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We’Re Back!

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re returning from a two-week hiatus just in time to call your attention to the final event in a series of author talks that China Beat has produced in cooperation with several other UC Irvine organizations during the 2009-2010 academic year. Tomorrow’s dialogue at UCI, featuring Ian Johnson and Angilee Shah, is free and open to the public (details here).

The Tao Of Avatar — And Why This Sort Of Movie Cannot Be Made In The Prc At This Point In Time…, Sam Crane

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We saw Avatar last night (I know, I’ve been on a movie kick of late…). It was visually stunning. The story was unremarkable: a melodramatic morality tale (the good guy wins in the end!). But it did have a couple of Taoist elements, which were no doubt quite consciously incorporated into the story.

China’S Promise, Geremie R. Barme

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The year 2009 was marked by a series of important anniversaries in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Some of these were commemorated with due pomp and circumstance in the official media and dissected at length during learned gatherings and discussions. Others, those events that I think of as ‘dark anniversaries’, passed by in an atmosphere of heightened alertness, surveillance and official anxiety. Dark anniversaries are the signposts of quelled protests, social unrest and state violence, events such as the 1959 rebellion in Lhasa, the shutting down of the Xidan Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1979, the tragedy …

Behind The Wheel, About To Snap, Peter Hessler

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

. . . A photo, that is. Below, Peter Hessler shares some of the photographs he took while traveling across China doing research for his latest book, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory. Read our review of Country Drivinghere; for other takes on the book, check out Jonathan Yardley’s review at theWashington Post, and Adam Daniel Mezei’s write-up at his blog.

Readings Around The Web: Fun In The Sun Edition

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• Heading for the beach and looking for the perfect book to toss in your tote bag? At Five Books, authors are interviewed and asked to recommend five books on a specific topic. Though the site covers far more than China, several of the features are China-focused and worth a look; check out Rod MacFarquhar on the Cultural Revolution, Isabel Hilton on China’s environmental crisis, and Richard McGregor on the Chinese Communist Party.

Expo Watch 2010, Shellen Xiao Wu

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In Shanghai these days it is impossible to avoid the World Expo. Hotels are packed with domestic tourists and school groups; subway and bus televisions show a constant news loop about events at the Expo; and Haibao, the rectangular, blue mascot of the Expo, graces numerous government offices, posters, and official merchandise stalls. To ensure the target of 70 million visitors is met and exceeded for the duration of the Expo from the beginning of May to the end of October, various government offices in Shanghai have handed out Expo “gift packs” of one free ticket per Shanghai resident family. …

Beijing Bibliophile, Part Ii: Market Change And New Technology, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Dozens of bookstores continue to dot Beijing but recent developments are changing the landscape for readers and publishers by forcing many smaller stores out of the market. Part of this trend is due to advances in public transportation, particularly the enlarged subway system, that make it possible to travel across town for a larger selection and lower prices, leading to a decline in neighborhood bookstores. A less positive part of the bookstore consolidation is the increasing leverage state sector bookstores such as Xinhua can exert on private booksellers using market and political forces. A mixed element in the dynamic Beijing …

Review: China’S Megatrends: The Eight Pillars Of A New Society, William A. Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The future is a hot topic in China; bookstores are full of tomes asserting the 21st century as China’s century: Liu Mingfu’s The China Dream(2010) and Chan Koon-chung’s The Gilded Era: China 2013 (2009) are but two of the most recent books that describe how China is destined to become the number one country in the world.

New Release: Coming To Terms With The Nation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On Monday, China’s decennial census began, sending six million census workers door-to-door in a quest to record and count the country’s population over the course of only ten days. A key issue in this census, according to some observers, will be placing China’s population in terms of place of residence. One thing analysts are waiting to find out, for example, is how many citizens of the PRC are described as living in cities rather than villages, as this census, which comes after a period of massive rural-to-urban migration, is supposed to describe where people physically live and work, not their …

As China Goes, So Goes The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Karl Gerth is a tutor and fellow at Merton College and a historian of modern China at Oxford University. His new book is As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything (Hill & Wang, 2010). (See this review by Christina Larson at the Washington Monthly and this oneat Kirkus Reviews for more on Gerth’s book.) Below, an excerpt from chapter 1 of As China Goes, which takes a look at one of the most notable phenomena of 21st-century Chinese life: the sudden boom in car ownership and its far-reaching consequences.

China Beat Is Heading To The Beach . . .

