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Remembering Liu Xiaobo

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Liu Xiaobo.

This is adapted from a speech that Ian Johnson gave at Berlin’s Zion Church commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Liu Xiaobo. July 13, 2025, is the eighth anniversary of Liu’s passing and, instead of his importance fading, it only grows. In this essay, Johnson hints at some of the reasons for his enduring relevance—partly because of his courage for staying and fighting, but mainly for his self-reflection, which allowed a callow, arrogant intellectual to develop into a thoughtful person with sophisticated ideas for how people can live a decent live in an authoritarian regime.

The Man Who Stayed: Remembering Liu Xiaobo Eight Years After His Passing
By Ian Johnson

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In 1898, some of China’s most brilliant minds allied themselves with the Emperor Guangxu, a young ruler who was trying to assert himself by forcing through reforms to open up China’s political, economic, and educational systems. But opponents quickly struck back, deposing the emperor and causing his advisors to flee for their lives.

Among those who stayed was a young scholar named Tan Sitong. Tan knew that remaining in Beijing meant death but hoped that his execution might shock his fellow citizens awake.

It wasn’t a modest decision. Tan was one of the most provocative essayists of his generation. He had published an influential book decrying the effects of absolutism. He had founded schools and newspapers and advised other political figures on how to change the system. There was every justification for him to save himself so he could contribute to future battles. But these arguments also made Tan realize how valuable it was that he remain in the imperial capital: facing death proudly, at the hands of those resisting reforms, could make a difference; people might pay attention to China’s plight. Continue reading Remembering Liu Xiaobo →

ACLS 2025-26 competition

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The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce its 2025-26 fellowship and grant competitions. ACLS offers programs that promote research across all fields of the humanities and social sciences.

Our application, peer review, and award processes aim to promote inclusive excellence, and we welcome applicants from groups that are underrepresented in the academic humanities and from across the diverse landscape of higher education

Learn about application information and eligibility criteria for all programs.

Application deadlines vary by program. ACLS is now accepting applications for select fellowship and grant programs with September, October, and early November deadlines. Other programs, including the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies, and ACLS Digital Justice Grants will begin accepting applications in the coming months.

September 25, 2025, 9:00 PM EDT

October 29, 2025, 9:00 PM EDT

November 5, 2025, 9:00 PM EST

Continue reading ACLS 2025-26 competition →

Love Songs in East Asia (AAS panel)–cfp

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Call for Papers: Popular Love Songs in East Asia, in-person session at the AAS Annual Conference, Vancouver, March 12-15, 2026.

Love has always had tremendous weight in popular songs. From the sentimental ballads of Teresa Teng and Japanese enka to contemporary K-pop, J-pop, Cantopop, and Mandopop, love songs have played a central role in articulating personal yearnings, collective recollections, and transnational ambitions. Love songs have always attracted the spotlight in the region’s popular cultures by shaping shared emotions and critiques across borders. East Asian popular music has also reflected and responded to dramatic social transformations including urbanization, migration, and media globalization. Love songs are windows into changing ideas of relationships, modernity, self, and nationhood. This panel will investigate the ways in which love songs from East Asia have shaped regional and global soundscapes in distinct ways. We seek contributions that interrogate how musical form, lyrical content, performance, and industry structures mediate experiences of love, desire, and relationality to illuminate modern existence in East Asia.

Please send your abstract (250 words max) and a 100-word bio by July 23, 2025 to Sijia Yao at syao@soka.edu.

The Red Wind Howls

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Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my translation of The Red Wind Howls, a major novel by the Tibetan writer Tsering Döndrup. The book deals with the history of the 1950s-1980s, when the Tibetan region of Amdo was violently incorporated into the PRC. It is available through Columbia University Press:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-red-wind-howls/9780231213738/

From the publisher’s website:

A remarkable novel by one of Tibet’s foremost authors, The Red Wind Howls is a courageous and gripping portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao’s regime. The story delves deep into forbidden history, spanning the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and, most taboo of all, the 1958 Amdo rebellion when Tibetans rose in armed revolt against the Chinese state. Tsering Döndrup self-published the book in 2006, because no publisher would risk accepting it. When the authorities caught wind, all copies were confiscated and the author faced severe reprisals. He lost his job as head of the local archives, his passport was confiscated, and he has been under close surveillance ever since.

