Chinese Cultural Studies

The Eighteenth Party Congress' Third Plenary Session's Decision maps out the country's plan for cultural and media development. There is nothing on the surface that suggests a radical departure from the tight control the Chinese party-state exerts. The Decision is full of paternalistic clichés about the development of socialist culture under the guidance of Marxism, media controls, and the unification between social benefits and economic benefits. But new elements embedded in the Decision contain potential seeds for at least a partial reordering of the dynamic tension between impulses demanding control and those calling for expression in the Chinese cultural and media realm, with control perhaps gaining ground. These elements also figure in China's recent effort to develop culture industries and rebalance domestic media control and international cultural expansion and influence. This essay does not aim to provide a comprehensive commentary on China's recent cultural policies as they relate to the Decision. Instead, it focuses on the intersection between cultural and media policies and the push and pull between the party-state and aggressive market-oriented media producers. Specifically, the essay will highlight some potential changes in the following six areas: (1) control mechanisms, (2) the prescribed nature of a media organization, (3) media censorship, (4) media consolidation and economies of scale, (5) the entry of private capital into the Chinese media industries, and (6) China's soft power and public diplomacy.

Based on eight in-depth interviews, this article analyses the quandary faced by liberal mainland Chinese student migrants in Hong Kong. On the one hand, the liberal pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong are deeply intertwined with the rise of localism, which is based on a dichotomy between Hong Kong and mainland China. On the other hand, a rising, development-centric nationalism in mainland China reduces Hong Kong protesters to unemancipated British colonial subjects. However, in the context of this "double marginalisation," liberal Mainland students guard a form of liberalism that transcends both Hong Kong localism and Chinese nationalism. They debunk the stereotype of mainland Chinese students being apolitical and therefore provide an alternative definition of being Chinese. They challenge the view that mainland Chinese can only be emancipated outside mainland China to destabilise a Fukuyamian linear interpretation of history. They use four tactics to cope with double marginalisation: understanding localists, befriending expatriates, assuming professionalism, and becoming apolitical.

The Chinese have lived in single-extended-family courtyard houses in many parts of China for thousands of years. The earliest courtyard house found in China was during the Middle Neolithic period (5,000-3,000 BCE). However, the 20th century was a significant turning point in the evolution of Chinese courtyard houses. This presentation provides an overview of this transition and evaluates some of its causes. Based on Dr. Zhang’s empirical research and analysis of six multi-household renewed and new courtyard housing experimental projects built in Beijing and Suzhou since the 1990s, she observes that although the new communal courtyards can facilitate some social interactions, neighborly relations are only partially influenced by the form and space of the courtyard housing, and are perhaps influenced even more so by China’s changing and polarizing society as manifested in these specific residents’ socioeconomic levels, housing tenure, modern lifestyles, community involvement, common language, cultural awareness, and demographic backgrounds.

This book discusses and provides an interpretation of the notion of qiyun in Chinese painting, and considers why creating a painting (especially a landscape painting) replete with qiyun is regarded as an art of genius, where genius is an innate mental talent. A central feature of my discussion is a comparison of the role of this innate mental disposition in the aesthetics of qiyun and Kant’s account of artistic genius. Through this comparison, the book addresses an important feature of the Chinese aesthetic tradition, one that evades the aesthetic universality imposed through the lens of Kant.
The book includes two parts. The first part draws upon the views of Xie He (active 500–ca. 535), the late Tang art historian Zhang Yanyuan (847), the tenth-century landscapist and theorist Jing Hao (ca. 870–ca. 930), the Northern Song art historian Guo Ruoxu (ca. 1080) and the early Yuan connoisseur Tang Hou (ca. 1255–ca. 1317), to explain and discuss qiyun and its development from a notion mainly applied to figure painting to one that also plays an important and enduring role in the aesthetic of landscape painting.
In the light of Kant’s account of genius, the second part examines a range of issues regarding the role of the mind in creating a painting replete with qiyun and the impossibility of teaching qiyun. These include why the ability to create paintings replete with qiyun is regarded as determined by an innate mental disposition endowed by tian (nature) and belonging only to a few gifted artists, how genius establishes pictorial yi (idea) under the animation of shen (spirit) in the context of qiyun-focused landscape painting, how following the rule of tian enables qiyun to be captured in artistic spontaneity, and why somatic training or practice of genius is required despite the impossibility of teaching or learning qiyun. Also discussed are why and how yipin (the untrammelled class) demonstrates the originality and exemplarity of genius, why and how a pure, untrammelled and lofty mind is cultivated as an ideal mental state for conveying qiyun, how the disinterested aesthetic pleasure of the heart in tune with forest and stream is combined with an interest in pursuing the carefree wandering of a city-recluse-artist, and how a balanced human nature is nourished and its union with tian realised through painting a work replete with qiyun. Finally, I explore how the Confucian doctrine of sincerity is involved in spiritual communion (shenhui) between artist, object, work and audience, and how aesthetic autonomy and the moral relevance of art are reconciled under the first criterion of qiyun. The comparison with Kant on these issues demystifies the uniqueness of qiyun aesthetics and also illuminates some limitations in Kant’s aesthetics.

