About 10% of the Chinese here sued and almost 30 of these went to the Federal Supreme Court, and it was the sixth company that organized many of these winning for all Americans and not just the Chinese right. To a public education. Even if you are an immigrant tape versus Hurley in 1885. Then we have the Yick Wo versus Hopkins case that gave equal protection under law for everyone. Now, the 14th Amendment does have this clause equal protection under law, but everybody thought that meant you had to write a law that was equal for everybody. But in the case of Yick Wo versus Hopkins, it was also important that the law is executed and administered equally for everyone. That's the first time where it was made very clear that equal protection under law also means the administration and the execution of the law. So that is the core of American Civil Rights and the Chinese won this case for all Americans. Of course, Wong Kim Ark.    The concept of political asylum, public law 29 was a Chinese case passed by Congress in 1921, and then we have Miranda Act. If you look into the Miranda Act, it was based on a Chinese case, 1924 Ziang Sun Wan versus the US two Chinese were accused of murder in Washington DC They were tortured, denied sleep. Denied food, denied attorneys, so they confessed. But when it came to trial. They said we didn't do it, we confessed 'cause we were tortured and they won in the Supreme Court, but it was a Washington DC case only applicable to federal jurisdictions. So when Miranda came up, the Supreme Court said, well, we decided this in 1924, but now we'll just make it applicable to state, county and municipality. And then of course, as recently as 1974 Chinese for affirmative action helped bring the Lao versus Nichols case. Where now is required to have bilingual education for immigrant students, if there are enough of them to form a class where they can be taught math, science, history in their original language. These and many more. The Chinese brought and won these cases for all Americans, but few people know this and we just don't talk about it.    Miko Lee: [00:15:35] David, thank you so much for dropping all this knowledge on us. I did not know that the Miranda rights comes from Asian Americans. That's powerful. Yes. And so many other cases. I'm wondering, you said that Chinese Americans and the six companies sued, did you say 10,000 times?    David Lei: [00:15:53] We have 10,000 individual cases. In many of these cases, the Chinese six company helped provide a lawyer or a vice.    Miko Lee: [00:16:03] And where did that come from? Where did that impetus, how did utilizing the legal system become so imbued in their organizing process?   David Lei: [00:16:14] Well, because it worked even with the exclusion act, during the exclusion period most Chinese. Got a lawyer to represent them, got in something like 80%. In many of the years, 80% of the Chinese that hire a lawyer to help them with the immigration process were omitted. So the Chinese knew the courts acted differently from politics. The Chinese did not have a vote. So had no power in the executive branch nor the legislative branch. But they knew if they hire good lawyers, they have power in the court. So regardless of whether their fellow Americans like them or not legally the Chinese had certain rights, and they made sure they received those rights. By organizing, hiring the best lawyers, and this was a strategy. suing slowed down after 1905 because the Chinese lost a important case called Ju Toy versus the us. The Supreme Court decided that since the Chinese sue so much, their courts of appeal were tied up with all these cases. So the Supreme Court says from now on, the Supreme Court will give up his rights to oversight on the executive branch when it comes to immigration because the Chinese sue too much. And that's why today the executive branch. Has so much power when it comes to immigration, cause the court gave up the oversight rights in this ju toy versus the US in 1905. So if we go to the history of the law a lot of the legal policies we live in today, were. Pushback and push for by the Chinese, because the Chinese were the first group that were excluded denied these rights. but the Chinese were very organized one of the most organized group and push back. And that's why we have all these laws that the Chinese won.    Miko Lee: [00:18:30] And in your deep knowledge of all this history of these many cases, what do you think about what is happening right now with all the conversations around birthright citizenship? Can you put that into a historical perspective?    David Lei: [00:18:44] So being an American. We always have to be on the guard for our rights. Who would've thought Roe v. Wade would be overturned? So all these things can be challenged. America's attitude change. Civil disobedience, the Chinese are actually, we have on record the largest number of people practicing civil disobedience over a long period of time. In 1892, when the Exclusion Act, Chinese Exclusion Act had to be renewed, they added this. New requirement that every Chinese must carry a certificate of residency with their photo on it. Well, this is like a internal passport. No one had to have this internal passport, but they made the Chinese do it. So the Chinese six company. Says, no, this is not right. Only dogs need to carry a license around to identify. Itself and only criminals needs to register with a state. And we Chinese are not dogs and we're not criminals, so we're not going to do it 'cause no one else needs to do it. So the six company told all the Chinese 105,000 Chinese not to register. 97% refuse to register. In the meantime, the six companies sued the federal government again. Saying the Federal Go government cannot do this. The Chinese lost this case in the Supreme Court and everybody then had to register, but they didn't register until two years later, 1894. So they held. Held out for two years.   Miko Lee: [00:20:31] How many people was that?    David Lei: [00:20:32] About a hundred thousand. 97% of the 105,000 Chinese refused to do this. So if you look at these certificate of residencies that the Chinese were forced to carry. They were supposed to register in 1892. Almost all of them are 1894. Some of them in fact many of them are May, 1894, the last second that you can register before they start deporting you. So the Chinese. Also practiced civil disobedience and the largest incidents, a hundred thousand people for two years.    Miko Lee: [00:21:15] How did they communicate with each other about that?   David Lei: [00:21:18] The Chinese were very well connected through the six companies, their district association, their surname association oftentimes because of. The racism segregation, the Chinese were forced to live in Chinatowns or relied on their own network. To support each other. So there, there's a lot of letter writing and a lot of institutions, and they kept in touch.That network was very powerful. In fact, the network to interpret a law for everybody interpret uh, any rules of business, and. Just how to conduct themselves in America. They have a lot of institutions doing that. We still have them in the 24 square blocks we call Chinatown. We have almost 300 organizations helping the immigrants. Chinese there with language, with how to do your taxes tutoring for their kids. Advice on schools paying their bills and so on. We have surnames associations, we have district associations, we have gills, we have fraternal organizations, and we certainly have a lot of nonprofits. So it's very, very supportive community. And that's always been the case.    Miko Lee: [00:22:42] I'm wondering what you feel like we can learn from those organizers today. A hundred thousand for civil disobedience. And we're often portrayed as the model minority people just follow along. That's a lot of people during that time. And what do you think we can learn today from those folks that organize for civil disobedience and the Chinese Exclusion Act?    David Lei: [00:23:03] It takes a community. One person can't do it. You have to organize. You have to contribute. You have to hire the best lawyers, the very best. In fact, with the Yik Wo versus Hopkins case, the equal protection under law, the Chinese immediately raised 20,000 equivalent to half a million. It takes collective action. It takes money. You just have to support this to keep our rights.    Miko Lee: [00:23:29] And lastly, what would you like our audience to understand about Wong Kim Ark?    David Lei: [00:23:35] Well, Wong Kim Ark, he was just an average person, a working person that the immigration department made life miserable for him. Is very difficult to be an immigrant anytime, but today is even worse. We have to have some empathy. He was the test case, but there were so many others. I mentioned Look Tin Sing, whose adult name is Look Tin Eli. We know a lot about Look Tin Eli and then this other Hong Yin Ming in 1888 before Wong Kim Ark and so generations of generations of immigrants. Have had a hard time with our immigration department. It's just not a friendly thing we do here. And you know, we're all descendants of immigrants unless you're a Native American. Like I mentioned Look Tin Sing, who was the first case that I could find. For birthright citizenship. His mother was Native American, but Native American didn't even get to be citizens until 1924. You know, that's kind of really strange. But that was the case.    Miko Lee: [00:24:50] That's very absurd in our world.    David Lei: [00:24:52] Yes, Chinatown is where it is today because of Look Tin Sing, his adult name, Look Tin Eli. He saved Chinatown after the earthquake. He's the one that organized all the business people to rebuild Chinatown like a fantasy Chinese land Epcot center with all the pagoda roofs, and he's the one that saved Chinatown. Without him and his Native American mother, we would've been moved to Hunter's Point after the earthquake. He later on became president of the China Bank and also president of the China Mayo Steamship Line. So he was an important figure in Chinese American history, but he had to deal with immigration.   Miko Lee: [00:25:39] David Lei, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. I appreciate hearing this story and folks can find out when you are part of a panel discussion for Wong Kim Ark week, right?    David Lei: [00:25:50] Yes.    Miko Lee: [00:25:51] Great. We will be able to see you there. Thank you so much for being on Apex Express. Annie Lee, managing director of Policy at Chinese for affirmative action. Welcome to Apex Express.    Annie Lee: [00:26:01] Thank you so much for having me Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:26:02] I wanna just start with this, a personal question, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Annie Lee: [00:26:10] I am the daughter of monolingual working class Chinese immigrants. And so I would say my people hail from Southern China and were able to come to the United States where I was born and was allowed to thrive and call this place home. I do this work at Chinese for Affirmative Action on their behalf and for other folks like them.    Miko Lee: [00:26:31] Thanks Annie, Today we're recording on March 17th, and I'm noting this because as we know, things are changing so quickly in this chaotic administration. By the time this airs on Thursday, things might change. So today's March 17th. Can you as both an educator and a lawyer, give me a little bit of update on where birthright citizenship, where does it stand legally right now?    Annie Lee: [00:26:55] As an educator and a lawyer, I wanna situate us in where birthright citizenship lives in the law, which is in the 14th Amendment. So the 14th Amendment has a birthright citizenship clause, which is very clear, and it states that people who were born in the United States, in subject to the laws thereof are United States citizens. The reason. This clause was explicitly added into the 14th Amendment, was because of chattel slavery in the United States and how this country did not recognize the citizenship of enslaved African Americans for generations. And so after the Civil War and the Union winning that war and the ends of slavery . We had to make African Americans citizens, they had to be full citizens in the eye of the law. And that is why we have the 14th Amendment. And that clause of the 14th Amendment was later litigated all the way to the Supreme Court by Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco, like me, two Chinese immigrant parents. When he left the United States, he went to China to visit his family. He tried to come back. They wouldn't let him in. and he said, I am a citizen because I was born in the United States and this clause in your 14th amendment, our 14th amendment says that I'm a citizen. It went all the way to Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed with Wong Kim Ark. Does not matter your parents' citizenship status. Everyone born in the United States is a US citizen, except for a very, very narrow set of exceptions for the kids of foreign diplomats that really is not worth getting into. Everyone is born. Everyone who's born in the United States is a citizen. Okay? So then you all know from Trump's executive order on day one of his second presidency that he is attempting to upends this very consistent piece of law, and he is using these fringe, outlandish legal arguments that we have never heard before and has never merited any discussion because it is just. Facially incorrect based on the law and all of the interpretation of the 14th amendment after that amendment was ratified. So he is using that to try to upend birthright citizenship. There have been a number of lawsuits. Over 10 lawsuits from impacted parties, from states and there have been three federal judges in Maryland, Washington State, and New Hampshire, who have issued nationwide injunctions to stop the executive order from taking effect. That means that despite what Trump says in his executive order. The birthright citizenship clause remains as it is. So any child born today in the United States is still a citizen. The problem we have is that despite what three judges now issuing a nationwide injunction, the Trump's government has now sought assistance from the Supreme Court to consider his request to lift the nationwide pause on his executive order. So the justices, have requested filings from parties by early April, to determine whether or not a nationwide injunction is appropriate. This is extraordinary. This is not the way litigation works in the United States. Usually you let the cases proceed. In the normal process, which goes from a district court to an appeals court, and then eventually to the Supreme Court if it gets appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. This is very different from the normal course of action and I think very troubling.    Miko Lee: [00:30:36] So can you talk a little bit about that? I know we constantly say in this administration it's unprecedented, but talk about how there's three different states that have actually filed this injunction. , how typical is that for then it or it to then go to the Supreme Court?    Annie Lee: [00:30:53] Just to clarify, it's not three different states. It's judges in three different states. In fact, more than many, many states, 18 more than 18 states. There have been two lawsuits related, brought by states one that California was a part of that had multiple states over 18 states as well as San Francisco and District of Columbia. Then there was another lawsuit brought by another set of states. and so many states are opposed to this, for different reasons. I find their complaints to be very, very compelling. Before I get into the fact that multiple judges have ruled against the Trump administration, I did want to explain that the reason states care about this is because birthright citizenship is not an immigration issue. Birthright citizenship is just a fundamental issue of impacting everyone, and I really want people to understand this. If you are white and born in the United States, you are a birthright citizen. If you are black and born in the United States, you are a birthright citizen. It is a fallacy to believe that birthright citizenship only impacts immigrants. That is not true. I am a mother and I gave birth to my second child last year, so I've been through this process. Every person who gives birth in the United States. You go to the hospital primarily, they talk to you after your child is born about how to get a social security card for your child. All you have to do is have your child's birth certificate. That is how every state in this country processes citizenship and how the federal government processes citizenship. It is through a birth certificate, and that is all you need. So you go to your health department in your city, you get the birth certificate, you tell, then you get your social security card. That is how everyone does it. If you change this process, it will impact every state in this country and it will be very, very cumbersome. Which is why all of these states, attorneys general, are up in arms about changing birthright citizenship. It is just the way we function. That again applies to re regardless of your parents' immigration status. This is an issue that impacts every single American. Now, to your question as to what does it mean if multiple judges in different states, in different federal district courts have all ruled against. Donald Trump, I think it really means that the law is clear. You have judges who ha are Reagan appointees saying that the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th amendment is crystal clear. It has, it is clear in terms of the text. If you are a textualist and you read exactly what the text says, if you believe in the context of, The 14th Amendment. If you look at the judicial history and just how this clause has been interpreted since ratification, like everything is consistent, this is not an area of law that has any gray area. And you see that because different judges in different district courts in Maryland, in Washington, in New Hampshire all have cited against Donald Trump.    Miko Lee: [00:33:54] So what is the intention of going to the Supreme Court?    Annie Lee: [00:33:59] I mean, he is trying to forum shop. He's trying to get a court that he believes will favor his interpretation and that is why the right has spent the last half century stacking federal courts. And that is why Mitch McConnell did not let Barack Obama replace Antonin Scalia. The composition of the Supreme Court is. So, so important, and you can see it at times like this.    Miko Lee: [00:34:28] But so many of the conservatives always talk about being constitutionalists, like really standing for the Constitution. So how do those things line up?   Annie Lee: [00:34:38] Oh, Miko, that's a great question. Indeed, yes, if they were the textualist that they say they are, this is a pretty clear case, but, Law is not as cut and dry as people think it is. It is obviously motivated by politics and that means law is subject to interpretation.   Miko Lee: [00:34:59] Annie, thank you so much for this breakdown. Are there any things that you would ask? Are people that are listening to this, how can they get involved? What can they do?    Annie Lee: [00:35:09] I would recommend folks check out StopAAPIHate. We are having monthly town halls as well as weekly videos to help break down what is happening. There's so much news and misinformation out there but we are trying to explain everything to everyone because these anti-immigration. Policies that are coming out be, this is anti-Asian hate and people should know that. You can also check out resources through Chinese for affirmative action. Our website has local resources for those of you who are in the Bay Area, including the rapid response lines for bay Area counties if you need any services, if you. See ICE. , if you want to know where their ICE is in any particular location, please call your rapid response line and ask them for that verifiable information. Thank you.    Miko Lee: [00:36:00] Thank you so much, Annie Lee for joining us today on Apex.    Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:36:04] You are listening to 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno, 97.5 K248BR in Santa Cruz, 94.3 K232FZ in Monterey, and online worldwide at kpfa.org.   Miko Lee: [00:36:23] Welcome, Nicholas Gee from Chinese for affirmative action. Welcome to Apex Express.    Nicholas Gee: [00:36:29] Thanks so much, Miko. Glad to be here.    Miko Lee: [00:36:31] I'm so glad that you could join us on the fly. I wanted to first just start by asking you a personal question, which is for you to tell me who you are,, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you.   Nicholas Gee: [00:36:46] I'll start off by saying Miko, thanks so much for having me. My name is Nicholas Gee and I am a third and or fourth generation Chinese American, born and raised in Houston, Texas. And for me, what that means is, is that my great-great-grandparents and great-grandparents migrated from Southern China, fleeing war and famine and looking for opportunity in the middle of the early, like 19 hundreds. And they wanted to start an opportunity here for future generations like me. My people are my family who migrated here over a hundred years ago. who were settling to start a new life. My people are also the people that I advocate with, the Language Access network of San Francisco, the Immigrant Parent Voting Collaborative, my colleagues at Chinese for affirmative action and stop AAPI hate. I think about my people as the people that I'm advocating with on the ground day to day asking and demanding for change.   Miko Lee: [00:37:41] Thank you. And what legacy do you carry with you?    Nicholas Gee: [00:37:45] I carry the legacy of my elders, particularly my grandparents who immigrated here in around the 1940s or so. And when I think about their legacy, I think a lot about the legacy of immigration, what it means to be here, what it means to belong, and the fight for advocacy and the work that I do today.    Miko Lee: [00:38:05] Thanks so much, Nick, and we're here doing this show all about Wong Kim Ark, and I know Chinese for affirmative action has planned this whole week-long celebration to bring up as we're talking about legacy, the legacy of Wong Kim Ark. Can you talk about how this one week celebration came to be and what folks can expect?    Nicholas Gee: [00:38:26] Yeah. As folks may know we are in the midst of many executive orders that have been in place and one of them being the executive order to end birthright citizenship. And Wong Kim Ark was actually born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, particularly on seven. 51 Sacramento Street. In the heart of the community and local partners here in this city, we're really trying to figure out how do we advocate and protect birthright citizenship? How do we bring momentum to tell the story of Wong Kim Ark in a moment when birthright citizenship is, in the process of being removed And so we really wanted to create some momentum around the storytelling, around the legacy of Wong Kim Ark, but also the legal implications and what it means for us to advocate and protect for birthright citizenship. And so I joined a couple of our local partners and particularly our team at Chinese for affirmative action to develop and create the first ever Wong Kim Ark Week. Officially known as born in the USA and the Fight for Citizenship, a week long series of events, specifically to honor the 127th anniversary of the Landmark Supreme Court case, US versus Wong Kim Ark, which affirmed birthright citizenship for all in the United States.    Miko Lee: [00:39:44] What will happen during this week-long celebration?   Nicholas Gee: [00:39:48] We have several scheduled events to raise awareness, mobilize the community, and really to stand up for the rights of all immigrants and their families. One is an incredible book Talk in conversation with author and activist Bianca Boutte. Louie, who recently authored a book called Unassimilable. And she tells a personal narrative and provides a sharp analysis for us to think about race and belonging and solidarity in America, particularly through an Asian American lens. This event is hosted by the Chinese Historical Society of America. Following. We have a live in-person community symposium on Wong Kim Ark legacy and the struggle for citizenship. There'll be a powerful community conversation with legal advocates, storytellers, movement builders, to have a dynamic conversation on the impact of birthright citizenship. Who is Wong Kim Ark? What is his enduring legacy and how people can join us for the ongoing struggle for justice? And you know, we actually have a special guest, Norman Wong, who is the great grandson of Wong Kim Ark. He'll be joining us for this special event. We have a couple of more events. One is a Chinatown History and Art Tour hosted by Chinese Culture Center, this is a small group experience where community members can explore Chinatown's vibrant history, art, and activism, and particularly we'll learn about the legacy of Wong Kim Ark and then lastly, we have a in-person press conference that's happening on Friday, which is we're gonna conclude the whole week of, Wong Kim Ark with a birthright, citizenship resolution and a Wong Kim Ark dedication. And so we'll be celebrating his enduring impact on Birthright citizenship and really these ongoing efforts to protect, our fundamental right. and the San Francisco Public Library is actually hosting an Asian American and Pacific Islander book display at the North Beach campus and they'll be highlighting various books and authors and titles inspired by themes of migration, community, and resilience. So those are our scheduled, events We're welcoming folks to join and folks can register, and check out more information at casf.org/WongKimArk    Miko Lee: [00:42:04] Thanks so much and we will post a link to that in our show notes. I'm wondering how many of those are in Chinese as well as English?    Nicholas Gee: [00:42:13] That is a fantastic question, Miko. We currently have the community symposium on Wong Kim Ark legacy in the struggle for citizenship. This event will have live interpretation in both Mandarin and Cantonese.    Miko Lee: [00:42:46] What would you like folks to walk away with? An understanding of what.    Nicholas Gee: [00:42:30] We really want people to continue to learn about the legacy of birthright citizenship and to become an advocate with us. We also have some information on our website, around what you can do to protect birthright citizenship. As an advocate, we are always thinking about how do we get people involved, to think about civic engagement intentional education and to tie that back to our advocacy. And so we have a couple of ways that we're inviting people to take action with us. One is to invite a friend to consider attending one of our events. If you're based here in the San Francisco Bay area or if you're online, join us for the book Talk with Bianca. , two, we're inviting folks to take action and oppose the executive order to ban birthright citizenship. Chinese for affirmative action has. A call to action where we can actually send a letter to petition , to oppose this executive order to send a message directly to our congressman or woman. and lastly, you know, we're asking people to learn about Wong Kim Ark as a whole, and to learn about the impacts of birthright citizenship. My hope is that folks walk away with more of an understanding of what does it mean here to be an advocate? What does it mean to take action across the community and really to communicate this is what resilience will look like in our community    Miko Lee: [00:43:44] Nick Gee, thank you so much for joining me on Apex Express. It was great to hear how people can get involved in the Wong Kim Ark week and learn more about actions and how they can get involved. We appreciate the work you're doing.    Nicholas Gee: [00:43:56] Thanks so much Miko, and I'm excited to launch this.   Miko Lee: [00:43:58] Welcome, Reverend Deb Lee, executive Director of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and part of the Network on Religion and justice. Thank you so much for coming on Apex Express.    Rev. Deb Lee: [00:44:09] Great to be here. Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:44:11] I would love you just personally to tell me who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Rev. Deb Lee: [00:44:17] Wow. Well, my people are people in the Chinese diaspora. My family's been in diaspora for seven generations, from southern China to southeast to Asia. and then eventually to the United States. What I carry with me is just a huge sense of resistance and this idea of like, we can survive anywhere and we take our love and our family and our ancestor we gotta carry it with us. We don't always have land or a place to put it down into the ground, and so we carry those things with us. , that sense of resistance and resilience.    Miko Lee: [00:44:56] Thank you so much. I relate to that so much as a fifth generation Chinese American. To me, it's really that sense of resilience is so deep and powerful, and I'm wondering as a person from the faith community, if you could share about the relevance of Wong Kim Ark and Birthright citizenship.   Rev. Deb Lee: [00:45:12] Yeah, Wong Kim Ark is critical because he was somebody who really fought back against racist laws and really asserted his right to be part of this country, his right to have the Constitution apply to him too. I'm just so grateful for him and so many of the other Chinese Americans who fought back legally and resisted against in that huge wave of period of Chinese exclusion to create some of the really important immigration laws that we have today. I wouldn't be a citizen without birthright citizenship myself. Wong Kim Ark really established that every person who is born on this soil has a right to constitutional protection, has a right to be a citizen. And in fact, the Constitution in the 14th Amendment also applies to let equal treatment for everyone here, everyone who is here. You don't even have to be a citizen for the constitutional rights. And the Fourth Amendment, the fifth Amendment, the first amendment to apply to you. And those things are so under attack right now. It's so important to establish the equality. Of every person and the right for people here in this country to have safety and belonging, that everyone here deserves safety and belonging.    Miko Lee: [00:46:24] Thank you so much for lifting up that activist history. as, a person who was raised in a theological setting at a seminary, I was really raised around this ethos of love as an active tool and a way of fighting for civil rights, fighting for things that we believe in. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you see that playing out in today. And especially as you know, this Trump regime has had such incredible impacts on immigrants and on so much of our activist history. I'm wondering if you have thoughts on that?    Rev. Deb Lee: [00:47:00] Well, so much of the civil rights history in this country, you know, going back to like the activism of Chinese Americans to establish some of those civil rights. You know, it goes back to this idea of like, who is fully human, who can be fully human, whose humanity will be fully recognized? And so I think that's what's connects back to my faith and connects back to faith values of the sacredness of every person, the full humanity, the full participation, the dignity. And so I think, Wong Kim Ark and the other, like Chinese American activists, they were fighting for like, you know, we don't wanna just be, we're gonna just gonna be laborers. We're not just going to be people who you can, Bring in and kick out whenever you want, but like, we want to be fully human and in this context of this nation state, that means being fully citizens.And so I think that that struggle and that striving to say we want that full humanity to be recognized, that is a fundamental kind of belief for many faith traditions, which, you know, speak to the radical equality of all people and the radical dignity of all people, that can't be taken away, but that has to really be recognized. What's under attack right now is. So much dehumanization, stigmatization of people, you know, based on race, based on class, based on gender, based on what country people were born in, what papers they carry, you know, if they ever had contact, prior contact with the law, like all these things. You know, are immediately being used to disregard someone's humanity. And so I think those of us who come from a faith tradition or who just share that kind of sense of, value and, deep humanism in other people, that's where we have to root ourselves in this time in history and really being, you know, we are going to defend one another's humanity and dignity, at all costs.   Miko Lee: [00:48:55] Thank you for that. I'm wondering if there are other lessons that we can learn from Wong Kim Ark, I mean, the time when he fought back against, this was so early in 1894, as you mentioned, the Chinese exclusion acts and I'm wondering if there are other lessons that we can learn from him in, in our time when we are seeing so many of our rights being eroded.   Rev. Deb Lee: [00:49:17] I think that there's so many ways, that we think about how did people organize then like, you know, it's challenging to organize now, but if you can imagine organizing then, and I'm thinking, you know, when Chinese people were required to carry identification papers and you know, on mass they refused to do that and they. Practice, like a form of civil disobedience. And I think we're at this time now, like the Trump administration's telling anybody here who's unauthorized to come forward and to register well, I think people need to think twice about that. And people are, there are many other things that they're trying to impose on the immigrant community and I think one like lesson is like, how do people survive through a period of exclusion and we are today in a period of exclusion. That really goes back to the mid 1980s, when there was, last, a significant immigration reform that created a pathway to citizenship. Only for about 3 million people. But after that, since that time in the mid 1980s, there has been no other pathways to citizenship, no other forms of amnesty, no other ways for people to fix their status.So in fact, we are already in another 40 year period of exclusion again. And so one of those lessons is how do people survive this period? Like right, and left. They're taking away all the laws and protections that we had in our immigration system. They were very narrow already. Now even those are being eliminated and any form of compassion or discretion or leniency or understanding has been removed. So I think people are in a period of. Survival. How do we survive and get through? And a lot of the work that we're doing on sanctuary right now we have a sanctuary people campaign, a sanctuary congregations campaign is how do we walk alongside immigrants to whom there is no path. There is no right way. there is no opening right now. But walk with them and help support them because right now they're trying to squeeze people so badly that they will self deport. And leave on their own. This is part of a process of mass expulsion but if people really believe that they want to stay and be here, how do we help support people to get through this period of exclusion until there will be another opening? And I believe there will be like our, our history kind of spirals in and out, and sometimes there are these openings and that's something I take from the faith communities. If you look at Chinese American history in this country, the role that faith communities played in walking with the immigrant community and in supporting them, and there's many stories that help people get through that period of exclusion as well.   Miko Lee: [00:51:52] Deb, I'm wondering what you would say to folks. I'm hearing from so many people [say] I can't read the news. It's too overwhelming. I don't wanna get involved. I just have to take care of myself. And so I'm just waiting. And even James Carville, the political opponent, say we gotta play dead for a few years. What are your thoughts on this?    Rev. Deb Lee: [00:52:11] Well, we can't play totally dead. I wish the Democrats wouldn't be playing dead, but I think that a person of faith, we have to stay present we don't really have the option to check out and we actually have to be in tune with the suffering. I think it would be irresponsible for us to. You know, turn a blind eye to the suffering. And I wanna encourage people that actually opportunities to walk with people who are being impacted and suffering can actually be deeply, fulfilling and can help give hope and give meaning. And there are people who are looking for solidarity right now. We are getting a lot of calls every week for someone who just wants them, wants someone to go to their court or go to the ice, check-in with them, and literally just like walk three blocks down there with them and wait for them. To make sure they come out. And if they don't come out to call the rapid response hotline, it doesn't take much. But it's a huge act like this is actually what some of the immigrant communities are asking for, who are millions of people who are under surveillance right now and have to report in. So those small acts of kindness can be deeply rewarding in this. Sea of overwhelming cruelty. And I think we have an obligation to find something that we can do. , find a way, find a person, find someone that we can connect to support and be in solidarity with and think about people in our past. Who have accompanied us or accompanied our people and our people's journey. And when those acts of kindness and those acts of neighbors and acts of friendship have meant so much I know like my family, they still tell those stories of like, this one person, you know, in Ohio who welcome them and said hello. We don't even know their names. Those acts can be etched in people's hearts and souls. And right now people need us.    Miko Lee: [00:53:59] Oh, I love that. I've talked with many survivors of the Japanese American concentration camps, and so many of them talk about the people of conscience, meaning the people that were able to step up and help support them during, before and after that time. Lastly, I'm wondering, you're naming some really specific ways that people can get engaged, and I know you're deeply involved in the sanctuary movement. Can you provide us with ways that people can find out more? More ways to get involved in some of the work that you are doing.    Rev. Deb Lee: [00:54:29] I'll put a plug in for our website. It's www dot I am number four, human integrity.org. So it's, iam4humanintegrity.org. We work with families that are impacted facing deportation, looking for all kinds of ways to get the community to rally around folks and support and we work with faith communities who are thinking about how to become sanctuary congregations and how to be an important resource in your local community. The other organizations, I would say sign up for Bay Resistance. They're organizing a lot of volunteers that we call on all the time we're working with. We're, you know, working with many organizations, the Bay Area, to make sure that a new ice detention facility does not get built. They are looking at the potential site of Dublin. We've worked really hard the last decade to get all the detention centers out of Northern California. We don't want them to open up a new one here.   Miko Lee: [00:55:27] Deb Lee, thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express and folks can actually see Deb on Tuesday night in Wong Kim Ark Week as one of the speakers. Thank you so much for joining us.    Rev. Deb Lee: [00:55:38] Thank you, Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:55:39] Thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express. We're gonna close this episode with words from Norman Wong, the great grandson of Wong Kim Ark.   Norman Wong: [00:55:49] So let's fight back. Threats to birthright citizenship will only divide us, and right now we need to come together to continue the impact of my great grandfather's. This is my family's legacy, and now it's part of yours too. Thank you    Miko Lee: [00:56:11] Please check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about our show tonight. We think all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is created by Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preti Mangala-Shekar, Swati Rayasam, Aisa Villarosa, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Gabriel Tanglao, Cheryl Truong and Ayame Keane-Lee.    The post APEX Express – 3.20.25- Wong Kim Ark appeared first on KPFA.

