History

posts related to modern Chinese history

Who is Hua Mulan?

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Source: Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton (6/10/24)
Who is Hua Mulan?
By

So you think you know who Mulan is? Perhaps you know the feisty girl from the eponymous cross-dressing warrior of the 1998 Disney animated film Mulan. She is the rebellious teenager who escapes the suffocating social expectations for a maiden and heads to the battle zone, where she finds peace with who she is. Or, if you are a Chinese speaker, you may have first learned about the weaver-turned-soldier from the “Ballad of Mulan,” the lyrics of a folk song first preserved in writing in as early as the sixth century. In the memorable rhyming text she is the filial and brave daughter who is determined to shield her aging father from a perilous military life.

Mulan’s story is included in an advertisement booklet titled Women’s Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars in Color Pictures 女子二十四孝彩圖, published by a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai in 1941. Whereas the historic figures featured in the classic Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars were nearly all male, the booklet focuses on young Chinese girls’ and women’s filial piety. The caption emphasizes that when Mulan returns home after serving eleven years in the army, she is “apparently still a virgin” (page 7). The facing page advertises fish liver oil, said to have ingredients supplied by an American vitamin company. In Nü zi er shi si xiao cai tu. Shanghai: Xin Yi Pharmaceutical Company, 1941. (Cotsen 75832)

China’s Bravest Girl: The Legend of Hua Mu Lan, told by Charlie Chin 陳建文; illustrated by Tomie Arai 新居富枝; Chinese translation by Wang Xing Chu 王性初. Emeryville, CA: Children’s Book Press, 1993. (Cotsen 17732)

Have you ever wondered, however, what kind of Chinese girl Mulan was? Weren’t women in ancient China supposed to have their feet bound? How could Mulan have gotten away from the crippling practice? Was Mulan’s family rich or poor–and does it matter? Did Mulan really grow up in those circular communal buildings portrayed in Disney’s live-action adaptation of 2020? If not, where was her hometown? [CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE]

‘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

Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing

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Source: China Digital Times (6/5/24)
Memories of a Massacre: Recollections of June Fourth Beyond Beijing
By

Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories of June Fourth still persist. On the 35th anniversary of the 1989 student movement’s suppression, a number of people who lived through the era published personal recollections to overseas websites. CDT has archived their essays and translated selected excerpts from each.

Jiang Xue, a leading Chinese journalist now reporting from exile, published a mix of reportage and memoir in Wainao (WHYNOT), a Chinese-language online magazine. She recalled how the events played out in her small hometown in Gansu, hundreds of miles from the events in Beijing. She remembered solidarity and initial permissiveness, followed by a crackdown on public mourning:

That summer, we all gathered anxiously to listen to Voice of America, straining for any and all news out of Beijing about the student movement. One day in March, our class leader brought our entire class to a blackboard at the school gate and posted our school’s first big-character poster. To this day, I remember the crude blue characters written in a fountain pen on a large white paper: “Down with corruption, punish profiteering bureaucrats, support the student sit-in.”

[…] Before the massacre, the movement on the square was in full swing. One day, my classmates entrusted me to go to the town post office to donate our 14.5 yuan student fund. Writing on the post office’s crude desk, I put down the address: “The Tiananmen Square student sit-in.” The postal workers helped me fill out the remittance, which went smoothly. Nobody said, “This address is unclear, it won’t arrive.” That day, all of us, including the postal workers, knew without a doubt: The students on Tiananmen Square would receive the money. Continue reading Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing →

‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Identity’

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Source: NYT (6/4/24)
As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’
The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.
By Li Yuan

An illustration of a large creature with glowing red eyes. Its paws are on stacks of paper, which are also in its mouth, in between its baring fangs. Nearby, people are holding documents, two of them holding up one that says “404.”

Credit…Yifan Wu

Chinese people know their country’s internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.

They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.

Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks.

A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.

“The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored.

