Marco Pouget
@marcopouget
Sinologist at LMU Munich, interested in premodern Chinese (intellectual) history and written culture.
What's crawling here? It's my author's copy of "Microhistories Retold. Insects in the Premodern World". The contributions range from studying #insects as materia medica to philosophical and literary views, and from Virgil to medieval Portugal and early China. @degruyterbrill.bsky.social @lmu.de
On Chinese and Taiwanese social media, users are jokingly discussing alternative designs to the proposed new #Euro banknotes showing famous people or birds: a train construction site in Germany, a pickpocket in Paris, or an attached plastic bottle cap.
A bittersweet last day at #EACS2026 in Venice. While I normally tend to stick to early history and philosophy more, this year, I have mostly listened to papers on literature and from manuscript studies, which has been very inspiring.
My presentation "The Classics as Teachers, Teaching the Classics. Commentary as a Didactic Instrument in Early Imperial China" at #EACS2026 takes place in session 10/11 (from 14:15) tomorrow in room 10A.
#EACS2026 has kicked off in Venice! An impressive 800 scholars of Chinese Studies from Europe and the world are gathered here.
How I imagine everyone is travelling to #EACS2026 (conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies) in Venice.
I finally got my hands on "The Craft of Oblivion" by @albertgalvany.bsky.social (2023). Curious to find out what the beautiful fish on the cover have to do with forgetting and memory. Goldfish, at least, have been proven to have a much better memory than they get credit for...
A masterclass has rounded off the summery visit by Martin Kern to @lmu.de. Based on his forthcoming comparative philology lexicon, we discussed the value of intercultural and interdisciplinary comparison (decentring familiar conceptions and convictions) and gained career insights for our PhD cohort.
I discovered a, to someone in Chinese Studies especially, interesting detail on the facade of Westminster Abbey, London: a Chinese man's sculpture. Turns out, it is pastor Wang Zhiming 王志明 (1907-1973), who is revered as a modern martyr because he was killed during the Cultural Revolution.
Prof. Martin Kern (Princeton) will give a lecture on "Writing and Community in 300 BCE China. The Canonical Poems (Shi 詩) at the Chu 楚 Capital of Ying 郢" @lmu.de on July 14th. I am thrilled he followed the invitation by our project and will even be giving a masterclass to our cohort.
I organised an introductory seminar on #DigitalHumanities together with the IT Group fpr the Humanities @lmu.de for our cohort of #PhD students. The seminar concluded with a detailed overview of current #AI tools and how they might be responsibly implemented into a research workflow.
Yesterday, the opening ceremony of the Cluster of Excellence "Cross-Cultural #Philology" took place in #Munich. Part of the ceremony were paired presentations by the PIs. Pictured are @histphilosophy.bsky.social and Prof. Hans van Ess, comparing commentaries from #Arabic and #Chinese texts. @lmu.de
Pressing this door handle would trigger a deafening alarm, so someone took precautions that nobody would press it :D (this is not an emergency exit, no worries)
Glad that my participation at EACS Venice will be supported by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). My presentation on "The Classics as Teachers, Teaching the Classics" discusses the intersection of teaching and commentary-writing on the "Confucian" classics. Kitty for your viewing pleasure.
A glimpse into St Michael's Church (聖彌愛爾大教堂), Qingdao (China). Construction began in the German concession around 1932 under the auspices of the Steyler missionaries. It is a Roman-style architecture and was used until around 1950.
A late Qin 秦 dynasty wooden map, excavated in Fangmatan 放馬灘 No. 1 (Gansu, Tianshui 甘肅省天水市). #cartography #chinesehistory #china #manuscripts #maps #geography #research #history #archeology #asia
The Year of the Horse is celebrated with a play on words at this hotel in China: 马屁拍拍，好运即来, "Pat pat the horse butt, and good luck will come soon". The proverbial phrase "patting the horse butt" means "to flatter someone" in Chinese.
A sign at the Laoshan Daoist Temple, saying that minors are not permitted to participate in religious activities. Under 18-year-olds may not be present at religious ceremonies under Chinese law.
Qingdao No. 9 High School traces its roots back to German missionary and sinologist Richard Wilhelm (衛禮賢, 1879-1930), who translated a large number of Chinese classics into German. Lesser known that the Chinese scholar Lao Naixuan 勞乃宣 (1843-1921) helped him with the translations .
There are overall 20 different plays put on, and some visitors come several days in a row to see them all. Some are interactive, and they all interweave bombastic light and visual effects and narration with the stageplay.
I was interviewed about my impressions of the Dream of Red Mansions plays at Langfang Hongloumeng Huancheng 廊坊《紅樓夢》幻城, a kind of artist's dreamland that interweaves influences from the classic novel with very large-scale stage technology. I will share some thoughts below.
Impressions from the exhibitions of textual and cultural heritage at the China National Archives of Publications and Culture (中國國家版本館）. They are not yet publicly accessible, but house a comprehensive collection of textual artefacts in an effort to preserve China's cultural heritage.
/2 Another depicts "Accepting the red-haired foreigners' submission" (shoufu hongmao fan 收服紅毛番), commemorating Koxinga's victory. This temple is hidden in a pretty remote fishing hamlet between Taitung and Hualien.