In this special episode Randel and Owen hold their first Coaches Roundtable interview with master teachers Russ Smith and Kevin Secours.About Kevin Secours: ".....over 41 years of experience in the martial arts. I hold an 8th dan in Goshinbudo, 3rd dan in Kempo Jujitsu, 1st Dan in Akai Ryu Jujitsu, Full Instructorship in Shaolin Boxing and Senior Instructorship in Russian Systema. I'm the founder of Integrated Fighting Systems and the director of the International Combat Systema Association. "WebsiteYouTubeAbout Sifu Russ: "Russ expressed an interest in martial arts as a young teenager, and began learning Karate basics with a family friend. It wasn't until Russ was on extended vacation in the Philippines over thirty years ago that he began his formal training in Japanese Goju-Ryu under an Australian instructor, Sensei Iyan Mackenzie...Russ's desire to continue research on the origins and influences on Goju-Ryu has lead him to also study Fujian and Hakka arts such as Five Ancestor (Ngo Cho Kun / Wuzuquan), White Eyebrow (Pak Mei), and White Crane Boxing styles....Russ's focus is preserving, promoting, and researching the arts of Okinawa, Southern China, Malaysia, and the Philippines at his Burinkan dojo."⁠Website⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Amazon⁠

Jennifer Coates is back with me this week to cohost Part 4 of our series about researching our way to feeling better as artists. This time we go all the way back to 1306 to the Mongol empire and then zoom forward to the 1970's in the USSR and with a few more stops in between. We studied hard (and maybe got C minuses) but we ended up feeling inspired and hope you will too. The artists we spoke about:Zheng Sixiao of Southern China's Song Dynasty, "Ink Orchid" 1306, during Mongol Empire (Yuan Dynasty) under Kublai Kasimir Malevich of Russia/USSR, "Black Square" 1915, "Girls in a Field" 1928-30, "Female Worker" 1933, Russian icon paintingsThe Bulldozer Exhibition, 15 September 1974 and Oskar Rabin "Lamp and Shawl" 1974 & Lidya Masterkova "Untitled" 1974 of the Leonozovo Group, Photographs by Mikhail Abrosimov/ The Calvert JournalRead more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/bulldozer-underground-exhibition-revolutionised-russian-art https://www.edelman.com/insights/bulldozer-exhibition-my-eyewitness-account-russian-repression-6-amClaude Cahun of Jersey (Channel Islands/France), Partner/Collaborator, Marcel Moore, "I am in training, don't kiss me" 1927, "What do you want from me?" 1929, "Self Portrait" 1939The Nahua People of the Aztec Empire and the Florentine Codex: https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/ - facilitated by Franciscan Monk, Bernardino de Sahagún, Deep dive into the Codex with Dr. Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Deputy Director, Program Director, and Dr. Virginia Fields Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUfg_WQwvMgGee's Bend Quilters of Alabama and their organization Souls Grown Deep: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/Other artists mentioned:Elisabeth Condon, Piet Mondrian**Disclaimer: As we are not historians by trade, some factual errors may have slipped through. Apologies if so **Jennifer Coates online: ⁠⁠web⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠IG⁠⁠Amy Talluto online: ⁠⁠web⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠IG⁠⁠Thank you, Jennifer! Thank you, Listeners!All music by Soundstripe----------------------------Pep Talks on IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@peptalksforartists⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pep Talks website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠peptalksforartists.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amy, your beloved host, on IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@talluts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amy's website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠amytalluto.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pep Talks on Art Spiel as written essays: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/7k82vd8s⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BuyMeACoffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donations always appreciated!

