Nick Admussen
nadmussen.bsky.social
Nick Admussen
@nadmussen.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Chinese literature at Cornell, poet, translator. My current project is "On Stricture: Chinese Poetry and American Culture." More (incl links to open-access research) at nickadmussen.com.
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Rereading part of the Classic of Mountains and Seas for the Strange class. Here are so good bits:

"There is an animal here which looks like a wild cat, and it has a white tail and a mane. Its name is the bum-bum. If you rear it, you can take it to cure melancholy."
February 1, 2026 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich
February 1, 2026 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
I have spent my entire adult life being lectured by Republican politicians and conservative legal movement types about how important it is to preserve the sacred constitutional right to self-defense of *specifically this person* and then secret police murdered him in the street
Minneapolis police chief Brian O'Hara says that the victim was a 37-year-old white man and US citizen with no criminal record and that he was a legally permitted gun owner.
January 24, 2026 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Here is the newly-unsealed State Department memo confirming -- finally -- that the detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk was based on an op-ed.

No antisemitic activity. No support of terrorism.

An op-ed in a student newspaper.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
January 23, 2026 at 2:27 PM
I keep coming back to this. I asked my son about the Pokemon hat: it's Marill, a water mouse. He described Marill fans as "sweet people who like cute things." This is the kind of hat you buy your kid if it's cold out and you want dressing up for school to feel happy and fun.
January 22, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
A 5-year-old preschool student was taken with his father by federal immigration agents shortly after arriving home from school, Columbia Heights school leaders said Jan. 21.
Preschooler and three other students detained by ICE, school district leader says
The detentions of Columbia Heights students come after weeks of heightened concern and enforcement presence near and on Twin Cities school property.
bit.ly
January 22, 2026 at 12:50 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
全糖半糖微糖無糖我都可以,反正就是一定要去冰 | solidarity with protesters against the ICE terrorists, solidarity with americans against the fascist US state (in taiwan when we order drinks we say 去冰 to ask for no ice)
January 9, 2026 at 4:38 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
People are calling this post a godtier opener for 2026 because it captures the undeniable tension in the patriarchal institution of marriage in China. The post has got over 1.3M likes within a day, and has been censored and uncensored for over 5 times. As of now OP’s account has also been banned.
Hahahah so this post on Xiaohongshu has gone viral. Describing this guy and saying "What would I need to bring to the table for him to marry into my family?", waited for all the mens' opinions to build up and then revealed that the post was about herself and thanked them all for the compliments 😂
January 9, 2026 at 1:10 PM
You might not think you want to read anything from the Journal of Critical Accounting, but this essay about how the fascist state seized control of Italy's University of Ferrara feels highly relevant: impoverish a school, destabilize it with regulation, then buy it out. doi.org/10.1016/j.cp...
January 8, 2026 at 6:06 PM
Just got back to the department and this was the center of the conversation-in-progress in the Asian Studies office; strongly considering de-Canvasifying my spring course (as well as other things I won't post about). Highly recommended, thanks Matt and @ehayot.bsky.social
This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
www.chronicle.com
January 6, 2026 at 4:23 PM
Tidying up the Pokémon clone I made with the kid last spring and all of a sudden realized what I want to bring to the new year
January 3, 2026 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
[𝐍𝐄𝐖 @asiancha.bsky.social 𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐘] In an exclusive essay, Nick Admussen reads the game 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎𝐱𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐒𝐓 through immunity and memory, situating trauma, gender, and forgetting within the history of Hong Kong protest and the Chinese diaspora. @nadmussen.bsky.social

⧉ 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝: chajournal.com/2025/12/17/1...
。。
December 17, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
[𝐍𝐄𝐖 @asiancha.bsky.social 𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐘] In an exclusive essay, Nick Admussen reads the game 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎𝐱𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐒𝐓 through immunity and memory, situating trauma, gender, and forgetting within the history of Hong Kong protest and the Chinese diaspora. @nadmussen.bsky.social

⧉ 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝: chajournal.com/2025/12/17/1...
。。
December 17, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
"To these detectives of digital inauthenticity, I say:

Friend, welcome to a typical Tuesday in a Kenyan classroom, boardroom, or intra-office Teams chat. The very things you identify as the fingerprints of the machine are, in fact, the fossil records of our education."
December 16, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Live your life in a way that earns a hate-tweet from Donald Trump when you’re gone.
December 15, 2025 at 7:35 PM
A comprehensive look at the current situation in transnational Chinese surveillance, anticorruption, and suppression of perceived opponents
1/Beijing is using an increasingly powerful tool to control and monitor its own officials: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an @apnews.com investigation has found.
Buckle up for a twisting ride through China's corruption crackdown...
apnews.com/article/whis...
A Chinese official exposed his boss. Now in Texas, he’s hunted by Beijing - with help from US tech
Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang fled to the U.S. seeking asylum, fearing persecution from the Chinese government.
apnews.com
December 15, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
This is what @thepoetslizard.bsky.social and I are facing at Via Negativa, a literary blog with nearly 15,000 posts. We might have to password-protect our archives just to keep the site from being taken offline www.glamelab.org/products/are...
Are AI Bots Knocking Cultural Heritage Offline?
www.glamelab.org
December 13, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Another impressive piece on China from @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/the... --Eleanor Goodman translation of reportage by Zheng Xiaoqiong
The Makers of Modern China • EQUATOR
For many years, Zheng Xiaoqiong has collected the stories of the workers whose migration to Guangdong powered China’s manufacturing revolution
www.equator.org
December 10, 2025 at 9:38 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Love to see China's anti-work culture getting the global recognition it deserves
Feeling burned out? There's a word for that in Mandarin Chinese
How an obscure term used in anthropology leaped from the pages of academia into the Chinese meme world and then became part of Chinese government policymaking.
www.npr.org
December 10, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
December 4, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
Miss you. Would Like to Take a Walk With You by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
www.divasofverse.com/2025/02/miss...
Miss you. Would Like to Take a Walk With You by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Miss you. Would Like to Take a Walk With You Do not care if  you just arrive in your skeleton. Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you....
www.divasofverse.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
My colleague, Dr. Vahid Abedini, was illegally detained by ICE on Saturday. He is currently being held without a court date in sight, despite being in the country legally. Please spread the word! We must ensure his due process rights are upheld. www.oudaily.com/news/ou-prof...
OU College of International Studies professor reportedly arrested by ICE
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly arrested an OU professor at Will Rogers International Airport Saturday.
www.oudaily.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Looks like they have created a roadmap to reboot the NRC/FLAS/Hays grants? Makes the wave of layoffs that is currently flowing through area studies and language education programs seem especially meaningless: www.state.gov/releases/off...
State Department to Lead Additional International Education Programs Under New Interagency Partnership - United States Department of State
The U.S. Department of State today announced that, under a new interagency partnership, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) will lead several programs previously managed by the Depart...
www.state.gov
November 20, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Nick Admussen
“Adversarial poetry.”

Love this. Obvs.
November 20, 2025 at 5:53 PM