Culture

posts related to Chinese culture

Creative Belonging

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New Publication: Creative Belonging: The Qiang and Multiethnic Imagination in Modern China by Yanshuo Zhang is forthcoming with the University of Michigan Press on January 12, 2026. Pre-order of the book is available and UM Press is offering significant holiday sales:  https://press.umich.edu/Books/C/Creative-Belonging3 . The book is also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

This book has about thirty full-color images and is printed on high-quality matte-glossy paper similar to an art catalogue or art book at a very affordable price. It offers a luxurious and intimate view of contemporary ethnic minority life in China. It would make for an excellent holiday read. The book’s wide-ranging sources, evidence, and visual aids make it an excellent textbook and can be easily adopted for any courses on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture, film, history, or other types of China- and Asia-related courses.

The author of the book, Yanshuo Zhang, is Assistant Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures at Pomona College. She is the Principal Investigator of the national winner of the Inaugural Luce/ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Collaborative Grant in China Studies in 2024. Titled “Resituating Humanistic Pedagogy in China Studies: Incorporating Ethnic Minority Literary and Cultural Productions into North American College Classrooms,” the winning project is an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional project that aims to build understanding of ethnic diversity and minority voices within China by developing a multicultural China studies curriculum that is integrated with global studies on race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and identity. Prof. Yanshuo Zhang is leading a group of scholars, translators, artists, and ethnic minority and indigenous collaborators in mainland China and Taiwan on developing a collective database that would offer innovative and original materials on teaching multiethnic China for the English-speaking and multilingual audience internationally. Continue reading Creative Belonging →

Oldest complete copy of Book of Songs found

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Source: China Daily (11/10/25)
‘Book of Songs’ from Chinese imperial tomb proves oldest complete copy ever found
By Xinhua

NANCHANG — Archaeologists have confirmed the discovery of China’s first ever-known complete version of the “Book of Songs” on bamboo slips from the Qin (221-207 BC) and Han (202 BC-220 AD) period, dating back some 2,000 years.

The manuscript written on bamboo slips was unearthed from the famed tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Nanchang, capital of east China’s Jiangxi Province.

Infrared scans clearly identified key information such as a total of “305 poems” and “7,274 lines,” proving it was a full copy when the classic work was buried in the tomb, Yang Jun, the tomb excavation team leader from the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said at a recent seminar.

The bamboo slips each measure 23 cm in length and 0.8 cm in width, and there are 20 to 25 characters per slip and three binding cords, said Yang Bo, a researcher at the Institute of Ancient History, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Experts hold that the copy was the official textbook for Confucian studies during the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-25 AD). The tomb’s owner, Marquis Liu He, was a documented student of the book, making the find a direct link to historical records.

Liu was the grandson of Emperor Wu, whose reign ushered in one of the most prosperous periods in China’s history. Liu was given the title “Haihunhou,” or “the Marquis of Haihun,” after he was deposed as emperor, following only 27 days in power. He was dethroned by his royal clan due to what they considered a lack of talent and morals. Haihun is the ancient name of a very small kingdom in northern Jiangxi.

You Xing Bookstore gets reprieve

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Source: China Digital Times (11/10/25)
Translations: As Tributes Pour In, Chengdu’s You Xing Bookstore Gets a Reprieve From Feared Closure
By Cindy Carter

The entrance to You Xing Bookstore is welcoming and well-lit. The exterior walls are painted white, and there are two broad double-doors with large inset panes of clear glass, and rounded canopy-style awnings above them. Between the doors, on the exterior wall, is an illuminated grey and white sign with the store’s name in both English and in highly stylized Chinese characters. Inside the entrance, at left, are some comfortable looking wooden chairs with white cushions, and a band of curved, blonde-wood bookshelves filled with various books. Two men stand between the shelves and the door, talking and smiling. One of the men—dressed in boots, rolled-up blue jeans, a black sweater, and glasses—smiles directly at the camera.

The entrance to You Xing Bookstore: a clean, well-lighted place (source: WeChat account 麦客自留地)

Following more than a week of speculation that Chengdu’s You Xing Bookstore (有杏书店, Yǒu Xìng Shūdiàn) would soon close, amid an outpouring of tributes from customers and supporters, it appears that the beloved bookstore and events space has been granted a reprieve and will remain in business. Started in August 2023 by former financial reporter and prolific blogger Zhang Feng and a group of friends, You Xing Bookstore has become a vibrant public space, providing books, coffee, free public events, and a much-needed sense of community following three years of “zero-COVID” policy-induced isolation.

