Asian Studies Commons^™

证婚人: A Memoir, Jacob Dreyer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

While living in Shanghai last year, Jacob Dreyer found himself working as a 证婚人 [zhenghunren] in one of the city’s many wedding facilities. Translated as “wedding officiant,” “priest for weddings,” or “wedding witness,” zhenghunrenhas no real equivalent in the West. The role involves leading the wedding ceremony, but there is no need for a zhenghunren to be certified or authorized to perform weddings — which is one reason Dreyer was able to slip into the position so easily.

Shanghai, September 2009. It was the time of year when it was just beginning to be crisp. At a party at night, …

Upcoming Event: Ying Zhu On Google And China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Ying Zhu, Professor of Media Culture at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island, will be giving a talk on Friday, February 12 at Google’s Manhattan headquarters, beginning at noon. Although the event is not open to the public, a limited number of guest passes can be arranged; anyone interested in attending can contact her by e-mailing Ying.Zhu[at]csi.cuny.edu

Ying Zhu’s presentation, titled “Emerging Critical Masses and Shifting State-Society Relations in China,” will focus on Google’s recent tensions with China, as well as the adventures of Avatar in Chinese theaters, to explore the concept of China’s emerging “critical …

U.S.-China Relations: A Quick Q-And-A With Warren I. Cohen, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

While trying to keep up with the latest twists and turns of U.S.-China relations, something I recently wrote about for Time magazine’s Asian edition, I learned that a new edition of a book on the topic that I’ve learned a lot from, and also assigned in a recent undergraduate class, is about to come out from Columbia University Press. The book is Warren I. Cohen’s America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, and this will be its fifth edition. Given the current interest in interactions and tensions between Washington and Beijing, I decided to ask Cohen (whose name …

A Conversation On “Confucius” With Daniel A. Bell, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The film Confucius premiered in Beijing last month, to a backdrop of controversyover Avatar being dropped from cinemas to make way for more patriotic fare. I saw the film last weekend with Chinese student friends, and we couldn’t hold back the occasional open snigger: in a word, Confucius is cornier than maize. It also raises interesting questions about the selective interpretation and political uses that modern China makes of its ancient Confucian tradition.

I put some of these questions to Daniel A. Bell, Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University, who has written widely on Confucianism (including pieces for The China …

Six Takes On Martin Jacques, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have a commentary that’s just appeared online at time.com (it’s in print as well in Time Asia’s February 8 issue), in which I focus on the distinction between what I call “Big China Books” (with “titles that cry out to be put in bold type”) and the quite different works that take a “worm’s eye” rather than “bird’s eye” view of the country, and which usually avoid predictive assertions. I state my preference for the latter genre, which I call forays into “scholarly reporting,” taking my cue fromAndrew Ross.

While I mention several books falling into each category, the …

Coming Distractions: Country Driving, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I made my initial foray into China studies in the fall of 2000, when I took a course called “Travelers in History.” Beginning with The Travels of Marco Polo, we moved forward through the centuries, reading a sampling of China-related travel narratives as well as works by historians looking back at those who had journeyed to and from China (such as The Question of Hu by Jonathan Spence and Peter Hopkirk’s Foreign Devils on the Silk Road). For the “modern” period, we read Paul Theroux’sRiding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China(1988). Although I thoroughly enjoyed Theroux’s book, and thought …

In Case You Missed Them: Books By Martin Jacques And Yasheng Huang, Howard French

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

During his first trip to China recently, Barack Obama was excoriated by pundits for his meekness on a host of issues, from Tibet to exchange rates to human rights. Newspaper commentary in the United States went on endlessly about the curtailment of American influence in an age where a fast-rising China has become this country’s main creditor. The event that supposedly crystallized all of this was the American-style town hall meeting the president had planned, but which the Chinese government appeared to control. In the end, Obama was limited to a stilted forum with an audience of carefully screened and …

Happy Birthday To Us . . .

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On January 14, 2008, the very first China Beat post went online

Google + China: Q-And-A With Mara Hvistendahl

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Below is a short Q-and-A that Jeff Wasserstrom conducted with Hvistendahl via e-mail.

