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Granta special issue

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Granta has just published a special issue on contemporary Chinese literature. For the time being, the texts are accessible online.

Granta 169: China (Autumn 2024)

At a time when China has become a unifying spectre of menace for Western governments, this issue of Granta seeks to bring the country’s literary culture into focus.

Featuring fiction by Yu Hua, Zou Jingzhi, Yan Lianke, Jianan Qian, Shuang Xuetao, Mo Yan, Zhang Yueran, Ban Yu, Yang Zhihan and Wang Zhanhei.

Essays by Xiao Hai and Han Zhang, as well as a conversation between Wu Qi and Granta.

Photography from Feng Li, Haohui Liu and collaborators Li Jie and Zhang Jungang.

And poetry from Huang Fan, Lan Lan, Hu Xudong and Zheng Xiaoqiong.

Souls Left Behind

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Dear all

As part of a series of events to recognise the ways in which Chinese communities contribute to Western festivals and commemorations, on Monday 11th November (Remembrance Day in the UK) we are holding an online event from 4pm-5:30pm (GMT) to consider the contributions of the Chinese Labour Corps and the different generations of Chinese communities participating in the first and second World War. Please join us if you can.

“Souls Left Behind: Remembering Chinese Contributions to UK and US War Efforts”
Monday 11 November 2024, 4pm – 5.30pm

This is a sinoLEEDS event, a partnership between Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing and Sinoist Books, with support from Arts Council England.

We’re delighted to be joined online by three speakers – Fan Wu, John De Lucy and Professor Gregory Lee, to talk about Fan’s novel, Souls Left Behind (translated by Honey Watson and published by Sinoist Books) and how it pays tribute to the 140,000 men recruited from China by Allied forces during the First World War. We will also hear an introduction by John de Lucy to a photographic archive of the Chinese Labour Corps, and finally explore with Prof Lee how ideological perspectives differed between first- and second-generation members of the UK Chinese community and how this played out in their participation in the Second World War.

Please sign up here for access to the event – an online link will be sent shortly beforehand.

Very best

Frances Weightman <f.weightman@leeds.ac.uk>, Sarah Dodd, and Xunnan Li

The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing
利兹大学当代华语文学研究中心
http://writingchinese.leeds.ac.uk

Harvard position in anthropology

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TENURED PROFESSOR IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHINA
Harvard University
Department of Anthropology

Position Description:

The Department of Anthropology seeks to appoint a tenured professor specializing in the anthropology of China. The appointment is expected to begin in academic year 2025-2026. The successful candidate will have a distinguished record of ethnographic research on contemporary Chinese society and culture and will contribute to both undergraduate and graduate education. Candidates are expected to engage in ongoing research that advances the department’s commitment to intellectual diversity and excellence.

Basic Qualifications:

Candidates are required to have a doctorate in anthropology or a related field.

Additional Qualifications:

A demonstrated strong commitment to teaching, advising, and research is essential. Candidates should exhibit intellectual leadership and impact on the field and have the potential for significant contributions to the department, university, and broader scholarly community.

Application Instructions:

Applicants should submit the following materials through the ARIeS portal (https://academicpositions.harvard.edu) no later than December 30, 2024: Continue reading Harvard position in anthropology →

The Cultural Revolution Discourse in Ming Pao

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SOAS China Institute webinar
The Chinese Cultural Revolution Discourse in Ming Pao
Shuk Man Leung (University of Hong Kong)
Date: Monday, 18 November 2024
Time: 1pm to 2.30pm, GMT

This webinar will take place online via Zoom. All welcome, but registration is required here.

Abstract

Recent studies marked the 1967 riots as a watershed in Hong Kong’s subsequent identity formation, which was based on a dichotomy between a benevolent British colonial administration and a hostile socialist China.

However, this prevailing view overlooks the complexity of Chinese nationalism and the role of the Cultural Revolution (CR) in forming a local consciousness. In the process of structuring its local/national identity discourse, Ming Pao, a neutral newspaper, took a strategically ambiguous approach, rather than a definite political position involving factional leftism, Communist nationalism, Trotskyism, cultural nationalism, and pro-KMT ultra-rightism.

The aim of this investigation of Ming Pao’s CR discourse is to reveal how its intellectual tropes—“stability and prosperity,” “three-in-one combination” (i.e., socialist equality, capitalist economy’s freedom, and Confucian benevolence), and “the concepts of everyday and labor”—helped to cultivate a local identity for the Chinese during the CR.