This powerful novel is set in part in the punitive labor camps to which Tibetans were sent after the failed rebellion, where many perished from starvation or forced labor. Inside and outside the camps, it depicts with dark humor a world of informers, cruelty, and score settling, against the backdrop of immeasurable environmental devastation and the destruction of traditional Tibetan ways of life. The novel draws on extensive interviews conducted by the author, and the rhythms of oral storytelling are reflected in its fragmented narrative style, which jumps back and forth between periods and events. An unparalleled account of the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover of Tibet, The Red Wind Howls is both a richly imaginative work of fiction and a vital piece of historical testimony.

Christopher Peacock
Department of East Asian Studies
Dickinson College

Cold Window Newsletter #7

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Source: Cold Window Newsletter #7
The fractal madness of internet literature genres
13 Ways of Looking at Chinese Internet Literature (#3-4)
By Andrew Rule

Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter! In this issue, the long-delayed return to my series on Chinese internet literature, with a focus on the chaotic sprawl of genres within which online fiction is produced. There’s a lot to say, so I’ll be splitting it up into two posts, published a week apart. No author profiles or recommended stories this time, but look forward to a bunch of those in a seasonal special later this summer.

I made this disclaimer last time, but it bears repeating: Chinese internet literature is one of the most massive media ecosystems in the world, and I am as far as can be from an expert. If you, like me, are a newcomer in this world, let’s treat this series as an opportunity to learn about it together. And if you’re a long-standing fan, I hope you’ll lend your expertise to the conversation.

Thirteen ways of looking at Chinese internet literature: Genre madness (3-4)

The first Chinese internet novel I ever really got into was about video gamers in a post-apocalyptic world. (I will withhold the title of the novel out of embarrassment.)1 A game-master transports them into the wasteland under the pretense that they are playing a VR game, and by manipulating them with quests, meaningless digital currencies, and promises of exclusive rewards, he manages to build an unstoppable army of blithe gamer warriors willing to carry out his every whim. I was astonished by the creativity of the concept: its humor, its moral ambiguity, its blending of classic sci-fi with manga tropes and game mechanics… It wasn’t until hundreds of chapters in that I discovered that this exact blend of story elements has a name: “Fourth Calamity” 第四天灾 fiction, so called because the arrival of gamers who fear no death and are hungry for loot on an unsuspecting world is an epoch-scale calamity. The Fourth Calamity subgenre is a tiny sliver of the video game novel subgenre, which is only part of the sci-fi and system story (系统文) genres. Novels in this subgenre operate in an incredibly specific range of plots.2 And yet there are a lot of them.

Chinese internet literature is VAST. All it takes is a quick scroll through Qidian or Novel Updates to see the whole bedazzling landscape of genres and subgenres unroll before you. But you’re not likely to learn much about internet literature as a whole just by gawking at genre names. Part of my thesis in this series is that internet literature cannot be understood at a glance (it takes at least thirteen!), and that goes for internet genres as well. So, for our next four Ways of Looking, we’ll try to approach genre from a handful of different perspectives. This week, in Part 1, a lexicon of how genres are talked about, and a bird’s-eye view of why they matter. And in Part 2 a week from now, a basic taxonomy of the genres themselves, and a blitz through some of the classic works that define them.

Let’s get to it. Check out my post from May if you want a refresher on Ways #1 and #2. Continue reading Cold Window Newsletter #7 →

China has paid a high price for dominance in rare earths

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Source: NYT (7/5/25)
China Has Paid a High Price for Its Dominance in Rare Earths
Dust and groundwater contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive chemicals pose a health threat that the authorities have been trying to address for years.
By Keith Bradsher, who has covered the rare earths industry in China since 2009, reported from Baotou and Longnan in China.

A body of water next to a dry area with a sprawling industrial site in the background.

An artificial lake of sludge, partly covered with water, was created in Baotou, China, from the waste from rare earth and iron ore processing. It was built without a liner to prevent its contents from seeping into groundwater. Credit…The New York Times

Chinese mines and refineries produce most of the world’s rare earth metals and practically all of a few crucial kinds of rare earths. This has given China’s government near complete control over a critical choke point in global trade.

But for decades in northern China, toxic sludge from rare earth processing has been dumped into a four-square-mile artificial lake. In south-central China, rare earth mines have poisoned dozens of once-green valleys and left hillsides stripped to barren red clay.

