Chinese Studies Commons^™

Some Interviews (And Answering A Question I Wasn’T Asked)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I’ve recently been lucky enough to be asked to do a couple of radio interviews to promote Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments, and also to get an opportunity to explain what I was trying to do in the book to various journalists working for Chinese and English language publications. This is a very nice development because I wrote the book with general readers as well as academics in mind, and because I hoped that my ideas about Shanghai would start to make their way into Chinese as well as English language discussions of the city’s past, present, and …

More Web-Based Resources For Learning And Reading Chinese

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In two earlier posts (from last May and August 2008), we offered some of our top picks among language and literature websites for students of Chinese. Here are five more recommendations for anyone who is learning the language or who struggles occasionally (!) with reading Chinese texts. All these resources are free unless otherwise noted.

1. Based on a popular tool for reading Japanese websites, Chinese Perapera-kun is an easy-to-use pop-up translator that can be installed as an add-on to the Firefox web browser. Once the tool is enabled, positioning the mouse cursor over any Chinese character on a website …

The Big March Of April 27, 1989

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Wang Chaohua is an independent scholar who received her doctorate from UCLA last year, has written political commentaries for periodicals such as the New Left Review, and is the editor of One China, Many Paths. A leader of the Tiananmen protests of 1989, she wrote the following essay reflecting on the events of twenty years ago for Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, which will run the original Chinese language version soon. Dr. Wang has been good enough to provide us with an English language translation to publish here.

We all know that the large scale, student-led pro-democracy movement that took …

Readings On 1999’S "May 8th Tragedy"

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The events that began with the May 4th protests and the struggle that took place seventy years later during the lead-up to the June 4th Massacre loom largest in the history of Chinese youth activism in years ending with the numeral 9. But there were also protests involving university students in other years ending with that number, including 1999. These took place soon after the 80th anniversary of the may 4th Movement was marked, and they were triggered by NATO missiles hitting the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three PRC nationals. The Embassy was hit on May 7 European time, …

Rambling Notes: Tracing “Old Shanghai” At The Futuristic Heart Of “New China”, Niv Horesh

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Shanghai is in many ways the face of the new People’s Republic. Even as the city has been remade in recent decades, efforts are underway to selectively salvage what remains of its pre-war architectural heritage (1842-1937) and many of its archival records are becoming accessible to foreign researchers. Touted as Asia’s biggest and most cosmopolitan urban centre in the pre-war era, Shanghai has (re)emerged over the last two decades as “a harbinger of China’s future and a testing ground for the world at large.”

It is therefore worth reprising Shanghai’s distant treaty-port past not just as tourist-trivia pursuit: the past …

Follow-Up Interview With Lijia Zhang, Author Of Socialism Is Great!

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last June, Nicole Barnes of the China Beat interviewed Lijia Zhang, author of the acclaimed book Socialism is Great!, whose paperback edition has just been released by RandomHouse. Here is a follow-up interview with Ms. Zhang about her recent (and ongoing) book tour, her upcoming book, and women’s issues in Asia:

Nicole Barnes: You recently completed your book tour for Socialism is Great!Where did you speak about your book?

Lijia Zhang: I have not completed my book tour yet. My French publisher has promised to invite me for a promotional tour this autumn when the French version comes out. I’ll …

They Chose China Now At Youtube

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last year, China Beat ran a review of Shuibo Wang’s fascinating documentary,They Chose China. The documentary traces the stories of American POWs who chose to stay in China after the 1953 Korean War armistice.

At the time that we ran that review, we noted that the video was hard to come by. Now, however, the entire documentary has been posted on YouTube, in five parts. We’ve posted all five parts below (and here are direct links to YouTube for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V). Those interested in learning more might also be interested in …

The (Model) Un Comes To Beida, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In our ongoing effort to draw attention from time to time to blogs about China we come across and like (as we did in this recent post), we want to let our readers know about an intriguing one we’ve just started following. Six, maintained by Alec Ash, was recently singled out by CNReviews (another new addition to our RSS feed list, which we’ll doubtless start linking to regularly now that we’ve discovered it) as one of the “ten eclectic China blogs” worth following.

