New publications

posts related to new publications in Chinese studies

JMLC ‘Chinese Poetry and Translation’

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JMLC releases its 14.2–15.1 special issue “Chinese Poetry and Translation: Moving the Goalposts”

Guest-edited by Maghiel van Crevel, this special issue of the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese (JMLC) comes out of a June 2017 workshop at Lingnan University. Rather than from real and imagined problems of (Chinese)-poetry-and-translation, the authors of this issue work from its potential: for rocking the boat rather than providing safe passage, for moving the goalposts and getting away with it, for empowering the translator to choose, time and again, which rule s/he wants to break, and unleashing whatever it is that happens next. While translation—interlingual and otherwise—is a central feature of the study of Chinese literature as practiced in an international community, it nevertheless doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and we are happy to help address this. The papes conjoin theoretical contributions with in-depth reflection generated from inside processes and results of translation and its infrastructure. The abstracts can be viewed at http://commons.ln.edu.hk/jmlc/.

Table of Contents: Continue reading JMLC ‘Chinese Poetry and Translation’ →

Chinese Literature Today 6.2

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Dear MCLC List members,

I am pleased to announce that Chinese Literature Today 6.2 (2017) is now available on the Routledge website (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/uclt20/6/2?nav=tocList). Below is the TOC of CLT 6.2 (2017).

Ping Zhu <zpdarr@gmail.com>

2017 NEWMAN PRIZE FOR CHINESE LITERATURE: Wang Anyi

6 Introduction, by Dai Jinhua
8 Writing as a Way of Life: Nomination of Wang Anyi for the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, by Dai Jinhua
10 “Coming to Oklahoma”: In Acceptance of the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, by Wang Anyi
12 Wang Anyi: The Storyteller as Thinker, by Wang Ban
14 Seven Short Conversations with Wang Anyi, Dai Jinhua, and Wang Ban, by Ping Zhu
22 The Emergence of a Writer, the Evolution of a Literary Scene: In Conversation with Wang Anyi, by Michael Berry
29 The White Horse in the Longtang, by Wang Anyi
35 Mothers and Daughters: Orphanage as Method, by Carlos Rojas
43 From Nostalgia to Reflection: An Exploration of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi, by Elena Martin-Enebral
52 Wang Anyi, Taiwan, and the World: The 1983 International Writing Program and Biblical Allusions in Utopian Verses, by Po-hsi Chen Continue reading Chinese Literature Today 6.2 →

Hollywood Made in China review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Darrell William Davis’s review of Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017), by Aynne Kokas. The review appears below, but is best read online at: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/ddavis/. My thanks to Jason McGrath, MCLC media studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC Editor

Hollywood Made in China

By Aynne Kokas 

Reviewed by Darrell William Davis
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2018)

Aynne Kokas, Hollywood Made in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. 272pp. ISBN: 9780520294011 (Cloth: $85.00) ISBN: 9780520294028 (Paperback: $29.95)

Hollywood Made in China is an elegant account of Hollywood’s evolving engagements in China’s commercial film environment. In six concise chapters, Aynne Kokas details the myriad flows of policy, investment, deployment, and rewards of Sino-US media co-productions. Her aim is mostly large-scale entertainment schemes, including contemporary blockbusters, theme parks, and studio co-ventures. Because China is now becoming the world’s largest film market, Hollywood is courting Chinese executives and regulators, the better to ensure access to viewers and returns for American pictures. The objective is market access, in return for which Hollywood players are willing to cede control, a tradeoff the author calls “transformative” (33). This is a transaction not available to Silicon Valley (e.g., Google, Facebook, Netflix), and despite frustrations of piracy and capricious regulations, Hollywood may well count itself fortunate. In any case, Kokas demonstrates that the Sino-US co-production enterprise is a work in progress, always in a state of renegotiation and revision, as she aptly puts it: “The Hollywood dream factory and the Chinese Dream work together, while mired in a state of perpetual negotiation” (20).  A combination of Hollywood “thirst” for ever-larger markets (old) and China’s “cultural trade deficit” (new) brings potential synergies and symbiosis (2-3). It also brings evolving forms of contention and conflict (13). With every new co-production, new standards and practices appear in the playbook. Aynne Kokas makes a strong case for the “interaction and variability” (8), the unpredictability inherent in this volatile relation. Continue reading Hollywood Made in China review →

Meng Lang’s poetry in Italian

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Dear MCLCers,

On behalf of Meng Lang, I would like to announce that his collection of poetry about Tiananmen is now available in Italian.

