The Count Down Night 1

It has come down to this glorious week end of March beginning of April, and on April 3, which is also the inauguration of the new UMW president, Judy Hample, the initial draft of my research paper is due for peer-review in class 9AM. It's kind of been a strange sort of whirlwind semester, filled with missed days in my journal and jumping from different written mediums all over the place. A wild ride for sure. So, at least being somewhat of a good student (still relative!) I began the uphill battle to fight off this paper. I had thus far been doing extensive work with secondary sources, but very minimal attempts were made at the primary documents which should be telling of some interesting insights. If one attempts to craft a paper fully out of secondary, doesn't it eventually throw you too far out into the abstract? These primary sources from the actual event are what should be the bread and butter of a solid paper. I blasted through a few different books tonight while trying to prepare. The most interesting one wasn't technically a historical source. Lydia Liu had written on the ideas about the Language of Sovereignty and spends a great length of time tracing out the idea of the supersign yi/barbarian. Barbarian is a term that haunts most translations of Chinese work, particularly anyone coming from a Fairbankian tradition, which I doubt is super prevalent in modern history writing. Don't get me wrong, John King Fairbank did amazing things for the disciple and opening all sorts of doors, but the idea of Western impact has caused so many issues that it isn't even funny. Tonight I also completed combing through Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking, originally published in 1914. It lacks the primary but gives some interesting nuggets about Court edicts, but gives little idea to China. The other books were about just as semi helpful, but at least I am making progress. Tomorrow is John Slade day, fingers crossed. This can still go well, just need to log more hours. Oof if I had just kept an eye on the calendar and the clock.