New publications

posts related to new publications in Chinese studies

Suipian no. 6

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碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments no. 6 (May 31, 2025)
By TABITHA SPEELMAN

Welcome to the 6th edition of Suipian, my personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. You’re receiving this because you were previously subscribed to Changpian, my earlier newsletter sharing Chinese nonfiction writing – or if you recently subscribed. See here for more introduction to Suipian.

Suipian is coming to you from Rotterdam on this 端午节. I have spent the last few months mostly here for personal reasons, but China never feels far. Whether it is the ever-expanding range of authentic Chinese food offerings, the number of high-quality events, or the first European museum designed by a Chinese architecture firm that recently opened in my neighborhood (see this video and pictures below), these cultural trends feel energetic and like they have their own momentum apart from the political cycle, at least for now.

The below selection is as random as ever – hope there’s something you enjoy.

随笔 // Suibi // Notes

Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

Like many, I am struggling to keep up with political developments, let alone my emotions around them. So I was touched when, on podcast 不合时宜, I heard Chinese semiconductor industry strategist Lu Ming discuss how every day he has to remind himself of what has changed: “我们已经处于一个不短的历史趋势的可能是头部，然后它在一时半会是结束不了的，抱着一种侥幸心理去期待世界不是这样子不会有任何的帮助,” he says, adding that: “这是我经常,每天,都跟自己在说的一件事情.” Continue reading Suipian no. 6 →

Periodising HK cinema

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New publication: Jessica Siu-yin Yeung, “Periodising early Hong Kong cinema (1914–41): Tianyi Hong Kong Studio, Cantonese resistance, and colonial paradox.” Early Popular Visual Culture (May 2025).

I hope this piece will help some listserv subscribers teach early Hong Kong film history. It is written with the intention of serving as reading for novice students who have no prior knowledge of early Hong Kong cinema, providing accurate information, many images, and minimal jargon. Here is the abstract:

This article asks, ‘What do we mean when we say “early Hong Kong screen culture and cinema?” It answers this question with a threefold response. Against the scholarship that has been focusing on Shanghai-Hong Kong connections, this article emphasises the overlooked Canton-Hong Kong connections. It highlights the separationist government Chen Jitang’s contribution to preventing Cantonese filmmaking from being banned by the Kuomintang government in the 1930s when the Nanking government promoted Mandarin as the national language. Also, existing studies have overemphasised ‘The Father of Hong Kong Cinema’, Lai Man-wai and his family as important personages in early Hong Kong cinema for making the first fiction film and some national defence films. Yet this article argues that it was the Shaw Brothers’ Tianyi Hong Kong Studio that inaugurated the era of quality Cantonese filmmaking. Lastly, this article periodises early Hong Kong cinema (1914–41) into three stages: the silent film and the partially-sound Cantonese film age (1914–32), the talkies, the boom, and the censorship of Cantonese filmmaking (1933–36); and the peak and decline of Cantonese filmmaking (1937–41). Hong Kong’s status as a colony paradoxically endowed it with the criteria to preserve Cantonese filmmaking, as this article shall explicate such serendipity with Barbara Ward’s framework of ‘colonial paradox’. In other words, it was the nonchalance of the British Hong Kong government towards Cantonese filmmaking that preserved this endangered indigenous art through the Kuomintang censorship and the wartime, so that Cantonese filmmaking could be continued in the post-war period.

Jessica Siu-yin Yeung <jessicayeung@LN.edu.hk>

Toward a Locational Theory of Chinese Animation

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Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (5/25/25)
Toward a Locational Theory of Chinese Animation
By Daisy Yan Du

I wrote this short article in response to Prof. Karen Redrobe’s essay “Failed Animation, Limited Theory: Feminist Reflections in a Transnational Context,” published on the ACAS website on March 14, 2024. Her essay was based on an invited lecture she delivered in February 2024 for the ACAS Distinguished Lecture Series at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Given that the lectures in this series are expected to be somehow related to China or Chinese animation and Prof. Redrobe is not a China or Chinese animation scholar, it would perhaps be impracticable for her to conduct in-depth research about Chinese animation for the lecture in the short time she had to prepare. I therefore suggested that for convenience’s sake, she could link some ideas in her edited book Animating Film Theory (2014) to China or Chinese animation. Even though the topic of Chinese animation is absent in that book, there is still certainly much she could say about it, such as the role of Chinese animation for theorizing animation. I want to clarify that my suggestion is by no means a gesture of criticism. In other words, the absence of Chinese animation in that book should not be taken as a failure, nor the editor’s negligence, nor a limitation of that book. In fact, I have been using that groundbreaking book for my graduate courses over the past decade and I do regard it as a milestone in animation studies, a classic indeed. Chinese animation was absent in that book largely because the topic was still invisible in the English academia at that time. When Prof. Redrobe embarked on that book project, I was still writing my PhD dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which was the first in the West.[1]

