Author: denton.2@osu.edu

Transborder Flows and Chinese Cinemas–cfp

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CFP – Journal of Chinese Film Studies
A special issue on
Transborder Flows and Chinese Cinemas
Edited by Chris Berry and Haina Jin

Chinese cinemas have always been characterised by transborder flows, both of foreign films flowing in and Sinophone films flowing out. What foreign films have been popular in Chinese-language territories, with what audiences, when, and why? What Chinese-language films have found audiences overseas, in what places, when, and why? And what forces and practices have shaped those transborder flows and what are the impacts and results of those flows? This special issue of Journal of Chinese Film Studies seeks to spotlight these under-explored topics. We seek proposals for 6,000-8,000 word scholarly articles on aspects of transborder flows and Chinese cinemas.

The persistent dominance of the outdated understanding of both national cinema as films produced in a certain territory and cinema as simply film texts has left transborder flows long neglected. Work such as Andrew Higson’s redefinition of national cinema as films viewed within a certain territory back in 1989 is now combining with research on distribution and exhibition by scholars such as Li Daoxin, Li Jie, Liu Guangyu, and Zhou Chenshu, along with work on transborder flows by scholars such as Huang Xuelei, Su Tao and Fu Yongchun to break the logjam and stimulate greater interest in the character and role of transborder flows in Chinese cinemas. Continue reading Transborder Flows and Chinese Cinemas–cfp →

Chinese Encounters with the Mediterranean research position

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Chinese Encounters with the Mediterranean in Late Qing Travel Accounts: Call for research position

The University of Palermo (Italy) is the lead institution for the research project “The Mediterranean through Chinese Eyes: An Analysis Based on Geographical and Travel Sources from the Song to Qing Dynasties (960–1911) [MeTChE]”, funded by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research. In relation to this project, the following research position with a research grant is announced, for a duration of 12 months. The research work can also be conducted remotely, in collaboration with the Principal Investigator (PI) and the research units. The deadline for submitting the application is June 30, 2024.

RESEARCH TITLE
Chinese Encounters with the Mediterranean in Late Qing Travel Accounts: A Transcultural Exploration

DESCRIPTION
The research fellow will collaborate on the project “The Mediterranean through Chinese Eyes: An Analysis Based on Geographical and Travel Sources from the Song to Qing Dynasties (960–1911)”. He/she will be in charge of collecting and translating late Qing-era Chinese travel sources to analyze descriptions of Mediterranean civilizations from a transcultural perspective, under the supervision of the Project Scientific Supervisor. Specifically, he/she will:

  • Identify a selection of travel accounts by Chinese travelers in the Mediterranean and Europe;
  • Create an archive of occurrences of the term “Mediterranean”;
  • Analyze and translate excerpts from collected works related to the theme of Mediterranean culture (both material and immaterial aspects);
  • Conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses to delineate the perception of the Mediterranean by late Qing-era Chinese travelers.

The research fellow will collaborate with the project’s PI and other research unit members, either in person at the Departmental offices or remotely, in producing research outputs and organizing conferences and events.

Scientific Director: prof. Renata Vinci renata.vinci@unipa.it

Deadline: June 30th, 2024

Call in English
University Official Register n. 2248 del 31/05/2024

‘To Govern the Globe’ review

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The famous Southeast Asia historian Alfred McCoy has published an important new book, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change on world history, and where it is heading with China as an aspiring new world empire. I’ve written a review of it:

“Cycles of History: Review Essay on Alfred McCoy’s To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change.” By Magnus Fiskesjö. International Institute for Asian Studies newsletter (June 2024).

Sincerely,

Magnus Fiskesjö, magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu

On Tsui Hark’s ‘The Taking of Tiger Mountain’

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Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (5/5/2024)
What Happens to the Index in Animation? The Case of The Taking of Tiger Mountain
By Cassandra Xin Guan

