East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Reader Responses: Celebrating Jianbing, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

[Editor’s note: It seems that quite a few of our readers are as fond of jianbing as we are here at China Beat HQ. This morning’s post on the tasty breakfast dish garnered a number of responses on Twitter (revealing that not everyone is a fan, though all have strong feelings on the jianbing issue), which I’ve collected below, followed by one story sent in by a reader via email. And fellow UC Irvine graduate student Aubrey Adams directed my attention to this basic recipe for jianbing, in case I (or anyone else) wants to attempt making them at home.]

Soft Power Struggle: Ai Weiwei And The Limits Of Sino-German Cultural Cooperation, Adam Cathcart

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As an attempt to drain the seemingly endless reserves of paranoia fed by China’s rise, the extension of Chinese “soft power” [ruan shi li 软实力] into Western Europe is one of the more interesting stories of our day. How the Chinese Communist Party uses culture and cultural exchange to shape its image in Europe varies, like any good guerrilla strategy, depending on conditions. In the performing arts, PRC-sponsored groups tour European stages, acting out a meta-drama that pits twirling autonomous-region Uighurs against the ubiquitous Falun Gong-affiliated Shen Yun ballerinas (and their army of granny pamphleteers). Embassy-sponsored photographic exhibits celebrating modernization …

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3

Late Qing Dreams Of Modernity, Peter Zarrow

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I would like to alert China Beat readers to a new film, Datong: The Great Society [Chinese title: 大同：康有為在瑞典]. This docu-drama tells the story of Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and to a great extent that of his second daughter Kang Tongbi (aka Kang Tung Pih, 1887-1969).

I found the film a powerful and affecting evocation of a philosopher’s life, and found myself challenged to consider what we make of the past and what it makes of us. The film-maker, Evans Chan, calls Datong: The Great Society a “docu-drama,” since it is based on verifiable records, period photos, and vintage footage—as well …

Straight Out Of Wukan: A Quick Q & A With Journalist Rachel Beitare, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this year, a Beijing-based Israeli journalist named Rachel Beitare contacted me out of the blue to set up an interview about the impact the Arab Spring events might have in China. I ended up impressed by the caliber of the questions put to me, so I started keeping an eye out for her byline, in case she published things in English (much of her work comes out in Hebrew, which I don’t read). I wasn’t disappointed, as before long Foreign Policy ran a smart commentary, ”Guilty By Association,” in which Ms. Beitare looked at the way the Party had …

Bow Before The Portrait: Sino-North Korean Relations Enter The Kim Jong Un Era, Adam Cathcart

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The pigs were being slaughtered in the streets when the news of Kim Jong Il’s death arrived in Dachuan, a small logging village in the mountains of western Sichuan province. Over the immense and extended cacophony of the blood-letting, the retired head of the local bank explained, with a bit of apologetic joy, that the villagers were getting ready for Spring Festival, then turned back to the news from Pyongyang, shaking his head at the retrograde tendencies of China’s Korean socialist brothers.

Book Review: Behind The Gate: Inventing Students In Beijing, Ling Shiao

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

By drawing our attention to the previously unexamined question of space for student activism, Fabio Lanza has successfully remapped the May Fourth Movement, despite the fact that it is perhaps the most well-travelled terrain in historical research of modern China. This is not a revisionist study that seeks to de-center May Fourth in China’s passage from tradition to modernity by looking for pre-May Fourth modern experimentations and the continuity between the late Qing and May Fourth periods. In fact, Lanza travels back to the historical site of Beijing University (hereafter Beida) and the canonical moment of the May Fourth years …

When Things Go Wrong: Village Elections As A Process Creating Contention, Kerry Brown

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the heart of the big story of Chinese rural democracy is the many millions of smaller stories of those who have been touched by this immense process. Before looking at village elections, therefore, here is one single story, of one man, who tried to stand in a village election, and of what happened to him. It is concrete experiences of engaging in the whole process of rural democracy like this that give village democracy its tremendous significance and interest. This section is based on papers obtained in Beijing in August 2009.

New Issue Of Twentieth-Century China Available

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The latest issue of Twentieth-Century China should be arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes right now, bringing readers four research articles described below by Chief Editor James Carter in an excerpt from the journal’s editorial:

Ai Weiwei And The “Age Of Madness”: Day Five And Counting, Lionel M. Jensen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Just over four days after Ai Weiwei’s sudden apprehension by China’s Public Security Bureau, the government has initiated, as is its tireless and terrifying custom, the public process of building a case against the disappeared by alluding to the subject’s “crimes.”

