International and Area Studies Commons^™

China Annals: Interview With Lijia Zhang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Lijia Zhang, most recently the author ofSocialism is Great!, is also a freelance journalist with a great sense of style and an awesome website. Recently she entertained Nicole Barnes of the China Beat with an interview about her work. Her latest book is auto-biographical and narrates the decade that she spent working in a munitions factory, one of Communist China’s notoriously boring state-owned enterprises. Hindsight is glorious; Zhang’s beautiful writing transforms even this drab existence into an entertaining page-turner.

NB: As a freelance journalist, you seem to have a lot of control over your topics. Your articles cover the most …

Imperial Ways, Daniel A. Bell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I am a big fan of Jonathan Spence’s works. His books bring to life some of the great and not-so-famous characters in Chinese history and they read like novels. When I was told that he had delivered a lecture on “Confucian Ways” for the BBC, I was very curious, and clicked on the link with great anticipation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to download the programme here in Beijing, but I did print out the transcript. That’s what I’ve just read.

The lecture was delivered at the British library, and the host Sue Lawley opens by noting that the …

A Writer Takes The Stage: Jonathan Spence’S Lectures, Part 1

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Jonathan Spence’s elegant writing and his creative efforts to test the limits of standard genres of historical presentation have secured him a special status within both the interdisciplinary field of Chinese studies and the American historical profession. His reputation—as many or perhaps even all readers of this blog know—is based primarily on a string of successful books. These range widely in format, running the gamut from slim volumes that try to bring to life obscure or famous figures from the Chinese past to a large textbook. And while most of his publications focus on events and individuals of the opening …

The Dirt On China Reporting, Pierre Fuller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Reporting China for a Western readership gets a whole lot easier once you master the discursive montage of cheap China associations. When discussing the Chinese state, for example, plug in Orwell. When referencing anything in the period 1949-1976, plug in Mao. If, say, your topic is changing environmental behavior among the Chinese, ascribe it only to orders from the “new emperors” above; national pride could also do. And so on. A recent International Herald Tribune and New York Times website report, “Smoke Clears, Dust Does Not in Beijing,” follows the formula to a T.

Reporting China for a Western readership …

Liu Si (6/4)–Part 2, Looking Forward

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This is the second part of our commemoration of Liu Si. Here, instead of looking backward (though some links include information about the past), our focus is on the present and the future. We point our readers to pieces that take up the contemporary meaning of the 1989 protests and the crackdown that followed, or assess the current state of Tiananmen-related issues, such as patterns of protest and human rights.

1. The latest issue of China Rights Forum, a publication of Human Rights in China, is titled “June 4/2008” and combines retrospective and forward-looking materials. All of the poem, essays, …

China: Democracy, Or Confucianism?, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last October, when the CCP held its 17th congress, CNN reported the event with the headline “China rules out copying Western democracy.” My first reaction to this headline was, So what? That spontaneous reaction might have been an unconscious consequence of my reading Political Confucianism by Jiang Qing (蒋庆), a contemporary Confucian in China. In this book Last October, when the CCP held its 17th congress, CNN reported the event with the headline “China rules out copying Western democracy.” My first reaction to this headline was, So what? That spontaneous reaction might have been an unconscious consequence of my reading …

Logiques Urbaines Dans Les Arts Plastiques : De La Filiation De Jean-Michel Basquiat Au Sénégal, Massamba Mbaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

ertain Senegalese painters, including Soly Cissé, Camara Guèye, Birame Ndiaye and Samba Fall draw their inspiration from the city’s structure. Attentive to the tensions it produces as well as the daily struggles to survive, they transpose urban walls in their paintings to better transgress them, go beyond pre-imposed limits. One can therefore ask what is the influence of a painter like Basquiat on these contemporary painters ? Approaches and needs found in Senegal differ greatly from those found in the United States ; however interesting links can be traced that allow for a better understanding of present Senegalese art.

