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Wednesday Reading

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The tainted milk scandal has stayed on the front pages, particularly in recent days as the type of tainted products expanded yet again (to include eggs, see below). Here are a few readings on the subject, in case you missed them:

1. Anna Greenspan wrote this piece on the milk scandal for our forthcoming book,China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, but we’re delighted that its up for reading right now at The Nation. Check it out here.

2.Though most stories on the tainted baby formula have emphasized that its devastating impacts are the result of falling rates of …

Wow In China And The U.S.

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the most popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) ever created, with more than 10 million players worldwide—half of them in China. Before WoW launched in 2004, conventional wisdom placed the potential playerbase for MMOs numbering in the hundreds of thousands. WoW quickly broke those numbers, drawing in new gamers with its cartoonish graphics, tongue-in-cheek storylines, and mix of collaborative and solo player options. Stories on WoW in China a few years ago emphasized a phenomenon known as “gold farming”—sweatshop laborers in China playing the game to raise in-game currency to then sell for real …

1948 & 2008: The George E. Morrison Lectures And Beijing’S Years Of Great Significance, Geremie R. Barme

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The 69th Morrison Lecture, “Reporting the Olympic Year,” was presented by Jane Macartney, The Times’ correspondent in Beijing, on October 22, 2008. The Morrison Lecture is an annual event in the academic calendar and public program of The Australian National University in Canberra. As 2008 was a major year for China, and Beijing in particular (something that will be marked by an upcoming publication by the editors of China Beat, China 2008: A Year of Great Significance), the Morrison Lecture Committee invited Jane to make this year’s presentation. As Jane noted in her précis of the Lecture, “The Olympics were …

The Best Reporting On The Sichuan Earthquake You’Ll Never See, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Busan, Korea – Pan Jianlin’s documentary about the earthquake that struck Sichuan province on May 12 made a quiet debut on a Sunday morning, at 10 a.m., the third day of this year’s Pusan International Film Festival.

With its not-so-great timing and grim title, Who Killed Our Children was a blip on the festival calendar’s 315 films and 85 world premieres. And if you happened to miss the documentary in Korea, it’s possible you will not have an opportunity to see it again.

Pan’s film’s subject is as simple as its title, examining the collapse of one of the many …

On The Train To Tibet

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As part of our on-going series of reading recommendations and conversations about Tibet and Tibetan history, we are today featuring a short excerpt from occasional China Beat contributor Alex Pasternack about his recent ride on the new train to Tibet. Pasternack writes regularly for Treehugger, where this essay was published in its entirety.

China’s – and the world’s – reach to the highest plateau on earth grew in summer 2006 with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Qingzang Tielu 青藏铁路). An engineering marvel that China itself once ruled impossible, the $4.2 billion line traverses an region known for earthquakes, low …

Wiki-Ing China: The Discussion Continues

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Charles Hayford shared the link to his recent China Beat pieces (Parts 1 and 2) on using (and altering) Wikipedia with the Asia Scholars listserv, H-Asia. A brief discussion ensued there, which included references to several new (to us) resources. Though we won’t mention names or specific discussions, we did want to share some of the resources we learned about as a result of listening in:

1. At this website, Vincent Pollard has written a student guide on internet credibility that could be easily adapted to an exercise on testing/editing/using Wikipedia.

2. One contributor noted a particularly outstanding Wikipedian (not …

China In 2008: A Year Of Great Significance

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last month, we announced our forthcoming book, China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in early 2009. With the manuscript beginning to take its final shape (and 2008 far enough advanced that we felt somewhat—but only somewhat, given what a crazy year it’s been so far—safe beginning to reflect on it), we thought we would share a little bit from the book with you. In the coming weeks, we hope to share with you a preview of the table of contents as well as perhaps snippets of other new pieces from the …

Greatball

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Taiwanese baseball has just been giving a powerful shot in the arm, with three consecutive shots out of the park by the Brother Elephants’ star player Peng Chen-min 彭政閔 during his team’s 7-1 victory over the LaNew Bears in the first game of their playoff series.