In the opening sequence of The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Zhiqu Weihushan 智取威虎山  2014), an overseas Chinese student, “Jimmy,” walks into a karaoke parlor in Manhattan’s Chinatown trailing a suitcase. He mingles with a noisy group of young Asians, until the incongruous sound of Peking opera and the vision of a fur-clad actor gesturing before a painted snowy landscape interrupts the karaoke program. It is reconnaissance officer Comrade Yang Zirong astride an invisible horse in the 1970 film adaptation of the revolutionary model opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. [1]The room erupts into hilarity at the embarrassment of the singer, taken aback by this prank. Jimmy alone is entranced by the apparition on the flatscreen TV. Someone asks, “It’s your hometown, isn’t it?” Next, we see the young man sitting in a yellow cab en route to the airport. While the driver curses Yuletide traffic, Jimmy begins to watch a YouTube video of the model opera on his phone. The operatic soundtrack swells while the camera zooms intently into his face. Snow is falling in America and in the deciduous forests of Northeast China. Over aerial vistas of the hyperborean landscape, the title of the film appears followed by the name of the director and source material: The Taking of Tiger Mountain, a film by Tsui Hark 徐克, adapted from the 1955 novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest (Linhai xueyuan 林海雪原) by Qu Bo 曲波. Continue reading On Tsui Hark’s ‘The Taking of Tiger Mountain’ →

Subtitled version of ‘The White-Haired Girl’

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The Chinese Film Classics Project is delighted to announce the publication of a subtitled version of the film The White-Haired Girl 白毛女 (Wang Bin 王濱 and Shui Hua 水華, dirs., 1950), translated by Pete Nestor and Thomas Moran:

https://chinesefilmclassics.org/the-white-haired-girl-1950/

My thanks to Pete Nestor and Thomas Moran and the MCLC Resource Center for granting the Chinese Film Classsics Project permission to use their translation, and to Tamar Hanstke for doing the subtitling.

ABOUT THE FILM:

The White-Haired Girl 白毛女 (1950) is a seminal work of New China cinema. A musical film adapted from a stage production, which in turn was claimed to have been adapted from a popular folk legend, The White-Haired Girl is an ideologically-freighted story of liberation and rejuvenation. A fresh young country girl is subjected to inhuman suffering by a despicable landlord, before being rescued when the communist Eighth-Route Army liberates her village and sees justice done. Xi’er’s new lease on life became symbolic of the rebirth of China, whose history the film divided into two distinct periods with the slogan: “The old society forced humans to become ghosts / The new society turns ghosts into humans.” Continue reading Subtitled version of ‘The White-Haired Girl’ →

#MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years

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Source: The Guardian (6/14/24)
China #MeToo journalist sentenced to five years in jail, supporters say
Sophia Huang Xueqin, who reported on #MeToo movement and Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, sentenced along with labour activist Wang Jianbing
By  in Taipei

Sophia Huang Xueqin, a freelance journalist who reported on China’s MeToo movement and the Hong Kong democracy protests, has been sentenced to five years in jail. Photograph: Thomas Yau/SCMP/Getty Images

A Chinese court has sentenced the prominent #MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin to five years in jail and the labour activist Wang Jianbing to three and a half years, almost 1,000 days after they were detained on allegations of inciting state subversion, according to supporters.

On Friday, supporters of the pair said the court had found them guilty and given Huang the maximum sentence. The jail terms would take into account the time they had already spent in detention. A copy of the verdict said Huang was also deprived of political rights for four years and fined $100,000 RMB (£10,800). Wang faced three years of deprivation of political rights and was fined $50,000 RMB.

Huang told the court she intended to appeal, the supporters said.

“[The sentence] was longer than we expected,” said a spokesperson for the campaign group Free Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, asking to remain anonymous for safety concerns. “I don’t think it should have been this severe, and it is completely unnecessary. So we support Huang Xueqin’s intention to appeal.”

Just one day’s notice was given of Friday’s hearing, and the public and media were kept away by a heavy police presence of both uniformed and plain clothed officers, as well as court workers and large barriers. The closed-door trial began in September last year, two years after their arrest. Continue reading #MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years →

Taiwan’s declining birthrate forces schools to close

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Source: The Guardian (6/14/24)
Empty classrooms, silent halls: Taiwan’s declining birthrate forces schools to close
Authorities fear looming economic crises caused by an expanding elderly population without enough workers to support them
By and Lin Chi-hui in Taipei

Chung Hsing private high school in Taipei, Taiwan, which closed in 2019 due to low enrolment. Dozens of schools, colleges and universities are closing their doors due to population decline. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

In the courtyard of the Chung Hsing private high school, desks and chairs are piled high like a monument or an unlit bonfire. Mounds of debris cover the play area, as two construction workers pull more broken furniture from empty classrooms, throwing them towards a pickup truck.

