Month: July 2022

The not-so-scary truth behind horror sensation ‘Incantation’

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Source: SupChina (7/29/22)
The not-so-scary truth behind horror sensation ‘Incantation’
Audiences are raving about Taiwan’s newest horror film “Incantation,” which just hit international Netflix this month. Exactly how real are the religious elements at the center of the movie?
By Emma Burleigh

Incantation.

This month, the Taiwanese film Incantation (咒 zhòu) hit international Netflix: a found-footage horror movie following the experiences of a cursed woman — and the consequences of the curse. Viewers were quick to hype up the film, daring others online to try and sit through the whole thing.

Since its premiere in March, the movie has become the highest grossing Taiwanese horror film of all time, and Taiwan’s highest grossing film of 2022. Incantation also finds itself at the center of a debate on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. The hashtag “Is Incantation scary?” (咒吓人吗 zhòu xiàrén ma) has garnered millions of views. The ultimate consensus: not that scary, but still worth watching.

Something feels different with Incantation. Directed by Kevin Ko, the movie interacts with its viewers. The protagonist, Ronan (Tsai Hsuan-yen [蔡亘晏 Cài Gènyàn]), leads the audience through mind exercises, directing chants to be spoken. By the end of the movie, you feel like you’ve been tricked. Maybe cursed.

The movie is set around Ronan’s curse after she breaks a religious taboo while ghost-hunting in Yunnan province. Ronan and her two friends visit a remote village practicing an extreme form of Buddhism. They become wrapped up in a local ritual, unknowingly binding themselves to Dahei Mother Buddha.

Continue reading The not-so-scary truth behind horror sensation ‘Incantation’ →

The Golden Age review

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Source: NYT (7/26/22)
Sex Confessions and Protest From a Disillusioned Communist
Wang Xiaobo’s “The Golden Age” is a novel of lust and loss during China’s Cultural Revolution.
By Ian Johnson

Wang Xiaobo. Credit…Wang Xiaoping

In 1991, a little-known writer in Beijing named Wang Xiaobo mailed the manuscript of a novel to the eminent historian Cho-yun Hsu, his former professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The book was about China’s Cultural Revolution, the political purge from 1966 to 1976 that killed more than a million people and sent scientists, writers, artists and millions of educated youths to labor in the countryside.

At the time Wang was writing, novels about the Cultural Revolution tended to be fairly conventional tales of how good people suffered nobly during this decade of madness. The system itself was rarely called into question. Wang’s book was radically different. THE GOLDEN AGE (Astra House, 272 pp., $26) — the title itself was a provocation — told the tragic-absurd story of a young man who is exiled, witnesses suicide, endures bullying and beatings by local officials … and spends as much time as possible having sex.

Professor Hsu forwarded the manuscript to the judges of one of Taiwan’s most prominent literary prizes. Wang’s story of lust and loss won, stunning China’s literary world and turning the author into one of the country’s most influential and popular novelists. Continue reading The Golden Age review →

Heat waves scorch China

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Source: NYT (7/26/22)
Hotter, Longer and More Widespread Heat Waves Scorch China
By Vivian Wang

Shanghai, home to 26 million people, reached nearly 106 degrees Fahrenheit this month, tying its hottest day on record.

Shanghai, home to 26 million people, reached nearly 106 degrees Fahrenheit this month, tying its hottest day on record. Credit…Aly Song/Reuters

BEIJING — In western China, runoff from melting glaciers could overwhelm dams, officials have warned. In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, the government has asked residents to use large appliances less so the electrical grid is not overwhelmed as the city battles its longest heat wave since 1951. In the coastal city of Fuzhou, temperatures exceeded 41 degrees Celsius, or nearly 106 degrees Fahrenheit, for an unprecedented three days in a row, state media reported.

More than 900 million Chinese, about 65 percent of the population, are living under some kind of heat warning. Temperatures have reached, or exceeded, the highs that have recently tormented parts of Europe and the United States. Between June and mid-July, officials across the country have issued more than 15,000 high-temperature warnings, including more than 2,000 predicting temperatures would exceed 104 degrees, according to state media. Seventy-one weather stations recorded their highest temperatures ever.

China has long suffered from extreme weather in summer, with heat waves accompanied by intense flooding. But the severity of these events has increased in recent years under the effects of global warming. Officials said the heat this year was likely to be more intense and more prolonged. It is expected to persist until at least the end of the month. Continue reading Heat waves scorch China →

Yan Geling says movie fails to credit her

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Source: NYT (7/23/22)
A Novelist Says a Movie Fails to Credit Her. The Film World Shrugs.
Geling Yan says that she is owed a screen credit for the Chinese film “One Second” — and that companies bringing it to Western audiences are complicit in censoring her.
By Mike Ives

The writer Geling Yan has pushed for her novel “The Criminal Lu Yanshi” to be recognized in the film that it helped inspire.

