Essay · 2 min · EN
In Praise of the Squat
Squat toilet versus sitting toilet: an old Chinese conflict over body, health, economy and modernity.
Writing
Essays and field notes
Essays, field notes and research by Noam Backner on China, Inner Asia, Buddhism, the Silk Roads, food, agriculture and the lived experience of place.
History (5)All writing
Essay · 2 min · EN
Rats and Plagues in Yunnan
Strawberries, bananas and flowers — and the pandemic that took fifteen million. A Yunnanese literatus writes from the Third Plague.
Essay · 6 min · EN
The Empty Bowl: Myth and Practice on the Himalayan Margins
Tibetan singing bowls, the mythology of ancient wisdom, and the intricate meeting of spiritual longing and global commerce.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Slaves of the Long River
Trade, metal convoys, and the boat haulers whose punishing labor carried the Yangtze’s commerce through the Three Gorges.
Essay · 8 min · EN
In Defense of Ja’far ibn Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki: His Good Name, His Memory, and the Repose of His Soul
Behind Disney’s villain stands an Abbasid statesman whose family carried a Buddhist intellectual inheritance from Balkh to Baghdad.