Asian Studies Commons^™

Rural Return: Xi Jinping’S Iowa Visit, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US took him across the country, from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles (where, sadly, despite spending some time with a sartorially-challenged David Beckham, he did not show off his soccer skills, as he did in the subsequent Irish leg of his trip).

But it wasn’t the visits to the coasts that dominated human interest stories on Xi Jinping’s trip, but the days in the middle, when he spent a little time in Iowa. Xi first visited Iowa in 1985, when he was an official in Hebei province, and this trip was a …

Book Review: Keeping The Nation’S House, Elizabeth Lacouture

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 1940, China’s Nationalist Ministry of Education issued a decree from its wartime capital of Chongqing. At a time when Japan occupied China’s eastern seaboard and the Communists controlled the north, the Ministry called on educators and homemakers to “cultivate children’s happiness.” Doing more with less, teachers and mothers were supposed to make children believe that “even if the food is unsatisfactory, the clothes are inadequate, or the habitation is insufficient… it is still very good” (p. 1). In Keeping the Nation’s House, Helen Schneider explores how Chinese educators and the Chinese state transformed the seemingly frivolous and individualistic bourgeois …

Excerpt: Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom, Stephen R. Platt

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A big new China book to hit shelves in recent weeks is Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, written by University of Massachusetts, Amherst historian Stephen Platt. Platt places the Taiping Rebellion in a global context, emphasizing its importance to American and European observers of the conflict, whose economic ties to China made them keenly interested in the country’s domestic situation. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom also offers new insights into how the Taiping Rebellion tied into Chinese internal politics, particularly the ways in which the Taiping rebels sought …

Book Review: Modern China’S Network Revolution, Brett Sheehan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The title of Zhongping Chen’s new book has a double meaning. Modern China’s Network Revolution refers both to his claim for new, revolutionary forms of networking among lower-Yangzi Chinese elites at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries and to the revolutionary roles of those networks in elite mobilization, especially in the 1911 revolution which overthrew the Qing. As such, the book makes a meaningful contribution to debates on the nature of Chinese organizational practices, especially merchant organizational practices, and to debates about the nature of late-Qing elite mobilization and the relationship of those mobilized elites …

The First Asian Man: The Story Behind The Jeremy Lin Story, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are good reasons why Jeremy Lin deserves the extensive news coverage he has received recently: a Harvard grad playing in the NBA, he had an indispensible role in the Knicks’ 9-2 run before losing to Miami on February 23, averaging 23.9 points and 9.2 assists in 11 games. Yet the extraordinary “Linsanity” displayed by the mass media seems to suggest that what makes Lin’s story so notable is what it says about perceptions of Asian masculinity. In Lin, the media has finally found an Asian man.

Letter From Little Lhasa, Reshma Patil

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The runaway from a Tibetan village in Naba, China, led the way down the slippery dirt track to the doorstep of a restaurant with a Potala Palace bereft of tourists and soldiers painted on its blue walls. The Tibetan-speaking attendant at Chonor House politely declined to serve my first meal in McLeod Ganj. The kitchens were functioning only for hotel guests until the end of Losar. The three-day Tibetan New Year passed uncelebrated earlier this month in the Indian hill-town teeming with Tibetan exiles who give Dharamshala the moniker of Little Lhasa. The exiled Tibetan government is edged higher in …

Chinese Youth: A Quick Q And A With Mary Bergstrom, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Whenever I take a trip that includes stops in Shanghai and Beijing, two people I make sure to meet up with are Jeremy Friedlein and David Moser, the Academic Directors of the CET study abroad programs in those cities. I do this for several reasons. One is that CET has deep ties to China Beat, since the blog’s founding editor Kate Merkel-Hess and current editor Maura Cunningham are both alums. Another reason is that, for almost two years now, CET has been sponsoring a series of literary events at M on the Bund (in Shanghai) and now also Capital M …

“Unwavering Public Support” Not Quite So Easy To Find These Days, Duncan Hewitt

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It was just like old times—in many of China’s major newspapers, a prominently displayed half-page story headlined: “Officials and citizens all across the country express unwavering support for central party leadership’s decision.” It followed hot on the heels of the previous day’s People’s Daily headline: “Resolutely support the party’s correct decision,” which appeared on many front pages. In the wake of the stunning news that Bo Xilai, one of China’s most prominent politicians, had been suspended from the ruling Politburo, and his wife arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, the Chinese Communist …

Book Review: The Gender Of Memory, Nicole Elizabeth Barnes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Gail Hershatter and her Shaanxi-native research collaborator Gao Xiaoxian (of the Shaanxi Provincial Women’s Federation) spent ten years interviewing 72 women and a few men in rural Shaanxi province in northwest China. The Gender of Memory, Hershatter’s sole-authored product of this joint effort, fills a crucial gap in historiography of the 1950s, providing the first personal stories of land reform, the 1950 Marriage Law, collectivization, and the Great Leap Forward. Moreover, through incisive gender analysis, Hershatter illustrates how gender determined not only how Chinese women and men lived their lives, but also how they remember them. Whereas male interviewees …

