Dear Friends,

A gentle reminder on the November 11th deadline for submitting your abstract for the 2020 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, to be held in our beautiful campus from April 16-18, 2020 in Lexington Kentucky.

Please submit your abstract in the field of East Asian Studies by November 11th, 2019 @ 11:59 pm EST here: https://kflc.as.uky.edu/submit-abstract.

Warm thanks,

Liang

羅靚 Luo, Liang Ph.D.
Faculty Director, International Village Living and Learning Program
Associate Professor of Chinese Studies
Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of Kentucky, USA

Source: The Guardian (10/24/19)
Chinese orienteering team disqualified for cheating at Military World Games
Athletes lose moral compass after using secret paths and markings to win contest
By Lily Kuo in Beijing

The Chinese orienteering team disqualified from the Military World Games for cheating. Photograph: Tomonews.com

A Chinese orienteering team has been disqualified for cheating at the Military World Games in China.

Chinese runners in the middle-distance competition on Sunday initially came first, second, and fourth among the women and second among the men.

However, it was soon discovered that the runners had received illegal assistance from spectators and used markings and small paths prepared in the terrain that only their team was aware of, the International Orienteering Federation (IOF), whose rules govern the competition, said. Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Dear list members,

Through a mutual friend, Taije Silverman has asked for the contact information of the poet Shu Ting. If anyone can provide it, please reply to her at:  Taije Silverman: taije@sas.upenn.edu

Thanks,

Nick Kaldis

Hi, please allow me to seek your attention to my fieldwork housing, if you don’t mind.

I’m looking for a room to rent for about a year in Shanghai, beginning in mid June 2019. This is for my dissertation fieldwork in cultural anthropology. My dissertation project is about environmental NGOs of today’s Shanghai. My budget is around RMB 3,000 per month. I’d like to be within an hour-long distance from North Sichuan Road (四川北路) by subway or bus. If you are looking for a roommate in Shanghai or know someone who is, kindly consider letting me know. I don’t smoke, I have no pets. My email address is goeun.lee@uky.edu and my WeChat ID is huahai14. Thank you.

All the best,

Goeun

李高恩 Lee, Goeun, MSc Social Anthropology
PhD Candidate
Department of Anthropology
211 Lafferty Hall, University of Kentucky, USA

The latest issue of Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Vol. 102 is now available online at: http://www.mh.sinica.edu.tw/bulletins.aspx

Contents

[Articles]

Juntian Tunyong on the Nineteenth-Century Hunan Miao Frontier
By Lee Wen-liang

The Predicament of Public Administration Education at the Central Politics School and Its Solution
By Wang Chen-cheng

The Formation and Evolution of the Re-education through Labor, 1955-1961
By Xu Hetao

[Book Reviews]

William T. Rowe, Speaking of Profit: Bao Shichen and Reform in Nineteenth-Century China, Reviewed by Wang Xueshen

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

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the abstract submission deadline for the 2019 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, i.e. “KFLC: The Languages, Literature, and Cultures Conference, 2018” has been extended. Abstract submission will remain open until November 26th, 2019 @ 11:59 PM, EST.

For general conference guidelines, to find the Call for Papers for each track, and to submit an abstract, please visit our website: https://kflc.as.uky.edu/

As always, the success of our conference is dependent upon the hard work and enthusiasm of our participants. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns. We look forward to working with you this year.

Wishing you all the best,

Luo, Liang 羅靚

Source: Sixth Tone (10/23/18)
Buddha-mania: Understanding China’s Buddha Building Boom
In the race to build the biggest Buddha, no one is a winner.
By Zhou Mingqi

Visitors look out at the world’s tallest Buddha statue from atop a viewing platform in Lushan County, Henan province, Aug. 26, 2017. Niu Yuan/IC)

Is there such a thing as too many Buddhas? China may be about to find out.

For the past few decades, the country has been in the midst of a Buddha-building craze. Just last year, for example, it was reported that a wealthy businessman had nearly completed “the world’s largest copper sitting Buddha” in a remote county in the northern province of Shanxi. The 22-story structure supposedly took 8 years to build and cost 380 million yuan ($57 million) — a relative pittance in the world of big Buddhas.

Travelers looking for the world’s largest Buddha statue, however, must make the trip to the neighboring province of Henan. Opened in 2008, the Spring Temple Buddha is located in Lushan County — one of the poorest counties in all of China, in which residents’ average annual discretionary income is just 12,800 yuan. In stark contrast to the poverty of the surrounding countryside, the Spring Temple Buddha, which took 11 years to complete, stands more than 208 meters tall, is plated with 108 kilograms of gold, and cost an eye-popping 1.2 billion yuan to build. Continue reading →

Source: NPR (10/10/18)
U.S. Charges Alleged Chinese Government Spy With Stealing U.S. Trade Secrets
by Ryan Lucas

GE Aviation exhibited equipment at the Zhuhai Airshow in 2010. Now, U.S. officials say, a Chinese intelligence officer has been charged with trying to steal American jet engine technology. Kin Cheung/AP

The Justice Department unsealed charges Wednesday against a suspected Chinese spy for allegedly conducting economic espionage and trying to steal trade secrets from U.S. aerospace companies.

The alleged Chinese intelligence officer, Yanjun Xu, was extradited to the United States on Tuesday from Belgium, where he was arrested in April at Washington’s request. Continue reading →

ACLS Workshop: Reading Chinese Reportage across the Disciplines
Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Collaborative Reading-Workshop Grants 2018

Charles Laughlin and Li Guo
Location: University of Virginia
Reading Chinese Reportage Across the Disciplines

Poster: 2018 ACLS reportage workshop poster version 3 revised(1)-172l72r

This collaborative reading workshop explores reportage narratives in contemporary China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, including travel writings, environmental reportage, nonfiction works, and documentary films. Participants appraise the activist function of the reportage genre, assess its ideological limitations, idiosyncratic constraints and concurrent ethical challenges. The reading sessions of the workshop cross-examine literary reportage and documentary cinematography, focusing on the textualization of real life images, and the visualization of texts narrating real people and events. Ultimately, the workshop evaluates the representations, discourses, and analytical demarcations of the reportage concept, and explore new perspectives on the aesthetics of global reportage.

Charles Laughlin <cal5m@virginia.edu>

It does not flatter a Journal of Chinese Humanities, to devote a whole issue(!) to Daniel Bell and his old-hat book and theories, which have been thoroughly refuted. In fact, it should be enough to read this assessment of Bell, short yet effective:

The Qing is dead! Long live the Qing!
By John Fitzgerald. InsideStory.au, 11 August 2015
http://insidestory.org.au/the-qing-is-dead-long-live-the-qing

–Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu