Obligatory self-introduction

Welcome to String between Pearls, in which I (would-be gender historian of imperial China, blithering fanchild, and specfic writer wannabe) plan to wax verbose about things historical, gender-y, and cultural; fandom, and intersections thereof. I am the happy reader of a number of delightful medievalists' blogs, but it seems to me that there is a lack of Asian studies counterparts out there--I mean lighthearted ones. Serious blogs, there are quite a few. But sometimes I just want to talk about Tokugawa Ieyasu using a "cannon spear" in the hack-and-slash video game Sengoku Musou, or how the seventeenth-century collection Bian er chai details the ins-and-outs (pun intended) of anal sex... and so here I shall.