“We used to believe that the internet had a memory,” He Jiayan, a blogger who writes about successful businesspeople, wrote in the post. “But we didn’t realize that this memory is like that of a goldfish.” Continue reading ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Identity’ →

The ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy in China

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TIANANMEN AT 35—THE ONGOING STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY IN CHINA
US Congressional-Executive Commission on China
2118 Rayburn House Office Building | Tuesday, June 4, 2024 – 10:30am

In 1989, citizens in China from all walks of life participated in demonstrations that swept throughout the country including in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The peaceful demonstrators of that year called upon the Chinese government to eliminate corruption, accelerate political reform, and protect human rights, particularly the freedom of expression—demands echoed during the “White Paper” protests that spread throughout China in 2022. The Chinese Communist’s Party’s violent suppression of the 1989 demonstrations, along with ongoing censorship of any public discussion of what happened in June of 1989, have had far-reaching consequences for Chinese society and U.S.-China relations.

On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, this hearing will review the legacy of the 1989 protests and look at how a new generation of advocates are seeking to both preserve the memory of Tiananmen and advocate for human rights and political reforms in the People’s Republic of China, despite increasing intimidation and censorship.  Witnesses will provide testimony about Hong Kong’s efforts to repress Tiananmen commemorations, discuss the impact of the “White Paper Movement” on a next generation of advocates, and provide details about the PRC’s transnational repression efforts targeting those advocating for greater freedoms in China.

The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC’s YouTube channel.

Witnesses: 

Fengsuo Zhou—Tiananmen student leader and Executive Director, Human Rights in China

Rowena He—Senior Research Fellow, University of Texas, Austin and author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices for the Struggle for Democracy in China

Ruohui Yang—founder of the human rights and democracy organization Assembly of Citizens and student at Humber College, Canada

“Karin” (an alias) —White Paper Protest activist and student at Columbia University (will appear in disguise)

More witnesses may be added

Closing off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre

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Source: Human Rights Watch (6/2/24)
China: Closing Off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre
35 Years On, Commemorators Imprisoned, Victims’ Families Denied Redress
By Human Rights Watch

Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators protest in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, May 17, 1989. © 1989 Sadayuki Mikami/AP Photo

(New York) – The Chinese government is further suppressing any discussion and commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Human Rights Watch said today. Leading up to the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4, 2024, Chinese authorities have again preempted commemorations.

The government has imprisoned those in China and Hong Kong who have sought to honor the memory of the victims, while refusing to acknowledge responsibility for the mass killings or provide redress for victims and their families.

“The Chinese government is seeking to erase memory of the Tiananmen Massacre throughout China and in Hong Kong,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “But 35 years on, the government has been unable to extinguish the flames of remembrance for those risking all to promote respect for democracy and human rights in China.”

On April 3, Xu Guang (徐光), a 1989 student leader, was sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he demanded that the Chinese government acknowledge the Tiananmen Massacre and held a sign calling for redress at a local police station in May 2022. Xu was reportedly tortured, shackled, and mistreated while in detention.

Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of victims of the 1989 massacre, reported that one of their founders, Zhan Xianling, is under surveillance with guards outside her home. Other activists connected to the 1989 democracy movement including Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer who had been a student representative at Tiananmen, and Ji Feng, a student leader in Guizhou, are similarly under tightened police surveillance or taken away from their homes. Continue reading Closing off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre →

Liao Yiwu on two poems and four years of detention

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Source: The Guardian (5/9/24)
Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who smuggled his writing out of prison
My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on words
By (Translated by Michael Martin Day)

Liao Yiwu in Paris in 2019. Photograph: Yoan Valat, EPA/EFE.

Most of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the ministry of security, and the agents there study and ponder them repeatedly, more carefully than the creator himself. The guys working this racket have superb memories; a certain chief of the Chengdu public security bureau can still recite the poems I published in an underground magazine in the 1980s. While the literati write nostalgically, hoping to go down in literary history, the real history may be locked in the vaults of the security department.

The above is excerpted from my book June 4: My Testimony, published in Taiwan in 2011. I wrote that book three times, the later drafts on paper much better than the paper I used for writing in prison, which was so soft and brittle I had to write very lightly. Paper outside prison is solid and flexible enough that you don’t have to worry about puncturing it with the tip of a pen. Thus, I restrained myself and filled in a page of paper, and then how many thousand – ten thousand? More? How many ant-sized words can be packed on to a page? Who knows.

I spent four years in prison for two poems, Massacre and Requiem, both of which railed against the Tiananmen massacre that began in the early hours of 4 June 1989. Fuelled by extreme anger, I recited Massacre and made it into an audiotape, which was distributed to more than 20 cities across China. I worked with the Canadian sinologist Michael Martin Day, who was living in my home at the time. After mustering a mob of sorts, we made Requiem into a performance art film. On 16 March 1990, I was arrested and imprisoned. About two dozen underground poets and writers were detained and interrogated, but only eight would be named as defendants in the first indictment in the case against this “counter-revolutionary clique”.