Rather than explain Six’s features to you, we asked Ash to let us repost a piece from …

The New May Fourth Spirit, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat has been running excerpts from Philip J Cunningham’s forthcoming memoir, Tiananmen Moon; Inside the Chinese Student Uprising in 1989, which will be published in May by Rowman & Littlefield. This excerpt addresses the events of May 4, 1989. Readers can also read the first, second, and third in this series at China Beat or read more at Cunningham’s website.

The sun is rising. At Beijing Normal University, red flags flutter and unfurl in the early morning breeze above the sports ground. Thousands of students mill about, excitedly falling into groups and lining up to take to the streets …

China Beat Comments

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We wanted to let our readers know that we will be discontinuing comments at the site for the foreseeable future. China Beat is committed to ensuring that the discussions that take place here are productive and respectful, but we unfortunately do not currently have the time to edit and post content as well as manage the comments that come in.

In the interim, we will be considering how we might reconfigure the site more generally, which in part involves exploring ways to procure a little funding to support what we do.

You can always email us if you need to …

China’S Bottom Line, David Moser

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This text message is being passed around virally this May 1st holiday. For the first time in my memory, China is feeling safe and comfortable at home. From their vantage point, it’s the rest of the world going to hell!

五一何所见?

北美猪疫黯.

美汽车破产.

法总统服软.

韩审卢武铉.

朝嚷放火箭.

巴伊阿泰惨.

街头扔炸弹.

他乱由他乱.

咱享咱平安.

It’s May First: What’s the bottom line?

North America hit by flu from swine.

U.S. car companies in sharp decline.

The French president has lost his spine.

Roh Moo-hyun’s on the firing line.

The North Korean missile fell into the brine.

Israel, Afghanistan, Thailand, Palestine —

Everywhere you step, a …

Intellectuals And The Nation In China And India: A Roundtable Report

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last Friday, China Beat and the UCI International Center for Writing and Translation (ICWT<) hosted a public roundtable with UC Riverside professor Perry Link and Tiananmen activist Wang Chaohua weighing in on the China side, and writer Pankaj Mishra (a frequent friend of the China Beat) and UCI professorVinayak Chaturvedi speaking about India. China Beat and UCI’s Jeff Wasserstrommoderated the roundtable discussion, and asked the panelists to consider “dates ending in 9” of specific relevance for China (1919, 1949, 1959, 1979, and 1989) and India (where 9-2 seems to be a more pertinent number, as in 1857 and 1947).

Vinayak Chaturvedi began with a discussion of 1909 as the year of publication of 2 foundational texts in Indian nationalism: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (or Indian Home Rule) and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Indian War of Independence: 1857, a history of the 1857 “mutiny” (if you were British) and “war of independence” (if you were Indian). [Readers who are intrigued by the reflections of one Vinayak, a UCI professor, on another Vinayak, a Hindu nationalist, can read Dr. Chaturvedi’s article on the same subject in Social History vol. …

May Fourth Movement: Top Five Readings, Rana Mitter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The May Fourth Movement – so famous in China it doesn’t need a year, although 1919 – the year it happened – has become legendary too. On that date, some three thousand students marched through Beijing demonstrating against Japanese imperialism and started a political movement that would become identified with Chinese demands for “science” and “democracy” through the next century. From the Cultural Revolution to Tian’anmen Square, May Fourth echoes through China’s modern history. The Chinese Communist Party still claims the movement as its point of origin. On May 4, 2009, the movement will be ninety years old. In some …

A Monster Mash(Up) With Chinese Characteristics: Breaking News From The Prc For Those Intrigued By The "Pride And Prejudice And Zombies" Phenomenon

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

By the end of this post, readers will have been able to click on a word to be introduced to the sounds of “Redgrass Music” (a genre that uses Chinese instruments in a novel manner), seen the special look of a curious vehicle recently displayed in Shanghai that one journalist has said should be called a “Lexiac” ( like a Pontiac from the front, like a Lexus from behind), and discovered something important that Zhang Yimou and Jane Austen have in common (hint: surprise appearances by the undead are involved in each case). First, though, some background about “mash-ups” (aka …

Digital Traces Of 1989

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat sent out a note to a few scholars and journalists who have carefully watched and written about the events of 1989, asking them to send in short commentaries detailing what they wish more people knew, associated with, or remembered about that spring. We ran the first piece in this limited series, by John Gittings, on April 23, the second, by Jonathan Unger, on April 26. This is the third piece.

