China Girl Research Articles

Obscenity

Obscenity Editorial note: From Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Invocation to the silent majorities) (Letraversal, 2022). Translated by Lawrence Schimel (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution I'm terrified of my migrant parents,always with their eyes set on flight. Is that how you solve everything, Papá?Are you going to once more do what he tells you, Mamá? I'm more terrified by the wound of birth,I hide it in the oriental part of the HERE.What was so bad so as to abandon the THEREwhere one finds oneself at just twenty?How did they do it to reconstruct (themselves),to recompose (themselves),to resist? How to raise an offspring who curses a place thatshe has never visited,who dreams in a language she doesn't know,who lives in another one which will always be foreign to her? What is so good to justify staying?What European dream is beingthe Chinese woman who sells beer,the Chinese man of the village,the Chinese girl of El Hormiguero,the Chinese kid of Física o Química,the China girl of China boy? That is not my dream. My dream is to be the blood that flows from the migratory wound,the Valencian queen of the gunpowder blessed by my ancestors. My dream is that they don't separate me from my fatherand from my motherinto one line for foreignersand another for Europeans,that we embarkthrough the same gate,that we fly togetherto whereverpassports arean obscenity. Translation from the Spanish [End Page 8] Paloma Chen Paloma Chen (b. 1997, Alicante) investigated the Chinese diaspora in Spain in Crecer en 'un chino' and has contributed to El Salto, El País, and La Marea. She won the 2020 Viva #LdeLírica National Poetry Prize and has recited in such festivals as Irreconciliables in Málaga and in spaces such as the Fórum Social Europeu das Migrações and the Asia Europe Peoples' Forum. Lawrence Schimel Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual author and literary translator based in Madrid, working in and between English and Spanish. His translations have won a PEN Translates Award from English PEN (three times) and the Cliff Becker Book Translation Award. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as One-Act Ballet, and: Great Bear, China Girl, King Ivory, and: The Saint, and: News Cycle, and: Pyramus & Thisbe, and: The Illuminati

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as One-Act Ballet, and: Great Bear, China Girl, King Ivory, and: The Saint, and: News Cycle, and: Pyramus & Thisbe, and: The Illuminati David Moolten (bio) Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as One-Act Ballet You rise from a horizontal pas de deux, lurch aroundwith her in the muscle car to the stereo's quake,the backdrop bowling, all-you-can-eat pancakes,and of course mining, steel, and Jesus,going but never gone like weed tipspoking through snow. Your faces turnto mist while you envy the distance, all mountains,finally the fine fentanyl powder of the stars,the two of you just another shift, a generationlined up to man this museum, this mausoleum.But at night you perform whatever actson her the personal ad argot promisedin front of a man if he seems harmless enough,high but restrained when you do it like balloonsleashed to a chair the morning after a partyon the factory floor. She lifts her dresslike a curtain on your good old days, a short historyof the place, a Thespian in magic shoeson a torn poster in the school's long hall.But he's lonely, and he's serious, showing youfive shell casings from Abu Al-Khaseeb. He's sobbingand eating swan tonight. The dancershave all squatted on the suddenly dimmed stage. [End Page 143] Great Bear, China Girl, King Ivory The morgue fills like the hold of a cargo shipsailing away every day from landlocked Bethlehem,a used-up coal cast on the snow, where once vatstilted to pour golden metal and famous mills made Americaby the unit and the ton, now just the numbers and namesof the lost. The people who sell to your brother,at least they found jobs, and the smugglers,the runners and lookouts. Isn't this that shot in the armthe past has waited for? Optimism flaresin his butane flame's cupped hand. The spoon bubbles,the map catches fire, Allentown, Scranton, Honesdale,delusion real to the disillusioned, telltale mistfrom his mouth like the silent ghostof a party horn in an empty house, otherwise familythe siding's forgotten string of carsby a limestone river's indigo vein. Oh, quaint chimneysin a fallow sky, tall shadows in the dusk,a cure for dust made of dust. [End Page 144] The Saint Dusk smoldered in the weedsbehind the factories while a saint hung by a threadfrom the rearview in the Chevy John gave Jenwhen he went away. She and Danny foughtand I waited in back with the beer.Our town never knew lovelike mine for my cousin, or his for his wife,or hers for her brother when he stoodmanacled to himself, or his for his high schoolex, or hers for her father who taught thereuntil he lay on their kitchen floor, fading, radiantlove the story of the town like an abbreviationfor everyone in it. Just like that, only thatdrove us, shared if whispered and alwayson our lips, what we clung tolike a man hadn't died but shatteredinto light with a thousand timesthe power in all those furnaces and machines.Whoever harnessed it might have put this placeon a map. Instead, the tediumwe missed returned and we knew it as solace,and tomorrow we'd tug on our boots and overallsas though sacrifice meant we didn't worship dyingwith every breath, no disagreementleft in us, just the nuts and bolts of a lieeveryone assumed, no need to tell itas the last of the long day crept up the hills. [End Page 145] News Cycle You go up in a three-alarm blaze or give black icea whirl while passing a semi, have a new nameas long as it takes to say it. They really are detailsat 11. But every death reminds me of yours.Once the only weather it was time to checkwas the zephyr of your breathminute by minute while you lay in the dark.Now a tree...

