The Timing of the 1979 Chinese Invasion of Vietnam
I have read countless times that in 1979 the Chinese invaded Vietnam to “punish” the Vietnamese for having invaded Cambodia, a “client state” of the PRC. I think that is…
The Loyal An Nam Wives of Guizhou Men in the Sixteenth Century
I was looking around in a searchable version of the Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times (Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成), an encyclopedic collection of…
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…
Predicting Apathy in 1950 Indochina
In looking around in the Online Public Access page of the US National Archives, I came across a declassified CIA report from 1950 that was speculating about whether or not…
George Carlin on Vietnamese History
No, the late American comedian George Carlin never talked about Vietnamese history, as far as I know, but I wish he had. Today I got distracted (it happens a lot)…
Chiang Kai-shek and Vietnam in 1945
Last year I wrote a post (here) in which I tried to refute the idea that Hò Chí Minh said in the late 1940s that “I prefer to sniff French…