Ming Pao’s nationalist discourse demonstrated an alternative way to understand the formation of the popular identity discourse of Hong Kong, which transcended the traditional Cold War dichotomy between communism and capitalism and the pro-colonial identity discourse. Continue reading The Cultural Revolution Discourse in Ming Pao →

NUS Postdoctoral Fellowships in Chinese Studies

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The Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS) is inviting applications for up to 3 fully funded postdoctoral fellows for 1 year for the Academic Year 2025-26. Postdoctoral fellows are chosen from a competitive selection process. They will spend one year with the department working on research for a book manuscript or articles. In addition, they are expected to deliver a seminar about their research during their fellowship and teach one course for the department.

We welcome applications from junior scholars who have research interests in any of the following areas:

  • Chinese Literature
  • Chinese Media Studies
  • Chinese History
  • Chinese Linguistics
  • Translation and Interpreting Studies, with a focus on Chinese-English and/or English-Chinese translation/interpreting
  • Overseas Chinese Studies
  • Chinese Philosophy
  • Chinese Religion

A doctoral degree is required by one month prior to the start of the fellowship. Candidates must provide confirmation of successful completion of their terminal doctoral degree, in the form of a diploma or a certificate of completion from the degree-granting institution’s Registrar. Applicants may not be more than three years beyond the receipt of their doctoral degree at the start of the fellowship. Applicants should possess native-speaking, or near native-speaking, competence in both Mandarin and English. Continue reading NUS Postdoctoral Fellowships in Chinese Studies →

More Swindles from the Late Ming

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More Swindles from the Late Ming: Sex, Scams, and Sorcery
by Zhang Yingyu (fl. 1617)
Translated by Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea
Columbia University Press, November, 2024
ISBN: 9780231212458

“In the canon of the con, More Swindles from the Late Ming is an honest-to-goodness treasure—without a trace of honesty or goodness. Rusk and Rea have succeeded brilliantly with this translation, unearthing and explaining the roots of deep moral anxieties in China. Like the greatest crime stories, these harrowing tales read like sociology in disguise, reminding us how much of our daily life rests on a thin foundation of trust—if we can keep it.” — Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

DESCRIPTION

A woman seduces her landlord to extort the family farm. Gamblers recruit a wily prostitute to get a rich young man back in the game. Silver counterfeiters wreak havoc for traveling merchants. A wealthy widow is drugged and robbed by a lodger posing as a well-to-do student. Vengeful judges and corrupt clerks pervert the course of justice. Cunning soothsayers spur on a plot to overthrow the emperor. Yet good sometimes triumphs, as when amateur sleuths track down a crew of homicidal boatmen or a cold-case murder is exposed by a frog. These are just a few of the tales of crime and depravity appearing in More Swindles from the Late Ming, a book that offers a panorama of vice—and words of warning—from one seventeenth-century writer.

This companion volume to The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection presents sensational stories of scams that range from the ingenious to the absurd to the lurid, many featuring sorcery, sex, and extreme violence. Together, the two volumes represent the first complete translation into any language of a landmark Chinese anthology, making an essential contribution to the global literature of trickery and fraud. An introduction explores the geography of grift, the role of sex and family relations, and the portrayal of Buddhist clergy and others claiming supernatural powers. Opening a window onto the colorful world of crime and deception in late imperial China, this book testifies to the enduring popularity of stories about scoundrels and their schemes. Continue reading More Swindles from the Late Ming →

Relaunch of Folk History Archive

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We at the Universities Service Centre for China Studies (USC) Collection, Chinese University of Hong Kong, are thrilled to announce the relaunch of the Folk History Archive website, a significant component of our Folk History Project, which has been collecting Chinese personal and familial testimonies, memoirs, and biographies since 2006 on its website and in print for its collection.

Key Highlights:

  • Approximately 500 original contributions, including 70 novellas and over 400 articles, providing a rich and diverse collection of narratives.
  • Downloadable metadata for over 9,000 records, encompassing selections from magazines, newspapers, and books, enhancing research opportunities.
  • Resources related to Chinese folk history, incorporating book series, websites, and we-media platforms, providing a comprehensive knowledge base.

We are excited to reintroduce the Folk History Archive in a new design and invite you to explore this invaluable online resource. Your engagement and support contribute to the preservation and sharing of diverse narratives that shape our understanding of Chinese history and society.

You are welcome to direct any inquiries or questions via email to us: usc@cuhk.edu.hk.

Sincerely,

Miriam Seeger <miriamseeger@cuhk.edu.hk>
Modern China Studies Librarian
Universities Service Centre for China Studies Collection
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library

SEC-AAS cfp deadline extension

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Dear List Members,

The deadline for submission to the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SEC-AAS) has been extended to November 15, 2024.

The 64th annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SEC-AAS) will be hosted by the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, on January 24-26, 2025: https://www.sec-aas.com/conf.

