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Book Review: A Passion For Facts By Tong Lam, Maggie Clinton

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Tong Lam’s engaging new study A Passion for Facts analyzes the processes by which modern modes of apprehending and ordering the social world were forced upon and ultimately embraced by Chinese political and intellectual elites during the late Qing and Republican periods. Lam focuses on the rise of the “social survey” (shehui diaocha) as a means of knowing and constituting a new object called “society” (shehui), as well as the epistemological violence of imperialism that rendered the social survey a seemingly natural way of investigating the world. By the time the Nationalists assumed state power in 1927, Lam argues, “seeking …

Book Review: Superstitious Regimes By Rebecca Nedostup, Stefania Travagnin

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Superstitious Regimes is an interdisciplinary work that sheds new light on the interaction between the state-body and the religion-body in early twentieth-century China, with a focus on the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). Nedostup develops her analysis from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective. The author underlines shifts and continuities between a few historical periods: Sun Yat-sen’s time, the early years of the Nanjing Decade, the late years of the Nanjing Decade, and the post-Nanjing Decade.

Nedostup’s interdisciplinary study is of interest for a large readership: students and scholars of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, Chinese religions, and Chinese history would all benefit …

Rural Return: Xi Jinping’S Iowa Visit, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US took him across the country, from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles (where, sadly, despite spending some time with a sartorially-challenged David Beckham, he did not show off his soccer skills, as he did in the subsequent Irish leg of his trip).

But it wasn’t the visits to the coasts that dominated human interest stories on Xi Jinping’s trip, but the days in the middle, when he spent a little time in Iowa. Xi first visited Iowa in 1985, when he was an official in Hebei province, and this trip was a …

Book Review: Developmental Fairy Tales, Nicole Kwoh

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the 1996 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting, Jiang Zemin concluded his speech on economic development with a quote from Lu Xun: “For actually the earth had no road to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made” (1921). This quote highlights the important role played by the first generation of modern Chinese literature in shaping the current rhetoric of building a road to progress. In Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture, Andrew F. Jones explains the construction of this ubiquitous concept of cultural and historical progress. With a focus on Lu …

Digital Chinese Whispers: Death Threats And Rumors Inside China’S Online Marketplace Of Ideas, James Leibold

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Chinese internet is a wonderfully raucous and interesting place. It has greatly expanded the scope of public discourse and activity, despite the party-state’s extensive censorship regime. Not surprisingly, the world’s largest cyber-community exhibits tremendous depth and diversity: progressive cyber-activists and professional agitators; navel-gazing starlets and steam-venting gamers; mundane infotainment and the banal waxing of quotidian life; and, sadly, dark corners of fear, hatred and paranoia. It’s all there; it simply depends on where one looks. Like other technologies before it, the internet is normatively neutral, and thus can be put to good, bad and anodyne uses: individuals—not tools—shape the …

Book Review: China And Orientalism, Fabio Lanza

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This slim, sharply-argued volume should be a mandatory reading for all of us who work on post-1949 China. China and Orientalism is a refreshing and often eye-opening analysis on how knowledge of the object called “China” has been constructed in the West since the end of Maoism. That knowledge, as Vukovich cogently demonstrates, is fundamentally flawed.

Writing as a “barbarian” outside the disciplinary gates— i.e. a self-declared non-sinologist (pp. xii-xiii) —Vukovich argues that, since the late 1970s, Western knowledge production about the PRC has been dominated and defined by a new form of Orientalism. But while for Edward Said the …

Letter From Little Lhasa, Reshma Patil

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The runaway from a Tibetan village in Naba, China, led the way down the slippery dirt track to the doorstep of a restaurant with a Potala Palace bereft of tourists and soldiers painted on its blue walls. The Tibetan-speaking attendant at Chonor House politely declined to serve my first meal in McLeod Ganj. The kitchens were functioning only for hotel guests until the end of Losar. The three-day Tibetan New Year passed uncelebrated earlier this month in the Indian hill-town teeming with Tibetan exiles who give Dharamshala the moniker of Little Lhasa. The exiled Tibetan government is edged higher in …

A Flourishing Profession: Reflections On A Career In Asian Studies, Charlotte Furth

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the March annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, held in Toronto, the association recognized Charlotte Furth with the AAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies. Furth is Professor Emerita of history at the University of Southern California and has written and edited five books, including A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960-1665 (UC Press, 1999). Below is an expanded version of remarks that Furth gave at the AAS award ceremony, in which she reflects on the changes to Asian Studies that have taken place since she entered the field in 1959, particularly regarding the …

The First Asian Man: The Story Behind The Jeremy Lin Story, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are good reasons why Jeremy Lin deserves the extensive news coverage he has received recently: a Harvard grad playing in the NBA, he had an indispensible role in the Knicks’ 9-2 run before losing to Miami on February 23, averaging 23.9 points and 9.2 assists in 11 games. Yet the extraordinary “Linsanity” displayed by the mass media seems to suggest that what makes Lin’s story so notable is what it says about perceptions of Asian masculinity. In Lin, the media has finally found an Asian man.