Achieving dominance in rare earths came with a heavy cost for China, which largely tolerated severe environmental damage for many years. The industrialized world, by contrast, had tighter regulations and stopped accepting even limited environmental harm from the industry as far back as the 1990s, when rare earth mines and processing centers closed elsewhere.

In China, the worst damage occurred in and around Baotou, a flat, industrial city of two million people in China’s Inner Mongolia, on the southern edge of the Gobi Desert. Baotou calls itself the world capital of the rare earth industry, but the city and its people bear the scars from decades of poorly regulated rare earths production.

An artificial lake of sludge known as the Weikuang Dam, four square miles in size, holds the waste left over after metals are extracted from mined ore. During the winter and spring, the sludge dries out. The dust that then blows off the lake is contaminated with lead, cadmium and other heavy metals, including traces of radioactive thorium, according to technical papers by Chinese scholars. Continue reading China has paid a high price for dominance in rare earths →

Revisiting the Hu Feng Case

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Hu Feng and his wife Mei Zhi.

Revisiting the Hu Feng Case 70 Years Later: Storm under the Sun and a Baseless Literary Inquisition (七十年后重温胡风案：《红日风暴》和一场莫须有的文字狱)
By Ma Qinuo 马奇诺

[中国民间档案馆 China Unofficial Archives is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. ]

2025 marks the 40th anniversary of Hu Feng’s death and the 70th anniversary of the infamous case of the “Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique.”

Hu Feng passed away on June 8, 1985. Thirty years prior, in May 1955, his arrest on charges of counter-revolution ushered in a large-scale literary inquisition following the Chinese Communist Party’s establishment of the People’s Republic. The case of the “Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique” implicated over 2,100 people in China. Hu Feng himself was initially sentenced to 14 years in prison, a term later escalated to life imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution.

A poet and theoretician within the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Feng was considered a successor to the great Chinese writer Lu Xun, who helped found the New Literature Movement. In the 1930s, he served as head of the propaganda department for the League of Left-Wing Writers, founding the magazines July and Hope, and nurturing a significant number of left-wing poets and writers.

After 1949, his theoretical views on literature and art clashed with Zhou Yang, who was one of Mao’s favorite literary theorists. Mao Zedong also perceived his ideas as opposing the rules that Mao set forth in his 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.” This ultimately led to Hu Feng’s imprisonment. The Hu Feng case had profound consequences; although only Hu Feng and two others received formal sentences, as many as 2,100 people were implicated. Official statistics later revealed that 92 individuals were arrested, 62 were held in solitary confinement, and 73 were suspended for investigation during the movement. Several designated key members endured decades of imprisonment and forced labor. Continue reading Revisiting the Hu Feng Case →

UBC lecturer position

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Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Cinema
University of British Columbia
Application deadline: August 4, 2025

The Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver campus) is accepting applications for the position of Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Cinema, commencing Sept. 1, 2026.

This is a full‐time position for a term of up to five years, which includes a probationary first year. Lecturer positions are appointments without review (i.e., non‐tenure track), renewable for successive terms, subject to availability of funds and demonstration of excellence in teaching and service, in accordance with the Collective Agreement between UBC and the UBC Faculty Association.

A full-time Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts is responsible for 24 teaching credits (i.e., eight 3-credit courses) annually, typically with a 3‐3 load in the Winter sessions and 2 courses or one intensive 6-credit course in one of the Summer sessions. The successful candidate will teach undergraduate courses in modern Chinese literature, culture, and cinema, primarily in English (ASIA-prefix or ASIX-prefix content-based courses), and in Chinese (CHIN-prefix advanced language courses) as needed. The workload for this position also includes service assignments. Continue reading UBC lecturer position →

Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre

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NEW PUBLICATION
Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre: Intellectuals, Amateurs, and Cultural Entrepreneurs, 1910s–1940s (University of Michigan Press, 2025)
By Man He

