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Kate Lingley 龍梅若

@klingley.bsky.social
2.4K followers 778 following 2.5K posts

Art historian of medieval China; Assoc Prof, UH Mānoa. Feminist; foodie; early-music nerd; Jewish mother; SF/F fan; knitter; Maine native. She/her. Buddhist monuments and women's history in early medieval China. IG @kate.lingley, blog mbotd.blog

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Well that's worth celebrating, to be sure :)
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Stephen Owen, Victor Mair, and Al Dien. 祸不单行; it’s been quite a year.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Vale, Al Dien (1927-2026): My fondest memory of him is from Dunhuang in 1998, when he went to a local beer festival and then came to us students (unannounced) with armloads of bottles. It was our job to drink the beer so he could remove the labels for his extensive collection 🍺
facebook.com
Facebook
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
You're absolutely right, of course, but I think this is a case where it's kind of folk art and therefore there isn't necessarily going to be a stylistic norm that can be traced with great accuracy and used as a diagnostic. But again, not my specialty, so YMMV.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I found a couple with *sort of* similar feet, but all on antique sales sites, so the fact that they're all listed as Chinese doesn't really tell you much. Cf:
greatfindsdesign.com
Antique Carved Camphor Chinese Chest - Great Finds & Design
Antique Carved Camphor Chinese Chest. Beautifully carved hardwood chest with flower and bird decoration throughout. A later added shelf/tray inside. The back is also carved. Camphor wood.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The carving style is so folky that it seems hard to localize (to me, with no expertise). But those feet with masks on them are quite distinctive. I wonder if one might look for other chests with those kinds of feet, that extend beyond the corners of the chest itself. Could also be Southeast Asian?
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
THANK you. Oy.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Ah right I think I heard about this once. I love the whole concept of making the tonal distinction inherent in the spelling rather than something added on top, but what a nightmare in actual practice.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
For various reasons I was just reminded of a college classmate whose last name was Hrung, which she explained was 洪 in an odd system where tones were indicated by excrescent consonants (like the silent r in her surname). Does anyone know/remember this romanization? @bokane.org ?
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My goodness. How oddly evocative.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
As one Jewish mother to another, I'd be happy to do this for you for free, if you find the right rectangle; but you would have to mail your materials to Honolulu.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
...then tying the tzitzit is really quite easy (lots of mail order judaica shops will sell you the threads) and you'll have a kosher tallit (oh, you also want to put a tag or something on one of the long sides because it needs to have a clear "top" and "bottom").
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I appreciate that you probably don't want to DIY it yourself, but if you can find a rectangle in the right shape (like a table runner? They're often woven in this kind of material) and hire someone to put a buttonhole in each corner (a friend with a sewing machine will be able to do this)...
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
At one point I had to break myself of the habit of seeing kanji as signal and kana as noise
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I did! Modern and classical both. I stand by what I said. Three scripts, 生 has like thirty different pronunciations, and the sound system is organized based on Sanskrit. It’s bonkers (I don’t mean that entirely negatively, but I do mean it).
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It almost was, ngl. I’m more than a little punchy after 25 hours of Yom Kippur.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Remorseless bricolage! My favorite kind.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
OK but the writing system is a colossal kludge, you have to admit
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Mary they are both taller than me and shave regularly 😯
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
That’s exactly what my kids said, I should have gone with them
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
My first ever lattice top pie (apple) made with coaching from D, age 16.
An apple pie with a lattice woven top, on a cooling rack.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Once again Shabbat Shuvah and Talk like a Pirate Day converge. Shanah Tovarrrrr, everyone 😁
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I mean they’re not wrong 😆
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm late to this discussion, but: My favorite footnote in a recently published article, generated in irritated response to a reviewer who seemed insistent that everything we need to know about ritual is found in the Dunhuang documents:
Screenshot of a section of an article, reading: "There is no shortage of received texts on ritual, or of liturgies which were demonstrably used in medieval Buddhist practice, but anyone who has been involved in planning a religious ritual will recognize that the liturgy provides a structural framework for the ritual, which is then adapted in practice (and within limits) to the needs of the moment and the community."Screenshot of the footnote to that sentence, which reads: "My perspective on this question is undoubtedly shaped by having recently planned a double bar mitzvah for my twin sons in a liturgically conservative community where correct practice is a strong value. A broad range of questions not addressed by the liturgy needed to be resolved in order for this to take place, and as a result, a reading of the liturgy itself, which we followed quite faithfully, would nevertheless fail to provide an account that resembled the ritual as it actually occurred."
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My god, you're right. A couple of senior members of the Dunhuang Research Academy (summer 98) were serious Sichuan hua speakers and as a translator I think it took several years off my lifespan
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Reposted by Kate Lingley 龍梅若
the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
rip annie dillard
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A lovely story about ancient apples discovered growing near where I grew up. "Cloth of gold of Brittany."
scientificamerican.com
How apple detectives solved the mystery of an ancient tree—and rewrote the history of fruit
And how they might have helped save the future of American apples
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
You've seen these, but:
View of a room with the walls painted pumpkin orange, a red Bukhara carpet on the floor, and a built-in bookshelf on the far wall made from a steel pipe frame and wooden shelves. There is an open space in the middle of the array where a map of O'ahu hangs. On the left wall is a gray sofa and on the right wall, an electric piano.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Oh I never saw the salamander! How great 🤩
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
You don’t get to score a win every day; but today I got to introduce a bunch of my undergrads to Ea-Nasir and his stash (STASH!) of complaint letters for the first time. A few of them clearly knew about him already BUT STILL. (It’s Mesopotamia week in the big survey class)
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Haha you and me both (except I’m also married to a Californian)
Dialect quiz map showing that I speak most like a person from Massachusetts, but with some influences from California and Hawai’i, which, accurate.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This post gave me an earworm that is 22 years old 😆
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I was so grouchy about the propaganda drama that I decamped to Thai BL for a brief stint ("Goddess Bless You from Death," which is fluff with mild horror elements but an enjoyable ghost/detective story) but I am in the market for a new c-drama.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I wouldn't even mind, but APARTMENT.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Unpacks immediately, lives with three leave-it-arounders 😆
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Well naturally 😁
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I have a full set of cold-weather coping skills from my childhood in northwoods Maine, which also don't get much use, so, you know, just flexing underused muscles all around really 😆
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Toronto in November (at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, U of Toronto, and McMaster University). Finally a use for my knitwear, which otherwise doesn't get out much 🙂
An announcement flyer for the Yehan Numata Program in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. It lists four visiting speakers including the OP, for Fall 2026:

Ingo Strauch, University of Lausanne - September 10, 2026 - September 11, 2026.
Xin Wen, Princeton University - October 15, 2026 - October 16, 2026.
Natalie Avalos, University of Colorado, Boulder - October 22, 2026 - October 23, 2026.
Kate A. Lingley, University of Hawai'i at Manoa - November 12, 2026 - November 13, 2026.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Sunset city. Went to a bat mitzvah reception and apparently being a 13 year old girl is a much better deal than it was 42 years ago. Boy did they know how to party.
First of four views of Honolulu harbor at sunset. A calm sea with several outrigger canoes at anchor, with sunset colors in the background.View across the harbor at sunset with the highrises of the city in view.View of the Waianae mountain range at sunset.The sun dipping toward the sea, with several boats silhouetted against the light.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Yes, “perfectly fine” absolutely sums it up. I did appreciate Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway looking their age, but maybe I’ve been watching too many C-dramas 😁
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I had to go so the teenagers could see it (rated R) and I felt like it was a take in its own right, so, fair enough. A few really effective visual touches.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
My twin boys are 16 and I can’t keep the cupboard stocked
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The last one is also not the original but a modern artist's copy of the murals in Princess' Yongtai's tomb chamber. I know, I know, it doesn't matter. But still.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Somebody should have fact checked the images. I know they're just there for color, but how much attention would it take to notice the first one does not depict ladies preparing newly-woven silk? (It's a poor reproduction of Lady Guoguo's Spring Outing, attributed to the same artist)
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Since I had an ordinary childhood very far away from anything that would have made it into the Boston society pages, it was always a reminder that my dad had this epic and imaginative side once upon a time. They even dug up Francis Hatch to sing "Some Coward Closed the Old Howard."
en.wikipedia.org
Francis W. Hatch - Wikipedia
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Ha, found this post at random - my father was one of the two perpetrators of the Old Howard Ball, in memory of Scollay Square's burlesque house. The Boston Globe society pages did a feature on it which I have seen - I don't know if my dad still has it but it would be great to dig it up somehow.
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Reposted by Kate Lingley 龍梅若
H-Net Reviews @hnetreviews.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
New book review: Lingley on Stephanie Balkwill: _Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century, The_. University of California Press, 2024. Published by H-Buddhism. Read here: networks.h-net.org/node/20158511
networks.h-net.org
Stephanie Balkwill. The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century. : University of California Press, 2024. Illustrations. 272 pp. $12.99 (e-book), ISBN 9780520401822.$34.95 (paper), ISBN 9780520401815. Reviewed by Kate Lingley (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa) Published on H-Buddhism (August, 2026) Commissioned by Stuart H. Young (Bucknell University)
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
The designers of my building sacrificed a planned painting classroom in order to leave room for this magnificent baobab tree. That was fifty years ago and it continues to grow through the spaces of the building (my office is right behind it)
View of the corner of a modernist concrete building on a tropical college campus. The building is about forty feet high and a gigantic tree, growing partly inside it, towers over it by another twenty or thirty feet.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
This is one of my favorite things about having offspring. Suddenly you know someone who has never seen The Princess Bride (or whatever) :)
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Rats. Raining.
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