We just had good news. Marine Brossard, Ph. D. student in our university, had a call with the French embassy and said she was well. We have no further details for the moment.
Thanks for your mobilization, and a happy Christmas to all of you,
Jacqueline Estran <j_estran@yahoo.fr>
Université de Lyon – Jean Moulin Lyon 3
A French-Chinese artist couple has just been disappeared in Shenzhen, apparently by Chinese plainclothes police/thugs. See story below for full report and pictures of the artwork, a mural painting of an empty chair, which apparently aroused the paranoid censors:–fwd by Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>
Source: BBC News (12/22/17)
France couple in China unreachable after Liu Xiaobo tribute
Hu Jiamin and Marine Brossard beside their mural
Two artists from France have been unreachable in China after they painted a tribute to the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, sparking concern over their whereabouts.
Hu Jiamin and Marine Brossard painted a mural showing an empty blue chair at an art exhibition in Shenzhen last week.
The mural was quickly covered up and plainclothes policeman took the couple away, Hong Kong media report. Journalists and friends say they have since been unable to contact the duo. Continue reading French-Chinese artist couple disappeared
Source: Washington Post (12/19/17)
The global backlash against China is growing
By John Pomfret
[John Pomfret, a former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, is the author of “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present.”]
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing in February. (Associated Press)
A global backlash is brewing against the People’s Republic of China. In Australia, China’s efforts to use surrogates to funnel money into the Australian political system led one senator to quit last week, and has prompted the government to unveil a series of laws to crack down on foreign influence. In Europe, alarm is growing at Chinese mercantilist practices and China’s desire to snap up European firms with innovative technologies. In the United States, the business community, long the ballast in America’s relations with China, is no longer united over the issue of how to pursue relations with Beijing. Many American firms have suffered losses in China. As a result, a slew of other issues — such as China’s industrial espionage, its demands for forced technology transfer, its use of Chinese state-run media to broadcast pro-Beijing propaganda in the United States and its attempts to influence U.S. educational institutions — is prompting calls for a response. Already, Chinese firms seeking to buy American high technology are facing more difficulties. And there’s talk in Congress of forcing China’s state-run TV and wire service operations in the United States to register as agents of a foreign power. Continue reading Global backlash against China
Source: Sup China (12/20/17)
Nanchang University Dismisses Two Deans Over Sexual Assault Scandal
By JIA GUO
Accusations of sexual assault and a subsequent cover-up in a Chinese university may have cost two deans their jobs.
On Tuesday, Weibo user @喝咖啡的猫11 (@Hekafeidemao11) published a post claiming Zhou Bin 周斌, as vice dean of Nanchang University in Jiangxi Province, lured multiple female students into joining a study group by offering them nice meals and private tutoring. Once they were in his group, Zhou would ask them for small favors — such as ordering takeout for him, going to his office to wake him up from afternoon naps, or giving him massages — all the while bragging about his dissolute romantic history.
@Hekafeidemao11 relates one specific case of a girl named Xiao Rou 小柔 (not her real name; also, the Weibo poster’s relationship with Xiao Rou is unclear). According to @Hekafeidemao11, in 2016, Zhou confessed his love to Xiao Rou, forced her to kiss him, and “played with his penis in front of her and molested her.” Continue reading Nanchang University dismisses deans over sexual assault
VISITING CHINESE POSITION AT POMONA COLLEGE
The Department of Asian Languages and Literatures at Pomona College invites applications for a full-time 2-year visiting position in Chinese to begin August 2018. Applicants must have native or near-native fluency in Mandarin Chinese and English, demonstrated excellence in undergraduate teaching, and Ph.D. in hand at time of appointment. This position carries a 3-2 teaching load. Area of specialization open, but preference will be given to applicants with training in applied linguistics, second language pedagogy, or contemporary Chinese literature and culture. This is a restricted local search, the college is unable to pay travel expenses.
Please submit application materials online (https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo): cover letter describing research and teaching interests, CV, statement on teaching, teaching portfolio (syllabi and teaching evaluations), statement addressing your demonstrated ability to mentor a diverse student body, and three letters of recommendation. Please address queries other than applications to Allan Barr, Chinese search committee chair, 550 N. Harvard Ave, Pomona College, Claremont CA 91711, allan.barr@pomona.edu. Applications received by January 22, 2018 will receive full consideration, but will be reviewed until the position is filled. Pomona College is a highly selective liberal arts college that supports equal access to higher education and values working in a richly diverse environment.
MCLC Resource Center is most pleased to announce publication of “Walk on the Wild Side: Snapshots of the Chinese Poetry Scene,” by Maghiel van Crevel. With its 143 mini-chapters and lavish illustrations, this is the longest and most ambitious piece we’ve published to date in our online publication series. Though written in a non-academic style that makes it accessible to a general readership, it is filled with details of interest to academic specialists in contemporary Chinese poetry. The essay can be read online at:
https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/walk-on-the-wild-side/
It is also available as a pdf download. Go to the link above, and click “DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT” near the top of the page.