Exchanges: Reconciling Confucianism And Socialism?, Daniel A. Bell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Today China Beat would like to introduce our new “Exchanges” feature, which we hope will become a regular item on the blog. The debate below, between Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer, was originally printed in the Winter 2010 issue of Dissent, and is reposted here with permission. We’d like to invite our readers to share their thoughts on this discussion, and will run a response from Daniel Bell in the coming weeks. Please send your comments and questions to thechinabeatgmail.com.

Photo: A World Of Ruins

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center organized a trip to teach English at a school built for the disaster victims of the big earthquake that shook Sichuan in 2008.

What Exactly Happened In Copenhagen?, Yu Zhou

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Commentary and coverage of China’s role at Copenhagen has been widespread in the past few weeks, including from some of the writers and journalists we pay close attention to like Xujun Eberlein, Pallavi Aiyar, and Evan Osnos, among many others. Here, China Beat contributor Yu Zhou critiques the reading of China’s role as it has developed in the Western press.

Reading Round-Up, 2/27/2010

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. Hat tip to China Digital Times for directing us to this video by Ian Johnson at the Wall Street Journal site. Johnson narrates a quick tour of the Palace of Eternal Joy (Yongle Gong) in remote Shanxi Province, where a 700-year-old Daoist mural covers the walls. The paintings include rare depictions of Daoist gods, as well as representations of Yuan Dynasty architecture, “very little of which has survived.” Amazingly, the temple housing the mural was disassembled and relocated, piece by piece, during the Mao era, as a planned Yellow River dam would have flooded its original location.

Listening On China (This Week)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We wanted to draw reader attention to a few interviews that aired this week from regular China Beat contributors.

Not Aesopian Enough: A Chinese Publishing Fable, James W. Loewen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In April 2008, Ma Wanli, a professor of American history at Nanchang Hangkong University in Nanchang, China, emailed me to introduce himself as the translator of the Chinese version of my U.S. best seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me. He also invited me to write a preface for this new edition. I agreed.

Notes On The Shanghai Expo, Jonathan Hwang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. One of my Chinese classmates mentioned that what really mattered for Chinese visitors were the big exhibitions: Japan, China, Europe, and the US. While still interested in the big exhibits, most Westerners were also astounded by the fact that North Korea and Iran were among the countries with pavilions at the Expo. The pavilions, although far from spectacular, showed a side of the “rogue” nations that is impossible to see in Western media, which often focuses on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and anti-US sentiment. The North Korean Pavilion showed video clips of the Mass Games and random shots …

Questioning The “Chinese Model Of Development”, Zhansui Yu

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese, following Chairman Mao’s famous phrase, tend to use the expression “like a fire burning in the wilderness” [燎原之火 liaoyuan zhi huo] to describe the unexpected rise and popularity of something marginalized or rebellious. Since the literary explosion in the years immediately after Mao’s death, mainland Chinese literary circles have rarely witnessed such a “wild fire.” Recently, however, a fierce literary “fire” suddenly broke out and shocked the entire Chinese intellectual world. The spark that ignited this fire is Chan Koon-chung’s 陈冠中 political novel Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 [盛世：中国 2013]. [1]

More Questions Than Answers, Michelle Yeh

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this month, we ran an opinion piece by Peter Zarrow concerning the plagiarism accusations against Tsinghua University Professor Wang Hui, in which Dr. Zarrow explained why he had signed a letter of support organized by international scholars and sent to Tsinghua’s president. The essay was picked up and circulated by the MCLC listserv, where it generated a number of comments. One of the responses came from Michelle Yeh of UC Davis, and we asked Dr. Yeh if she would expand her remarks and share them with China Beat readers. She has done so in the essay below, and also …

R.I.P. China Blogs?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We were amused to see that the most recent Sinica podcast was ominously titled “Death of the China Blog,” since here at China Beat we feel very much alive. To our relief, however, the discussion (among host Kaiser Kuo, Imagethief’s Will Moss, and Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn — who was good enough to do an interview with us last month) ended with the happy conclusion that while the China blogosphere has changed quite a bit in the past few years, it’s still going strong. We heartily agree.