Modern Chinese theatre once entailed a variety of forms, but now it primarily refers to spoken drama, or huaju. Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre looks beyond scripts to examine  visuality, acoustics, and performance between the two World Wars, the period when huaju gained canonical status. The backstage in this study expands from being a physical place offstage to a culturally and historically constructed social network that encompasses theatre networks, academies, and government institutions—as well as the collective work of dramatists, amateurs, and cultural entrepreneurs. Early huaju was not a mere imitation of Western realist theatre, as it is commonly understood, but a creative synthesis of Chinese and Western aesthetics. Charting huaju’s evolution from American colleges to China’s coastal cities and then to its rural hinterland, Man He demonstrates how the formation of modern Chinese theatre challenges dominant understandings of modernism and brings China to the center of discussions on transnational modernities and world theatres.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: When S/He is not Nora: Chinese Theatres and Cosmopolitan Students in Post-World War I America
Chapter Two: Script to See: Spectatorial Subjects and Enlightened Eyes in Chinese Realist Theatres of the 1920s
Chapter Three: Out of the Box-Stage: Huaju’s Relocation to the Rural Modern
Chapter Four: Institutional Theatrics: Techniques, Prompts, and Plays to Serve the Nation
Chapter Five: Canonizing the Backstage: Gossip, Annals, and the Politics of Making Theatre History
Conclusion

Man He is Associate Professor of Chinese at Williams College.

Settler Colonialism, Diaspora, and Indigeneity–cfp

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Call for Panelists Verge-sponsored Panel at AAS 2026
“Global Asias’ Crossroads: Settler Colonialism, Diaspora, and Indigeneity”

Organizers: Lillian Ngan (lngan@usc.edu) and Wayne CF Yeung (wayne.yeung@du.edu)
Date/Venue: AAS, March 12-15, 2026 / Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Descriptions:

As scholars (Fujikane & Okamura; Day et al.) turn a critical eye towards the involvements of Asian diasporas in settler colonialism in places like Hawai’i and Canada, a salient absence from the conversation is the settler colonialisms currently active in continental Asia, including China (Tibet, Xinjiang), Japan (Hokkaido, Okinawa), and Russian Far East, as well as settler post-colonies like Taiwan and India (Kashmir). Meanwhile, Sinophone studies, which has pioneered settler-colonial criticisms in the study of Sinitic-language communities, remains ambivalent as to how diaspora’s expiration answers to the decolonization of immigrant-Indigenous relationalities in local contexts. Continue reading Settler Colonialism, Diaspora, and Indigeneity–cfp →

Dalai Lama will reinarnate

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Source: NYT (7/2/25)
Dalai Lama Says He Will Reincarnate, but China Has No Say in Successor
The aging Tibetan spiritual leader is looking to prevent Beijing from taking advantage of a power vacuum that might arise after his death.
By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar, Reporting from Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders are meeting to discuss the future of the spiritual leader’s institution

Monks in saffron robes sit as a video of the Dalai Lama speaking onscreen plays in front of them.

Tibetan Buddhist monks gathered in Dharamshala, a Himalayan hill town in India, to discuss the future of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual office, as China tries to control who will succeed him. Credit…Atul Loke for The New York Times

The Dalai Lama gathered senior Tibetan Buddhist monks on Wednesday in Dharamsala, the Himalayan town where he has lived in exile for over half a century, to chart the future of his spiritual office — and how it might survive growing pressure from China.

In a recorded video statement to the three-day conference, the 89-year-old offered few specifics on how Tibetan Buddhism’s highest office might avoid a period of uncertainty after he dies, a moment that Beijing may try to seize by installing its own choice as the next Dalai Lama.

But he made one thing clear: his own doubts about whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue after him have now been put to rest. He had previously been open to ending the role to avoid it being exploited by China after his death, but now affirmed that the lineage would go on.

He also made what was seen as another move at shutting China out from the future reincarnation of the Tibetan spiritual leader. He said in a statement that Gaden Phodrang Trust, which is registered in India and run by the Dalai Lama’s office, has “sole authority” to recognize such a reincarnation.

“No one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” he said.

The Chinese Communist Party, which has sought to erode the influence of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, asserts that only it has the authority to choose his reincarnation, despite being committed to atheism in its ranks. In Beijing, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the reincarnation had to be approved by the central government. Continue reading Dalai Lama will reinarnate →

Williams position

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Assistant Professor of Chinese at Williams College

WILLIAMS COLLEGE, Williamstown MA 01267. The Department of Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Williams College invites applications for a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor of Chinese, beginning in the fall of 2026. We seek someone who can teach all levels of Chinese language courses as well as disciplinary courses in the candidate’s specialization, which can include second language acquisition, formal or applied linguistics, cultural studies, literature, or related fields. The teaching load will consist of four courses per year,  as well as meaningful participation in the Winter Study curriculum which is during January.