A Q&A; With Janet Chen, Author Of Guilty Of Indigence, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Every society sees and treats its poorest members differently. The distinctive way that Victorian Britain dealt with poverty is a central theme in many novels by Charles Dickens, the prolific author whose books are getting even more attention as the bicentennial of his birth is being marked. For those more interested in India’s present than England’s past, the book of the moment on this theme seems to be Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, which is earning enthusiastic advance reviews and is due out soon (coincidentally or not on February 7, Dickens’ …

Book Review: Phoenix: The Life Of Norman Bethune, David Webster

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Millions of Chinese have memorized Mao Zedong’s 1939 lines “In Memory of Norman Bethune,” written soon after the Canadian surgeon’s death amidst the war against Japan. As a result, Bethune remains the best-known Canadian in China, still outstripping comedian Dashan (Mark Rowswell).

“Comrade Bethune’s spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people,” Mao wrote, extolling Bethune’s “spirit of absolute selflessness.” If Bethune was pure selflessness and internationalist heroism after coming to China, it was only after …

Ai In Mumbai, Reshma Patil

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Chinese artist offered a firm handshake and his business card. The Indian curator hesitated for a split second. They were, after all, standing in a men’s loo in Gwangju, South Korea. The curator returned to Mumbai, a financial powerhouse that several Chinese artists in the study group at Gwangju had never heard of. “What is Mumbai?” they asked him. The artist, who happened to know where Mumbai lies, returned to his studio in Beijing. He and the curator communicated via email for over a year. There were long silent gaps, until one day this year, the curator received a …

A Flourishing Profession: Reflections On A Career In Asian Studies, Charlotte Furth

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the March annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, held in Toronto, the association recognized Charlotte Furth with the AAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies. Furth is Professor Emerita of history at the University of Southern California and has written and edited five books, including A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960-1665 (UC Press, 1999). Below is an expanded version of remarks that Furth gave at the AAS award ceremony, in which she reflects on the changes to Asian Studies that have taken place since she entered the field in 1959, particularly regarding the …

Prevented Or Missed Chinese-Indochinese Encounters During Wwi: Spatial Imperial Policing In Metropolitan France, Tobias Frederik Rettig

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Amina Bath

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

From Philosopher To Cultural Icon: Reflections On Hu Mei's "Confucius" (2010), Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Ronald K. Frank, Renqiu Yu, Bing Xu

Global Asia Journal

No abstract provided.

Cracks In The Empire: Reflections Of French Journalists And Authors On The Crisis In 1930s Indochina, Henri Copin, Tobias Rettig

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The events of the early 1930s in Vietnam left an important legacy to France's literature of enquiry and protest. Writers, essayists and journalists enquired on behalf of their audiences, and in the process developed France's littérature coloniale. By showing an interest in the colonial 'other' and identifying discrepancies between imperial ideology and colonial reality, they formed a new body of thought. This new colonial humanism arguably changed metropolitan sensibilities towards the French civilizing mission. Nevertheless, while they are critical of colonial abuses and in favour of reforms, the authors discussed in this paper do not really question the French colonial …

Special Issue: Revisiting And Reconstructing The Nghê Tinh Soviets, 1930-2011, Tobias Frederik Rettig

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The seven papers presented here constitute the first collective effort in a Western language to revisit the Nghe Tinh Soviets of 1930–31. The Nghe Tinh movement, its name a compound of two neighbouring provinces in the north-central part of the French protectorate of Annam, not only occupies a special place in the history of the early Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) but also became a site for animated debate on the causes of agrarian unrest that produced two of the most influential books in South East Asian Studies: James Scott’s Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976); and Samuel Popkin’s The Rational …

Re-Evaluating Vietnam’S Nghe-Tinh Soviets (1930-1931) Using A Historical Gis: Some Preliminary Observations, David W. Del Testa

Faculty Journal Articles

The Nghe-Tinh Soviets of 1930-1931, a rebellion against colonial authority in north-central and central colonial Vietnam, has received extensive analysis by a variety of commentators and scholars, both Vietnamese and not. Most scholars, Vietnam and internationally, settled on some view of immiseration combined with the presence of pro-communist organizers as the motive forces for the rebellion, but a few have favored questions of political dissatisfaction and local empowerment as underlying motivations for revolt. Until recently, examining the rebellion on a gross scale in order to test either theory has proven difficult, with a surfeit of information but no easy way …

Being Blacklisted By China, And What Can Be Learned From It, James A. Milward

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Bloomberg, and more recently The Washington Post, have run stories about the visa problems of scholars who contributed to Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, a volume edited by Frederick Starr and published by M.E. Sharpe in 2004. The Bloomberg piece was exhaustively reported; the reporters who wrote it, Dan Golden and Oliver Staley, conducted interviews with Chinese as well as western participants in the episode, and all in all did a good job with a complicated story. Inevitably, however, the Bloomberg piece creates some misconceptions, and these are as likely to be reinforced as cleared up in news reports that build …