Politique Culturelle : Tradition, Modernité Et Arts Contemporains Au Sénégal, 1960-2000, Kinsey Katchka

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay approaches contemporary arts in Senegal and their exhibition from the perspective of cultural policy. This is an especially salient approach in Senegal, where policy has played a significant role in exhibition and creative practice since the colonial period. This history is conventionally examined through a distinctly nationalist framework that reveals the government’s clear distinction between "tradition" and "modernity". State exhibition practice and rhetoric have reinforced this dichotomy, serving to position the Senegalese state as purveyor, definer, and arbiter of cultural heritage. However, diverse creative expressions throughout the capital city of Dakar call into question nationalist rhetoric’s rigid distinction …

Les Limites De L’Appartenance : Composition, Intertextualité Et Langue Dans Les Dents Du Topographe Et Méfiez-Vous Des Parachutistes De Fouad Laroui, Carla Calargé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this article, I examine two novels by Fouad Laroui, Les dents du topographe (1996) and Méfiez-vous des parachutistes (1999). I analyze the difficulties encountered by their narrators when they try to find and define non alienating cultural and geographical spaces to which they could belong. For that purpose, I study the composition of the two novels, the play of intertextuality as well as the language of the main characters.

La Parole Au Féminin : La Narratrice De Cette Fille-Là De Maïssa Bey, Ana Soler

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Maïssa Bey’s novel, Cette fille-là, the character of Malika serves as a narrative plea for change. Since her childhood, Malika has strived to create an inward, personal imaginary for herself, as a defence mechanism against a hostile environment. In the workhouse, she adopts the role of storyteller for all those companions of hers, excluded as she is, from society. As the receptor of confidential information, she delights in verbally re-enacting their intimate stories, sprinkling them with accounts of her own experiences. By thus establishing Marika’s voice as a “link-route” to the novel’s subjacent vocal polyphony, the character is presented …

La Dimension Cachée De L’Art Sénégalais Contemporain, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

For nearly fifty years now, Dakar has been an epicenter of contemporary art, not just for continental Africa but for the entire world. Senegalese artists are well known internationally through participation in biennials, exhibitions, and gallery shows ; and many argue that they are contemporary artists from Senegal rather than “Senegalese artists” defined or constrained by their african identity. Among these, however, some match the global techniques and aesthetics of their works with local meanings derived from mystical Islam. Indeed, this “hidden side” can be very significant to the artists themselves even though it may be ignored by cosmopolitan connoisseurs.

Projets De Collection Et D’Exposition D’Art Sénégalais : Être Mécène D’Art À Dakar, Joanna Grabski

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The collection of Bassam Chaitou and its recent exhibition in Dakar offers a focal point to examine issues associated with private projects of collecting and exhibiting Senegalese art in Dakar. This article considers the relationship of Dakar’s collectors to historical patronage under Senghor and Dakar’s contemporary art scene. It proposes that private Dakar-based projects of collecting make visible a story about local propositions and dialogues about art. Dakar-based projects of collecting reveal a great deal about the city’s art scene, its history, artists, and trends.

L’Éthique De La Différence En Traduction : Le Cas De Deux Romans Africains Francophones Et De Leur Restitution En Anglais, Augustine H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Translation advances the cause of the international community as it plays a vital role in global development and understanding. The literary text needs to be translated before readers from diverse linguistic communities can apprehend and enjoy it. To a large extent, the success of the translation enterprise is a function of the accuracy of the target-text. With illustrations drawn from two francophone african masterpieces, Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des indépendances and Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, this article seeks to determine the extent to which the target-texts in English respect the spirit and the letter articulated by the source-texts. …

Raharimanana : « Le Viol Des Douceurs », Patricia Célérier

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

constant and paradoxical paradigm, violence is at the core of the Malagasy writer, Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s work. What are its representations, its modulations and functions in his shortstories, his novel, Nour, 1947, and his narrative, L’arbre anthropophage ? His poetic elaboration of violence puts his production at the juncture of postmodern and committed literatures and gives it a singular value in the world of postcolonial literature.

