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New Era Civilization Practice Centers

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This piece is a few months old, but I find it important and post-worthy.–Kirk

Source: China File (1/31/22)
A Vast Network of ‘New Era Civilization Practice Centers’ Is Beijing’s Latest Bid to Reclaim Hearts and Minds
By Jessica Batke

Steven Weinberg for ChinaFile

Primary Sources:
New Era Civilization Practice Centers Infographic
Haiwan Town New Era Civilization Practice Volunteer Service Activity List
“Guiding Opinion on the Work of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers Pilot Project” (Chinese)
“Implementation Plan to Deepen and Expand the Pilot Project of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers” (English and Chinese)
“Implementation Plan for Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Volunteer Service Mechanisms” (Chinese)

Translation of Selected Terms
New Era Civilization Practice Center (county level) 新时代文明实践中心
New Era Civilization Practice Institute (township level) 新时代文明实践所
New Era Civilization Practice Station (village level) 新时代文明实践站
Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization 中央精神文明建设指导委员会
Volunteer service with Chinese characteristics 中国特色志愿服务
Propagandize to the masses, educate the masses, lead the masses, serve the masses 宣传群众、教育群众、 引领群众、服务群众

In a rural county in southern China, more than ten thousand volunteers, scattered across mountain villages and rice paddies, are out gathering local folk songs. Their charge: to bring back paeans to “the new era and new thought” at the heart of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s vision for China’s political future.

The folk song compilers are just one of “seven detachments in the mountains,” teams of volunteers throughout Longli County in China’s Guizhou province working to “forge mass solidarity, guide the masses, inculcate a correct cultural disposition in individuals, improve social mores, and adjust people’s behavior.” Members of the “Pure Folkways” detachment go door to door to urge thrift and discourage lavish spending on events like weddings and New Year’s banquets. The “Grateful to the Party” detachment’s formerly poverty-stricken households work to assist their less fortunate neighbors. Other detachments mediate disputes, organize neighborhood clean-up, and tend to children and elderly relatives left behind when working-age adults in their households seek employment elsewhere. Continue reading →

Hawai’i Intl. Conference on Chinese Studies–cfp

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Aloha!

The third annual Hawai‘i International Conference on Chinese Studies (HICCS), organized by the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, is hosting an in-person conference in 2023. HICCS will be held from January 4 (Wednesday) through January 6 (Friday), 2023. The conference will bring together educators and professionals from a wide range of fields in Chinese Studies to present papers on various aspects of Chinese culture and society in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among overseas Chinese. Papers can address issues within China and in Chinese communities throughout the world.

The deadline to submit paper title and abstract is September 15. Please see the CFP here and HICCS website (English) ( 简体)  ( 繁體) for more information on submitting an abstract.

If you would like to add your name to our mailing list for future updates, please click here.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Pettit, HICCS co-chair
Peng Xu, HICCS co-chair

University of Buffalo position

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Clinical Assistant Professor, Chinese Language, University at Buffalo

The Department of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo is seeking a full-time, Clinical Assistant Professor, Chinese Language, for a 10-month (academic-year commitment), non-tenure track position with an initial three-year appointment with possible renewal, contingent on performance, department need, and availability of funding.

The successful candidate’s responsibilities include teaching three courses per semester, possibly including a content course (e.g., in Chinese linguistics or culture), and providing administrative direction to the Chinese Language Program, including tasks such as hiring additional instructional faculty, training and supervising graduate and undergraduate student teaching assistants and other instructors, conducting placement tests, and curriculum development. There is no research obligation for this position, and there is potential for promotion to clinical associate professor. The position offers competitive faculty salary and state employee benefits.

The successful candidate must be able to regularly teach in-person classes on the University at Buffalo campus beginning Fall 2022. Review of applications will begin on May 31, 2022, and continue until the position is filled. Interviews will be conducted via Zoom. More detailed information about the position, including minimum qualifications, can be found in the UBJobs posting. Please direct questions to Jeff Good (jcgood@buffalo.edu).

