Author: denton.2@osu.edu

The Landscape of Historical Memory

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If I might indulge in a little shameless self-promotion…

The Landscape of Historical Memory: The Politics of Museums and Memorial Culture in Post–Martial Law Taiwan (歷史記憶的景觀：戒嚴後的台灣博物館和紀念文化的政治意義)
Kirk A. Denton
Hong Kong University Press (March 2021)
Hardback 978-988-8528-57-8

The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward the role of politics—especially political parties—in the establishment, administration, architectural design, and historical narratives of museums. It is framed around the wrangling between the “blue camp” (the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and its supporters) and the “green camp” (Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, and its supporters) over what facets of the past should be remembered and how they should be displayed in museums. Organized into chapters focused on particular types of museums and memorial spaces (such as archaeology museums, history museums, martyrs’ shrines, war museums, memorial halls, literature museums, ethnology museums, and ecomuseums), the book presents a broad overview of the state of museums in Taiwan in the past three decades. The case of Taiwan museums tells us much about Cold War politics and its legacy in East Asia; the role of culture, history, and memory in shaping identities in the “postcolonial” landscape of Taiwan; the politics of historical memory in an emergent democracy, especially in counterpoint to the politics of museums in the People’s Republic of China, which continues to be an authoritarian single party state; and the place of museums in a neoliberal economic climate.

Kirk A. Denton is a professor of Chinese language and literature at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (2014) and The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling (1998). He is also editor of the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.

Ai Xiaoming and the Quarantine Counter-Diary

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Source: LARB (3/12/21)
Ai Xiaoming and the Quarantine Counter-Diary
By Thomas Chen

Huiming road ,Wuchang District, Wuhan during 2019-nCoV coronavirus outbreak. Wikepedia Commons.

THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK has spawned the resurgence of one literary form above all: the diary. Under variously imposed quarantines, people all over the world have turned to self-writing and recording to deal with the unprecedented state of isolation.

The “lockdown diary” first surged in China, when the city of Wuhan went into lockdown in late January 2020. The most famous example is the one posted online by the award-winning author Fang Fang, who grew up in Wuhan. Her diary, kept daily for 60 straight days and read by millions of people all over the country, was translated into English by Michael Berry and published as Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. [Editor’s note: For more on Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary, see the review that Chris Madden wrote for the Hong Kong Review of Books, a Los Angeles Review of Books channel, which appeared July 20, 2020, here: https://hkrbooks.com/2020/07/20/wuhan-diary/]

But another online diary from Wuhan is just as noteworthy. Ai Xiaoming is a prolific filmmaker of over two dozen documentaries. Between the first, Taishi Village (2005), which is about a local government trying to sell collective land to developers, and the most recent, Jiabiangou Elegy (2017), which revisits a labor reform camp during the massive famine of the late 1950s, her documentaries have concerned grassroots activists, violence against women, the AIDS epidemic, the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and the plight of migrant workers. Born and raised in Wuhan, she was there when COVID-19 erupted and trapped her in the city. Continue reading Ai Xiaoming and the Quarantine Counter-Diary →

Between Mobility and Place-making (1)

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“Between Mobility and Place-making: The Worlds of Southeast Asia in Modern Chinese Literature”
A virtual workshop in three sessions, beginning on March 19 8-10 PM EDT (March 20 8:10 AM SST), held over Zoom (registration required)

Zoom registration link: https://duke.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYlfu2rrj8sH9cJ3jP4KNyLRZd6vTqkXhgc

March 19 (Fri.), 8-10PM EDT [(March 20 8-10 AM SST)]

David Der-wei Wang (Harvard), “Of Wind, Soil, and Water: The Mesology of Sinophone Southeast Asian Literature ”

Shuang Shen (PSU), “Mahua and Sinhua Literature as Inter-imperial Formation”

March 25 (Thu.), 8-10PM EDT [(March 26 8-10 AM SST)]

Kien Ket Lim (NCTU), “Deconstructing the Sinophone”

Khor Boon Eng (UTAR), “Counter-discourse: The Strategy of the Minorities Representation in Sinophone Malaysian Literature”

March 26 (Fri.), 8-10PM EDT [(March 27 8-10 AM SST)]

Brian Bernards (USC), “The Iridescent Corner: Sinophone Flash Fiction in Singapore”

Carlos Rojas (Duke), “Becoming Semi-wild: Chang Kuei-hsing’s Monkey Cup”

Taiwan Arts program administrator position

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The University of Washington is looking for a Taiwan Arts Program Administrator to design and direct a new Taiwan Arts Program. As part of our new MOFA grant, the new Taiwan Arts Program under the Taiwan Studies Program will offer national events open to the public focused on Taiwan arts and culture. We define arts and culture broadly, including high culture, popular culture, folk culture, cultural history, indigenous culture and contemporary cultural movements in Taiwan.