The writer Geling Yan has pushed for her novel “The Criminal Lu Yanshi” to be recognized in the film that it helped inspire. Credit… Stefano Mazzola/Awakening/Getty Images

In 2018, as a celebrated Chinese director prepared to film a movie, his team sent the novelist Geling Yan a 33-page script with her name printed on each page. Ms. Yan said that made sense to her because she had written the Chinese-language novel that inspired the film.

But when the film, “One Second,” was released in China and elsewhere two years later, her name did not appear in the credits. It was directed by Zhang Yimou, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose works include “Raise the Red Lantern” and “House of Flying Daggers.”

Ms. Yan, who has publicly criticized the Chinese government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, said she was not surprised to see her name removed from a film produced in the country. Still, she said, she thought that the companies distributing and promoting it outside China could perhaps agree to credit her in some way.

Ever since, Ms. Yan and her husband, Lawrence Walker, who is also her manager, have been asking companies in Asia, Europe and North America to do just that, either in the film itself or in their promotional materials. Continue reading Yan Geling says movie fails to credit her →

Night Bus

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Source: NeoCha (7/14/22)
Night Bus
By Ryan Dyer

Strangers on a bus. Each of them has a secret. Like the best Hitchcockian stories, they all have skeletons in their closets, and once a necklace is stolen in the dead of night, the chain of events that begins to unravel feels unstoppable, like falling dominoes. Viewers are taken on a ride directly into the dark abyss of human nature. This is Night Bus, a 20-minute horror short by Taiwanese director Joe Hsieh that made its way around film fest circuits in early 2022.

Night Bus is Hsieh’s third short film, a follow up to 2006’s Meat Days and 2014’s The Present, and it extends the themes of his earlier work to make this ride into the personal hells of its riders something truly memorable. Along with making deep impressions, the film is also winning awards—at Sundance, Night Bus granted him the Short Film Jury Award for best animation. . . [read the rest of the article here]

Jay Chou releases first album in six years

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Source: SupChina (7/22/22)
Jay Chou, king of Mandopop, releases first album in six years, immediately shattering records
The six-year wait for new music by Taiwanese pop superstar Jay Chou is finally over. His latest album and promotional activities have become bona fide cultural phenomena in mainland China, rejuvenating Mandopop listeners’ interest in the singer-songwriter’s decades-long career.
By Zhao Yuanyuan

The past month has been a big one for Jay Chou (周杰伦 Zhōu Jiélún), one of the best-selling artists in the world of Chinese-language pop music. From casually teasing upcoming projects in a travel vlog on June 19 to shattering records across the board with his newest music, the mega pop star’s road to his 15th studio album Greatest Works of Art (最偉大的作品) has been a mix of suspense, excitement, and nostalgic fun.

With such an eventful month for the superstar — and, undoubtedly, one of the biggest moments for Mandopop this year — here is a complete timeline of Chou’s activities this summer so far:

June 19

周杰倫2022年專輯前導 . 巴黎創作紀錄片

Continue reading Jay Chou releases first album in six years →

How Madame Mao remade Hollywood for Chinese audiences

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Source: LitHub (7/21/22)
How Madame Mao Remade Hollywood For Chinese Audiences
Ying Zhu on Jiang Qing’s Influence On Mid-Century Chinese Film
By Ying Zhu

VIA THE NEW PRESS

After decades of successful screening in China, Hollywood films vanished from the Chinese screen during the Mao era. Yet, hidden from the public eye, many Western films, including classic Hollywood films, were available to the party rank and file as well as to key film professionals. These became known as “internal reference films.”

The phenomenon of clandestine viewing of Hollywood films lasted until the end of the Mao era; watching poisonous films was a common ritual among the privileged few with access. The studio responsible for the translation of many such internal reference films was the Shanghai Dubbing Studio.

Despite the ban on Hollywood films early on, and on Soviet films later, foreign films became available through restrictive internal screening to film practitioners for professional needs and to an exclusive group of ranking party officials led by Mao Zedong’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing. A second-rate movie actress herself during the Republican era, Jiang Qing was a closeted Hollywood devotee with a trove of Hollywood films, mostly dubbed but some in original versions, at her private disposal, even when she was attacking Hollywood in public. Continue reading How Madame Mao remade Hollywood for Chinese audiences →

Dream of the Red Chamber: Literary and Translation Perspectives

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New Publication
Dream of the Red Chamber: Literary and Translation Perspectives
Edited By Riccardo Moratto, Kanglong Liu, Di-kai Chao

Book Description

This edited volume contains an excellent collection of contributions and presents various informative topics under the central theme: literary and translation approaches to China’s greatest classical novel Hongloumeng.

Acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, Hongloumeng (known in English as The Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone) epitomizes 18th century Chinese social and cultural life. Owing to its kaleidoscopic description of Chinese life and culture, the novel has also exerted a significant impact on world literature. Its various translations, either full-length or abridged, have been widely read by an international audience. The contributors to this volume provide a renewed perspective into Hongloumeng studies by bringing together scholarship in the fields of literary and translation studies. Specifically, the use of corpora in the framework of digital humanities in a number of chapters helps readdress many issues of the novel and its translations, from an innovative angle. The book is an insightful resource for both scholars of Chinese literature and for linguists with a focus on translation studies. Continue reading Dream of the Red Chamber: Literary and Translation Perspectives →

MCLC 34.1

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We are delighted to announce the publication of issue 34.1 (Summer 2022) of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, now published and distributed by Edinburgh University Press. Titles and links to abstracts are listed below. The printed copies are still coming off the press, but subscribers can access the full content right away using the new MCLC repository:  https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/mclc/34/1

(direct URLs may vary depending on your home institution). Non-subscribers and those without institutional access can read one free article (Shu Yang’s “Wrestling with Tradition: Early Chinese Suffragettes and the Modern Remodeling of the Shrew Trope”) and the “Note from the Editors.” In the latter, we present some of the notable changes coming to the journal, including to layout and JSTOR access. A few things are changing for MCLC, but we hope the transition will be a smooth one for both readers and authors. Most importantly, the scholarship of the journal remains of the highest standard, so we hope you enjoy exploring this latest issue.

Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier

Volume 34, Number 1 (Spring 2022) 
Articles

Popular Culture in China’s Early Reform Era

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A new special issue “Popular Culture in China’s Early Reform Era, 1978-1989” edited by Zhao Ma was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies in July 2022.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Revisiting popular culture in China’s early reform era, 1978–1989: a historical overview
Zhao Ma

Embodying beauty, desiring the world: dress and fashion in the 1980s’ China
By Yuqian Yan

Between the past and the future: the rise of nationalist discourse at the 1983 CCTV Spring Festival Gala
By Min Wang

Mysterious Buddha, popular cinema, and the new Chinese film culture in the early 1980s
By Li Yang

Airing the Gospel: Christian radio broadcast and multiple narratives in early reform-era China
By Joseph Tse-Hei Lee & Christie Chui-Shan Chow Continue reading Popular Culture in China’s Early Reform Era →

Mo Yan says some works in his name are not his

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Source: China Daily (7/18/22)
Nobel winner says some works in his name are not his
By Yang Yang | China Daily

Mo Yan speaks at a ceremony in Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, where he was awarded an honorary fellowship, in June 2019.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Nobel Prize Laureate Mo Yan recently published an article on his WeChat account clarifying that many poems and articles apparently signed with his name online were actually not his works.

Apart from a 32-second video, which in an amusing way shows the writer’s confusion, a handwritten letter is also posted, in which Mo replied to a reader named Lin Quan, who asked him whether a poem titled On Wine and Beauty was written by him.

“Let me explicitly tell you, it’s not my work, just like the poem How Wonderful It Will Be If You Can Understand Me, which I think is quite good. I admire the talent of these writers and also feel pity that they give up their copyright. To be honest, I once even received royalties for the poem when it was chosen for the textbook of a university, about 400 yuan ($59.3). I hope that the poem’s real creator can claim his or her ‘child’ as soon as possible, as well as the royalties. In the history of modern literature, there have been many poets who gained fame for just one poem. It’s a shame that such a good poem is put under another person’s name and drifts online, homeless. Another example is I, a poem full of wisdom. A lot of elderly people love it,” Mo writes in the letter. Continue reading Mo Yan says some works in his name are not his →

Govt boarding schools as a tool of genocide

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Please note this upcoming public seminar that should be of burning interest to those angry and protesting similar crimes in Canada, the US, and other countries in the past. Learn about how these crimes are being committed today, now, against hundreds of thousands of ethnic-minority children in China–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Government Boarding Schools as a Tool of Genocide in the 21st Century: Uyghur and Tibetan Family Separation
Tuesday, July 26, 2022 | 1:00–2:00 p.m. EDT

No registration required, watch via UHRP Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. For full links and more info, see: https://uhrp.org/event/boarding-schools/.

From July 24 to 29, Pope Francis is visiting Canada, when he will publicly apologize for the suffering and abuse in the Catholic boarding schools for Canada’s indigenous peoples, following his historic apology at the Vatican in April. In May 2022, the U.S. government released an unprecedented report on 53 burial sites at 408 boarding schools for Native American children across 37 states, operating between 1819 and 1969. These historic crimes are recognized as causing lifelong and generational trauma.