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

. . . well, not exactly. But we are taking a short vacation, to focus on wrapping up the academic year here at UC Irvine. We’ll be back online June 6 (though we will keep up our Twitter feed during the break, so follow us today!). Before we go, a few links we’d like to share:

“A Wildly Weird And Wonderful Event”

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For updates and insights on the 2010 Expo, one of the first places we turn isShanghai Scrap, where Shanghai-based writer Adam Minter has been following the story for almost two years. Minter’s Expo posts cover topics such as the emergence of Haibao (September 2008), the renovation of the Bund (December 2009) and demolition of neighborhoods (October 2009), and an ongoing in-depth investigation of the twisted saga of the U.S. pavilion (most recent posthere; full archive here). Minter also has an article and slideshow about the Expo atThe Atlantic. In the wake of last Saturday’s opening ceremony, we posed a few …

Bloggers’ Breakfast At Aas

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s become a tradition for China Beat contributors and friends of the blog to assemble at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting (as well as at the American Historical Association’s meeting) for a “bloggers’ breakfast” that provides China Beatniks the chance to get together and meet face-to-face — often for the first time, since so much of our business is conducted via e-mail. Last Saturday morning, we gathered at a Starbucks near the AAS conference site and talked about China, writing, and many other topics over coffee and pastries. A couple of photos from the AAS 2010 bloggers’ breakfast:

What I Read On My Summer Vacation (Part Ii), Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Moving across the country (from Irvine, California to State College, Pennsylvania) meant that most of my books—even the new ones—spent the summer packed in boxes. But alongside a rapid inhalation of all three Stieg Larsson novels, I still did a little China reading. Here, a few recommendations.

China’S Communist Party: Two Glimpses Inside, Thomas Kellogg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On August 16, 2010, China reached yet another milestone in its decades-long breakneck run of economic development: it became the world’s second largest economy. According to official economic data, China surpassed a still-struggling Japan, leaving it behind only the United States in terms of overall economic size. Some analysts predicted that China could pass the US to become the world’s largest economy as early as 2030.

Jean-Philippe Béja On Liu Xiaobo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In only a few hours, word will come from Oslo and the world will know whether or not this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is Chinese activist and author Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an eleven-year prison sentence for “subverting state authority.”Speculation about Liu’s odds has been running at a fever pitch this week, so much so that Irish bookmaker Paddy Power made an early payout to those who had put money on Liu by Tuesday. Authorities in Beijing, however, have made it clear that this is one international prize that China doesn’t want to win.

Book Review: Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010, Adam D. Frank

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On first blush, one would think that reviewing Nick Land’s Shanghai World Expo Guidebook 2010 would be an exercise akin to reviewing a movie poster for Avatar—a kind of 2-D portrait of a 3-D experience.

A Conceptual Guide To Natural History Museum Visitors’ Understanding Of Evolution, E. Margaret Evans, Amy N. Spiegel, Wendy Gram, Brandy N. Frazier, Medha Tare, Sarah Thompson, Judy Diamond

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Museum visitors are an ideal population for assessing the persistence of the conceptual barriers that make it difficult to grasp Darwinian evolutionary theory. In comparison with other members of the public, they are more likely to be interested in natural history, have higher education levels, and be exposed to the relevant content. If museum visitors do not grasp evolutionary principles, it seems unlikely that other members of the general public would do so. In the current study, 32 systematically selected visitors to three Midwest museums of natural history provided detailed open-ended explanations of biological change in seven diverse organisms. They …

Grounded Theory As A “Family Of Methods”: A Genealogical Analysis To Guide Research, Wayne A. Babchuk

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

This inquiry traces the evolution of grounded theory from a nuclear to an extended family of methods and considers the implications that decision-making based on informed choices throughout all phases of the research process has for realizing the potential of grounded theory for advancing adult education theory and practice.

Book Review: Psychoanalyzing Prejudice, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The classic psychological work on prejudice is Gordon Allport’s 1954 The Nature of Prejudice. Half a century later, its definitive modern counterpart must surely be On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years after Allport (2005). Systematically reconsidering Allport’s work in light of subsequent research and theorizing, On the Nature of Prejudice provides, in one carefully edited volume, the most comprehensive statement on the psychology of prejudice currently available. The Future of Prejudice: Psychoanalysis and the Prevention of Prejudice, in contrast, is simply a collection of sixteen chapters that, although generally psychoanalytic in orientation, vary greatly in form, content, …

Three Decades In The Cold And Wet: A Career In Northern Archaeology, Sophia Perdikaris, George Hambrecht, Ramona Harrison

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Thomas H. McGovern has been a pioneering researcher in the North Atlantic region for most of the past 40 years. He has taken his specialty in zooarchaeology beyond counting bones to actually addressing questions about human environment interactions and human response to extreme environmental events. A prolific writer and researcher with a multitude of publications and an impressive funding record, McGovern has always been a proponent of multidisciplinarity and international collaboration. His vision resulted in the creation of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) that currently has more than 400 scientific partners and has been leading projects throughout the Circum …

Cracid News: Bulletin Of The Cracid Group Of The Iucn/Ssc-­‐Wpa Galliform Specialist Group 29-33, 35-36 (2010-2014), Iucn Ssc-Wpa Galliformes Specialist Group

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

Volume 29 (Spring 2010)

In memoriam: Dr. Jesus Estudillo Lopez, Juan Cornejo

Ecology and behavior of the bare-faced curassow (Crax fasciolata) in the Brazilian Pantanal, Arnaud Léonard Jean Desbiez

