New publications

posts related to new publications in Chinese studies

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 →

City of Fiction

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City of Fiction, by Yu Hua
Europa Editions
2025, pp. 432, Hardcover
ISBN: 9798889660934
Translated by Todd Foley

A story of love, blood and dreams, set in early 20th century China

In the early 20th century, China is a land undergoing a momentous social and cultural shift, with a thousand-year-old empire crumbling and the nation on the brink of modernity. Against this backdrop, a quiet man from the North embarks on a perilous journey to a Southern city in the grip of a savage snowstorm. He carries with him a newborn baby: he is looking for the child’s mother and a city that isn’t there.

This is a story of two people: a man who finds unexpected success after having journeyed to the hometown of the woman who abandoned him; and the woman he is searching for, who mysteriously disappeared to embark on her own eventful journey. This is a story about vanished crafts and ancient customs, about violence, love, and friendship. Above all, it’s a story about change and about storytelling itself, full of vivid characters, ranging from bandits to vengeful potentates, from prostitutes to deceitful soothsayers, and surprising twists—an epic tale, as inexorable as time itself and as gripping as a classic adventure story.

Yu Hua
Now one of China’s most beloved novelists, Yu Hua was born in Haiyan, Zhejiang province, in 1960, and grew up in and around a hospital where his parents were both doctors. His book include the best-selling To Live (Knopf, 2003) and China in Ten Words (Anchor, 2011). He is the recipient of numerous international awards and honors, including the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour and Giuseppe Acerbi prizes, and the French Prix Courrier International. In 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. His Paris Review Art of Fiction interview was published in 2023.

Posted by: Todd Foley <twf218@nyu.edu>

John Brown in China

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New Publication:
Shi Penglu and Joe Lockhard, “John Brown in China.” South-North Cultural and Media Studies 39, 1 (2025)

ABSTRACT

This study delves into the depiction of John Brown in China across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It provides an extensive review of a wide range of Chinese-language histories of the United States and texts relating to US slavery. The paper delineates an evolving discourse within Chinese scholarship regarding John Brown, transitioning from an emphasis on his role as a symbol of the latent revolutionary potential within American society in the mid-to-late twentieth century, to a more contemporary critique that calls into question the efficacy of Brown’s rebellion, preferring Lincoln’s constitutionalism. Where older standard histories in US classrooms often treated Brown as a madman and traitor, our survey indicates that these misrepresentations never gained currency in Chinese histories that near-uniformly praise Brown. The research highlights interpretative discrepancies within the Chinese academic milieu in reimagining and reinterpreting this controversial and nearly mythological figure from nineteenth-century American history. Such discrepancies include portraying Brown as a singular historical fulcrum; neglecting his affiliations with African American struggles against slavery; failure to mention Brown’s religious motivations; and isolating Brown as a character intrinsic to American history, thereby neglecting the broader international backdrop of his era. Contemporary discussions of whether John Brown was a terrorist or hero, or his appreciation within present abolition movements, remain entirely obscured in China.

Cold Window Newsletter #5

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Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter! In this issue: the Beijing literary collective introducing dozens of Chinese writers to the world, and two novelists from Liaoning who deserve to be translated.

A note on numbering: this issue will be the second to be posted on Paper Republic, but the fifth overall. Remember to subscribe for updates, including a shorter Substack-only issue that will be coming out in a week or two to wrap up my coverage of the Dongbei Renaissance (for now!).

Recommendation: Entering the Spittoon universe

Ten Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moons: New Chinese Writing (2025)

What is Spittoon? When I first came across its website in 2022, I thought it was just a literary magazine devoted to new translations of Chinese literature. We’ve had those before—pour one out for Pathlight and Peregrine, two beloved Chinese translation magazines from the 2010s—but rarely ones that boasted the same panache and gleeful oddness of Spittoon’s biannual offerings. Later I also found that Spittoon has also hosted regular poetry and fiction nights in Beijing for over eight years; has operated at least two separate literature podcasts; and, as of this winter, has published a gorgeous new anthology of translated Chinese fiction, nonfiction, and prose called Ten Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moons: New Chinese Writing. I’ve emerged from my journey down the Spittoon rabbit hole dazed and bedazzled. Continue reading Cold Window Newsletter #5 →

A Spray of Plum Blossoms

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The Chinese Film Classics Project is pleased to announce the publication of Christopher Rea’s translation of the film Yihjanmae (Richard Poh, dir., 1931), also known as A Spray of Plum Blossoms:

https://chinesefilmclassics.org/yihjanmae/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv9UVTUcXoU

ABOUT THE FILM

Shakespeare in Canton! In this adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine (Jin Yan) and Proteus (Wang Cilong), recent graduates of the military academy, are commissioned as officers in the employ of General Sze (Wang Guilin). The general’s daughter, Silvia (Lin Chuchu), falls in love with Valentine, whose sister, Julia (Ruan Lingyu), forms an attachment with Proteus. Silvia and Valentine’s happiness is threatened, however, by Churio (Gao Zhanfei), the high-born suitor favored by the General, as well as by Proteus, whose wandering eye leads him to become so smitten with Silvia that he slanders Valentine as a traitor. The banished Valentine takes on a new role as the wrong-righting vigilante leader “Yihjanmae,” or A Spray of Plum Blossoms. Meanwhile, Silvia exposes Proteus’s inconstancy to Julia, and Valentine, foiling the brutish Churio, orchestrates a reckoning that prompts Proteus to confess his betrayal and the General to declare an amnesty. In the end, love and harmony is restored, and all rejoin the ranks to fight for China. Continue reading A Spray of Plum Blossoms →

