King Mindon’s 1856 Letter to the US President
The US National Archives has digitized a letter that was sent by Burmese king, Mindon Min, to the US president in 1856. In that year, Franklin Pierce was the president,…
Music and Power in Mainland Southeast Asia
Recently I’ve been reading and listening to a new book with accompanying CDs called Longing for the Past: The 78 rpm Era in Southeast Asia. In the early 20th century,…
Humor at the Biên Hòa Insane Asylum in 1934
I was looking at an issue of Phụ nữ tân văn (Women’s News) from 1934 and came across an article written by a certain Nguyễn Thị Manh Manh about a…
Prince Maung Maung Gyi, Emperor Bảo Đại, and the Women They Loved
I came across a wonderful picture on Facebook today. This is Prince Maung Maung Gyi, a member of the (deposed) royal family of Burma. Not knowing anything about this man,…
Mixed Messages about Sex in Advertisements from 1930s Singapore
I like to relax by looking through old newspapers from Singapore (that have been beautifully digitized by NUS). In doing so today, I just realized that there is something odd…
Seeing Tai in Nanzhao
The effort of scholars in the People’s Republic of China to discredit the claim that the kingdom of Nanzhao (~8th-9th cents.) had been Thai/Tai culminated in 1990 with the publication…
Sujit Wongthes, PRC “Scholars” and the Question of Thai/Tai Origins
There are two words in English that confuse people – Tai and Thai. The term “Tai” is used to refer to a language family that includes such languages as Zhuang,…
The “Việt Nam Trung Hoa” Song
A reader pointed out that the melody and lyrics for the song that I included in the post below, “Việt Nam Trung Hoa,” was published in Nhân dân on September…
Sino-Vietnamese Relations in Film and Song
I was reading the Renmin ribao 人民日报 (People’s Daily) and came across a reference to a 1971 film called “The Visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by a Delegation…
Whistling La Marseillaise in Vichy-Controlled Phnom Penh
There is a very famous scene in the movie Casablanca where some German officers in a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Casablanca start to sing “Die Wacht am Rhein” and then the…