Chinese Studies Commons^™

"The Chinese Animation Industry: From The Mao Era To The Digital Age", Stephanie Jones

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since the 1950’s the Chinese Animation industry has been trying to create a unique national style for China. The national style of the 1950’s and early 1960’s was one of freedom, fantasy, and creativity. With the success of “Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland”/草原英雄小姐妹(1965), the government administration, namely Jiang Qing of the “Gang of Four”, demanded that all animation should follow specific guidelines based on Social Realism guidelines. This in turn, ushered in a new national style of animation during the Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). During this ten-year period government policies imposed strict restrictions on animators and cause a drain of creative …

The Farewell, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Farewell (2019) directed by Lulu Wang.

Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements Of Chinese Animation, 1940s-1970s By Daisy Yan Du (Review), Li Guo

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

In her groundbreaking monograph, Daisy Yan Du offers a rigorous discussion of Chinese animation by highlighting the historical course of Chinese animation and how animated filmmaking contests the notion of nationhood and opens up a spatialized conception of intercultural encounters and collaboration. The book contains a theoretical introduction essay, four substantial chapters, a concise epilogue, and three appendices on animated films by Mochinaga Tadahito, on leaders of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, and on major publications on Chinese animation. It contributes valuable discussions on the “disjuncture between politics and aesthetics in the sense that politics cannot fully control arts” (Du 2020, …

Coming Soon To A Chinese Theater Near You: Why China Matters Even To Hollywood, James N. Udden

Friday Forum

In recent years, China has engaged in infrastructure projects on a scale and scope without historical precedent. Cinema in China is no exception. For roughly a century Hollywood has managed to dominate the world largely through the control of the largest exhibition market in the developed world, meaning the USA and Canada. Just a couple years ago, however, the Chinese exhibition sector surpassed North America as the world’s largest linguistically unified and developed film exhibition market. Find out why screenwriting classes in the USA now include courses on how to write for the Chinese market. Find out why even you …

Introduction: Rethinking Critical Theory And Maoism, Kang Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question …

Perspectives Plurielles Sur La Danse Du Lion Et Du Dragon: La Chinafrique, Suzanne Crosta

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

When it comes to China and Africa, one thinks spontaneously of immensity versus mosaic, but one can also be fascinated by the rooting in the past. To create La legende des siècles, a French epic, Victor Hugo allowed himself to be carried by "history listened through the gates of legend", according to his own words. Imagine what would be the writing of The legend of the millennia for China and Africa, impressive asteroids launched in the sky of time? Thousand eyes scrutinize with their camera the interactions between the people of the great country and those of the African …

Learning Culture: Cultural Relationship In Masked Lanterns, Yuxuan Ding

Graduate School of Art Theses

Culture shock, or culture conflict, is the unfamiliarity or disorientation an individual experiences after encountering a culture different than their own. To better understand the people around us who share a different culture and the way of life it creates, we need to first respect and understand their culture. In general, Chinese culture stresses that individuals must see themselves as part of a larger group for the benefit of society, while American culture stresses the importance of individualism.

Based on my experiences in graphic design, I decided to further my studies in a studio art context to understand how the …

Domestic Workers In Hong Kong: Their Stories, Self-Perception, And Their Portrayal In Hong Kong And Filipino Media, Lauren Ernst

Senior Theses

Foreign domestic helpers are one of the most common and unique sights in current-day Hong Kong. On the weekdays, they can be seen walking dogs, taking children to school, and completing chores around the house. On Sundays, they flood the streets in full force, relaxing and taking advantage of their one day off a week. This population faces many challenges during their time in Hong Kong – these challenges are modern as well as historical and include financial, governmental, emotional, and social challenges. Along with the challenges of day to day life, they also face challenges in that their stories …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Imaginative Geographies: Visualising The Poetics Of History And Space, Clive Barstow

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This essay presents a visual dialogue about our relationship to place. I adopt Henri Lefebvre’s model of cumulative trialectics (1991) as a new thirdspace that more accurately represents the complexities of modern day geographies and hybrid communities by extending the binary analysis of the past and present and beyond the real and the imagined. Trialectics expand our understanding beyond physical geographies by suggesting a cerebral space that searches for new meaning and is therefore more radically open to additional otherness and toward a continuing expansion of [human] spatial knowledge and imagination.

Julia Lossau describes thirdspace as a space that ‘…tends …

My Name Is Jing, Jing Wang

Theses and Dissertations

My Name is Jing is an essay film about my family and a commentary on the rapid changes that have taken place in Chinese society over the past five decades. The film explores personal and national memories. It shows the impact of large-scale economic and social changes on an ordinary Chinese family.

