Month: March 2025

The Unfinished Comedy

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This April Fool’s Day, the Chinese Film Classics Project is slap-happy to announce the publication of Christopher Rea’s translation of the film The Unfinished Comedy 沒有完成的喜劇 (Lü Ban 呂班, dir., 1957):

https://chinesefilmclassics.org/the-unfinished-comedy-1957/
https://youtu.be/8I6j9dKi0B8

ABOUT THE FILM:

Bring back the clowns! In the plot of this metacinematic film, New China was founded several years ago, in 1949, and beloved Republican-era screen comedians skinny man Han Langen and fatty Yin Xiucen (playing themselves) are only just now getting the chance to make films again thanks to the invitation of Changchun Film Studio (playing itself). The Hundred Flowers Campaign is under way, a cultural thaw spurred by the apparent newfound openness of the Chinese Communist Party. Now that Han and Yin have, in their words, “returned to the ranks,” will the results of their filmmaking be “flowers of comedy” or just “a clump of weeds”…especially when their first three films are screened for the censor, Comrade Bludgeon?

The Unfinished Comedy is the most daring Chinese film comedy of the 1950s, one that takes direct aim at the myopia of present-day New China’s censors. The film was the third of a trio of short film comedies that actor-turned-director Lü Ban made during the brief liberalization of the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956-57), following Before the New Bureau Chief Arrives 新局長到來之前 (1956) and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff 不拘小節的人 (1956). Veteran actors Han and Yin are in fine fettle, and the film displays flashes of satirical brilliance, especially in the first film-within-a-film, which culminates with an old comedian’s cri de coeur: “I never died! I’m alive! I’m alive and well!” Continue reading The Unfinished Comedy →

Suipian 5

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碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments #5
TABITHA SPEELMAN
MAR 30, 2025

Welcome to the 5th edition of Suipian, my personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. You’re receiving this because you were previously subscribed to Changpian, my earlier newsletter sharing Chinese nonfiction writing – or if you recently subscribed. See here for more introduction to Suipian.

I hope you’ve been well. Today’s edition is a bit shorter than usual (maybe a good thing). Welcome also to those of you who subscribed because of the kind shout-out by David Ownby, who translated the 端传媒 story on Covid grief and anger that I shared last time. If you did not have a chance to read it, I recommend his excellent translation (and the rest of the Reading the China Dream website).

随笔 // Suibi // Notes

Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

When the new Trump administration got started on their ‘breaking things’ agenda, Western mainstream media quickly framed this as a great opportunity for China, especially on issues like the dismantling of USAID. I was struck by how that conversation seemed all but absent in China, where there was shock and some gloating at the chaos, but as far as I could tell not much talk, at least among the public, of how these developments might benefit China’s rise. I explored this topic in a few stories (and a Dutch podcast) for which I talked to experts but also to people like Mr. Ye, a retired Beijinger who I met in a park and who took some time from listening to his audio book to kindly mansplain me on how things look from China. Continue reading Suipian 5 →

AACS 2025–cfp

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AACS 2025 Call For Papers–Deadline Extended to April 18

The American Association for Chinese Studies (AACS) annual conference program committee would like to invite proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers on issues concerning China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, other Chinese communities, and the Chinese diaspora for the 67nd Annual Conference, hosted by Adelphi University, Garden City, New York October 24-26, 2025. The theme of the conference is “Charting New Paradigms: China and the Chinese Diaspora in a Changing World Order.”

We invite panels and papers from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology. Scholars from other disciplines whose research aligns with the AACS conference theme are encouraged to organize special panels and submit proposals for consideration. The 2025 conference will feature a roundtable discussion with experts analyzing the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and its implications for international relations in the region. Additionally, the event will include a keynote address by an invited speaker, focusing on the new world order under Trump and its impact on Washington-Beijing-Taipei relations. The program committee of the AACS meeting aims to foster interdisciplinary exchanges and policy dialogues. We are committed to curating a balanced program that includes panels addressing a diverse range of topics, offering valuable insights for both academic scholarship and social and political policy discussions.