Now in the 21st Century, the Chinese government is operating a vast system of colonial boarding schools in Tibet, including at least 50 mandatory boarding preschools holding 100,000 Tibetan children, ages 4 to 6. The Chinese government is also operating mandatory boarding schools for Uyghur children as part of its genocidal policies, in a systematic effort to separate Uyghur children from their families, affecting an estimated 900,000 children. Please join us for a discussion of the implications of these crimes and the need for a policy response. Continue reading Govt boarding schools as a tool of genocide →

CNKI’s Security Problem

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Source: China Media Project (7/6/22)
CNKI’s Security Problem
A national security review of China’s leading academic research database, announced last month by cyberspace authorities, is not so much about sensitive content as about the potential sensitivities of public access.
By Stella Chen and David Bandurski

Image by Anonymous Account available at Flickr.com under CC license.

When China’s top internet control agency announced late last month that it would launch a security review of the country’s leading academic research database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), citing the need to protect “important data,” the reactions online were broadly of two types. While some wished to know exactly what kind of content concerned the authorities, many others cheered the action, noting how CNKI had drawn ire for many months over its skyrocketing subscription fees and its monopoly hold on the sector.

Both reactions were largely missing the point. The most recent action against CNKI is not about the sensitivity of certain types of data. Nor is it about the fair price for access to data. The issue for China’s authorities is about the abundant public access the CNKI database provides to an astonishing range of information. On the face of it, most of the information available through CNKI, drawn from thousands of periodical titles, is non-sensitive. Once made widely available to researchers, however, and once contextualized and interpreted, it can be revealing in ways that unsettle China’s leadership. Continue reading CNKI’s Security Problem →

Thinking China and Circulation–cfp

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HKU Graduate Writing Workshop:
Thinking China and Circulation: Beyond Borders / In Translation / Across Adaptation
October 20-22, 2022
CALL FOR PAPERS
Abstract submission: September 1, 2022
Paper submission: October 3, 2022

Circulations are at the core of globalization and speak to all fields, periods, and regions. They can be political, economic, cultural, geographical, social, communal, familial, or personal. They may involve the relocation of objects and images; translation, adaptation, and appropriation of texts; or trajectories of individuals. They may be influenced by diverse forms of media. They may be imposed and experienced by individuals, groups, or institutions. They may take place on an equal footing or reinforce power relationships. They may bring about understanding, transformations, creativities, or else misunderstanding, prejudice, and defiance. Circulations also entail a historical process of images, texts, and ideas changing over time.

This historical moment – global pandemic, changing geopolitics, the threat of economic sanctions, and renewed racism against the Chinese diaspora – is a good time to reflect on real-life and virtual circulations in the context of China.

The Department of Comparative Literature and the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and its Cultures at the University of Hong Kong invite graduate students working on China and Sinophone world of the twentieth century to submit paper abstracts on the theme of “CIRCULATION”. We encourage people to interpret the theme in the broadest possible terms. We particularly welcome proposals that discuss circulations in relation to China in/and the world (in any language or across multiple languages). We hope to bring together early-career scholars working across disciplines, including literature, history, philosophy, film and media studies, etc. Continue reading Thinking China and Circulation–cfp →

Banking scandal tests faith in system

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Source: NYT (7/19/22)
‘My Worldview Has Been Destroyed’: Chinese Banking Scandal Tests Faith in the System
The disappearance of ordinary savers’ money, and the government’s seemingly indifferent response, could pose a major test for the Communist Party’s legitimacy.
By Vivian Wang and Zixu Wang

Protesters in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou on July 10. Photos and video of men in plainclothes attacking them, while the police looked on, stirred public anger.

Protesters in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou on July 10. Photos and video of men in plainclothes attacking them, while the police looked on, stirred public anger.

BEIJING — The saving opportunity with the rural bank in central China looked, to Sun Song, a 26-year-old-businessman, like a great find. It would be linked to his existing account at a large, reputable state-owned bank. The rural bank was also offering high interest rates, making it seem like an ideal place to park his roughly $600,000 in savings.

Then the bank abruptly froze his account this year, and officials said they were investigating potential fraud. “I owe money on my credit card and have to repay my car loan,” he said. “I have two sons. They’re all waiting.”

The financial scandal ensnaring Mr. Sun and thousands of others across the country could pose a serious test to the ruling Communist Party, which prizes stability and its ability to control any threats to it. While the amount of money at risk is small relative to China’s economy, it strikes at the core promise of the party that it will provide a better future for the people.

For members of the Chinese public, it has revealed how vulnerable their money could be, even in a transaction as seemingly routine as putting it in a saving account. Financial issues are all the more sensitive as the economy weakens, with China last week reporting its slowest rate of growth since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading Banking scandal tests faith in system →