Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Coming Distractions: The Complete Fiction Of Lu Xun–A New Translation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re pleased to present here an excerpt from the introduction of Julia Lovell’s forthcoming translation of Lu Xun’s fiction. Lovell examines the uses (and abuses) of Lu Xun’s writings by Mao Zedong in the decades after the author’s death, pointing out the ways in which the CCP smoothed over rough edges and ignored inconvenient truths as it disseminated Lu Xun’s work for the Chinese public to study. Since the reforms of the late 1970s, Lu Xun has been transformed yet again, and now occupies a status equivalent to that of Charles Dickens in Britain: while his work might be respected, …

Review: Making Religion, Making The State, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A collection of essays on the religious revival in the People’s Republic of China,Making Religion, Making the State (Stanford UP, 2009) focuses on how the state has influenced the development of Chinese religious institutions and practices. But, as the title suggests, the state’s rehabilitation of different religions has been far from a one-way street, with both clergy and laity prompting the state to adjust its strategies. The essays demonstrate just how complicated this process has been thus far, and suggest that the dynamics of the current religious revival will remain subject to change, albeit under the shadow of a state …

Lijia Zhang: Virtually And In Person

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last Thursday, Lijia Zhang gave a talk at the University of California, Irvine campus to a packed room. In addition to discussing her book, Socialism is Great!, Zhang also discussed her experiences as a writer in China.

Currently in residence as a fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writer’s Program (for Iowa Citians, Zhang will be giving a reading at Prairie Lights todayat 4 p.m.), Zhang has also been hosting a talk show in China. Click here to see her interview with the Australian ambassador to China, Dr. Geoff Raby; you can find more videos at Blue Ocean Network’s …

Shattered Hearts (Summary Report): The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of American Indian Women And Girls In Minnesota., Alexandra (Sandi) Pierce

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 1st (2009)

Table of Contents

Background 1

Definitions and terms 2

The context 5

Prevalence 8

Patterns in entering the sex trade 10

Age of entry 10

Modes of entry 11

Factors that facilitate entry 17

Generational trauma 17

Runaway, thrown away, and/or homeless 17

Repeated exposure to abuse, exploitation, and violence 20

Addiction 25

Failure to finish high school 27

Mental and emotional vulnerability 28

Barriers to exiting the sex trade 29

Limited access to emergency and supportive housing 29

Absence of other options for self-sufficiency 30

Distrust of law enforcement 29

Child protection policies 30

Limited resources for support and …

Double Take

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I took this photograph in Hanoi last summer, during my first trip to Vietnam, a brief but memorable one, the main purpose of which was to give lectures about the Journal of Asian Studies and the nature of scholarly publishing in the West. Many things I saw there made me think of China (either as it is today or as it was a decade or two ago), including this store. When I first took the photograph, I was reminded of a Danwei post I had seen a few months earlier that featured a May 4th commemorative graphic (from the Chinese …

Dirty Innards, Paul Katz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Taiwan has recently been upset by the news that imports of American beef will soon resume, including internal organs. The resulting upheaval has featured more hysteria than science, but has nonetheless had an impact on the current government’s popularity, with President Ma’s approval rating plummeting by 14%. In the midst of the discomfort about potentially contaminated beef, however, concerns are also being raised about other forms of filth at the political and social levels:

1. Yet another KMT legislator is facing the end of his political career, with the Taiwan High Court yesterday upholding a lower court ruling annulling his …

Peter Hessler: Readings On The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Peter Hessler will be speaking about his new book at the University of California, Irvine on February 16 (mark your calendars, Southern Californians!). Hessler will be in the midst of a tour for the book, Country Driving. We noticed a few readings by and about Hessler this week, and thought, in honor of his upcoming visit, to share them with you.

1. This week’s New Yorker features a piece by Hessler on Lishui, a Chinese city that has a booming business in export artwork. Click here for a slide show narrated by Hessler. (For another take on Chinese copies/forgeries in …

In Case You Missed It: Repeat After Me

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 2005, when Rachel DeWoskin published her memoir of living in Beijing during the 1990s, I was so excited that I immediately bought the first copy I saw in a Hong Kong bookstore. Foreign Babes in Beijing represents a rare female voice among the expats-in-China genre of books, and DeWoskin’s tales of working in public relations and acting in a Chinese soap opera are deftly and humorously written. It’s a book that I still recommend to people who want to know more about living in China, and I’m looking forward to seeing the film version that’s currently in development.