Working Women In Choson Korea: An Exploration Of Women's Economic Activities In A Patriarchal Society, Michael J. Pettid

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This paper examines the economic activities of women in Choson Korea in an attempt to uncover the realities of their lives in terms of economic contribution and support of the well-being of their households. Despite the prevailing rhetoric of the "Confucianization" of late Choson, it is the belief of this writer that such a situation probably did not apply strictly to rural society or in matters of the necessity of economic strength. Rather I will argue that the economic realities of late Choson and farm life in general valued the labor and contributions of all members of a household, and …

A New, Post-Lee Kuan Yew Era, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Eugene Tan, asst prof of law at SMU writes a commentary on Minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew's departure and how it reinforces the belief that the Singapore systems is based on institutions, not personalities.

Book Review: Fractured Rebellion, Amy O'Keefe

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Walder creates an orderly account of the events, discussions, and political currents that comprised the student movement in Beijing during the first two years of China’s Cultural Revolution. With meticulous attention to sequencing, he comprehends and brings meaning to a whirlwind of events often described as a vindictive political free-for-all, but which he shows, instead, to have been a structured series of rivalries.

Passport To The World: Chinese Students At The University Of Kentucky, Denise Ho, Jared Flanery

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My Thursday afternoon flight from Shanghai to Chicago exhibited a curious phenomenon. United Airlines Flight 836, which went from China to Midwestern America on August 19, 2010, had the most homogenous set of passengers I had ever seen. They were all in their late teens and early twenties, Chinese youth dressed in the trendiest fashions and carrying the latest electronics. I was so impressed that I broke my rule about photographing people, popped up in my seat in the corner of economy class, and took their picture.

Whether United knew it or not, my flight was a modern school bus, …

Havel, China And Africa, Howard W. French

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I am eager to read Chinese news accounts of the life and death of Vaclav Havel, whose central message might be summed up as the necessity for individuals everywhere to cast off their apathy and assume their rights – and agency – as citizens.

The death of this figure of major importance to the history of the late- and post-Cold War world will inevitably generate talk that is heavily focused on Europe, just as the attention of the Western media and foreign ministries tended to stay almost exclusively bracketed on this region (with China, for a time, serving as a …

Liminal City, Rian Dundon

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

He says he’s lost his city and his society. We drive past a group of demonstrators protesting land seizures. He points out the scene and the gaggle of police cruisers nearby and grins in English “this is Chi-na”, emphasizing the play-on-words between “Chi” and “Chai” (chai, or 拆 being Chinese for “dismantle” or “demolish”). He sees the city’s recent prosperity through a filter of isolation, exclusion, and greed. Tells me how the doors are all closed. How peoples’ sense of self worth is determined by the number of contacts in their cell phones. How they are drifting further …

Review: Consent Of The Networked, Anne Henochowicz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The last two years have seen much talk about the explosion of social media as a tool of real change, most notably during the Arab Spring. Tunisia’s and Egypt’s revolutions were powered by Twitter and Facebook. Though these sites are blocked in China, Sina’s microblogging platform Weibo has also changed the political game in that country, forcing government accountability after last summer’s high-speed train crash in Wenzhou and contributing to the very public downfall of former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai. Weibo’s power may also lead to its demise. After rumors of a coup attempt spread recently, the comment function …

Obama, The Dalai Lama, And Us-China Relations: The Current State Of Affairs

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In early 2010, when President Obama met with the Dalai Lama, this made a considerable splash both in the news media and in diplomatic circles, and there have been various repercussions from Beijing’s side when other foreign leaders have met with the Tibetan figure. Obama’s July 16 meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington, DC led to a furious reaction within hours from Beijing, perhaps even stronger than in the past. So we decided to ask Robbie Barnett, the Director of Columbia University’s Modern Tibetan Studies Program, the author of works such as Lhasa: Streets with Memories, and a long-time …

China’S Empty Apartments, Michael Gsovski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are serious problems in the Chinese housing market. While the average urban resident has to deal with constant rent hikes and the threat of eviction in the face of new construction, the rich buy extra apartments to shield their wealth against inflation. Not only is this an economic threat, but in China it is a particular threat to stability as well. Firstly, since the turbulent boom years of the China’s opening and reform period, owning housing has been seen as a useful hedge for ordinary people against an otherwise uncertain economic situation. Secondly, owning—rather than renting—an apartment or other …

Your Discourse Or Mine?, Silvia Lindtner

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As scholars we speak frequently in public and are confronted with various interpretations of our work by others who at times do not share our own viewpoints. Though this often brings with it excitement at the opportunity to form bridges between academic and other discourses, reaching audiences beyond our own disciplines and engaging a wider public still remains a challenge for many of us. We look at these conversations as opportunities for further debate, for mutual learning, and for being introduced to different perspectives on our work. At times, how one’s work finds resonance elsewhere surprises, illuminating the scholar’s responsibility …