The central Taipei private school closed in 2019 after failing to reverse financial problems caused by low enrolment, and was sold to developers. The school was an early victim of a problem now sweeping across Taiwan’s educational institutions: decades of declining births mean there are no longer enough students to fill classrooms.

Like much of east Asia, Taiwan is struggling to achieve the “replacement rate” needed to maintain a stable population. That rate is 2.1 babies per woman, but Taiwan hasn’t hit that number since the mid-80s. In 2023, the rate was 0.865.

Demographers and governments fear looming economic crises caused by a growing elderly population without enough working taxpayers to support them. In Taiwan, the impact of shrinking generations has already started affecting military recruitment, and now is flowing on to enrolments at schools and universities. Continue reading Taiwan’s declining birthrate forces schools to close →

China is testing more driverless cars than any other country

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Source: NYT (6/13/24)
China Is Testing More Driverless Cars Than Any Other Country
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
Assisted driving systems and robot taxis are becoming more popular with government help, as cities designate large areas for testing on public roads.
By Keith Bradsher (Reporting from Wuhan, China)

A Baidu driverless robot taxi with nobody in the front seats traveling in Wuhan, China, last month.Credit…Qilai Shen for The New York Times

The world’s largest experiment in driverless cars is underway on the busy streets of Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane expressways and towering bridges over the muddy waters of the Yangtze River.

A fleet of 500 taxis navigated by computers, often with no safety drivers in them for backup, buzz around. The company that operates them, the tech giant Baidu, said last month that it would add a further 1,000 of the so-called robot taxis in Wuhan.

Across China, 16 or more cities have allowed companies to test driverless vehicles on public roads, and at least 19 Chinese automakers and their suppliers are competing to establish global leadership in the field. No other country is moving as aggressively.

The government is providing the companies significant help. In addition to cities designating on-road testing areas for robot taxis, censors are limiting online discussion of safety incidents and crashes to restrain public fears about the nascent technology.

Surveys by J.D. Power, an automotive consulting firm, found that Chinese drivers are more willing than Americans to trust computers to guide their cars. Continue reading China is testing more driverless cars than any other country →

Malaysian Chinese Museum lecture

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Dear all,

The ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series’ will host the 9th talk on Thursday 27 June 2024. Our speaker is Lim Kah Koe, chief curator of the Malaysian Chinese Museum. He will give a talk on From Overseas Chinese to Malaysian Chinese: The Curatorial Concept & A Brief History of the Malaysian Chinese Museum 从落叶归根到落地生根——马来西亚华人博物馆策展思路与创馆历程

The talk will be given in Mandarin Chinese. Simultaneous translation into English will be provided.

Date: Thursday 27 June 2024
Time: 12:00 pm to 13:30 pm (BST)
Venue: Online via Zoom

The event is free to attend and open to all. Please register via Ticket Tailor here.

Chair: Huimei Zhang, Assistant Director, Chinese Heritage Centre, Nanyang Technological University

Speaker: Lim Kah Koe, chief curator of the Malaysian Chinese Museum.

Abstract

The Chinese diaspora in Malaysia has a long and rich history, with immigrants from different periods and backgrounds contributing to the diverse and complex Chinese society. As Malaysia’s first museum to comprehensively showcase the history and development of the Chinese diaspora, the Malaysian Chinese Museum extensively documents the history of immigrant pioneers and the contributions of the Chinese diaspora to the nation’s development. This talk will focus on the permanent exhibition content of the Museum, sharing its curatorial approach and the history of the birth of a privately-owned museum.

The event is jointly hosted by HOMELandS (Hub On Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces) at the University of Westminster and the Chinese Heritage Centre of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. It is organised as part of the ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative’ project funded by AHRC. Continue reading Malaysian Chinese Museum lecture →

Gaokao security

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Source: SCMP (6/11/24)
Why armed China police and extraordinary security surround key national gaokao exam
Teachers are kept under watch in secure facilities as they draft national test and exam papers are printed in designated prisons
By Alice Yan in Shanghai

China’s most important examination for the future career prospects of students is subject to unprecedented levels of security. The Post explains why. Photo: SCMP composite/Baidu/Sohu

Mainland social media has hailed the fact that test papers for China’s most important examination – known on the mainland as gaokao – are drafted under strict security and printed in designated prisons.