Reading Round-Up: China And India

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• At the Wall Street Journal, Shefali Anand explains why India’s stock market is currently outperforming China’s:

Two Pku Professors On China’S Youth, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In late May and early June, I interviewed professors Zhang Weiying and Pan Wei of Peking University (known as ‘Beida’). I wanted to know what the generation who grew up in the Cultural Revolution thought of the generation who grew up in the Consumer Revolution – and who could be leading China in thirty years. Here’s what they said.

Reading Round-Up, 7/10/10

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Apple is opening its first Shanghai location this weekend, the kickoff to what one analyst describes as a planned “major invasion” of China (Apple projects that it will open twenty-five stores on the mainland in the next eighteen months). Read a New York Times article on the new store here; see here for pictures of the store up at Shanghaiist. The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report blog has an account of the store’s launch party here.

“The Heritage Of Shanghai”

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Read about all things Shanghai in the latest issue of China Heritage Quarterly, now online. In the “Features” section, you’ll find a photo essay on “Shanghai Modern” by Lois Conner

Over Exposure, Lisa Movius

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“The Expo story that couldn’t be printed.” That’s what editors at Shanghai’s City Weekend magazine found they had on their hands several weeks ago, when Chinese censors deemed the story below “too negative” to run. A revised version was subsequently submitted, approved by the censors, and printed in the January 20, 2010 issue. City Weekend decided not to post the original story on its website as planned, as they were told it was inadvisable due to an official caution against publishing media reports critical of the Expo. Here, we are pleased to share with China Beat readers the full, uncensored …

Lessons From Sichuan For Haitian Survivors, Sascha Matuszak

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China has just sent its second medical team to Haiti, along with 20 tons of supplies and five Chinese peacekeepers to replace the four who died in the earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince on January 12th. The current group replaces a set of Chinese International Search and Rescue workers and sniffer dogs who arrived in Haiti the day after the disaster struck.

Five C’S On China, Censorship, And Cyberspace

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re continuing to track the Google and China story, and wanted to call your attention to these particularly good pieces of writing — each of which brought a “c” adjective to mind:

Capturing Chinese With Help From Lu Xun

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’ve run several posts on Lu Xun at China Beat recently (including this one by Julia Lovell and this one by Sean Macdonald). While Lovell’s new translation of Lu Xun’s stories caters to an Anglophone audience, Kevin Nadolny wanted to create a reader that made Lu Xun more accessible to Chinese-language learners. His new text, Capturing Chinese: Short Stories from Lu Xun’s Nahan, features a fully glossed text of Lu Xun’s short stories so that language learners can focus on reading and comprehension rather than their dictionaries. Here, Kevin answers questions about his motivations for creating the reader and his …

When Skinny Is Too Thin

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Many Taiwanese are becoming increasingly concerned for the health of First Lady Chow Mei-ching 周美青 (Christine Chow Ma), who suffered a spinal injury after being bowled over by a group of overenthusiastic children while visiting a primary school in Pingtung 屏東 County on March 3. She was released from the hospital on March 16, but despite repeated Presidential Office reassurances that the First Lady is in good health doctors have ordered two months of additional bed rest, meaning that she had to miss the opening game of Taiwan’s professional baseball league on March 20 (the First Lady is an avid …

A New Book (Almost In The Bookstores) And Some Boston To Boulder Speaking Dates

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Back when the “China Beat” was in its infancy (figuring that blog years should be reckoned like dog years, it is now solidly in its adolescence), those of us involved in launching it thought that a fair amount of its content might well end up taking the form of “Self-Promotion Saturday” posts (shamelessly touting activities we’d been involved in) or “Coming Distractions” reviews (discussions of books that were about to appear, films that were in the works, upcoming conferences, etc.). Thankfully, the content has turned out to be much more varied, so these two features have only made up a …

The End Of The Revolution: China And The Limits Of Modernity

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When the Association for Asian Studies meets in Philadelphia later this week, one of the keynote speakers will be Tsinghua University professor and noted public intellectual Wang Hui, whose talk on Saturday evening is free and open to the public. A former editor of Dushu(“Reading”), Wang’s writings include China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition(Harvard, 2003), as well as a recently released collection of essays, The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (Verso, 2009). Here, we are pleased to share with China Beat readers an excerpt from the English edition introduction of The End …