Hidden Materialities

Hidden Materialities Michele Pierson (bio) Genevieve Yue. Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. 185 pages. $110.00 cloth. $32.00 paperback. While it is important to place Genevieve Yue’s Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality within a history of feminist scholarship that has been less concerned with matters of cinematic representation than with investigation of the circumstances in which films get made and circulated, this book also strikes out in exciting new directions. Feminist film and media scholars working in the burgeoning field of production studies have expanded on early studies of women’s roles in the film and television industries by turning their attention to both production at the margins of these industries and alternative production communities. Yue makes an important distinction between these studies and her own interest in film production when she writes that “I neither begin from nor drive toward the empirical woman of social relations, such as the many female screenwriters, directors, producers, actors, editors, casting directors, costume designers, script-girls, and other film industrial workers that would be central in a historical materialist study” (14). Yue’s eye is instead on women’s hidden roles in film production processes, technical processes that have tended thus far to escape feminist notice. Take “Girl Head” in the book’s title. We learn that this is another term for “China Girl,” a reference image found from [End Page 109] the mid to late 1920s onward in commercially produced films. For most of the twentieth century a China Girl image, invariably featuring an attractive white woman, was used by laboratory technicians to calibrate color, tonal density, and the overall aesthetic appearance of a film. For “every leading lady, there is,” Yue observes, “a corresponding leader lady laboring behind the scenes” (59). The central argument and provocation of Girl Head is that cultural understandings of gender are “baked into” film production practices and processes at every stage in the life of a film (14). Most feminist studies of media production tend, as Yue puts it, “to partition materiality (technical or institutional processes and support) from gender (woman as cultural actor or mediatized subject), and only later reconnect them, if at all” (14). The China Girl is a technical image, an aide to quality control in the making and duplicating of 35mm and 16mm film prints. There is nothing about this process, however, that mandates that the reference image be a woman. In Girl Head, then, materiality refers first to objects and processes (and we are given to understand that digital film production is as much a material practice and process in these terms as analog film production). Second, materiality is theorized in relationship to the virtual (and here Yue draws on Anne Friedberg’s thinking about the virtual in The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft).1 The virtual refers to the realm of image and appearance. Representation and appearance are related in this theoretical framework but not coextensive. Rather than starting with representation, Girl Head begins by inquiring into the nature of appearance. In Yue’s words, “Appearance, in this sense, is not only a matter of how one looks but the conditions by which an image can be seen. This book aims to restore a fuller picture of what film production beneath the surface appearance of representation has been” (8). Each of this book’s three case studies is organized around investigation of the relationship between materiality and appearance. Each takes a particular production matrix as its focus: the practice of using images of women as reference images in the film laboratory, editing practices that blur the distinction between special or visual effects and editing, and the historical and theoretical premises for the constitution of the film archive. The first two case studies focus on material processes that determine the look and feel of a film but also go undetected by viewers. In all three, a woman’s body is revealed to have been suppressed—sometimes through “violent excision” and sometimes just by being overlooked or forgotten. The balance between historical research and theoretical speculation shifts from one case study to the next. The first offers an [End Page 110...