Rose Boy

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Source: SupChina (5/11/22)
‘Rose Boy’: How a death on campus changed LGBTQ education in Taiwan
The 22nd anniversary of the death of “Rose Boy” was commemorated in China, while the media coverage of an empowering song named after him attracted criticism for downplaying its progressive message.
By Nathan Wei

Illustration for SupChina by Derek Zheng

Welcome to our new China LGBTQ Column, a fortnightly round-up of news and stories related to the sexual and gender minority population in Greater China.

April 20 marked the 22nd anniversary of the death of Yeh Yung-chih (叶永志 Yè Yǒngzhì), also known as “Rose Boy” (méiguī shǎonián 玫瑰少年), an iconic figure in Chinese-speaking LGBTQ communities around the world.

On the morning of April 20, 2000, Yeh, who was at the time a junior high student in Taiwan, asked his teacher to go to the bathroom in the middle of a class. A few minutes later, he was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor. Yeh later died of head trauma at a local hospital at the age of 15. An investigation concluded it was an accident: as Yeh rushed back to the classroom, he slipped and fell head-first onto the wet floor in the bathroom.

Prior to his death, Yeh suffered verbal and physical bullying by schoolmates due to his non-conforming gender expression. Despite multiple complaints lodged by his mother, the school did nothing to improve the situation. Although there was no direct evidence connecting the incident to his past experience of being bullied, Yeh’s plight attracted a great deal of public attention and prompted local queer activists to advocate for more inclusive education on diverse sexuality and gender identities in school. Yeh’s mother, Chen Chun-ju (陈君汝 Chén Jūnrǔ), has also been participating in social activism proactively to seek justice for her son and to reach out to other youth. Continue reading →

Paper Republic newsletter 13

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Happy Friday y’all!

This issue comes with a set of brilliant answers to questions we put to three Chinese-Spanish translators, as a continuation of our previous collab with their respective translator collectives. You can find their answers beneath the news. We hope to have more collaboration with Chinese translators and publishers into more languages besides Chinese, so if you fall into one of those categories, feel free to get in touch.

First, let me direct your attention to the great events there are coming up, which for the first time in a long time are all in person. So Londoners and Copenhageners, get to booking.

Oh, and remember news of Han Song’s new novel Hospital, coming out from Amazon Crossing (read our chat with acquiring editor Gabriella Page-Fort here)? We’ve got a look at the striking cover, check it out!

Enjoy your perusing!

Extracts, stories and poems:

Continue reading →

The Chinese Comparatist online

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In its earliest days, the Association of Chinese & Comparative Literature (then the American Chapter of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association) published the journal, The Chinese Comparatist. As the ACCL house journal, The Chinese Comparatist was edited and printed by the late Wu Beiling, and published three issues between 1987 and 1989, before its untimely demise.

The journal is not widely available in library collections today. To make it more accessible, the ACCL has partnered with Penn State University Libraries to digitize the issues for open access.

So if you want to (re-)read Liu Kang’s essay, “Storyteller and Ideologeme: Some Aspects of Discourse in Classical Chinese Fiction,” or Zhang Yingjin on “Fetishism and Faddism: Manifestations of Literature as Commodity in Contemporary China,” or Eugene Eoyang’s “Still Life in Words: The Art of Li Ch’ing-Chao”—and many more—then go to the link below:

https://libraries.psu.edu/about/collections/chinese-comparatist

With best regards,

Nico Volland (ACCL President)

HK police arrest Cardinal Joseph Zen

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Source: NYT (5/11/22)
Hong Kong Police Arrest Former Bishop in National Security Case
Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, was among three held for their work with a legal aid group that helped protesters and that officials accuse of colluding with foreign powers.
By Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May

Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, has been critical of the official crackdown in Hong Kong.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, has been critical of the official crackdown in Hong Kong. Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong police arrested three prominent activists on Wednesday, including a retired bishop and a pop star who were leaders of a legal aid organization now under investigation for suspected violations of the city’s strict national security law, a lawyer for the group said.

The arrests are the latest in a sweeping crackdown that followed widespread antigovernment protests in 2019 and the imposition of the security law on the territory a year later. More than 170 people have been arrested under the law since it was implemented, and dozens are in custody awaiting trial.