Please use the following links to submit your proposal:

If you have any questions or concerns about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact our local coordinators, Dr. Charlie Yi Zhang (charlie.zhang@uky.edu) and Dr. Liang Luo (llu222@uky.edu).

In addition, we have organized music performances (AppalAsia) and pedagogical workshops (Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell, and Peter Hershock, Asian Studies Development Program) supported by the Henry Luce Foundation through the East-West Center, and co-sponsored by various local partners at the University of Kentucky, as special events taking place during the conference.

We look forward to welcoming you to Lexington in late January 2025!

Warmly,

Liang Luo, University of Kentucky

Paper Republic newsletter 19

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The newsletter

As some of you will know, the newsletter has been going for a couple of years now. Huge thanks to Jack Hargreaves for bringing it out fortnightly at the start. Recently there have been a few gaps, but now we’re back! From now on, we aim to publish our newsletter every two months. We hope you enjoy it. Please ask your friends to subscribe. As a special bonus, you can win a book, as a prize, if you get a number of friends to subscribe. Please tell us if you have news you’d like us to include in the newsletter, just drop us an email — click here. We’re also delighted to tell you that you can now read the archived copies of our newsletter on the Paper Republic webpage here.

Read Paper Republic

One of our Read Paper Republic pieces in the Home series now features on the Youtube video channel, Translators Aloud: Anne Henochowicz and poet Yu Xinqiao read from “At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor”.

Events – STOP PRESS

Meet the World: Ká-sióng: Imagining a Different World Through Taiwanese Literature

Thursday 7 November, Online, 12.00 – 13.15 GMT. FREE.

Join National Centre for Writing to celebrate Ká-sióng, a new series of chapbooks from Strangers Press, focusing on literature from Taiwan. Continue reading Paper Republic newsletter 19 →

Redacted

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I write to share with you that my co-edited experimental book with Franck Bille and Lisa Min titled, Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State has finally been published. It’s open access, available as an ebook, and print versions are available via Amazon and The Book Depository. There are multiple contributions about China and Tibet.

“This fascinating collection explores the unprecedented challenges facing ethnographic research today. Some of these have been around for a while, but many are new. Brought about by major changes in our world – from the end of the Cold War, to the rise of social media, to the global spread of authoritarianism – these challenges call into question the basic ethical principles and methods of our research. The authors of these essays demonstrate that addressing such challenges requires new approaches to ethnographic practice and new understandings of the ethical relationship between the researcher and the people among whom they conduct research. The result of this collective exploration is as intellectually rigorous and timely as it is poetic.”~ Alexei Yurchak, author of Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

Continue reading Redacted →

Can men in China take a joke?

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Source: NYT (10/31/24)
Can Men in China Take a Joke? Women Doing Stand-Up Have Their Doubts.
Comedy has become a way for women to skewer China’s gender inequality. Some men aren’t happy about it.
By Vivian Wang (Reporting from Beijing)

A woman in a sleeveless, striped top, is seen holding a microphone in her right hand.

Yang Li, China’s best-known female stand-up comic, in a screenshot from a variety show. She was dropped from an ad campaign after men complained to the company.Credit…iQIYI Variety via YouTube

On the list of topics best avoided by China’s comedians, some are obvious. Politics. The Chinese military.

Now add: Men’s fragile egos.

That, at least, was the message sent this month, when a major e-commerce platform abruptly ended a partnership with China’s most prominent female stand-up comic. The company was caving to pressure from men on social media who described the comedian, Yang Li, as a man-hating witch.

Speaking up for women’s rights is increasingly sensitive in China, and the stand-up stage is the latest battleground. Growing numbers of women like Ms. Yang are speaking out about — and laughing at — the injustices they face. On two hugely popular stand-up shows this fall, women were among the breakout stars, thanks to punchlines about the difficulty of finding a good partner, or men’s fear of talking about menstruation.

But a backlash has emerged, as men balk at being the butt of the joke. They have attacked the comics on social media; Ms. Yang has described receiving threats of violence. The women’s new visibility can also be easily erased. Not long after the e-commerce company, JD.com, dropped Ms. Yang, it deleted posts on its official social media account featuring two other female comedians.

The battle over women’s jokes reflects the broader paradox of feminism in China. On the one hand, feminist rhetoric is more widespread than ever before, with once-niche discussions of gender inequality now aired openly. But the forces trying to suppress that rhetoric are also growing, encouraged by a government that has led its own crusade against feminist activism and pushed women toward traditional roles.

On guancha.cn, a nationalistic commentary site, an editorial declared: “The fewer divisive symbols like Yang Li, the better.” Continue reading Can men in China take a joke? →

Cave of the Silken Web

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The Chinese Film Classics Project is pleased to announce the publication of Christopher Rea’s translation of “Cave of the Silken Web” 盤絲洞 (Dan Duyu, dir., 1927), with a new musical score by Donald Sosin.