A total of 843 college students in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies were investigated using a social support evaluation scale, a resilience scale, and a life satisfaction evaluation scale. Results were analyzed using IBM® SPSS 21.0® and Amos 17.0. It was shown that there existed a positive correlation respectively among resilience, social support and life satisfaction. Social support predicted resilience positively and resilience partially mediated the association between social support and life satisfaction. Finally, resilience moderated the association between social support and life satisfaction; the higher the resilience level, the more significant the positive predictive effect of social support on life satisfaction. College students' life satisfaction is closely related to social support and resilience; resilience partially plays a mediating and moderating role between social support and life satisfaction.

The concept of qi 氣 belongs among the most difficult and complex notions in Chinese ideational history. The present article follows from recognizing that traditional translations of this concept are Eurocentric. The author substantiates the problematic role of these presumptive translations through critical analyses of their methodological approaches, which led to the traditional, falsified understanding of this concept. A new alternative and richer understanding of this concept is proposed, pointing to several different levels of meaning on which it can be understood. The author analyses and interprets the notion of qi including its various philosophical, physiological, psychological end ethical dimensions. The article shows that on the semantical level, qi derives from the etymological meaning of air and is in essence similar to the concept of field in physics, referring to the breath as the origin of the living world. From this perspective, the holistic nature of this notion of breath will be introduced, exposing the dynamic network through which it connects all existing beings in the universe, endowed with life. Resumo: O conceito de qi 氣 está situado entre um das noções mais difíceis e complexas da história ideacional chinesa. O presente artigo parte do reconhecimento de que as traduções tradicionais desse conceito são eurocêntricas. A autora fundamenta o papel problemático dessas traduções presuntivas por meio de análises críticas de suas abordagens metodológicas, que levaram à compreensão tradicional e falsificada desse conceito. Uma nova alternativa e uma compreensão mais rica desse conceito é proposta, apontando os diversos níveis de significado nos quais ele pode ser compreendido. A autora analisa e interpreta a noção de qi, incluindo suas várias 117 dimensões filosóficas, fisiológicas, psicológicas e éticas. O artigo mostra que, no nível semântico, qi deriva do significado etimológico de ar e é essencialmente semelhante ao conceito de campo na física, referindo-se à respiração como a origem do mundo vivo. Nessa perspectiva, será apresentada a natureza holística dessa noção de respiração, expondo a rede dinâmica por meio da qual ela conecta todos os seres existentes no universo, dotados de vida.

Th is study is the third book of the author’s series dedicated to the Scythian-like cultures in China. Th e book investigates China materials from the Mohuchahan cemetery belonging to the Chawuhu culture in the period of 9th–8th centuries BC. Th is cemetery is one of the earliest sites found in the Eastern Scythian world. Th e representative data on funeral rite and goods used by the Chawuhu population that had lived a century earlier than anticipated was fi rst obtained at this site containing 235 burials. Th e relative chronology of four burial groups identified in the cemetery with the goods being gradually modifi ed in the 9th–8th centuries BC is of particular importance. The Caucasian population who left the Mohuchahan cemetery was found to maintain ties with the
Southern Siberian and Kazakhstan cultures at an early stage, which suggests a much wider distribution of such transitional sites.
The monograph is intended for archaeologists and scientists engaged in studying the history of the Eastern Scythian world as well as the features of transition from the late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age.

Consistent with its growing economic, political and military might, China wants due recognition by and engagement with the global community of nations. This aspiration is complicated by the fact that Chinese political leaders and intellectuals continue to struggle with how "Chinese values" fit with "universal values", and whether there is a single global modernity or whether there are multiple modernities and multiple-perhaps competing universal values. In this paper I examine how some prominent Chinese philosophers are engaging with these issues, despite the fact that in 2013 the topic of "universal values" was prohibited as a discussion topic in universities on the mainland.

The concept of qi belongs among the most difficult and complex notions in Chinese ideational history. The present article follows from recognizing that traditional translations of this concept are Eurocentric. The author substantiates the problematic role of these presumptive translations through critical analyses of their methodological approaches, which led to the traditional, falsified understanding of this concept. A new alternative and richer understanding of this concept is proposed, pointing to several different levels of meaning on which it can be understood. The author analyses and interprets the notion of qi including its various philosophical, physiological, psychological end ethical dimensions. The article shows that on the semantical level, qi derives from the etymological meaning of air and is in essence similar to the concept of field in physics, referring to the breath as the origin of the living world. From this perspective, the holistic nature of this notion of bre...

Systemization of apparently pre-existing elements of traditional Chinese wedding ceremony is generally credited to scholars of the Warring States period (402-221 BCE). Three venerable texts, The Book of Rites, The Book of Etiquette and Ceremonies, and the Baihu Tong outline the Three Covenants and the Six Rites, which were considered necessary elements of a marriage. However, the full ritual was so complicated that even within the span of the Warring States period the custom underwent changes and simplification.