The police arrested Cardinal Joseph Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop; Denise Ho, a prominent Cantopop singer and L.G.B.T.Q. rights activist; and Margaret Ng, a lawyer and former lawmaker. They were all trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, an organization founded in 2019 to provide grants to people who were arrested for participating in demonstrations. Continue reading →

Chinese Independent Cinema Observer no. 3

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Dear list members,

The third issue of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer, “The Keywords of Chinese Independent Cinema”, edited by Flora Lichaa and Yang Yishu, is now available to download from the Chinese Independent Film Archive:

https://www.chinaindiefilm.org/issue-3-the-keywords-of-chinese-independent-cinema/

This issue includes essays on a range of keywords in independent Chinese cinema by scholars, practitioners, and critics.

In addition, we have an online launch event for the issue, on Saturday May 28th at 1.30pm UK time/8.30am New York time/8.30pm Beijing time. The event, “How to Make the Invisible Visible: The Past and Present of the Dissemination of Chinese Independent Films”, will be chaired by the issue editors, and features guest speakers Cong Feng, Gan Xiao’er, Jiang Nengjie, Yang Zi, and Zhang Yaxuan. Further details on the event can be found here.

Registration for the launch is required.

Many thanks,

Luke Robinson

Honoring China’s heroes

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Source: China Media Project (5/10/22)
Honoring China’s Heroes
Last week veteran journalist Luo Changping was given a seven-month jail sentence for defaming the country’s martyrs and heroes. The harsh penalty for the former senior editor of Caijing magazine, who in the past has been hailed in China for his heroic journalism, reveals how profoundly the values in Chinese society have shifted under Xi Jinping.
By David Bandurski

Just over a decade ago, veteran journalist Luo Changping (罗昌平), then deputy editor-in-chief of one of China’s most influential magazines, was a stand-out example of the best in Chinese journalism – a professional dedicated to the facts and to the hard-nosed techniques needed to ferret them out in a challenging environment. In November 2013, his work exposing official corruption earned him back-to-back international and domestic honors, first the “Integrity Award” from Transparency International, and later the China Hero Award from NetEase.

But the days are long gone when journalists in China can be openly lauded as heroes for asking hard questions about those in positions of power. On May 5, Luo Changping was sentenced to a seven-month prison term for “infringing the reputation and honor of national heroes and martyrs.” His punishment is a potent illustration of how profoundly values have shifted in Chinese media and society under the iron-fisted rule of Xi Jinping.

Luo’s sentencing comes almost exactly seven months after he was summoned by police on October 7, 2021, after making several posts to Weibo in which he questioned China’s role in the Korean War as depicted in a blockbuster propaganda film called The Battle at Lake Changjin (长津湖). Commissioned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, the film is a cloying war epic glorifying the deeds of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) at the outset of the Korean War in 1950, as they faced off against an American-led United Nations force near at the Chosin Reservoir, about 100 kilometers south of the current border of China and North Korea along the Yalu River. Continue reading →

Hao Chang has passed away

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Source: Academia Sinica (5/5/2022)
Academician Hao Chang Has Passed Away


Academician Hao Chang passed away in the United States on April 20, 2022. He was 85 years old.

Dr. Chang was a renowned Sinologist, devoted to the intellectual history of modern China and history of Chinese political thought. He studied under notable scholars, including Yin Hai-guang, Yang Lien-sheng, and Benjamin I. Schwartz, and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1966. Dr. Chang taught at Ohio State University from 1968 to 1998, and at the University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, since 1998.

Dr. Chang obtained many outstanding achievements and authored several articles and books in both Chinese and English. His comparison and reflection on Western Liberalism and Chinese Confucianism were widely influential in Sinology and in intellectual history studies. In February of this year, Dr. Chang donated his book and manuscript collection to the National Library, a remarkably generous gesture and invaluable contribution to history research.

During his distinguished career, Dr. Chang has received numerous honors, including grants from the American National Humanities Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Qian Mu History Lectureship and the Yu Ying-shih Lectureship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Tseng Yueh-nung Lectureship on Comparative Study of Cultures at Tunghai University, Taiwan. Dr. Chang was elected Academia Sinica Academician in 1992.

