‘Mirrorlands’: Ed Pulford on the Sino-Russian border
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2019
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Sinica features a chat with Ed Pulford, author of the recent book Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between. Kaiser chats with Ed about the Sino-Russian border and Ed’s anthropological travelogue exploring the border’s past and present.
What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast:
28:06: Ed describes some of the tensions and perceptions that exist in the borderlands between Siberia and China’s northeast: “I think the increasing presence of Chinese ‘things’ — whether it’s material objects, consumer goods, or people who are coming over as tourists increasingly but also for longer as traders in the post-Soviet era — it’s a big shock and it has [presented] a lot of worries about the osmotic potential for what would happen if things were balanced out in terms of population and land use.”
43:43: Ed talks about Leonid, a Nanai man (赫哲族, Hèzhézú) whom he met during his travels along the Russian-Chinese border, his own ethnic awakening, and others that are occurring (and not occurring) around the world. “Among many, many indigenous groups of the Far East, the Far North, and Siberia, the post-Soviet period has been one where interest in global indigeneity — whether it’s Native American populations, Maori, or any other global indigenous cause — [there has] been a huge boom.”
Ed explains that within China, conditions are different: “There’s been a lot of this inter-indigenous group communication and networking. Whereas in China, at least from the Hèzhé and other groups, including the Éluósīzú and other minority groups, they’re part of a Chinese world that is not so much a part of those same discussions.”
Recommendations:
Ed: The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle, by Kobayashi Takiji, and National Book Award finalist Pachinko, by Minjin Lee.
Kaiser: Ivanhoe, a 1982 film adaptation of the original work by Sir Walter Scott.
This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Stick around after the show for an interview with Clay Baldo, the host of Strangers in China, |
| 0:04.2 | the newest podcast at SubChina, which will debut September 19th. |
| 0:18.0 | Welcome to the Cynical podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:23.5 | SubChina is the best way to keep on top of all the latest news from China in just a few minutes a day through our email newsletter, our smartphone app, or at the website, suprchina.com. |
| 0:33.5 | We offer original reporting and perspectives on a range of China-related topics from the Belt and Road to the environment, from the latest online phenomena to the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China's Xinjiang region. |
| 0:46.0 | We're sure you'll agree that it's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. |
| 0:52.7 | I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you today from Denver, Colorado, |
| 0:55.6 | where the 2019 AAS conference, |
| 0:58.2 | the Association for Asian Studies Conference, |
| 1:00.6 | is throwing its annual Shindig. |
| 1:02.8 | It's been a terrific, terrific conference, |
| 1:04.8 | and as you can imagine, we've managed now |
| 1:06.5 | to line up many, many guests for future episodes, |
| 1:09.4 | so stay tuned. |
| 1:10.7 | Today on Cineka, I am delighted to be joined by Ed Pulford, a postdoctoral researcher at Hokkaido, |
| 1:15.5 | University, who I actually met last year at AAS, of all things. |
| 1:19.4 | Ed is the author of a brand new book called Mirrorlands, Russia, China, and Journeys in Between. |
| 1:25.4 | Ed is a Cambridge-trained linguist and anthropologist who is fluent in both Russian and |
| 1:29.1 | Mandarin Chinese, and we've just been talking about, just now about learning Japanese and |
| 1:33.2 | Korean. |
| 1:34.0 | He's at Hokkaido, so naturally Japanese. |
| 1:36.1 | His book is a kind of, I would describe it as an erudite anthropological travelogue |
... |
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