For video highlights, please click here. I especially like the announcer’s comments about a home run ball resembling a girlfriend who has just had a change of heart — neither is coming back (In the case of one of Taiwan’s 40-something superstars, Chang Tai-shan 張泰山, this is modified to include a reference to his …

Painted Skin: To Scare Or Not To Scare?, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It may come as a surprise that movies about ghosts and monsters are strictly speaking illegal in China, a land that has given us such an enchanting array of supernatural figures as the White Serpent Lady, the Weaving Girl, the three-headed Nuozha, and, of course, the delightful trickster Monkey. Gods and ghosts do show up on the Chinese screen, but they have to be framed as “characters” of folklore or fanciful creations of the “primitive” mind, something of ethnographic interest but no longer relevant to our sense of self and world. However, if they end up unsettling our secular confidence …

Fakeball

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Taiwan baseball world has been rocked by yet another game-fixing scandal, this time involving the dmedia T-Rex team. A total of three players (including a former MLB pitcher) are out on bail, while some bookies, gangsters, and team officials (including coaches, the assistant manager, and the team spokesman) have been detained. The guilt of those involved has yet to be proven, but there have certainly been some suspicious incidents. During one game on July 11, the dmedia’s normally accurate U.S. hurler lasted only three innings, managing just 32 strikes out of 84 pitches (an almost unheard of ball-strike ratio), …

China Annals: Factory Girls

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last weekend China Beat contributors—and longtime Beijing neighbors—Susan Jakes and Leslie T. Chang caught up to talk about Chang’s newly released book,Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. The book, which builds on stories Chang wrote as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal (and currently garnering glowing reviews and widespread coverage), follows the lives of young rural women making new lives for themselves in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan.

Susan Jakes: How did you decide you wanted to write a book about migrant workers in China? What did you want to try to figure out? …

Part Ii, Improving Wikipedia: Technique And Strategy For China Folk, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

How do we improve the coverage, reliability, and balance for China? With all the objections listed in my previous post, in the end, clearly we can’t achieve perfection, only make improvements. If you are already participating, you have doubtless come to terms with the culture of the natives; if you now join, remember to respect our perhaps outlandish ways. Like members of any other cult(ure), we have to live with each other. Some Wikipedians are nuts, some are smart and generous, most are trying to be useful, some are all of the above. Wikipedia enthusiasts simply accept that the project …

Living With Wikipedia: It’S Here To Stay, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My name is Charles and I’m a Wikipedia addict.

I can’t help myself, but then, neither can 75,000 other “active contributors.” We don’t just look things up: we create articles, correct and introduce mistakes, send each other notes, and fuss over issues great and obscure. Anonymity lends a carnival air of freedom and community since, as the famous New Yorker cartoon had it, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog” (and yes, the link is to a Wikipedia article).

Wikipedia is an internet galactic cloud of information. Nicholson Baker, who once crankily lamented the end of the library card …

In Case You Missed It: Tibet Special, Part 4, Robert J. Barnett

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There’s a nice thing about literature about modern Tibet, which is that it is wonderfully polemical. It’s not that I like polemic, which destroys lives and wreaks havoc with societies. But it does make it ever so easy to organize one’s books. So instead of tedious hours sorting them by topic or author, I can arrange my Tibet books according to two or three viewpoints, perhaps four at most. One case for the books with a China POV, some shelves for those from the exile perspective, a few for the “I was a Heroic Western Explorer and Discovered Totally Unknown …

China In Socal

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We don’t usually do posts about upcoming events, but there are so many involving China Beat-related folks (either contributors or people we’ve reviewed or referred to recently) in Southern California in the next few weeks that we felt remiss not mentioning them.

First, tomorrow (nothing like starting with the present!) USC will be hosting a day-long symposium on “Hong Kong, China and the World Art System.” It features many speakers, including China Beat contributor Richard Kraus.