Anna May Wong and the Color Image

Abstract In Cinema 1, Deleuze proposes the “color-image,” a type of film image with an “absorbent characteristic” that does not refer to a particular object but seizes all that happens within its range. Like color-images, racial categories have an absorbent, seizing quality: they assert “color” at the expense of the object of representation. Deleuze does not address the potential applications of his concept to race, but they are especially illuminating when applied to early color-process cinema. This essay approaches The Toll of the Sea (dir. Chester M. Franklin, 1922), starring Anna May Wong and set in China, the first Technicolor film to be widely distributed in general release, as a feature-length “China Girl” and feature-length color-image, in Deleuze's sense. It further shows how Wong and her world are virtualized in this film under the rubric of a fictional orientalist palette.

Study on the Efficient Cutting Propagation Technology for <i>Ilex</i> “China Girl”

In order to realize the efficient industrial production of Ilex “China Girl”, an orthogonal experiment with 4 factors and 3 levels was designed. Firstly, the optimal orthogonal cutting scheme was selected from 9 treatments. Then through the systematic analysis of the effects of cutting position, substrate, exogenous hormones type and concentration on rooting indexes, such as rooting rate, root number, root length and root effect index, the theoretical optimal scheme was predicted and verified. The results showed that the theoretical optimal scheme (3000 mg/L IBA treatment for 15 s, cutting in mixed matrix with peat soil, perlite and vermiculite ratio of 2:1:1) was the optimal cutting rooting scheme of Ilex “China Girl”. After the treatment of this scheme, the rooting rate of Ilex “China Girl” reached 100%, the average root number was 51.67 per plant, and the average root length was 6.13 cm. The rooting time was greatly shortened, the rooting rate and rooting effect were greatly improved. In this study, the efficient cutting propagation technology system of Ilex “China Girl” was established, which laid a foundation for the popularization and application of Ilex “China Girl”, and also provided reference for further improving the cutting propagation efficiency of other evergreen holly. This study laid a foundation for the application of Ilex “China Girl”, and also provided a reference for further improving the cutting propagation efficiency of other evergreen holly.

Thao by Thao Lam

Reviewed by: Thao by Thao Lam Elizabeth Bush Lam, Thao Thao; written and illus. by Thao Lam. Owlkids, 2021 [24p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781771474320 $17.95 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2–4 In this compact picture book memoir, author/illustrator Lam (The Paper Boat, BCCB 7/20) reconstructs what it was like to have a Vietnamese name in an Anglo-oriented Canadian classroom. Expanding on the opening thesis “It’s not easy being Thao,” she recalls the ways a perfectly straightforward name could be mangled by persons who sometimes seemed bent on making it harder than it is. Young Thao generally accepts the iterations with a mixture of patience and exasperation (“THOU. Sigh. TOE? Not. Even. Close”), or even resignation, responding “Here” with a raised hand to the attendance call “Towel?” A word cloud of names, however, demonstrates that confusion and teasing also crosses the line into hurtfulness—China Girl, Owie, Towie, Tao the Cow—and at that point Thao abruptly opts for Jennifer. It makes her life marginally easier in some respects, but she’s not about to abandon her identity; when it comes to her the delicious lunch of gỏi cuốn, clearly [End Page 302] in a class by itself next to her schoolmates’ bland fare, she’s one hundred percent Vietnamese right down to the diacritics. Collage illustrations combine a paper cast with trimmed snapshots of Thao herself, a visual strategy that grounds the story in an all-too-real past and underscores her unassailable pride in identity. This is a genial but pointed primary-grade reminder that names matter, and names deserve respect. Teachers sharing this in the classroom can head right over to teachingbooks. net to play Lam’s self-introduction, unambiguously pronounced. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Analýza orientalizmu v Bowieho skladbe „China Girl“ / Analysis of Orientalism in David Bowie’s Song “China Girl”