On October 29, the bookstore’s founder Zhang Feng published a WeChat post announcing that due to “force majeure” (unspecified reasons beyond his control, likely referring to official pressure), the bookstore would be closing its doors on November 28. When an online commenter asked, “Why? The bookstore has always had such good events,” Zhang Feng replied, “That’s exactly the reason.” Zhang’s initial announcement, which he quickly deleted, has been archived by CDT Chinese editors, and a portion is translated below:

I had imagined many ways that the bookstore might end. The most likely scenario was force majeure—and now, this has come to pass.

You Xing Bookstore will close on November 28.

I nearly smiled when I heard the news. I always knew this day would come, I just wasn’t sure when it would happen.

My attitude towards managing a bookstore has always been: If you only had one day, how would you run that bookstore? You should live every day as if it might be your last. Continue reading You Xing Bookstore gets reprieve →

UK university censorship scandal

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On the Sheffield Hallam University China slavery censor scandal breaking today: Chinese authorities brazenly and at first successfully intimidated and shut down research on China’s Uyghur slavery at a UK university! Today, they have been outed. Deepest sympathy for and solidarity with Laura Murphy and her colleagues — and with the millions of victims caught up in the atrocities that they have exposed. Shame on Sheffield Hallam U for caving to Chinese intimidation, even if they seem to have backed off when duly warned by the UK government, which is as it should be.

But, how many such horror cases of selfcensorship by universities go undetected, out of fear? The Chinese Embassy in the UK are openly admitting that their own students are now their WEAPONS: “there are over 200,000 Chinese students in the UK, making China the largest source of international students in the UK,” adding “educational cooperation has become a driving force in bilateral ties” … yeah, and not just in the UK but around the world.

If universities cannot stop such Chinese intimidation by themselves, then national governments obviously will have to override them, to protect the universities’ freedom and our freedom.

This today is a huge scandal — and a warning to all the world’s academia and the world, of China’s brazen intimidation and shameless weaponizing of their own students in order to silence the BEST RESEARCH in our free universities.

On today’s breaking news, see the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq50j5vwny6o

Continue reading UK university censorship scandal →

Comparing genocides

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NEW PUBLICATION
Comparing genocides: Forced assimilation in Nazi Europe and East Turkestan (Xinjiang), China
Forced assimilation as a neglected yet crucial instrument of genocide, past and present.
By Magnus Fiskesjö

–My new article at SINOPSIS (Prague) issued on 26 Sept. 2025, comparing Xi Jinping’s ongoing forced assimilation (Sinicization) as genocide against the Uyghurs and others today, with Hitler’s interrupted plans for forced assimilation (Germanization) of the Czechs and of the rest of Occupied Europe, as an instrument of the Nazi genocides.

The Remote Chay Podcast

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New Podcast Alert: Remote Chay

This podcast brings together researchers and experts to explore two tightly linked topics:

  1. Remote Ethnography – how do we study places that are physically or politically inaccessible due to surveillance, state control, or other restrictions?
  2. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (China) – a critical case at the intersection of geopolitics, anthropology, ethics, and research methodology.

Each episode dives deep into the challenges of conducting research under extreme constraints. From inaccessible field sites to global surveillance regimes, Remote Chay invites guests to reflect on what it means to produce knowledge in such contexts, in particular for Uyghur studies.

Explore all episodes here 👉 remote-xuar.com/podcast

Very Best,

Vanessa Frangville <Vanessa.Frangville@ulb.be>

Hong Kong forum on Xinjiang relays Chinese state propaganda

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The independent Hong Kong-focused magazine《棱角 The Points》published an interesting article on Aug. 20, 2025, about an invitation-only Hong Kong academics gathering to promote the Chinese Party line on the Xinjiang atrocities.

Here I offer some preliminary comments and also a link to the article in the original Chinese, plus a lightly edited machine translation, below.

It is interesting yet somewhat predictable. Some of the people involved are recognizable as longtime, well-known propagandists and denialists. It is also no surprise that it was invitation-only, not public. These scholars seem to be using their universities’ name recognition not to further discussion, but to further Chinese state propaganda.