Later I was invited by Prof. Redrobe to give a lecture for her graduate class Global Film Theory at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2025. Since I had no clue of what I could say to meet the needs of that class, Prof. Redrobe suggested that I speak about the status of “theory” in Chinese film and animation studies. Since my own publications are largely based on archival and historical research, which is a common practice in area studies, or China studies to be specific, we must ask: What’s the role of theory in Chinese film and animation studies? Is theory important for Chinese film and animation studies? If so, what does theory allow for and reveal in Chinese film and animation studies? I wrote this essay to address her questions as well as some of my own. Continue reading Toward a Locational Theory of Chinese Animation →

Chinese Theater Collaborative new modules

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NEW PUBLICATION: Additional Modules Released on Chinese Theater Collaborative

The Chinese Theater Collaborative (CTC) (https://chinesetheatercollaborative.org/ctc/index) has released three new modules about modern adaptations of three different traditional Chinese plays: The Orphan of Zhao 赵氏孤儿 (2005), a Yueju opera performance, by Susanna Sun; Crimson 红娘 (1976), a Beijing opera film, by Olivia Bobak; and The Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭 (1986), a Kunqu opera film, by Jason Wang. Enjoy!

Patricia Sieber <sieber.6@osu.edu>

Jianmei Liu on Chinese Thirdspace

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Source: US-China Perception Monitor (5/20/25)
Chinese Thirdspace & A Third Political Route w/ Jianmei Liu
By Miranda Wilson

Jianmei Liu is chair professor of Chinese literature at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature (2016) and Revolution Plus Love: Literary History, Women’s Bodies, and Thematic Repetition in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (2003). This interview covers her most recent book: Chinese Thirdspace: The Paradox of Moderate Politics, 1946–2020 (2025).

Miranda Wilson: To begin, what inspired you to write Chinese Thirdspace? And, for readers who don’t know, what is the “Chinese Thirdspace”?

Jianmei Liu: The inspiration for Chinese Thirdspace came during the intense anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019. I observed a society sharply divided into two camps: those supporting China and those opposing it. As someone seeking a middle ground, I often felt bewildered and caught in the crossfire. This situation reminded me of past political turmoil in mainland China, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when many people felt pressured to choose a side with little room for alternatives. This binary thinking limits our ability to empathize with others whose views may differ from our own.

During my writing process, I drew inspiration from my father, Liu Zaifu, a distinguished literary critic and scholar, whose literary theories were very influential in China. After his exile to the United States due to his involvement in the Tiananmen Square Movement, he introduced the concept of Thirdspace in the late 1990s, presenting a perspective that diverges from that of Western theorists like Homi Bhabha and Edward Soja. My father’s vision of Thirdspace encapsulates the struggles of modern Chinese intellectuals, who have long been ensnared in a polarized dilemma—revolution versus anti-revolution, individual versus collective, Marxism versus anti-Marxism, leftist versus rightist, materialism versus idealism, modernity versus tradition, and East versus West. For over a century, these entrenched divisions have stifled the richness of diverse perspectives. Continue reading Jianmei Liu on Chinese Thirdspace →

Chinese Thirdspace

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Chinese Thirdspace: The Paradox of Moderate Politics, 1946–2020
By Jianmei Liu
NY: Columbia University Press, 2025.

Chinese intellectuals have long chafed under the dominance of dualities—the sense that they are trapped between two diametrically opposed forces, with no choice but to pick one side or the other. Over the years, they have been driven into binary debates such as reform versus revolution, tradition versus modernity, the West versus the East, and left versus right. At the same time, a number of key thinkers have sought to transcend the extremes and find middle ground.

This book examines how a diverse set of Chinese intellectuals carved out in-between spaces beyond the poles of competing ideologies for greater openness, multiplicity, and pluralism. Reappropriating and rehistoricizing the concept of Thirdspace—theorized by Homi Bhabha and Edward Soja—Jianmei Liu traces how writers and artists, in different times and places, have explored and developed alternatives to either/or dichotomies. Chinese Thirdspace brings together an unexpected group of cases, including Zhang Dongsun’s political philosophy, Yin Haiguang’s “colorless thought,” Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction, Liu Zaifu’s fragmentary writing, Gao Xingjian’s transmedia cine-poems, Xi Xi’s hybrid works, Chi Zijian’s eulogy of shamanism, Chu Tien-Hsin’s various heterotopias, and Chan Koonchung’s speculative political novel, concluding with the controversy over Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary. Their works offer new ways to grapple with the modern Chinese experience, and as Liu shows, they contain alternative possibilities for a future beyond the binary oppositions of our current era. Wide-ranging and theoretically rich, this interdisciplinary book demonstrates the pivotal role of Thirdspace in the intellectual history, politics, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, art, and film of modern China. Continue reading Chinese Thirdspace →

Cold Window Newsletter no. 6

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Source:  The Cold Window Newsletter 6 (2025)
By Andrew Rule

Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter! In this issue: a first foray into the world of Chinese internet literature, kicking off a column that will be running through several issues of this newsletter throughout 2025; and short fiction from the margins of Southern China.