Among other areas, Orientalism is widespread in pop music. The aim of this essay is to analyze Chinese Orientalism in the song and video “China Girl” by British singer David Bowie. Bowie is known for his interest in Asian cultures, signified most notably by the influence of Japanese style on Bowie’s musical performances, among other examples. The song “China Girl” initiated a passionate discussion about racist motives in the video clip; although Bowie is known for his opposition to racism, and the intended purpose of the video was to criticize racism, it is clear from the public and professional discussion that this intention may have failed. Displaying racist motives without a proper commentary is always problematic. Although Bowie’s song “China Girl” is often mentioned in academic texts as an example of Orientalism, its detailed analysis has not yet been processed. In my analysis, I will focus on the ornamental and content Orientalism of the video clip. I will also consider the extent to which Orientalism can be dangerous if individual stereotypes are described without a proper context.

“The Harder I Swim, the Faster I Sink”

This essay considers the role that Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (BBC/SundanceTV, 2013) and Top of the Lake: China Girl (BBC/SundanceTV, 2017) play in the post-network television landscape. Situating the series among the globalized genre of serialized post-network crime shows that feature female detectives, this essay argues that Campion reworks the genre’s fascination with victimized women from her auteurist and Antipodean perspective. While the characterization and actions of the female detective resonate with other programs’ protagonists, Campion challenges dominant discourses of victimized women by intervening in the global circulation of women’s bodies on television. By drawing on Zoë Sofia’s work on female bodies and container technologies, this essay argues that Campion’s use of pregnant victims and her exploration of a female detective’s history as a survivor of sexual assault allow her to interrogate the typical treatment of female corpses within crime television. Through circuitous investigations that leave enough narrative space for detours like the settling of Paradise, where women transform shipping containers into domestic spaces for struggling women, Campion provides a countermodel to crime television focused on forensic progress through a case. Campion similarly takes the container of serialized crime drama that circulates the globe in a post-network television landscape and creates space for women’s stories from the Antipodes. Pausing the narrative to indict the treatment of female victims, Campion also unearths the melodramatic underpinnings of serialized crime dramas that resonate with her own filmography.

Spray Penetration and Natural Enemy Survival in Dense and Sparse Plant Canopies Treated with Carbaryl: Implications for Chemical and Biological Control1

Abstract Ornamental plant producers often rely on chemical control to manage insect pests. However, cultural practices, such as pruning, can influence plant architecture which may, in turn, affect pesticide penetration. Spray penetration was studied to determine the effect of canopy density on beneficial insect survival following insecticide application and to better understand the implications of canopy density on pest management. Regardless of canopy density or plant species, the interior position of the canopy received less than 8% spray coverage. The middle position of sparse canopies received 288 to 513% more coverage than the middle position of dense canopies. The middle and interior position of dense canopies protected greater than 50% of the convergent lady beetle (Hippodamia convergens (Guérin-Méneville) population while only the interior position of dense canopies protected greater than 50% of green lacewing (Chrysoperla rufilabris Burmeister) populations. Index words: beneficial insect, nursery crop, pesticide, plant architecture, woody ornamental. Species used in this study: China Girl® holly (Ilex ×meserveae ‘Mesog'); ‘Alice' Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia Bartr. ‘Alice'); convergent lady beetle [Hippodamia convergens (Guérin-Méneville)]; green lacewing [Chrysoperla rufilabris (Burmeister)]. Chemicals used in this study: carbaryl (1-naphthyl N-methylcarbamate, Sevin® SL, Bayer CropScience, Durham, NC).

