Author: denton.2@osu.edu

China’s efforts to show off its vaccines is backfiring

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Source: NYT (1/25/21)
China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring.
Delays, inconsistent data, spotty disclosures and the country’s attacks on Western rivals have marred its ambitious effort to portray itself as a leader in global health.
By Sui-Lee Wee

Brazilian indigenous people waiting in São Paulo to receive the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinovac. Brazilian officials have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients.

Brazilian indigenous people waiting in São Paulo to receive the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinovac. Brazilian officials have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients. Credit…Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

China’s coronavirus vaccines were supposed to deliver a geopolitical win that showcased the country’s scientific prowess and generosity. Instead, in some places, they have set off a backlash.

Officials in Brazil and Turkey have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients. Disclosures about the Chinese vaccines has been slow and spotty. The few announcements that have trickled out suggest that China’s vaccines, while considered effective, cannot stop the virus as well as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, the American drugmakers.

In the Philippines, some lawmakers have criticized the government’s decision to purchase a vaccine made by a Chinese company called Sinovac. Officials in Malaysia and Singapore, which both ordered doses from Sinovac, have had to reassure their citizens that they would approve a vaccine only if it has been proven safe and effective. Continue reading China’s efforts to show off its vaccines is backfiring →

Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

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Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: A Comparative and Literary-Historical Reevaluation by Hongjian Wang (Cambria Press)
Cambria Sinophone World Series (General Editor: Victor H. Mair)
Hardback  9781621965435  $109.99  264pp. (Save 25% off hardback—use coupon code SAVE25).
E-book editions start at $32.99—Order from Cambria Press.

European Decadence, a controversial artistic movement that flourished mainly in late-nineteenth-century France and Britain, has inspired several generations of Chinese writers and literary scholars since it was introduced to China in the early 1920s. Translated into Chinese as tuifei, which has strong hedonistic and pessimistic connotations, the concept of Decadence has proven instrumental in multiple waves of cultural rebellion, but has also become susceptible to moralistic criticism. Many contemporary scholars have sought to rehabilitate Chinese Decadence but have found it difficult to dissociate it from the negative connotations of tuifei. More importantly, few have reconnected Decadence with its steadfast pursuit of intellectual pleasure and unique paradoxes or explored the specific socio-historical conditions and cultural dynamics that gave rise to Decadence.

This is the first comprehensive study of Decadence in Chinese literature since the early twentieth century. Standing at the intersection of comparative literature and cultural history, it transcends the framework of tuifei by locating European Decadence in its sociocultural context and uses it as a critical lens to examine Chinese Decadent literature and Chinese society. Its in-depth analysis reveals that some Chinese writers and literary scholars creatively appropriated the concept of Decadence for enlightenment purposes or to bid farewell to revolution. Meanwhile, the socialist system, by first fostering strong senses of elitism among certain privileged groups and then rescinding its ideological endorsement and material support, played a crucial role in the emergence of Chinese Decadent literature in the European sense. Continue reading Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture →

“Communist Rhapsody”

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Adrian Thieret’s translation of “Communist Rhapsody,” a story by Zheng Wenguang. “Communist Rhapsody” is a “scientific fantasy” written during the Great Leap Forward. I give a teaser below. For the entire story, go to: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/communist-rhapsody/. My thanks to Adrian Thieret for sharing his work with the MCLC community.

Kirk A. Denton, editor

Communist Rhapsody

By Zheng Wenguang 郑文光[1]

Translated by Adrian Thieret[2]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January 2021)

Editor’s foreword (1958): In this era in which one day equals twenty years, people want to know what our country, society, and people’s lives will look like twenty years from now. The writer of this piece has adopted a daringly imaginative style in writing this relatively scientific fantasy. We call it relatively scientific because what he says isn’t entirely baseless. We call it fantasy because to achieve these things still requires the hard work of the people. However, we anticipate that with the efforts of all China’s people, this fantasy can certainly be realized. Today there are only unimaginable miracles; there are no unrealizable fantasies. Because this work is fairly long, we will publish it in two parts.

Part 1: Our Country’s Thirtieth Anniversay

Everything happened so suddenly…

In the morning on the eve of the holiday, Director Zhang said to me: “Get your things together, Keling, we’re leaving on the Red Arrow to Beijing to watch the celebrations!”

I nearly jumped with joy. But Director Zhang told me sternly that before leaving I first had to go to the department to ascertain whether the second phase of the engineering plan had been approved.

We were advancing into the Xinjiang desert, and I was the engineer on the special “War on Deserts Committee.” Our work was, in the amusing words of Director Zhang, “to erase yellow from the map.” The work had actually begun nearly twenty years ago. Back then, people had flown in planes over the great Gobi Desert to seed it with hardy plants such as black saxaul bushes, oriental raisin trees, cacti, and camelthorns that might check the flow of sand, absorb moisture from far below the surface, and slowly form a new green oasis. [Read the entire story]

Taiwan Lit 1.1 and 1.2

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Taiwan Lit
January 23, 2021

Dear Friends,

We are happy to present the first two issues of Taiwan Lit (1.1 & 1.2). Established in the summer of 2020, Taiwan Lit aims to build a critical transnational forum, disseminate research ideas, and facilitate innovative modes for scholarly exchange on Taiwan literature and culture. The table-of-contents for both of the 2020 issues are attached below; together, they include six essays, four reviews, and two articles.