In China in the past, birthdays were ordinarily celebrated for children under 20 and adults over 50, Traditional Chinese birthdays are calculated by the person’s nominal age (the 9-month pregnancy counts as a year). The age, rank, and financial situation determine the extent of a birthday celebration. The level of celebration also depends on the last digit of the age. Big celebrations include the last digit is 9 (e.g. 39, 49, 59, 69, 79, etc); medium celebrations include the last digit is 0 (e.g. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, etc); and small celebrations include the last digit is 1-8 (e.g. 41-48, 51-58, 61-68, etc). Significant birthday celebrations in China are when one reaches 60th and 80th. According to Chinese astrology, the zodiac sign governs one’s birth and destiny. The 12 animals (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig) correspond to the 12 Earthly Branches. Five cycles of 12 years make up a complete cycle of 60 years. Thus one’s 60th birthday is a cause for a major celebration because the person has completed a full cycle of life.

As one of the greatest masterpieces in Chinese history, Dao De Jing is a philosophical work by Laozi (Li Er, c.571-471 BCE) published in the 4th century BCE. It contains 81 chapters/verses whose essence is on moral philosophy and ideal ways for humans to be in harmony with nature, self-cultivation, governing the country, deploying military forces, among other things. Although some of the ideas are only historically relevant at the time when Laozi lived, the majority of his thoughts is still pertinent today because human nature has not drastically changed since antiquity, and many social ills that Laozi mentioned still exist even now. Dao De Jing is one of the most translated works in world literature, and second most popular sacred scripture after the Bible. It is hoped that everyone can find something useful in these verses, as the Chinese saying suggests: “The benevolent sees benevolence, and the wise sees wisdom.” This translation has attempted to adhere as faithfully as possible to the original meanings in the Chinese text, and to reflect Mandarin pronunciations and recent revisionary development in Daoist scholarship. The edition has employed Pinyin rather than the older Wade-Giles system for transcribing Chinese words. Hence, the Chinese character for the “Way” is rendered “Dao” rather than “Tao,” Dao De Jing in place of Tao Te Ching, and Laozi for Lao Tzu. The 140-page volume is for anyone interested in Chinese philosophy, and for those who want to learn the art of living from it.

Govor je vezan za vreme. Interaktivan je i prolazan, sadrži spontanost i brzinu. Pismo je vezano za prostor. Statično je i trajno, što dozvoljava da se ono ponovo čita i analizira. Pismo ima tendenciju da postane standard koji društvo ceni, ali govor i pismo su neraskidivo uvezani u jedno. Za razliku od umetnosti, koja predstavlja lični izraz, pismo je konvencionalno i standardizovano. Neki od najstarijih primera zapisa apstraktnog karaktera otkriveni su na sumersko-vavilonskim glinenim tablicama 3000 godina p.n.e. Pitanja: 1. Odnos između govora i pisma 2. Problemi s kojima se danas susrećemo 3. Stara pisma-slika ili nešto drugo Logografsko pismo: Grafeme (piktografi, piktogrami) daju prepoznatljiva značenja stvari i u logografskim sistemima pisma predstavljaju reči. Simboli moraju biti dovoljno jasni i jednostavni da se mogu dalje prenositi i prepoznavati. Piktografi su nekad predstavljali i zamenu za suglasnike ili grupe suglasnika. Slogovna pisma: Kod slogovnih pisama, jedan slog (suglasnici + samoglasnik) je predstavljen jednom grafemom. Alfabetsko pismo: Kod alfabetskih pisama postoji direktan odnos između grafema i fonema. Najstariji alfabet jesevernosemitski (Palestina i Sirija, 1700 godina p.n.e) sa 22 suglasnička slova. Zatim imamofeničanski, koji 1000 godina p.n.e. služi kao model grčkom pismu, koje postaje model etrurskom, a dalje rimskom. U svetu nauke često se govori o vezi između karaktera i značenja, ali je bitnija veza između karaktera i glasa.

This essay explores how landscape forms are used by writers, photographers, filmmakers, and other artists from inside and outside of China to represent environmental problems in that country. It considers the “landscape of desolation” as an ecocritical mode designed to change how people see and act in the world in relation to both the shifting status of “Chinese tradition” and to earlier moments in Euro-American landscape art, particularly the so-called New Topographics Movement of the 1970s.

As one of the greatest masterpieces in Chinese history, Dao De Jing is a philosophical work by Laozi (Li Er, c.571-471 BCE) published in the 4th century BCE. It contains 81 chapters/verses whose essence is on moral philosophy and ideal ways for humans to be in harmony with nature, self-cultivation, governing the country, deploying military forces, among other things. Although some of the ideas are only historically relevant at the time when Laozi lived, the majority of his thoughts is still pertinent today because human nature has not drastically changed since antiquity, and many social ills that Laozi mentioned still exist even now. Dao De Jing is one of the most translated works in world literature, and second most popular sacred scripture after the Bible. It is hoped that everyone can find something useful in these verses, as the Chinese saying suggests: “The benevolent sees benevolence, and the wise sees wisdom.” This translation has attempted to adhere as faithfully as possible to the original meanings in the Chinese text, and to reflect Mandarin pronunciations and recent revisionary development in Daoist scholarship. The edition has employed Pinyin rather than the older Wade-Giles system for transcribing Chinese words. Hence, the Chinese character for the “Way” is rendered “Dao” rather than “Tao,” Dao De Jing in place of Tao Te Ching, and Laozi for Lao Tzu. The 140-page volume is for anyone interested in Chinese philosophy, and for those who want to learn the art of living from it.

