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3.0 Resources

The following webpages contain resources for myself and for anyone who finds them useful. The writing here will be less polished; diacritics may be ignored and some parts will remain half-finished. I haven’t done much with this section since 2009, when my interest in maintaining a website as a reflection of current projects and interests peaked. By now (2014), the website has become more of an archive of past projects and data.


3.1 Notes on the Study of Japanese for Sinologists
Scholars often need to read, not speak or write, secondary literature in other languages. While some universities offer courses in reading French and German, fewer offer equivalent courses for Japanese. Furthermore, the communicative “just learn by doing” approach prevalent in Japanese language classrooms today is not conducive to acquiring the kinds of analytic reading and translation skills scholars need to work effectively. On this webpage I list and describe tools and techniques to decipher and translate Japanese.

3.2 Notes on the Study of Taiwanese
In 2005-2006 I learned Taiwanese at the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) of National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. On this webpage I reflect on what I learned that the teachers and textbooks didn’t tell me, and I also list and evaluate resources and tools for learning Taiwanese.

3.3 Notes and Questions from Classes, Fall 2008
       3.3.1 Early Chan
       3.3.2 Chinese Buddho-Daoism
       3.3.3 Reading Japanese
       3.3.4 Buddhist Studies Proseminar

3.4 Translation of Japanese Article on Chinese Mummies
This is a rough translation of the first several pages of a Japanese article on Chinese Buddhist mummies. The first part of the article discusses the term "true bodies" (zhenshen) and  its relation to mummies. At some point I would like to edit and go further in this translation.

3.5 Notes and Questions from Classes, Spring 2009
       3.5.1 Thinking about Not Thinking