The university entrance examination enjoys the highest security classification in the country to ensure fairness and justice for every person who takes the test, the state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Success or failure in the test is widely recognised as being a key factor in deciding a young person’s future.

More than 13 million people, the majority of whom were secondary school graduates, took the examination this year, the highest number in China’s history, making the competition more intense than before.

The importance of the landmark exam is underlined by the measures in place to protect its integrity. Continue reading Gaokao security →

Lying down or impossible to get ahead

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Source: China Digital Times (6/10/24)
Quote of the Day: “Not So Much ‘Lying Down’ as Finding It Impossible to Get Ahead”
By 

Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL) recent video broadside against “lying down”—referring to the much-discussed phenomenon of people slacking off, quietly giving up, or dropping out of the rat race as a means of coping with a hyper-competitive society that treats workers as “huminerals” to be relentlessly exploited and ultimately discarded.

The video, widely circulated on the Chinese internet, was titled “CYL Central Committee: ‘Only a Tiny Minority Are Truly Lying Down, While the Vast Majority Are Working Tirelessly.’” This was followed by an online survey that asked viewers to choose whether they were among the “tiny majority who lie down” or “the vast majority who work tirelessly.” To the amusement of many online observers, and at odds with the propagandistic tone and intent of the video, fully 93 percent of respondents confessed to being among that “tiny majority” of slackers, while only seven percent identified themselves as card-carrying members of the “vast majority” of indefatigable workers.

Columnist, pop psychologist, and WeChat blogger Tang Yinghong (唐映红, Táng Yìnghóng) put an interesting spin on the survey, cautioning that while most of the respondents were probably jesting, the CYL was likely correct in declaring that only a tiny minority were inclined to “lie down” because slacking off is a luxury that only the privileged few can afford. The vast majority of Chinese young people, Tang wrote, are simply too busy struggling to make a living to even contemplate dropping out or slowing down: Continue reading Lying down or impossible to get ahead →

‘Home’ series from Paper Republic

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“Home”, new Paper Republic series of shorts in English translation

A refuge, a recollection, a promised land, a prison; the arms of family, or four concrete walls in the sky… Home means something different to each of us, but it means something to all of us.

Paper Republic’s newest Read Paper Republic series of online short story and poem translations, themed around HOME, will commence publication on June 6, 2024. Read the pieces, completely free, online at https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/series/home/.

The tenth series since Read Paper Republic was first published in 2015, HOME includes four short stories and two poems, each adopting a different point of view on the all-important question of belonging. At a time when Chinese society is wrestling with generational gaps, real-estate crises, and the outfall of pandemic, these meditations on love and security (or lack thereof) deliver a powerful testament to the variety of human experience.

We’re giving away brand-new novels translated from Chinese completely free to people who help us grow our mailing lists with the most names. What you have to do to win a novel (or collection of short stories or poetry):

  • Send this email to any friends you think would be interested.
  • Ask if they will agree to have their names added to our mailing list. (They’ll get a couple of emails and a couple of free newsletters from Paper Republic per year, no more.)
  • Send us their names and emails by 31 July 2024.
  • Wait to hear from us! We’ll ask you for your mailing address if you’re one of the lucky winners

Continue reading ‘Home’ series from Paper Republic →

Conceptualizing Asian Commons online workshop

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Conceptualizing Asian Commons Online Workshop
Co-organized by
Commoning Asia Collective,
Department of English and Cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed to be University), and
Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Hong Kong Shue Yan University

Date: June 22, 2024
Time: (HKT) 13:00 – 19:30 (IST) 10:30 – 17:00
Venue: Google Meet

This online workshop is the culmination of a project that began with an International Conference on Multiple Decolonialities and the Making of Asian Commons organized in February 2022. The idea was developed further in another Symposium at Centre for Social Studies (CSS), Surat in August 2023. At the conclusion of the Symposium which was attended by scholars based in Asia, it was decided that it was time to form a scholars’ collective to keep the discussion ongoing and alive but also develop common research agenda and collaborations.