The AACS is an interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of subjects related to China and Taiwan broadly construed (www.americanassociationforchinesestudies.org). Membership in AACS is required for participation in the annual conference, but non-members are welcome to submit proposals, join the Association, and participate in the annual meeting. We encourage submissions from junior and senior scholars and Ph.D. students from the U.S. and overseas. Please note that this conference is in-person only. Continue reading AACS 2025–cfp →

CHIME 2025

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Registration open: “Digital Futures for Chinese Music” (28th CHIME Conference, University College Cork)
28th CHIME International Conference, 4–8 July 2025
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

Conference registration now open
Preliminary conference programme available here

Further information: please contact Dr. Lijuan Qian (lijuan.qian@ucc.ie) or visit the UCC Department of Music website

Registration rates: Please consider becoming a member of CHIME Worldwide Platform for Chinese Music – for a reduced conference registration fee (and to enjoy various other benefits): https://www.chimemusic.net/members

In this conference we focus on the various ways new media (digital media especially) provide spaces for preserving, creating, playing, sharing, teaching, or discussing music, and the ways these spaces are impacting what musicians, culture bearers, and others do in the musical part of their lives. Participants will share research resonating with this theme. Presentations of other new research in the broad area of Chinese music studies are also included.

New digital media provide for “repackaging” of traditions, access to distant events, gestures of sharing and commemoration, and spaces (and toolkits) for new creation, online learning, critical commentary, or playful remixing. We might study these situations in several ways: Continue reading CHIME 2025 →

Soft Burial review

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Source: The Atlantic (3/27/25)
The Chinese Communist Party’s Ultimate Taboo
Fang Fang’s newly translated novel uncovers the brutal, buried history of land reform in China.
By Ian Johnson

collage of images depicting land reform in China

Illustration by Colin Hunter / The Atlantic. Sources: Chronicle / Alamy; Tzido / Getty; Wikicommons.

Over its 75-year history, the People’s Republic of China has suffered numerous traumas, but perhaps none with longer-lasting consequences than land reform—a violent campaign of torture, murder, and mob rule that the Communist Party enacted in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The program’s stated intent was to redistribute property to landless farmers, but in reality it was used to bring huge swaths of Chinese society to heel through the brutal persecution of landowners.

This history is the governing party’s ultimate taboo, its unspoken original sin. Over the decades, independent historians and ordinary people in China have at times managed to publicly criticize some of the party’s actions—even major upheavals such as the Cultural Revolution—without facing reprisal. But land reform is so fundamental to how the current government took power that no citizen may portray it as anything other than a benevolent campaign that brought fairness and prosperity to China’s long-suffering farmers.

This context is what makes Fang Fang’s novel Soft Burial, recently translated into English by Michael Berry, so electrifying. Starting around the turn of the 21st century, independent historians began to explore land reform, drawing on oral histories to challenge the party’s narrative. But their works were either quickly banned or circulated only underground. Soft Burial, first published in China in 2016, was different. Fang is one of her country’s best-known novelists, and a longtime member of its literary establishment. After Soft Burial was published, it won a sought-after literary prize and was widely discussed in mainstream Chinese media, until backlash prompted censors to ban it. Continue reading Soft Burial review →

Navigating the Mediterranean through the Chinese Lens

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The volume Navigating the Mediterranean Through the Chinese Lens: Transcultural Narratives of the Sea Among Lands, edited by Renata Vinci (Firenze University Press, 2024), is now available in open access and can be fully downloaded at the following here.

Synopsis:

In the postnational era, as scholars investigating the circulation of reciprocal knowledge between China and foreign countries, we are called to reconsider the relevance of national borders in our own research. This comes as a response to an extended demand to rethink the ties imposed by concepts such as nation, language and heritage in favour of essential inclusive sentiments of shared interests and belonging. This volume is the initial outcome of the research project The Mediterranean Through Chinese Eyes (MeTChE), which aims to investigate the perception and representation of the Mediterranean region in Chinese sources, conceptualising this ‘region among lands’ as a transcultural and debordered space, as advanced by contemporary Mediterranean Studies.

For more information about the research project’s outputs, events, team members, and more, please visit the MeTChE project website.

Posted by: Renata Vinci <renata.vinci@unipa.it>

Museums in Motion–cfp

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We are delighted to invite papers for the international workshop ‘Museums in Motion: New Frontiers in Chinese Museum Studies’, to be held in person and online at the University of Siena on 13-14 November 2025.

Studying Chinese museums is both an intriguing and rewarding pursuit, offering a valuable perspective on the histories and cultures of China and its unprecedented transformations over the past three decades. These institutions house an extraordinary wealth of historical, artistic, and cultural artefacts, providing deep insight into China’s long and complex past, as well as its multilayered interactions with the world today. From ancient bronzes and calligraphy to contemporary art and political exhibitions, museums in China serve as dynamic spaces where history is preserved, interpreted, and debated. They shape narratives, influence national and local identities, and even serve political functions. The way history and culture are presented—what is emphasized, omitted, or reframed—offers a revealing glimpse into China’s evolving relationship with its past and present.