The lead poster names include Nury Vittachi, a rather vicious propagandist, whose actions as a journalist and writer are well summarized. Barry Sautman, too: this is a scholar who once wrote decently on Tibet, but then in recent years has turned into a pro-PRC parrot, also well described here. –I did not know the name of the Xinjiang university Chinese scholar Lin Fangfei 林芳菲 but it is no surprise that they mobilize people like that, to join the chorus and parrot the party line on Xinjiang — in her case to deny the amply documented forced labor. One more participant featured on the poster, listed with a cryptic title on Hongkong matters, is anonymous.

What is something of a surprise to me is the Canadian scholar William Schabas, based at Middlesex in Britain. He is a longtime genocide scholar, who has long been regarded by many as respectable, with general books on international law. He is a recipient of the Order of Canada, elected member of academies, and so on. It seems he moved to England after leaving Leiden U, where he taught for years. Something strange happened with Schabas that has not been fully explained and isn’t mentioned by The Points: In 2019, he surprised the world by taking on the task of defending the Burmese military junta at the ICJ in the Hague against accusations that they are committing genocide against the Rohingya, brought by the Gambia on behalf of a long list of Muslim countries. That was a big shocker. At the time, he was asked by a journalist why he would do that, and he gave no explanation other than chuckling and saying that ‘everyone deserves representation’ (so, even blood-soaked generals) — as if he were not a decent scholar but simply a lawyer for hire by whatever criminal can pay him. In my view, given how he is now parroting Chinese state propaganda on Xinjiang, it could well be that he helped the Burmese military junta simply because Western nations (and the Islamic world) were pretty unified against that junta’s atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya. Continue reading Hong Kong forum on Xinjiang relays Chinese state propaganda →

Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized

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Source: Journal of Peace Research
Review of John Beck (2025) Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized (New York: Melville House)
By Magnus Fiskesjö (Cornell University)

China’s genocide against the Uyghurs and Kazakhs is ongoing since 2017, yet the world is mostly silent. East Turkestan (Chinese Xinjiang, the ‘New Territory’) seems remote, and it is not Biblical land. China has formidable resources to influence those who should be influenced (world opinion); and to intimidate and silence those who should be silenced (witnesses and refugees). This book is a riveting, stark, and beautiful writeup of the testimonies of four key native witnesses. The reader is invited into their real-life experiences over the last several years. There are no scholarly footnotes, bibliography or index. Instead, readers enter the gripping stories, which start well before the genocide launch, describing the previous fraught and unequal coexistence of Muslim natives and Chinese settlers. The deadly 2009 clashes in the regional capital Urumchi form a key watershed. Chinese officials  borrowed the rhetoric of terrorism and enabled settler violence against the remaining native people. (The Palestinian West Bank parallels are obvious.) The pace accelerates as the Chinese state launches the genocide, with massive sweeps of people for the concentration camps. The cruelty, the mass humiliation, the coercion, the drugging, the sterilizations, all emerge, as well as the struggle to escape. The book, a masterful and moving reportage, ends with the few narrators now in exile, struggling to tell us their story. The author could have added a chapter on how China is now completing the genocide, by seizing the future: mass separating all children, erasing their identities, culture, and language, force-replaced with Chinese: ‘Kill the native, save the man’, just like in North America in the last century (compare the UN Genocide Convention, §2E). I warmly recommend this book.

The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet

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Source: China File (7/3/25)
Balancing What Can Be Said with What Can Only Be Implied: The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet
By Shelly Kraicer

A still from Ridiculous Nurshad (2022).

The young Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet is now in a Chinese prison. Arrested in May 2023, he was accused by the Chinese government of “actively participating in terrorist activities.” Human Rights Watch called the charges “politically motivated,” and reported that Ikram was “tortured . . . until he gave a false confession.” Convicted in January 2024, Ikram was sentenced to six and a half years behind bars. He was likely targeted because he had studied in Turkey between 2010 and 2016. His arrest and imprisonment has occurred in the context of Chinese authorities’ continuing persecution of minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that has intensified since 2017.

It is always difficult for what China calls “ethnic minority” (i.e. non-Han Chinese) filmmakers to make the films they want to make inside China, where review by the state Film Administration is mandatory for all. Staying inside the system allows filmmakers to have their work shown publicly in China and, if they can get official approval, abroad. What may be surprising is that filmmakers from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang have succeeded in making important and eloquent works of cinema that grapple, at least indirectly, with the particular situations of their communities in China, despite the constraints under which they work.