The Taiwan Arts Program Administrator will have an opportunity to direct and grow an ambitious new initiative at the intersection of contemporary culture, higher education, and academic studies of Taiwan.  The Administrator will be in charge of finding and engaging culture partners, such as film directors, literary authors, and dance troupes to perform or speak for US audiences, and will have significant ability to shape the program.

As part of the role, the Program Administrator will also offer one academic course on Taiwan per year on an arts or humanities field.  This could include, for example, literature, poetry, cultural studies, art history, performance studies, film and media studies, cultural anthropology, etc.  The ideal candidate will have academic training, preferably a PhD in one of these fields.

The position will remain open until filled.  For more details and to apply, please see the job listing in UW Human Resources.

Trump as you’ve never seen him before (1)

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Interesting piece. Two supplements are needed, though.

1.Some of the attraction to Trump in China comes because, not in spite of, his readiness to oppose Beijing.

2.Countless images of Mao were produced less because he was “an artistic muse” than because he was Chairman of the Communist Party of China.

Perry Link <eplink@ucr.edu>

Trump as you’ve never seen him before

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Source: NYT (3/12/21)
Trump as You’ve Never Seen Him Before
A furniture maker and decorator in China created a stir — and inspired copycats — by casting a ceramic sculpture of the former president in a meditative pose that evokes the Buddha.
By Steven Lee Myers

A cast of “Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise,” by the Chinese sculptor Hong Jinshi. The artwork, as well as countless imitations, can be purchased on the e-commerce site Taobao. Credit…Xiaoya

There is no shortage of merchandise in China devoted to the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. There are commemorative coins, toilet brushes and cat toys; countless figurines, including updated versions of Mount Rushmore, plus all those flags, bumper stickers and hats from campaigns past and future. (Does anyone still believe all that “Make America Great Again” stuff was really made in America?)

Enter the Trump Buddha.

A furniture maker and decorator in southern China has cast a sculpture of Mr. Trump in ceramic whiteware, his legs crossed and hands serenely resting in his lap. He is draped in a monk’s robes, his head is lowered and his eyes are closed, as if in meditative repose, an emotional state not typically associated with the 45th president of the United States.

The artist calls it “Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise.” Continue reading Trump as you’ve never seen him before →

PAMLA 2021 Asian lit and culture session–cfp

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The 118th Annual Conference of PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada between Thursday, November 11 and Sunday, November 14, 2021 at the Sahara Las Vegas Hotel and Virtually (Online). The Asian Literature and Culture session welcomes proposals on a wide variety of topics pertaining to Asian literature and culture, with particular consideration granted to papers that engage with the conference theme of “City of God, City of Destruction.” Other topics of particular interest include but are not limited to:

  • Asian urbanities
  • cyberpunk
  • ecocriticism
  • geopolitics of storytelling
  • memory, trauma, nostalgia
  • place-making and identity (re)formation
  • spaces of encounter
  • urbanization, migration, and displacement
  • utopias and dystopias
  • new readings of classical literature

Submissions may be made at the following URL by April 15:  https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/18212

For more information about the conference, please visit https://www.pamla.org/pamla2021/

Ying Bao

The hyperreal life of Chen Qiufan

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Source: Wired (3/9/21)
Sci-Fi Writer or Prophet? The Hyperreal Life of Chen Qiufan
As China’s science fiction authors are elevated to the status of oracles, Qiufan’s career—and his genre’s place in society—have gone through the looking glass.
By Yi-Ling Liu

Chen Qiufan

Chen Qiufan wants his writing to provoke a sense of both wonder and estrangement, like a “fun-house mirror, reflecting real light in a way that is more dazzling to the eyes.” PHOTOGRAPH: YILAN DENG

WHEN CHEN QIUFAN took a trip to the southwest Chinese province of Yunnan 15 years ago, he noticed that time seemed to slow down as he reached the city of Lijiang. Chen was a recent college graduate with a soul-sucking real estate job in the ­pressure-cooker metropolis of Shenzhen, and Lijiang was a backpacker’s refuge. Wandering through the small city, he was enchanted by the serrated rows of snow-capped mountains on the horizon and the schools of fish swimming through meandering canals. But he was also unnerved by the throngs of city dwellers like himself—burned out, spiritually lost, adrift. He wove his observations together into a short story called “The Fish of Lijiang,” about a depressed office worker who travels to a vacation town, only to discover that everything is artificially engineered—from the blue sky to the fish in the streams to the experience of time itself.