SULL’EDUCAZIONE, Un diario poetico su Tian’anmen 1989 is translated by Claudia Pozzana of the University of Bologna and Alessandro Russo. This follows the publication of the bilingual edition, Views on Education: Twenty-five Poems (教育詩篇 二十五首), which was translated by Denis Mair. More information on Sull’educazione is available from the publisher, Damocle Edizioni:
https://edizionidamocle.wordpress.com

The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.it/gp/offer-listing/889659099X/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Anne Henochowicz
Commission Editor, China Channel

Ming Qing Studies 2017

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We are very pleased to inform you about the recent issue of Ming Qing Studies 2017, edited by Prof. Paolo Santangelo (Sapienza University of Rome).

Please find more information on Ming Qing Studies and the Call for Papers for the next issue at:

https://sites.google.com/site/mqsweb/home and
https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/paolosantangelo-eng/home/ming-qing-studies

You can purchase a copy of Ming Qing Studies 2017 at:
http://www.aracneeditrice.it/index.php/pubblicazione.html?item=9788825509274

or write the publishing house at: info@aracneeditrice.it. Continue reading Ming Qing Studies 2017 →

Walk on the Wild Side: Snapshots of the Chinese Poetry Scene

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MCLC Resource Center is most pleased to announce publication of “Walk on the Wild Side: Snapshots of the Chinese Poetry Scene,” by Maghiel van Crevel. With its 143 mini-chapters and lavish illustrations, this is the longest and most ambitious piece we’ve published to date in our online publication series. Though written in a non-academic style that makes it accessible to a general readership, it is filled with details of interest to academic specialists in contemporary Chinese poetry. The essay can be read online at:

https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/walk-on-the-wild-side/

It is also available as a pdf download. Go to the link above, and click “DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT” near the top of the page.

I want to thank Professor van Crevel for sharing with us his deep insights into the contemporary Chinese poetry scene.

Happy holidays,

Kirk A. Denton
Editor, MCLC

Made in China 2.4: Balancing Acts

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Dear Colleagues

I am glad to announce the publication of the latest issue of Made in China, the open access quarterly on Chinese labour and civil society supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University. You can download the pdf for free and subscribe at this link: http://www.chinoiresie.info/made-in-china-quarterly/. Below you can find the editorial of the new issue:

Balancing Acts: Precarious Labour in Contemporary China

On 19 November, a fire broke out in a popular housing block inhabited mostly by migrant workers in Beijing’s Daxing district, killing nineteen. Citing the need to ensure safety, in a matter of days the local authorities forced tens of thousands of ‘low-end people’ (diduan renkou) to abandon their dwellings in the suburbs of the Chinese capital, showing absolutely no regard for their livelihoods. Families who had moved from all over China—and had, in some cases, lived in Beijing for years—were effectively thrown out on the street and left to their own fate in the freezing northern winter. In just a few days they lost everything, a cruel reminder of the precarity inherent to the life of the Chinese migrant. Continue reading Made in China 2.4: Balancing Acts →

Vol. 29, no. 2 of MCLC

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We are pleased to announce publication of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, volume 29, number 2 (Fall 2017). Find a table of contents for the issue below, along with links to abstracts. For those of you who are subscribers, you should be receiving your copy in the next couple of weeks. For those of you who would like to subscribe or to purchase single copies of this issue, please contact my (new) assistant Mario De Grandis (mclc@osu.edu). We greatly appreciate the support you show for MCLC through your subscriptions. Back issues of MCLC, with a two-year lag, are available through JSTOR. Seeing as it is the season of giving, if anyone is in a giving mood, please consider donating to MCLC. Enjoy the new issue.