The China Girl on the Margins of Film

The “China Girl” has appeared in more films than any actress, but she is almost never seen. Used in industrial film laboratories since the late 1920s, this image-nearly always a woman positioned next to color swatches and patches of white, gray, and black—is clipped to the leader of a film reel and used throughout the processing, developing, and printing of photochemical film to determine the desired exposure, density, and ideal appearance of the human body. This article addresses the China Girl's essential but often overlooked role in film history, specifically as it pertains to questions of race, gender, and visibility. It also surveys the work of various experimental filmmakers, including Owen Land, Morgan Fisher, Barbara Hammer, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Cécile Fontaine, and Mark Toscano, who have used the China Girl image to explore issues of celluloid materiality, the behind-the-scenes workings of the film industry, and the often marginal role of women both in front of and behind the camera.

Hollywood goes to Korea: Biopic politics and douglas sirk's Battle Hymn (1957)

Despite the lofty status of its director in American film history and genre study, Douglas Sirk's Battle Hymn (1957) has received remarkably little critical attention—a fact that reinforces the mar...

Does Controlled-Release Fertilizer Technology Increase Nutrient Uptake Efficiency Per Se in Ornamental Plant Production?

Many agronomic and horticultural studies on nutrient uptake and use-efficiency have indicated, in general, that agricultural crops are poor competitors for nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in soil-based systems, with estimates of overall nutrient efficiency being less than 50% for N and 10% for P. Low efficiencies are due to losses from leaching, runoff, gaseous emissions and soil fixation, but uptake efficiency is also affected by rate and timing (i.e. seasonal effects) of applications. Controlled-release fertilizers (CRF's) have been promoted as a technology that can slowly release nutrients; the release rate is most often a function of prill coating and temperature. There are few data in the ornamental literature that have directly compared the total uptake efficiency of CRF's to soluble fertilizer sources. From 1999-2002, we collected three annual N and P budgetary datasets, comparing two species (Rhododendron cv. azalea and Ilex cornuta cv.`China Girl') with different growth rates and hence nutrient requirements. Plant N and P uptake efficiencies were usually less than 20% of the total applied, but all datasets included a significant soluble fertilization component. In 2003, a new study with Ilex cornuta cv.`China Girl' was initiated, where nutrients were supplied only from two CRF sources, as we want to determine whether this technology can significantly increase nutrient uptake efficiency at similar rates. A preliminary analysis of the data indicate that total N and P uptake efficiencies between different CRF sources were similar, but leaching losses between sources varied during the growing season. It appears that the primary determinant of uptake efficiency is not source material or timing, but the overall rate of nutrient application.

372 Nitrogen and Phosphorus Release from Controlled-release Fertilizers while Overwintering Nursery Stock under Plastic

Nutrient release patterns from several different controlled-release fertilizers (CRF) were studied during the overwintering period of a long-term nutrient uptake, leaching, and loss study of Azalea (Rhododendron) cv. `Karen' and Holly (Ilex cornuta) cv. `China Girl', under sprinkler and drip irrigation. In Maryland, diurnal winter temperatures can vary from ≈10 °C to above 15 °C. Most growers, therefore, cover frames with opaque plastic for cold protection from November through April. This is also the period when many growers apply CRFs on those plant species that take more than 1 year to produce. Few data are presently available on the release patterns of CRFs under variable temperature conditions in late winter/early spring. We hypothesized that substrate temperatures warmer than 15–16 °C will result in CRFs releasing nutrients at a time when root systems are inactive, with a major loss of nutrients with the first few irrigations in Spring. This 105-day study quantified nitrogen (N) and phosphorus release patterns from four brands of CRF (Osmocote, Nutricote, Scotts High N, and Polyon) with 270- and 360-day release rates, under these conditions. Each CRF was top dressed onto blocks of 18-month-old holly or azalea (n = 112) in 11.5-L (3-gal) containers, at a (low) rate of 6.1 g N per container. Ten randomly selected pots from each treatment were sampled every 15 days using two sequential leachings of distilled water, for a target leaching fraction of 25%. Leachates were recovered and analyzed for nitrate and orthophosphate concentrations. Ambient canopy temperatures were recorded continuously with remote temperature (HoBo) sensors from which degree days above 15–16 °C were calculated and correlated with CRF release patterns.