В статье впервые вводится понятие культурного кода, являющегося основой для формирования ценностных ориентиров китайцев и имеющего принципиальное значение при анализе процессов ценностных трансформаций в китайской культуре. На примере первого в истории китайской мысли духовного кризиса с участием внешних факторов доказывается неизменность выделенных констант в условиях масштабных культурных сдвигов. Автор, обращаясь к специфике китайской культуры, выводит определенную «формулу», основываясь на которой, могут быть проанализированы и дальнейшие ценностные трансформации в китайской культуре.

This 200-page volume contains 85 carefully selected Chinese poems arranged in chronological order, from antiquity (c.2000 BCE) to the modern time (1972), though most of them are from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, since these two eras were the climax of Chinese poetry creation and development. The selection was based on the popularity of the poems, and the common phrases taken from them in everyday usage. Pinyin has been added to help readers learn Mandarin while reading these poems, and feel the sense of poetics in them. The translator is a native Beijinger who has lived in China for over 20 years and in English-speaking countries for over 30 years. Her professional background is architectural humanities. She hopes to make an original contribution to the translation of Chinese poetry through her unique lenses. During the translation, she found it interesting and surprising that the rhythms in the classical Chinese poems were somewhat able to be transformed to follow certain rhythms in the English versions. Maybe there is a universal truth about composing poetry in a sense. Enjoy your reading if you are a lover of Chinese literature and culture, and learn the wisdom of life through your reading.

• Lena Scheen writes a lucid and compelling account of literature written amidst Shanghai’s sweeping transformations from 1990-2010. She evokes lived experiences of the city via literary and cultural analysis informed by field research on influential authors, their texts and their public reception. Shanghai Literary Imaginings is essential reading on turn-of-the-millennium Shanghai literary culture.  -- Robin Visser, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Shanghai Literary Imaginings offers significant new insights into contemporary Chinese urban culture from a highly innovative methodological perspective. Its truly interdisciplinary approach makes Shanghai Literary Imaginings stand out from other books that comment on contemporary Chinese city life. -- Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London
• Shanghai Literary Imaginings is an admirable feat of organization, analysis, translation, and interpretation, bringing to light a large body of work that would otherwise lie buried, at least in the western world of Chinese studies. -- Andrew David Field, Duke Kunshan University

An examination of silks from Qinghai and in the collections of the National Silk Museum in China, along with evidence from murals, documents the popularity and spread of textiles produced in Central Asia into the Trans-Himalayan regions in the second half of the first millennium CE.

Southern Vietnam was reclaimed by the Vietnamese in the mid-seventeenth century. They first brought their folk Buddhism and various popular religions to new land; however, the bureaucratic system then forced the Chinese Han – Song Dynasties’ institutionalized and politicalized Confucianism on the population. The arrival of the Chinese from overseas since the late seventeenth century marked the introduction of Qing Confucianism into Southern Vietnam, shaping the pro-Yangming studies among local literati. Many writers claim that Qing Confucianism had no impact on Vietnam. Obviously, however, these writers ignored the diversity of Vietnamese Confucianism in the new frontiers in the South. Qing Confucianism was truly absorbed into many aspects of life among the local gentry, popularizing the so-called pro-Yangming studies.
The article aims to study the transmission, contestation, transformation, and manipulation of Qing Confucianism in Southern Vietnam by penetrating deeper into the life, career, mentality, merits, and influence of local Confucianists and reviving the legacies of practical learning in local scholarship. The research discovers that the practical learning of Qing Confucianism dominated the way of thinking and acting of local elites, affecting ideological, educational, cultural and socio-economic domains of local society. However, the domination of the classical Confucian orthodoxy and the lack of state-sponsored institutionalization in late feudal periods, as well as the later overwhelming imposition of Western civilization under French colonial rule, seriously challenged and downgraded the impacts of Qing Confucianism in Vietnam. Therefore, Yangming studies were once transmitted but had limited impact on Vietnam.

Please cite as: Chang, B., Baimaganbetova, S., Yang, M., Cheung, I., Pun, C., & Yip, B. (2021). The Project for Critical Research, Pedagogy & Praxis: An educational pipeline model for social justice teacher education in times of division and authoritarianism. In B. S. Faircloth, L. M. Gonzalez, & K. Ramos (Eds.), Resisting barriers to belonging: Conceptual critique and critical applications (pp. 225-249). Rowman & Littlefield.

(*Note: This is a co-authored paper with undergraduate, Master's, and PhD students involved with PCRP).
For several decades, Hong Kong has been known as one of the world’s great metropolises, a global finance center, and the gateway to much of Asia.  In 2014 and 2019, Hong Kong caught the world’s imagination via massive long-term protests for democracy and socioeconomic justice while under de facto rule by mainland China.  Following both waves of social movements, heightened sociopolitical repression was brought down upon students, other activists, and mainstream society.  Under such conditions, it is understandable that students and teachers struggled to develop a sense of agency, belonging, and community.  It is within these contexts that the Project for Critical Research, Pedagogy and Praxis (PCRP) emerged from 2015-2020.  Co-written by student and teacher members of PCRP, this chapter discusses PCRP’s efforts at building an educational pipeline from the undergraduate to Ph.D. level, across university campuses and K-12 school communities. 

