Month: July 2016

Zhao Ziyang Collected Works published in HK

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Source: NYT (7/28/16)
Purged Chinese Leader’s Inside Look at Communist Leadership
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

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A newly published collection of works by Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted in 1989, along with his photograph, on display at a book fair in Hong Kong this month. Credit: Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIJING — Retired and dead Chinese Communist Party leaders who join the official pantheon are usually feted with the publication of their collected works. Generally, the fat volumes of speeches and writings are rarely read by anyone except the occasional scholar and party members ordered to study them.

But that honor has been denied to Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted in 1989, when Deng Xiaoping, his powerful elder, sided with conservatives who blamed Mr. Zhao for letting student protesters get out of control. Mr. Zhao died in 2005, still an official pariah under house arrest, and even now his name is rarely mentioned in the party-run news media, and his speeches and writings are hard to track down in China, where their circulation was banned after his fall. Continue reading Zhao Ziyang Collected Works published in HK →

Mistress dispellers

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (7/29/16)
China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’
By EMILY FENG and CHARLOTTE YANG

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A poster for “Mistress Dispeller,” a Chinese film about a man whose job is to lure women from their married lovers and whose wife fears he’s falling for the mistress he was hired to dispel. Credit Li Chenyu

BEIJING — When Ms. Wang, a 39-year-old from Shanghai, discovered texts on her husband’s phone that suggested he was having an affair with one of his employees, she was distraught. “I couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “I was very hurt.”

She decided to take action, though perhaps not in the expected way. Rather than confronting her husband, she searched online for a “mistress dispeller.’’

Mistress-dispelling services, increasingly common in China’s larger cities, specialize in ending affairs between married men and their extramarital lovers. Continue reading Mistress dispellers →

Grinnell College position

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GRINNELL COLLEGE – DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE – TENURE-TRACK POSITION IN CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (START FALL 2017).

GRINNELL COLLEGE. The Department of Chinese and Japanese invites applications for a tenure-track appointment in Chinese language and literature (area of specialization open, but premodern specialists preferred) beginning Fall 2017. Assistant Professor (Ph.D.) preferred; Instructor (ABD) possible. Successful candidates must be able to teach modern Chinese language at all levels and classical Chinese. The teaching load is five courses over two semesters.

Grinnell College is a highly selective undergraduate liberal arts college with a strong tradition of social responsibility. In letters of application, candidates should discuss their potential to contribute to a college community that maintains a diversity of people and perspectives as one of its core values. To be assured of full consideration, all application materials should be received by October 10, 2016. Please visit our application website at https://jobs.grinnell.edu to find more details about the job and submit applications online. Candidates will need to upload a letter of application, curriculum vitae, transcripts (copies are acceptable), and provide email addresses for three references. Questions about this search should be directed to the search chair, Professor Jin Feng, at [ChineseSearch@grinnell.edu] or 641-269-3141.

Grinnell College is committed to providing a safe and inclusive educational and work environment for all College community members, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, veteran status, religion, disability, creed, or any other protected class.

Liu Wencai’s grandson challenges CCP lore

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (7/26/16)
Grandson of China’s Most-Hated Landlord Challenges Communist Lore
By VANESSA PIAO

Liu Xiaofei, the grandson of Liu Wencai, who has long been held up as the epitome of the evil landlord of pre-Communist society, telling visitors to the Liu Family Manor Museum in Anren, China, that most of the exhibits are fake. CreditVanessa Piao/The New York Times

ANREN, China — To many Chinese, Liu Wencai is the archetype of the despotic landlord from pre-Communist days, one who exploited his tenants, tortured those who fell behind on rent in a “water dungeon” and forced new mothers to breast-feed him as a longevity therapy.

But his grandson Liu Xiaofei, 70, has spent the past two decades trying to prove that his grandfather was not only a good man, but actually aided the Communist forces in Sichuan Province. Continue reading Liu Wencai’s grandson challenges CCP lore →

Tsai Ing-wen interview

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Source: The Washington Post (7/21/16)
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen: Beijing must respect our democratic will
By Lally Weymouth
Lally Weymouth is a senior associate editor at The Washington Post.

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, says Beijing cannot impose conditions on a democratic country. (Jorge Saenz/AP)

Tsai Ing-wen is the first woman to be elected president of the small island of Taiwan, a close U.S. ally but also a potential flash point, because Beijing asserts that Taiwan belongs to the People’s Republic of China and can never be independent. Quite a few Taiwanese in Tsai’s party see it differently. Although China and Taiwan have been able to paper over their differences to date, tensions have been mounting since Tsai’s inauguration, when she did not restate the so-called ’92 consensus, in which Taipei and Beijing agreed that they are part of “one China” — but with different interpretations. This past week, The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth visited Tsai’s office for the president’s first foreign interview since taking office. Edited excerpts follow:

Q: What is your impression of Chinese President Xi Jinping?