Yang Guobin is an Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College. He has written essays on many subjects, including the students protests of 1989, …

Reprint: Conflicts And Clashes Are The Social Norm, Sun Liping

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat checks in regularly with Xujun Eberlein at her blog Inside-Out China, and we’ve run pieces by Xujun in the past. In early April, she ran another in her series of translations of Chinese materials. We thought this continuation of her translation of Professor Sun Liping‘s works on social protest was interesting enough to reproduce in full (with Xujun’s permission).

Note: About a month ago I translated an essay from Prof. Sun titled “The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown.” His rational and perceptive view attracted wide interest from readers, and that post was linked by …

Tiananmen Moon: Beida Summit, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the second time in a day I’m on the run with Chai Ling. For the second time in a month I find myself in a beat-up jalopy racing towards the Beida student center at Sanjiaodi. Again I am huddled together with members of the vanguard, only this time it’s not musicians wanting to know what the students are up to but the student leadership itself.

The interior of a moving van is a reasonably good place to hide, assuming the driver is trustworthy and the vehicle not bugged. Chai Ling sits behind me in the third row, curled up …

The Tiananmen Protestors, Then And Now, Jonathan Unger

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Looking back in time from a distance of two decades, we are apt to forget the economic circumstances in which the nationwide protests of 1989 arose, as well as the vantage points of the protests’ participants.

In the late 1980s, people across China felt frustrated and angered by inflation and mounting corruption. This dissatisfaction had been moving toward a crisis point over the previous couple of years despite the fact that urban living standards, on the whole, had been rising steadily throughout most of the Eighties. But expectations of a better life had been rising even faster, and when inflation …

The Boston Long Bow Group, Chai Ling And “The Gate Of Heavenly Peace”: Geremie R. Barmé Responds To "China Beat"

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In several previous posts, we’ve directed our readers to the prize-winning film “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” and the excellent accompanying website, which provides a wealth of information for those seeking to understand the complex events of 1989. The film has generated controversy from the start, but we’ve learned that there’s now a new development, a lawsuit directed against the film-makers. To learn more about the situation, we’ve turned to Geremie Barmé, whose role in the film and the website have been described before. Here are the questions we’ve put to him and his answers:

CB: What exactly is the …

The Forgotten Meaning Of Tiananmen, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Tiananmen” is a taboo topic in China. But even in places where it is remembered and commemorated, the Beijing student movement of 1989 is best known for its bloody ending on June 4, a tragic turning point of unquestioned significance, but one which tends to obscure the amazing weeks of restraint, harmony and cooperation in crowds that swelled to a million at the height of an entirely peaceful and extremely popular social movement.

Twenty years ago, as hundreds of thousands demonstrated day after day in Beijing, as ordinary citizens joined in or supported the student protesters with offers of food, …

Jokes From Post-Reform China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last week, we ran the first part of a series of popular Chinese jokes, translated by Guo Qitao, a UCI history professor. While the earlier jokes were from the Cultural Revolution period, the two jokes presented today are more recent and address issues at the core of the Chinese people’s concerns about their nation: responsible governance, inequality, and corruption.

江泽民来到天安门城楼上。

江泽民来到天安门城楼上。

往南看，贪官污吏一大片；

往北看，下岗工人八百万；

往东看，走私货轮正靠岸；

往西看，百姓全是穷光蛋；

往下看，法轮功还在转；

往上看，美国导弹到处窜；

往后看，接班人挤向前；

往前看，问毛主席怎么办？

毛主席说：你下来躺着，我起来干。

Jiang Zemin mounted the gate at Tiananmen Square to survey the scene.[1] Looking south, he saw a sea of grubby officials all on the take; Looking north, eight million workers …

Reflecting On Tiananmen, 20 Years Later

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat sent out a note to a few scholars and journalists who have carefully watched and written about the events of 1989, asking them to send in short commentaries detailing what they wish more people knew, associated with, or remembered about that spring. Here is the first of their responses. John Gittings is a research associate with the Centre for Chinese Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies and a former writer and editor at The Guardian. He is the author of The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Marketand numerous other books and articles, including …

It’S Just History: Patriotic Education In The Prc, Julia Lovell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s now a year since Chinese nationalism had its last big public outing. On April 19, 2008, twelve days after pro-Tibet protesters in Paris tried to grab the Olympic flame from a wheelchair-bound Chinese paralympian, patriotic civilians began mobilising protests around the French embassy in Beijing, and outside Carrefours in at least four different Chinese cities. “Protect Our Tibet! Bless Our Olympics! Boycott Carrefour!” declared banners at demonstrations on the northeast coast. “Say No to French Imperialists!”