From Monkey King To Mao: Cultivating Online Games With “Chinese Characteristics”, Marcella Szablewicz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With 300 million people playing Internet games in China, the question of how these games affect youth has captured the attention of the public and researchers alike. I first became interested in studying online gaming in 2002 when, as a language student in Harbin, China, I discovered the extent to which playing online games in Internet cafés had become a central part of social life for many urban youth. However, like any new technology, the growing popularity of games has also sparked growing fears about their potential to negatively impact society. In recent years the Chinese media has been full …

Book Review: Gourmets In The Land Of Famine, Emily Hill

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Why is “eating in Canton” (shi zai Guangzhou) known as the best in China? Seung-joon Lee’s lively and original study examines the peculiarities and politics of eating in Canton (Guangzhou) from Qing times to 1937. Using a delectable range of materials in Chinese, Japanese, and English, the book offers an illuminating entrée to the culture and political correctness of eating in modern Chinese history. As the author points out, few historical studies focus on food supplies. Many narrative histories of China, for instance, include sections on the Canton-based events of the 1920s when the Guomindang and the Chinese …

Book Review: Mao Zedong And China In The Twentieth-Century World, Jeremy Tai

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Mao Zedong may no longer be the sublime object of desire in China, but in recent decades his image has been continuously invoked and consumed in countless guises – both familiar and new – ranging from pop art portraits to the ubiquitous face of Chinese banknotes, from Cultural Revolution kitsch to the ObaMao souvenirs currently found in tourist traps around China. The reproduction of Mao in his various postmodern manifestations suggests a loss of meaning and depoliticization; at the same time, however, the deep-seated clash between sentimental and polemical cultural representations also makes clear that there is still much at …

On Chinese Mothering And Amy Chua

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Yale Law professor Amy Chua’s article on “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” is still in the top five most-emailed stories at the Wall Street Journal’s website, four days after its publication last Saturday. Chua has attracted a considerable amount of attention with her article (and newly released book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother), which examines Chinese parenting techniques and compares them to Western approaches to raising children:

Upcoming Events

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Happy New Year from China Beat! If you’ve just purchased a 2011 calendar, here are some upcoming China-related events—featuring quite a few China Beatniks—to jot down in it:

Chicago And The Future Of U.S.-China Summits, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Except in the Windy City itself, where Hu Jintao heads today and will spend tomorrow, the reporting and speculative commentary on the Chinese leader’s second visit to the United States has tended to focus on it’s just-concluding Washington leg. To me, though, the stop in Chicago seemed from the start the most potentially interesting and novel part of Hu’s trip. After all, this is the first time that a visit to Chicago, an economically important crossroads city with a colorful history and famous architectural landmarks, has figured in the itinerary of the head of China’s Communist Party.

China In 2010: A Baker’S Dozen Of Links, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last month, many commentators offered up lists of top books and top news stories of 2010, sometimes focusing on a particular place or topic. It would be easy to follow suit here, in my first 2011 blog post about China. After all, there were plenty of books on the country published last year (some of which I reviewed individually or in groups). There were also plenty of China-related headlines, from those twelve months ago detailing rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, to summer ones reporting that the nation had surpassed Japan to become both the world’s number two economy, to …

A Quick Q & A With Kim Rathcke Jensen: A Beijing-Based Danish Journalist

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A variety of events, from the Copenhagen environmental issues summit in 2009 to the controversy sparked by the Empty Chair in Oslo last year, have led to news stories in the American press that involve both China and a Scandinavian country. This led me to wonder what, if anything, was distinctive about the way Scandinavian media cover China. Realizing that there are bound to be important differences among Scandinavian countries in this regard, but needing to start somewhere in getting a feel for this issue, I turned to Kim Rathcke Jensen, a Danish reporter whose wide-ranging China-focused twitter feedhttp://twitter.com/kinablog/ I’ve …

China Beat On Break

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Happy holidays to all our readers and contributors from the China Beat editorial team.

Ode To The Communist Song Revisited

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Back in 2009, as the Chinese Communist Party geared up to mark one major official anniversary (the 60th birthday of the founding of the PRC), China Beat was fortunate enough to be able to run a lively piece of reportage by the versatile writer Lijia Zhang on an unusual museum devoted to a single revolutionary song. Now, as the CCP prepares for another anniversary (the 90th birthday of the organization itself), headlines about the “Red Song” wave (a fad that has been most closely associated with Chongqing but has also been making its mark on other parts of the country) …

The Red Legacy, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When I left Beijing after two years studying Mandarin at Peking and Tsinghua Universities, my Chinese friends from those universities threw me a leaving dinner at the Cultural Revolution restaurant, far on the outskirts of Beijing, outside the 5th ring road. While punters ate, drank and sang along with Mao era songs, waitresses dressed as Red Guards performed patriotic dances, clutching prop rifles. “Long live Chairman Mao!,” the diners would shout, tucking into red-braised pork – good thing this wasn’t the Great Leap Forward restaurant, or it would perhaps have been a quarter bowl of rice each. “Death to capitalist …

Hu Jintao’S “Concession” On Human Rights, Alice Miller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese President and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao’s remarks on human rights during his joint press conference with President Obama in Washington on 19 January have been widely regarded in foreign media as a grudging concession that broke new ground in Beijing’s position on the issue. Specifically, confronted by a persistent Washington press corps, Hu for the first time acknowledged “the universality of human rights” in international politics and conceded that “a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.”