After …

Party Girl

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Taken in a packed Christian service I attended out of curiosity at a wannabe mega-church in Beijing. While the passionately Christian Chinese acquaintance I went with stood reverent and modest by my side, this girl happened to step into my shot.”

–Alec Ash

The Curious Case Of Jia Junpeng, Or The Power Of Symbolic Appropriation In Chinese Cyberspace, Guobing Yang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

An Uncanny Story[1]

On July 16, 2009, an anonymous internet user in a popular Baidu discussion forum posted a message titled “Jia Junpeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat.” The message has only twelve Chinese characters in its title and has no other content. Yet it got 3,000 responses within five hours, responses that range from the routine socializing type (“Support!” “Interesting!”) to the funny and sarcastic (“I am not going to eat at home today. I’m eating in the Internet bar. Please pass on my message to my mom.”). Within one day, it received seven million …

10/19 Reader

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. This is a rather belated link, but in case you missed it at China Digital Times, you might be interested to read their translation of a piece on “‘The Wall’ and ‘Climbing Over the Wall’” by Tu Zifang from Southern Metropolis Weekly.

For so many years, the busiest people on the Chinese internet are those who make the Wall software and the “Climbing the Wall” software. It has been said that those people all have something in common: 1. They are all Chinese, 2. They all made a fortune, 3. They all have studied in the US. The only …

Response To “Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter In The Xinjiang Riot”, Mark Elliott

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat has run several pieces recently on the Xinjiang riots. On October 2, we featured Rian Thum’s “The Ethnicization of Discontent in Xinjiang,” which argued that the riots had raised ethnic tensions in the region. A few days later, we published “Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot,” written by Liang Zheng. Zheng argued that the foreign media had ignored indications that the riots were instigated by fundamentalists from southern Xinjiang, an argument that preserves the notion of ethnic harmony in Urumqi itself.

Today we run a response to Zheng’s argument from Mark Elliott, Professor of Chinese …

New Engagements With Documentary Editions: Audiences, Formats, Contexts, Andrew Jewell

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Conference Presentations and Speeches

This paper is an effort to think about something different than the creation of documentary editions. It is an effort to think about the reading of them. Specifically, I want to think about the ways the reading of documentary editions is changing, or how it might change. First, however, a caveat: much of what I say is speculative and anecdotal. Though others’ research has been consulted, I’m heavily influenced by what I observe is happening with readers of my own editing project, The Willa Cather Archive, a digital thematic research collection dedicated to the life, work, and environs of the …

Yes, You Too Can “Win In China”: An Interview With Filmmaker Ole Schell, Dustin Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There has understandably been no shortage of commentary on China’s rapid economic development. Much like Japan’s economic “miracle” of the last century, this other industrialization in East Asia has generated considerable discussion, both in academia and popular media. No doubt, much of the discussion rests on a healthy crop of skepticism regarding the actual sustainability of China’s growth. However, though export growth has slowed since the boom apex in 2007, the country’s economy is nonetheless continuing to grow and many observers maintain that China is surviving the global recession better than any other major economy.

But as both domestic and …

Talks By Jeff Wasserstrom In Heidelberg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Jeff Wasserstrom will be giving several talks at the University of Heidelberg over the next few days in the series “China Beat–Mega-Events and Recent Trends in Transcultural China”:

Thursday, October 15

“New Possibilities and Old Patterns in Publishing in and about China,” with a response by poet Bei Ling

Friday, October 16

“Mega-Events and the Rise of Global Cities: The Shanghai World Expo in Historical and Comparative Perspective”

Monday, October 19

“Chatter about China in the Global Public Sphere: From the Boxer Crisis to the Beijing Games and Beyond”

Details about these events are available here.

Long Live The Nation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“祖国万岁. Long Live the Nation.” The main pavilion of the Expo looks like a cross between a UFO and the hull of a ship. I spoke with some bystanders who turned out to be residents of the area. The old couple comes out everyday at night to marvel at the dramatic displays on the Expo pavilion. It seems that there isn’t enough to warrant a lawn chair but they beg to differ. It’s their city.

