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 …

Ann Marie Chua Lee Interview, Jasmin M. Ortiz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 Interview with cosplay costume designer Anne Marie Chua Lee by Jasmin M. Ortiz

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 …

The Outsourcing Of Creative Work And The Limits Of Capability: The Case Of The Philippines Animation Industry, Feichin Ted Tschang, Andrea Goldstein

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The animation industry, like many information-technology-enabled services sectors, has been of interest to many developing countries interested in developing services outsourcing industries. We analyze the case of the Philippines' animation industry. This paper investigates the outsourcing process in animation and the nature of capabilities within that, with the goal of contributing to a more general understanding of services outsourcing. We examine the industry's history, interview data with industry participants, and secondary data. We find that strong labor force skills have been central to capabilities rather than organizational abilities. Outsourcing of production takes place only so far as the work is …

A New Approach To Human Rights (And China), William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The focus of dialogue with Beijing about human rights should shift from enforcing universal laws towards building a shared moral identity, says William A Callahan.

Congkak, A Game That Connects Us With The World, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Imagining “Indonesia”: Ethnic Chinese Film Producers In Pre-Independence Cinema, Charlotte Setijadi, Thomas Barker

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this paper, we aim to re-examine the roles of ethnic Chinese filmmakers in Indonesian cinematic history as a preliminary study in the reconsideration of the early years of the film industry. Here, we regard the simplification of history in the film industry as part of a broader attempt by nationalist and New Order ideologues to “appropriate” the origins of cinema and “ ” in Indonesia. On the same note, we argue that the narrative tradition that privileges “indigenous” filmmakers as the originators of asli (authentic ortrue) Indonesian culture on screen reflects the dominant yet narrow definition of nationalism as …

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.