Getting through the Fog of Chaos in 4 steps is a Podcast that resonated with me as a Maritime Meditation long ago. It is the narrative story of facts how SeaMen navigated the sea's before 1100 AD. The magnet compass was created in 206 BC, but not implemented into sea navigation until 1107 AD. KungFu was practiced upon ship decks, particularly in Southern China. With visibility less than 100 yards, knowing how to survive when you were lost at sea wasn't just theory. I will share the stories and point out questions to ask and to avoid asking until later. Also I will share with you what real illusions that you must be aware of when you get lost in a fog at sea. You can find more content and information at twsmith.us/meettim

  A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.   In this episode of APEX Express, host Cheryl shares Part 1 of a powerful intergenerational conversation featuring the OG organizers of Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and young leaders from Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP). The discussion highlights the challenges and inspirations that drove CAA's founders to join the Asian American Movement of the '60s and '70s, offering valuable lessons for sustaining activism across generations. Important Links: Chinese for Affirmative Action: Website  |  Instagram Hmong Innovating Politics: Website  |  Instagram Transcript   Cheryl Truong: good evening and welcome to tonight's episode of apex express. I'm your host, Cheryl Truong and tonight is an AACRE night. Now you might be wondering what is AACRE. AACRE stands for the Asian Americans for civil rights and Equality network, which is made up of 11 grassroots, social justice groups. Together leverage the power of our network to focus on longterm movement, building and support for Asian-Americans committed to social justice. And speaking of AACRE groups. APEX express is proud to be a part of the AACRE network.  For tonight's show, I'm thrilled to share a really special and intimate recording from a panel discussion we hosted here at the AACRE network that bridges generations of organizing. This panel brought together the OGs– originals– who helped build chinese for Affirmative Action or CAA into the esteemed 50 year old civil rights organization it is today. Alongside young organizers from Hmong Innovating Politics, also known as HIP, who are paving the way for Hmong Americans in Sacramento and Fresno. Both hip and CAA are vital groups within the AACRE network. The purpose of this exchange. To spark an intergenerational dialogue between seasoned CAA leaders and current hip staff and exploring how their roles in the movement have evolved over time.  Together, they delve into the strategies they've employed to sustain their impact over decades of organizing. However, this is only part one of what is and was a much longer conversation. So for tonight's episode, we'll focus on getting to know some of the CAA OGs. You'll hear them introduce themselves. Share some of the hardships they faced as pivotal organizers during the Asian-American movement of the tumultuous sixties and seventies. And reflect on what catalyze them to get involved in the movement. Through the stories we hope to uncover lessons from the past that can guide us in sustaining and evolving the fight for justice today. So stay tuned. It's going to be an inspiring and reflective journey into the heart of activism.  So I'm pleased to introduce. The panel facilitator, Miko Lee who is AACRE's director of programs. And CAA OGs Germaine Wong Henry Der Laureen Chew Stephen Owyang and Yvonne Yim-Hung Lee  Miko: Yvonne,  what was a kind of chrysalis moment for you in terms of social justice? Yvonne Yim-Hung Lee: First of all, when I got the email, I didn't know what O. G. was, so I said “Oh Geezer!” That's how I interpret it. I said “Oh, I'm there!” This is going to be a really honest and frank family gathering so thank you inviting me and I'm really excited to be here with my, peers and colleagues and more importantly to really hear from you, your experience. I am a first generation immigrant. My parents were very well to do business people in Hong Kong. They decided to immigrate to this country with three young kids. My father when he was young, he was the richest boy in his village. Overnight, people came and forced his father to give up 98 acres of their 99 acre farm. So from being the richest boy in town, in his village, to have to go to Hong Kong to live with this uncle. My mom was from a rich family in China also. Her father was one of the few merchants who came to the U.S. after the Chinese Exclusion Act, he went to New York, opened up a pastry shop, but he found his goal. He won second prize of a New York lotto. So he decided to go back to China because even though he was a merchant, he experienced a lot of discrimination. He never talked about his experience in America. But my mom was a little princess. You know, we used to call her , and her friends, the little Paris Hilton of the group, because that's what they did. They went to school as ABC's, never had to work a day in their life. But one thing, She and my father, because they were both from richest families in different villages, they were supposed to be matched up. But by the time they were at marriage age, he was already a poor kid. But my mom told the father, said, a promise is a promise.. So she married this poor guy, moved to Hong Kong, and he did quite well for himself. So we were brought up, ” money is not what should drive you in your life. You can lose it in one day. The most important thing is to have a good heart, to make sure that everything in this world, you have to make a difference. Whether it's to your family, or to others. You cannot be angry, because someone else is going to make you angry. When we came, it was a really tough time for him. You know, we lived really well in Hong Kong. Coming here to live in Chinatown back in the 60s really wasn't that pleasant. But, we made do based on the three principles. We came here for freedom. We came here for knowledge. And knowledge doesn't mean just college. So we were lucky. We never were forced to study certain fields so that we can make money because for him, it was always experience to really, really take in the nourishment for yourself, but give out whatever you have to others. So based on the guidance and that's how, that's my North Star. That's what's driven me. So I went to Davis. Yay Davis and the Cows! They're still there. What really got me to community activism was when I was 16, I was in the hospital. And They put this, at the time I thought she was elderly, but thinking back she was probably in her 30s. But when she was 16, anyway over 20 is elderly. And she could not speak English. And they could not communicate with her. And half of the hospital staff was making fun of her. And that was in, 70? 1970? It wasn't that long ago. It was still in my our lifetime. So, I was young but I acted as her translator. It was very difficult because she has women issues. And I didn't know her. And her husband was standing there. And she had to tell me her most intimate thing. And all the room of doctors, nurses and everything– they were very dismissive of her because of the fact that she did not speak their language. So because of that I felt that that's wrong. Because prior to that, even when we were living in Chinatown, I still felt I was privileged. You know, we weren't poor. We were still doing well. But after seeing that experience, it really taught me that even though we came to America for freedom, freedom is only for those who could really stand for themselves. And there are some who, if they cannot, send someone else in to fight with them. Not for them, but with them. So that's how I started my career, and I jumped from place to place. I'm not the CAA member, but I'm the honorary member of CAA because I had the privilege of working with Henry. All the meetings that we had back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s and everything with Ted and Steve on redistricting, immigration reform, census, welfare reform, everything that we today take granted. We don't even think about it. Came from here. This room. Before this room, it was another room. It was a little less, little place. We, we moved up by, by moving here in the 90s. So, thank you so much for this privilege and I look forward to our conversation. Miko: Thank you, Yvonne. And I just, OG, just so you know, does not mean OG. Does anybody want to explain what OG means? Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP) Staff: Old Gangster   Miko: It's actually a hip hop terminology for gangster, but it actually means the original. Who's the original, the source of the knowledge, the source of the power. So it's, we use it with love and honor.  Yvonne Yim-Hung Lee: Intergenerational communication.  Miko: I'm sorry I did  Henry Derr: I have to say, I never liked the term O. G. when I first heard it. Because I thought it meant an old guy, Even though I'm old, I didn't want to admit that I was old. , one thing I have to say straight away is, you all are happy about this weather, I'm very unhappy about this weather, because I, even though I'm a native of San Francisco, Chinatown, at the age of seven, my family moved into Stockton. I went through all my schooling till I graduated from Franklin High School on the east side of Highway 99. Some of you may have, your high schools may have competed against Franklin High School. When we moved into Stockton for the longest time, We could never figure out why in the hell our father moved us into Stockton, because we were the only one or two Chinese family on the east side of Stockton right there on Main Street. And then over time, and actually very recently when I think about it, there was, he probably had a good reason for moving us into Stockton. Because my father was actually quite clever in terms of circumventing the discriminatory impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As some of you may know, a lot of Chinese men who came here to the United States after the Exclusion Act had to lie about who they were. They would claim that they were sons of U. S. citizens in order to enter the United States. Well, it turned out that my father and my mother on paper had 17 children. And in our family, there were really only just eight of us who were born from our parents and my oldest brother who was adopted. The rest were actually paper sons. So my father moved the family into Stockton because I remember very clearly when I was less than five years old, my mom said to us, children, don't say anything about the family when you go out the streets and I could never understand why don't say anything about that. Well, it turned out that. There were a lot of immigration agents prowling around Chinatown during the fifties, during the confession program. So, I think my father made the right choice to move the family into Stockton. And we always longed about coming back to San Francisco. But also looking back at it, it was actually a blessing in disguise. Because I actually grew up, as some of you may know, from Fresno, Sacramento, Visalia, Ceres, Modesto, then, not now. It was actually, I lived in a very diverse neighborhood. There were blacks, there were Mexicans and there were whites and the whites were not rich. They were like the rest of us. They were poor from Oklahoma. So probably the first social, I would consider this first social justice consciousness that I developed during the 19 50s and 60s when I was growing up. In addition to following what was going on and unfolding with the Black Civil Rights Movement in the South, was that Stockton Unified was impacted by school desegregation and there was busing. So there was a lot of talk that kids from our high school in Franklin were going to be bused to Stagg High School. And at that time, in the 50s and 60s, Stagg was all white, they were all wealthy, and we basically protested, said, we are not going to go, that we're not, we don't need those rich white folks. We're okay by ourselves. So that kind of built a consciousness in me. And I would say the other big social justice consciousness was really actually during college, when many of us protested against the war in Vietnam. We marched to the Oakland Army Induction Center in Oakland. We had a sleep in, in the old student union on the college campus. We didn't get arrested like the kids are being arrested today who are protesting the atrocities in Gaza. During my last year in college, There wasn't anything known as Asian American Studies, but there were enough black students who wanted black studies on the campus. So, we just joined in and helped protest that there was an absence of black studies on the college campus. After I graduated from college, I knew that I was going to go into Peace Corps because I was inspired by President Kennedy. And it didn't make, truth be told, it made no difference what college I was going to go to. I knew I was going to go into Peace Corps, and that's what I did, because the last year I was in college, they offered Swahili, and I said, oh, that's perfect, I'm going to enroll in Swahili, and I end up going to Kenya for two years. And after two years of service in Kenya, you know, it kind of made sense for me to say, you know, if I can go halfway around the world to do public service work, I can certainly come back to Chinatown and do community work. And that's how I end up coming back to San Francisco in 1970. And then, The rest is whatever I did.  Female speaker: The rest is history.  Female Speaker 2: The rest is documented history.  Miko: We'll get into that a little bit more. Steve, what about you? What was your first kind of experience of recognizing social justice?  Stephen Owyang: Okay, so, Both sides of my family came to the U. S. a long time ago in the 1870s from Southern China. And they were in San Francisco until the big earthquake in 1906, after which point most of the family went into the Sacramento Valley. So I was born in Sacramento. I was raised in, down the river in the Delta. I'm really excited to meet you because my father had a small business back then and we went up and down Highway 99 all the time. So, Stockton, Lodi, Modesto, Merced, Kingsburg, Fresno, Hanford, Ripon, Visalia. And my father's business was basically delivering stuff to little mom and pop grocery stores run by Chinese families, mainly from one little county in Guangdong province. There was no I 5 back then, just 99, and you know, in the summer, as you know, it gets really hot. So it was a treat for me to go along with my father because I always got free sodas at every store, so I would go out with him and you know after six or seven sodas It was like, it was a great day. My first glimmers about social justice were just growing up in the Delta and I'll give you three stories.  It's the town of Walnut Grove, and the town of Walnut Grove on Highway 160 is one of the few delta towns that are on both sides of the river. There's a bridge that connects it. And on one side of the river, it's middle class and upper middle class and wealthy white families. Our side of the river, you had the folks from the Dust Bowl days, as Henry mentioned, people from Oklahoma and Texas who came out during the Depression. You also had a small Chinatown, a small J Town, a small Filipino area, a small Mexican area. And that just reflected the social conditions of California agriculture, because each one of those communities at one time was the main source of farm workers. And in fact, my own family, because of the alien land laws, they were farmers, but they couldn't own farmland, right? And so they were sharecroppers. Just, you hear about sharecropping happening in the South, but it also happened in California. So when I was growing up, three things. On the rich side of town, the white side of town, there's a swimming pool that was only open to white families. It was a private pool. You could only go there if you were a member. You could only be a member if you were white. The only way I could go there is if a friend who's a white, from a white family, who's a member, takes you there as a guest. So that's number one. Number two. My best friend was from one of these landed white families, and we were, we were very close. We were good students in elementary school. And then one day in the seventh grade, he, he takes me aside and he says, You know, I can't hang out with you anymore because my mom says I need to have more white friends. So he just cut it off like that. And I, that's the, that's, that's the truth. That's just how it happened. I guess the other thing that affected me back then was I used to go to a little American Baptist church and we had, I guess visits to black churches. And I remember going up to Sacramento on one of these visits and one of the kids there did Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech from memory. And, it's like amazing oration. And I thought, wow, there's something. going on here that you sort of opened up my eyes to the situation in this country.  So basically until high school, I was a country kid, you know, but then we moved out to San Francisco and it was a big culture shock, big shock. So I was in, I basically came out for high school and this was in the late 60s and I remember it was 1968 when Laureen was on strike for, uh, Ethnic Studies and the Third World Strike in SF State. My high school was literally a few blocks away. I was at Lowell High. And students from SF State were coming over and leafleting us. I started reading that stuff and that's when I really got interested in what was going on at State and later on when I was at Berkeley, you know, in Ethnic Studies. So I think my grounding came from Ethnic Studies, the anti war movement, and, you know, I would love to talk to you about the whole thing about the Vietnam War because, You know, I'm guessing maybe your parents or grandparents were involved in the secret war in Laos, a war that the U. S. wouldn't even acknowledge happened even though we were bombing Laos. So it was ethnic studies, the civil rights movement, and the anti war movement that got me involved. In Berkeley, I was involved in some of the ethnic studies stuff. Even though I'm a fourth generation Chinese American, it's always been very important to me to try to learn the language so I was in the Cantonese working group. So I helped put together the curriculum stuff that was going on in Asian American Studies. I think before Germaine was there, or maybe around the same time. Yeah, I've known these folks for literally 50 years. It's kind of scary. So, um, I was inspired by what was going on at CAA, what Laureen was doing at SF State. So I joined CAA. Biggest mistake of my life. Because I saw this little ad in East West newspaper, used to be this community newspaper, and there was literally a coupon that you would clip out. And I sent in the coupon with a 5 check. It's like the most expensive 5 I've spent in my whole life. And then I went to law school, and I was involved in the law caucus and a number of other things, but my first job out of law school was Right here at CAA. Well, not here, but up on Stockton Street. Henry was my boss. You know, I feel like I would have been less burned out had we done some of this stuff. But we didn't do any of this. I remember my first desk had literally a door on top of like cardboard boxes. That was our office back then. And in one form or another, I've been involved in CAA ever since. I've been in a couple of organizations. Other organizations, but CAA is the one that's closest to my heart, and I'll tell you why. One, I met my wife here. And number two, I feel like the great thing about CAA is it's never lost its real community roots. I feel like other organizations do great work, don't get me wrong, but I feel like CAA has always maintained a real close connection to the community, and that's why everybody. I wrote that 5 check and, and several others. So yeah, that's, that's my story.  Miko: Thanks, Steve. Laureen, what about you?  