Culture

posts related to Chinese culture

China’s war on Uighur culture

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Excellent update report here, on the human rights catastrophe in Xinjiang, China, including on the “single ‘state-race’” racist-nationalist and Han-supremacist ideology that is driving the Chinese government in perpetrating these atrocities. –Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Financial Times (9/12/19)
Fear and oppression in Xinjiang: China’s war on Uighur culture: Beijing’s crackdown on minorities reflects a broader push towards a single ‘state-race’
By Christian Shepherd

When Gulruy Asqar first heard that her nephew Ekram Yarmuhemmed had been taken away by the Chinese police, she feared it was her fault. It was 2016, and she had recently moved to the US from Xinjiang, the region in north-west China that is the traditional homeland of her people, the Turkic-speaking Uighurs.

Her nephew’s family had loaned her about $10,000 towards the move, and Asqar had just transferred the money back to Yarmuhemmed when police came to his home in the regional capital of Urümqi and detained him. “I felt so guilty and I cried . . . I thought I was the reason for it,” Asqar told the FT by telephone from her home in Virginia. Continue reading →

China Brand Insider

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Dear Media Friend,

The publisher of China Film Insider today announced the launch of China Brand Insider, a new weekly business publication specifically focused on the business of brand integration in Chinese entertainment.

China Brand Insider will act as a key source of news and insights for the business of brand integration in the world’s most dynamic consumer culture. The first issue can be viewed here.

The weekly newsletter, written in English, features original content, case studies, and takeaways from the latest Chinese-language news on the relationship between brands and entertainment. CBI as it is known, will also develop in-depth reports and case studies as well as live events to deeply cover the rapid rise of this industry.

For more information, please see the attached press release. Let us know if you have further questions.

Best Regards,
Chen Zeng
China Film Insider

Teenage brides trafficked to China

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Source: NYT (8/17/19)
Teenage Brides Trafficked to China Reveal Ordeal: ‘Ma, I’ve Been Sold’
By Hannah Beech

Nyo, 17, back home in Shan State in Myanmar, after being trafficked by brokers who sold her and her friend to men across the border in China. Credit: Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

MONGYAI, Myanmar — She did not know where she was. She did not speak the language. She was 16 years old.

The man said he was her husband — at least that’s what the translation app indicated — and he pressed himself against her. Nyo, a girl from a mountain village in the Shan hills of Myanmar, wasn’t quite sure how pregnancy worked. But it happened.

The baby, 9 days old and downy, looks undeniably Chinese. “Like her father,” Nyo said. “The same lips.” Continue reading →

Forbidden City opens wide

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Source: NYT (8/3/19)
The Forbidden City Opens Wide as China Projects New Pride in Its Past
President Xi Jinping has pushed “cultural self-confidence” as a signature policy, and one of the beneficiaries has been the former home of emperors, neglected no longer.
By Ian Johnson

Visitors now throng the Forbidden City in Beijing. Credit: Yan Cong for The New York Times

BEIJING — For much of the past century, the Forbidden City has been an imposing void in the otherwise bustling heart of Beijing.

The 180-acre compound, where emperors and their advisers plotted China’s course for centuries, was stripped of its purpose when the last emperor abdicated in 1912. Since then, the palace grounds have at times lain empty or been treated as a perfunctory museum, with most of the halls closed to the public and the few that were open crammed with tourists on package tours.

But as the Forbidden City approaches its 600th birthday next year, a dramatic change has been taking place, with even dark and dusty corners of the palace restored to their former glories for all to see. Continue reading →

Asia at the World’s Fairs

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Announcing the launching of
Asia at the World’s Fairs: An Online Exhibition of Cultural Exchange
Presented by the Center for the Study of Asia, Pardee School of Global Studies
Curated by Catherine Vance Yeh

Beginning with the earliest international exhibition at London’s “Crystal Palace” in 1851, “world’s fairs” became a prominent stage for the presentation of peoples and cultures of Asia to a world audience. With its rich, vibrant and diverse histories and cultures, Asia as represented at these universal expositions provided many fairgoers with their first encounter with Asia and helped shape their understanding of the world. Taking place during a time of widespread colonialism, the notion of the world presented at these fairs had many complex layers of meaning. In many cases, indigenous arts and crafts were selected and showcased by their colonial administrators. Yet, many Asian countries chose to actively confront the asymmetry of power in their relationship to the West by presenting in these exhibitions their own image of their country and culture. These expositions served as a grand stage that displayed a complex history of conflicts, contradictions, and engagement of Asia with the world. Continue reading →

Science and the May Fourth

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Source: Sup China (4/24/19)
Protesting In The Name Of Science: The Legacy Of China’s May Fourth Movement
By YANGYANG CHENG

A hundred years after the rally for “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy,” can the pursuit of scientific truth bring political freedom?