A Turn To Realism And Humanism From Propaganda: Chinese Photojournalism Practices Between 1976 And 1988, Shi Li

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

China’s photojournalistic field undertook great transformations in the 1980s. While the conservatives continued to cling to the propagandistic doctrine, a more progressive trend was emerging. The tension between these two forces had its historical roots and would go on to shape the way Chinese photojournalism developed. Based on archival research and in-depth interviews, this paper revisits the history of Chinese photojournalism practices between 1937 and 1988 and identifies the key features of these three periods: the wartime propaganda of 1937—1949, the intensification of propaganda of 1949 —1976, and the transformation to realism and humanism in 1976—1988.

Ji Sor (1997): Self-Realization Of Women In Cinema And In History, Tong (Hilary) Lin

CMC Senior Theses

100 years ago, there was a group of women called Zishunu who stood up against the whole society and swore off marriage for life. Zishu offered an escape for many women in the Pearl River Delta area. As forerunners in female independence and liberation, Zishunu never had the chance to be the spokesman of themselves or the recognition they deserved. Ji Sor (1997), a groundbreaking work in lesbian-themed movies, beautifully depicts this special and unparalleled historical phenomenon in detail. Released a few months after the Handover of Hong Kong in 1997, this critically acclaimed movie by Hong Kong New Wave …

Crime And Culture : A Thematic Reading Of Sherlock Holmes And His Adaptations., Britney Broyles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The …

Trauma, Migrant Families, And Neoliberal Fantasies In Last Train Home, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This paper examines the traumatic experience of migrant workers through a reading of Lixin Fan's award-winning documentary film Last Train Home(2009). I am not primarily concerned, like most trauma-studies-based research, with grand, clearly recognizable catastrophes. I also avoid generalizing about human suffering in the age of global capitalism. I focus rather on post-Socialist China's more hidden social violence and its traumatizing effect on the quotidian life of migrantworkers-a subaltern group on the periphery of society. I argue that the trauma of the marginalized population must be socially and politically contextualized. The first section of the essay investigates the traumatic sense …

Review Of Riding The Wind With Liezi By Ronnie Littlejohn And Jeffrey Dippmann, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Creativity: How Web-Based Parody Encourages Chinese Civil Participation, Amber Boczar

International ResearchScape Journal

This article investigates that relationship between e’gao (parody using web-based media) and Chinese civil participation. E’gao (恶搞 EUH-gow) uses videos, images, and text based campaigns that use humor to remove fear of political commentary and action. By detailing the development of China’s internet use, and the creation of the e’gao movement, I argue that e’gao removes the fear of participating in campaigns and movements, which criticize government policy and actions on both local and state levels, by using humor and anonymity of large online numbers. E’gao can provide a way for the common citizens to mold policy, and hold authority …

Violence, Wuxia, Migrants: Jia Zhangke’S Cinematic Discontent In A Touch Of Sin, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This article examines the representation of violence in Jia Zhangke's film A Touch of Sin (2013) in light of Žižek's theory of ‘objective violence’ and the wuxia tradition. Jia attempts to understand the rise of individual violent incidents during China's post-socialist transformations by laying out the social, historical and political milieus in which they take place. He unveils the Žižekian objective violence hidden in the realm of social normality, pinpointing the country's sins of collusion with the global capital to impose injustice on the poor and disadvantaged. Invoking the wuxia genre, Jia portrays the protagonists not so much as perpetrators …

Ecocriticism And National Image In 舌尖上的中国 (A Bite Of China), Mingwen Xiao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ecocriticism and National Image in 舌尖上的中国 (A Bite of China)" Mingwen Xiao examines the multi-faceted contents of the popular 2012 television series. Instead of exhibiting delicacies made by professional chefs in luxury restaurants, A Bite of China displays local food and dishes made by ordinary people. By focus on every-day food preparation, the show constructs a performance where class, ethnicity, gender, age, and other social markers are blurred and the geographically and ethnically diverse ways of food preparation and consumption appear as a cohesive Chinese culinary identity. Xiao argues that A Bite of China plays a role …

Dust In The Wind: A Definitive Hou/New Cinema Work, James N. Udden

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema enjoys a special status, comparable with that of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for earlier generations, a cinema that was and is in the midst of introducing an innovative sensibility and a fresh perspective. Hou Hsiao-hsien is the most important Taiwanese filmmaker working today, and his sensuous, richly nuanced films reflect everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. By combining multiple forms of tradition with a uniquely cinematic approach to space and time, Hou has created a body of work that, through its stylistic originality and …

From Eileen Chang To Ang Lee: Lust/Caution Ed. By Peng Hsiao-Yen And Whitney Crothers Dilley, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

香港文學的現代主義 : 六、七〇年代歐洲電影與香港文學的關係, Pak Shing Tse

Lingnan Theses

大量的史實證明，香港五、六○年代銳意介紹西方現代主義的文藝雜誌與 副刊跨越了不同的藝術媒介，為香港現代文學奠下了重要的基礎；而這個基礎 有兩個重要的特質：一它是一個連續的累積過程，二它具有跨越媒介的特色。 由《文藝新潮》（1956－1959）以降，到《新思潮》(1959)、《好望角》(1963) 等提倡現代文藝的雜誌，它們所累積的現代主義文化根基及對不同藝術媒介的 包容吸收，到了六○年代的《中國學生周報》仍然秉承這份精神。本文把西方傳入的現代主義思潮看成是一個在香港連續發展的整體。