The Forbidden City By Barmé—Don’T Leave For The “Great Within” Without It

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“I think there’s a lack of books that serious, educated non-specialists can pick up…I’ve read a lot of great books recently by academics but few that I could recommend, say, to my father.” These lines come from an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Johnson that “China Beat” ran at the end of January, back when our site was still young (now that we’ve been going for more than a third-of-a-year, we hardly count as youthful anymore, so quickly does the blogosphere change). He was responding to a question Nicole Barnes had put to him about what he’d like …

Biennale Et Effervescence Artistique Au Sénégal : Conjonctions Et Passerelles, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The Dakar Biennial, Dak’Art, plays a key role and is the only event of this kind on the african continent. Held in a country where there is an abundant artistic production, it prolongs Senghor’s objectives (underlining the importance of the collective, intertwining art forms, investing mystical positions). Made of an “In” and “Off”, its structure dismantles divisions between popular/theoretical, accessible/obscure, autodidact/trained and promotes a dialog between people and approaches. Many Senegalese artists proceed in a similar fashion, assembling concepts (orality, signs, cultural references, categories), drawing from the world at large. Inscribing memory, they invite us to interrogate our future beyond …

The Chinese Press In The Spotlight, Timothy Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In recent weeks, the Chinese press has struggled to cover a series of major and difficult stories. Moreover the Chinese press itself is being watched and critiqued by the Western world with intensity and curiosity. What we are seeing in the Chinese press now is a world in transition and flux.

First was the Chinese press’ discussion of the Tibetan demonstrations, its virtual refusal to acknowledge the validity of any foreign criticism, and its exposure of a reflexive, threatening, and brittle nationalism, especially among some Chinese youth. However, that was followed by its honest and educational reporting during the hand …

Culture And Collapse, Pierre Fuller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China has shown a “dismayingly cavalier attitude toward the well-being of its people,” a British journalist turned pop historian determined recently in the pages of the New York Times. The Chinese, he explained, long ago handed over science – and by extension earthquake resistant engineering – to “the West,” leaving “themselves to become mired, time and again, in the kind of tragic events that we are witnessing this week.” The thrust of this piece by Simon Winchester (which simultaneously appeared in the International Herald Tribune and evidently stems from his latest books, The Man Who Loved China (2008), on Joseph …

Praise For China: A Reader

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. “Can we outsource FEMA to the Chinese?” asks one reader at MSNBC’s World Blog, in response to a post on the temporary villages the Chinese government is erecting in the disaster area. Other readers also make Katrina/China earthquake comparisons. The MSNBC World Blog has been providing continuing coverage of the earthquake.

2. One of the side effects of coverage of the earthquake has been an increase in “human interest” stories on quake survivors. For instance, the story of a couple who survived together, trapped under debris, was one of the New York Times’s top e-mailed stories in the days …

Cultural Responses To Disaster In China, Pierre Fuller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A land of floods, fault lines and food crises, China has rarely been one of mercy in the Western imagination. Today, with millions of Chinese dealing with another world-class disaster on their soil, the Western press appears to be singing a different tune. For one, Tuesday’s New York Times heralded that “Many Hands, Not Held by China, Aid in Quake,” reporting that even official Chinese media sees private donations exceeding the state’s total so far of half a billion relief dollars. This “striking and unscripted public response” of “blood drives, cake sales, charity fund-raisers and art auctions” might even pose …

Self-Promotion Saturday: Brief Notes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few of our writers made it into the news this week:

1. NPR broadcast a brief interview with Jeff Wasserstrom on the Chinese government’s response to the earthquake on Wednesday, May 21.

2. In response to a review of Simon Winchester’s new book on Joseph Needham (the famous scholar of Chinese technology, among his other accomplishments) at Salon.com, one reader submitted a lengthy comparison of Jared Diamond and Kenneth Pomeranz. Read it here.

3. For those who subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can read an article that quotes Caroline Reeves, who wrote a two-part piece for us …

Writing Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I started writing my book on a March morning in 2006. About fifteen minutes into it, panic hit: I am no longer earning a salary just sitting here at my desk. By mid-morning, another realization had set in: I can’t go back to being a newspaper reporter.

The book, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, opens inside the world of the young women working on assembly lines in the south China factory city of Dongguan:

When you met a girl from another factory, you quickly took her measure. “What year are you?” you asked each other, …

Giving Long-Term Relief, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

May 12, 2008, will enter the history and China and the world as a day of sadness. At 2:30 p.m. local time, a devastating earthquake, registering 7.8 on the Richter scale, hit Wenchuan near Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, and the confirmed death toll has soared to more than 41,000.

