Results tagged “josephkahn”

... and the rumor-mill is running in overdrive. Recent reports suggest that Shanghai Party Chief Xi Jinping's (习近平) recent entry into the race - apparently at senior leader Zeng Qinghong's (曾庆红) insistence - has shaken things up; forcing Hu Jintao to make some last-minute maneuvering.

From Southern Weekend via the Bokee blogs we learned that the controversial Shanghai high school history textbooks—the very ones that were the subject of a New York Times article last year (Sept. 1, 2006)—have been banned.

The recent hoopla over poisonous, tainted, and otherwise malignant Chinese exports — toothpaste, toys, and pet food, oh my! — has left us with an unpleasant taste in our mouths (and not just the minty-fresh kind). Industrial malfeasance has become the bane of Chinese commerce, and we have no intention of downplaying the unique brand of terror experienced by a parent who realizes he just gave his kid a lead-addled plaything.

Shanghaiist has posted before about the controversy surrounding the new high school history textbooks in Shanghai, which were thrown under the media spotlight after an article in the New York Times by Joseph Kahn claimed that the new history books were a big departure from the old books and went so far as to nearly remove Mao from China's history. You can read what the folks over at the Peking Duck thought about it this issue here and here. It seems that only one or two people there managed to compare the new history textbooks in Shanghai, which move away from the "great man" theory of history, with a somewhat similar movement in teaching of American history towards more social and cultural history, along the lines of (and this perhaps isn't the best or only example) Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

A Chinese reporter recently called the Shanghai Education Bureau to find out what was going on with regard to the newly revised high school history textbooks that supposedly minimize Mao and other Chinese historical figures and represent a somewhat radical departure from the kind of history taught in China in the past.

Image from Amazon.com.