A note on numbering: this is the third issue of the newsletter published on Paper Republic, but it is the sixth full-length issue overall. I’ve also begun writing shorter features between main issues that will not be cross-posted here, so if you want to receive the interim feature that will be coming out later this month, make sure to visit the newsletter’s main page on Substack.

Guide: Thirteen ways of looking at Chinese internet literature (1-2)

When we write about Chinese fiction in English, we have a tendency to draw a clear line between translated literary fiction (serious, challenging, widely acclaimed but little read) and translated popular fiction (addictive, commercial, devoured in private by millions but rarely acknowledged by the literary establishment). Despite the warmth and open-mindedness of readers on the literary fiction side, and despite the explosive growth of translation websites and fan communities on the popular fiction side, this divide has persisted. But, in my view, as long as you’re only reading work from one side of the divide, you’re missing out on a huge swath of the creativity, diversity, and insight that Chinese fiction can offer. Continue reading Cold Window Newsletter no. 6 →

Challenges for Chinese Women

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The new book Challenges for Chinese Women in the Early Twenty-First Century is scheduled for October 2025 publication. Full TOC and more info already published:

https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/14359

I have a chapter in the book, “The Party-State and the Forced Confessions: Similarities and Differences in the Treatment of Men and Women” which includes discussion of how both Chinese and Uyghur men and women are subjected to the CCPs coerced confession method.

Sincerely,

Magnus Fiskesjö

Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse

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The volume Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse: Time, Space, Bodies, and Things, edited by Justyna Jaguścik, Joanna Krenz, and Andrea Riemenschnitter (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) is now available in open access via the press website.

The 1919 May Fourth movement was the breeding ground for experiments by authors inspired by new world literary trends. Under Mao Zedong, folk songs accompanied political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward. Misty Poetry of the 1980s contributed to the humanistic discourse of the post-Mao reform era. The most recent stage in Chinese poetry resonates with contemporary concerns, such as technological innovation, environmental degradation, socio-political transformations, and the return of geopolitical Cold War divisions. In search of creative responses to the crisis, poets frequently revisit the past while holding on to their poetic language of self-reflection and social critique. This volume identifies three foci in contemporary poetry discourses: formal crossovers, multiple realities, and liquid boundaries. These three themes often intersect within texts from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan discussed in the book.

Contributors (in alphabetical order): Nick Admussen, Dean Anthony Brink, Simona Gallo, Justyna Jaguścik, Joanna Krenz, Andrea Lingenfelter, Liansu Meng, Andrea Riemenschnitter, Chris Song,  Maghiel van Crevel, Victor Vuilleumier, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Mary Shuk Han Wong, Zhiyi Yang, Michelle Yeh.

Contents: Continue reading Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse →

Chinese Independent Cinema

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Dear all,

On behalf of the Chinese Independent Film Archive, I am very happy to announce a new publication: Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present, and a Questionable Future, edited by Chris Berry, Luke Robinson, Sabrina Qiong Yu, and Lydia Wu (Amsterdam University Press, 2025).

Independent cinema in China is not only made outside the commercial system but also without being submitted for censorship. We know that for several decades it has been the crucible out of which China’s most exciting new films have flowed. The essays in this volume interrogate what else we think we know. Did it really start with Wu Wenguang and Bumming in Beijing in 1990, or can its roots be traced back much earlier? What are its aesthetics? And its ethics, including of gender and class? Where do audiences watch these films in China and how do they circulate? And, since the 2017 Film Law defined uncensored films as illegal, is independent Chinese cinema still alive? What does it mean today? And does it have a future? The essays in this anthology—many by exciting new scholars—explore these urgent questions.

