Historian Slapped, Ethnic Tensions in China’s Nationalist Narrative Persist

From Danwei.org: Yan Chongnian (阎崇年), a scholar specializing in Qing history and Manchu culture, was attacked on October 5 when he was in Wuxi to promote his new book, The Kangxi Emperor. The prolific author was smacked twice in the face, allegedly because the attacker disagreed with his historical views. Yan is the director of the Manchu studies department at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and is a guest host on the CCTV-10 TV show Lecture Room. That program, which focuses on Chinese history and traditional culture, has made him a celebrity, as it has for other academics including Yu Dan, arguably the most popular exponent of Confucius ever. Some statements which Yan’s online detractors contribute to the historian and call “traitorous”: Wu Sangui, the general who has usually taken the blame for the collapse of the... [read full story]