Chinese Studies Commons^™

Integrating Chinese Tradition And Western Techniques In Jiang Zuxin’S Piano Works: A Study Of Temple Fair And Mountain Flower Collection, Qi Zhang

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This document focuses on Jiang Zuxin’s two piano suites, Temple Fair and Mountain Flower Collection, examining how traditional Chinese musical materials interact with Western compositional techniques. Through close analytical readings of selected excerpts, combined with considerations of performance practice and modal context, the research demonstrates that Jiang systematically employs pentatonic collections and their modal configurations (gong, shang, jue/zhi/yu), along with certain altered tones (such as biangong and qingjue), as foundational pitch material. He also draws on folk songs, dances, and theatrical elements from traditional Chinese culture. At the same time, he simulates the timbres and idiomatic playing techniques of …

The Integration Of Western Compositional Techniques And Traditional Chinese Folk Music In The Piano Works Of Jianzhong Wang, Yingqi Wang

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This document explores the method by which Jianzhong Wang (王建中) (1933–2016), a celebrated Chinese composer and pianist, integrates traditional Chinese folk melodies with Western compositional techniques in his solo piano works, including Western harmonic techniques and tonal language, contrapuntal and polyphonic textures, formal structure and thematic development, and the imitation of instruments and sounds. Introduced to Wang’s music during high school through the piece, “Embroidering the Golden Plaque” from Four Northern Shaanxi Folk Songs, the author reflects on the artistic challenges posed by Wang. Over years of study, an appreciation for Wang’s innovative fusion of Chinese folk elements and Western …

The Batiandi Li Family, Xifu

Zea E-Books Collection

The novel tells the story of six generations of the Li family over the course of nearly a century and a half, a legendary saga. The protagonists of the Li family in various historical stages of the book are searching for their own identity and the position of the family on the road of life. Sometimes they seize opportunities and create temporary brilliance for the benefit and glory of the family, while at other times they submit to fate and follow the tide of history, content to live ordinary lives like common people.

In 1832 the second brother of the …

Intergenerational Family Dynamics Among Caregivers And Children’S Social-Emotional Development In China, Weiman Xu

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The early years of a child’s life are pivotal for social-emotional development. While extensive research has explored the role of family settings in fostering children's social-emotional development (Bornstein, 2005), the impact of grandparental involvement, particularly the caregiving dynamics between generations, remains less well understood. This study aims to fill this gap by examining two critical aspects of intergenerational dynamics among caregivers (i.e. parent-grandparent coparenting and parent-grandparent relationship quality) and their associations with children’s social-emotional development (i.e. social skills and problem behaviors). Two specific aims were delineated: 1) examine the unique contribution of parent-grandparent coparenting, especially the power and authority domain …

Shan Song Xiao: English Edition, Xifu, Jane Li, Paul Royster

Zea E-Books Collection

This book describes the family story of three generations of daughters over the past century, starting from the grandmother to the mother, and then to the daughter. They lived overlapping lives, but each follows a different life path in different eras with different main themes. As time flies and life rushes by, they look back on the past and document their lives.

The story travels from a rural village in Northeast China to an overcrowded modernized metropolis. It unfolds against a backdrop of invasion and occupation, liberation, collectivization and famine, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the emergence …

Weaving “National Spirit”: Jacquard-Woven Silk Images In The Nanjing Decade (1927–1937), Brielle Pizzala

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Industrial silk factories in Hangzhou and Shanghai represent active efforts to modernize and weave together the turbulent Republic of China (1912–1949). The Guomindang government, under Chiang Kai-Shek (1887–1975), acculturated modernity, as demonstrated by the silk industry, to unite China and secure the nation from trans-colonial threats, including economic security. Countless silk reelers, weavers, and businessmen in China, altered traditional sericulture with imported industry and ideologies in order to secure national autonomy. Imported steam reeling and jacquard loom factories became means to secure economic survival and national autonomy during this anxious and extremely political period. How did creating silk tapestries materialize …

Shan Song Xiao / 山松晓, 熙福 著, Jane Li

Zea E-Books Collection

故事梗概 这本书描写一百年来一家三代女儿的家族故事，从外祖母，母亲，再到女儿，她们生活在有重叠的生活里，又各自有着不同时代不同主旋律的生活轨迹。光阴荏苒，人生匆匆，回首过往，记录生活。 书中的人物以真实人物为原型，作者将真实名字略去，并在故事情节上加以了丰富和构想。 作者：熙福

ShanSongXiao 'Morning Pine on the Mountain' -- Summary of the story: This book describes the family story of three generations of daughters in a family over the past 100 years. From grandmother, mother, to daughter, they live in overlapping lives, and each has a life trajectory with different themes in different times. Time flies, life is in a hurry, look back on the past and record life. The characters in the book are based on real people. The author has omitted their real names and enriched and imagined the storyline. Author: Xi Fu