A: I think that Chairman Xi’s courage tackling corruption is an important matter in the development of Chinese society. I also look forward to him showing a bit more flexibility in dealing with cross-strait relations. I hope that he can appreciate that Taiwan is a democratic society in which the leader has to follow the will of the people. Continue reading Tsai Ing-wen interview →

Domestic animals in Chinese culture–cfp

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Hello, Would anyone like to participate with me on a panel for the 2017 AAS Toronto conference? I know it’s very late, but maybe there are other last-minute folk like me on this list?

Tentative title: “Domination and Affection: domestic animals in Chinese culture”

I am seeking to make a panel with other scholars working from a historical perspective on domestic and companion animals in China. Papers using cultural anthropology, etymology, and visual studies (art and artifacts) are most welcome.

Please submit to me a brief abstract by… next Wednesday August 3.

Thank you!
Claire Huot
University of Calgary
chuot@ucalgary.ca
clairehuot@gmail.com

Crystal Wedding review

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From: Roh-Suan Tung <roh.tung@balestier.com>
Source: My Chinese Books (7/27/16)
Xu Xiaobin, romance, some sex and some good books
Review by Bertrand Mialaret

Xu-Xiaobin-7Xu Xiaobin is a famous writer in China, three novels have been translated into English. A romantic style but sometimes including some social reality.

“Crystal Wedding” fifteen years of the life of a couple:

Yang Tianyi, the heroin is, as says the author, a woman, a pretty ordinary intellectual and she tells us the fifteen years (1984-1999) between her marriage and her divorce, her relations with her husband and several unsuccessful love affairs, her failure as a mother such as her relationship with her own mother. Her professional success as a writer and lecturer does not hide her distaste for literary and audiovisual coteries.

She is a romantic heroine, “she now realized with some desperation, that her whole being, her life, her appearance, her everything has been ruled by her emotions. When she was loved, she blossomed, she was beautiful. But without love, she withered “(p.277). Continue reading Crystal Wedding review →

Backreading Hong Kong–cfp

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Backreading Hong Kong
Junior Scholars’ Symposium on Hong Kong Literature and Culture
CALL FOR PAPERS

A highly diversified and fluid cultural space, Hong Kong requires a particular kind of “backreading” that strikes connections between the temporal, spatial, cultural and linguistic gaps in one’s critical appreciation of literary arts from the local soil. In a spirit of solidarity, this symposium aims at engaging young and emerging scholars in a generative dialogue to explore the transnational and cross-media communications in the production, circulation and reception of the multilingual and multicultural Hong Kong literature and culture. No registration fee is required!

Date: 7 January 2017 (Saturday)
Venue: TBA, Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese, English, Mandarin Chinese

We welcome contributions from any young scholar who
1. has obtained a doctoral degree within the recent six years; OR
2. is a doctoral degree holder under forty-years old; OR
3. is currently a PhD candidate.

Abstract Submission
https://docs.google.com/…/1hgKwByjq9qFSBGjBrhWWiUTtG7B…/edit Continue reading Backreading Hong Kong–cfp →

Why translations of premodern poetry are having their moment (6)

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Thoughts in Spring By Du Fu

The nation ruined, mountains and rivers remain,
In spring, the city overgrown with plants.
Stirred by the times, flowers seem to weep,
Birds startle my heart saddened by parting.
Wars continued for three months,
A letter from home worth loads of gold.
I scratch my white hair thin.[i].
It won’t hold a pin.

Tr. by Lily Lee <l.lee@sydney.edu.au>

[i] The Chinese original says short, I take the liberty to change it to thin.

Why translations of premodern poetry are having their moment (5)

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I saw that you were on the look out for translations of 春望 so I thought I would send you mine. It was one of three translations I made during the dreadful months after 911 when I felt like Du Fu after the fall of Chang-An. Raritan was kind enough to publish it. Here is the link:

Steven Bradbury <stevenedgarbradbury@yahoo.com>

Three Poems from the Chinese of Du Fu (Translation) | Raritan

Spring Prospects

Nations fall but hills and streams remain.
Again the spring asserts its reign within
This citadel where petals spatter tears
And birds take fright for our afflicted age.
The beacon fires have burned three months on end,
And news from home is well nigh worth a fortune.
I’ve scratched my grizzled head so often
My hair’s too thin to hold my hatpin in.

