Kate Lingley 龍梅若
@klingley.bsky.social
Art historian of medieval China; Assoc Prof, UH Mānoa. Feminist; foodie; early-music nerd; Jewish mother; SF/F fan; knitter; Maine native. She/her. Buddhist monuments and women's history in early medieval China. IG @kate.lingley, blog https://mbotd.blog/
Bonus if you are a non-Western specialist, b/c some of it doesn't apply AT ALL and there are great opportunities for snark, like, when optical perspective was introduced to Chinese painters and they went "hmm, this is a cheap trick suitable for fooling the hoi polloi, but you can't call it art" 😁
November 25, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Bonus if you are a non-Western specialist, b/c some of it doesn't apply AT ALL and there are great opportunities for snark, like, when optical perspective was introduced to Chinese painters and they went "hmm, this is a cheap trick suitable for fooling the hoi polloi, but you can't call it art" 😁
oh jeez, same, I really feel you here.
November 25, 2025 at 8:01 PM
oh jeez, same, I really feel you here.
The playlist I linked is complete, at least viewed from the US.
November 25, 2025 at 4:37 PM
The playlist I linked is complete, at least viewed from the US.
You should - the character work is also amazing and the two leads are Johnny Huang 黄景瑜 and Wang Ziqi 王子奇, who are apparently good friends IRL and have great chemistry. Several really great older actors too, including Li Naiwen 李乃文 and Liu Wei 刘威
November 25, 2025 at 6:26 AM
You should - the character work is also amazing and the two leads are Johnny Huang 黄景瑜 and Wang Ziqi 王子奇, who are apparently good friends IRL and have great chemistry. Several really great older actors too, including Li Naiwen 李乃文 and Liu Wei 刘威
However, it's also true that the pipe that drains my kitchen sink and dishwasher is blocked at the moment, so for the past few days I've been doing the dishes by hand, in a plastic basin, squatting beside the bathtub, and that's just as much a return to the 1990s (in my experience) as the rest.
November 25, 2025 at 5:28 AM
However, it's also true that the pipe that drains my kitchen sink and dishwasher is blocked at the moment, so for the past few days I've been doing the dishes by hand, in a plastic basin, squatting beside the bathtub, and that's just as much a return to the 1990s (in my experience) as the rest.
...to the faintly Wild West mix of old state-run restaurants and hostels with new enterprises, cell phones, video arcades, etc. (I mean, I didn't go to that many nightclubs, but still.) The executive producer is Zhang Yimou, which may have something to do with the production values.
November 25, 2025 at 5:28 AM
...to the faintly Wild West mix of old state-run restaurants and hostels with new enterprises, cell phones, video arcades, etc. (I mean, I didn't go to that many nightclubs, but still.) The executive producer is Zhang Yimou, which may have something to do with the production values.
For whatever reason, the people who made it were deeply committed to evoking an industrial northern city in the 1990s, and it does an amazing job. If you, like me, lived in the PRC in the 1990s, a lot of this show will be incredibly evocative, from the hairstyles to the office furniture...
November 25, 2025 at 5:28 AM
For whatever reason, the people who made it were deeply committed to evoking an industrial northern city in the 1990s, and it does an amazing job. If you, like me, lived in the PRC in the 1990s, a lot of this show will be incredibly evocative, from the hairstyles to the office furniture...
It’s the oldest trick in the book, but also the most human.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
It’s the oldest trick in the book, but also the most human.
Where the LLM is designed to mimic the preexisting conventions of written language as nearly as possible, the Buddhist donor and the composer of the epitaph inscription, like the literati gentleman, are using convention as a tool to build something specific and new.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Where the LLM is designed to mimic the preexisting conventions of written language as nearly as possible, the Buddhist donor and the composer of the epitaph inscription, like the literati gentleman, are using convention as a tool to build something specific and new.
On some level, this is not entirely unlike being asked to memorize the Confucian canon or a body of Buddhist texts and use them as models. So where’s the difference? An LLM is in essence a computerized generator of conventional text. The problem, of course, is the absence of improvisation.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
On some level, this is not entirely unlike being asked to memorize the Confucian canon or a body of Buddhist texts and use them as models. So where’s the difference? An LLM is in essence a computerized generator of conventional text. The problem, of course, is the absence of improvisation.