Utilizing sociocultural learning and critical pedagogy, including Chang’s notions of recognition, solidarity and collaboration, this pipeline’s focus was on developing more engaging and rigorous teacher education praxes at research universities, linking pre-/in-service teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.  Particularly concerned with equity issues, the PCRP pipeline was based at a research-intensive campus that also largely serves working-class students, or those who are the first in their family to attend college.  Adapting social justice-oriented theories originally developed in the Global North, this chapter presents insights to teacher education and educational pipeline work in Asia, and how they can be sustained as spaces of greater agency, belonging, and community abroad.

Southern Vietnam's tradition has been mainly built on Confucian ideology, although it is a transformed one. There have been two types of Confucianism in the region: state-sponsored and mass Confucianism. During the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under harsh colonial rule, a number of messianic religious movements emerged. The Minh Đức Nho giáo Đại đạo sect (MĐNGĐĐ, founded in 1932 in Trà Vinh province) is one such movement. The sect takes Confucian norms and values as its basic platform and further acculturates and transforms the philosophical values and rituals of Buddhism, Daoism, and Caodaism, as well as popular religions, to consolidate its settings. This article uses fieldwork-survey data and written documents-and applies historical particularism and acculturation theories, as well as the concepts of "standardiza-tion" and "de-standardization" by Watson (1985), to generalize the birth and features of MĐNGĐĐ in the local context. The study provides a comprehensive means to access the history of social thought in pre-modern Vietnam and possible principles of Confucian propagation and transformation in the country. The study finds that Confu-cianism may easily transform into a religious institution if the civilizing missions of local elites are missing. Ko modrec postane »božanstvo«: Poduhovljena konfucijanska sekta Minh Đức Nho giáo Đại đạo iz Južnega Vietnama Izvleček Tradicija Južnega Vietnama je bila osnovana predvsem na konfucijanski ideologiji, pa čeprav v njeni dokaj prirejeni obliki. V regiji sta obstajali dve vrsti konfucijanstva: kon-fucijanstvo pod pokroviteljstvom države in konfucijanstvo množic. V času med poznim

In Shanghai Filmmaking, Huang Xuelei invites readers to go on an intimate, detailed, behind-the-scenes tour of the world of early Chinese cinema. She paints a nuanced picture of the Mingxing Motion Picture Company, the leading Chinese film studio in the 1920s and 1930s, and argues that Shanghai filmmaking involved a series of border-crossing practices.

Shanghai filmmaking developed in a matrix of global cultural production and distribution, and interacted closely with print culture and theatre. People from allegedly antagonistic political groupings worked closely with each other to bring a new form of visual culture and a new body of knowledge to an audience in and outside China. By exploring various border crossings, this book sheds new light on the power of popular cultural production during China’s modern transformation.


Table of contents

Figures, Charts, and Tables
Conventions and Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

Foreword
Paul G. Pickowicz

INTRODUCTION: Shanghai Filmmaking: Border-crossing Practices

PART I PRODUCTION
1. The Business
2. Players in the 1920s: Interconnecting, Mediating
3. Players in the 1930s: Contestation? Collaboration?

PART II PRODUCT
4. The Medium: Inside Glocal Mediascapes
5. The Narrative (I): Melodrama as a Social Form
6. The Narrative (II): Melodramas Fit for All
7. The Meaning: Toward a Sentimental Education

EPILOGUE: Toward a Glocal Viewing Public

Appendix I: Filmography
Appendix II: Mingxing Personnel
Bibliography

Hardcover: ISBN: 9780190909796 [904pp, incl. 77pp indices + 43 B&W halftones images] The work features forty-seven essays authored by forty-nine international scholars. It showcases the four-fold paradigm: the Bible's translation, expression, interpretation, and reception in China over the last 1400 years Website: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-bible-in-china-9780190909796?q=yeo&lang=en&cc=us#

Central Asian textile iconography spread from the Tarim to the Mediterranean Basin. Mainly developed on complex structures, compositions of roundels (beaded or lobed) enclosing animals were woven in weft-faced compounds [Fig. 1]. A subset of textiles with such motifs and woven in that technique has come to be called , even though, as we now know, the term is a misnomer.1 Always referred as a cotton textile, the original was produced in Zandana near Bukhara, one of the centers where this compound was mainly produced and traded

This paper will examine Kuo Pao Kun’s modern reiteration of the Zheng He theme in his 1995 Singaporean play titled Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral 郑和的后代. The memory of Zheng He and his legacy rooted in an anomalous series of sea expeditions makes him unique in Chinese history and speaks to contemporary issues of multiculturalism, ethnic hybridity, and the geopolitics of migration and diaspora. Kuo reappropriates the Zheng He theme to re-present the eunuch admiral as an ancient paradigm of the modern multicultural man in an increasingly transnational world. Scholars have noted the way Kuo uses storytelling to prompt people in Singapore to show a greater willingness to live together as a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual nation. However, I argue that the play’s text reveals more somber and personal undercurrents, where Kuo draws upon an intimate understanding of the classical Chinese Zheng He story to record shrewd observations and articulate concealed shafts of criticism about Singapore’s bureaucracy, intermingled with philosophical reflections addressing contemporary Sinophone lived reality.