I want to thank Professor van Crevel for sharing with us his deep insights into the contemporary Chinese poetry scene.
Happy holidays,
Kirk A. Denton
Editor, MCLC
Source: The World of Chinese (12/18/17)
The Writing on the Walls
Shenzhen’s Dafen village, once the world’s painting factory, faces redevelopment as an “art park.” But what will happen to its artists?
By Phoebe Zhang
From a distance, one could take Yang Ming for a teenager. About five-foot two, his skinny arms and legs in a white T-shirt and jeans, Yang’s left shoulder is permanently hunched because of a childhood injury, making it hard to distinguish his head from behind.
With his right hand, Yang raises a paintbrush, glancing from time to time at a picture on his phone, before resuming his reproduction of a Van Gogh masterpiece, “The Harvest.” The process is sometimes interrupted by tourists who wander into the alleyway to appraise his work. At his feet lies his border collie, Didu, while above them both hangs a portrait of the dog—lying on a grassy hill, rather than a ramshackle alley. It’s one of several original works he’s trying to sell nowadays. Continue reading Dafen village faces redevelopment as art park
Source: Sup China (12/19/17)
Nanny Arsonists And Maggot-Infested Chicken — A Top 10 List Of Society News In China, 2017
By Jia Guo
Search engine giant Baidu released a report (in Chinese) on Monday, highlighting the most significant news, events, and people throughout the year in 2017. One of the lists in the report is the “Top 10 society events” of the year.
Sogang University in Seoul will host a two-day international conference on Chinese Cultures on 21 and 22 December 2017. This conference is designed to facilitate transnational, transdisciplinary and transgenerational discussion.
On the first day, we will have a series of lectures by distinguished scholars on various topics and a roundtable on the topic of “Chinese Studies outside China”. The undergraduate and graduate student conference will be held on the second day. The student conference is designed to give the next generation of scholars in Chinese studies a chance to get feedback from other students and internationally recognized scholars from different parts of the world. The sessions will be held either in English or in Chinese. Continue reading 2017 Sogang Transcultural China conference
Liu Xia’s poem, Liao Yiwu’s appeal and photographs made by Liu Xia can be found on my blog HERE:
Martin Winter <dujuan99@gmail.com>
Source: Sup China (12/18/17)
Top news searches in China, 2017
By Jia Guo
China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, released a report (in Chinese) on Monday, highlighting the most significant news, events, and people throughout the year in 2017. One of the lists on the report featured the “Top 10 most-searched domestic news” this year.
Source: Sup China (12/18/17)
Artist who filmed Beijing eviction aftermath detained, then released on bail
By Lucas Niewenhuis
Hua Yong 华涌, the artist who documented the destruction and social turmoil that resulted from Beijing’s migrant evictions, had quite the weekend.
Dear Colleagues
I am glad to announce the publication of the latest issue of Made in China, the open access quarterly on Chinese labour and civil society supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University. You can download the pdf for free and subscribe at this link: http://www.chinoiresie.info/made-in-china-quarterly/. Below you can find the editorial of the new issue:
Balancing Acts: Precarious Labour in Contemporary China
On 19 November, a fire broke out in a popular housing block inhabited mostly by migrant workers in Beijing’s Daxing district, killing nineteen. Citing the need to ensure safety, in a matter of days the local authorities forced tens of thousands of ‘low-end people’ (diduan renkou) to abandon their dwellings in the suburbs of the Chinese capital, showing absolutely no regard for their livelihoods. Families who had moved from all over China—and had, in some cases, lived in Beijing for years—were effectively thrown out on the street and left to their own fate in the freezing northern winter. In just a few days they lost everything, a cruel reminder of the precarity inherent to the life of the Chinese migrant. Continue reading Made in China 2.4: Balancing Acts
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies: An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowships
An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowships in Chinese Studies
The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2018-2019 competition for the An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowships in Chinese Studies. Applications are invited from scholars in any academic discipline, working on contemporary China or any period of Chinese history. Fellows will pursue their own research and contribute to Fairbank Center programs. Priority will be given to candidates working in the humanities or social sciences. However, applications are also welcome from scholars in other fields. A strong working knowledge of Chinese and English is required.
The fellowship period is from August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2019. Continue reading An Wang postdocs 2018
We are pleased to announce publication of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, volume 29, number 2 (Fall 2017). Find a table of contents for the issue below, along with links to abstracts. For those of you who are subscribers, you should be receiving your copy in the next couple of weeks. For those of you who would like to subscribe or to purchase single copies of this issue, please contact my (new) assistant Mario De Grandis (mclc@osu.edu). We greatly appreciate the support you show for MCLC through your subscriptions. Back issues of MCLC, with a two-year lag, are available through JSTOR. Seeing as it is the season of giving, if anyone is in a giving mood, please consider donating to MCLC. Enjoy the new issue.
Kirk Denton, editor
Volume 29, Number 2 (Fall 2017)
Articles