Chen has since gone on to pen many more stories, win virtually every sci-fi literary award in China, and establish himself as a leading voice among the country’s growing roster of acclaimed writers in the genre. But unlike Liu Cixin, the lionized author of The Three Body Problem, who grapples with the faraway grandeur of outer space, Chen is drawn more to the interior lives of characters struggling to anchor themselves in a moment of accelerated change—much the way nearly anyone in China struggles to anchor themselves today. His work is often described as “science fiction realism.” Continue reading The hyperreal life of Chen Qiufan →

Media and Mediation in East Asia summer institute–cfp

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Resident Scholarships: Summer Institute for East Asian Studies, University of Pittsburgh, June 2, 3, 4, 2021:

Media and Mediation in East Asia: Assemblages and Global Flows. Applications for a 3-day intensive virtual academic workshop are invited from early career scholars who have received their PhD after 2015. Eight scholars in a range of disciplines will be selected from a pool of international applicants. Scholars will engage with leading East Asian studies faculty to workshop article-length manuscripts in preparation for peer review journal publication. Presentations during the workshop will highlight research and teaching objectives. Selected fellows will join Dr. Charles Exley, Dr. Kun Qian and other faculty from the University of Pittsburgh as well as distinguished senior scholars Dr. Joshua Neves (Concordia), Dr. Daisuke Miyao (UCSD) and Dr. Weihong Bao (UC Berkeley), for three days, June 2 – June 4, 2021. The workshop will be conducted remotely via Zoom. Scholars who participate in the program will receive a $1000 honorarium. Each scholar will give a public presentation on current research, submit a polished draft of work in progress for review and critique by a panel of peers and faculty, and prepare a draft syllabus for the development of a course on this year’s theme: Media and Mediation in East Asia: Assemblages and Global Flows (www.ucis.pitt.edu/asc/SIEAS). Scholars will participate in daily lectures, panel discussions, workshops, and related formal activities, as well as informal networking and social events. Applications must include a cover letter with details on research interests and experience, a CV, a writing sample, and the names and contact information of two references. Please send these materials by April 10th to Dr. Joseph S. Alter, Director of the Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh at asia@pitt.edu. Early applications are strongly encouraged. Selected applicants will be notified by April 15, 2021.

Westerners fear traveling to China

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Source: CNN (3/9/21)
Westerners are increasingly scared of traveling to China as threat of detention rises
By Jenni Marsh, CNN

Image

(CNN)Jeff Wasserstrom is a self-proclaimed China specialist who is seriously considering never returning to China — at least, he says, not while President Xi Jinping is in power.

The American professor, who for decades made multiple trips a year to China and was last there in 2018, hasn’t focused his career on Tibet or Taiwan — lightning-rod issues which attract Beijing’s ire at lightning-quick speed — but he has written about cultural diversity and student protests in mainland China, and appeared on panels with people he says the Communist Party is “clearly upset with.”

Three years ago, that made the California-based academic wonder if his visa application to China might be rejected.

Today, it makes him consider whether crossing the border risks his indefinite arbitrary detention. The chance of that outcome, Wasserstrom says, might be “pretty minimal,” but the consequences are so grave — those detained can be locked up for years without contact with their families or a trial date — he is not willing to gamble.

And he is not alone. Continue reading Westerners fear traveling to China →

China’s vegan revolution

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Source: The Guardian (3/9/21)
China’s appetite for meat fades as vegan revolution takes hold
Concerns over carbon emissions and food crises are fuelling a move away from meat consumption as a symbol of wealth
By Crystal Reid

A person walks past an advertisement for plant-based products at a KFC store in Hangzhou

An advertisement for plant-based products at a KFC store in Hangzhou. International and domestic chains are expanding their range of meat alternatives. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

The window of a KFC in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou hosts the image of a familiar mound of golden nuggets. But this overflowing bucket sporting Colonel Sanders’ smiling face is slightly different. The bucket is green and the nuggets within it are completely meat free.

Over the last couple of years, after many years of rising meat consumption by China’s expanding middle classes for whom eating pork every day was a luxurious sign of new financial comforts, the green shoots of a vegan meat revolution have begun to sprout. Although China still consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork, and boasts a meat market valued at $86bn (£62bn), plant-based meat substitutes are slowing carving out a place for themselves among a new generation of consumers increasingly alarmed by food crises such as coronavirus and African swine fever.

