Barbarians at the Gate

On this episode, we sit down with the one and only Jesse Appell—Chinese TV stand-up comedian, blogger, lecturer, tea entrepreneur, and passionate bridge-builder for US–China cultural exchange. In his newly published book, Jesse shares the unlikely story of how a Fulbright Fellowship to study the traditional Chinese humor form “crosstalk” (xiangsheng) launched him from student to television star,...

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 festivals run in third-tier cities across China, subsidized by local governments trying to drive foot traffic into half-empty malls. Hefei alone has four a year.In this episode, Jeremiah talks with Mike Wester, co-founder of True Run Media and publisher of...

Warning: GEEKY CONTENTHosting solo in this week’s episode, David takes a geeky deep dive into the digital revolution in Chinese language learning in conversation with Chinese language pedagogy expert Matt Coss. The Sisyphean task of learning to write hundreds of Chinese characters has long been the bête noire of Chinese language students. The explosion of digital devices and apps for processing...

In this episode, we reconnect with an old friend of the podcast, Canadian performer Mark Rowswell—better known in China as Dashan, or “Big Mountain.” Mark reflects on his early career in China, where his remarkable fluency in Mandarin launched him from a young foreign newcomer into the world of xiangsheng (相声, crosstalk), and soon after into a highly sought-after TV host and cultural ambassador...

Lee Moore's new book challenges both Chinese state propaganda and Western pundits on Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong with 1400 endnotes, and a drinking game for beheadings.A historian who writes about Ming emperors getting stabbed in the balls, a drinking game for beheadings in Xinjiang, and why almost everything politicians say about Taiwan’s history is wrong. In this...

It’s another Barbarians at the Gate crossover with China Books Review. This month’s China Archives column covers Decadence Mandchoue by Edmund Backhouse, edited and annotated by Derek Sandhaus. CBR Associate Editor Alexander Boyd and I sat down to talk about all things Backhouse and try to parse one of Sinology’s more controversial memoirs.Backhouse was the son of a British baronet who dropped...

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 special gift to our listeners, we are cross-posting this bonus episode about the life and China travels of the American writer Emily "Mickey" Hahn. This episode is from By Their Own Compass, a podcast looking at historical travelers and past journeys co-hosted by...

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 missing: the tour buses.For the last decade, Thailand bet the house on Chinese mass tourism. Now, that wager is looking shaky. The numbers are down, and the reasons go deeper than just a sluggish post-COVID economy.On this episode, David dials in from Addis...

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 way is the stampede heading?To help us read the tea leaves, we welcome back our occasional co-host, Zhang Yajun. As a global strategist and former innovation lead at the World Economic Forum, Yajun has spent over 16 years translating complex shifts—from AI to...

Champions Day in the city of Shanghai, November 1941.The world was at war, but the clubhouse at the Shanghai Race Club (now People's Park) was packed with owners and punters cheering on the pony. The funeral of Shanghai's richest widow, Liza Hardoon, was a spectacle that filled the streets of the International Settlement. Japanese occupiers and their Chinese collaborators came together in a...