China Tech Beyond Shenzhen: Robots, Solopreneurs and Going Global
In Shenzhen, a robotics expo is just another Tuesday. But China’s tech story doesn’t stop at Shenzhen’s city limits. Jeremiah is joined by t...
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Society & Culture
Barbarians at the Gate
A semi-serious deep dive into Chinese history and culture broadcast from Beijing and hosted by Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser.
Episodes
20 of 119 episodes
Shen Fu and Six Records of a Floating Life: Love, grief, and lying flat in Qing China
What can a grief memoir about a beloved wife tell us about love, life, and society in 18th-century China? Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Life Ad...
You Must Remember This: Studying in China yesterday, today, and...tomorrow?
David and Jeremiah are back together again in Beijing. Recording from Palace Moser, the two get weirdly nostalgic and compare notes on what...
Chairmen, China, and the Tricky Translations of Political Terms in the PRC
Two older gentlemen with expanding waistlines, staggering daddy issues, and a shared love of firing military brass meet in DC this week. And...
Mao More Than Ever
Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Fifty years later, Jeremiah and David compare notes on a mostly quiet anniversary. Jeremiah reports th...
The Last Emperor of China with author Paul French
China’s last emperor (Puyi), his empress (Wanrong), and concubine (Wenxiu) spent two years sequestered in the Forbidden City before their ex...
Somerset Maugham's On a Chinese Screen: Missionaries, Taipans, and Expats Who Never Leave (but probably should)
In this Barbarians at the Gate x China Books Review crossover, Jeremiah Jenne is joined by CBR Associate Editor Alexander Boyd to discuss th...
Barbarian Remix: The Secrets and History behind Beijing's Forbidden City
It’s the summer travel season, and one of the most popular sites here in Beijing is the Palace Museum at the Forbidden City. To talk about C...
Neysun Mahboubi on the past, present, and future of US-China Academic Exchanges
We are honored to have Professor Neysun Mahboubi, Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, a program that provide...
AI Slop, AI Detectors, and Authentic Voice: A China-Tech Insider on Writing and Working With AI
Should we view today’s powerful AI language tools as intellectual crutches or as incredibly useful assets? Can they be safely integrated int...
China Books Review x Barbarians at the Gate: The Private Life of Chairman Mao
The Politburo had given Mao Zedong’s personal physician Li Zhisui a direct order: prepare the Chairman’s body so that he can be on permanent...
This Was Funnier in China: Jesse Appell's Cross-Cultural Comedy Journey
On this episode, we sit down with the one and only Jesse Appell—Chinese TV stand-up comedian, blogger, lecturer, tea entrepreneur, and passi...
The Business of Burgers in Beijing: What Fast Food Festivals Reveal About China's Economy
Mike Wester launched the first Burger Fest in Beijing 13 years ago as a scrappy response to the collapse of print ad revenue. Today, burger...
Barbarians Remix: Do you really need to learn to write characters to study Chinese?
Warning: GEEKY CONTENT Hosting solo in this week’s episode, David takes a geeky deep dive into the digital revolution in Chinese language le...
The Many Lives of Da Shan: Mark Rowswell on Chinese Poetry, Performing Live, and Staging Shawshank in Mandarin
In this episode, we reconnect with an old friend of the podcast, Canadian performer Mark Rowswell—better known in China as Dashan, or “Big M...
Lee Moore's China Backstory: Why Saying "History Proves" Actually Means "I Haven't Done the Reading"
Lee Moore's new book challenges both Chinese state propaganda and Western pundits on Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong wi...
Décadence Mandchoue: The wild (and almost certainly fictional) affair between Sir Edmund Backhouse and Empress Dowager Cixi
It’s another Barbarians at the Gate crossover with China Books Review. This month’s China Archives column covers Decadence Mandchoue by Edmu...
Barbarians at the Gate x By Their Own Compass: Emily Hahn's Shanghai
Welcome to a special episode of Barbarians at the Gate. David and Jeremiah are off this week preparing for Chinese New Year, but as a specia...
Lost in Thailand: The New Chinese Diaspora from Bangkok to Addis Ababa
It’s high season in Thailand. The weather is perfect. But look around the hotel lobbies and the night markets, and you’ll notice something m...
Perilous Prognostications for China in 2026 with Yajun Zhang
Following a tumultuous 2025, we gallop into the Year of the Horse. Tradition says it should be a year of dynamism and progress, but which wa...