Memories Of Hyperdevelopment: Chongqing Trip Report, Jacob Dreyer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Like any good Shanghai resident, I am more or less terrified by the China that exists outside of metro line 3. However, I had been obsessing for months about the municipality of Chongqing, a radically unusual city even by the standards of contemporary China. When I found that I had a spare weekend, I finally took a trip there to explore. Instead of describing my trip, or offering a journalistic take on the city à la Christina Larson, whose piece in Foreign Policy does that more competently than I could hope to, what follows is a series of meditations on …

Shanghai Spaces And Histories: Thoughts On Reading Qiu Xiaolong’S Years Of Red Dust, Daisy Yan Du

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In Shanghai Modern, Leo Lee, a prominent specialist in Chinese literary studies, focuses much of his attention on urban space as a marker of modernity in Republican Shanghai (1912-1949). His mappings of the city include places that are located mostly in the concessions, where Western (and later Japanese) influences dominated: the high-rise buildings in the Bund, the department stores located on or near Nanjing Road, and the cafes in the French Concession, as well as dance halls, public parks, race clubs, and cinemas. Lee also touches upon the lanes populated by native Chinese, but his main focus is on …

Asia’S Disappearing Daughters, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last week witnessed the publication of Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs, 2011), and over the weekend my take on the book appeared online at the recently relaunched Asian Review of Books. That review is reposted here with the kind permission of the ARB, almost exactly as it ran there. Those who are interested in learning more about Hvistendahl’s arguments after reading my essay can, of course, buy the book, but U.S.-based followers of the blog have another option as well: catch one of the public events …

Humiliation And Normalization: A Tale Of Two New China Books, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Henry Kissinger and Robert Bickers don’t have much in common. One is a U.S.-based octogenarian; the other a U.K.-based scholar roughly half as old. Only one, Kissinger, has been characterized by Christopher Hitchens (among others) as a perpetrator of war crimes. And only one, ironically Kissinger again, has won a Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger spent some time as a professor, but then went on to work as a diplomat and business consultant. Bickers, however, while writing about diplomats and entrepreneurs (along with policemen and other kinds of people), has made his career solely within the academy. This list could be …

New Media And Old Dilemmas: Online Protest And Cyber Repression In Asia Panel Report, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As I noted in an article I wrote for the Dissent website earlier this week, one of the major China-related stories of 2011 has been the government’s ever-increasing crackdown on public expression. What started subtly back in January—a slowdown in internet service here and there, more websites (including this one) being blocked—became a full-blown international issue on April 3, when artist and activist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport. Ai’s disappearance has sparked a flood of analysis and commentaries: Colin Jones discusses “The Purge of Ai Weiwei” at Dissent, Evan Osnos at the New Yorkerhas written a series …

Factories Without Smoke, Chris Cherry

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

They are China’s most precious economic asset: migrant workers. Each year, millions upon millions untie themselves from the rhythms of rural life to chase down a future in the prestige cities and sudden boomtowns of the eastern and southern coasts. In doing so, they begin a dramatic journey from farmer to worker; one marked by a profound shift from cultivating land they own, to producing goods they don’t. But few will be allowed to transform completely. Oft belittled for their unsophisticated ways, to urbanites they are forever “waidiren” — outside people. Most will be marked by their speech the moment …

We Chinese, M. Scott Brauer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“We Chinese” grew out of a curiosity to find out what Chinese people think about their country and their future. Media coverage of the country and its development often raises questions about the direction of the government in Beijing on the world stage. Few reports take into account the feelings of the Chinese people, instead making reference to the country as a monolithic actor without constituent parts. A country’s trajectory through history cannot be mapped without careful consideration of the people. This project aims, in a small way, to develop a portrait of the country by looking at the individual …

Pre-Summit Positioning, Scott Kennedy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Preparations for Wednesday’s state visit by Hu Jintao have been underway for several months. Most of that time was spent negotiating over what deals would be reached, whether there would be a joint statement, and what food would be served. I’m particularly interested to see: 1) Whether Chinese first lady Liu Yongqing will eat the standard fare put on the table as everyone else. She typically travels with her own chef and food; and 2) Whether the American media will get a good photo of the back of Hu Jintao’s head to determine once and for all if he has …