Photo by Grace Park, caption by Jonathan Hwang. Both are students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.

Learning From Lai Changxing?, Jeremy Brown, Xian Wang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last year, Angilee Shah wrote a review at China Beat of Oliver August’s Inside the Red Mansion. The review inspired Simon Fraser University Professor Jeremy Brown to assign the text to a class and he recently invited the book’s protaganist, Lai Changxing, to join his class for a day. Brown and one of his students provide an account of the day’s visit below (for a write-up in Chinese, see this report at The Global Chinese Press).

A few days before National Day, Lai Changxing joined our fourth-year Chinese history class at Simon Fraser University. For almost three hours China’s most …

Chinese History Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A hodgepodge of historically or (historian-) relevant readings from the last few weeks…

1. Of greatest interest to the historians around here (particularly those of us who don’t make it to Cambridge regularly), Harvard and the National Library of China have signed a deal to digitize Harvard’s collection of 51,000 rare Chinese books:

Once completed, these images dating as far back as the Song ynasty in 960 AD, will be publicly available for free on the Web to scholars in China and elsewhere.

“We need to change the mindset that rare materials must be kept behind closed doors,’’ said James …

The Great Wall Parade, Alex Pasternack

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My second day back in Beijing, and I was already under house arrest.

It was a sensitive time — the day before China’s 60th birthday — and I found myself stuck inside the gates of the city’s oldest diplomatic compound, where many foreign newspapers and television stations now have their offices.

Granted, this was partially of my own accord. The compound sits near the eastern end of the parade route, on the city’s legendary Chang’an Jie (Avenue of Eternal Peace), and a friend’s balcony offered a good vantage point. But because of high security, I had been told that if …

Patriotism

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Peking University students queue to see the jingoistic new film ‘The Founding of a Republic’. In the screening, the young audience seemed more interested in the Chinese movie stars who appear in the film than they were in the historical content itself. Real footage of Chairman Mao in 1949, however, drew enthusiastic applause. Peking University students queue to see the jingoistic new film ‘The Founding of a Republic’. In the screening, the young audience seemed more interested in the Chinese movie stars who appear in the film than they were in the historical content itself. Real footage of Chairman Mao …

Around The Web: China’S National Day Celebration

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Now that the celebration is over and China has celebrated its 60th anniversary, we thought we would point out some of the National Day media coverage that caught our eye:

1. China Digital Times directed us to The Guardian, which posted this wonderful time-lapse video of the parade in Beijing; watch the day’s highlights in under four minutes!

2. Yale University’s Kang Zhengguo wrote this piece for the New York Times op-ed page, in which he reflects on his own National Day experiences over the span of five decades. While Kang marched as a Young Pioneer in the 1959 National …

Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter In The Xinjiang Riot, Liang Zheng

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s been three months since the city of Urumqi was plunged into chaos and terror by the deadliest ethnic bloodletting in the history of the People’s Republic. The riot on July 5th this summer erupted right after a mostly peaceful demonstration organized by Uyghur youths in Urumqi called to demand the government thoroughly investigate a brawl in southern China, which had left two Uyghur workers dead and dozens more injured. At that point, no one anticipated the demonstration would be followed by a horrible massacre in Urumqi that took at least 197 innocent lives, most of them members of the …

The Future Of Japanese-Chinese Relations Under Japan’S New Government: An Expert Weighs In, Elizabeth M. Lynch

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The United States was not the only country that voted for change this past year. On August 30, 2009, after fifty-four years of essentially one-party rule, the Japanese people voted overwhelmingly to usher in a completely new government and a new way of thinking. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which ruled Japan since 1955, was completely rejected. Obtaining only 119 out of 480 seats of the House of Representatives (the lower Diet), the LDP took a second seat to the younger and fresher Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The DPJ won 308 seats in the House, ensuring that their leader, …

The Ethnicization Of Discontent In Xinjiang, Rian Thum

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of many disturbing long-term effects of the recent violence in Urumqi is an increased ethnicization of anger on all sides. Ethnic tensions are of course nothing new in Xinjiang, and ethnically targeted state policies have long made it difficult to distinguish between anti-government and ethnic discontent, but until now Uyghur resistance has been aimed at the state. The recent Urumqi uprisings represent a significant redirection of anger along more clearly ethnic lines.