Contents: Continue reading Chinese Independent Cinema →

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

Writing to the Rhythm of Labor book talk

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Dear Colleagues and Students,

We extend a warm invitation for you to join us at an insightful event celebrating the release of Prof Benjamin Kindler’s new book, Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942–1976. Details are as follows:

Date: 3 May 2025 (Sat)
Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm
Venue: MPL1201, Lingnan@WestKowloon (Address: 12/F, M+, Lingnan@West Kowloon, West Kowloon Cultural District, 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon)
Speaker: Prof Benjamin Kindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University
Discussants:
Prof Pun Ngai, Chair Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University
Prof Rebecca Karl, Professor of History, New York University
Dr Harlan Chambers, Researcher, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen

Book Title: Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942–1976
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Summary:
What does it mean to write in a socialist revolution? What defines labor in a communist society? In revolutionary China, writers were regularly dispatched to the countryside or factories with the expectation that, through immersion in the life of workers and peasants, they would be remade as “culture workers” whose writing could serve the communist project. Their cultural labor would not merely reflect or represent the process of building socialism—it would actively participate in it by excavating the contradictions and challenges of the ongoing reorganization of social relations. Continue reading Writing to the Rhythm of Labor book talk →

Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures book talk

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Online Book Discussion: Dr. Karen Thornber – Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures
Organizer: Dr. Paul J. D’Ambrosio
Discussants: Drs. Durba Mitra, Bruce Fulton and Hui Faye Xiao
April 23, 2025 8pm EDT
Virtual event held on Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83317177585#success

About the Book

This casebook investigates how diverse writers from across East, South, and Southeast Asia and their diasporas have engaged with the struggle for gender justice. Each chapter analyzes works of literature originally written in Bengali, Chinese, English, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Marathi, Thai, and Vietnamese. Aimed at both specialists and nonspecialists, Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures addresses such subjects as gender imparity in male-dominated professions; the lives of migrant sex workers and caregivers; the fight against reproductive, family, non-partner, and intimate partner violence; and norms of shame and silence surrounding violence against women. Informed by the author’s deep knowledge of literature, history, culture, law, and social conditions, this book will be a resource for instructors and students in gender studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, Asian diaspora studies, comparative literature, and world literature.

About the Author

Karen Laura Thornber is Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University. A cultural historian and scholar of literature and media, she has published numerous articles and books, including Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (2009), Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures (2012), and Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care (2020).

Posted by: Faye Xiao <hxiao@ku.edu>

Fundamental Structures of the Chinese Language

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New Publication
Fundamental Structures of the Chinese Language: Topic-Comment and Other Key Structures (Routledge, 2024)
By Taciana Fisac, Riccardo Moratto

Fundamental Structures of the Chinese Language is an exceptional resource for understanding how Chinese grammar functions in natural discourse.

This book departs from the conventional approach of superimposing grammatical constructs from English onto Chinese and focuses on the topic–comment structure inherent in the Chinese language. Constructions that are usually considered complex or challenging for students whose mother tongues are subject–verb–object languages will be more easily understandable with this analysis. Simple and complex verbal structures are discussed in depth with the incorporation of the aspect category, which provides an enormous richness of nuances in the internal development of the action, and word order is considered one of the key features of the Chinese language. All the explanations are applied to numerous examples of real Chinese texts.

This textbook is a valuable resource for students, teachers, and researchers in Chinese language courses including Chinese translation, Chinese linguistics, and comparison linguistics in general.

Posted by: Regina Llamas <regina.llamas@ie.edu>

Interview with Ye Lijun and Fiona Sze-Lorrain

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Source: Asymptote (April 9, 2025)
Devoured, Like Snow Into Sea: Ye Lijun and Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Chinese Nature Poetry
By Alton Melvar M Dapanas

Art is from the same source as poetry, and what comes from the mind will eventually return to the mind, as long as one keeps exploring.

In an interview from The Kenyon Review, the poet Ye Lijun (叶丽隽) confesses: “I feel and think of myself as a nature poet, not a contemporary Chinese pastoral poet,” perhaps revealing the specificities of genres in Chinese ecoliterature. Poetry within Chinese nature writing comes in loose nomenclatures: among others, there is shanshui shi (山水詩), the poetry of mountains, rivers, and landscape; tianyuan shi (田園詩), the poetry of fields, gardens, and farmstead; and shanshui tianyuan shi (山水田園詩), nature poetry. This latter category is brilliantly displayed in My Mountain Country (World Poetry Books, 2019), the first bilingual publication of Ye, a promising poet of the post-70s generation.

The book explores the visceral connections between the poet and the landscape she inhabits, with its poems taken from Ye’s three Chinese-language poetry collections and translated by her long-time translator, the award-winning writer, poet, and zheng harpist Fiona Sze-Lorrain—named in Chinese Literature in the World: Dissemination and Translation Practices (2022) as one of the most prolific translators of modern Sinophone writings. In this conversation, kindly mediated by her translation, I spoke with both Ye (in Lishui) and Dr. Sze-Lorrain (in Paris) on this English-language debut, and how their book speaks to the larger body of Chinese nature poetry.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): My Mountain Country is a bilingual volume of selected poems taken from your various Chinese-language poetry collections. Could you share the story behind these poems and the journey of bringing these collections to life? Continue reading Interview with Ye Lijun and Fiona Sze-Lorrain →