This workshop is dedicated towards a research output around the concept of Asian Commons. The papers to be presented in the workshop engage with Asia both in its incredible heterogeneity and its important historical resonance. The intellectual and political desire to create an Asian Commons comes from a collective history of anti-colonial struggles and shared vision for social and economic justice. As a working concept, Asian Commons is informed by the historical resources accumulated through Asia’s varied but connected experience with decolonization, as well as the intellectual project to study such lived experiences on their own terms. The workshop aims to rethink Asia in an inclusive and collective manner without privileging any particular region/state on the basis of economic and political power.

All are welcome, please register here: Continue reading Conceptualizing Asian Commons online workshop →

School of Cantonese Studies 2024

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School of Cantonese Studies 2024

School of Cantonese Studies 2024 will be jointly organized by Hong Kong Metropolitan University and the Education University of Hong Kong. The theme of School 2024 is Cantonese studies with a comparative approach. Speakers of the School will highlight the special features of Cantonese through comparisons with other major languages such as Standard Chinese and English. Topics in this 4-day School include phonology, grammar, language and society, historical development of Cantonese, IT in Cantonese learning and teaching.

Date: 12 – 15 August 2024 (Mon to Thu), am and pm
Venue: Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Homantin, Hong Kong

*Medium of instruction: Cantonese supplemented with English and Putonghua.

https://www.hkmu.edu.hk/fmo/campus-information/directions-to-campus/

About the SchoolSchool of Cantonese Studies was first organized in 2019 at the Education University of Hong Kong from 27 to 31 May 2019.The aims of the School are as follows:(a) to introduce recent developments and knowledge on different domains in Cantonese Studies to the participants;

(b) to introduce systematic and rigorous methodologies for conducting research on Cantonese;

(c) to provide a venue for scholarly exchange and interaction between scholars and participants of different backgrounds who are interested in Cantonese Studies.

The five-day event covered nine lectures delivered by twelve scholars specializing in Cantonese studies. There were 60 participants coming from different parts of the world. [See https://www.eduhk.hk/lml/scs2019/en/]

The School of 2021 (online mode) carried the theme “Cantonese Studies in the Digital Age”. In the two-day event, speakers of the School introduced some up-to-date Cantonese studies involving digital technologies, such as corpus-based research, online tools and resources for Cantonese studies, and digital processing of Cantonese corpus data. [see https://www.eduhk.hk/lml/scs2021/en/]

Continue reading School of Cantonese Studies 2024 →

Affordances of the Sinophone Literary Translator in the Age of AI–cfp

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CfP: The affordances of the Sinophone literary translator in the age of AI
Time: 13-14 December 2024
Place: M+, Kowloon, Hong Kong

The Department of Translation at Lingnan University and the Hong Kong Translation Society will hold a symposium on the affordances of the Sinophone literary translator in the age of AI, at which the distinguished scholar-translators Michael Berry and Douglas Robinson (with Sun Xiaorui) will deliver keynote addresses.

First proposed by the psychologist J. J. Gibson in 1979 as a way of understanding the way an animal affords itself of opportunities for support and sustenance that it perceives in its environment, the concept of an affordance soon went viral, and has become a term of art in both the social sciences and the humanities if not the life sciences. Scholars have been applying it to literary translators in recent years. A substantial article on the topic was published last year by Douglas Robinson, who glosses affordances as resources (among other terms) and focuses on the uses to which a literary translator can put these resources. This symposium is an opportunity to focus more narrowly on the uses to which translators of literary works in Chinese languages have put the resources available to them, including the resources they have mined and refined. Anyone who is working on some kind of Sinophone literary translation should not find such a “narrow” focus confining; we invite scholars and translators alike to think along the following lines (without being limited by them):

  • The use of lexical or grammatical resources to create a distinctive literary idiom
  • The use of literary resources to reinvent a work in another genre
  • The use of intermedial resources, for instance taking inspiration from film or drama
  • The use of interpersonal resources, such as innovative ways of working with authors or editors
  • The use of institutional resources, including different sources of funding and channels for publication and canonization
  • The use of technological resources, from Double Dragon/Dictate to DeepL/ChatGPT

Continue reading Affordances of the Sinophone Literary Translator in the Age of AI–cfp →