This is also a moment of perseverance. There are countless stories of surviving victims of the catastrophe—grieving parents, husbands and wives, children, coworkers, neighbors, classmates—doing all they could to rescue and help others. This is a moment of compassion and humanity. China acted swiftly, sending relief workers, volunteers, soldiers …

Rumor And The Sichuan Earthquake, Steve Smith

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the intriguing aspects of the appalling crisis created by the earthquake in Sichuan on May 12—whose death toll as I write is over 40,000 and still rising—has been the role played by rumor. Just four days before the quake, the Sichuan provincial government issued a notice designed to quell “earthquake rumors.” Three days after it, on May15, Xinhua news agency announced that seventeen people had been arrested for circulating malicious rumors, and the Ministry of Public Security revealed that its bureaus in eleven provinces and municipalities had discovered more than forty messages on the internet that “spread false …

Disaster Relief: Material And Spiritual

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last night, the members of one of the Buddha’s Light International Association (國際佛光會) relief teams returned to Taiwan, most in tears due to the horrifying devastation they had witnessed. They also reported a disturbing new development: an increasing number of survivors are starting to take their own lives.

To a certain extent, this should not be too surprising. Inland earthquakes often devastate economically deprived regions, where the livelihood of most people hangs by a thin thread even before a disaster strikes. This was the case for Taiwan’s 921 Earthquake, which was also followed by a rash of suicides. Now that …

A Mid-Week Reader

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. If it isn’t already part of your media China blog circuit (it has just become part of ours), check out the Wall Street Journal’s China Journal. Run by Sky Canaves, the blog apparently draws on more than twenty journalists, and even ran a recent entry on Beijing’s air quality (that’s a favorite Western media story that has slipped out of sight lately).

2. Tim Johnson’s blog, China Rises, has a few moving recent on-the-ground reports from Sichuan. Zhongnanhai also has reports from an individual in Sichuan. For detailed information about the earthquake and its casualities (including maps), see the …

History Of Chinese Red Cross: Part Ii, Caroline Reeves

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As Chinese rush to aid their countrymen and other countries rush to aid the Chinese, it is important to note that Chinese participation in mutual aid and in the international relief community is not new. Here I continue with part II of the earlyhistory of the Chinese Red Cross Society.

At the turn of the twentieth century, China was being torn apart not by the movement of tectonic plates, but by political, social and intellectual currents. In a world shaken by the new imperatives of Social Darwinism (that posited a divide between “modern” nations that would thrive and “backward” ones …

Letters From Sichuan, Peter Hessler

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On May 13th, I filed a web report on the New Yorker’s site, based on what I heard from former students in the early days of the disaster. Since then, I’ve continued to receive notes, and I’ve copied a few below.

When I lived in Sichuan, I was most impressed by the sense of place. The landscape was rugged and beautiful, and the people had a distinct character. They seemed more emotional than in other parts of China; they laughed more freely and their street arguments were more vicious. It wasn’t any surprise that in 1999, after NATO bombed the …

Chinese Responses To Disaster: A View From The Qing, Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Media reports of this week’s devastating earthquake in Sichuan highlight trends seen as impressive and new in terms of PRC responses to disaster. The quick response of state leaders symbolized by Premier Wen Jiabao’s much-heralded arrival in the disaster area only five hours after the earthquake hit on Monday, for instance, stands in stark contrast to the PRC’s handling of major catastrophes during the Mao-era, when Chairman Mao and other top leaders failed to act on reports that people were starving to death by the thousands during the Great Leap Famine of 1959-61. An estimated 30 million people died as …

History Of Chinese Red Cross: Part I, Caroline Reeves

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Among the scenes of devastation—small bodies in shrouds; crumpled buildings and bridges; dazed survivors—another image flashes across the screen: something familiar, something reassuring to international viewers. Out of the chaos appears the symbol of the Red Cross, on the arm of a medic, on the side of an ambulance: a sign that there might be some hope—or at least some comfort—for these victims of China’s horrific earthquake.

As we watch the unreal footage of a natural disaster that has, so far, claimed almost 30,000 lives, we are brought back to our own comfort zone by the presence of that familiar …