I passed through an interrogation centre, a detention centre, No 2 prison and No 3 prison in Sichuan province. During the two years and two months I spent in the detention centre, I wrote and preserved 28 short poems and eight letters, which I hid in the spine of a hardcover edition of the medieval novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I used paste to “repair” and restore it, before it was eventually taken out of the prison after passing through many hands. In the last prison, No 3 prison in north-east Sichuan, I secretly wrote more than 200 pages of manuscripts. These were published after my release in a four-volume book with the title Go on Living. Continue reading Liao Yiwu on two poems and four years of detention →

Taiwan will tear down remaining Chiang statues

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Source: SCMP (4/22/24)
Taiwan will tear down all remaining statues of Chiang Kai-shek in public spaces
DPP government says more than 760 statues of Chiang, who ruled the island for nearly three decades, will be swiftly removed. The move is seen as a bid to erase his legacy and ‘will be seen as an unfriendly gesture towards mainland China’, analyst says
By Lawrence Chung in Taipei

There are hundreds of statues of late president Chiang Kai-shek in public spaces across Taiwan. Photo: Shutterstock Images

Taiwan’s government will remove all remaining statues of late president Chiang Kai-shek from public spaces in what is seen as a bid to erase his legacy and the historical link with mainland China.

Chiang ruled the island for nearly three decades until his death in 1975. He had led his Nationalist or Kuomintang troops to Taiwan in 1949 and set up an interim government on the island, declaring martial law, after being defeated in a civil war by the Communists on the mainland.

Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party government set up a transitional justice commission in 2018 to investigate Chiang’s rule, finding perceived political dissidents had been persecuted and he had misused government funds to benefit the KMT.

One of the commission’s proposals was to remove thousands of Chiang statues across Taiwan. Critics have branded Chiang as a dictator who sent troops to kill hundreds of civilians during unrest in 1947 and say he does not deserve to be remembered.

On Monday, a cabinet official told the legislature that the interior ministry would swiftly remove the more than 760 statues of Chiang that are still standing across the island. Continue reading Taiwan will tear down remaining Chiang statues →

The Oscars of archaeology

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Source: SCMP (4/17/24)
The Oscars of Archaeology: China unveils its top 10 discoveries of 2023
One discovery unearthed some of the oldest people to ever live in China. While another used extremely modern technology to create a breakthrough
By Kevin McSpadden

The Oscars of Archaeology: China unveils its top 10 discoveries of 2023. Photo: SCMP composite/National Cultural Heritage Administration

Every industry has that one annual event that stands apart as the premier award ceremony. For Chinese archaeologists, the best discoveries of the year awarded by China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration is the industry’s Oscars.

The agency says it looks for revelations that “inspire important discussions, offer new perspectives, and take archaeology in a novel direction.”

“The projects selected as the ‘top 10 new archaeological discoveries’ in 2023 are outstanding representatives of field archaeological work from the past year. These new archaeological discoveries vividly demonstrate China’s long history and vast civilisation and are the foundation of self-confidence and a source of strength,” the agency said in its announcement.

The projects range from uncovering prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies to surveying beautiful porcelain cerematics work, and even include a great achievement in China’s burgeoning industry of underwater archaeology. This year’s crop also happens to be a particularly old set of sites, with only two coming from after the BC-AD timeline shift.

It is important to note that many of the recipients were rewarded for the artefacts discovered over the course of years-long excavation projects, and most of the sites were first discovered prior to 2023.

So here they are, the “Oscars of Archaeology” – the National Cultural Heritage Administration’s top 10 most important excavations of 2023. Continue reading The Oscars of archaeology →

Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan

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Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan
2024 UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative Conference
Friday, April 19, 2024 – Saturday, April 20, 2024

Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan

Image Credit: 作者 (Photographer)：余如季 (Yu Ru-ji)。《蚵女》拍攝現場採訪照 (Interview Photo from the filming of “Oyster Girl”)。典藏者：余立。數位物件典藏者：中央研究院數位文化中心、國家電影及視聽文化中心。創用CC 姓名標示-非商業性-相同方式分享 3.0台灣（CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 TW）。發佈於《開放博物館》[https://openmuseum.tw/muse/digi_object/6262314d95bf7f0b4f4528ae98bd1ec4#211035]（2024/02/06瀏覽）

Image for RSVP Button

Organized by Shu-mei Shih (Irving and Jean Stone Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies, UCLA) and Faye Qiyu Lu (Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA), the Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan conference is presented as part of the UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative, a partnership of UCLA and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) that aims to create research synergies to promote cutting-edge research in Taiwan studies.