A live screening of the film will be held at the UBC Asian Centre at 12noon on Halloween (Oct. 31), followed by a discussion with film scholars Mila Zuo and Christopher Rea:

https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/special-halloween-screening-cave-of-the-silken-web-1927/

This newly-translated restored copy was shared with the Chinese Film Classics Project by the National Library of Norway, and features subtitles in both Chinese (translated by Christopher Rea) and Norwegian (translated by Bjørn Giertsen), and is available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IyxoaYyEc0

ABOUT THE FILM

Spiders, spiders—everywhere! Cave of the Silken Web is adapted from an episode in the Ming dynasty novel Journey to the West, in which Tripitaka is kidnapped by a cave of spider-women. Will the good monk succumb to these magical vixens’ temptations of the flesh? Will Pigsy, Sandy, and the Monkey King succeed in rescuing him before he is forced to marry the Spider Queen? What does the Fire Slave have cooking for the unwilling guest? How do spiders, centipedes, and turtle-spirits celebrate a wedding? And who will ultimately meet their end in the Cave of the Silken Web? Continue reading Cave of the Silken Web →

UNC MA program

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Asian and Middle Eastern Studies M.A. Program Accepting Applications

https://asianstudies.unc.edu/ma-program/

Priority Application deadline is December 10, 2024
Final Application deadline is May 13, 2025

The M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is a two-year, interdisciplinary humanities degree that prepares students to engage with the social, environmental, and political challenges facing countries in Asia and the Middle East, and their transnational communities. Students can choose between two tracks: the interdisciplinary track and the Chinese track. This degree will provide students with deep cultural knowledge of Asia and the Middle East while training them in the intellectual flexibility necessary to grasp and work with complex and dynamic issues as they arise. By applying humanist approaches to real world problems, students will learn to evaluate research and apply analytical methodologies from various disciplines to specific situations and questions. This intellectual flexibility, the hallmark of humanist approaches attuned to change and contingency, is foundational to the type of leadership necessary for an interconnected world.

Posted by: Robin Visser <rvisser@email.unc.edu>

Heritage and Urban Space

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The Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster is pleased to announce the next event in our Conference Deconstructed – Heritage and Urban Space.

Speakers: Dr Philipp Demgenski, Dr Luo Pan, Dr Paul Kendall
Date and Time: Wednesday, 20th November, 13:00-15:00 (GMT)
Location: Online via Zoom
Registration:  The event is free to attend and open to all. A Zoom link will be provided to all those who register via Ticket Tailor before 18 November.

Panel Description:

Since China ratified the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in 1985, heritage discourse has become intertwined with all kinds of spaces. This has included not only world-famous heritage sites such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City but also spaces that have not previously been regarded by state institutions as worthy of celebration, such as colonial buildings, neighbourhoods delineated by popular religion, and abandoned factories. Rapid urban development has constituted a constant threat to all but the most revered heritage sites and yet municipal authorities have also selectively preserved or reconstructed colonial, religious and industrial spaces (among others) in order to redevelop inner-city neighbourhoods, produce unique city brands and generate tourist revenue. This panel continues the Contemporary China Centre Conference Deconstructed format, bringing together international experts to examine municipal attempts at the heritagization of urban space, as well as the extent to which these projects have been successful in their aims. Continue reading Heritage and Urban Space →

China’s latest security target: Halloween partygoers

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Source: NYT (10/29/24)
China’s Latest Security Target: Halloween Partygoers
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
Last year, the Shanghai government said Halloween celebrations were a sign of “cultural tolerance.” This year, the police rounded up people in costume
By Vivian Wang and Muyi Xiao (Vivian Wang reported from Beijing)

Social media videos verified by The New York Times showed police in Shanghai escorting away people dressed in costumes. CreditCredit…

The police escorted the Buddha down the street, one officer steering him with both hands. They hurried a giant poop emoji out of a cheering dance circle in a public park. They also pounced on Donald J. Trump with a bandaged ear, and pushed a Kim Kardashian look-alike, in a tight black dress and pearls, into a police van, while she turned and waved to a crowd of onlookers.

The authorities in Shanghai were on high alert this past weekend, against a pressing threat: Halloween.

Officials there clamped down on Halloween celebrations this year, after many young people turned last year’s festivities into a rare public outlet for political or social criticism. People had poured into the streets dressed up as Covid testing workers, to mock the three years of lockdowns they had just endured; they plastered themselves in job advertisements, amid a weak employment market; they cross-dressed, seizing the opportunity to express L.G.B.T.Q. identities without being stigmatized. Continue reading China’s latest security target: Halloween partygoers →