Author: denton.2@osu.edu

Chinese farmer who live-streamed her life

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Source: The New Yorker (10/29/18)
The Chinese Farmer Who Live-Streamed Her Life and Made a Fortune
By Yi-Ling Liu

Liu Mama, a loud-mouthed, ruddy-cheeked Northern farmer with millions of online followers, is one of many Chinese live-streamers participating in a virtual gold rush. Liu Mama / Kuaishou

Three years ago, Liu Mama was an unremarkable middle-aged farmer from the Dongbei region, in northeastern China. Then she started presenting her life on the social-media platform Kuaishou. Liu Mama’s son-in-law, who would later assume the role of her trusty cameraman, introduced her to the live-streaming craze, and they decided to try it out, for laughs. The first videos, each less than a minute long, show Liu, short and squat, black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, dressed in a red mian ao (a cotton-padded jacket)—the archetype of the good farmer’s housewife—sitting at the kitchen table. She’s chewing on pork ribs and fish heads while composing crude rhymes about the glories of rural life. “Chowin’ on a pork bone / mouth covered in oil / Bringin’ me good luck / two years on,” she hollers between bites. Continue reading Chinese farmer who live-streamed her life →

William and Mary position–reminder

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Reminder: The review date will begin on 3 November 2018.

The Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at William & Mary seeks applications for a tenure track position at the Assistant Professor level in premodern Chinese literature and culture. This scholar would work primarily on Chinese literature and culture before the Qing period (1644–1911). The applicant is expected to establish and maintain an active research program.

Teaching expectation is two courses per semester. The successful candidate will possess the skills to teach current course offerings, such as Survey of Traditional Chinese Literature in English and Art of Chinese Poetry. He or she can develop new courses in the area of premodern Chinese literature and culture under the existing course titles, such as Freshman Seminar; Introduction to Chinese Cultural Studies; Topics (or Advanced Topics) in Chinese Language, Civilization, or Literature; and Advanced Seminar.  Candidates should also be able to teach courses in Mandarin Chinese at all levels as needed. Opportunities exist to contribute to our dynamic new general education curriculum (https://www.wm.edu/as/undergraduate/coll/index.php) and interdisciplinary programs such as Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Continue reading William and Mary position–reminder →

‘Add oil’ makes it into the OED (2,3)

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I also have the similar question as Tina: the usage of “jiayou” as a cheer should be much earlier than 1960s. According to this article, the slang was first created on Qinghua campus in the 1920s, and later popularized by the CCP in the 1930s. But it’s still not clear if the “you” originally means “cooking oil” or “machinery oil,” or both.

Cheers,

Jin Liu <jin.liu@modlangs.gatech.edu>

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Came across this on WeChaot about the origin of “add oil.” I did not try to verify its authenticity. Some might find it interesting.

Liang Shi
Miami University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feng Zikai exhibit

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Source: China Daily (10/26/18)
National Art Museum commemorates painter Feng Zikai

A painting by Feng Zikai. Photo/namoc.org

The National Art Museum of China recently opened an exhibition of Feng Zikai’s paintings to honor the 120th anniversary of his birth. Having achieved a unique style in painting, writing and translation, Feng is a prestigious literatus of the 20th century China.

Three collections of his works are on display. Feng’s unpretentious tone and strokes indicate his reflection about the social reality and also his friendship with Master Hong Yi, a Chinese Buddhism monk and an artist.

The exhibit runs through Nov 4.

If you go: 9 am to 5 pm (closed on Mondays). National Art Museum, 1 Wusi Avenue, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.

‘Add oil’ makes it to the OED (1)

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Just a note that while the article on ‘jiayou’ being added to the OED states “jiayou” is believed to have originated as a cheer at the Macau Grand Prix during the 1960s, readers of early 1950s PRC-reportage will be familiar with the use of the phrase in stories centred on mutual encouragement of comrades, particularly related to campaigns to overcome nature/environmental hardships when opening up ‘virgin land’ or bringing film to the countryside.

I’ve often wondered if the phrase was a reflection of a vernacular term being taken up in CCP reportage, or if the term emerged to reflect particular modes of socialist modernization premised on incorporation of industrialization/machinery/oil & electricity into everyday life.