The UCI Center for Asian Studies, in cooperation with several other units, will be hosting Michael Meyer, author of Last Days of Old Beijing, …

Coming Distraction: Factory Girls

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As faithful readers may recall, China Beat contributor Leslie T. Chang has a forthcoming book, Factory Girls: From Village to City in Changing China, which will be released October 7. The book has received positive reviews, such as this one at Publisher’s Weekly and this one from China Beat’s Jeff Wasserstrom writing in Newsweek. You can read the first chapter for the book as a preview at Amazon, but we wanted to share a short excerpt, from Chapter 4, with you as well. In this excerpt, Chang describes how a mobile phone is not just a desirable accessory for migrant …

Playing With Dolls, Margaret D. Jacobs

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Dolls seem to be a ubiquitous feature of American girlhood, cherished objects played with by girls from many different cultures over many centuries. These three photos show American Indian girls playing with dolls in the early twentieth century. ... On the surface, we might think of dolls as innocent items meant to entertain children, typically (in our own era) girls. Don’t parents give dolls to children simply to amuse them? And don’t dollmakers construct dolls merely to fulfill a demand (and in the case of mass production, to turn a profit)? For many decades now, feminist scholars have read more …

National Days Past: Five Things To Read Or Look At

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

To complement the last post on revolutionary anniversaries, here are some places to turn to get a sense of how October 1 has been marked in China between 1949 and 2007.

1) Let’s start with National Day 1950: for an idealized vision of the celebrations held that day, look at this poster.

2) For a fascinating discussion of past National Days that combines memories of personal experience and analytical moves rooted in the discipline of art history, see Wu Hung’s excellent Remaking Beijing.

3) For a look back at National Day 1984, when the 35th anniversary of the founding of …

Self-Crosslinked Gliadin Fibers With High Strength And Water Stability For Potential Medical Applications, Narendra Reddy, Yiqi Yang

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

For the first time, protein fibers with excellent mechanical properties and water stability have been produced from gliadin for potential use in tissue culture and other medical applications. Biomaterials developed from plant proteins such as zein and soyproteins are preferred for several medical applications over synthetic polymers such as polylactic acid. However, the plant protein based biomaterials developed so far have poor mechanical properties and hydrolytic stability even after crosslinking. This study aims to develop biomaterials from gliadin with excellent mechanical properties and water stability without using any crosslinking agents. A novel gliadin fiber production method was used to self …

Review Of Huberman & Meter, Eds., Memoria Y Representación: Configuraciones Culturales Y Literarias En El Imaginario Judio Latinoamericano, Amalia Ran

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

El estudio de la memoria ha sido de mayor interés académico en las últimas décadas y el objetivo de distintas manifestaciones artísticas y literarias. En la realidad latinoamericana actual, la necesidad de debatir el tema de la memoria y el olvido frente a los horrores del pasado cercano llevó a reexaminar su importancia en el desarrollo personal y colectivo. Esta colección original de ensayos ofrece reflexionar sobre el papel de la memoria en la (re)construcción de las identidades latinoamericanas a través de la experiencia judía. De acuerdo al judaísmo, el mandato de recordar está estrechamente relacionado con el relato del …

The Camera's Eye And Mine: An Experience Of Creating Video, Teal Gardner

Laurus: Undergraduate Literature Journal of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Camera's Eye and Mine: An Experience of Creating Video. This piece won the "Laurus Award for Outstanding Creative Writing" from the Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, presented to the author, Teal Gardner, April 30, 2009. Accompanied by a video, "Attention: Opposing 1," available on YouTube.

Grips, Teal Gardner

Laurus: Undergraduate Literature Journal of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln

GRIPS, a poem by Teal Gardner, won the "Laurus Award for Outstanding Creative Writing" from the Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, presented April 30, 2009.