Laureen Chew: Wow, this is amazing. Listening to everybody else's story, really. I guess I'll start pretty much how, my family was. My grandfather came in 1870s. I think I found out when I went to the roots program, which is only like five years ago, that was an adventure. so my parent, my father and his whole family was born here and born during Chinese exclusion. And so obviously they lived in Chinatown and nowhere else to go, even though they, my father and especially his, younger siblings. They all spoke English. Interestingly, his first two sisters were born here too. They didn't speak a lick of English because they never went to school. So what was really interesting for me, so I was born and raised in Chinatown. Okay. I wasn't born in Chinese Hospital. I was born in Children's Hospital, which everybody thinks is odd. But that's another story. My mother is actually an immigrant. She's a first generation, but she didn't come until 1947. So what's interesting is that I'm always kind of stuck between generations, like one and a half. But having a very strong mother who spoke only Chinese and my father's side, who's mostly English speaking. But a lot of them, my cousins or whatever, they were a lot older. They did speak Chinese also. But what's really stark to me is because growing up in Chinatown, you go to school with basically majority Chinese kids, right? And so you live in this community that on the one hand is very nurturing, very safe. Very intimate in a lot of ways. All my cousins and whatever are here. I mean, to show you how large my father's side was, when my aunt, the oldest aunt had her 50th anniversary wedding anniversary, she married when she was 14 because otherwise women, people forget. I I'm probably the first generation of women that either had a choice to not get married and I was still able to eat because I made my own money. Okay, my mother's generation, no, all her friends, no, you know, so don't take that one for granted either as women. So what was interesting was the fact that because she is very strong in being Chinese and then my father's side are total assimilationists, mainly, which was really interesting because many of them who grew up during Chinese exclusion. It was horrific, but you would never, I never heard one story. His family must have had over 300 people because his sister had 13 kids. Okay, then they had all had kids, one at 10, one of her daughter in law. So it was like huge. Growing up in this area, I just never felt I was different than anyone else because you don't come in contact with anyone that's really different until I went to high school. My mother is the immigrant. She wanted to send me to a school that was not a public school that a lot of the Chinatown kids went to, which was Galileo, because she somehow felt that I would be the kind of kid that would go not the straight and narrow, but more towards the the More naughty kids, to put it mildly, she knew that. So what she did was that she sent me to a Catholic school, okay, because she, God knows, oh yeah, she went to school for two years in Hong Kong. She's another story, she didn't have any money, and so she was given to an aunt to be raised. So she married to get out of Hong Kong because At twenty, she told me the only thing she told me was at twenty seven, I was considered an old maid. And then my father, who was, didn't have, there weren't very many women here because of Chinese exclusion, and he had to marry Chinese, actually saw my mom, and my mom's a picture bride, so they didn't even know each other when they got married. But she took over. My mom is like the queen of the family and the decision maker. And my father made the money and she spent it however little she had. Okay. And going to Catholic school was one thing that she felt that would help me become a good girl, except that I had never been to a where there were white kids. And so this school Was not only Catholic, but it was also a school that was considered kind of the, the best girls, Catholic high school. It was at the end of Chinatown. And that's the only reason why she wanted me to go there because I didn't have to take the bus. I can walk home. It's, it's a French school called Notre Dame de Victoire. So I went there and I thought I would have a really good time, just like all, all the high school. My problem was, was that. I was different, but never to know that you're different until you're in high school. Because you know, you know how mean girls can be in high school. And then they're all, it's an all girls school and it's a small school. And so my mom told me very clearly, you know, it's $150 a year. We really don't have that money, but. You know, we'll scrape and do whatever we can to send you through that. I said, Oh, okay, cool. Right. Except I had no friends. I mean, I was one of three Chinese girls in the school and I never knew how different I was until I got there because I used to get home perms, you know, permanence. And all the other girls had money. They were at least middle class, if not richer, and they all went to beauty parlors. My mom cut my hair and gave me the home perms, and she was into saving money, like I said, so she always kept the perm on longer than you should have it. I swore one year it came out like I had an afro, and I was so embarrassed. I made her cut it just to make it look straighter, but it was horrible. I don't have a picture. No, first of all, pictures aren't that common back then, you know, it costs money to have film and a camera. You didn't even have a camera. Yeah. So anyway, plus another thing is that because I wasn't the smartest Chinese girl either. Okay, the other two Chinese girls did pretty well. They were smart, and they were good in sports. I was neither. And I looked like a dork. Then what would made it even worse was that my mother spoke no English. My father did, but he might as well be absent because he slept during the day and worked at night. So we have things called mother daughter fashion shows. Mother, daughter breakfast. And I saw the way those mothers were dressed and I saw the way everybody acted and my way of dealing with it was I had no mom. I never brought her to the school. Any mother, daughter thing, I didn't go to. You didn't have to. I mean, that made me even less part of the school. And it was very painful because I didn't understand why I would be treated that way. Just because I looked, but I spoke English, it didn't matter. I did look a little weird, you know, so to this, I think it influenced me a couple of ways. One, whenever I had money, clothes was going to be my big deal. It still is, you know, it's kind of psychological. And then secondly, then that was a time that I figured out like, how come I don't, I hate myself and my family versus versus hating those girls. Right. I mean, that's how I dealt with it. It was, I call it a form of self hatred and it's, it's done by schooling. It's done by not only schooling in terms of omission about who we were as a people here, but omission about racism. Omission about discrimination and just about our histories here. But I didn't have a label for it in high school. I just, I really thought there was something wrong with me and my family. And that's the greatest danger about racism, is this form of internalizing it and not having a vehicle to deal with it. And there was nothing in our schools that dealt with it, you know, and I think what I came out of there realizing was that. Oh, another thing, I had mixed messages about what was happening because Martin Luther King was already on TV, and I was trying to watch it, and then I was still in high school, and my mom would, and my cousins, American boys, don't watch the black people. They're troublemakers. You know, all they do is make trouble, you know, they don't, they should be like us. We don't complain, right? We don't make trouble. And that's how you succeed. You succeed, I think, in my, what I was raised with, with the older generation of American born who had to go through this horrific history, you know, one, you don't get a job in Chinatown. You should get a job outside of Chinatown because it means that you're working for white folks and working for white folks is better than working for your own. So self hatred doesn't just run in yourself. It kind of permeates how we feel. feel as, as a group of people, right? And so, my whole thing was that I was looking for answers as to why, why I felt the way I did. And not only that, I wasn't the only one. That's what was interesting. And I didn't realize that until I went to San Francisco state, you know, because I was told, my mom said, you want to go to college, you're going to have to You know, find your way up to court because she, you know, she spent that on my fabulous high school education, which I came up miserable and, and I would tell her I want to go to Galileo. I want to go there. She said, no, you're not going to go. I said, she goes, what is wrong with you? Because I started crying certain times and she would just say, well, you're going to school to learn, not to make friends, so forget about it. I'm giving you the best with best intentions. But then when I went to college, this one girl who grew up in South City, similar experience because South City was all white back then. So she said to me one day, she was, she's Chinese too. And she says, you know, there's a meeting there that's huge. The people are talking about all this stuff. We talk about how we were mistreated in high school and how people are blah, blah. There's a name for it. It's called racism. I was called what racism. Okay. She goes, you want to go? I said, well, who's there? She said, black people. But I said, Oh, my mom would kill me. I mean, I was really worried because my mom doesn't even know what I do at state. So I went. I think that time we had some pretty interesting people. One time there was Eldridge Cleaver, who was the head of the Black Panther Party. Um, there were people like Carlton Goodlett, who was from the Bayview Hunters Point, who had certain people from the mission. They were all kind of leaders of different communities. There was Yuri Wada, who was a Japanese American. He was very prominent in dealing with civil rights. Chinatown, I, George Woo, George Woo is an infamous person also. He was the spokesperson for gang kids in Chinatown. He was very, very, very alive and took over in terms of the whole thing about the youth problems in Chinatown. So he was not part of this group, but just hearing the stories of these other ethnic groups that were very similar, not the same, but this whole thing of like just being dissed for the way you look, the way you speak, and supposedly your values. And my whole thing is that, that thing opened my eyes to the extent that helped me to release a lot of my anger towards something I didn't know who to be angry at, right? So you have to, I felt that the San Francisco State Strike, I mean, I was all in and with a small group of Chinese that were there, including Mason, all these people. And we had to really open our eyes to working with other people that were not like us. And what was more interesting for me to see was that every single group said that if we're ever going to have classes on ethnic studies, a key part of those classes should be why we are getting an education. And why we're getting an education primarily is to serve our communities. So there is a real strong component to ethnic studies that was community based. And because of that, during my college years, I actually came back, I mean came back, I was still living in Chinatown, but I actually placed myself in the Chinatown that I knew nothing about, which is our issues, our problems. And during my time, it was mainly about youth problems. We had a gang problem. We had girls that were on drugs. We had immigrant kids that didn't speak any English and just thrown into schools nilly willy without anybody helping them. So I was lucky enough for three years or four years during college that I worked as a house parent for runaway girls. I worked trying to tutor immigrant kids, you know, and I was trying to become a teacher. So those formative years, in terms of just having my feet in different things really showed me that, you know what, I don't want next generations of people who kind of look like me to have to go through the struggle of hating myself. Because of things that are my home, that are based home base, you know, this country, this is what I feel that very strongly about the United States, that I think people are losing sight of, especially now that we're all in very ethnic silos. This country is very different in the sense of just the whole fact of different groups mixing, you know, you go to China or whatever it's still basically you. you're Chinese, even in my north, south, pink, whatever direction you are. It's still basically Chinese, but in this country you can come from different areas and different places of the world and still have a vision that ties you together. That should be a singular vision, which is a democracy at this point. And then also this very simple statement of justice. And equality for all. We sometimes forget about the all, if we're just kind of in our little silos. But I think that's the reason why, from state on, and reacquainting to my community, it was life changing. Whatever job I took after that, whether I was a teacher, a faculty, associate dean, chair of the department. My main focus was that I'm here for the students and the people, quote unquote, who are here with me that have this similar vision, that we all have a place here. And in order to, for us to really respect others, we have to respect ourselves. And that includes what we're raised with in terms of our values and also our history here. Miko: Thanks, Laureen. Germaine?  Germaine Wong: Oh. well, my experience is similar to many of yours and a little bit different. I grew up in Oakland, Chinatown, and Went to a school that was only three blocks from where I live. And the school was Mexicans, blacks, as well as Chinese. Although I would say maybe half the school, at least half the school was Chinese. And I didn't, I didn't speak any English until I went to school, so I had that experience too. And then, my father was always very upwardly mobile, wanted to live the white middle class life. And I didn't know it at the time, but, he managed to buy property in Castro Valley, Southeast of Oakland. At the time, they wouldn't sell to Chinese. So he got somebody at work to buy the property for him. And then sold it to my father. That's how we got to move there. So I started high school in Castro Valley. I was the only non white in the whole school. The janitors, the cafeteria workers, everybody was white. I was the only one in that school who was not white. But I'm a little bit more dense than all of you, so I was not aware of whatever racism there was. At that time Castro Valley was really white. And also very affluent. So most of my classmates. It's unlike in Oakland, Chinatown, these classmates, they were children of doctors and lawyers and engineers and dentists and most of the people in my high school, they, the kids either had horses or cars. At that time, Castro Valley was not the suburb it is today. Our neighbors, for example, our next door neighbors had chickens and goats So it was really different. So it was all so different from Oakland Chinatown. And then I finally experienced some racism the following year when a black family moved in and somebody really literally did burn a cross in their front lawn. Wow. Yeah. And she was in the same grade I was in, one of the daughters. And then another Chinese girl moved in. And I recognized her, but we were never friends in Oakland Chinatown. And that's where I first experienced reverse discrimination. Because I met the stereotype of an Asian student, right? So I did well in math and all the classes. Well, she was definitely a C student and the teachers treated her as if she was an F student. Teachers just expect us to excel in our classes. So that was my first, really, where it hit home for me. And then in the 50s, in Oakland, Chinatown, I experienced what Henry did during the confession program. So my mother was going through all these things. These are your aunts and uncles and these are not your aunts and uncles. And so if any white person comes and starts asking you about your family, just remember these people are not related to you because all of us had paper names. Like I'm not really a Wong. My family's really a Kwan. But in my situation, I had a great grandfather who was here legitimately. And then the next generation, when they went back, they decided we're never coming back to the United States. So they sold their papers. So then when the next generation decided to come back, they had to buy papers. So my family went through that situation. I had jobs where I lived in, during college, I, I had live in jobs, I lived with a family first when I was going to UC Berkeley, and then later on when I transferred over to San Francisco State, I worked for an older white woman, and so I, I got to see what upper white middle class families lived like, and then with this older woman that I lived in with here in San Francisco, what the rich people lived like, so that was kind a different world. And then somebody asked me to work at the Chinatown YWCA here. And I got to experience San Francisco Chinatown then. I was assigned to work in a pilot program where I worked with third grade Chinatown girls. One group were immigrant girls who lived in the SROs here. They literally are eight by eight rooms with a whole family lives in them. And the kitchen and the bathrooms are down the hall. So that was the first time I had ever seen people living like that, in such crowded digits. And the other group of girls I worked with, again, were middle class, upper middle class Chinese girls whose parents were doctors and dentists and like that. And the woman who was the executive director was a Korean American woman named Hannah Sir. And this was all when I went to college when President Kennedy was assassinated and then Lyndon Johnson became president. And so it was during this time that this Korean American woman said to me, you have to apply for this program because right now, President Lyndon Johnson only thought about blacks and Hispanics who needed help. And we really need to get Asian Americans in. So she convinced me to apply for program and some miracle happened and I got into the program. After I went to that summer training program, I came back here to San Francisco and I was assigned to work in the Bayview, Hunters Point, and Fillmore areas of San Francisco working with black gang kids. That was a new experience for me too. Then from there, then I went to grad school, then when I came back, I got assigned to working here in Chinatown, where I worked mainly with immigrant adults looking for jobs as well as the gang kids, both English speaking as well as Chinese speaking. And, from there, I met people like Ling Chi Wong and Eileen Dong. who were already working in Chinatown before I was. And that's when we got together and Ling Chi was actually the organizer, the lead person. And, we started CAA. So all of us had other jobs. We had full time jobs and so we were doing this kind of on the side. I think Ling Chi was the only one who didn't have a job. He was a graduate student. And I want to tell you, he was a graduate student in Middle Eastern ancient languages. That's what he was studying at UC Berkeley at the time. And, uh, but all the rest of us had full time jobs. We started CAA as a volunteer organization. We had no office, no staff, no money. And that's how we started. And eventually I first met Laureen, who really helped us out with one of our first major projects. Teaching English on television, remember? You and Helen, yes. You and Helen Chin really helped us out. Laureen Chew: Okay, nice to know.  Germaine Wong: And then I remember meeting, and then when Henry came to Chinatown and his Swahili was better than his Cantonese. Wow. Yes. Wow. Anyway, and I met all of these good people and CAA continued to grow. And there still is. Yep. Amazing, amazing story.  And that wraps up part one of this incredible intergenerational conversation. Between the OGs of Chinese for affirmative action. And the young organizers of mung innovating politics. Tonight. We got a glimpse into the powerful stories of CAS.  Of CA's founders.  Their hardships resilience and what drove them to commit their lives to the movement. Their reflections, remind us that the fight for justice is not just about the moments of triumph and the victories, but also about the struggles, the sacrifices. And perhaps most importantly, the. Vital importance of being grounded in our communities and our values. Be sure to join us next time for part two, where we'll dive into the dialogue between. Seasoned OJI leaders and today's. Today's youth Changemakers from Monday innovating politics. Together, they'll explore strategies, how strategies have shifted over the decades and how we can sustain our work for social justice in the longterm. As always thank you for tuning into apex express. For more about Chinese for affirmative action and mung innovating politics.  Please do check them out on their websites, which will be linked in the show notes. At apex express. At kpfa.org/apex express. Until next time. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong  Cheryl Truong: Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening!  The post APEX Express – December 19, 2024 – Bridging Generations appeared first on KPFA.

Kuliang, located on the outskirts of Fuzhou, Southern China, was once a summer resort for foreigners in the early 20th century. Since 1886, people from more than 20 countries, including Britain, France and the United States, began to build villas in Yixia village in Kuliang to spend the summer. We are joined by an American legend in China and the Friend of Kuliang, Elyn MacInnis. Her father in-law defended China as a pilot in the Fighting Tigers. We discuss her and her families ties to and life in China.d Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition has opened in Zhuhai. A variety of land-based air defense weapons and equipment are on display.

