Outside Blogging – Catching Up

First of all, my two guest posts at Hacking Chinese are now live. READ THEM!!!

Approaches to reading Chinese
A language learner’s guide to reading comics in Chinese

And … I somehow forgot to mention that I have a new column at Manga Bookshelf: It Came From the Sinosphere. In each post, I discuss something from Chinese-language pop culture (with a strong focus on Taiwan, though I think the focus on Taiwan will lessen over time). It comes out every week. I am not going to mention it every week … but I will occasionally do a round up. Like now:

Idol Dramas:
The Outsiders 1&2
My Queen

Novels:
The Book and the Sword
Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero, Part 1
Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero, Part 2

Comics:
Divine Melody
Creative Comics Collection

Movies:
Cheerful Wind

I plan to eventually write a personal post about Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero – even though it is not asexy/aromantic, it does touch on one of this blog’s most common themes.

One of the reasons why I am writing this new column is that I think that the way culture is shared between the United States (and other English-speaking countries to some extent) and the Chinese speaking worlds is greatly imbalanced. If something is even somewhat popular in the United States, chances are that it will be made available in Taiwan, in translation if necessary. However, some of the bedrocks of Chinese-language pop-culture are not available in English at all. I hope my column can tilt this situation, even just a teensy bit, to a more balanced state.