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Yaoi or BL (Boys’ Love) is a genre of Japanese subculture presenting in comics, videogames, novels and fan art which describe the fantasy erotic and romantic relationships between men. This is a female-oriented subculture which originated in Japan in the early 1970s. It has spread globally and has become a phenomenon in China through websites hosting countless fan fictions.
This presentation will report on one potential explanation for the popularity Yaoi in China – that it creates an ideal romantic relationship for young women to enjoy. First, in contrast to heterosexual romance, that between two men might more easily be presented as a relationship between two equal individuals. This allows the romance to jettison or revise conventional gender roles. Second, most relationships in Yaoi avoid reproduction. This makes the relationship independent of family expectations for (grand)children and offers a challenge to pro-family rhetoric. Third, male-male romance establishes the hurdle of social disapproval that the partners must surmount together. Hence, theirs may be presented as a particularly strong love because it has to endure many sacrifices.
Although Yaoi as ‘ideal romantic relationship’ is likely to be attractive to women across the world, this may be particularly so in China. China has a strongly traditional culture while, on the other hand, has massively improved the education and life expectations of girls over the last 2 or 3 generations. Hence, many young Chinese women may see in Yaoi the kind of relationship they aspire to with a man while they are, at the same time, subject to social and family pressures to maintain tradition roles of wife and mother.

This chapter concentrates principally on ‘Shanghai Puck’, a cartoon monthly first published in 1918, which, as will be demonstrated below, is a typical product of multidirectional transcultural exchange. In exploring the visual world of ‘Shanghai Puck’ and its ‘models’, the chapter will deliberate the following questions: How did ‘Shanghai Puck’ relate to foreign satirical cartoon magazines? Here, the focus will not only be on the London Punch but the American Puck as a possible template as well. This chapter also investigates ‘Shanghai Puck’s’ global agency: What does the intervisuality observed on the pages of Chinese, Japanese and foreign satire magazines and pictorials tell us about the anxieties of the respective journals’ readers and the emotions triggered by such images? How were China and the Chinese, as well as foreigners, portrayed and transformed pictorially on the pages of the ‘Shanghai Puck’? What strategies did ‘Shanghai Puck’ apply when it came to raising China’s global position?

This essays analyzes the 2007 popular novel, Chronicle of Du Lala’s Promotion. A bestseller followed by three sequels, a film, a TV series, a stage adaption and so on, it narrates the success story of a young Chinese woman who paves a dazzling career in a multinational corporation. While the novel appears, at first sight, as a purely commercial product which is created by the market and simply talks about (life in) the market, I argue instead that the novel serves the function of educating its readers to the dominant ideological values and goals promoted by the Communist Party in this period, which are precisely those necessary to the construction of the “socialist market economy”. By highlighting how the novel draws from exemplary narratives of self-transformation of the Mao era, and how it reproduces many official ideological discourses of its time, especially those centered around the notion of “middle class”, I will show that the character of Du Lala in fact can be considered an exemplary model akin to those of the Maoist period, even though the type of personality she is intended to exemplify is completely different. Viewing the novel as part of a widespread phenomenon of popular literature and culture that ultimately aims at popularizing the teachings that the higher education system wants to transmit to the Chinese students and future professionals, this article also attempts to make some reflections on the modes of ideological dissemination and the evolution of exemplary literature in China during the age of the socialist market.

Juxtaposing real life environmental issues with cinematic metaphors in Chinese cinema, this chapter focuses on the ecological, interspecific fable between a human and a mermaid in Stephen Chow (周星驰)’s comedy The Mermaid (美人鱼, 2016), and discusses how mythical creatures and environments in the film serves both as a critique of environmental destructions in Hong Kong caused by excessive urban developments over the past two decades; and the allegories of postcolonial Hong Kong under drastic transformations. It illustrates how traditional Chinese folk legends are reimagined and recontextualized in the film, placing cultural imaginations of (post)colonial Hong Kong within ecocritical contexts, in order to facilitate our ecocritical awareness towards planetary healing from multispecies perspectives.

By focusing on its speciesist representations and difference between whimsical interspecific romance and “eco-empathy,” this chapter examines why The Mermaid, as a commercial film with an environmental message, falls short in various aspects to cultivate better viewers’ ecocritical awareness and convey more effective messages in  promoting planetary healing. Drawing from recent ecocritical works on affective ecologies (Choy 2011; Weik von Mossner 2017) and corporeal connections between humans, nonhuman animals and the environment/watercapes, from pink dolphins in Sha Lo Wan to the mythical mermaids in Stephen Chow’s comedy film, this chapter explores the extent in which mainstream fictional Chinese films could bring to light issues of interspecific connectivity and multispecies coexistence and harmony, in a region under drastic socioeconomic and environmental changes.