In a cat-and-mouse game between the United States and China, Washington is unleashing new export controls after China found new ways to access banned technology. The Hong Kong branch of The Epoch Times is no longer printing its newspaper until further notice. The suspension comes as nearly two dozen news agencies have shut down after Beijing tightened control on press freedom. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is warning of potential Chinese attacks on American infrastructure. How prepared is America's electric grid? A powerful storm makes landfall on an island in Southern China. What do forecasters say about where the typhoon will head next? ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Mountain landslides, submerged houses, and flooded farmlands—we take a look at the aftermath in China's flood-hit regions. Senators are taking action against the Chinese regime's state-sanctioned organ harvesting. The Falun Gong Protection Act was introduced in the Senate, after its companion bill passed in the House. Despite censorship and travel warnings against China, the country still sees a lot of foreign tourism—and some of those visitors have posted travel vlogs praising their trips. However, some of them have disclosed their trips were covered by China, while others were monitored by the Chinese police. China is blaming Australian burger patties after two of its swimmers tested positive for steroids. We have more on the regime's ongoing Olympic doping scandals. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Flooding Drenches Northeastern, Southern ChinaSenate Considering Falun Gong Protection ActTravel Bloggers' China Stories Feared to Be PropagandaFisher: Ukraine Won't Receive Support from ChinaDC Rally Raises Public Awareness on Fentanyl EpidemicChina Blames Imported Beef for Positive Steroid TestsLawmaker Calls CCP Sanctions Against Him 'Absurd'New Bill Aims to Block Chinese Firms from SubsidiesChinese Courier 'Running' into Summer Olympics

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As flooding batters China, the embankment guarding China's second largest freshwater lake has an emergency breach. Plus, villagers were seen banding together to rescue a 90-year-old. A glue factory explosion rocks Southern China and was caught on camera. The cause of the incident is now under investigation. Reporting to Beijing, gathering intel, and spreading propaganda—Chinese Communist Party members say they're still living under the regime's shadow, even after moving to the other side of the world and putting down roots in the United States. We take a look at the impacts on American soil. In a counterpunch against Beijing's aggression, Japan and the Philippines sign a landmark defense pact as China ramps ups its pressure on Manila. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

A threat in America's backyard is growing. Satellite images show Cuba is expanding spy facilities, and a new report says they could serve as Beijing's ears if the regime gets access to them. The Treasury is trying to cut off the money flow powering fentanyl trafficking. Two Chinese and one Mexican national have been sanctioned for allegedly laundering drug proceeds. Severe flooding continues to plague Southern China. Rivers have swollen to 70-year highs. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated. A passageway is closing for Chinese illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States. Panama just signed a deal with Washington to help shore up the U.S. southern border. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Heavy rains are pooling in Southern China, causing record-high floods and killing at least nine people. Many are still missing. Local reports reveal that artificial factors may be adding to the disaster. In other parts of China, deadly heat waves are scorching cities, with some rural areas seeing 90 percent of their crops wilted and shriveled. Green energy is high on President Joe Biden's campaign agenda, but is the climate-conscious pursuit forcing the U.S. military to rely even more on China's energy sector? A new move to counter China's dominance in critical minerals is coming from the House Select China Committee. Plus, we have more on why American weapons depend on Chinese rare earth elements. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Southern China Hit by Record Flood, at Least 9 DeadMore Extreme Weather Roils China: HeatwaveU.S., China Hold Talks on Anti-Drug CooperationYellen Announces Actions Against FentanylReport: ‘Green Energy' Increases U.S. Reliance on ChinaHouse China Committee Forms Working Group on Minerals'Big Three' U.S. Carmakers Losing China Market Share: ExpertChina Weighs in on Retaliatory Tariffs on European CarsDoctors Report Pay Cuts Across ChinaChinese Espionage Threatens Silicon Valley FirmsEU Urges China Stop Human Rights Abuses

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports on heavy flooding in parts of China.

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Heavy rainfall continues in some places in south China while a heatwave is sweeping the north. Continuous floods in Guangxi have raised river levels.

Join us as we talk with Jonathan R. Latham, executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project and the editor of Independent Science News. He delves into a topic that, while some wish to leave it behind, demands ongoing scrutiny and critical analysis due to its profound implications. An expert virologist by training, Latham explores the debate surrounding the origins of the COVID-19 virus. This discussion questions not only the transparency and integrity of media and government but also the accountability of leaders. Latham examines various theories about how the virus may have emerged, including the well-known lab leak and 'meat market' theories and a far lesser-known yet incredibly compelling one involving miners from Southern China in 2012. Tune in to uncover: The most compelling scientific evidence contrasting the lab leak theory with the natural zoonotic transmission theory and the miner theory. Insights into viral evolution: can a virus mutate more rapidly in one individual or millions? The adaptation of respiratory viruses to different human tissues, such as the nose and throat versus the lungs, and the evolutionary advantages of these adaptations. A critical look at media coverage: what's being reported, what's omitted, and why it matters. Take advantage of this eye-opening and important conversation about truth in science. Press play and learn more at Independent Science News | Food, Health and Agriculture Bioscience News - Bioscience news for food, health and agriculture. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/38oMlMr

To celebrate the start of “Pushing Boundaries,” KEXP's programming for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Isabel Khalili chats with Diana Ratsamee. Diana is the host of Eastern Echoes, KEXP's weekly show exploring music of all styles from Asia and the Asian diaspora. They talk about the 1980's Lao song that connects Diana with her family's story, plus three new songs that span the globe, from brain-tingling electro-punk from Southern China to Middle Eastern surf rock. And, as always, we hear about one standout release recently added to KEXP's rotation, straight from KEXP Music Director Chris Sanley. Songs featured: Sothy – “Lam Seung Bang Fai” South Acid Mimi – “The End” Habibi – “On The Road” TamTam –  “Ramble In the Rainbow” Mei Semones – “Tegami” Listen to the full songs on KEXP's "In Our Headphones 2024" playlist on Spotify. Listen to Eastern Echoes with Diana Ratsamee every Thursday at 7-10pm PT, or anytime on the 2-week archive, at KEXP.org or the KEXP App. Hosted and produced by: Janice Headley and Isabel KhaliliMixed by: Emily FoxEditorial director: Larry Mizell Jr. Our theme music is “好吗 (Hao Ma)” by Chinese American Bear Support the podcast: kexp.org/headphonesContact us at headphones@kexp.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AP correspondent Karen Chammas reports on the rescue effort after part of a highway collapsed in Southern China.

NEWS: Road collapse kills 19 in southern China | May 2, 2024 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asia correspondent Diane To speaks to Lisa Owen about Taiwan's incoming president featuring in Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world and extreme weather sweeping across southern China. She also speaks about Hong Kong introducing new rules to cut down on plastic disposables.

Hundreds of millions of people are traveling as they welcome the Chinese New Year, and they're also contributing to soaring box office numbers (00:56). Egypt is beefing up defenses from across the border as Israel strikes Rafah (15:24). And Patrick Mahomes is Super Bowl MVP for a third time after helping the Kansas City Chiefs win another Super Bowl (21:47).

Fentanyl arrest. Federal agents pick up a man arriving into a Hawaii airport. How much of the deadly drug he was allegedly carrying. On Oahu. Crews responded to a two-alarm fire in Kaimuki over the weekend. How long it took HFD to extinguish the blaze. In part five of our "Journey to China" series. Stephanie Lum joins a Native Hawaiian leader as she traces her roots in Southern China. What she discovered about her family. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Brute Force Manufactured Consensus is Hiding the Crime of the Century, published by Roko on February 3, 2024 on LessWrong. People often parse information through an epistemic consensus filter. They do not ask "is this true", they ask "will others be OK with me thinking this is true". This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says the same thing they will adopt that position because their brain interprets it as everyone in the tribe believing it. Anon, 4Chan, slightly edited Ordinary people who haven't spent years of their lives thinking about rationality and epistemology don't form beliefs by impartially tallying up evidence like a Bayesian reasoner. Whilst there is a lot of variation, my impression is that the majority of humans we share this Earth with use a completely different algorithm for vetting potential beliefs: they just believe some average of what everyone and everything around them believes, especially what they see on screens, newspapers and "respectable", "mainstream" websites. This is a great algorithm from the point of view of the individual human. If the mainstream is wrong, well, "nobody got fired for buying IBM", as they say - you won't be personally singled out for being wrong if everyone else is also wrong. If the mainstream is right, you're also right. Win-win. The problem with the "copy other people's beliefs" algorithm is that it is vulnerable to false information cascades. And when a small but powerful adversarial group controls the seed point for many people's beliefs (such as being able to control the scientific process to output chosen falsehoods), you can end up with an entire society believing an absurd falsehood that happens to be very convenient for that small, powerful adversarial subgroup. DEFUSING your concerns This is not a theoretical concern; I believe that brute-force manufactured consensus by the perpetrators is the cause of a lack of action to properly investigate and prosecute what I believe is the crime of the century: a group of scientists who I believe committed the equivalent of a modern holocaust (either deliberately or accidentally) are going to get away with it. For those who are not aware, the death toll of Covid-19 is estimated at between 19 million and 35 million. Covid-19 likely came from a known lab (Wuhan Institute of Virology), was likely created by a known group of people (Peter Daszak & friends) acting against best practices and willing to lie about their safety standards to get the job done. In my opinion this amounts morally to a crime against humanity. And the evidence keeps piling up - just this January, a freedom of information request surfaced a grant proposal dated 2018 with Daszak's name on it called Project DEFUSE, with essentially a recipe for making covid-19 at Wuhan Institute of Virology, including unique technical details like the Furin Cleavage Site and the BsmBI enzyme. Note the date - 3/27/2018. Wait, there's more. Here, Peter Daszak tells other investigators that once they get funded by DARPA, they can do this work to make the novel coronavirus bond to the human ACE2 receptor in... Wuhan, China. Wow. Remember, this is in 2018! Now, DARPA refused to fund this proposal (perhaps they thought that this kind of research was too dangerous?) but this is hardly exculpatory. Daszak et al had the plan to make covid-19 in 2018, all they needed was funding, which they may simply have gotten from somewhere else. So, Daszak & friends plan to create a novel coronavirus engineered to infect human cells with a Furin Cleavage Site in Wuhan, starting in mid-2018. Then in late 2019, a novel coronavirus that spreads rapidly through humans, that has a Furin Cleavage Site, appears in... Wuhan... thousands of miles away from the bat caves in Southern China ...

It finally snowed in large swaths of Southern China. Many actors and actresses shared posts of the snowy spectacles down in Heng Dian with fans speculating which film crews will take advantage of the natural scenes! However, the biggest news with the snow actually comes from the pandas in Cheng Du! Listen to our latest podcast episode to find out more!

What is in the This Week in Science Podcast? This Week: Predictions from 2023, Predictions for 2024, Supernovae, Ancient Archery, Grizzlies, Wing Source?, Giants of Southern China, Bats could cure diabetes, And Much More Science! Become a Patron! Check out the full episode of our science podcast on YouTube and Twitch! And, remember that you […] The post 10 January 2023 – Episode 956 – 2024 TWIS Science Predictions! appeared first on This Week in Science - The Kickass Science Podcast.

Guangzhou Baiyun Railway Station has reopened after undergoing a major renovation (19:06). Some shipping companies have announced plans to return to the Red Sea despite Houthi attacks (05:20). And protesters are still calling for Serbia's election results to be annulled (07:30).

Interview with Tim Harrison, Managing Director of Ionic Rare EarthsOur previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/ionic-rare-earth-ixr-battery-recycler-ahead-of-the-pack-3252Recording date: 21st November 2023Building Europe's Rare Earths Supply Chain from Mine Through RecyclingRare earth elements may lack mainstream name recognition, yet they play irreplaceable roles across electric transport, renewable power, robotics, and defence sectors. Despite such critical applications, Europe sources over 90% of its rare earths from China, creating a major strategic vulnerability. However, determined policy action coupled with private sector innovation could soon change this landscape.Australian firm Ionic Rare Earths is advancing projects on two fronts to onshore rare earths into Europe and build more resilient supply chains. The company is finalizing permitting to develop the Makuutu rare earths deposit in Uganda, while simultaneously commissioning a novel rare earths recycling plant in Northern Ireland this January.Makuutu could become one of few large-scale rare earths mines outside China meeting European standards for responsible and transparent mineral development. Containing a large ionic clay deposit, metallurgical breakthroughs allow rare earths at Makuutu to be extracted via simple processes already proven successful in Southern China.With over 94% of land access agreements secured and continued positive drill results, Ionic believes necessary approvals are nearing completion to allow initial production of mixed rare earth carbonate samples by Q1 2024. Director Tim Harrison explains that establishing this early output will let potential customers complete their own assessments as full-scale development continues.In tandem, Ionic's Artic Technologies joint venture is preparing for 24/7 operation at its Belfast rare earth recycling plant. This ground-breaking facility can extract rare earths from not just end-of-life magnets but also manufacturing scrap and other waste residues containing them. This greater feedstock flexibility bolsters supply security.Already tied to a European supply agreement with Less Common Metals and Ford Motor Company, initial outputs from Belfast will showcase Artic's technologies to other manufacturers. Supporting Europe's goal for 25% of rare earth magnets to come from recycling by 2030, Artic aims to undertake feasibility studies in 2023 for commercial-scale development.Getting both the Makuutu mine and Artic recycling plant successfully online would showcase Ionic Rare Earths' capacity to deliver end-to-end rare earths supply chains on European soil. Integrating complementary primary and secondary production with regional manufacturing can help the continent minimise dependence on Chinese imports over the long-term.—View Ionic Rare Earth's company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/ionic-rare-earths-ltdSign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Norm O'Hara is the General Manager of a sporting equipment factory based in Southern China. He's also a lean manufacturing enthusiast who's excited to share the improvements he and his team are making on their journey toward organizational excellence. In this episode we talk about: Treating improvement videos as a product Cultural challenges of applying lean in China (And how to overcome them) The power of building a physical bridge between two factories Reducing the number of people moving items around from 40 to 4 And his desire to run a “world-class business” Check it out! Links: Playlist with 119 improvement videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzZiVpXQCLUmIUeg5Tx4P3BbBtfIfRsUt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normohara?originalSubdomain=cn Book a Lean Made Simple Tour: https://www.leanmadesimple.com/book-a-tour

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports on Asia Storm.

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports on Asia-Typhoon.

Super-typhoon Saola prompts flight cancellations, railway closures and severe weather warnings across Hong Kong and southern mainland China; we get an update from Hong Kong and hear about the global economic importance of Guangdong, in the typhoon's path. Also in the programme: Algerian coastguards shoot dead two tourists who strayed into Algerian waters on their jet skis from a Moroccan resort; and we report from Kashmir, where journalists say the administration is carrying out a systematic campaign of arrests and intimidation. (IMAGE: People brave strong winds in Hong Kong, China, as Super Typhoon Saola approaches, September 1, 2023. CREDIT: Reuters / Tyrone Siu)

What you grow up with, that's what becomes normal. You could be smack dab in the middle of something extraordinary, but it's simply everyday life for you.In this conversation with Yvonne Lau we reflect on her experience of growing up as the daughter of immigrants from Southern China who ran an herb store in San Francisco's Chinatown. It was a time when a few dedicated young people from the mainstream culture began to show a respectful and insatiable interest in Chinese medicine.The interest of those young people was part of what would become a growing acceptance of Chinese medicine in the west. And the herb store; it too has grown through the years.Listen into this conversation of playing hide and seek behind bags of uncut herbs, some of the characters who made up the Asian Chinese medicine community, how her parents herb store has become a major supplier of medicinals, and some of the challenges we face in this moment of time.