The interactions between Uyghur and Han citizens vary with the uneven demography of Xinjiang. In the provincial capital, Urumqi, Uyghurs are a minority. This means that Urumqi …

Contributors Around The Web, Ii

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. Leslie T. Chang has been recognized by PEN with a 2009 Literary Award for research nonfiction for her book, Factory Girls.

2. Jeffrey Wasserstrom has a new piece at Foreign Policy, “The Autocrats’ Learning Curve“:

It’s impossible to pinpoint when, exactly, the CCP went from looking like it was on its last legs to looming as a global force majeure. But in fact, the mistaken predictions of my generation may have had much to do with it — and with events in Berlin as well.

I learned why a decade ago, at a Budapest conference devoted to revisiting the …

Redefining The Dust Bowl Region Via Popular Perception And Geotechnology, Jess C. Porter, G. Allen Finchum

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The Dust Bowl is a historical vernacular region that has been delimited by a diverse group of academics, literary authors, and popular cultural voices. However, the general public’s perception of the Dust Bowl region has not been mapped and analyzed. This research queried residents of 93 Great Plains counties in order to ascertain their perceptions and knowledge of the vernacular Dust Bowl region. Analysis of the responses via the application of geographic information system mapping reveals striking differences between respondents of varying age and place of residence. Findings suggest that spatial understanding of the Dust Bowl phenomena is eroding among …

Book Review: Daschle Vs. Thune: Anatomy Of A High-Plains Senate Race By Jon K. Lauck, Thomas D. Isern

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Historian, political operative, and blogger Jon K. Lauck offers an insider’s account of the 2004 United States Senate race in South Dakota. Democrat Tom Daschle, leader of his party in the Senate, sought reelection and was challenged by Republican John Thune. Lauck seeks to explain Thune’s surprising victory—or rather, as the account unfolds, Daschle’s bitter loss. As is the way with insider accounts, this one produces some striking insights, but is also somewhat limited by its perspective.

Daschle in 2004 struggled, as Lauck puts it, with “the LBJ dilemma”—how to lead a liberal party in Washington while campaigning back home …

Abundance And Distribution Of Lesser Snow And Ross’S Geese In The Rainwater Basin And Central Platte River Valley Of Nebraska, Mark P. Vrtiska, Susan Sullivan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The number of lesser snow geese (Chen caerulescens) and Ross’s geese (C. rossii), hereinafter called “light geese,” staging during spring in the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley of south-central Nebraska has dramatically increased since the late 1980s. However, there has been no documentation of the abundance or distribution of light geese across the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley and the relationship of distribution to conservation-order activities. We used aerial transect surveys and distance sampling methodology to estimate abundance and distribution of light geese in the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley …

Book Review: Collaborating At The Trowel’S Edge: Teaching And Learning In Indigenous Archaeology Edited By Stephen W. Silliman, Joe Watkins

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This book is an outgrowth of a symposium presented at the 2005 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting and judged by the Amerind Foundation as the conference’s outstanding symposium. The original symposium papers, further refined during an Amerind Foundation-sponsored seminar held in October of the same year, form the book’s chapters. The volume’s rather lofty goal, as set out in Silliman’s introductory chapter, is to “redirect contemporary archaeology in many ways that are more methodologically rich, theoretically interesting, culturally sensitive, community responsive, ethically aware, and socially just.”

The chapters in part 1 focus on field schools and workshops conducted in …

Shattered Hearts (Full Report): The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of American Indian Women And Girls In Minnesota., Alexandra (Sandi) Pierce

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 1st (2009)

Table of contents

Acknowledgements iii

Background 1

Organization of the report 3

I The context 4

Native women’s experiences during colonization 5

Native women’s experiences during national expansion 7

Native girls’ boarding school experiences 8

Impact of assimilation policies on Native women 10

The damage caused by life in prostitution 14

II Methods and definitions 16

III Prevalence 28

Involvement in prostitution 28

Involvement in the Internet sex trade 35

IV Patterns in entering the sex trade 36

Age of entry 36

Modes of entry 39

V Factors that facilitate entry 53

Generational trauma 53

Runaway, thrown away, and/or homeless …