We want to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to our contributors.

One of this journal’s primary missions is to advocate a holistic view of Taiwan literary studies as a field constituted by scholars occupying different intellectual and aesthetic positions. These scholars’ methodological approaches and professional agendas are diverse and divergent, as found in any vibrant and thriving academic community. We are delighted that such productive plurality and dynamism are well captured in works that have appeared on our pages. Continue reading Taiwan Lit 1.1 and 1.2 →

Racism with Chinese characteristics

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Expanding the debate on racism. We need to talk about the roots of Chinese racism that gave us the Xinjiang genocide:

“Racism with Chinese Characteristics: How China’s imperial legacy underpins state racism and violence in Xinjiang.” By Magnus Fiskesjö. China Channel, Los Angeles Review of Books (January 22, 2021).

–Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

‘Touching fish’ craze

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Source: The Guardian (1/22/21)
‘Touching fish’ craze sees China’s youth find ways to laze amid ‘996’ work culture
An online movement is pushing back against the country’s ferocious work culture of long hours for seemingly little gain
By  in Taipei

The e-commerce company Pinduoduo celebrates its listing in Shanghai. It has been criticised for expecting employees to work very long hours.

The e-commerce company Pinduoduo celebrates its listing in Shanghai. It has been criticised for expecting employees to work very long hours. Photograph: VCG/Visual China Group/Getty Images

On the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: fill up a thermos with whisky, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink litres of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone.

“Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” said one netizen. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.”

Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching fish” [摸鱼]. The term is a play on a Chinese proverb: “muddy waters make it easy to catch fish” [浑水摸鱼], and the idea is to take advantage of the Covid crisis drawing management’s focus away from supervising their employees.

The author of a viral post at the centre of the conversation, Weibo user Massage Bear, described “touching fish” as a life attitude. Continue reading ‘Touching fish’ craze →

Lu Xun and World Literature–cfp

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CFP: Virtual Workshop “Lu Xun and World Literature” (2-3 July 2021)
Call for Papers: “Lu Xun and World Literature” Virtual Workshop
Time: 2-3 July 2021
Venue: Online Zoom
Hosted by: The Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Keynote speaker: Carlos Rojas (Duke University)

2021 marks the 140th anniversary of Lu Xun’s (1881­–1936) birth. The last decade witnessed the adoption of Lu Xun in world literature curriculum that calls for diversity and inclusivity in the twenty-first century, as well as the reconceptualization of Asia as a dynamic formation and interaction spanning East Asia (Northeast and Southeast), South Asian sub-continent, Central Asia, and Western Asia (non-African Middle East), complicating territorial fixation and East-West binaries. It is timely to re-evaluate the multifaceted role of Lu Xun as a writer, translator, and reader in the global circulation and translation of texts and ideas in the early twentieth century and interwar period. Continue reading Lu Xun and World Literature–cfp →

Research integrity questions for top academicians

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Fascinating blogpost today by Leonid Schneider, on a top Chinese academician and scholar appointed chairman of research integrity in November 2019 … and who now, along with some other less-than-careful top scholars, is getting “a slap on the wrist.”

Leonid Scheider, Research integrity: Communist Party gives Xuetao Cao, Meiyu Geng, Hongliang Li a slap on the wrist. For Better Science (January 21, 2021).

It’s based partly on this Twitter thread today from Elizabeth Bik. This is hard science — but, fascinating for all of us, since it reflects the corrupt state of the Chinese academy.

I personally could not resist adding a comment about Chen Quanguo, the Politburo member currently overseeing the genocide in Xinjiang, who in 2019 was outed as having plagiarized much of his own PhD thesis! My 3 notes on MCLC, from 2019: Continue reading Research integrity questions for top academicians →

Women Writing China

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Li Juan, a prominent Chinese essayist, will be discussing her experiences as female writer living and writing in a rural Chinese community.

About this Event

In partnership with the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, Sinoist Books brings you Women Writing China: Female Authors and Chinese Literature, featuring Li Juan, an acclaimed Chinese essayist writing from the extreme rurality of the Altay region of Xinjiang, and Christopher Payne, translator of Li Juan’s latest book.

We will be discussing Li Juan’s writing, specifically Distant Sunflower Fields (遥远的向日葵地), which charts the lives of three generations of women in Li Juan’s family; what is it to be a woman living in such a community, and how have her experiences as a female writer influenced and taken shape in text?