現代主義雖然是西方思潮，但在香港的特殊背景之中，反而把其消化成香港獨特的文學風格，令香港文學更加本土化；而對於六○年代在香港成長的作者，歐洲電影更是一個吸收現代主義思潮的重要途徑。本文以現代主義及歐洲電影兩條線索在香港交匯的事實構成一個視角，一方面考察香港本土意識的形成，另一方面探討電影與文學在美學及文化上的互動關係。

在這個視角下，六○年代《中國學生周報‧電影版》所討論的歐洲電影成為本文重要的文獻，而本文會抽取當中較有代表性的電影作品，並以之為章節， 看其對香港文學的影響。討論的作品以長篇作品《剪紙》（1977）及《我城》 （1979）為主，旁及《養龍人師門》（2002）、《象是笨蛋》（1969）以至也斯及西西的影評，以及他們回應某些歐洲電影的文學作品。與過往的評論不同， 本文把這兩部作品放在歐洲電影與現代主義文學交錯的脈絡中，重新發掘其背後的影響來源，討論的電影包括阿倫‧雷奈（Alain Resnais，1922－）的《去 年在馬倫巴》(Last Year at Marienbad， 1961)、路易士‧布紐爾（Luis Buñuel， 1900－1983）的《模糊的情慾對象》(That Obscure Object of Desire，1977)、 安東尼奧尼（Michelangelo Antonioni）的《春光乍洩》（Blow-Up，1966)、路 易‧馬盧（Louis Malle，1932－1995）的《莎西遊巴黎》（Zazie dans le m�tro， 1960）等，並旁及這些導演其他電影作品及當時歐洲的電影文化，以至它們背後的文學原著，包括法國情色文學作家皮亞‧盧維（Pierre Louÿs，1870－1925） 的《女人與玩偶》（The Woman and The Puppet，1898）、 南美魔幻寫實作家科塔薩爾（Julio Cotazar，1914－1984）的短編作品、法國新小說作家的電影劇本等，並以也斯和西西早期作品為參照，察看當中受電影文化影響的轉變過程。

Contention Of Lust, Caution: Sexuality, Visuality And Female Subjectivity, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This paper investigates the ways in which Ang Lee provides new insights into subject formation in his film Lust, Caution (Se Jie, 2007). In the paradigm of structuralism, the subject is defined, as well as confined, by the symbolic order or the dominant ideology. The puzzle therefore rests on how to explain the subject’s negotiation with its normative identity, its denial thereof, or even its subversion of said identity. In a close reading of the female protagonist’s subject formation in Lust, Caution, this paper acknowledges the power of ideology, specifically the power of its interpellative operation, in constructing a subject. …

No Man An Island: The Cinema Of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, James N. Udden

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Hou Hsiao-hsien is arguably the most celebrated Chinese-language film director in the international film festival realm. However, this is not due to an inert cultural tradition so much as to numerous historical/contextual factors – most of all his being from Taiwan -- which together explain the accomplishments of Hou.

This Time He Moves! The Deeper Significance Of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Radical Break In Good Men, Good Women, James N. Udden

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

Following the recent success of Taiwanese film directors, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Ang Lee and Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwanese film is raising its profile in contemporary cinema. This collection presents an exciting and ambitious foray into the cultural politics of contemporary Taiwan film that goes beyond the auterist mode, the nation-state argument and vestiges of the New Cinema.

Cinema Taiwan considers the complex problems of popularity, conflicts between transnational capital and local practice, non-fiction and independent filmmaking as emerging modes of address, and new possibilities of forging vibrant film cultures embedded in national (identity) politics, gender/sexuality and community activism. …

香港文學電影片目, Ping Kwan Leung, Shuk Han, Mary Wong

嶺南大學人文學科研究中心叢書 Centre for Humanities Research : Book Publications

《香港文學電影片目》收錄1913至2000年改編自文學作品的香港電影，及文人作家參與編製的電影。我們希望可以編一個齊全的片目，以方便日後的硏究者和有興趣的同學，但目前香港文學及電影的資料散佚仍多，我們盡力而為，工作了多年，但相信仍 有不少可以補充的地方。就算是拋磚引玉好了，希望前輩高明和有識讀者能給我們提供寶貴意見。片目雖説是涵蓋九十年的文學電影資料，但側重是在五、六〇年代的文藝電影資料。這兩個年代改編文學作品的電影較多，文人參與電影製作亦較活躍，香港文學跟香港電影的關係最密切，這個情況似乎不復見了。編出這片目，不知對今天的電影工作者會不會有一點參考作用?