部分读后感： 你的小说语言淳朴，接地气。我非常喜欢你的小说，看过后有很多感想。一代一代的 女性不容易，我们赶上了好时代，要争取自己的权力！~ …

The Unintended Consequences Of China’S One-Child Policy, E. Wesley F. Peterson

Cornhusker Economics

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published a book entitled The Population Bomb in which he argued that rapid population growth would overwhelm the world’s capacity to feed, house, and otherwise care for the coming millions of people. At that time, the world population was about 3.5 billion growing at an average annual rate of 2.06 percent (World Bank 2023). At that rate of growth, the world’s population would have been expected to double to 7.0 billion by 2001. In fact, population growth rates fell after the 1960s and world population reached only 6.2 billion in that year. Fears of a population …

Nami-Ko: A Realistic Novel, Kenjiro Tokutomi

Zea E-Books Collection

Nami-Ko, also called The Cuckoo (不如帰, Hototogisu), is a tragic story of love and devotion, through sickness, war, oppression, and vengeance. Eighteen-year-old Nami Kataoka hoped her marriage to Baron Takeo Kawashima would bring freedom from her overbearing stepmother. But the couple’s happiness is spoiled by her illness, her mother-in-law’s jealousy, and the schemes of Chijiwa, her husband’s cousin and her own disappointed suitor. Takeo’s naval career takes him away for long periods, and when war breaks out between Japan and China (in 1894), his mother takes advantage of his absence to break up the marriage, sending Nami back …

The Challenge Of Chinese Character Acquisition: Leveraging Multimodality In Overcoming A Centuries-Old Problem, Justin Olmanson, Xianquan Chrystal Liu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

For learners unfamiliar with character-based or logosyllabic writing systems, the process of developing literacy in written Chinese poses significantly more obstacles than learning to read and write in a second language like Portuguese or Cherokee. In this article we describe the linguistic nature of Chinese characters; we outline traditional and new media approaches to Chinese character acquisition; we unpack how multimodal technologies combined with computational linguistics might be used to provide new types of support for Chinese character learning; and we offer a design that incorporates several of these concepts into a digital writing support tool that could work as …

The Influences Of The American Boxer Indemnity Reparations Remissions On Chinese Higher Education, Xiaojuan Zhou

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to consider the influences of the American Boxer Indemnity Reparations Remissions (ABIRR) on Chinese higher education. These remissions were used to establish two universities, to establish the American Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program (ABISP) to support Chinese students’ studying in America, and to support other higher education- related projects.

This study focused on higher education considering ABISP as an individual case. The ABISP students were selected from all the students who studied in America in the corresponding period in part because of the inconsistencies of research before 1949.

Through tracking 1,152 ABISP students of Type …

A Fragmented Treasure On Display: The Turfan Textile Collection And The Humboldt Forum, Mariachiara Gasparini

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the summer 2012, thanks to the Department of Central Asian Art of the museum and the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library in London, UK, the so-called Turfan textile collection--gathered during the last century Prussian Turfan Royal Expeditions in the Tarim Basin--held in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, Germany, was finally microscopically analyzed and digitized. Except for a couple of pieces taken into account in previous studies as examples of comparison, the collection as a whole (ca. 350 pieces) has not enjoyed particular attention from scholars in the fields of Chinese or Central Asian art …

Understanding Africa’S China Policy: A Test Of Dependency Theory And A Study Of African Motivations In Increasing Engagement With China, Nkemjika E. Kalu

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

African states are increasingly engaging with China--politically, socially and economically--especially through the machinations of the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This dissertation asserts that Africans are willing partners of the Chinese, motivated by their state-centric belief that engagement with China is in their national interest. This assertion contradicts the assumption of most literature to date that appears to borrow from the logic of dependency theory and presents African nations as pawns, subject to the demands of a dominant and exploitative China, who is benefiting at Africa’s expense. Economic trends from the decade before the launch of the FOCAC and the …

All Good Things Must Come To An End: China Beat’S 1,000th Post, Maura Cunningham, Kate Merkel-Hess, Ken Pomeranz, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With much gratitude, the China Beat editors say goodbye.

What a difference four years can make—for a blog, a country, and a planet. (“Blog, country, planet” might have made a nice coat of arms if we’d thought of it…) When China Beat launched early in 2008, blogs seemed like relatively new kids on the block, at least to academics. Four years later, the genre is old hat, sharing a landscape with newcomers like Tumblr, Twitter, and other microblogging platforms, and we’re increasingly catching up on China news not on computers but on devices that fit in our palms.

The blog …

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 …

Book Review: Dream Of Ding Village By Yan Lianke, Mike Frick

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government levied a “three nos” ban—no sales, no distribution, and no promotion—against Dream of Ding Village after its publication in 2005. Though the storytelling relies heavily on dream sequences, Yan takes little poetic license when exposing the depth of the state’s culpability in spreading HIV among poor, medically-naïve farmers. He is just as uncompromising when detailing how officials denied responsibility for the ensuing AIDS epidemic, even as they profited from its human tragedy. No one in Ding Village receives medical care, mental health counseling, food assistance, or a chance to hold the blood heads legally accountable. Cast …