As popular outrage grew about perceived anti-Chinese bias in Western reporting on the riots in Tibet and opposition to the torch relay, more …

Tiananmen Moon: Excerpt, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Tiananmen,” whispers Chai Ling.

“What?” I ask, comprehending without comprehension.

“I’d like to see Tiananmen, one last time.”

We skip the turn to the train station—she and Wang Li had been talking about catching the first train out of Beijing– and instead continue east on Chang’an. As the car approaches the familiar student-controlled zone around Tiananmen Square, I try to make sense of what we are doing.

I had just delivered to the international media a candid interview with a wanted student leader who said she is going to run away, while speaking forthrightly about imminent bloodshed and the desire …

China Events: Dc And Boston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’ve published a few pieces lately on China’s coming water crisis, including Ken Pomeranz’s “China’s Water Woes” (2/12/09). Tomorrow (April 22 from 9-11 a.m. EST), the Wilson Center will host a roundtable on “Asia’s Next Challenge — Securing the Region’s Water,” for those interested in learning more. For those who aren’t in the DC-area, the talks (by Saleem Ali, Geoff Dabelko, Suzanne DiMaggio) will be webcast live (so you can log onto the above link to watch).

Readers in the Boston area might be interested in this upcoming event on Chinese media at the Fairbank Center:

Does the Party Still …

In Case You Missed It: Uncle Ho And Uncle Sam, A. Tom Grunfeld

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

During the wars in Indochina, Americans exhibited little interest in the histories of the nations their country was ravaging. This is not so dissimilar from today, as the United States wages wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any discernable uptick in the sales of history books which would allow for a greater understanding of current events in a broader historical perspective.

The vast majority of Americans remained ignorant of the history of Vietnamese-American relations; especially of one of the most fascinating and improbable events – the brief period when the Vietnamese nationalist and communist leader Ho Chi Minh worked for …

Intellectuals And The Nation In China And India: A Public Roundtable

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The China Beat is very slowly beginning to co-sponsor real events. Our first is this coming Friday. Friday April 24, 2009, 2:00—3:30, in HIB [Humanities Instructional Building] 110 on the UC Irvine Campus

Sponsors:

UCI’s International Center for Writing and Translation

“The China Beat,” a UCI-based Group Blog

Co-sponsors:

The UCI History Department, the Center for Asian Studies, and the UCI Bookstore

Advances And Advance Notice

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We were delighted to come across a piece by Friend of the Blog Michael Meyer (called “About That Book Advance…“) in last week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review section. We figured, based on the author’s track record as a writer (and the insightfulness of his comments when talking about his work), that this piece would be lively and offer some illumination on an interesting topic and that it might also have some China tidbits. Well, it was not just illuminating (explaining how tough it can be for an author to live on what sounds at first like a very …

Jokes From The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

(Part One) Understanding jokes in another language is often the highest test of fluency, based as they often are on puns and insider cultural knowledge. When Guo Qitao, professor of Chinese history at University of California, Irvine, mentioned to us that he collects clever Chinese jokes, we asked if he might share a few at China Beat. Even better–he offered to translate and gloss them. The first set we offer here are of jokes from the Cultural Revolution, a period when political rhetoric and in-fighting predominated in the public sphere. Through these jokes, we see the way that Chinese people …

A China Beat Reader: 6/4

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Over the past year-plus, China Beat has run several pieces related to the 1989 protests. For readers who may have missed them originally (or wish for a refresher), here is a short list:

1. Par Cassel, “The Gate of Heavenly Pacification” (6/18/08): “Tian’anmen is by no means a peaceful name, but a name rather fitting to a fledging empire that anxiously protected its claims to legitimacy and busied itself with suppressing rebellion and dissent wherever they showed up.”

2. “Liu Si,” looking backward and forward (6/4/08): Two lists of suggested readings, one on the events of 1989 and another on …