Last time we spoke about the final days of the first Sino-Japanese War, the invasion of the Pescadores Islands, Taiwan and the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Japanese had taken Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and were on the verge of marching upon Beijing. The Qing were slow to action on the negotiation front leading to three attempts to reach a peace agreement. However in the meantime the Japanese prolonged things for just enough time to allow their amphibious forces to invade the Pescadore islands and Taiwan. Li Hongzhang became the scapegoat for the entire conflict and was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki. However in the end it would also be Japan getting served a nasty deal because of the Triple Intervention of Germany, France and Russia. The balance of power in the east had dramatically changed, and with change comes movement, the movement of many people, all over the world.   #55 This episode is, Overseas Chinese   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I did not know when I was going to tackle this subject, but I figured after the first Sino-Japanese war would be a good place. The 1890's-1900 is a sort of odd window of time for China where a lot of change occurs. When I was doing my undergraduate in History, a requirement of my University was to take a certain amount of courses in specific fields of history, one was Canadian history as I am from Quebec and its just forced on you. In one of those courses I had to spend an extensive amount of time learning about the Chinese-Canadian experience, particularly during the end half of the 19th century. Now I know the majority of you listeners are American and probably know the general history of Chinese immigration to America during the 19th century. For Canada is quite similar, first thing that comes to mind for all of you I imagine is the railroad work. Its a fundamental part of both America and Canada's history, the building of some of the great railroads and unfortunately the terrible mistreatment of Asian immigrants. In this episode however I don't want to just talk about Canada and the United States, because in truth, Chinese immigration saw Chinese going to all sorts of nations, for various reasons. I also believe it gives us a better understanding of all the events we have spoken about and how they affect the common person. There are more than 50 million Oversea Chinese today, most of them are in Southeast Asia, in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and such. They represent one of the highest figures of immigration in the world. Their migration goes back to ancient times, roughly 2000 years ago during the opening of the maritime silk road. Chinese immigrants were moving mainly to Southeast Asia. When the 15th century came around, Chinese began moving to places like Sumatra and Java, establishing what we call today, Chinatowns. Where trade went, so did the Chinese and by the 16th century trade began to pick up with Europe. Europeans began to establish themselves in the Far East, looking to trade and in the process integrated numerous places within a world trade network. European powers began to compete with another to expand and develop colonies in places like Southeast Asia and this in turn increased a demand for Chinese merchants and laborers. When the 17th century rolled around, there was an estimated 100,000 or so Chinese scattered about Southeast Asia and 20-30 thousand perhaps in Japan. Many Chinese came over during the Wokou years, setting up bases in Japan to help raid mainland China as pirates. When the Manchu conquered the Ming dynasty, numerous Chinese refugees fled to Japan to escape Manchu rule.  Now its during the 19th century when we really begin to see massive movements to the far reaches of the globe. When the age of colonialism was at its height so too would Chinese immigration be at its height, and with it a diaspora began. By the starting of the 19th century, millions of Chinese pulled up stakes and left for unfamiliar and faraway places, why? During the final century of the Qing dynasty, China began to struggle with mounting challenges as I think we all have seen in this series. These problems were both internal and external in nature. Internally, the Qing had doubled their territory, incorporating areas in the north and west which were sparsely populated, adding ethnic and religious diversity to the empire. There were Manchu, Hans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Muslims and such. Alongside this, the population exploded because of new irrigation and water management techniques that were helping tackle China's most troublesome historic nemesis, floods and droughts. New crops had come over from the America's such as corn, sweet potatoes and peanuts. The new foodstuffs could be grown in areas of China that historically always had trouble growing stuff, allowing for new lands to be expanded upon such as the southwest and northeast. As the nutrition improved, China's population exploded. By 1740 the Qing dynasty numbered 140 million, but by 1850 this increased to a whopping 430 million. Population growth holds numerous benefits to a nation, such as increasing economic activity, but it can also cause great strain. China took a very very long time to industrialize. In the early half of the 1800s, most Chinese supported themselves through farming, but with the population booming, less and less land pushed more and more to find new lands. The Qing government meanwhile, as we have seen in this series, proceeded to become incredibly corrupt. Their officials neglected the common people and engaged in corruption purely to enrich themselves, and they gradually became more and more inept at governance. With a corrupt government and a booming population of dissatisfied people, 19th century China was ripe for conflict. The first major one was the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796-1804. It broke out in response to famine, overcrowding of land and from the harassment by corrupt Qing officials. The cult lashed out, resulting in the deaths of millions and costing the Qing dynasty nearly 100 million taels. Then the First Opium War broke out against Britain resulting in a humiliating defeat and the beginning of unequal treaties upon China. After this, the worst civil war in history, the Taiping rebellion broke out, yet again during a time of famine, with another cult, the Taiping led by Hong Xiuquan who nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty leading to the death of over 20 million or so people. Alongside the Taiping was the Nian rebellion and the second opium war, inviting more death and humiliating treaties tossed upon China. The Dungan revolt killed another 10 or so million people, causing countless Hui Muslims to flee into surrounding neighboring states.  The turmoil of the mid 19th century caused terrible suffering on the people of China whether it be from drought, famine, war, governmental harassment or simply incompetence and when this becomes your everyday life, what do you do to improve it? Well after witnessing such foreign barbarians nearly toppling your government multiple times, showcasing technologies you've never seen before, you might get curious what its like in their nations. Once the bans were lifted Christian missionaries were pouring into China from these nations. These people didn't not simply sail over to China either, in the mid 19th century the invention of steamships made sea crossings much faster and safer. With steamships came railroads, a much more efficient way to move raw materials and people across land. Steamships and railroads would have a profound effect on China. The construction of railroads required a lot of work, particularly dangerous work of clearing land and laying tracks. European colonies, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Oceania and other far reaching places had enormous demand for laborer, whether it be in construction, agriculture, mining, railway building, etc. Plantations for rice, rubber, fruit, sugar, tea, hell the mining of guano was huge, talk about a shitty job. Like we see today, companies sought cheap and exploitable pools of labor to fit their demands, many of them turned to China. China because of the Opium wars and later the First Sino-Japanese War had opened up countless treaty ports, she was burst open. Now there were fundamentally two rationales for Chinese migration, the first being flight and the second economic. Flight refers to those literally driven to flee where they were because of war, famine, disease, natural disasters, terrible government and persecution. Economic refers to the drive to just improve one's life, maybe the grass is greener on the other side as they say. Both of these rationales could lead to temporary move or permanent and it did not necessarily mean leaving China either, let's not forget a ton of internal moving was occurring.  Now during the Taiping Rebellion as the violence escalated countless people fled. Take for example the wealthy class, whenever Taiping entered an area, obviously these people feared losing everything as the Taiping confiscated all wealth. Therefor countless fled to newly opened treaty ports like Shanghai where foreign protection was to be found. They began dealing with the foreigners and discovered some mutual interests. This was a large reason places like Shanghai and Hong Kong were transformed into booming sophisticated cities. But for the countless common people, the Taiping-Qing war saw a large mobile population, wandering wherever seemed safe at the time. Many of these people fled to provinces in the southwest and southeast of China. When the war ended, major food and tax producing provinces were de-populated, take Jiangsu for example which saw 70% of its population of around 24 million people. Anhui and Zhejiang lost around 50% of their respective 15 million or so people. When the war was finally over, the flight migrants did not all return. Hubei, Hunan and Henan saw a ton of their people simply pack up and set up shop east. A lot of people also fled into Manchuria which had always been sparsely populated, even though it was one of the richest areas for agriculture and natural resources. The Qing had always limited migration to Manchuria, trying to protect the Manchu homelands, but beginning in the 1860's the Qing leadership had a change of heart. There were two major reasons for this; number 1 the Taiping rebellion had ravaged the governmental budget, prosperous agricultural regions that provided a ton of tax revenue were depopulated. China had indemnity payments to pay the British and French, money needed to be made, so the Qing began selling land in Manchuria and increased taxes upon it once it started to become more productive. The second reason was Russia. Russia was encroaching into Manchuria, and the Qing worried its sparse population would leave it vulnerable, so they opened the doors to the Han to help out. Now it was not just the Russian encroaching into Manchuria, the Japanese also had their eyes on the region. As I explained briefly towards the end of last episode, the Russians basically swindled the Japanese with the triple intervention, managing to seize a 25 year lease over the Liaodong peninsula in 1898. The Russians quickly went to work developing the region's agriculture, mining and crucially its railways. All of this required the pumping of money into Manchuria further building up the desire for Chinese migration to fill the large demands. Now this was all internal movements, what about the external? Millions of Chinese responded to the international demand for labor during the mid to late 19th century, taking them first to Southeast Asia, and then to all the corners of the world. The major reason they were able to do this in large scale was because of the new steamships and the increase of foreigners inside China telling them about the various nations they came from. The majority of early migrants came from the wealthy class, who sought to move their families and businesses abroad. These types of businesses were typically, Luandromats, stores, restaurants and such. They mostly came from Guangdong and Fujian as southern China was in turmoil due to the opium trade and Taiping Rebellion. Southern China had become fertile grounds for western companies to come over and recruit or even Shanghai laborers. The British picked up Chinese and brought them to build up their colonies in Malaya and Singapore, while the Dutch brought them over to Sumatra. They worked in sweltering hot plantations, for tea, rubber, rice, fruit or in the great tin mines of Malaya for example.  This all of course becomes quite dark, I briefly talked about the “pig trade”, the pigs being Chinese coolies who were either hired or kidnapped into indentured servitude overseas. Britain had outlawed slavery in 1807, but the experience for these poor souls would be very reminiscence of the western african slave trade. The term “shanghaied” comes from this time, when Chinese were sometimes drugged up or boozed up and tossed onto ships going to various places like Trinidad, British Honduras, Jamaica, New South Wales, British Guiana, Peru, Cuba, all over really. Now the Pig trade was quite reviled, take this passage from 1852 by foreign secretary Lord Malmesbury “iniquities scarcely exceeding those practiced on the African coast and on the African middle passage have not been wanting…the jails of China [have been] emptied to supply ‘labour' to British colonies…hundreds [of coolies] gathered together in barracoons, stripped naked and stamped or painted with the letter C (California), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Islands) on their breasts, according to destination.” It was actually the gradual abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself that rose the demand for Chinese coolies. The British were the pioneers on this front sending 200 Chinese laborers over to Trinidad in 1806 to quote “in an attempt to establish a settlement of free peasant cultivators and laborers” these initial shipments saw Chinese on vessels that had been used to transport African slaves in previous years. The Trinidad experiment failed, only 20 to 30 of the 200 Chinese remained on the island by the 1820's, however such stories inspired people like Sir John Gladstone to bring Chinese over to sugar plantation in British Guiana in the hopes of replacing the lost Afro-Caribbean workforce because the slave trade was coming to an end. Now the logistics of coolie labor were, murky lets say. Most in theory were under contract, paid, to be temporary, one would say consensual. Regardless many in Britain rightfully saw how horrible it was and tried to fight to end the trade or at least improve conditions for the Chinese coolies. Many of these humane reformers argued the Chinese would be tricked into signing employment contracts based on misleading promises, often kidnapped or even sold by coolie merchants within China. Yes a lot of these unfortunate men, had debts, like gambling debts and their lenders simply sold them off. But there were many who volunteered, because they were offered free passage and paid something like 20 cents per day. While I have been focusing on the British, everyone was in the game somewhat, take for example the Portuguese who held Macao which was the center of the coolie trade. It was said from 1848-1873 Macao's only real business was trading coolie slaves, and eventually it became so bad the British forced them to ban it. Spain sent Cuba two large shipments of Chinese Coolies in 1847 to work the sugar fields in Havana, these men came from Xiamen, one of the treaty ports that opened after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. When Guangdong opened up, Peru saw a ton of Chinese coolies come over to work in their silver mines and in guano cultivation. When their contracts were up, many integrated into the countries of Peru, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Before 1959 when the Cuban revolution broke out, Havana held latin americans largest Chinatown, a result of the coolie trade. South America saw around 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers come over between 1850 and the late 1870s. The most vulnerable would be those poor souls deceived by false contracts or kidnapped who saw themselves basically thrown into slavery. For the majority who went to Cuba and Peru this was to be the case. After a 4 month grueling journey crammed onto a ship like a sardine, they would arrive to be met with cruelty and abuse. Most would find their contracts were written in such a way that it would make it nearly impossible for them to ever repay the cost of their passage, which was not covered for, also housing and food. When reports began to surface between 1847-1854 about the abuse of those going to Cuba and Peru, British tried to take responsibility by closing ports sending these people off in China, such as Amoy, but this simply led Macao to become the largest coolie port in the end. Hell some of these Chinese participated in the War of the Pacific known also as the Saltpeter war, where they burned down many of the haciendas they worked for. 2000 Chinese coolies joined a Chilean Army in Peru helping the wounded and burying the dead. The Germans brought some over to German Samoa to work on their plantations which only ended during WW1 when Anzac seized such islands. The French shipping of Chinese coolies to Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, the French west indies and such, as this also involved Indian coolies. Then came the age of Gold Rushes, all around the world large scale gold rushes emerged, in Oceania, Africa, South American and North America. In Australia the population tripled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871, making Australia the first multicultural society during the gold rush period. The gold rush began in may of 1851 after a prospector named Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered gold in Ophir. Hargreaves had been to California's goldfields learning gold prospecting techniques such as panning and cradling. Victoria would see the first large goldrush in July of 1851 and word spread fast. 290,000 migrated to Victoria from British territories, 15,000 from European nations, 18,000 from the US, but not all were welcome. In 1855, 11,493 Chinese arrived in Melbourne, which saw Victoria enact the Chinese immigration act of 1855 in response. This severely limited the number of Chinese passengers permitted on an arriving vessel, but to evade the new law, many Chinese began landing in southern parts of Australia and would hike it sometimes 400kms across the country to get to the Victoria goldfields. In 1865 Richard Daintree discovered the Cape River Goldfield which soon attracted Chinese to Queensland for the first time. In 1872 James Mulligan discovered gold in the Palmer River around Cooktown, seeing 3 years of waves upon waves of Chinese prospectors. By 1977 over 18,000 residents were Chinese miners. I wanted to leave the United States and Canada for last if you were wondering, as I think they are the most well known stories of Chinese immigration. Also there are numerous nations I could not cover, this story is far too expensive I do apologize. So lets start with a very popular story, that of the great Californian Gold rush. In 1848 James W Marshall found Gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news soon brought over 300,000 people to California. While most were Americans, the gold rush also attracted thousands from Latin America, Oceania, Europe and China. The Chinese began arriving in 1849, the first major rush was to Gum San nicknamed “Gold Mountain” by the newly arrived Chinese. In 1849, around 90,000 people had come over, of which around 50-60 thousand were american. By 1852 20,000 Chinese had landed in the San Francisco area. Their distinct dress and appearance made them particularly recognizable in the goldfields and they were met with a ton of racism and violence. The American miners were frustrated with all the foreigners encroaching and the Chinese were easier target than other groups. Initially the Chinese worked for themselves or labored with other miners, but the American miners began to press upon the government to thwart more Chinese from coming over. The California legislature passed a foreign miners license law in 1850, charging non-US citizens 20$ per month. The law would be repealed within a year because of how exorbitant the fees were. This did not dissuade the Chinese who would go on to found America's first Chinatown in San Francisco, where by 1852 the Chinese now accounted for 30% of all immigrants. In response the California legislature passed another foreign miners tax now at 4$ per month. Many Chinese thrived during this time despite the hurdles they faced. Chinese mining companies like John China Placer Mining company and Hong Kong China Wing Dam company hired up to 20 workers and provided industrial equipment, expanding large scale operations. Small scale workers cooperatives amongst the Chinese also thrived in the 1850's which operated similar to the larger companies, using a share-risk system amongst workers. Many Chinese also chose to work for wages from white employers. Its estimated though it varies greatly, that Chinese miners were making around 39-50 dollars a month which would have been around the average wage for white miners. But as you can imagine there was much hardship, and the violence could get incredibly bad. Take for example what is known as the Hells Canyon Massacre. In 1887 two groups of Chinese miners headed to Oregon's Hells canyon to search for gold. On May 25th of 1887, 7 White Horse gang members, these were horse thieves, they robbed, murdered and mutilated between 10-34 of the Chinese miners who were employee's of the Sam Yup company. Its said they stole up to a possible 50,000$ worth in gold. Historian David H Stratton described the massacre as such,  “The brutality of the Snake River atrocity was probably unexcelled, whether by whites or Indians, in all the anti-Chinese violence of the American West. After the first day's onslaught at Robinson Gulch, the killers wrecked and burned the camp and then threw the mutilated corpses into the Snake River. The bodies of the other Chinese received similar treatment. Since it was the high-water stage of the spring runoff, the dead Chinese were found for months (some accounts say for years) afterwards along the lower river.” On the 26th more Chinese showed up to investigate the scene and 8 were shot dead by the gang. Later on in 1888 one Frank Vaughn confessed to taking part in the crime giving up the names of 6 associates. Most had departed america save for Vaughn and another man named Hughes. Their gang leader, Bruce Evan's known as “old blue” was blamed for everything, but he escaped custody. Now by the 1860's the goldrush was quieting down, leaving many Chinese looking for work and they found it in railway construction. The first major railway seeing Chinese workers was the first transcontinental railroad which linked up California to the eastern united states. Construction began in 1863 with terminal points at Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento. Despite the Goldrush raising California's population, a large number of Chinese were recruited in 1865 to help build up the railway. Many of these were former gold or silver miners and it was Charles Crocker a manager of the Central Pacific Railroad who was one of the first trying to hire Chinese. As he pointed out to his colleagues, hiring Chinese as opposed to whites as they cost a third of the salary. Crocker also pointed out they could hire the Chinese immigrants to do much of the grueling work and particularly the dangerous jobs. Crocker soon broke records for laying track, finishing the project 7 years ahead of time. This was due to the fact he worked the men to down to the bones. The central pacific track was constructed primarily by Chinese, Crocker initially hired every Chinese he could find in California, but soon began importing Chinese workers directly from China. The railroad had to pass over river and through canyons requiring bridges to be made and tunnels to be blown open. Many of the Chinese workers would be sent into tunnels to break through using hand tools and black power bombs. To tunnel through places like the the foothills of Sierra Nevada, the Central Pacific began to use the newly invented but extremely unstable Nitro-glycerine explosives, aka TNT. This greatly accelerated the rate of construction and deaths for the poor Chinese workers who used them. The work often saw Chinese workers tossed in large baskets with the explosives down to hard to reach areas, they would lit the fuse and the basket would be pulled as fast as it could away from the blast area, not safe. Over 11,000 Chinese took part in the project and they made up 90% of the work effort. A large portion of them came from Guangdong, recruited through a network of small firms and labor contractors. Its estimated around 1000 Chinese died building the Central Pacific Railroad.  Now as the Chinese came to the US for the Goldrush and then railroad construction, they were met with a lot of racism, violence and legislative efforts. I mentioned the American miners pushing for legislation against them, but when the Chinese began working on the railways this greatly expanded. In the 1870's various legal discriminatory measures were being made against the Chinese. In San Francisco Chinese school children from 1859-1870 were segregated, but in 1870 the requirement to educate them was simply dropped. Also in 1870 the Naturalization act which extended citizenship rights to African Americans specifically barred Chinese on the grounds they could not be assimilated into American society. Chinese immigrants were thus prohibited from voting, jury duty (which lets be honest is a blessing) and faced alien land laws prohibited them from purchasing property or establishing permanent homes or businesses. In 1873 the Pigtail Ordinance, you heard that right, targeted Qing dynasty immigrants based on their Queues. The law required prisoners in San Francisco to have their hair cut within an inch of their scalp and any Qing citizens who went to prison and had their queues cut, meant they could not go back home until it grew back. The law was passed with the idea it would dissuade Chinese immigration. Two years later came the Page Act of 1875, barring Chinese women from entering the US. This was justified under the guise many who came over were performing sex work. In reality it was another measure taken to dissuade Chinese immigration. This was followed up in 1882 by the infamous Chinese exclusion act which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. All of this was strongly driven by frustrated American workers who saw the Chinese as a threat to their jobs. Miners and railway workers pressed unions which pressed the legislatures to toss countless anti-Chinese laws trying to dissuade them from coming to the US. With so much discrimination and hurdles tossed at them, the Chinese began moving somewhere else to make ends meet. Chinese immigrants began arriving to the then Colony of Vancouver island in the late 1850's looking for gold. The colony of British Columbia, much like California was seeing a gold rush. The first Chinese community was established in Barkerville where half its population were Chinese. Soon other Chinatowns emerged in Richfield, Van Winkle, Quesnellemouthe, Stanley, Antlery and Quesnelle forks. By 1860 the Chinese population of Vancouver island and British columbia was around 7000. Then in 1871, British Columbia agreed to join the confederation of Canada and one of its conditions to do so was for the new federal government of Canada to build a railway linking BC to Eastern Canada, yes its basically the exact same thing as California with the Eastern US. Prime Minister John A Macdonald along with numerous investors realized the project would be unbelievably expensive. They also realized they could cut costs by employing Chinese laborers, as Macdonald told Parliament in 1882 “it is simply a question of alternatives either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway”. In 1880 Andrew Onderdonk, one of the main construction contractors in British Columbia for the new Canadian Pacific Railway began recruiting Chinese laborers from California. Learning from the Americans he also began importing Chinese workers from Guangdong and Taiwan. The Chinese workers were hired for the first 320 kms of the CPR which was considered to be the most difficult and dangerous segments, particularly the parts going through Fraser Canyon. Like their american counterparts they were paid much less than white Canadians, around 50% on the dollar.  Between 1880-1885, 17000 Chinese workers came to build the CPR with around 700 dying due to the terrible work conditions. The CPR's construction resulted in the establishment of Chinatowns along the rail line which further resulted in Chinese communities spreading across Canada. Following directly in the footsteps as the Americans, when the CPR was finished in 1884, the following year saw the infamous Chinese Head Tax. The Canadian government levied its first of many to come, anti chinese immigration acts, to discourage Chinese from coming to Canada. The head tax system stipulated all Chinese people entering Canada first had to pay 50$ ie: the head tax. This would be amended to 100$ in 1900, 500$ in 1903 and so forth. Because of this, basically no Chinese laborers could afford to bring over their families, though BC's Chinese communities still grew. In British columbia the perception of all the asians coming into the province, as it was not just the Chinese, many Japanese came over particularly for the fishing industry, well they perceived these people to be taking their jobs. Australia likewise had tossed up immigration restriction acts in 1901, the infamous “white australia policy” which eliminated asian immigration after their federation, and Canada would try the same. The Asian Exclusion League in Canada, yes there was a league just for this lobbied as much as they could to thwart Chinese immigration. I did not want to delve into the 20th century in this episode, but I did want to touch upon the violence that would occur in BC. In 1907 tension had increased, as more and more Asian immigrants were flooding over into BC from the US as a result of their anti chinese regulations, kind of a hot potato situation. By the end of October 1907 over 11,440 immigrants came over, 8125 were Japanese, 1266 Chinese and Sikhs made up 2049. Anti-Asian acts were blowing up and soon full blown riots spread.  The Asian exclusion league developed a new immigration act, but the federal government refused to back it. This led to outrage which led to its members starting a parade on September 7th of 1907. This parade turned into a mob riot where Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods were attacked. Asian owned businesses were vandalized, beer bottles were tossed at windows, fires were lit, the rioters were trying to destroy businesses. They came to Japantown where armed Japanese residents fought back, over 50 stores had their windows broken in and the entire riot only died down around 3am. Labour Minister MacKenzie King, yes the soon to be Prime Minister of Canada conducted a commission into the riots finding the damage to be worth around 26,000$ for the Chinese community and 9000$ for the Japanese. The riot directly led to the 1908 “gentleman's agreement”, one I might add not many people know about, not as notably as the head tax, but this was a secret agreement between Japan and Canada to restrict the number of passports issued to Japanese annually at under 400 peoples. It was a dark part of Canadian history. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. I do apologize if this episode is more on the gloomy side, but do not forget these asian communities are thriving today all around the world. I plan to do another episode on Overseas Chinese in the 20th century, so I hope you enjoyed this one and come back for some more!

