{"id":8655,"date":"2015-04-06T17:19:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T21:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=8655"},"modified":"2017-10-17T08:37:52","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T12:37:52","slug":"episode-113-palimpsest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-113-palimpsest","title":{"rendered":"Episode 113 – Palimpsest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show:
\nMichael Meyer – Palimpsest<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_113_-_Palimpsest.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“When you look at the history of northeast China, it’s all successive regimes that have tried to import their version of civilization into this area, and they’ve all failed.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"meyer-cover200\"<\/a>When he was a kid in Minnesota, Michael Meyer<\/a> papered his walls with National Geographic<\/em> maps. A Peace Corps stint in 1995 began his 20-year odyssey in China, yielding two books, true love, and a unique perspective on the world’s most populous country. We talk about his latest book, In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China<\/a>\"\"\u00a0(Bloomsbury),\u00a0life in rural China compared to suburban MN, the country’s changes in the past two decades, the flexibility of the Communist party, China’s uses and abuses of history, the tortured history of the Manchuria region, the need to explode\u00a0Americans’ myths about the country and its people, our favorite jet-lag remedies, and the Chinese use of “uh” as a conversational placeholder. Give it a listen<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“China isn’t a billion-plus people marching in lockstep. Nor is it some mastermind sitting in some opulent room in Beijing and declaring, ‘Now we will do this!'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We also get into the time the Beijing police took Michael in so he could teach them American curse-words, why it’s safe to be a writer but not to be a journalist, China’s transition from individual farms to an agribusiness model, why the time to write a book is when the book you want to read doesn’t exist, the differences in storytelling modes between Americans and Chinese, his debts to Bruce Chatwin, Pearl S. Buck, and Ian Frazier, and how tens of thousands of Jews wound up in the town of Harbin.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_113_-_Palimpsest.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

Enjoy the conversation!<\/a>\u00a0Then check out\u00a0the archives<\/a>\u00a0for more great episodes! You might like:<\/p>\n