At the same time, questions of accessibility and representation remain central. While major state-run museums, such as the National Museum of China, present grand, state-approved narratives, smaller independent museums sometimes offer alternative perspectives, occasionally challenging official histories. This raises critical discussions about who controls historical narratives and how they are curated. Beyond their role as cultural and historical institutions, Chinese museums are at the forefront of technological and curatorial innovation. Digital exhibitions, AI-driven curation, and new approaches to audience engagement are transforming how visitors experience history and culture. But what does this mean for museum studies as a field? Are existing theories and methodologies sufficient to analyze these developments, or do we need new frameworks to understand this evolving landscape? Continue reading Museums in Motion–cfp →

Newman Prize events

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Dear MCLC friends,

I hope you can mark your calendar for two events starting today!

(1) Panel Discussion, Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, Celebrating the Work of the 2025 Laureate Ling Yu
Thursday, March 27, at 12 noon (central time).

CIS Newman Panel discussion sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Institute for US-China Issues in the David L. Boren College of International Studies. The Newman Prize is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition, based solely on literary merit.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycsaK7dBfL4)

(2) This Friday evening (tomorrow, March 28th), we will celebrate this year’s Newman Prize for Chinese Literature Prize winner Ling Yü, and the Newman Prize for English Jueju winners starting at 7pm (central US time). Here is the live streaming link: link.ou.edu/newmanprize-livestream. Or you can watch on Youtube:

(https://www.youtube.com/live/6XlvSCIS_Bc)

I hope you can join us as we celebrate Sinophone poetry and Chinese poetics across languages!

Jonathan Stalling

Hollywood in China summer course

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Colleagues,

I’ll be offering a course on the relationship between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry at Columbia University this summer. Pls pass along info to students and colleagues who might be interested in the topic.

Hollywood in China: A Course on the Relationship between Hollywood and the Chinese Film Industry.

Come tease out a cluster of issues concerning the politics, economy, and culture of transnational entertainment and media practices — all at the heart of one of the most vibrant artistic and international cities in the world.

Admissions are open to all who would like to study with us this summer – – Go to arts.columbia.edu/summer for application details and deadlines.

All the best,

Ying ZHU

Queer Women’s Fandoms

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Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to share the publication of the special issue “Queer Women’s Fandoms” coedited by Jamie J. Zhao and Eve Ng in the journal Popular Communication.

The special issue is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/23/1. The introduction to the issue can be accessed (with first 50 online copies free for downloading) at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TBHEAAKWKUHFYZHSAPCB/full?target=10.1080/15405702.2025.2477054 .

The table of contents for this special issue is also attached below. Please help widely share it to colleagues and students who might be interested in related topics.

Table of Contents

Popular Communication, vol. 23, issue 1, 2025 (pp. 1-104)

Introduction

Queer Women’s Fandoms: New Global Perspectives
By Jamie J. Zhao and Eve Ng (https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2025.2477054)

Research Articles

“In this life or the next”: “Cancel Your Gays” and the Warrior Nun “Save Our Show” campaign
By Kimberly Dennin (https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2024.2414115) Continue reading Queer Women’s Fandoms →

Queer TV Asia

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Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to share the publication of the dossier “Queer TV Asia: Emerging Studies of Queer TV in a Globalising Asia” edited by Jamie J. Zhao in the journal Screen‘s latest 66.1 issue.

The dossier is available at: https://academic.oup.com/screen/issue. The introduction to the dossier is free access at https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/66/1/80/8090413.

The table of contents for this dossier is also attached below. Please help widely share it to colleagues and students who might be interested in this and related topics.

Table of Contents

Screen, vol. 66, issue 1, Spring 2025

Queer TV Asia: Emerging studies of queer TV in a globalising Asia Introduction
by Jamie J. Zhao (free access: https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaf005)

Queering BL televisuality across Asia: queer polylocality across Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea
by Alvin K. Wong (free access: https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaf008) Continue reading Queer TV Asia →

JCLC 11.2

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TOC: Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 11, issue 2 (November 2024)

I am pleased to share the newest issue of the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (11:2), edited by Zong-qi Cai and Yuan Xingpei. The new issue is now available in print and online. Browse the table of contents, made freely available, here: https://read.dukeupress.edu/jclc/issue/11/2

Table of Contents

Brevity and Breadth: A Linguistic, Aesthetic, and DH-Assisted Study of the Book of Poetry and “Nineteen Old Poems”
ZONG-QI CAI and MACIEJ KURZYNSKI

Some “Han” Fu on Things
LUKE WARING

Mencian Reincarnations: Mercy and Forgiveness in the Seventeenth-Century Chinese Novel Predestined Marriage That Awakens the World
YUANFEI WANG

Constructing Cosmopolitan Identities in the Literary Sinosphere
STEPHEN J. RODDY, Organizer Continue reading JCLC 11.2 →

PAMLA 2025–cfp

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PAMLA 2025 Asian Literatures and Cultures Session Call for Papers

The 122nd annual PAMLA (Pacific Ancient Modern Language) Conference will take place in San Francisco on November 20-23, 2025. Please find information about the conference here: https://www.pamla.org/pamla2025/

The Asian Literatures and Cultures session welcomes proposals for papers on a wide variety of topics pertaining to “Asia” and “literature and culture,” broadly conceived. Papers may deal with a range of historical periods (premodern, modern, etc.) and regions (East, Southeast, South, West, Central, etc.). “Literature and culture” can include literature, but also media such as film, theater, and art.

