Asian Studies Commons^™

Review: China’S Megatrends: The Eight Pillars Of A New Society, William A. Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The future is a hot topic in China; bookstores are full of tomes asserting the 21st century as China’s century: Liu Mingfu’s The China Dream(2010) and Chan Koon-chung’s The Gilded Era: China 2013 (2009) are but two of the most recent books that describe how China is destined to become the number one country in the world.

New Release: Coming To Terms With The Nation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On Monday, China’s decennial census began, sending six million census workers door-to-door in a quest to record and count the country’s population over the course of only ten days. A key issue in this census, according to some observers, will be placing China’s population in terms of place of residence. One thing analysts are waiting to find out, for example, is how many citizens of the PRC are described as living in cities rather than villages, as this census, which comes after a period of massive rural-to-urban migration, is supposed to describe where people physically live and work, not their …

As China Goes, So Goes The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Karl Gerth is a tutor and fellow at Merton College and a historian of modern China at Oxford University. His new book is As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything (Hill & Wang, 2010). (See this review by Christina Larson at the Washington Monthly and this oneat Kirkus Reviews for more on Gerth’s book.) Below, an excerpt from chapter 1 of As China Goes, which takes a look at one of the most notable phenomena of 21st-century Chinese life: the sudden boom in car ownership and its far-reaching consequences.

China Beat Is Heading To The Beach . . .

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

. . . well, not exactly. But we are taking a short vacation, to focus on wrapping up the academic year here at UC Irvine. We’ll be back online June 6 (though we will keep up our Twitter feed during the break, so follow us today!). Before we go, a few links we’d like to share:

“A Wildly Weird And Wonderful Event”

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For updates and insights on the 2010 Expo, one of the first places we turn isShanghai Scrap, where Shanghai-based writer Adam Minter has been following the story for almost two years. Minter’s Expo posts cover topics such as the emergence of Haibao (September 2008), the renovation of the Bund (December 2009) and demolition of neighborhoods (October 2009), and an ongoing in-depth investigation of the twisted saga of the U.S. pavilion (most recent posthere; full archive here). Minter also has an article and slideshow about the Expo atThe Atlantic. In the wake of last Saturday’s opening ceremony, we posed a few …

Bloggers’ Breakfast At Aas

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s become a tradition for China Beat contributors and friends of the blog to assemble at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting (as well as at the American Historical Association’s meeting) for a “bloggers’ breakfast” that provides China Beatniks the chance to get together and meet face-to-face — often for the first time, since so much of our business is conducted via e-mail. Last Saturday morning, we gathered at a Starbucks near the AAS conference site and talked about China, writing, and many other topics over coffee and pastries. A couple of photos from the AAS 2010 bloggers’ breakfast:

What I Read On My Summer Vacation (Part Ii), Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Moving across the country (from Irvine, California to State College, Pennsylvania) meant that most of my books—even the new ones—spent the summer packed in boxes. But alongside a rapid inhalation of all three Stieg Larsson novels, I still did a little China reading. Here, a few recommendations.

China’S Communist Party: Two Glimpses Inside, Thomas Kellogg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On August 16, 2010, China reached yet another milestone in its decades-long breakneck run of economic development: it became the world’s second largest economy. According to official economic data, China surpassed a still-struggling Japan, leaving it behind only the United States in terms of overall economic size. Some analysts predicted that China could pass the US to become the world’s largest economy as early as 2030.

Jean-Philippe Béja On Liu Xiaobo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In only a few hours, word will come from Oslo and the world will know whether or not this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is Chinese activist and author Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an eleven-year prison sentence for “subverting state authority.”Speculation about Liu’s odds has been running at a fever pitch this week, so much so that Irish bookmaker Paddy Power made an early payout to those who had put money on Liu by Tuesday. Authorities in Beijing, however, have made it clear that this is one international prize that China doesn’t want to win.

Book Review: Shanghai World Expo Guide 2010, Adam D. Frank

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On first blush, one would think that reviewing Nick Land’s Shanghai World Expo Guidebook 2010 would be an exercise akin to reviewing a movie poster for Avatar—a kind of 2-D portrait of a 3-D experience.

“Revolution By Eradication:” On The Khmer Rouge’S Making Of The Tragedy Of Cambodia, Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space . By James A. Tyner. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. 209pp.

Thai Students' Usage Of Mandarin Second-Person Pronoun "Ni" And "Nin", Seubpong Changboonchu

Asian Review

There are two forms of single second-person pronouns in Modern Chinese language, namely ni and nin Various factors should be considered between two communicating parties about which term is better to be used. The Thai language's secondperson pronoun system is quite similar to that of Modern Chinese language, but the forms in Thai are more diverse. In this paper, questionnaires and interviews are used to investigate Thai students' use of ni and nin. The findings show that Thai students use second-person pronouns differently from Chinese people whose usage is closely related to their mother tongue and culture.