Literacy And Development Within China’S Minorities, Alexandra Grey

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Outside of China, people are agape at the prospect of learning to write Chinese: “So hard! Too hard.” Back in Australia, I know first generation migrants who speak Chinese at home but have never learnt to write; they gape along with everyone else. But for all the jaw-dropping, these people can read and write the national language of their home (for the Aussie-Chinese, that’s English). What about the people inside China for whom ‘Chinese’ is a foreign language? They are a significant minority, and, on the Chinese scale, a minority still means millions of people. ‘Chinese’ is usually loosely used …

Book Review: Fractured Rebellion, Amy O'Keefe

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Walder creates an orderly account of the events, discussions, and political currents that comprised the student movement in Beijing during the first two years of China’s Cultural Revolution. With meticulous attention to sequencing, he comprehends and brings meaning to a whirlwind of events often described as a vindictive political free-for-all, but which he shows, instead, to have been a structured series of rivalries.

Reading Round-Up: Reactions To The Wenzhou Train Crash, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There has been a huge amount of reporting on the July 23 train accident in Wenzhou that killed at least 39 and incited a continuing outcry among Chinese journalists and internet users, as well as government efforts to silence such criticism. Here, a collection of links connected to the rail crash and its aftermath.

Facebook And The People In The Iron House: 非死不可？, James A. Millard

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others,” Adam Conner, a Facebook lobbyist, told the [Wall Street] Journal. “We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before,” he said.

New Issue Of Twentieth-Century China Available

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The latest issue of Twentieth-Century China should be arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes right now, bringing readers four research articles described below by Chief Editor James Carter in an excerpt from the journal’s editorial:

Understanding China, Ron Javers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Though the lyric was written for and recorded by Nina Simone in 1964, most Americans who remember it at all probably remember best the 1965 cover by Eric Burdon and the Animals, with its twangy guitar riffs and R&B-fired shriek of entreaty.

Mourning The Soviet Union, Nicolai Volland

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Twenty years ago, on 23 August 1991, a grimlooking Boris Yeltsin shoved a sheet of paper in front of Mikhail Gorbachev with the words, “You read this now!” Gorbachev, who had just returned to Moscow after the abortive coup d’état led by KGB generals and hardliners in his own Party, appeared tense and insecure. In front of a stunned international TV audience (original footage here [at 01:25]), he did as he was told. Gorbachev’s decree was the first in a number of documents that led to the ban of the once mighty Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

From Monkey King To Mao: Cultivating Online Games With “Chinese Characteristics”, Marcella Szablewicz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With 300 million people playing Internet games in China, the question of how these games affect youth has captured the attention of the public and researchers alike. I first became interested in studying online gaming in 2002 when, as a language student in Harbin, China, I discovered the extent to which playing online games in Internet cafés had become a central part of social life for many urban youth. However, like any new technology, the growing popularity of games has also sparked growing fears about their potential to negatively impact society. In recent years the Chinese media has been full …

China Beat Birthday: Now We Are Three

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat very quietly celebrated its third birthday last Friday, making the site now almost a senior citizen in the constantly enlarging arena of China blogs. While we’re very happy with the work we’ve been doing for the past three years—and we hope China Beat readers and contributors are equally pleased with our efforts—it’s always nice to shake things up a bit. For that reason, China Beat is now undertaking a collaborative venture with the journal Twentieth-Century China, a move that we hope will continue to bring together the worlds of online and print publishing.

China In 2010: A Baker’S Dozen Of Links, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last month, many commentators offered up lists of top books and top news stories of 2010, sometimes focusing on a particular place or topic. It would be easy to follow suit here, in my first 2011 blog post about China. After all, there were plenty of books on the country published last year (some of which I reviewed individually or in groups). There were also plenty of China-related headlines, from those twelve months ago detailing rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, to summer ones reporting that the nation had surpassed Japan to become both the world’s number two economy, to …

Upcoming Events

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Happy New Year from China Beat! If you’ve just purchased a 2011 calendar, here are some upcoming China-related events—featuring quite a few China Beatniks—to jot down in it:

On The Joys Of Online Book Shopping, Maggie Greene

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the fall of 2010, I advanced to candidacy at the University of California, San Diego, and bearing the new title of PhD candidate in modern Chinese history, I set off for that great and time-honored pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China to start researching my dissertation. I’ve been here four months, and while the process of researching Chinese opera (particularly kun opera and ghost plays) in the PRC has not been as smooth as I would have hoped, there is one thing that’s been going swimmingly: book shopping. More precisely, shopping online for books related to my dissertation.