Postemergence Control of Bittercress in Container-grown Crops

Abstract Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of postemergence applied herbicides for hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta L.) control in container-grown crops. Manage (halosulfuron), Image (imazaquin), Action (fluthiacet-methyl), Resource (flumiclorac pentyl), Trimec Southern (Mecoprop + 2,4-D + dicamba), and Gallery (isoxaben) were applied to emerged bittercress in ‘Variegata’ and ‘Big Blue’ liriope. ‘China Girl’ holly and ‘Midnight Flare’ azalea were also treated with Manage, Image, Trimec Southern, and Gallery to evaluate injury. Among all experiments, Gallery provided 90 to 100% bittercress control at the labeled rate of 1.12 kg ai/ha (1.0 lb ai/A) with no injury to liriope, holly, or azalea. Among non-flowering bittercress, Manage applied at 0.035 kg ai/ha (0.031 lb ai/A) provided 90 to 100% bittercress control, with slight to moderate injury to ‘Variegata’ liriope; Image applied at 0.070 kg ai/ha (0.062 lb ai/A) provided 73 to 99.5% bittercress control and caused severe injury to azalea; and Trimec Southern applied at 0.31 kg ai/ha (0.28 lb ai/A) provided 50 to 100% bittercress control and caused severe injury to liriope and azalea. However, using the same rates applied to flowering bittercress Manage, Image, and Trimec Southern provided only 55, 6, and 50% bittercress control, respectively. Action and Resource did not control bittercress.

Evaluation of Commercial Deer Repellents on Ornamentals in Nurseries

Abstract The efficacy of several new commercial deer repellents in a nursery setting was evaluated from October through March. Repellents evaluated were Deer-Away™, Tree Guard™, Holly Ridge, Bobbex™, and Deer-Off™. Damage was evaluated on yew (Taxus x media L. ‘Densiformis’, Taxus x media Rehd. ‘Nigra’, Taxus baccata Rehd., and Taxus baccata L. ‘Repandens’), holly (Ilex x meserveae S.Y Hu ‘Blue Princess’ and Ilex x meserveae S.Y Hu ‘China Girl’) and Juniper (Juniperus chinensis L. ‘Keteleeri’). Plots received between 0% and 96% deer browse damage. Both Deer Away™ and Holly Ridge significantly reduced browsing. Tree Guard™ and Deer Off™ reduced browsing when feeding intensity was low.

Cutless Controls Shoot Growth of ‘China Girl’ Holly

Abstract Ilex x meserveae ‘China Girl’ plants were sprayed with a single application of different rates of Cutless (flurprimidol) during container production. Growth index, shoot length and shoot dry weight decreased with increasing rates of Cutless. Growth index of plants treated with 500 ppm Cutless was about 17% less than that of control plants 120 days after treatment, but were similar after the spring flush the following year. Growth inhibition persisted for at least two growing seasons when plants were treated with rates of 1500 to 2500 ppm; foliage of these plants was smaller and more cupped than that of control plants. Treated plants were noticeably more compact and uniform, and foliage was darker green than that of control plants.

Winter Hardiness, Leaf Water Potential, and Heat Tolerance of ‘China Girl’ Holly as Affected by Landscape Exposure

Abstract Ilex rugosa × cornuta ‘China Girl’ plants were established around structures simulating typical residential dwellings to determine tolerance to summer and winter stresses of sun and shade patterns. All plants survived the summer of 1983, when temperatures in the leaf canopy at one location reached 49°C. Leaf water potential was lowest in summer at the southeast, south, and southwest exposures, and most winter injury occurred at these same sites. Most growth and berry production occurred at cool northern exposures. No appreciable injury was caused by the 1983-84 winter, when low temperatures of -23° occurred in both December and January. However, winter burn on foliage was quite extensive in southeast and southwest locations exposed to winter sun. Temperature fluctuations of as much as 28° occurred the same day in southwest locations. Variations of as much as 18° occurred among sites at the same time of day. This new interspecific hybrid exhibited equal winter hardiness but greater heat tolerance than Ilex × meservae cultivars at the same exposures.