China’s most cosmopolitan cities are now home to social media groups, websites and communities dedicated to meat-free lifestyles. VegeRadar, for example, has compiled comprehensive maps of vegetarian and vegan restaurants all across China. According to a report by the Good Food Institute, China’s plant-based meat market was estimated at 6.1bn yuan (£675m) in 2018 and projected to grow between 20 and 25% annually. Continue reading China’s vegan revolution →

Backlash in China against Chloé Zhao

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Still waiting to find out–and really would like to know–who is responsible for the censorship of the Filmmaker magazine article? Was it some American company or agent or film industry, which would be a brutal new sign of the Hollywood kowtowing to China … or was it selfcensorship, or a combination of all of the above? Or was it direct Chinese state intervention somehow? See here for a side by side comparison of the 8 year old censored Filmmaker paragraph mentioned by the NYT, on China as a place full of lies.–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: NYT (3/6/21)
In China, a Backlash Against the Chinese-Born Director of ‘Nomadland’
Days after winning a Golden Globe for the film, Chloé Zhao was pilloried online for past remarks about China.
By Amy Qin and Amy Chang Chien

Chloé Zhao, the director of “Nomadland,” at the drive-in premiere of the film last year in Pasadena, Calif., last year. Credit…Amy Sussman/Getty Images

When Chloé Zhao won the Golden Globe for best director for her film “Nomadland” last Sunday, becoming the first Asian woman to receive that prize, Chinese state news outlets were jubilant. “The Pride of China!” read one headline, referring to Ms. Zhao, who was born in Beijing.

But the mood quickly shifted. Chinese online sleuths dug up a 2013 interview with an American film magazine in which Ms. Zhao criticized her native country, calling it a place “where there are lies everywhere.” And they zeroed in on another, more recent interview with an Australian website in which Ms. Zhao, who received much of her education in the United States and now lives there, was quoted as saying: “The U.S. is now my country, ultimately.”

The Australian site later added a note saying that it had misquoted Ms. Zhao, and that she had actually said “not my country.” But the damage was done. Continue reading Backlash in China against Chloé Zhao →

Afrolit for China

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Source: Bruce Humes.com (3/6/21)
Coming soon to China: African Poetry, Novellas and Parables Translated Direct from Hausa and Swahili
By Bruce Humes

2021 looks set to be a banner year for what I refer to in shorthand as “Afrolit4China,” i.e., African writing in Chinese translation targeting readers in the People’s Republic.

According to the latest statistics from the sole online mini-database in this niche, the bilingual African Writing in Chinese Translation (非洲文学: 中文译本), now lists 240 translated works by 101 African authors. This shows a robust 64 percent increase over the 146 titles in early 2018.

Last year’s batch included psychological thrillers My Sister, the Serial Killer (我的妹妹是连环杀手) by Oyinkan Braithwaite, and Alain Mabanckou’s Mémoires de porc-épic (豪猪回忆录), novels that were penned in colonial languages, English and French, respectively.

But East China Normal University Press (华东师范大学出版社) has announced that two of its first three titles in the VI HORAE Africa Series (六点非洲系列) are rendered into Chinese direct from languages indigenous to Africa. None of the customary “re-treads” here via the intermediary of English. According to Commissioning Editor Shi Meijun (施美均), the Chinese translators learned African languages as undergraduates, and several have lived and studied in Africa.

e5a48fe78fadc2b7e7bd97e4bcafe789b9e8af97e6ad8ce98089e99b86-e5b9b3e99da2e5b081.jpg

Shaaban’s poetry in bilingual format

[Note:  Most of the English-language titles below are for the convenience of Anglophone readers of this article; several of these works do not exist in English]

Selected Poems of Shaaban bin Robert (夏班·罗伯特诗歌选集) is translated from the original Swahili, published in a bilingual Swahili-Chinese format, and features graphics by African illustrators. The reader need only scan a QR code to access online recitations of the verse in Swahili.

Due out soon is The Body Will Tell You: Selected Works from the Hausa (身体会告诉你: 非洲豪萨语文学作品选).  Four nouvellas make up the first part of the book, while the second consists of two hundred short parables — inspired by West African oral folk literature as well as Aesop’s fables — compiled and retold by Yusufu Yunusa. Continue reading Afrolit for China →

Global racism, Chinese racism and genocide

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My new podcast interview on Chinese and global racism:

“Conversation with Dr. Magnus Fiskesjö: Impact of Chinese Racism.” Voice of East Turkistan. March 4, 2021.

It’s based on my online article:

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

ps. for those who speak Uyghur: A similar interview translated into the Uyghur, published January 29, 2021, on Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur service.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>