This essay explores Jia Zhangke’s 2006 film Still Life (Sanxia haoren) from two related perspectives: first, the still powerful discourse of realism that continues to shadow discussions of Chinese cultural production; and second, Jia’s formal and aesthetic experimentation. Beginning with a survey of some of the many types of “realisms” that have been ascribed to Jia, it goes on to situate his work within the context of a recent reappraisal of Bazinian realism that emphasizes the filmmaker’s ethical commitment to his or her subject. In Still Life, which centers on a handful of Three Gorges cities in the midst of being demolished to make way for the Three Gorges dam and reservoir, this ethical commitment is bodied forth by formal structures appropriated and adapted from earlier artistic forms. This virtuoso experiment in remediation and hypermediation draws from a broad array of sources–European portraiture, Socialist Realism and Chinese landscape painting, as well as Tang poetry and contemporary pop music–to reveal precisely how cultural practices have shaped and continue to shape the Chinese landscape. At the core of Jia’s aesthetic, historical and spatial investigations are the beleaguered people who have been forced to make way for the wholesale reconstitution of this particular landscape. These are, in the Chinese title of the film, the “good people of the Three Gorges."

A man that was not appreciated during his life time has risen to be one of the greatest poets of Chinese History. His works echoes the uneasiness and fretfulness that overwhelmed the Chinese society at his time while living during the era of disunity of the six dynasties. His ability to put his thoughts about nature, society, sages and agriculture expresses a beautiful and vivid literary work that other poets has looked up to and admired. This work sets out to examine the life and great works of Tao Yuan-Ming (365-427) while living through a life of reclusion was able to transcend his thoughts into poetic works that stands in modern time; it also sets to analyze his profound thoughts within the era of his lifestyle to understand his linguistic conceptualizations.

Chinese Studies in the east and west are often seen as distinct and even competing fields. The Chinese engage in national studies from a uniquely Chinese point of view, using their Chinese way of thinking; Westerners approach it from a Western point of view, using a distinctly Western way of thinking. The aim of this paper is to discuss the origins of this dichotomy, and to evaluate the extent to which it represents historical and contemporary reality. The thesis of this paper is that, although the clear division between the Western and Chinese approaches to the study of China is based on historical fact, the line that once served to distinguish between the two has diminished and blurred to such an extent that it is no longer relevant. (Chinese language)

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Yaoi or BL (Boys’ Love) is a genre of Japanese subculture presenting in comics, videogames, novels and fan art which describe the fantasy erotic and romantic relationships between men. Yaoi is a female-oriented subculture which, since its origins in the early 1970s, has spread globally, especially during the 1990s. In the 21st century, yaoi has become extremely popular in China. This presentation will explore the different preference for animal-related themes between Anglophone and Chinese fandoms comparing the results of a survey with an English version (n=2417) and Chinese version (n=1129). The survey includes 43 questions. Those relevant to animal themes appear in the options provided on ‘risqué sexual content’ and the options provided on ‘specific elements’ in yaoi. The survey results demonstrate that animal themes are popular for Chinese fans, whether or not associated with sexual content. On the other hand, the Anglophone survey results showed animal themes to be generally less popular, while demonstrating differences between simple animal elements (ears or tails) and animals as whole creations who can have sex with humans or who transform into human shape. Chinese yaoi - both original and fan work - has developed a particular style based on Chinese mythology, history, folktale. Animal themes are common in traditional Chinese mythology and folktale in which animals are presented as showing emotion, having sensations, and demonstrable intellect much like humanity. Although imported Japanese manga, anime, and video game brings many animal themed contents to an Anglophone audience, animal themes involving sexual contents may present an interesting cultural boundary.

Deliberately framing this book as "a Western cultural analysis," Willis aims at turning the strange into familiar. China not only excites Willis, but also puzzles him: "You are always a foreigner, taken as a foreigner" (p. vii). As an anthropologist who grew up in post-reform China and had my destiny and identity profoundly shaped by the ruthless Gaokao regime, Willis' cultural commentary inspires me to turn the familiar into strange; it also opens up or reframes interesting questions for China specialists to grapple with, to debate, and to answer.

Resumen: Tres son las grandes persecuciones que el budismo debió enfrentar y superar en la historia de China, y variadas las maneras en que ha debido crear un discurso que se adecue a las circunstancias culturales y políticas para sostener su doctrina. A principios del siglo xx enfatizó un discurso modernizador, para luego adaptar los conceptos religiosos a la ideología comunista. En la actualidad, el budismo debe responder a la política patriótica del " sueño chino ". En este texto se analiza la narración político-religiosa por medio del uso de conceptos e ideas que circulan en los medios de comunicación y en conferencias que la Asociación Budista de China difunde entre el pueblo creyente. Abstract: On three occasions Buddhism had to face and overcome major persecutions in the history of China, and there were various ways by which it created a discourse adapting to cultural and political circumstances in support of its doctrine. In the early twentieth century Chinese Buddhism emphasized a modernizing discourse, in order to later adapt its religious concepts to communist ideology. 0567-0592-RIOS.indd 567 18/07/2017 11:34:14 p.m.