Since 2017, a new generation of Uyghur filmmakers, including Ikram Nurmehmet, Tawfiq Nizamidin, Emetjan Memet, Mirzat Abduqadir, and Pahriya Ghalip, has emerged. Most studied at the Beijing Film Academy, and all have made creatively challenging, formally interesting, socially engaged short films that carefully explore—with humor, passion, and a savvy sense of how to balance what can be said with what can only be implied—what life is like for Uyghurs in China today.

A close reading of Ikram’s four short films—from Elephant in the Car’s mysterious energy, through the absurdly dark comedy of Ridiculous Nurshad and rambunctious humor of Tu Cheshang Erbai (200 Per Puke), to the brilliant formal control of A Day by the Sea—can elucidate some ways that a filmmaker under systemic political pressure can navigate the closely regulated Chinese censorship system while preserving an articulate, sustainable, and authentically expressive voice. Continue reading The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet →

Chinese propaganda deflects criticism on Xinjiang

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Chinese propaganda efforts take many forms, to try to deflect world criticism on the Xinjiang atrocities against the Uyghurs and Kazakhs there. This includes new forms, especially online, where naive netizens outside China are lured into traps by professional propagandists, and then hung out to dry on Western social media like X.

Before I get to that new chapter, let’s first note the progressive evolution that has taken place.

They started with the old-style naked propaganda and denial by official Chinese media. This is still going on, of course, including in UN speeches, the People’s Daily, Shanghai Daily, etc. etc.

Now, these same state media are also cleverly flooding Youtube, Facebook etcetera with benign-seeming videos showing things like unspoiled wildlife in Xinjiang’s faraway mountains, or, Kashgar tourist streets with “happy” Uyghur performers.

Sometimes, the propaganda department recruits naive foreign Youtubers, often Westerners willing to be duped and to regurgitate the official picture, and who are kept well away from the camps, the forced labor, the children’s mass Gulag, and all that. Continue reading Chinese propaganda deflects criticism on Xinjiang →

The Red Wind Howls

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Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my translation of The Red Wind Howls, a major novel by the Tibetan writer Tsering Döndrup. The book deals with the history of the 1950s-1980s, when the Tibetan region of Amdo was violently incorporated into the PRC. It is available through Columbia University Press:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-red-wind-howls/9780231213738/

From the publisher’s website:

A remarkable novel by one of Tibet’s foremost authors, The Red Wind Howls is a courageous and gripping portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao’s regime. The story delves deep into forbidden history, spanning the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and, most taboo of all, the 1958 Amdo rebellion when Tibetans rose in armed revolt against the Chinese state. Tsering Döndrup self-published the book in 2006, because no publisher would risk accepting it. When the authorities caught wind, all copies were confiscated and the author faced severe reprisals. He lost his job as head of the local archives, his passport was confiscated, and he has been under close surveillance ever since.

This powerful novel is set in part in the punitive labor camps to which Tibetans were sent after the failed rebellion, where many perished from starvation or forced labor. Inside and outside the camps, it depicts with dark humor a world of informers, cruelty, and score settling, against the backdrop of immeasurable environmental devastation and the destruction of traditional Tibetan ways of life. The novel draws on extensive interviews conducted by the author, and the rhythms of oral storytelling are reflected in its fragmented narrative style, which jumps back and forth between periods and events. An unparalleled account of the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover of Tibet, The Red Wind Howls is both a richly imaginative work of fiction and a vital piece of historical testimony.

Christopher Peacock
Department of East Asian Studies
Dickinson College

Chasing Traces open access

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Chasing Traces: History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia
Now available as Open Access from University of Hawaii Press.
Download and share

Table of contents is below, including my own chapter on the Wa people’s history between China and Burma.

First, the book’s description:

In the connected highlands of southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos, recalling the past is a highly sensitive act. Among local societies, many may actively avoid recalling the past for fear of endangering themselves and others. Oral traditions and rare archives remain the main avenues to visit the past, but the national revolutionary narrative and the language of heritagization have strongly affected the local expression of historical memory. Yet this does not prevent local societies from producing their stories in their own terms, even if often in conflict with both national and Western categories. Producing history, ethnohistory, historical anthropology, and historical geography in the Southeast Asian highlands raises significant questions relating to methodology, epistemology, and ethics, for which most researchers are often ill-prepared. How can scholars manage to competently access information about the past? How is one to capture history-in-the-making through events, speech acts, rituals, and performances? How is the memory of the past transmitted—or not—and with what logic? Continue reading Chasing Traces open access →

Satirical Tibet

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New Publication: Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo
By Timothy Thurston
University of Washington Press, 2025.