Tina Chen <Tina.Chen@umanitoba.ca>

Cornell halts China university ties over academic freedom

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Source: Financial Times (10/27/18)
Censorship: Cornell halts China university ties over curbs on academic freedom
US institution says Renmin punished students for supporting workers’ rights
By Yuan Yuan in Beijing

Cornell University’s campus in Ithaca, New York. Cornell’s industrial and labour relations school has had a partnership with China’s Renmin University since 2014 © Dreamstime

Cornell University of the US has suspended two academic exchanges and a research programme with China’s Renmin University because of concerns over academic freedoms, the first case in years of a foreign university halting a partnership with a Chinese counterpart for such reasons.

The move came after several students of Renmin, a top ranked Chinese institution, said they were punished by the school for speaking out online about workers’ rights and for supporting workers’ attempts to unionise in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen this summer, Cornell told the Financial Times. Continue reading Cornell halts China university ties over academic freedom →

Baghdad and Beijing in Book Art

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The Program in Chinese Literature and Culture at EALAC and CSSAAME Journal presents
Baghdad and Beijing in Book Art
a lecture by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, American University of Beirut.
Thursday, November 1, 2018 6:10pm-7:30pm
403 Kent Hall
Columbia University

This talk focuses on the work of the Iraqi artist Rafa Nasiri (1940-2014) and his autobiographical account Rihlati ila Sin (My Journey to China, 2012). It explores cross-cultural encounters between Baghdad and Beijing in the context of geopolitical change after the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Iraq Revolution of 1958.

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is an associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the American University of Beirut. She was a fellow in residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2017-18. Her research centers on modern Arabic literature, book culture and art, museum and collecting practices, private libraries, cultural/intellectual history and memory, and aesthetics and politics. Her publications include Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books ed. with May Muzaffar (2016); Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (2012); Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World ed. with John Pedro Schwartz (2012); Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered (ed.) in MIT EJMES Vol. 7 (2007); in addition to numerous book chapters and journal articles. She is currently working on a biography of the Palestinian writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and an edited volume on the Syrian playwright and public intellectual Saadallah Wannous.

Moderated by Professor Lydia H. Liu

Posted by: Harlan Chambers <hdc2116@columbia.edu>

An evening of East Asian vocal arts

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Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about an upcoming East Asian vocal concert at Swarthmore College on Nov. 3, 8-9:30PM. Guest artists from Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul will deliver the world’s greatest cultural treasures—Kunqu, Noh and Pansori—in one evening, with selection of the most canonical compositions: Tanci (The Ballad from Palace of Lasting Life), Kiyotsune and Hagomoro (The Feather Mantle), and Ch’unhyanga (The Song of a Faithful Wife). This concert highlights these seamlessly merged, musically invaluable arts. The concert is free and open to the public. If you are in Philadelphia area during the next weekend, please let me know and I will reserve seats for you.

I myself will be the vocalist in the Kunqu performance. While both the Noh and Pansori singers are in the lineage of UNESCO’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage” in their native soils, respectively, as a Kunqu singer I will represent the branch of the Chinese heritage that has almost been forgotten–my master of Kunqu, Mr. ZHU Fu, studied Kunqu under a disciple of Aisin Gioro Putong, the brother of China’s last emperor, in the last few years of the Cultural Revolution, and passed on all that he learned from Ye to me in 2002, before I came to the US to pursue my Ph.D. degree at the University of Chicago.

There will also be a reception after the concert, which offers opportunities to mingle and communicate with guest artists.

Best wishes,
Peng Xu <pxu1@swarthmore.edu>

Ball Lightning

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Source: China Daily (10/26/18)
The science of a good story
By Mei Jia

The English version of Liu Cixin’s Ball Lightning hits the global book market in August.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Two months after the English version of Ball Lightning hit the international book market in August, sci-fi writer Liu Cixin headed for the 2018 Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany.

There, following the book fair, Liu met with fans and gave talks and interviews at a university, in an old coal mine and several more venues across four German cities over the course of a week. According to local reports, he was received enthusiastically, as the second book of his Three Body trilogy, The Dark Forest, was still hot off the presses after its German-language release.

This time, however, as well as his critically acclaimed trilogy, Liu is armed with another recently translated novel－a story about tragedy, obsession and cutting-edge weapons.

The story begins on Chen’s 14th birthday, when his parents are killed in front of him, turned to ash after being hit by ball lightning.