The successful candidate will join colleagues in a vibrant and supportive academic community.  The Department of Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures offers three major tracks: Chinese, Japanese, and East Asian Languages and Cultures. The Chinese major requires four years of language study and the East Asian Languages and Cultures major requires three years of language study. The department also offers a dual language option under the East Asian Languages and Cultures major track. More information about the department can be found at https://www.williams.edu/dallc/. We offer mentoring and professional development opportunities, including participation in the college’s professional development programs of First3 and  External Mentoring Program for Pre-Tenure Faculty, access to a number of online NCFDD resources, and support through the newly established Rice Center for Teaching. Continue reading Williams position →

ACLA 2026–cfp

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The 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association will be held at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, February 26 – March 1, 2026.

The seminar proposal portal is now open: https://www.acla.org/seminars

You are invited to submit a seminar proposal (i.e., a call for papers) by August 8, 2025. A portal through which to submit paper proposals to seminar organizers will open on August 26, 2025.

Each seminar meets multiple times (usually three) to allow for continuous and substantive engagement among participants. This emphasis on long-form collaboration is a hallmark of the ACLA conference. For instance, a seminar meeting over three days may include up to twelve panelists, with three to four participants presenting twenty-minute papers in each session, followed by discussion. We welcome seminars on all topics and areas within Comparative Literature, broadly construed. We especially welcome seminars in areas historically underrepresented in the humanities. The conference is open to participants from both within and beyond the Americas.

Important Dates:
Accepting seminar proposals: July 1 – August 8, 2025
Accepting paper proposals: August 26 – October 2, 2025
Seminar organizer paper review period: October 6 – October 20, 2025
Secretariat sends status notifications: December 1, 2025
Accepting travel grant applications: Information coming soon!
Conference: February 26 – March 1, 2026 Continue reading ACLA 2026–cfp →

Princeton UP head joins China’s propaganda game (1)

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A lot more debate and beginning analysis is unfolding online, regarding the Princeton University Press scandal (but, we don’t yet see anything in big media — and nothing in the Daily Princetonian … ):

Recommended thread analyzing just how closely Princeton University Press parrots the party line (literally): https://bsky.app/profile/davidstroup.bsky.social/post/3lsper67des24

Another recommended thread on the Princeton University Press propaganda performance:

https://bsky.app/profile/protass.bsky.social/post/3lsqjto26r223

Another thread regarding Princeton University Press’ trip to Xinjiang

https://x.com/JimMillward/status/1939410493334335781

Further discussion, including of the Princeton statement justifying the trip:

https://bsky.app/profile/melissakchan.bsky.social/post/3lsrphzneks2w

https://x.com/melissakchan/status/1939681417711214986 Continue reading Princeton UP head joins China’s propaganda game (1) →

Police detain dozens of ‘boys’ love’ writers

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Source: NYT (6/28/25)
Chinese Police Detain Dozens of Writers Over Gay Erotic Online Novels
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
The genre known as Boys’ Love, stories written mostly by and for straight women, has been in the authorities’ sights for years.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

A man walks through a store past cardboard displays of bare-chested male fantasy characters.

A Beijing store selling merchandise based on Boys’ Love graphic novels. Boys’ Love fiction, about romance between men, has had a fervent niche following in China since the 1990s. Credit…Siyi Zhao/The New York Times

The graduate student in southern China wrote the romance novel in her spare time, self-publishing it online. In 75 chapters, it followed two male protagonists through a love affair that included, at times, steamy sexual encounters. It earned her less than $400, from readers who paid to access it.

Now, it could bring her a criminal conviction.

Across China, the authorities have been interrogating dozens of writers — many of them young women — who published gay erotic novels online, in what appears to be the largest police roundup of its kind to date.

At least 12 such authors were tried on obscenity charges in Anhui Province late last year, according to court records, and more investigations, including that of the student, were opened in Gansu Province this spring. Some of the writers have been fined heavily or sentenced to years in prison for producing and distributing obscene content.

At the center of the crackdown is Boys’ Love, a genre of romance between men that is mostly written and read online, and mostly by heterosexual women. Originally from Japan, it has developed a fervent niche following in China and other Asian countries since the 1990s, offering fans an alternative to the stereotypes of passive, obedient women and macho men in many mainstream love stories. Continue reading Police detain dozens of ‘boys’ love’ writers →