What does comedy look like when the wrong punchline can land you in jail? Humor has long been a vital, if underrecognized, component of Tibetan life. In recent years, alongside well-publicized struggles for religious freedom and cultural preservation, comedians, hip-hop artists, and other creatives have used zurza, the Tibetan art of satire, to render meaningful social and political critique under the ever-present eye of the Chinese state. Timothy Thurston’s Satirical Tibet offers the first-ever look at this powerful tool of misdirection and inversion. Focusing on the region of Amdo, Thurston introduces the vibrant and technologically innovative comedy scene that took shape following the death of Mao Zedong and the rise of ethnic revival policies. He moves decade by decade to show how artists have folded zurza into stage performances, radio broadcasts, televised sketch comedies, and hip-hop lyrics to criticize injustices, steer popular attitudes, and encourage the survival of Tibetan culture. Surprising and vivid, Satirical Tibet shows how the ever-changing uses and meanings of a time-honored art form allow Tibetans to shape their society while navigating tightly controlled media channels.

Timothy Thurston’s groundbreaking book Satirical Tibet is the first major study of Tibetan humor. Drawing on years of research in Amdo, Thurston reveals the cultures of comedy that have thrived in Tibetan-language literature, radio, television, and oral and performing arts into the digital age.”— Christopher Rea, author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China

Aftermath of Thai handing Uyghur refugees to China

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If you read just one article about Thailand handing Uyghur refugees to China, this may be the one — it situates this stunning debacle in the context of the global US withdrawal from commitments, promises, and values:

“US Ally Kowtows to China as Old Order Crumbles Under Trump,” by Matthew Tostevin. Newsweek (Feb. 28, 2025). 

The Newsweek piece was published the day after the forced deportation, so it could not yet note the absolutely stunning admission from the Thai government, on March 6, that they knowingly lied about there being no other governments (or the UNHCR) ready to take the refugees — as top officials all the way to the PM had been insisting, until that day, as one justification for setting aside the Torture Convention.

Links on this and on the Thai government’s shocking parroting of various other Chinese talking points (the refugees are “safe”, because there is pictufre proof from Chinese-arrangeded photo ops, etc.):

“In reversal, Thai official acknowledges other countries offered Uyghurs resettlement“… (Radio Free Asia)

“Thailand had offers to take Uyghurs but deported them to China anyway: MP.” (Radio Free Asia)

“US offered to resettle Uyghurs that Thailand deported to China, sources say.” (The Guardian)

For more, including some of the Chinese propaganda around this whole incident, see my online bibliography (periodically updated) on the genocide in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan): https://uhrp.org/bibliography/

Sincerely,
Magnus Fiskesjö

Thailand deports Uyghur refugees

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This morning, on Feb. 27, 2025, Thailand deported over forty Uyghur refugees to China, despite a pending court hearing set for next month. This was simply set aside — and was perhaps a lie to begin with. The shameful deportation was done under the cover of night, in buses with black-out windows, to prevent the press from seeing the prisoners [https://prachataienglish.com/node/11322]. A Chinese plane flew them direct from Bangkok to Kashgar in the Uyghur region, where China’s concentration camps now await them.

Thailand has now violated both the UN convention on torture, which it signed, and the principle of non-refoulement, against sending refugees in harm’s way. Thailand’s betrayal of human rights also overrides the Thai politicians and lawyers and others who tried to protest, arguing that refugees had suffered enough, languishing in Thai jails for over ten years, with five dying, including two children.

It is obvious this was done only to obey China — where state media celebrated getting their hands on the refugees.

For more see: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14jjxz8re6o

A week ago, I explained the global stakes of Thailand’s Uyghur refugee drama, that has now ended in such a gruesome way. Listen on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/wrfihumanrightsshow/magnus-fiskesjo-feb-21_4upload
(first aired Friday, Feb. 21 on the “Human Rights and Social Justice” local FM radio show hosted by Ute Ritz-Deutch, on WRFI.org, at FM 88.1 in Ithaca)

Sincerely, with great sadness, and frankly disgust at the Thai authorities’ betrayal,

Magnus Fiskesjö