Asian Studies Commons^™

The (Model) Un Comes To Beida, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In our ongoing effort to draw attention from time to time to blogs about China we come across and like (as we did in this recent post), we want to let our readers know about an intriguing one we’ve just started following. Six, maintained by Alec Ash, was recently singled out by CNReviews (another new addition to our RSS feed list, which we’ll doubtless start linking to regularly now that we’ve discovered it) as one of the “ten eclectic China blogs” worth following.

Rather than explain Six’s features to you, we asked Ash to let us repost a piece from …

The New May Fourth Spirit, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat has been running excerpts from Philip J Cunningham’s forthcoming memoir, Tiananmen Moon; Inside the Chinese Student Uprising in 1989, which will be published in May by Rowman & Littlefield. This excerpt addresses the events of May 4, 1989. Readers can also read the first, second, and third in this series at China Beat or read more at Cunningham’s website.

The sun is rising. At Beijing Normal University, red flags flutter and unfurl in the early morning breeze above the sports ground. Thousands of students mill about, excitedly falling into groups and lining up to take to the streets …

China Beat Comments

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We wanted to let our readers know that we will be discontinuing comments at the site for the foreseeable future. China Beat is committed to ensuring that the discussions that take place here are productive and respectful, but we unfortunately do not currently have the time to edit and post content as well as manage the comments that come in.

In the interim, we will be considering how we might reconfigure the site more generally, which in part involves exploring ways to procure a little funding to support what we do.

You can always email us if you need to …

China’S Bottom Line, David Moser

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This text message is being passed around virally this May 1st holiday. For the first time in my memory, China is feeling safe and comfortable at home. From their vantage point, it’s the rest of the world going to hell!

五一何所见?

北美猪疫黯.

美汽车破产.

法总统服软.

韩审卢武铉.

朝嚷放火箭.

巴伊阿泰惨.

街头扔炸弹.

他乱由他乱.

咱享咱平安.

It’s May First: What’s the bottom line?

North America hit by flu from swine.

U.S. car companies in sharp decline.

The French president has lost his spine.

Roh Moo-hyun’s on the firing line.

The North Korean missile fell into the brine.

Israel, Afghanistan, Thailand, Palestine —

Everywhere you step, a …

Intellectuals And The Nation In China And India: A Roundtable Report

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last Friday, China Beat and the UCI International Center for Writing and Translation (ICWT<) hosted a public roundtable with UC Riverside professor Perry Link and Tiananmen activist Wang Chaohua weighing in on the China side, and writer Pankaj Mishra (a frequent friend of the China Beat) and UCI professorVinayak Chaturvedi speaking about India. China Beat and UCI’s Jeff Wasserstrommoderated the roundtable discussion, and asked the panelists to consider “dates ending in 9” of specific relevance for China (1919, 1949, 1959, 1979, and 1989) and India (where 9-2 seems to be a more pertinent number, as in 1857 and 1947).

Vinayak Chaturvedi began with a discussion of 1909 as the year of publication of 2 foundational texts in Indian nationalism: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (or Indian Home Rule) and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Indian War of Independence: 1857, a history of the 1857 “mutiny” (if you were British) and “war of independence” (if you were Indian). [Readers who are intrigued by the reflections of one Vinayak, a UCI professor, on another Vinayak, a Hindu nationalist, can read Dr. Chaturvedi’s article on the same subject in Social History vol. …

May Fourth Movement: Top Five Readings, Rana Mitter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The May Fourth Movement – so famous in China it doesn’t need a year, although 1919 – the year it happened – has become legendary too. On that date, some three thousand students marched through Beijing demonstrating against Japanese imperialism and started a political movement that would become identified with Chinese demands for “science” and “democracy” through the next century. From the Cultural Revolution to Tian’anmen Square, May Fourth echoes through China’s modern history. The Chinese Communist Party still claims the movement as its point of origin. On May 4, 2009, the movement will be ninety years old. In some …

A Monster Mash(Up) With Chinese Characteristics: Breaking News From The Prc For Those Intrigued By The "Pride And Prejudice And Zombies" Phenomenon

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

By the end of this post, readers will have been able to click on a word to be introduced to the sounds of “Redgrass Music” (a genre that uses Chinese instruments in a novel manner), seen the special look of a curious vehicle recently displayed in Shanghai that one journalist has said should be called a “Lexiac” ( like a Pontiac from the front, like a Lexus from behind), and discovered something important that Zhang Yimou and Jane Austen have in common (hint: surprise appearances by the undead are involved in each case). First, though, some background about “mash-ups” (aka …

Digital Traces Of 1989

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat sent out a note to a few scholars and journalists who have carefully watched and written about the events of 1989, asking them to send in short commentaries detailing what they wish more people knew, associated with, or remembered about that spring. We ran the first piece in this limited series, by John Gittings, on April 23, the second, by Jonathan Unger, on April 26. This is the third piece.