When I bade goodbye to my family in China in the summer of 2009, I proudly declared that I was going to America to study science — and be free. Always hesitant about her daughter’s choice of science over a more “feminine” discipline, my mother was nevertheless more concerned about my second objective. “What do you mean by ‘being free’? What will you do when you are ‘free’?”

“Focus on your profession,” my mother warned. “Don’t talk about politics. Don’t participate in politics. Don’t ever join street demonstrations, not even for the spectacle.” Continue reading →

Penalty for maligning a building’s fengshui

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Source: NYT (4/11/19)
In China, a $30,000 Penalty for Maligning a Building’s Feng Shui
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By Javier C. Hernández and Albee Zhang

The Wangjing SOHO developed by SOHO China in Beijing. CreditImaginechina, via Associated Press

BEIJING — A Chinese court has ordered a media company to pay nearly $30,000 to a real estate developer after it published an article that suggested a flashy building in Beijing violated the ancient laws of feng shui and would bring misfortune to its occupants.

The Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing ruled on Wednesday that the media company, Zhuhai Shengun Internet Technology, had damaged the reputation of the building’s developers, SOHO China, one of the largest real estate companies in China. Continue reading →

China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority

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Source: The Guardian (4/11/19)
China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority
Smartphones and the internet gave the Uighurs a sense of their own identity – but now the Chinese state is using technology to strip them of it.
By Darren Byler

In mid-2017, Alim, a Uighur man in his 20s, returned to China from studying abroad. As soon as he landed back in the country, he was pulled off the plane by police officers. He was told his trip abroad meant that he was now under suspicion of being “unsafe”. The police administered what they call a “health check”, which involved collecting several types of biometric data, including DNA, blood type, fingerprints, voice recordings and face scans – a process that all adults in the Uighur autonomous region of Xinjiang, in north-west China, are expected to undergo.

After his “health check”, Alim was transported to one of the hundreds of detention centres that dot north-west China. These centres have become an important part of what Xi Jinping’s government calls the “people’s war on terror”, a campaign launched in 2014, which focuses on Xinjiang, a region with a population of roughly 25 million people, just under half of whom are Uighur Muslims. As part of this campaign, the Chinese government has come to treat almost all expressions of Uighur Islamic faith as signs of potential religious extremism and ethnic separatism. Since 2017 alone, more than 1 million Turkic Muslims, including Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others, have moved through detention centres. Continue reading →

China’s Thousandfold Guantánamos

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My new article on Xinjiang, which includes criticism of Cornell and other universities, over the Xinjiang human rights catastrophe, and China relations.–Magnus Fiskesjö

Source: Inside Higher Education (April 8, 2019)
China’s Thousandfold Guantánamos.
With China’s assault on scores of leading academics and intellectuals, business as usual is no longer possible, writes Magnus Fiskesjö.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LISA ROSS: The Uighur scholar Rahile Dawut conducting ethnographic research.

The recent mass arrests of scores of leading academics and intellectuals in western China is one of many indications that the Chinese regime’s current campaign against the native Uighur, Kazakh and other peoples is already a genocide. It is now clearly engaged in “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as defined in the 1948 international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Uighur Human Rights Project recently counted 386 targeted academics, artists and other prominent intellectuals as having been arrested by the regime. They probably are all, if still alive, in the concentration camps in the Xinjiang region, built there since 2017. Continue reading →

HK battles Beijing as dreams for culture soar

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Source: Taipei Times (4/3/19)
Hong Kong battles Beijing as dreams for culture soar
By AFP, HONG KONG

Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong plays the accordion inside a red mobile prison artwork called The Patriot, a performance art project protesting against the National Anthem Law, at his studio in Hong Kong.Wong’s work is a protest in a city struggling to square its vast cultural ambitions with an increasingly assertive Beijing. Photo: AFP

At a sunny Hong Kong art studio Kacey Wong gazes out through the bars of a cage, painted communist red — his work a protest in a city struggling to square its vast cultural ambitions with an increasingly assertive Beijing.

Better known for its high-end commercial galleries — and glamorous fairs like last month’s Art Basel — Hong Kong is striving to turn itself into a cultural heavyweight through a spate of new multimillion-dollar public art spaces.

But local artists warn Beijing’s growing influence is creating a climate of fear that is stifling creativity and threatens the nascent grassroots art scene Hong Kong says it wants to enrich. Continue reading →

Replica of Peony Pavilion to appear in Stratford

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Source: Global Times (3/14/19)
Replica of Chinese Peony Pavilion to appear in Shakespeare’s hometown
By Xinhua

The Peony Pavilion is a masterpiece by Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). A replica of the pavilion, based on pictures recorded in ancient books of the play, will appear in Shakespeare’s hometown.