Over the past decades between the “old” and the “new” Cold Wars, the (in)significance of Taiwan in world culture and history has often been determined by ideological assumptions that are overly simplistic. Yet not only have approaches to Taiwan studies in Taiwan experienced drastic changes (from area studies to postcolonial to settler colonial critiques), the positionality of Taiwan has also demonstrated unique potential for relational comparisons with the world. This conference examines ways of rethinking Cold War culture and history in Taiwan as well as the implications of the global Cold War culture and history for Taiwan studies from interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives. How do philosophical thought, literary and cultural productions, and geopolitical relations intersect when we situate Taiwan in the global Cold War? What does “being human” mean in Cold War Taiwan, taking into consideration Sinophone and transpacific entanglements? How is Cold War cultural politics negotiated in the developments of literary, cinematic, and media genres? What does the practice of rethinking Cold War culture and history in Taiwan do to better our understanding of Taiwan, China, and the world at the current moment with the formation of what may be called the Second Cold War? Continue reading Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan →

From Qing Dynasty to Republican China–cfp

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International Summer Seminar “From Qing dynasty to Republican China: continuities and ruptures
« La Vieille Perrotine », Saint-Pierre d’Oléron (France)
8-14 September 2024

Coordination and pedagogical team
Luca Gabbiani (École française d’Extrême-Orient), Marie-Paule Hille (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Stéphanie Homola (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Catherine Jami (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Coraline Jortay (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Sara Landa (University of Heidelberg), Xavier Paulès (École des hautes études en sciences sociales).

Financial support
Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, École française d’Extrême-Orient, LabEx Tepsis, University of Heidelberg.

Application deadline
5 May 2024.

Presentation
This Summer Seminar programme is aimed at students from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, dealing with Chinese historical studies. The selected period stretches from the Qing dynasty to the Republic (first half of the 20th century). It offers an optimal stage for the study of large-scale processes and syntheses in link with world history. By focusing on this period, the Summer Seminar’s approach will aim at providing a new comparative meaning to Chinese history and the humanities in a global perspective. The programme will place a strong emphasis on sources to facilitate better knowledge and access to the different types of documents in an interdisciplinary perspective. Continue reading From Qing Dynasty to Republican China–cfp →

Pleas and Appeals

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Source: China Media Project (3/22/24)
Pleas and Appeals
After it went viral in China this month, video footage of a woman wailing before the altar of Bao Qingtian, an 11th-century official who has become a popular symbol of justice, drove a debate online about the difficulties of seeking recourse for official wrongs.
By Alex Colville

Women kneeling before an image of Bao Zheng.

Footage of a woman wailing on her knees before a memorial to a Song-dynasty official went viral on the Chinese internet last week. Despite popular demand for more information, a lack of any press follow-up has instead let rumors fill the void. The question of why she would be kneeling before the image of an official who lived almost a thousand years ago goes to the heart of present-day questions of corruption, malfeasance, and social justice.

Bao Zheng (包拯), the historical figure at the heart of this mystery, who can also be referred to as Lord Bao (包公) or Justice Bao (包青天), was famed for his honesty and upright ways following his death in the 11th-century. Bao Qingtian (as he has come to be popularly known) served as magistrate for the Song capital in present-day Kaifeng, Henan province. Bao initiated judicial reforms that let petitioners lodge complaints against corrupt local administrators — and for this reason his name has become a byword for justice and good governance.

Some nine and half centuries later, the unknown woman appealing to Bao at his memorial temple in Kaifeng is believed to be a petitioner herself, eager to present some grievance to a higher official who can help her seek justice — and what higher official than a celestial one?