Yang Guobin is an Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College. He has written essays on many subjects, including the students protests of 1989, …

Reprint: Conflicts And Clashes Are The Social Norm, Sun Liping

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat checks in regularly with Xujun Eberlein at her blog Inside-Out China, and we’ve run pieces by Xujun in the past. In early April, she ran another in her series of translations of Chinese materials. We thought this continuation of her translation of Professor Sun Liping‘s works on social protest was interesting enough to reproduce in full (with Xujun’s permission).

Note: About a month ago I translated an essay from Prof. Sun titled “The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown.” His rational and perceptive view attracted wide interest from readers, and that post was linked by …

Tiananmen Moon: Beida Summit, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the second time in a day I’m on the run with Chai Ling. For the second time in a month I find myself in a beat-up jalopy racing towards the Beida student center at Sanjiaodi. Again I am huddled together with members of the vanguard, only this time it’s not musicians wanting to know what the students are up to but the student leadership itself.

The interior of a moving van is a reasonably good place to hide, assuming the driver is trustworthy and the vehicle not bugged. Chai Ling sits behind me in the third row, curled up …

The Tiananmen Protestors, Then And Now, Jonathan Unger

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Looking back in time from a distance of two decades, we are apt to forget the economic circumstances in which the nationwide protests of 1989 arose, as well as the vantage points of the protests’ participants.

In the late 1980s, people across China felt frustrated and angered by inflation and mounting corruption. This dissatisfaction had been moving toward a crisis point over the previous couple of years despite the fact that urban living standards, on the whole, had been rising steadily throughout most of the Eighties. But expectations of a better life had been rising even faster, and when inflation …

The Boston Long Bow Group, Chai Ling And “The Gate Of Heavenly Peace”: Geremie R. Barmé Responds To "China Beat"

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In several previous posts, we’ve directed our readers to the prize-winning film “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” and the excellent accompanying website, which provides a wealth of information for those seeking to understand the complex events of 1989. The film has generated controversy from the start, but we’ve learned that there’s now a new development, a lawsuit directed against the film-makers. To learn more about the situation, we’ve turned to Geremie Barmé, whose role in the film and the website have been described before. Here are the questions we’ve put to him and his answers:

CB: What exactly is the …

The Forgotten Meaning Of Tiananmen, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Tiananmen” is a taboo topic in China. But even in places where it is remembered and commemorated, the Beijing student movement of 1989 is best known for its bloody ending on June 4, a tragic turning point of unquestioned significance, but one which tends to obscure the amazing weeks of restraint, harmony and cooperation in crowds that swelled to a million at the height of an entirely peaceful and extremely popular social movement.

Twenty years ago, as hundreds of thousands demonstrated day after day in Beijing, as ordinary citizens joined in or supported the student protesters with offers of food, …

Jokes From Post-Reform China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last week, we ran the first part of a series of popular Chinese jokes, translated by Guo Qitao, a UCI history professor. While the earlier jokes were from the Cultural Revolution period, the two jokes presented today are more recent and address issues at the core of the Chinese people’s concerns about their nation: responsible governance, inequality, and corruption.