Kirk Denton, editor

Volume 29, Number 2 (Fall 2017)

Articles

New Wang Meng book on Chinese philosphy

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Source: China Daily (12/15/17)
New work lifts cultural confidence
By Li Yingxue | China Daily

Traditional Chinese culture is as extensive as it is profound, but it has often proved a difficult subject matter to encapsulate in print. Chinese author Wang Meng uses vivid stories drawn from his understanding of traditional Chinese culture to help interpret its essence for younger generations.

Born in 1934, Wang is a former culture minister who also worked as editor-in-chief of People’s Literature and as vice-executive-chairman of the Chinese Writers’ Association. He is also a prolific author of literary works, including novels, essays and poems.

Wang’s book Zhongguo Tianji [中国天机] (God Knows China) was published five years ago. The work demonstrated his profound understanding of Chinese history. Now Wang is bringing his audience a companion piece – Zhonghua Xuanji [中华玄机] (“Chinese recondite principle”) – which provides a deeper insight into Chinese philosophy and traditional culture. Continue reading New Wang Meng book on Chinese philosphy →

The People’s Republic of the Disappeared (1)

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Follow up on the new book on the People’s Republic of the Disappeared (https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Republic-Disappeared-enforced-disappearances/dp/099937060X):

The book was reviewed and excerpted in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/in-china-the-brutality-of-house-arrest.html

Also, Teng Biao, lawyer in exile from China, doctor of jurisprudence from Beijing University, who wrote the preface for that book, also published this surprisingly optimistic article in the newsletter of the IAS, the Insittute for Advanced Study:

Promoting Human Rights and Democracy in China: The Costs and Risks of Fighting for Human Dignity and Freedom
By Teng Biao. Published 2017.
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2017/biao-human-rights-china

Posted by: Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

A Village with My Name

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New Publication: A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start up the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the United States. But for Tong the move became much more—it offered the opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who had remained in China after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. By uncovering the stories of his family’s history, Tong discovered a new way to understand the defining moments of modern China and its long, interrupted quest to go global.

A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on the transitions in China through the eyes of regular people who have witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during World War II, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong’s story focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, an abandoned toddler from World War II who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland.

With curiosity and sensitivity, Tong explores the moments that have shaped China and its people, offering a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today.

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo22620312.html

Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, no. 96

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The latest issue of Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Vol. 96 is now available online at: http://www.mh.sinica.edu.tw/bulletins.aspx

Contents

[Articles]

Giuseppe Ros as a Scholar-Diplomat in China, 1908-1948
By Chang Li

Joseon Confucians’ “Chinese Identity”: A New Interpretation
By Kang Jieun

The Birth of the Public Spittoon: An Anti-Spitting Controversy in Hong Kong and the Response of the Chinese Community
By Sean Hsiang-lin Lei

[Book Reviews]

Onodera Shiro (trans. Zhou Junyu), National Flag, National Song, National Holiday: Modern Chinese Nationalism and State Symbols, Reviewed by Chang Jun

Tang Yan, The Two Worlds of Ye Gonchao: From Eliot to Dulles, Reviewed by Ya-Hung Hsiao

Posted by: Jhih-hong JHENG bimhas60@gmail.com

The People’s Republic of the Disappeared

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New book note — fwd by Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China’s system for enforced disappearances. Ed. Michael Caster,‎ Foreword by Dr Teng Biao
Safeguard Defenders (November 10, 2017)
ISBN-10: 099937060X
ISBN-13: 978-0999370605
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Republic-Disappeared-enforced-disappearances/dp/099937060X/

“You are now under residential surveillance at a designated location. Your only right is to obey.”

With these words, Chinese lawyer Xie Yang was introduced to the brutality of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), China’s rapidly expanding system for enforced disappearances. Little is known of RSDL, or what happens inside.

The People’s Republic of the Disappeared will change that. RSDL facilities, often secret, custom-built and unmarked prisons, are run by police or State Security officials. Inside, people are placed outside the normal legal system, left in solitary confinement, interrogated repeatedly, and often subjected to torture. There is no oversight of the police, and no protection for those inside. In RSDL, you simply vanish. In RSDL, the police have total control. Continue reading The People’s Republic of the Disappeared →