Digital Identities in China–cfp

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CFP: Digital Identities in China, a special issue of Chinese Literature and Thought Today (CLTT)*
Guest-edited by Dr. Paul J. D’Ambrosio

From award winning science fiction writers to the most unified social credit system in the world and from expansive use of digital identification cards to pervasive applications of artificial intelligence in everyday life, China is at the forefront of many digital frontiers. As ever increasing reliance on digital technologies shape our experiences and mediate our interactions, reflections on how our ways of understanding ourselves, others, and the world need to transform accordingly.

Many Western analyses criticize shifts to profile-based conceptions and frameworks as lacking “authenticity.” Digitalized identities—including those curated on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok—are appallingly antithetical to the self-narratives that appeal to creating or discovering an inner self.

Chinese literature and philosophy offer rich resources for questioning the absolute centrality of authenticity when reflecting on digital identities. They thus provide exciting resources for and examples of how shifts to digital identities can be engaged with, reflected on, and theorized about. In this special issue we invite authors to explore digital identities in China from the perspective of Chinese literature, philosophy, or other related avenues. Comparative or more Chinese centered approaches are equally welcome, as are new research proposals or English translations of previously published papers (in Chinese). Continue reading →

RMMLA Chinese Lit and Film–cfp

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75th Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association Annual Convention
Chinese Literature and Film since 1900 Session
Call for Papers:

Relationships of Crisis

At the present moment, between pandemic and war, as societies shudder and are torn apart by racism, the erosion of democratic institutions and civil rights, and the reliability of information and common ground for public discourse are questioned daily, the study of modern Chinese literature and film takes on a new light. By the time of the 75th RMMLA in Albuquerque, NM in October 13-15, 2022, the world may have changed significantly again, yet we nevertheless look forward to convening in person to renew our endeavors, and explore the relations between our work and the world. Our fields connect in new ways to current events and our call for papers in the Chinese Literature and Film since 1900 Session reflect this. We have gathered some themes around critical oppositions that resonate with concerns familiar to modern Chinese culture: Continue reading →

The rise of Chinese nonfiction

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Source: Sixth Tone (3/16/22)
From Soundbites to Deep Dives: The Rise of Chinese Nonfiction
Dutch researcher Tabitha Speelman shares her observations on China’s nonfiction boom.
Interviewers: Xue Yongle, Fu Beimeng, and Xie Anran; editor: Kilian O’Donnell.

CSA-Printstock/iStock/VCG, reedited by Ding Yining/Sixth Tone.

As part of the Sixth Tone China Writing Contest, Sixth Tone is publishing interviews with contest judges in which they share their personal takes on the contest’s theme of “generations” and the value of nonfiction writing. To learn more about the contest, click here.

In 2017, the Dutch journalist Tabitha Speelman, then based in Beijing, started the Changpian newsletter. Her goal? To introduce China’s burgeoning nonfiction writing scene to readers around the world. An avid reader of Chinese media, she selected stories from a mix of traditional outlets and emerging WeMedia platforms. The idea was to reach beyond the soundbites that dominated international coverage of China and instead immerse China-watchers in longer narratives about human-interest topics and day-to-day life in the country.

Unlike English-language nonfiction, which is a far broader genre, Chinese nonfiction is a descendant of the country’s decades-old tradition of literary reporting. Speelman started Changpian at a time when this longform reporting tradition was being revived and repurposed for the social media era. Readers devoured real and dramatic stories from around China on platforms like microblogging site Weibo and messaging app WeChat, and major outlets soon started launching new sections dedicated to longform nonfiction writing. Continue reading →

CUHK position

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Associate Professor / Assistant Professor
Department of Chinese Language and Literature
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Closing Date: May 31, 2022

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature is in the Faculty of Arts that offers diversified programmes including the undergraduate and the postgraduate programmes. There has been a clear position of the Department that sets a foothold in Asia with a global vision, aiming at combining tradition with modernity and promoting traditional culture while also keeping pace with the progress of the times.

The Department is now inviting applications for the post of Associate Professor / Assistant Professor in the area of modern Chinese literature. Applicants with research interests in the global Chinese literature, transcultural studies, or media studies including films, performing arts, and audio-visual culture are particularly preferred. Further information about the Department is available at http://www.chi.cuhk.edu.hk/. Continue reading →