Christopher Payne will also be speaking about the intricacies of translation and his work with Li Juan. Continue reading Women Writing China →

Paper Republic News #2

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Source: Paper Republic (1/21/21)
Read all about it! – News #2
By Jack Hargreaves
I

Here it is, what you’ve all been waiting for, the definitive round-up of all things Chinese / literature / translation / everything in-between. It was brilliant after the first instalment to receive requests for newsletter subscription, which is definitely our aim — to have this drop in your inbox every two weeks — but for now it remains in its nascent form. If there’s anything you’d like to see more of, less of, just the right amount of, please comment below. If you’ve stumbled upon news we’ve missed, or on any stories or extracts (I’ve found zero (EDIT: two)), pop them in the comments too.

See you again in two weeks!

News:
1. Acclaimed Chinese-language writer Yeng Pway Ngon 英培安 dies aged 73 — Author of Unrest (tr. Jeremy Tiang), Lonely Face (tr. Natascha Bruce) and much, much more. RIP.
2. Northwest Review open for submissions — they “really, really want to see as much translation as possible for Winter 2021!!” Continue reading Paper Republic News #2 →

Rain in Plural review

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Source: EcoTheoReview (1/18/21)
Unwinding Underground: A Review of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s Rain in Plural
By Hannah VanderHart

Rain in Plural by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Princeton University Press, 2020. 105 pages. $17.95.

The multiple layers and the angles of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s fourth collection of poetry, Rain in Plural, offer many doors though which a reader new to Sze-Lorrain’s work might enter: music, philosophy, dance—along with homages and allusions to the work of other writers, other artists. Even before opening Rain in Plural, there is a door within another door: the book’s cover featuring an image of the painting “Déjà vu, Déjà Blue” (2004) by Howard Hodgkin, the title of which references the 1980 power ballad by Dionne Warwick.¹ The painting itself features oversized, multi-layered blues curving in large brush strokes over the carved figure of a square (a visual door). Through this rich visual entrance that reimagines music via a visual art form—a fitting welcome to the poems that follow—the reader meets a speaker immediately in the poem, “More Vulnerable Than Others.” “So what if I break / I will continue to eat mud / unwind underground,” the poem opens. The first lines catch the reader off-guard—if one has assumed “the others” to be other humans, or if one is not prepared for a slide into metaphor. Poems are notoriously sleight of hand this way—their meanings shift underfoot; the ground is not stable, but the net of language itself. To eat mud and “unwind underground” points to growth and thriving that cannot be seen, that is below ground. It opens up, among other things, the idea of not-knowing—how little the reader knows about what is going on even in the natural world around them, the plant world of the yard or the park or even the houseplant, let alone inside another human being. The sheer agency and authority of the speaker is enviable, the poem’s verbs acknowledging the botanical power to break and live on (and even propagate) through breakage, to flourish underground, as well as to

mask banned signs

chew holes in every tall grapevine

breed my roots after a nap

spread fronds as free

clothes free money Continue reading Rain in Plural review →

The Roots of Anti-Asian Racism in the US

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Alexa Alice Joubin, “The Roots of Anti-Asian Racism in the U.S.: The Pandemic and ‘Yellow Peril’.” Global Social Security Review Vol. 15 (Winter 2020): 50-59.

Abstract: COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism—the demonization of a group of people based on their perceived social value—in the United States in the cultural and political life. Offering strategies for inclusion during and after the pandemic, this article analyzes the history and language of racism, including the notion of yellow peril. Racialized thinking and racial discourses are institutionalized as power relations, take the form of political marginalization of minority groups, and cause emotional distress and physical harm.

Journal website: https://www.kihasa.re.kr/web/publication/periodical/list.do?menuId=53&tid=38&bid=991

Shakespeare and East Asia book launch

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Join us for a book launch on how Shakespeare is connected to theater, film, and literature in East Asia.
Fri, February 19, 2021 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST

Book giveaway: Join us and ask a question during the event to win a free book.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shakespeare-and-east-asia-tickets-136547261535

How did Kurosawa influence George Lucas’ Star Wars? Why do critics repeatedly use the adjective Shakespearean to describe Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019)? How do East Asian cinema and theatre portray vocal disability and transgender figures? The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs Book Launch Series, National Resource Center, and Institute for Korean Studies are proud to present a lecture by Alexa Alice Joubin on her latest book, Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press). The talk will be followed by a live Q&A with the audience moderated by NRC Program Associate, Richard J. Haddock.

Li Tuo’s “The Pandemic and Contemporary Capitalism”

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I’m happy to announce that Boundary 2has released my translation of Li Tuo’s provocative interview, “The Pandemic and Contemporary Capitalism,” originally published in the Beijing Cultural Review 文化纵横 last summer. The interview ranges across a broad series of topics, but, at its core, engages the profound difficulties for critical thinking in the contemporary world. How, Li Tuo asks, do we think about capitalism today in the wake of its long, entangled history with struggles for socialism? Does Bernie Sanders or America’s Occupy Movement offer resources for thinking the future otherwise? If not, then where can we look? Finally, where does China figure in all of this and why do so many thinkers exclude it from their analyses altogether?

Regards,
Harlan Chambers