Contributors

Asian Review

No abstract provided.

Sexuality, Love, And Marriage Of Chinese Women As Reflected In Post-Mao Era Novels By Women Writers, Usama Mahapasuthanon

Asian Review

This paper examines the changing patterns of and attitudes on sexuality, love, and marriage of Chinese women in the Post-Mao era, especially after 1985, as reflected in novels written by renowned Chinese women writers. The study shows that Chinese women in the novels have challenged the Confucian code of conduct for women on the preservation of chastity, open sexuality, and even the intimacy with the same sex, which were also taboos under the Mao regime. Chinese women in this era are aggressive in terms of love. Love is a part of the search for their own identities, for the completion …

Women, Sexuality And Political Achievement In Thai Society And Thai Literature, Orathai Piayura

Asian Review

Thai culture discourages involvement in politics, especially by women. In addition, a fear of being scandalized by political competitors leads many Thai women with high competence not to get involved with politics. Instead of illustrating the real situation of female politicians, Thai women writers choose to show a different picture. Politics and politicians in works composed by Duangjai and M.L. Bunluea Theppayasuwan belong in an ideal or fantasy world. This fantasy is comparable with female fantasy about sex. Just as female sexual fantasy arises from an unconscious desire about female sexuality that cannot really happen in reality, political fantasy is …

Tang Poetry And The Reproduction Of Nation-Building Ideology In Chinese Society, Patchanee Tangyuenyong

Asian Review

This article analyzes poetry during the Tang dynasty by using the cultural dimension as an analytical lens. I have selected eightyseven Tang poems dealing with war that were compiled in the Complete Tang Poetry (全唐诗 Quán Táng Shī), commissioned by the Kangxi 康熙 emperor of the Qing 清 dynasty (1644-1911 AD). The research paper takes the approach of discourse studies, which postulates that language, literature, culture, and society are inseparably related. These poems were compiled by the Qing court to shape tradition and form a dominant ideology in the society. They contain hidden agendas on subjects such as race, class, …

Gender And Social Status In Zeami's Noh Plays, Winai Jamornsuriya

Asian Review

This article studies women's power and negotiation illustrated in lovelorn heroines' roles in Noh plays, particularly those composed by Zeami (1363?—1443?), the most famous Japanese playwright during the fourteenth century. This article examines Zeami's eight Noh plays, analyzing the causes of separation and the heroine's sadness in these stories, to illustrate the gender power and social status of Japanese women at the time.

Rattlings From The Gender Prison: A Look At Contemporary Indian Children's Literature, Siriporn Sriwarakan

Asian Review

This paper analyzes selected works of Indian children's literature, both short stories and novels, to tackle the problem of sexism. Sexism constitutes discrimination between the sexes, preventing girls and women from their full emotional and intellectual development in their struggle for a full humanity in their own right. This struggle finds representation even in contemporary children's literature. The main characters in the works selected for this presentation are nearly all female, though one interesting case involves the evolution of a male protagonist in gender awareness. The female protagonists are strong and determined while the male protagonist learns to recognize the …

Khai Hung's Novels And The Vietnamese Mandarinate Between 1920 And 1945, Kimloan Vu-Hill

Asian Review

This article examines some major novels by Khai Hung, a well known writer in Vietnam in the period 1930-1945, to glean social developments in Vietnam during this period. While there was a significant social transformation in the public domain, as shown by scholarly works by David Marr and Nguyen Van Ky, Khai Hung's novels show that in the families of the mandarinate (the Confucian educated literati, or members of the traditional ruling elite and their families), traditional values managed to survive and even to remain dominant in some cases. Also according to Khai Hung, it was probably this resistance to …

Diasporic Cultural Citizenship: Negotiate And Create Places And Identities In Their Refugee Migration And Deportation Experiences, Shirley S. Tang

Trotter Review

In 2002, the oldest Khmer (Cambodian) American community organization in Massachusetts, the Cambodian Community of Massachusetts (CCM), closed its doors to constituents in the state’s North Shore metro region, where the adjacent gateway cities of Lynn and Revere were home to the country’s fifth-largest concentration of Cambodian Americans, according to the 2000 Census. Founded by Cambodian refugees and their supporters in 1981 as one of the first-generation mutual assistance associations encouraged by the federal Office for Refugee Resettlement, CCM had operate as an ethnic-based, multiservice agency that helped survivors of war and trauma in Cambodia to adjust to U.S. society …