Last time we spoke about the Massacre at Port Arthur, actions in Manchuria and the fall of Weihaiwei. The Japanese had completely destroyed their meticulously cultivated public image when they let loose atrocities upon the Chinese at Port Arthur. Meanwhile, multiple Japanese and Chinese armies fought in Manchuria, culminating in a decisive blow at the battle of Yingkou. The Japanese advance was getting ever closer to Beijing, but the event that would inflict the most serious threat to China was the battle for Weihaiwei. The survivors of the Beiyang Fleet were trapped within the harbor of Weihaiwei when the Japanese snuck onto the Peninsula and laid siege to the great fortified port city. The Japanese stormed the fort's guns and quickly turned them on the Beiyang fleet before launching torpedo boats to finish the job. It was a catastrophe for the Qing Dynasty, now the Japanese could launch offensives at their whim against Shandong province.   #54 The First Sino-Japanese War of 1898-1895 Part 6: Taiwan and end of the War   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Japan had just captured the port city of Weihaiwei. The Japanese government publicly reported their objectives of war were not yet attained and that the diet was prepared to grant whatever amounts were necessary for military expenses required to finish them. Meanwhile the Qing court in Beijing concluded that China's military defeats had been mostly a result of the weaknesses of European weaponry. Yes, that was their conclusion. They pointed out how there was a mismatch between Chinese gunpowder, which might I add was inferior to that of what was being used in the west, and their western purchased breech-loading rifles. From the North China Herald we get this gem "There is a movement in Peking for a return to the use of muzzle-loading rifles and long jingals [sic] for arming the Chinese armies. But the Chinese arsenals before the war was ‘unfit even for firecrackers' and had been provided ‘by unprincipled ordnance officials.' This inferior gunpowder supplied to the Chinese armies in Manchuria and elsewhere since the war began, had undoubtedly been one of the chief causes which has made our soldiery appear ridiculous in the eyes of the world. The powder in the cartridges has been found either not to carry far enough in nine cases out often or not even to explode! This sad state of affairs has been the principal cause of the hitherto astonishing panics of the Chinese soldiery whenever they were confronted by the Japanese." Instead of simply replacing defective powder and using modern weapons. The Qing solution to their gunpowder problem, which was the result of corrupt officials embezzling, was to simply dispose of modern weaponry and start using their old stuff. Instead of simply replacing defective powder and using modern weapons. With the Beiyang fleet's warships destroyed or captured, Prince Gong ordered the closing of the admiralty board since China no longer possessed a real navy. When he did so, they found 5 million taels missing from the account. It is alleged these funds were diverted to Empress Dowager Cixi's summer palace renovations. There was a general recognition in the west after the fall of Weihaiwei that the balance of power in the far east had changed. China was no longer the dominant power, it was clearly Japan. The Qing dynasty faced a horrible decision: they could negotiate a peace deal with Japan or they could risk a coup d'etat. It was to be defeat by the hands of Japanese, or their own Han subjects. The Manchu leadership clearly favored the former, especially since they were under the belief they could enlist some western intervention to mitigate better peace terms on their behalf. For the Japanese, they now were trying to figure how to make their war gains permanent, but to do so they really had to get the Qing to capitulate before foreign intervention occurred. While Japan could defeat China, she could not handle more nations jumping into the mix, particularly the Russians in Manchuria. The Japanese public and military were demanding peace terms to meet their great achievements in the field of battle. Japanese diplomats however were very aware of the international diplomatic consequences of being too ambitious in the peace terms. Cooperation between the Japanese military and diplomatic leadership began to wane after Port Arthur fell. A week after its fall, Premier Ito Hirobumi arranged Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo to be relieved of his command for medical reasons, but he was not sick. No, it was because Yamagata favored a direct march upon Beijing and this made the Japanese political leadership worried he might not listen to orders telling him otherwise if he remained in the field. They believed such a strategy would ultimately backfire, because it would collapse the Qing dynasty which would simply drag western powers into the mix. As Premier Ito Hirobumi put it “Should this happen, Japan would be negotiating peace not with China, but with the Western Powers. But there is another twist to this story. Yamagata also happened to be Ito's most powerful rival and you can only imagine how much it might displeasure Ito if Yamagata marched into Beijing.  Thus Ito arranged for a different strategy. Beijing would no longer be an objective, instead the 2nd IJA hit Weihaiwei, but another far more distant objective was also tossed onto the map, Taiwan. It was the belief amongst the Japanese leadership, the western powers would tolerate Japan annexing Taiwan. Always trying to emulate the great powers, Japan wanted to obtain colonies, showcasing herself to be their equal. Taking territory on the mainland of Asia was much trickery and could butt heads with nations like Russia, but Taiwan was a lonely Qing held asset very far from her clutches. The strategy was extremely unpopular with the military and Japanese public, both of whom obviously were looking forward to a foothold on the Asian mainland and the ultimate spectacle of marching upon Beijing. In fact the Imperial Family had even sent Field Marshal Prince Komatsu Akihito over to specifically grab command over the march on Beijing. The Japanese royal family wanted one of its members to personally see the capitulation of the Qing emperor, now that would certainly be a hell of a spectacle. But most of the military and public did not understand what would occur if the Qing dynasty collapsed.  By this point of the war, the IJA sought to retain the Liaodong Peninsula, but the Japanese politicians understood this was far too close to the Chinese capital to be tolerated. Meanwhile the financial leaders of Japan sought, as you can imagine, large indemnity payments. War can be expensive. So the Peace demands would have three overarching demands: Taiwan, the Liaodong Peninsula and a fat sum of money in indemnities. Now ever since the disasters at Pyongyang and Yalu, the British and Russian governments began work to mediate between China and Japan. Nothing was coming to fruition, but after Port Arthur fell, the Qing began to get desperate. Just a week after Port Arthur's fall, the Qing government sent its first peace mission to Japan. On November 26th, the commissioner of customs at Tianjin, Gustav Detring and a journalist of the London Times named Alexander Michie arrived to Hiroshima with a letter from Li Hongzhang. Ito Hirobumi refused to receive the letter from Gustav Detring because he was not properly accredited by the Qing government, so he was sent away. When Gaiping fell on January 10th, the Qing government requested a cease-fire, which the Japanese turned down. In fact the Japanese publicly stated they would not halt hostilities even during peace talks. Thus the war continued on. Since the first mission, if you could call it that had failed, the Qing prepared a second. This time the Qing hired a special adviser, the former secretary of state to the US, John Watson Foster. Two commissioners were appointed, Zhang Yinhuan a former minister to the US, Peru and Spain and current Zongli Yamen. The second was Shao Youlin, a previous governor to Taiwan, and current activating governor of Hunan province. Zhang was capable of speaking English and thus he took the head. Speaking of heads, Shao Youlin, though a very unknown official, he was rather infamous for one thing. He had issued a proclamation at the beginning of the war, offering a 200 tael reward for the head of any Japanese officer or 100 taels for a regular soldier presented to him. Now if you have been listening to this series from the beginning you can guess this is the age old trick the Chinese played to save face. Always add some level of insult when performing negotiations. Thus Mr. Shao's appointment was just that, an insult and part of a game, a game the Japanese understood, China was still trying to make her look inferior. If China sent top ranking diplomats, it meant they were treating Japan as an equal. To this the Japanese retaliated. They used diplomatic fine print, found from European international law to rid themselves of the new delegation without breaching any rules on courtesy. They made the Chinese look ridiculous. Here is how it went down according to the North China Herald “the two envoys who should be proceeding were still idling in Shanghai because they were unfurnished with proper credentials” The Japanese also asserted the US minister in Beijing had been asked to draw up a proper set of credentials, but he was extremely late to present them and this was unacceptable. According to the Japanese the plenipotentiary powers of the two envoys lacked the authority to make any decisions. All of this occurred before the fall of Weihaiwei, meaning if the delegation had been successful the Japanese would have had a lot less chips on the table. A few days after the envoys departed for Hiroshima, the Peking Gazette, which was the official organ for the Qing government to publicate its edicts referred to the Japanese notably not with the term Woren, but this time the term Wokou which loosely meant “dwarf bandit'. The envoys reached Hiroshima on January 31st of 1895 and met with Ito Hirobumi on February 1st with Zhang keeping a friendly posture. Zhang continuously asked when he would be meeting with Emperor Meiji and Ito Hirobumi kept promising soon, soon he was a busy man, but in reality the Japanese, pardon my french, were just fucking with the envoys and were going to toss them out of the country. Ito Hirobumi made public statement to the two envoys, that they lacked official seals to conclude real treaties and that Japan had demanded assurances from the Qing government they would send proper envoys with proper seals. He finished off with this “ His Majesty the Emperor of Japan conferred upon my colleague and myself full powers to conclude and sign Preliminaries of Peace with the Plenipotentiaries of China." And on February 2, 1895, Ito called off the negotiations. Thus two days after the second mission arrived, they were already departing in failure. It would take over a month and a half before a third mission would leave China for Japan. In the meantime Japan captured Weihaiwei, destroyed the Beiyang fleet and were advancing upon Beijing by land and sea. This led the Chinese to stop messing around and choose envoys they knew the Japanese would accept. The Japanese made it known they would accept either Li Hongzhang or Prince Gong, China's two top foreign policy experts. Now if Li Hongzhang went, this offered the Japanese an enormous opportunity to humiliate the man who was commanding the Qing Navy and large parts of her land forces. The other choice placed a Manchu member of the royal clan in a position that would more than likely also result in humiliation. The Qing as you might guess, opted to toss the Han Chinese Li Hongzhang. It was the obvious choice to save the face of Manchu pride to scapegoat using a Han, a classica Qing dynasty strategy by this point in time. Thus the man who fought the most to modernize China and scapegoat this entire calamity would become the scapegoat and bear China's humiliation. To ready Li Hongzhang for his new responsibility, Emperor Guangxu simply restored all the honors and titles he had recently taken from him. Li Hongzhang yet again wore the 3 eyed peacock feather and yellow jacket. The Qing imperial court then asked all the highest ranking provincial officials for recommendations on what to include in the peace settlement. Li Hongzhang was provided with this: To accept a peace settlement as long as the Japanese only wanted indemnity payments. If Japan sought any territorial concessions, the Qing would continue to fight. Might I note, all of these officials who gave their recommendations were extremely out of touch with the reality of the ongoing war. On March 19th, Li Hongzhang alongside 100 other officials departed China for the port city of Shimonoseki. Premier Ito Hirobumi was the main Japanese representative and they would be conducted in english, with Li Hongzhang using an interpreter, Ito spoke english himself. Li Hongzhang presented official credentials with Emperor Guangxu's seal fixed on them. It's ironic, that when presented, Premier Ito asked why the Emperor used a seal, but no signature as was custom for modern society. Li Hongzhang waved it off stating it was Chinese custom and Ito did not press upon it, but yet again what a metaphor for China's reluctance to modernize. Li Hongzhang began negotiations by pressing upon things the two men used to talk about, pan-asianism vs western threats. In his words “the yellow race must work together to hamper the designs of the white race”. Ito replied “when I was at Tientsin 10 years ago settling the Korea problem, I gave you friendly advice that many reforms were most important for your country but I regret very much that no change whatever has taken place”. To this Li Hongzhang sighed and replied "the trammels of antiquated manners and customs in my country are most difficult to shake off and one cannot follow one's own inclination in effecting reform." Li Hongzhang then argued for the signing of an alliance between China and Japan against the West, which Ito declined. Then later that day, Li Hongzhang presented a proposal for an armistice, which Ito also declined. The main reason Ito Hirobumi was declining the armistice was because of the upcoming operations to invade Taiwan. Ito Hirobumi countered the armistice proposal by stating it would be accepted if the Japanese could occupy Dagu, Tianjin and Shanhaiguan; if China would cede control over railway from Tianjin to Shanhaiguan, which was her only railway at the time; and lastly pay for the cost of such occupation. According to Japanese foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu "As Li read this memorandum to himself, his face changed color and he appeared stunned. Over and over, he muttered that the terms were too severe." Li Hongzhang spoke with the Zongli Yamen, who in turn spoke to the Qing Court in Beijing and all agreed to reject such an armistice agreement. On March 24th, Li Hongzhang warned Ito "If the terms [for peace] involve the interests of any other country it would be well to proceed cautiously. Your Excellency said that Japan will attack Formosa [Taiwan]. This explains your objection to the Armistice." This was Li Hongzhang threatening that Western powers would intervene if Japan sought too extensive a price for peace and that China knew what they were up to with Taiwan. As Li Hongzhang left that days meeting to return to his lodgings, a Japanese youth named Koyama Toyotaro crept up to Li Hongzhangs palaquin and shot a pistol at him. The bullet went through Li Hongzhang's left cheek, literally just an inch below his eye. The Japanese police grabbed the man as Li Hongzhang was rushed to physicians to help him. The physicians were astounded with Li Hongzhangs fortitude in the face of such pain, especially since they could not anesthetize him due to his age. The operation would take a long recovery time, so Li Hongzhang decided not to have the bullet removed and simply went on with the negotiations. Now you think President Theodore Roosevelt was a badass,get a load of that. The bullet remained lodged deep under his nose. Emperor Meiji had ordered his personal physician to attend Li Hongzhang with bandages rolled up personally by the Empress. Emperor Meiji followed this up with an official public apology to the Qing government "It was of course incumbent on Us, in observance of international usage and on account of the credit of Our country to treat the Chinese Ambassador with proper courtesy and consideration...Most unfortunately, however, a fanatic has come forward and inflicted injury on the Chinese Ambassador. We are profoundly pained by the incident. The fanatic will of course be punished by Our officials in conformity with law." During the following week Li Hongzhang reported he had received over 10,000 letters of condolence from the Japanese public. This was an incredible loss of face for Japan. The wannabe assassin had very publicly breached the most elementary principle of modern diplomatic conduct. That said, the assassin received life in prison by the way. To restore some of their loss of face, Emperor Meiji granted a 3 week armistice to China, his entire military began pulling their hair out. The armistice was to be partial and not general however. What does that mean you might be asking? Well it meant it applied to the mainland, but not Taiwan and the Pescadore islands. The sneakiness of this was not lost of the press, the North China Herald had this to say “this voluntary sacrifice on Japan's part, is, as a matter of fact, no sacrifice and no armistice at all...[T]he march to Peking will not be continued...[but she] will go on with the subjugation of Taiwan." On March 15th of 1895, a Japanese expeditionary force of 5500 men had set sail for the Pescadore Islands. The Pescadore islands were the key to capturing Taiwan, their occupation would prevent the Qing from sending reinforcements across the Taiwan Strait. The Pescadores were garrisoned by 15 Qing battalions who held a recently created coastal defense battery that was created as a result of the French attacks during the Sino-French war. The Japanese opened up hostilities with a large naval bombardment of the Qing forts and batteries before landing ashore on Fisher Island and Penghu on March 24th. American-Canadian James W Davidson was a war correspondent with the IJA during the invasion of the Pescadore islands and later on Taiwan and he has honestly one of the best accounts on the entire story. So I am actually going to leave it to Mr. Davidson to describe how it went down. On March 20th, after a five days' trip from Sasebo naval station, the expedition, consisting of the fleet and the transports, arrived off the Pescadores and anchored near Pachau island to the south of the principal islands of the group. Bad weather on the 21st and 22nd prevented an immediate attack on the forts; but on the 23rd, the storm having abated, the ships got underway, and at 9.30 a.m., upon the first flying squadron drawing near Hau-chiau [候角?], the fleet subjected the Kon-peh-tai fort to a heavy bombardment, to which the Chinese replied for nearly an hour before they were silenced. During the afternoon, the disembarkation of the troops commenced. By the aid of steam pinnaces each towing several cutters, the troops, consisting of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Companies of the 1st Regiment of reserves under the command of Colonel Hishijima, were all landed in less than two hours. The landing of the troops brought the Kon-peh-tai fort into action again, but without inflicting much damage on the Japanese. The troops on shore engaged in a skirmish with some 300 Chinese soldiers, afterward reinforced by 150 more, near a commanding knoll which both forces were desirous of occupying. After a few volleys from the Japanese, answered by an irregular fire from the Chinese, the latter eventually fled, leaving the position in the hands of the Japanese. Staff-quarters were then established in the village of Chien-shan [尖山社]. At 2.30 on the morning of the 24th, the troops advanced with the intention of taking the Kon-peh-tai fort and Makung (Bako) with a temporary company of mountain artillery under Captain Arai and the naval contingent with quick firing guns under Naval Lieutenant Tajima in the van. The night was very dark and the only available route was so frequently cut up with ditches running in every direction that progress was laboriously slow; only some two miles being made after three hours of painful tramping. By about 4 a.m., the Japanese force had all reached the rallying ground, and thirty minutes later, led by the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of reserves, were advancing towards the fort. The 5th Company, under the command of Captain Kinoshita, formed the advance guard, and a detachment of this company, under command of Lieutenant Ishii, were the first to engage the Chinese forces, 200 of whom had taken up a position outside the fort and appeared to dispute the advance of the Japanese. The engagement was very brief, the Chinese flying before the small number of determined Japanese. Meanwhile, the temporary battery of mountain artillery had been shelling the fort from a position too far distant to do much damage to the stronghold, but in a manner sufficiently effective to frighten out the garrison, who left in such haste that, thirty minutes after the first gun had been fired, the Japanese were in possession. Thus was the principal port captured in the Pescadores. The naval contingent were also enabled to participate in the engagement, and with their two quick-firing guns did much execution. The 4th Company of the 1st Regiment of reserves and the naval contingent captured the village, after only a slight skirmish with the enemy. The place had been held by a garrison 500 strong. With the 2nd Company of the 1st Regiment of reserves leading the van, the Japanese forces now reassembled and advanced on the capital and principal city of the islands, Makung. No opposition was encountered on the way, with the exception of some ineffective firing from the Yui-wang island fort [漁翁島砲臺]; and upon reaching the city, the 1st Company stormed the Chinese infantry encampment, being followed soon after by the 2nd Company, which dashed through the gateway with the intention of dividing into three sections and attacking the enemy from different sides. But, to their amazement, their plans were found unnecessary, the garrison, with the exception of some thirty who did make a slight show of resistance, having fled. Some shots were fired at a few stragglers, and at 11.50 a.m. the occupation of the city was complete. Another engagement the same day resulted in the capture of the fort in the Yuan-ching peninsula [圓頂半島] by Commander Tanji with a naval force; about 500 of the enemy surrendering without making any resistance whatever. Two days later (March 26th), blue jackets occupied the Yui-wang island forts and found the place empty, the garrison having fled. Soon after the Japanese entered, a native presented himself, apparently on a very important mission, which proved to be the delivery of a letter stating that the Chinese commander and garrison wished to inform the Japanese that they surrendered the fort. Thus fell the key to Southern China. The Chinese prisoners, with the exception of eight officers, were given their liberty. The spoils of the little campaign were considerable, including 18 cannon, 2,663 rifles, over a million rounds of ammunition, 797 casks, and 3,173 bags of powder, a thousand bags of rice, etc., etc. Rear-Admiral Tanaka occupied the post of first governor of the group, and a government office and military post offices were at once erected. While the battle for the Pescadores was raging, both sides were still undergoing negotiations. On April the 1st, Li Hongzhang's nephew, Li Jingfang met with Foreign Minister Mutsu to ask if he could replace his uncle as plenipotentiary. Given the embarrassing nature of the assassination situation, Mutsu agreed to this. That same day the Japanese handed the Qing delegation an 11 page treaty draft. The draft showed the IJN wanted Taiwan, while the IJA sought the Liaodong Peninsula and the bankers wanted a large indemnity. Interesting point to note, Ito Hirobumi was the main architect of the treaty and he modeled it very much on Otto Von Bismarcks treaty after defeating France in 1871. Ito Hirobumi was a great admirer of Bismarck, and he even modeled the Meiji constitution on that of Prussia. Thus he wanted the Treaty of Shimonoseki as it would become known to mirror the key features of the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt. For those unaware the Treaty of Frankfurt held territorial annexation, a large indemnity payment and occupation of an enemy city until payments were complete. Ironically for those who know their world war history, the possession of Alsace-Lorraine would become the crux of two world wars, and much could be said of Japan's taking of Chinese territories leading to the same conclusion.  The Treaty held much more than the 3 demands however in totality it included, 1) the complete independence and autonomy of Korea 2) Qing cession of the entire coastal region of Manchuria from the Korean border south, including the Liaodong Peninsula, Niuzhuang, Taiwan, and the Pescadore islands 3) the indemnity payment of 300 million taels, to be paid over 4.5 years with a 5% interest rate 4) mandatory Japanese citizenship for residents in the ceded territories 5) a renegotiation of Sino-Japanese commercial treaties to mirror that with the West powers 6) the opening of 7 cities to international commerce, residence and industry (those being Beijing, Xiangtan, Chongqing, Wuzhou, Suzhou, Jiangsu and Hangzhou 7) the opening to international steam navigation of the upper Yangtze 8) exemption from the likin tax 9) Japanese occupation of Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and Fengtianfu until payments were done and 10) an end to all offensive military operations after treaty signing. Big gulp. To sing this would spell the end of Chinese influence not only over Korea, but major parts of Manchuria, and the complete loss of Taiwan and the Pescadore islands. When presented all of this China agreed to the issue of Korea's independence, but when it came to all the territorial claims Li Jingfang argued they were far too excessive. He also argued the indemnity fee was far too high and countered with 200 taels. It was at this point Ito Hirobumi pulled Li Jingfang aside for an informal meeting on April 8th. There he warned Li that time was running out and the closer the IJA got to Beijing the harder it would be to stop the toppling of the Qing Dynasty. Li immediately sent word back to the Qing court pleading for instructions on what to do, but they were not unified with factions emerging in the court fighting over differing issues. The next day the Qing delegation caved in to the Japanese demands with a few changes: 1) Both Japan and China would recognize Korea's independence 2) the territorial cessions would be the Pescadores, and part of Manchuria where it meets the border with Korea, this meant Andong, Kuandian, Fenghuangcheng and Xiuyanzhou 3) the indemnity payment was reduced 4) the Japanese would extend the same rights to Chinese in the ceded territories 5) The new Sino-Japanese trade deals would not be unequal treaties 6) Weihaiwei would be occupied until payments were made 7) all future disagreements would be submitted to international arbitration 8) all military offensives would cease upon signing. On April 10th, Li Hongzhang made the first visit to Ito Hirobumi since his date with the bullet and the talks began with a small exchange of courtesy. Li Hongzhang had this to say to Ito "What you have done for Japan I wanted to imitate for China. Had you been in my place you would know the unspeakable difficulties met with in China." Then Ito Hirobumi presented Japans revised treaty draft now including 1) Japan refused to recognize the neutrality of Korea and demanded China recognize the independence of Korea 2) Japan agreed to limiting territorial concessions, but wanted the Liaodong Peninsula, Nuizhuang, Taiwan and the Pescadores. 3) the indemnity payment was fine 4) Japan could not guarantee Chinese property right in ceded territories 5) Japan could not guarantee equal trade treaties 6) Japan reduced the list of cities to be opened from 7 to 4, Beijing, Xiangtan and Wuzhou were taken off. 7) Japan agreed to just occupy Weihaiwei 8) Japan refused to accept international arbitration to resolve future disputes 9) To stop military operations once this treaty was signed. The Japanese knew it would take another week or two for the delegation to get answers from the court in Beijing, thus giving their forces more time to subdue the Pescadores and Taiwan. Li Hongzhang began haggling more, so Ito Hirobumi pointed out that 60 more IJN transports were lying at anchor in Hiroshima's harbor awaiting the armistice expiration so they could depart for China. An ultimatum was given to the Chinese on April 11th and on the 15th they delegations met again where they simply hashed out the fine details such as waiving the interest rates and they extended the armistice to Taiwan and the Pescadores as by the 17th they were fully occupied. Finally on april the 17th the treaty of Shimonoseki was signed. With the treaty signed, the wolves came out in China to cast blame and cannibalize. Li Hongzhang's rivals at court came after him without mercy. Li Hongzhang for his part arranged to have his nephew take on the responsibilities of handing Taiwan over to Japan, a rough deal.  Now a lot would change, the balance of power in the far east for example. This is a podcast about the history of China so I do not want to delve too much into Japan, but it is important for the history of future events that you know this. Russia watched the war closely and by the end of it, came to the conclusion Japan posed a serious security threat to Russia and that of her expansion of the far eastern railway system. On April the 23rd, just 6 days after the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Ministers of France, Germany and Russia called upon the Japanese foreign ministry to offer some friendly advice. They recommended that Japan return the Liaodong Peninsula to the Qing dynasty on the grounds that Japan's possession of it would quote "would be a constant menace to the capital of China, would at the same time render illusory the independence of Korea, and would henceforth be a perpetual obstacle to the peace in the Far East." It was clear to the Japanese, the 3 western powers would intervene militarily if they did not acquiesce on the friendly advice. The IJN was not capable of facing the three navy's of France, Germany and Russia and thus Japan had to give up the Liaodong Peninsula. In truth Russia sought a warm water port in the Pacific, at this time they only had the cold water port of Vladivostok. As soon as Japanese forces had departed the Liaodong Peninsula, Russia immediately began occupying it and tossed immense funds into building up the naval base at Port Arthur. By December of 1897 Russian warships would be brought over to Port Arthur and in March of 1898 Russian formally leased the region for 25 years from China. And so the seeds of believe it or not WW2, had been sown some would argue. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Thus the first-sino Japanese war of 1894-1895 had come to an end. It was one of the most humiliating defeats for the Qing dynasty and yet again was breaking the dynasty brick by brick. For now the carving up of China was to ramp up. 