We welcome proposals both related to the conference theme, “Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion,” and those not related. Additionally, papers that analyze issues of power and ideology from multiple theoretical perspectives. Other topics of particular interest include but are not limited to:

  • Asian urbanities
  • Translations and relations between various Asian nations or cultures
  • Asian cyberpunk and science fiction
  • Asian ecocriticism
  • Geopolitics of storytelling
  • Memory, trauma, nostalgia
  • Place-making and identity (re)formation
  • Spaces of encounter
  • Urbanization, migration, and displacementUtopias and dystopias
  • New readings of classical literature

Please Submit your Abstract Proposal here: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19563

If you have any questions, please contact the Session Chair Géraldine Fiss at gfiss@ucsd.edu.

A River Crisis Prompts Rare Coverage

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Source: China Media Project (3/24/25)
A River Crisis Prompts Rare Coverage
Chinese media outlets have taken the unusual step of more openly covering a toxic thallium contamination in Hunan’s Leishuei River, exposing a crisis kept under wraps for a full week.
by David Bandurski

According to rare reports today from Chinese media, an environmental crisis is unfolding along a stretch of the Leishuei River in Hunan province that impacts the prefectural city of Chenzhou (郴州), home to more than four million people. Abnormal concentrations of thallium — a highly toxic, colorless heavy metal that causes organ damage and cancer through water contamination — have reportedly prompted the city to activate a Level IV emergency response, and residents are stockpiling drinking water.

In neighboring Guangdong province, the Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报), a commercial newspaper published under the state-run Nanfang Daily Group, splashed the crisis across its front page today, with the headline: “Thallium Abnormality in Hunan’s Leishuei River.”

The front page of today’s edition of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily.

According to reports from both the Southern Metropolis Daily and Caixin Media, the crisis began nearly a week ago, on March 16, as automatic monitoring stations along a section of the river between the cities of Chenzhou and Hengyang, population 6.6 million, showed abnormal thallium levels, “causing trans-municipal pollution and threatening downstream water safety” (造成跨市污染，威胁下游饮水安全).

Continue reading A River Crisis Prompts Rare Coverage →

Liu Xiaoqing Studies–cfp

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Women’s Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal (A&HCI)
Special Issue: Liu Xiaoqing Studies
Guest Editor: Chang Liu

Chang Liu from Heidelberg University’s Centre for Transcultural Studies invites you to contribute to a special issue on what he terms “Liu Xiaoqing Studies” for the journal Women’s Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal, published by Taylor & Francis.

Liu Xiaoqing (刘晓庆, b. 1950) is arguably one of the most famous and controversial actresses to have risen to fame after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In a career spanning nearly five decades, while most of her peers have long been forgotten, she has remained highly visible and continues to enjoy widespread popularity. This special issue will explore how Liu Xiaoqing’s personal transformation and evolving star image interact with broader societal changes and the transformation of Chinese women’s identity in post-socialist China.

In Chinese language media, Liu Xiaoqing is often referred to as “a product of her time.” Born in 1950, shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she witnessed the height of the socialist era in the 1960s and experienced the full impact of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She began her career near the end of the Cultural Revolution and rose to fame during China’s early reform era in the 1980s. Initially a film actress, she later navigated the decline of China’s film industry in the 1990s and the rise of TV drama productions, balancing her career between big and small screens. Liu Xiaoqing also had firsthand experience with Chinese government’s tax law reforms, which led to her imprisonment in 2002. Yet, after her release, she made a remarkable comeback, restarting her career as a nameless background actress drifting between roles in Hengdian in 2003. Her personal life has been equally eventful, marked by several high-profile marriages and extramarital affairs. Most recently, at the age of 74, she was found to be dating someone several decades younger than herself, sparking a new wave of public debate on female sexuality. Throughout her career, many have speculated that her popularity would soon fade. However, her recent appearance on a reality TV show has earned her an entirely new generation of fans. It is nearly impossible to summarize her accomplishments in just one paragraph. Continue reading Liu Xiaoqing Studies–cfp →