The Unfinished Comedy

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This April Fool’s Day, the Chinese Film Classics Project is slap-happy to announce the publication of Christopher Rea’s translation of the film The Unfinished Comedy 沒有完成的喜劇 (Lü Ban 呂班, dir., 1957):

https://chinesefilmclassics.org/the-unfinished-comedy-1957/
https://youtu.be/8I6j9dKi0B8

ABOUT THE FILM:

Bring back the clowns! In the plot of this metacinematic film, New China was founded several years ago, in 1949, and beloved Republican-era screen comedians skinny man Han Langen and fatty Yin Xiucen (playing themselves) are only just now getting the chance to make films again thanks to the invitation of Changchun Film Studio (playing itself). The Hundred Flowers Campaign is under way, a cultural thaw spurred by the apparent newfound openness of the Chinese Communist Party. Now that Han and Yin have, in their words, “returned to the ranks,” will the results of their filmmaking be “flowers of comedy” or just “a clump of weeds”…especially when their first three films are screened for the censor, Comrade Bludgeon?

The Unfinished Comedy is the most daring Chinese film comedy of the 1950s, one that takes direct aim at the myopia of present-day New China’s censors. The film was the third of a trio of short film comedies that actor-turned-director Lü Ban made during the brief liberalization of the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956-57), following Before the New Bureau Chief Arrives 新局長到來之前 (1956) and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff 不拘小節的人 (1956). Veteran actors Han and Yin are in fine fettle, and the film displays flashes of satirical brilliance, especially in the first film-within-a-film, which culminates with an old comedian’s cri de coeur: “I never died! I’m alive! I’m alive and well!” Continue reading The Unfinished Comedy →

Suipian 5

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碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments #5
TABITHA SPEELMAN
MAR 30, 2025

Welcome to the 5th 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.

I hope you’ve been well. Today’s edition is a bit shorter than usual (maybe a good thing). Welcome also to those of you who subscribed because of the kind shout-out by David Ownby, who translated the 端传媒 story on Covid grief and anger that I shared last time. If you did not have a chance to read it, I recommend his excellent translation (and the rest of the Reading the China Dream website).

随笔 // Suibi // Notes

Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

When the new Trump administration got started on their ‘breaking things’ agenda, Western mainstream media quickly framed this as a great opportunity for China, especially on issues like the dismantling of USAID. I was struck by how that conversation seemed all but absent in China, where there was shock and some gloating at the chaos, but as far as I could tell not much talk, at least among the public, of how these developments might benefit China’s rise. I explored this topic in a few stories (and a Dutch podcast) for which I talked to experts but also to people like Mr. Ye, a retired Beijinger who I met in a park and who took some time from listening to his audio book to kindly mansplain me on how things look from China. Continue reading Suipian 5 →

Navigating the Mediterranean through the Chinese Lens

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The volume Navigating the Mediterranean Through the Chinese Lens: Transcultural Narratives of the Sea Among Lands, edited by Renata Vinci (Firenze University Press, 2024), is now available in open access and can be fully downloaded at the following here.

Synopsis:

In the postnational era, as scholars investigating the circulation of reciprocal knowledge between China and foreign countries, we are called to reconsider the relevance of national borders in our own research. This comes as a response to an extended demand to rethink the ties imposed by concepts such as nation, language and heritage in favour of essential inclusive sentiments of shared interests and belonging. This volume is the initial outcome of the research project The Mediterranean Through Chinese Eyes (MeTChE), which aims to investigate the perception and representation of the Mediterranean region in Chinese sources, conceptualising this ‘region among lands’ as a transcultural and debordered space, as advanced by contemporary Mediterranean Studies.

For more information about the research project’s outputs, events, team members, and more, please visit the MeTChE project website.

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

Queer Women’s Fandoms

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Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to share the publication of the special issue “Queer Women’s Fandoms” coedited by Jamie J. Zhao and Eve Ng in the journal Popular Communication.

The special issue is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/23/1. The introduction to the issue can be accessed (with first 50 online copies free for downloading) at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TBHEAAKWKUHFYZHSAPCB/full?target=10.1080/15405702.2025.2477054 .

The table of contents for this special issue is also attached below. Please help widely share it to colleagues and students who might be interested in related topics.

Table of Contents

Popular Communication, vol. 23, issue 1, 2025 (pp. 1-104)

Introduction

Queer Women’s Fandoms: New Global Perspectives
By Jamie J. Zhao and Eve Ng (https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2025.2477054)

Research Articles

“In this life or the next”: “Cancel Your Gays” and the Warrior Nun “Save Our Show” campaign
By Kimberly Dennin (https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2024.2414115) Continue reading Queer Women’s Fandoms →