"Οι Χώρες Πέρα από τη Δημοκρατία.  Μια εξέταση της επίδρασης του κομφουκιανισμού και του νομικισμού στην πολιτική σκέψη του Lee Kuan Yew και του Xi Jiping."

Η παρούσα έρευνα αποτελεί μια κριτική επισκόπηση των σημαντικότερων  κειμένων των τελευταίων 30 ετών σχετικά με την επίδραση του (νέο) κομφουκιανισμού και του νομικισμού στην διαμόρφωση της σύγχρονης πολιτικής φιλοσοφίας στην Κίνα και στη Σιγκαπούρη. Σκοπός της προαναφερθείσας επισκόπησης είναι η προσπάθεια απάντησης στο  κύριο ερώτημα της έρευνας το οποίο είναι αν υφίσταται ποιοτικά διαφορετικό (Π)αράδειγμα πολιτικής οργάνωσης το οποίο να δύναται να θεωρηθεί ως «καταλληλότερο» για τις χώρες της Ανατολικής και Ν.Α Ασίας σε σχέση με τη δυτικού τύπου φιλελεύθερη δημοκρατία.
Διακεκριμένοι και εξαιρετικά επιτυχημένοι Ασιάτες πολιτικοί όπως οι Lee Kuan Yew (Πρωθυπουργός της Σιγκαπούρης, πρωτεργάτης του ομώνυμου οικονομικού μοντέλου) και ο Kim Dae Jung (πρώην Πρόεδρος της Νότιας Κορέας, κάτοχος του Νόμπελ Ειρήνης) έχουν βρεθεί  στην πρώτη γραμμή της υπεράσπισης του κομφουκιανισμού ως καταλληλότερου και πληρέστερου πυρήνα για μια νέα πολιτική φιλοσοφία, καταρχήν ασιατικού περιεχομένου, αλλά με φιλοδοξίες παγκόσμιας εφαρμογής.
Η μελέτη ταξινομεί τα επιχειρήματα που αντλεί από την βιβλιογραφική επισκόπηση σε δυο βασικές τάσεις: η πρώτη τοποθετείται αρνητικά έναντι της αναβίωσης του Κομφουκιανισμού ενώ η δεύτερη θετικά. Στην συνέχεια αξιολογεί τα επιχειρήματα των δυο τάσεων και αξιοποιεί παραδείγματα εφαρμογής πτυχών του κομφουκιανισμού όπως στο μοντέλο του Lee Kuan Yew για να καταλήξει στο συμπέρασμα ότι δεν είναι εφικτή μια απάντηση που θα περιορίζει την επιτυχία ή αποτυχία ενός πολιτικού συστήματος μόνο στο πολιτιστικό υπόβαθρο μιας χώρας χωρίς να συνεξετάζει παράγοντες όπως η γεωγραφία, οι πλουτοπαραγωγικές πηγές, το μέγεθος της χώρας και το μέγεθος του πληθυσμού, οι διεθνείς συνθήκες κατά την εξεταζόμενη περίοδο κλπ.

"Η Στρατηγική Κουλτούρα της Κίνας από τον Σουν Τζου στον Σι"

Η παρούσα εισήγηση πρόκειται να αναλύσει την αξία της θεωρίας της Στρατηγικής Κουλτούρας (Strategic Culture) ως το ευρύτερο δυνητικό ερμηνευτικό πλαίσιο  της διαμόρφωσης των στρατηγικών επιλογών της Κίνας. Σκοπός είναι να διερευνηθεί η δυνατότητα της θεωρίας να αξιοποιηθεί ως συμπληρωματικό αναλυτικό εργαλείο προκειμένου να παράσχει συνδρομή στην διαδικασία στρατηγικής ανάλυσης ώστε να εντοπιστούν και να αξιολογηθούν ειδικές ποιοτικές παράμετροι που επηρεάζουν την διαδικασία χάραξης στρατηγικής.
Δεδομένου ότι η στρατηγική συμπεριφορά είναι ένα σύνθετο φαινόμενο με πολλές συνιστώσες σκοπός της αξιοποίησης της θεωρίας της Στρατηγικής Κουλτούρας είναι να εντοπιστούν εκείνα τα ιδιαίτερα εθνικά κοινωνικά χαρακτηριστικά που διαφοροποιούν τον τρόπο που μια συλλογική οντότητα σκέφτεται και πράττει στις διεθνείς σχέσεις. Προς αυτό το σκοπό η παρούσα εισήγηση αντλεί στοιχεία από την κινέζικη ιστορία και τον κινέζικο πολιτισμό και αξιοποιεί τις πλέον πρόσφατες εκθέσεις σχετικά με τις στρατηγικές επιλογές της Κίνας ώστε να συνθέσει μια εικόνα για την κινέζικη οπτική των διεθνών σχέσεων. 
Η εισήγηση πρόκειται να παρουσιάσει τις σημαντικότερες ιστορικές επιρροές που συνέβαλλαν στην διαμόρφωση της κινέζικης στρατηγικής κουλτούρας από την εποχή των Μαχόμενων Βασιλείων μέχρι σήμερα.