China's Communist Party declared a “decisive victory” against the pandemic last week, arguing that the country's response to the virus has been a “miracle in human history.” We travel to four cities that have all played important roles in China's covid policies and examine the effects of the lockdowns that took place in each of them. The Economist's Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, and senior China correspondent, Alice Su, talk to Gabriel Crossley, The Economist's China correspondent. He traveled to Ruili, a border city in Southern China, to see how the local government leveraged the pandemic to build a border fence. We also hear from Don Weinland, our China business and finance editor in Shanghai, who has been speaking to business owners about the country's economic recovery. Sign up to our weekly newsletter here and for full access to print, digital and audio editions, as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/drumoffer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ketchup is in almost 97% of US homes today -- and, while this statistic may sound surprising, it turns out there's a long story behind this humble condiment. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max trace the origin of ketchup from its ancient predecessors in Southern China and the Mediterranean to the introduction of the tomato all the way to the modern day. Tune in for the first episode in our continuing series on the history of condiments (and tell us which condiments you'd like us to explore next).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For centuries self-assured academics believed Troy was a mythological city -- until, that is, the ruins were discovered. Over the span of history, the human species has lost people, cities and entire civilizations. Occasionally, governments don't want these lost empires to be found. So what happens when a controversial linguist claims to discover an ancient people spanning Iran to Southern China? They don't want you to read our book. They don't want you to see us on tour.They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.