Chen makes it his life’s mission to uncover the mysteries of the natural phenomenon in college, trying to figure out the mathematical pattern behind its random occurrence and movements. Continue reading Ball Lightning →

Revolutionary Bodies

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Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy
By Emily Wilcox
University of California Press, 2018

Revolutionary Bodies is the first English-language primary source–based history of concert dance in the People’s Republic of China. Combining over a decade of ethnographic and archival research, Emily Wilcox analyzes major dance works by Chinese choreographers staged over an eighty-year period from 1935 to 2015. Using previously unexamined film footage, photographic documentation, performance programs, and other historical and contemporary sources, Wilcox challenges the commonly accepted view that Soviet-inspired revolutionary ballets are the primary legacy of the socialist era in China’s dance field. The digital edition of this title includes nineteen embedded videos of selected dance works discussed by the author.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Bamboo and Silk–cfp

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Bamboo and Silk is a peer-reviewed academic journal sponsored by the Center of Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts of Wuhan University and published by Brill. It is co-edited by Professor Chen Wei of Wuhan University, China and Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy of the University of Chicago, USA. The journal is published in print and also digitally available at http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/24689246.

The journal focuses on unearthed Chinese bamboo and silk manuscripts from the pre-Qin period and Qin, Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties. It publishes research related to character identification and textual reconstitution, and studies of the social, political, economic and legal systems as well as ideology, culture, language, customs and other aspects reflected by these manuscripts.Bamboo and Silk publishes research articles, overviews, and book reviews that reflect the latest international developments concerning new Chinese manuscript finds. The journal publishes two issues every year, and selects articles for translation into English from the Chinese journal Jianbo 簡帛 (est. 2006) in addition to accepting new contributions in English. All contributions are peer reviewed by experts in the field. Continue reading Bamboo and Silk–cfp →

The Chalk Cycle at MIT

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hi colleagues,

letting you know about our fall theater production at MIT that just opened. if you are in boston area this weekend and want to come, please let me know and i will reserve a ticket for you. we are sold out tonite but have a few tickets for tomorrow (saturday) nite and some for sunday matinee at 2pm.

i wrote/directed the play—it is based on the yuan drama ‘the chalk circle’ and brecht’s adaptation ‘the caucasian chalk circle’ and the 1999-2007 custody case of anna mae he.

running time is two hours, and it’s appropriate for audiences 13 years old and up.

warm wishes,

claire conceison Continue reading The Chalk Cycle at MIT →

Role of Han civilians in Xinjiang repression (1)

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Thanks for bringing it up, I was also just thinking, this needs posting! I think Darren Byler’s excellent piece is important, and has gotten a lot of praise. And actually, Darren Byler has written previously on the forced cultural assimilation campaign in Xinjiang, on his excellent blog: https://livingotherwise.com/2018/02/23/images-red-han-culture-uyghur-performers-chinese-new-year/

And, here is yesterday’s 5 min. radio interview with Byler, on this same topic: https://www.pri.org/file/2018-10-25/chinese-civilians-occupy-uighur-homes

How do we talk about these things? Words like “paternalistic”, “patronizing”, “intrusive,” etc. do not seem to be enough to capture the revolting we-know-best attitude that animates these Chinese settler-colonist home-spies as they carry out their sorting of which families to break up, which children will lose their parents and go to brainwashing school, and so on. In Sweden we use the German word Besserwisser, but, it usually refers to an eccentric who’s annoying but not really consequential. It can’t quite capture Chinese Communist agents who put you behind barbed wire for being who you are. I don’t know what words would suffice to describe this campaign. Continue reading Role of Han civilians in Xinjiang repression (1) →

Beida president replaced with party chief

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Source: Radio Free Asia (10/25/18)
China Replaces Head of Peking University With Communist Party Chief
RFA

Hao Ping (L), the new president of Peking University, and predecessor Lin Jianhua, who was removed amid a campaign the Chinese Communist Party to increase control over higher education. Peking University

China’s ruling Communist Party has appointed its own representative to head one of the country’s most prestigious universities, as the administration of President Xi Jinping continues its ideological crackdown on academic life.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, on Tuesday announced the appointment of Hao Ping as the new president of Peking University,” state news agency Xinhua reported in a brief announcement.

He will replace Lin Jianhua, who was removed from the position.” Continue reading Beida president replaced with party chief →