Algunas características de la población y hábitat de Crax alberti en el Eco-Parque los Besotes, Valledupar–Cesar, Irina Margarita Mendoza Polo, Dewing Miguel Ochoa Ramos, Rafael Antonio Borja Acuña, y Tomas Gutiérrez Hinojosa

Volume 30 (Fall 2010)

Registros de cacería del paujil copete de piedra (Pauxi pauxi) en el extremo norte de la cordillera oriental de los Andes, Colombia, Víctor Setina Liz, Diego J. Lizcano, Milena Morales Sandoval, …

The Geography Of Buddhist Pilgrimage In Asia, Robert Stoddard

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place motivated by religious devotion. Although the term may be applied to a meditative search for new spiritual experiences, prolonged wanderings, or travel to a place of nostalgic meaning for an individual, here the word refers to the physical journey to a distant site regarded as holy. As defined in this essay, pilgrimage excludes local and family places of worship; therefore the spatial component of distance is critical.

Throughout the world and in numerous faiths, pilgrimages differ from other forms of worship because of the emphasis on the unique roles of movement …

Great Plains Region From Encyclopedia Of Religion In America, Volume 2, Robert H. Stoddard

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

To understand the religions of a region, it is helpful to examine its environmental characteristics and the history of human occupation of that land because interpretations and forms of worship often reflect the environment with which believers cope. Although characteristics of the natural environment are intricately incorporated into most ancient religions, this relationship may be less obvious in religions with creeds and set of beliefs enunciated by historic figures. Here focus is on how the religious history of the Great Plains distinguishes it from other parts of America.

Views On Agriculture, Energy And Food In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska, Rebecca J. Vogt, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bruce B. Johnson, Bradley D. Lubben

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Agriculture has played and continues to play a critical role in Nebraska’s economy. However, the industry is currently facing changes in consumer preferences for food production along with increased demands for renewable energy production and environmental goods and services. Given these changing demands, how closely are rural Nebraskans connected to agriculture? What product attributes are important to them when food shopping? What preferences do they have for government support and incentives for producing energy from various sources? How do they feel about alternative energy sources and energy conservation? This paper provides a detailed analysis of these questions.

This report details …

Living And Shopping In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska, Rebecca J. Vogt, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bruce B. Johnson, Bradley D. Lubben

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Recent community level Census data show that most small communities in Nebraska have experienced population decline since 2000. However, most larger communities have experienced population growth during this same time period. In addition, small rural communities in Nebraska have experienced a decline in retailing activity in the past few decades. The Internet has also impacted retail shopping behaviors, allowing customers to purchase goods and services online that they normally purchased from businesses in their community. Given these conditions, how do rural Nebraskans feel about their community? Are they satisfied with the services provided by their community? Are they planning to …

Life In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: Perceptions Of Well-Being And Acts Of Care Giving, Rebecca J. Vogt, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bruce B. Johnson

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Given the challenges and uncertainties of recent years, how do rural Nebraskans believe they are doing and how do they view their future? Have these views changed over the past fifteen years? How satisfied are they with various items that influence their well‐being? The aging population in nonmetropolitan Nebraska faces additional challenges to their quality of life and many rely on nearby social support systems to enable them to remain in rural areas. How many rural Nebraskans provide assistance to aging or ill relatives and neighbors? Do they live near their parents or grown children? This paper provides a detailed …

Asian Carp And The Great Lakes Region, Eugene H. Buck, Harold F. Upton, Charles V. Stern, James E. Nicols

Congressional Research Service Reports

Four species of non-indigenous Asian carp are expanding their range in U.S. waterways, resulting in a variety of concerns and problems. Three species—bighead, silver, and black carp—are of particular note, based on the perceived degree of environmental concern. Current controversy relates to what measures might be necessary and sufficient to prevent movement of Asian carp from the Mississippi River drainage into the Great Lakes through the Chicago Area Waterway System. Bills have been introduced in the 111th Congress to direct actions to avoid the possibility of carp becoming established in the Great Lakes.

According to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, …

Agriculture-Based Biofuels: Overview And Emerging Issues, Randy Schnepf

Congressional Research Service Reports

Since the late 1970s, U.S. policymakers at both the federal and state levels have enacted a variety of incentives, regulations, and programs to encourage the production and use of agriculture-based biofuels. Initially, federal biofuels policies were developed to help kick-start the biofuels industry during its early development, when neither production capacity nor a market for the finished product was widely available. Federal policy has played a key role in helping to close the price gap between biofuels and cheaper petroleum fuels. Now, as the industry has evolved, other policy goals (e.g., national energy security, climate change concerns, support for rural …

Renewable Energy Programs In The 2008 Farm Bill, Megan Stubbs

Congressional Research Service Reports

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-246, the 2008 farm bill) extends and expands many of the renewable energy programs originally authorized in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-171, 2002 farm bill). The bill also continues the emphasis on the research and development of advanced and cellulosic bioenergy authorized in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (P.L. 110-140).

Farm bill debate over U.S. biomass-based renewable energy production policy focused mainly on the continuation of subsidies for ethanol blenders, continuation of the import tariff for ethanol, and the impact of corn-based ethanol …