Changsha: Photographs By Rian Dundon, Rian Dundon

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Rian Dundon, whose photographs have previously appeared at China Beat, will soon be releasing a new book of photography on China, Changsha. Dundon’s book will feature a forward written by friend of the blog Gail Hershatter and includes his photos of and essays on the Hunan province city of Changsha. For more information, and to pre-order a copy of the book, see the book’s website (pre-sales of the book are part of a crowd-funding campaign raising funds for its first run with the publisher, Emphas.is). Below is a special teaser of Changsha material that Dundon has prepared for China Beat …

The Taiwan Elections In Historical Perspective, Sebastian Veg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

During a recent trip to Taipei to observe the January presidential and legislative elections, like many people with little first-hand knowledge of Taiwan, I was struck by the unique traits of Taiwan’s democracy. The elections also seemed relevant to many debates in China, not only because they were closely followed and tweeted by critical voices on the mainland, but also because of their significance against the broader historical and geographical context of the history of modern China, a connection which holds true even if one subscribes to the view that Taiwan had no previous connection with this history before 1945 …

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 …

Salvaging Memories From The Ruins Of The Three Gorges, Daisy Yan Du

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world. The construction of the dam began in 1994 and was completed in 2009. Proponents bill it as a symbol of China’s rise on the global stage, while critics worldwide see it as a huge humanitarian crisis that has the potential to worsen in years to come. The biggest controversy of this project concerns the forced migration of around two million people, who, due to the rising water, have been displaced from their hometowns along the upper reaches of the Yangzi River in Chongqing and Sichuan and Hubei …

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 …

Behind Bo Xilai’S Halo, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the wake of Bo Xilai’s sudden downfall, shortly after what could be called an online carnival among China watchers—probably more in celebration of a rare, real-life political drama than anything else—international media is changing its tune and beginning to paint a more sympathetic image of Bo than previously reported, by focusing on Chinese people’s love of him. Reuters, for example, has a report titled “In China’s Chongqing, dismay over downfall of Bo Xilai” that quotes a working “stick man” (棒棒军, a porter-for-hire) who praises Bo as “a good man” that “made life a lot better here.” The Telegraph‘s Malcolm …

Book Review: Chiang Kai-Shek’S Interpersonal Relationships: Perspectives Across The Strait, Sherman Lai

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This book brings together papers and panel discussions of a conference on Chiang Kai-shek held in Taipei in January 2011 with the joint participation of historians from both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. It reflects new scholarship on Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese-speaking world and showcases the approaches that historians in the PRC adopt in handling challenges that their Western colleagues do not encounter. While Chinese historians have enormous audiences, they do not share the academic freedom enjoyed by their colleagues in the West and Taiwan. Because their careers and livelihood are dependent on the Chinese Communist …

Republican China, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Several years ago, I gave a talk on my research to a community group. My first slide included the words “Republican China” and as I waited to begin I heard a woman in the front row lean over and whisper to her neighbor, “I had no idea they have Republicans in China too!”

At this time of bruising primary battles, though, the China that the Republicans have seems more relevant—as China, imagined and real, has played a recurring role in the raucous Republican primaries. Here’s a rundown of some of the ways China has popped up on the campaign trail …

Hong Kong Identity And Democratic Values, Sebastian Veg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When Peking University Professor Kong Qingdong’s diatribe on Hongkongers and their lingering colonial infatuation swept over the Internet in late January, the widespread and growing uneasiness about mainland Chinese in Hong Kong suddenly had a face. Triggered by a viral video of a Hongkonger telling off a mainland family in the subway because their daughter was eating dry instant noodles, Kong’s interview sparked a wave of predictable but nonetheless justified outrage in Hong Kong. It took place against the background of the annual mainland shopping spree over Chinese New Year (in a previous episode, Dolce and Gabbana staff in Tsim …

Excerpt: Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes, James Palmer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When the Tangshan Earthquake hit northern China on July 28, 1976, the country was in the midst of a tumultuous year that would grow even more chaotic with Mao’s death less than two months later. In retrospect, the massive earthquake has been viewed as a sign of trouble to come and a signal that major changes were on the horizon. In his new book, Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Death of Mao’s China, James Palmer delves into the history of 1976, tracing the developments of that pivotal year for all in China, from the leaders residing …

How Chongqing People View Bo Xilai, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One April day in my birth city of Chongqing, I encountered a rare quarrel in People’s Park. The park is one of several places in downtown Chongqing that offer low-cost “baba cha” (open-space tea), where retirees and others with time on their hands lounge under leafy banyan trees with their teacups and bird cages for a good part of the day. Two fiftyish men sat at a plastic table drinking tea and chatting about Bo Xilai, their city’s ousted leader. One of the men said that Bo’s promotion of “people’s livelihood” had been a fake show, because during his four-year …

Whither The "Year Of China"?, Denise Ho, Jared Flanery

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

To conclude my Chinese history lecture course at the University of Kentucky, I introduce my undergraduates to the concept of “soft power” and suggest that Confucius Institutes are emblematic of China’s cultural diplomacy, which aims to project a peaceful image abroad. Confucius Institutes are centers for teaching Chinese language and culture overseas; they are organized by an office known as Hanban in the Ministry of Education, though their funding comes directly from the Chinese government’s treasury. There are now over 350 Confucius Institutes in the world, and two of these are in the state of Kentucky.

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 …