Four hundred years ago, when William Shakespeare was writing his sonnets with a quill, Tang Xianzu was recording verses with a brush nearly 6,000 kilometers away.

China and Britain have hosted a series of events to commemorate Shakespeare and Tang. Among the cultural exchange contracts signed, a replica of British playwright William Shakespeare’s family house will be built in Tang’s hometown in Fuzhou, East China’s Jiangxi Province, while Fuzhou will help build the replica of the Peony Pavilion, the historical site where Tang’s story took place, in Shakespeare’s hometown. Continue reading →

“Wuhouci” Tibetan community of Chengdu

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Source: High Peaks Pure Earth (2/25/19)
“Wuhouci” The Tibetan Community of Chengdu – Guest Post and Poetry Translation
By Lowell Cook

Photo taken in Wuhouci, Chengdu (Photo credit: Nina Robyn and Drolma Dondrup)

“The Tibetan Community of Chengdu” – An Introduction by Lowell Cook*

There are a number of Tibetan communities outside of the indigenous Tibetan lands and the community of Wuhouci is one of the most vibrant. Wuhouci is a neighborhood in the city of Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, and has earned a name for itself as Chengdu’s Tibetan quarter.

With Sichuan encompassing large parts of Kham and Amdo, Chengdu acts as one of the major centers for Tibetans from these regions to access certain goods and medical care, find work and attend language schools or universities, and even spend their winters. It is said that at any given time, there are around 300,000 Tibetans in Chengdu. When you think about the overall Tibetan population (roughly 6 million), this is a sizable number. Yet, when you consider the entire population of Chengdu (over 14 million), it becomes clear that they are still very much a minority. Continue reading →

1.5 million Muslims in camps

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Source: SupChina (3/13/19)
1.5 Million Muslims Are In China’s Camps — Scholar
By LUCAS NIEWENHUIS

Adrian Zenz is a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany. Last year, he played a pivotal role in documenting the massive expansion of detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang region — what the government calls “vocational training centers,” but which function as political indoctrination camps. Zenz’s groundbreaking research estimating that as many as 1 million Muslims had disappeared into the facilities was published in the Jamestown China Brief, and then in the peer-reviewed journal Central Asian Survey. Continue reading →

Locking up his fellow Muslims

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Source: NYT (3/2/19)
He Needed a Job. China Gave Him One: Locking Up His Fellow Muslims
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China’s vast detention program for Muslims has required more and more police officers. And recruits are coming from the very ethnic groups that are being suppressed.
By Austin Ramzy

Baimurat, who lives in Kazakhstan, says he helped deliver hundreds of fellow Muslims to an indoctrination camp in China’s Xinjiang region. “I came to regret ever coming back to China,” he said. “That choice led me into doing such awful things.” Credit Emile Ducke for The New York Times

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — The businesses he started had failed, and he had a wife and two children to support. So when the authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang region offered him a job with the auxiliary police, Baimurat welcomed the good pay and benefits.

For months, he stood at roadside checkpoints, looking for people on the government’s blacklist, usually from Muslim ethnic minorities. As a Kazakh Muslim himself, he sometimes felt uncomfortable about his work, but he needed the money.

Then he was asked to help bring 600 handcuffed people to a new facility — and was stunned by what he saw. Officials called it a job training center, but it was basically a prison, with toilets and beds behind bars. One detainee was an acquaintance he barely recognized because he had lost so much weight. Continue reading →

Li Xueqin dies at 85

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Source: NYT (3/1/19)
Li Xueqin, Key Historian in China’s Embrace of Antiquity, Dies at 85
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By Ian Johnson

Li Xueqin, one of China’s leading historians, in an undated photo. Credit: Tsinghua University

BEIJING — Li Xueqin, whose political savvy and intellectual brilliance helped shift the field of Chinese history toward emphasizing the wonders of the country’s past, a traditionalist approach in line with the Communist government’s efforts to identify itself with ancient China, died on Feb. 24 in Beijing. He was 85.

His death was confirmed by a government obituary. The official newspaper Guangming Daily paid tribute to him in an article headlined, “A Lifelong Pursuit of History; He Also Wrote Himself Into the History Books.”

That was hardly an exaggeration. For more than 20 years Mr. Li was deputy director and then director of the Institute of History, part of the Chinese Academy of Social Science — positions of unusual influence in a country that has alternately gloried in its history and rejected it as a burden. Continue reading →