江泽民来到天安门城楼上。

江泽民来到天安门城楼上。

往南看，贪官污吏一大片；

往北看，下岗工人八百万；

往东看，走私货轮正靠岸；

往西看，百姓全是穷光蛋；

往下看，法轮功还在转；

往上看，美国导弹到处窜；

往后看，接班人挤向前；

往前看，问毛主席怎么办？

毛主席说：你下来躺着，我起来干。

Jiang Zemin mounted the gate at Tiananmen Square to survey the scene.[1] Looking south, he saw a sea of grubby officials all on the take; Looking north, eight million workers …

Reflecting On Tiananmen, 20 Years Later

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat sent out a note to a few scholars and journalists who have carefully watched and written about the events of 1989, asking them to send in short commentaries detailing what they wish more people knew, associated with, or remembered about that spring. Here is the first of their responses. John Gittings is a research associate with the Centre for Chinese Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies and a former writer and editor at The Guardian. He is the author of The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Marketand numerous other books and articles, including …

It’S Just History: Patriotic Education In The Prc, Julia Lovell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s now a year since Chinese nationalism had its last big public outing. On April 19, 2008, twelve days after pro-Tibet protesters in Paris tried to grab the Olympic flame from a wheelchair-bound Chinese paralympian, patriotic civilians began mobilising protests around the French embassy in Beijing, and outside Carrefours in at least four different Chinese cities. “Protect Our Tibet! Bless Our Olympics! Boycott Carrefour!” declared banners at demonstrations on the northeast coast. “Say No to French Imperialists!”

As popular outrage grew about perceived anti-Chinese bias in Western reporting on the riots in Tibet and opposition to the torch relay, more …

Tiananmen Moon: Excerpt, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Tiananmen,” whispers Chai Ling.

“What?” I ask, comprehending without comprehension.

“I’d like to see Tiananmen, one last time.”

We skip the turn to the train station—she and Wang Li had been talking about catching the first train out of Beijing– and instead continue east on Chang’an. As the car approaches the familiar student-controlled zone around Tiananmen Square, I try to make sense of what we are doing.

I had just delivered to the international media a candid interview with a wanted student leader who said she is going to run away, while speaking forthrightly about imminent bloodshed and the desire …

China Events: Dc And Boston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’ve published a few pieces lately on China’s coming water crisis, including Ken Pomeranz’s “China’s Water Woes” (2/12/09). Tomorrow (April 22 from 9-11 a.m. EST), the Wilson Center will host a roundtable on “Asia’s Next Challenge — Securing the Region’s Water,” for those interested in learning more. For those who aren’t in the DC-area, the talks (by Saleem Ali, Geoff Dabelko, Suzanne DiMaggio) will be webcast live (so you can log onto the above link to watch).

Readers in the Boston area might be interested in this upcoming event on Chinese media at the Fairbank Center:

Does the Party Still …

In Case You Missed It: Uncle Ho And Uncle Sam, A. Tom Grunfeld

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

During the wars in Indochina, Americans exhibited little interest in the histories of the nations their country was ravaging. This is not so dissimilar from today, as the United States wages wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any discernable uptick in the sales of history books which would allow for a greater understanding of current events in a broader historical perspective.

The vast majority of Americans remained ignorant of the history of Vietnamese-American relations; especially of one of the most fascinating and improbable events – the brief period when the Vietnamese nationalist and communist leader Ho Chi Minh worked for …

Intellectuals And The Nation In China And India: A Public Roundtable

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The China Beat is very slowly beginning to co-sponsor real events. Our first is this coming Friday. Friday April 24, 2009, 2:00—3:30, in HIB [Humanities Instructional Building] 110 on the UC Irvine Campus

Sponsors:

UCI’s International Center for Writing and Translation

“The China Beat,” a UCI-based Group Blog

Co-sponsors:

The UCI History Department, the Center for Asian Studies, and the UCI Bookstore

Advances And Advance Notice

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We were delighted to come across a piece by Friend of the Blog Michael Meyer (called “About That Book Advance…“) in last week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review section. We figured, based on the author’s track record as a writer (and the insightfulness of his comments when talking about his work), that this piece would be lively and offer some illumination on an interesting topic and that it might also have some China tidbits. Well, it was not just illuminating (explaining how tough it can be for an author to live on what sounds at first like a very …

Jokes From The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

(Part One) Understanding jokes in another language is often the highest test of fluency, based as they often are on puns and insider cultural knowledge. When Guo Qitao, professor of Chinese history at University of California, Irvine, mentioned to us that he collects clever Chinese jokes, we asked if he might share a few at China Beat. Even better–he offered to translate and gloss them. The first set we offer here are of jokes from the Cultural Revolution, a period when political rhetoric and in-fighting predominated in the public sphere. Through these jokes, we see the way that Chinese people …

A China Beat Reader: 6/4

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Over the past year-plus, China Beat has run several pieces related to the 1989 protests. For readers who may have missed them originally (or wish for a refresher), here is a short list:

1. Par Cassel, “The Gate of Heavenly Pacification” (6/18/08): “Tian’anmen is by no means a peaceful name, but a name rather fitting to a fledging empire that anxiously protected its claims to legitimacy and busied itself with suppressing rebellion and dissent wherever they showed up.”