Yan Han woodcuts exhibit

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Source: China Daily (7/26/16)
Yan Han’s woodcuts tell of suffering and valor during wartime
By Lin Qi (China Daily)

Yan Han's woodcuts tell of suffering and valor during wartime

Yan Han’s retrospective exhibition showcases his woodcut works in Beijing. Jiang Dong / China Daily

In 1938, while fleeing the invading Japanese troops, two students of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, parted ways.

The institution was then called the National School of Fine Arts.

The students met again in Paris in 1987, when the late Yan Han, a noted printmaker at the time, was showing his works in the French capital where his former classmate Chu Teh-chun, a well-known abstract painter, lived. Continue reading Yan Han woodcuts exhibit →

Columbia Companion review

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MCLC and MCLC Resource Center are pleased to announce publication of Edward M. Gunn’s review of The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature (Columbia UP, 2016), edited by Kirk A. Denton. The review appears below, but is best read online at:

https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/gunn2/

My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, MCLC literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Enjoy,

Kirk Denton, MCLC

The Columbian Companion to
Modern Chinese Literature

Edited by Kirk A. Denton

Reviewed by Edward Mansfield Gunn
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2016)

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Kirk A. Denton, ed., The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University, 2016. 488 pages. ISBN: 9780231170093 (Paperback) $45.00 / £33.00; ISBN: 9780231541145 (Hardcover) $125.00 / £93.00; ISBN: 9780231541145 (E-book) $44.99 / £33.00

As editor of The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, Kirk Denton provides a key statement in his Preface, that his “motivation was primarily pedagogical: to put together a resource that could be used fruitfully in university classrooms” (ix). With that in mind, considering the general structure of courses and the texts of modern Chinese literature that have been made available in English translation, many of the choices made in organizing such a resource become more than understandable. Moreover, The Columbia Companion is highly accessible for undergraduate readers.

The Columbia Companion is focused on printed and Internet literature (namely, fiction and poetry), while also offering significant attention to theatre. Given that the familiar essay is little taught, Denton has excluded this form, while recognizing its significance. One chapter focuses on the significance of literature for film through adaptations, while television adaptation is mentioned sporadically. The scope of the “modern” embraces the concluding years of the Qing and the early years of the Republic, although only marginally in three chapters out of fifty-seven. Hence, as with its choices of media, The Columbia Companion is somewhat conservative in defining the range of the modern. Yet, by acknowledging but placing certain media and historical periods in the background, Companion is able to concentrate an enormous amount of systematic scholarship on its indisputably modern periods and literary texts in under 500 pages. Continue reading Columbia Companion review →

Project Pengyou

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Dear Friends,

I’m pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for our Project Pengyou Leadership Fellows Program at Harvard University on October 7-10, 2016.

Current students at a U.S. high school, university or community college who have lived or studied in both the U.S. and China are encouraged to apply! (www.projectpengyou.org/leadershipfellows)

Fellows will be invited to participate in an intensive four-day Leadership Summit at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA to meet other like-minded young leaders, build unique community organizing skills and learn about cross-cultural leadership in the US-China context. With support from the Ford Foundation, Project Pengyou will cover lodging, food and training costs at Harvard University for all Fellows. A number of travel stipends will also be provided.

Leadership Fellows go on to establish a Project Pengyou Chapter at their school promoting cross-cultural inclusion, constructive dialogue and U.S.-China exchange. Since 2014, we have mobilized a grassroots network of over 40 campus chapters across the United States to advocate for constructive exchanges between American and Chinese people. Continue reading Project Pengyou →

Cross-Currents no. 19

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Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
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June 2016 e-Journal (No. 19) – Special Issue on Kham, Tibet

Co-editors’ Note to Readers

Articles

Introduction to “Frontier Tibet: Trade and Boundaries of Authority in Kham”
Stéphane Gros, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

“To Control Tibet, First Pacify Kham”: Trade Routes and “Official Routes” (Guandao) in Easternmost Kham
Patrick Booz, Pennsylvania State University

Construction Work and Wages at the Dergé Printing House in the Eighteenth Century
Rémi Chaix, École Pratique des Hautes Études

Guozhang Trading Houses and Tibetan Middlemen in Dartsedo, the “Shanghai of Tibet”
Yudru Tsomu, Sichuan University

Victorianizing Guangxu: Arresting Flows, Minting Coins, and Exerting Authority in Early Twentieth-Century Kham
Scott Relyea, Appalachian State University

Tricks of the Trade: Debt and Imposed Sovereignty in Southernmost Kham in the Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Stéphane Gros, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Memory Politics at Work in a Gyalrong Revolt in the Early Twentieth Century
Jinba Tenzin, National University of Singapore

Afterword: Why Kham? Why Borderlands? Coordinating New Research Programs for Asia
C. Patterson Giersch, Wellesley College Continue reading Cross-Currents no. 19 →