Reading Round-Up, 2/20/11

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• If you’re looking for a few China book recommendations, check out these two recent interviews at The Browser’s “Five Books” feature: the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos suggests five books that first-time visitors to China should read before they go, and Victor Shih of Northwestern University shares his favorite titles dealing with the Chinese economy.

Late Qing Dreams Of Modernity, Peter Zarrow

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I would like to alert China Beat readers to a new film, Datong: The Great Society [Chinese title: 大同：康有為在瑞典]. This docu-drama tells the story of Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and to a great extent that of his second daughter Kang Tongbi (aka Kang Tung Pih, 1887-1969).

I found the film a powerful and affecting evocation of a philosopher’s life, and found myself challenged to consider what we make of the past and what it makes of us. The film-maker, Evans Chan, calls Datong: The Great Society a “docu-drama,” since it is based on verifiable records, period photos, and vintage footage—as well …

The Prc And Pr: Baffling Messages In Times Square?, Christopher C. Heselton

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Amid all the fanfare and fear-mongering over President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States last week, the Chinese government has also launched an advertising campaign to enhance its national image in America. The campaign includes a 60-second ad showing on a mega screen at Time Square, New York, a 30-second segment at Gallery Place, Washington DC (DC’s “Chinatown,” though it’s a rather small one), and a series of 15-second advertisements airing on several news networks over a multi-week period. A host of Chinese celebrities, models, entrepreneurs, astronauts, and other household names appear in these advertisements, standing and smiling at …

Pre-Summit Positioning, Scott Kennedy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Preparations for Wednesday’s state visit by Hu Jintao have been underway for several months. Most of that time was spent negotiating over what deals would be reached, whether there would be a joint statement, and what food would be served. I’m particularly interested to see: 1) Whether Chinese first lady Liu Yongqing will eat the standard fare put on the table as everyone else. She typically travels with her own chef and food; and 2) Whether the American media will get a good photo of the back of Hu Jintao’s head to determine once and for all if he has …

On Chinese Mothering And Amy Chua

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Yale Law professor Amy Chua’s article on “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” is still in the top five most-emailed stories at the Wall Street Journal’s website, four days after its publication last Saturday. Chua has attracted a considerable amount of attention with her article (and newly released book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother), which examines Chinese parenting techniques and compares them to Western approaches to raising children:

A Quick Q & A With Kim Rathcke Jensen: A Beijing-Based Danish Journalist

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A variety of events, from the Copenhagen environmental issues summit in 2009 to the controversy sparked by the Empty Chair in Oslo last year, have led to news stories in the American press that involve both China and a Scandinavian country. This led me to wonder what, if anything, was distinctive about the way Scandinavian media cover China. Realizing that there are bound to be important differences among Scandinavian countries in this regard, but needing to start somewhere in getting a feel for this issue, I turned to Kim Rathcke Jensen, a Danish reporter whose wide-ranging China-focused twitter feedhttp://twitter.com/kinablog/ I’ve …

China Events In Southern California, February 8-22

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat readers living in and around the Southern California region might want to check out one or more of these events in the upcoming weeks:

Chinese Tour Groups In Europe, Chinese Tour Groups In Yunnan: Narrating A Nation In The World, Tami Blumenfield

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The first winter I stayed with a Moso (sometimes spelled Mosuo) family in southwest China, my weeks of Naru language tutoring did not help me get very far in understanding their conversations. I had trouble sorting out the names and relationships of the ten to eighteen family members who ate meals together and lived in that household. The apu (grandfather) joked to me that I, an American citizen who had been living in China, was now in the foreign country’s foreign country; no wonder I was disoriented. Their corner of Yunnan was culturally and linguistically distinct from other parts of …

China’S Water Challenges: A Quick Q & A With Environmental Historian Kenneth Pomeranz, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Ken Pomeranz, Kate Merkel-Hess and I had various reasons for launching this blog at the start of 2008. One thing that led us to start the venture, at a time when Kate was the only one of us with any blogging experience, was simply a sense that some of the things that we were saying to one another over lunch and in the hallways at UC Irvine might be of interest to people in other places who were working on, living in, or just curious about China. As much as the venture has developed since then (adding new contributors continually, …