Revolutionary Anniversaries

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Few Westerners will take note that this week it is time to celebrate Chinese revolutions. October 1 will be the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (celebrated as National Day). Ten days later, on October 10, Taiwan celebrates its National Day (also known as Double Ten Day, and on its 97th go-round). On the mainland, Double Tens is used as an opportunity to commemorate the uprising that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, though not the Republic that followed it. Of course, which one you celebrate depends on location and political leaning, but either way early October …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 20:3 — Fall 2008, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

TSA 2008 Symposium: "TSA Membership Provides Rich Program in Hawaii"
President's Letter
TSA News
TSA Member News
Collections News
Conference Reviews
Book Reviews
Exhibition Reviews
Calendar: Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops, and Tours
Calendar: Conferences and Symposia
Positions

Blanket Statements, Issue 93, Fall 2008

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 93, Fall 2008

You Can't Get There From Here: The Story Of The Third Conjugation, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

How does a student go from tetigit in the text to tango in the dictionary? Verbs in the third conjugation often prove difficult even for intermediate and advanced Latin students. The other conjugations all form the perfect stem with a v infix, with or without the thematic vowel. Third conjugation verbs form their perfect stem in five ways. Three of these ways correspond to Greek; the fourth way is with the standard u/v infix; and the fifth way is with no stem-change at all. A complete overview of these five types may preemptively spare your students time and grief.

China Annals: Interview With Antonia Finnane

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Antonia Finnane is Professor of Chinese History at the University of Melbourne, co-editor (with Anne McLaren) of Dress, Sex and Text in Chinese Culture (1999), and author of three books: Far From Where? Jewish Journeys from Shanghai to Australia (1999); Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850 (2004); andChanging Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation (2008). Read on for an interview with this prolific scholar and a review of her latest book.

Nicole Barnes: What first drew you to China studies?

Antonia Finnane: It’s hard to say, but the Cold War and the Vietnam War were probably factors. When I …

Commentary I: Celebration, Edna Glenn

Hopi Nation: Essays on Indigenous Art, Culture, History, and Law

In March, 1981, Texas Tech University hosted a conference, “The Hopi Year: A Tricentennial Symposium,” and at that conference discussions centered upon a complex topic, the meaning of HOPI.1 The conference featured cultural interchanges among experts of both Hopi and non-Hopi origins, and this volume contains the substantive and visual presentations of this unusual gathering. The content is interdisciplinary and presented in the context of both historic and contemporary viewpoints. Also important is attention given to land-use patterns and to environmental systems of human and physical growth and survival as related to the arid regions of the Hopi Reservation. Perhaps …

Chapter 2 Hopi Mesas And Migrations: Land And People, Lomawywesa (Michael Kabotie)

Hopi Nation: Essays on Indigenous Art, Culture, History, and Law

Survival and revival; the varied landscapes, buildings and environment; agricultural practices, arts and crafts; community institutions, cultural programs, clan beliefs and rituals—these all have meaning to our Hopi people and Hopi land.

The Hopi Reservation is situated in northeastern Arizona, about seventy-five or one hundred miles from the San Francisco Peaks, one of our sacred mountains. We call it Nuvatukwiovi. An examination of the geographical area reveals that to the far eastern edge of the Hopi Reservation is Keam’s Canyon, the region in which the Federal Government offices are located. Westward from Keam’s Canyon are the three Hopi mesas with …

Exemplary Arts: Section B — Subject: Corn As Life Essence, Edna Glenn

Hopi Nation: Essays on Indigenous Art, Culture, History, and Law

Five Paintings by the Artist Hopid

Figure 13: Four Mother Corn — Dawakema (Milland Lomakema)
Figure 14: Kachina Maiden Watching Fields — Coochsiwkioma (Delbridge Honanie)
Figure 15: Harvest Prayer — Honvantewa (Terrance Talaswaima)
Figure 16: Kachinas Germinating Plants — Dawakema (Milland Lomakema)
Figure 17: Angak’ China (Long-haired Kachina) — Honvantewa (Terrance Talaswaima)

“Hopi basically are corn people. We believe in agriculture because our greatest symbol is the corn, the ‘Corn Mother’.”—Lomawywesa