But the highest appeal here may also be to the internet and social media. Continue reading Pleas and Appeals →

Jewish Culture and Nationalism in Shanghai–cfp

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CALL FOR PAPERS: Between East and West: Jewish Culture and Nationalism in Shanghai
When: Sept. 11-13, 2024
Where: Shanghai
Submission Deadline: June 1, 2024
Notification: July 1, 2024

During the first half of the twentieth century, members of the Jewish national movement reimagined Jewish identity in various ways, with influences received and transmitted within different cultural contexts across the globe. While the range of influences and identities was robust, the stress in the current historiographical picture is on Western and Westernizing influences, while Asian influences, together with Jewish interest in, and even longed-for attachment to “The East” and “Eastern” cultures, has received comparatively little attention.

SIGNAL Group and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences invites scholars and researchers from around the world to submit proposals for participation in a pioneering academic workshop and conference in Shanghai to take place in Sept. 2024, that will explore Shanghai’s Jewish communities in Shanghai and other cities in China, with a special emphasis on the Baghdadi Jewish community of Shanghai and its remarkable newspaper, Israel’s Messenger (IM), published from 1904-41. Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jewish community secured support for the Jewish national movement in the Land of Israel from the father of modern Chinese nationalism, Sun Yat Sen, while IM brought Jewish national identity into dialogue with the aspirational vision of Asian identity that was articulated by the Nobel Prize winning poet and polymath, Rabindranth Tagore. The Baghdadi Jewish activity was marked by the vibrant and cosmopolitan environment of early twentieth-century Shanghai, and constituted a unique voice in that multi-vocal and multifaceted city which has yet to receive the scholarly attention that it deserves. Continue reading Jewish Culture and Nationalism in Shanghai–cfp →

Echoes of Harbin

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NEW BOOK: Dan Ben-Canaan, Echoes of Harbin – Reflections on Space and Time of a Vanished Community in Manchuria (Lexington Books) is being published and will be available in early March 2024.

Echoes of Harbin: Reflections on Space and Time of a Vanished Community in Manchuria deals with Harbin, a Chinese city that was established by Russians in 1898 and was a home for more than 38 different national ethnic communities for over 60 years. Among the communities, and second in size, was the Jewish community. This book exposes several areas that have contributed to the Jewish experience in China, particularly in Harbin, and paints a revealing picture of what a Jewish community in an alien land was and how it functioned in a space that was shared with other communities. While it starts with a unique space called Manchuria that had its mark on the town of Harbin, it uncovers the active and productive life of a community that wished for a haven but found unrest and hostilities and had to look for it elsewhere.

A blurb on the back cover:

“While much international attention has been focused in recent years on China’s northwest (Xinjiang and the Uyghurs), the study of modern northeast China, which was a considerably more important historical and strategic arena, has been somewhat marginalized. Focusing on Harbin, this book provides a vertical and horizontal analysis of northeast China since the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, underlying the role of Jews in comprehensive, virtually encyclopedic details never discussed before. As such, it is an outstanding lifelong achievement.” —Yitzhak Shichor, professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Posted by: Dan Ben-Canann <canaan@inter.net.il>

Youth in Chinese History project

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Youth in Chinese History: bibliography and video-papers

The research project ‘Youth in Chinese History: Education and Representations of Young People in Chinese Sources between Tradition and Modernity,’ coordinated by Giulia Falato (University of Parma, former Oxford University) and Renata Vinci (University of Palermo), included the organization of the Youth in Chinese History Workshop at the China Centre, University of Oxford, in September 2023. From this rich moment of exchange and dialogue, the idea arose to create digital resources to make the research of project participants available to the academic community and a broader audience.

On the project’s website, you can consult a thematic bibliography and a video-papers series produced by project participants on topics related to education and the representation of young people in imperial times. Both resources are constantly updated, so we invite you to visit the website and subscribe to the Youtube channel. You will already find the first four video-papers, and by subscribing to the channel, you will receive a notification whenever a new video is uploaded.

Project website: www.youthinchinesehistory.com

Direct link to the thematic bibliography: https://www.youthinchinesehistory.com/bibliography/

Direct link to the video-papers series: https://www.youthinchinesehistory.com/ych-video-series/

Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@YouthinChineseHistory

For further information, you can contact the coordinators at info@youthinchinesehistory.com

THIS RESEARCH PROJECT IS SUPPORTED BY THE BRITISH ACADEMY AND LEVERHULME TRUST SMALL RESEARCH GRANT.

Posted by: Renata Vinci renata.vinci@unipa.it