2. “Liu Si,” looking backward and forward (6/4/08): Two lists of suggested readings, one on the events of 1989 and another on …

Tiananmen Moon: Preface, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

If getting caught up in a popular uprising in China has taught me anything, it is that the past, present and future flow together as one with ferocious intensity. Looking back now at the eventful uprising at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 makes it all the more clear that what happened there was shaped by things that came before; and today’s China, basking in a post-Olympic glow and new-found national strength, is still profoundly haunted by the seminal events of 1989, though the topic is strictly taboo in the media and still feared by influential people in the leadership. …

Twenty Years: Preparing For The 6/4 Anniversary

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Some China Beat contributors have mentioned to us that they’ve been receiving requests from journalists and teachers for resources to turn to in writing and teaching about the up-coming twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting lists of resources—some online, others in print.

This first list of readings is based entirely on a single website, “Tiananmen: The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” which presents varied perspectives on China’s 1989, with info about an important Long Bow Group film (The Gate of Heavenly Peace, 1995) and diverse online readings, available full-text. China Beat views the …

Beijing Sixty-Six: Portrait Of A Lost Generation, Jean Loh

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A friend of the blog forwarded to us information about a current exhibition in Shanghai, “Beijing Sixty Six,” which features startling photographs of the Cultural Revolution by Solange Brand. The curator of the show, Jean Loh of Galerie Beaugeste, kindly agreed to write a piece for us about reactions to the exhibit, as well as allowing us to share a few of these recently-uncovered photographs. You can learn more about the exhibit at Facebook, City Weekend, or about Galerie Beaugeste (located on Taikang lu) at its website.

In 2002, the cofounder of the Pingyao International Photography Festival, Alain Jullien, invited …

From Mumbai To Beijing: China For Indian Readers, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the land of news-meets-the-Internet, China has been fertile soil for very interesting blogs by journalists. There’s Evan Osnos’ Letters from China at theNew Yorker, the China Journal at the Wall Street Journal, Pomfret’s China (John Pomfret, that is) from the Washington Post, James Fallows‘ often-China blog onThe Atlantic, Peter Foster and Richard Spencer at the Telegraph, The New York Times reporter Howard French’s non-New York Times’ blog, and last but not least, Tim Johnson’s long-standing China Rises for McClatchy Newspapers. Though this list is long, it is not exhaustive.

Perhaps what is most interesting about these blogs is the …

Of Books, Bloggers, And The Buddha

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With the anniversaries of the 1959 (and 2008) Tibetan Uprisings just past, Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism has been much in the news in the past few months. But Buddhism more generally has been popping up in world news. A few readings on the topic…

1) “Six episodes” are distilled from Donald Lopez’s new book Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed at University of Chicago Press’s website. Here’s one:

Although hailed in Victorian Europe for its rejection of the Indian caste system and its championing of the spiritual potential of all social classes, Buddhism also played a role in …

Interview With Bo Caldwell—Author Of "The Distant Land Of My Father," A Shanghai Novel, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Preface to the Interview (by Jeff Wasserstrom): When I was working on Global Shanghai, 1850-2010, I thought I was keeping up with the fiction as well as non-fiction that was being published about the city—at least things coming out in English and Chinese. Somehow, though, Bo Caldwell’s excellent 2001 Shanghai novel, The Distant Land of My Father, passed me by initially. I didn’t learn of it until the Pasadena Public Library invited me to give a public lecture on Shanghai’s past to provide background for an upcoming author’s visit. This would be part of their “One City, One Story” program, …

China In 2008 Price Drop

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last Wednesday, Amazon dropped the price of China in 2008 to its lowest yet–just over $20 (the price has been fluctuating over the past couple weeks). And the site has also bundled China in 2008 with Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones for about $30, so if any River Town fans never got around to ordering the second book by one of our contributors, now would be a great time to do so.

Amazon’s book bundling can be a little hit or miss, so we were wondering who Amazon would pair China in 2008 with, and were hoping it wasn’t a book …