Something similar is going on with so-called generative AI in the humanities: Based on the survey of huge bodies of textual material, large language models produce an output that is formulated according to the conventions they observe across large volumes of text.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Something similar is going on with so-called generative AI in the humanities: Based on the survey of huge bodies of textual material, large language models produce an output that is formulated according to the conventions they observe across large volumes of text.
Like improvisational jazz, this kind of performance is only possible if you have mastered the conventions absolutely, and that mastery allows for the expressive value of the form. So perhaps we should not be surprised when we see the creative use of convention turned to powerful effect by others.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Like improvisational jazz, this kind of performance is only possible if you have mastered the conventions absolutely, and that mastery allows for the expressive value of the form. So perhaps we should not be surprised when we see the creative use of convention turned to powerful effect by others.
The educated men responsible for so much of premodern China’s literary output were consummate improvisers, drawing on a deep knowledge of literary and philosophical conventions to express themselves in original ways, composing poetry in conventional forms through the matching of tone and allusion.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
The educated men responsible for so much of premodern China’s literary output were consummate improvisers, drawing on a deep knowledge of literary and philosophical conventions to express themselves in original ways, composing poetry in conventional forms through the matching of tone and allusion.
After all, the active and creative use of conventions is one of the hallmarks of the literati in the cultural history of China: the gentleman who has mastered the Confucian classics and can turn a witty phrase or a classical allusion to devastating effect is a cultural figure we all recognize.
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
After all, the active and creative use of conventions is one of the hallmarks of the literati in the cultural history of China: the gentleman who has mastered the Confucian classics and can turn a witty phrase or a classical allusion to devastating effect is a cultural figure we all recognize.
Why do I expect the unconventional donors, the rule-breakers, to be the only ones whose agency and autonomy are on view? Is it because I study women's history, and their conventionally subordinate social roles? Why should I think that only those who broke with convention had a voice?
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Why do I expect the unconventional donors, the rule-breakers, to be the only ones whose agency and autonomy are on view? Is it because I study women's history, and their conventionally subordinate social roles? Why should I think that only those who broke with convention had a voice?
The close reading of inscriptions belonging to an aristocratic grandmother in the Guyang cave provided an example of a donor whose inscription was largely conventional but who managed to use those conventions to tell her own story. And eventually, I thought, why do I find this surprising, anyway?
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
The close reading of inscriptions belonging to an aristocratic grandmother in the Guyang cave provided an example of a donor whose inscription was largely conventional but who managed to use those conventions to tell her own story. And eventually, I thought, why do I find this surprising, anyway?
Medieval Buddhist donor inscriptions are mostly boilerplate, perhaps based on model texts then in circulation. At first I thought that these inscriptions were historically useless, because how can you tell anything about a donor from an inscription that was cribbed from some kind of exemplar? BUT:
November 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Medieval Buddhist donor inscriptions are mostly boilerplate, perhaps based on model texts then in circulation. At first I thought that these inscriptions were historically useless, because how can you tell anything about a donor from an inscription that was cribbed from some kind of exemplar? BUT:
Fair enough (on both counts)
November 14, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Fair enough (on both counts)
Thank you for doing that, actually - the original has a slightly skeevy sense of diminishing value in “males, neutered males, females” 🙄
November 14, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Thank you for doing that, actually - the original has a slightly skeevy sense of diminishing value in “males, neutered males, females” 🙄
One of a parent’s greatest assets imo 😆
November 11, 2025 at 11:39 PM
One of a parent’s greatest assets imo 😆
I was always struck about that age, that so much of their talking was a kind of sociological experiment - seeing what we big folk would do if they said X, trying out different tones of voice, just reveling in the power to make other people react.
November 11, 2025 at 10:39 PM
I was always struck about that age, that so much of their talking was a kind of sociological experiment - seeing what we big folk would do if they said X, trying out different tones of voice, just reveling in the power to make other people react.