Forbidden City Research Articles

The House I Live in: An Interview with Charles Burnett

The Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett's firstfeaturefilm, was made in 1973 as his thesis project at UCLA and shot in its entirety on location in South Central Los Angeles. Beautifully filmed by Burnett himself, the film tenderly recounts afew days in the life of a slaughterhouse worker, Stan, whose existence is as bounded by invisible threads of hopelessness as that of the sheep that he is forced to kill each day. At the time of the film's original, sporadic theatrical release in 1977, the New York Times critic Janet Maslin dismissed The Killer of Sheep as amateurish and boring. Since then, the film has won awards at festivals in Houston and Berlin, acquired honorary protection by the National Registry of Films accorded to a selectfew masterpieces such as Citizen Kane, and aided its author in winning a prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the genius award. Even in this world where justice-if, indeed, there is any-lives elsewhere, things occasionally, as Charles Burnett would say, balance out with time. Ifirst saw The Killer of Sheep just recently, on video, with a group of my high school friends from Sarajevo currently seeking refuge in Los Angeles from the war in Bosnia. We expected to see an award winningfilm, possibly a cinematographic masterpiece-but most especially a film about a world that we were neither the part of nor could ever join. In spite of all the intellectual comparisons which are currently being made between the war in Sarajevo and the sealed-off war zones in Los Angeles, South Central Los Angeles seemed to us as distant as China's Forbidden City and as irrelevant as the war in Somalia. We had our own tragedy selfishly to worry about. And then, just fifteen minutes into the movie, we were all crying. The were playing on the minuscule TVscreen, throwing rocks onto passing trains, fighting with each other, wrestling in the dust, and doing the bump. Our entire childhood on the dirty streets of Sarajevo came back in a flash-we too used to throw rocks at busses and climb onto streetcars instead of trains. Also, there was a song in the background that we paid little attention to, although we knew the words by heart and continued to sing it long after it had ended in the film 's sequence: What is America to me? ... ./The grocer and the butcher/The faces that I see.. ./The in the playground.. ./That is America to me.' A few weeks later, thanks to my friend Orson Watson, who had learned the song in a Russian Pioneer Camp, I learned that its title was The House I Live In and that it was sung by Paul Robeson. I realized that it was truly unusual that we Bosnians knew by heart the words of a song that most Americans have never heard, and, in retrospect, that we were crying not only because of the images of the children in the playground, but also because of this music locked somewhere in the back of our minds: how strange that the memory of one of the greatest

Beijing: A City without Walls

Beijing: A City without Walls

Review: The Forbidden City within Victoria, by David Chuenyan Lai

Review: <i>The Forbidden City within Victoria</i>, by David Chuenyan Lai

The Forbidden City within Victoria

The Forbidden City within Victoria

"Ecstasy of Difference": Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor"

The Sino-Italian connection has long history, beginning with Marco Polo, Venetian who first revealed to West. As Zhang Longxi points out, has furnished West since that time with a better reservoir for its dreams, fantasies, and utopias.' Antonioni's documentary film on China, Chung Kuo, but one expression of Italy's continued fascination with China. In his discussion of Antonioni's film, Umberto Eco emphasizes the search for as potential utopia by frantic, neurotic West.2 Similarly, Bernardo Bertolucci, first Western director permitted to shoot in Forbidden City, traditional capital of Chinese emperors, has said that China had become front projection of our confused utopias.3 Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, thus, invokes problematic image of as myth and symbol of difference and as ultimate Other/double of West.4 Emperor, like Bertolucci's other films, about revolution and utopia. The focus of Bertolucci's meditation on fate and prospects of revolution in our time has evolved from an revolution (as envisaged in 1900) to real one which, however, in Longxi's words, is obviously not concerned with per se but with learning about self in West.5 Yet The Last Emperor's utopian vision implies expulsion of feminine from new and improved society. Toward end of movie, no women remain in it. Women (except perhaps in 1900) are excluded from communist utopia envisaged in most of Bertolucci's films, but Last Emperor goes one step further and banishes them from text. The annihilation of women in this film enacted through film's dialectics of interior/exterior, darkness/light, which ultimately assumes orthodox Freudian binarism of feminine/masculine and Lacanian division of imaginary versus symbolic.6 In Emperor, both protagonist's desire and text itself follow an Oedipal configuration generated by search for father-tutor and by repudiation of mother. This configuration entails acceptance of Lacanian symbolic and rejection of imaginary, latter being articulated through infant's dyadic relationship with mother. Whereas The Last Tango in Paris (1972) demonstrates attachment to Lacanian imaginary

Preservation and redevelopment in Beijing

The following is a good example of the integration of planning, design and management for simultaneous piecemeal preservation and redevelopment. The Shishahai area lies to the north of the Forbidden City and the Beihai Park, within the line of the old city wall. It is designated in Beijing’s master plan as a green space. Near its north-west corner is the Arrow Gate (Deshengmen) and at its north-east corner are the Bell Tower and Drum Tower as the northern limit of the central axis of the Old City. Di’anmen Street defines the southern boundary of the site. This 146 ha area includes 34 ha of water: Shisha Qianhai (Front Sea), Houhai (Rear Sea) and Xihai (West Sea). During the Yuan Dynasty (12711368), this area was known as Jishuitan, and was connected to the Grand Canal that ran from Beijing to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. At that time, navigation was so busy that nearly all the water surface was covered with vessels. The northeast bank of the Lake Jishuitan became the main commercial centre of Dadu City (Predecessor of Beijing City). During the Ming and Qing Dynasties (136% 1911): navigation was stopped. With its broad water surface and attractive natural scenery Shishahai became a historical cultural scenic focus of Beijing Old City. There were many temples, royal residences, and private gardens spread over the whole area. Among the remaining temples are Guanghua Temple, Sanguan Temple, Gao Temple, Jingye Temple, Fire God Temple, Sea Tide Nunnery, and among the remaining royal residences are Gongwangfu (Mansion of Prince Gong), Chunwangfu (Mansion of Prince Chun), Qingwangfu (Mansion of Prince Qing) and Taobeileifu (Mansion of Lord Tao). This area became the busy commercial centre of northern Beijing. The distinguished streets in this area are Di’anmenwai Street, which is part of the northern central axis, Yandai (Tobacco Pouch) Slant Street on the north-east bank of the Front Sea, and White Rice Slant Street on the south side of Front Sea. Within this area, there are several well-known restaurants. Formerly, to the west of the Front Sea, there was a lotus pond surrounded by an embankment with many snack food stands. Lotus flowers spread their fragrance and willow trees provided shade. The people of Beijing in the past came to enjoy fresh lotus seeds, water caltrop and cups of iced jelly while watching entertainers such as acrobats and story tellers. The high season of this “Lotus Market” was from the Dragon Boat Festival in the early summer to the Mid-Autumn Festival. Officers of the Royal House Camp and their guards in brocade garments used to present a colourful spectacle when they came on the 6th day of the 6th month (lunar calendar) to bathe the Emperor’s horses. On the 15th day of the 7th month (lunar calendar), the Orchid Party was held as a grand occasion, with lanters of lotus pattern floating all over the lake which vied with the shining stars and the round moon for radiance. In winter days, the lake is frozen and all kinds of skating sports were held, so the local folk activities at Shishahai continued all the year round, making this place the richest in folk

The Epistolary World of Female Talent in Seventeenth-Century China

Vol. 10, No. 2 Late Imperial ChinaDecember 1989 THE EPISTOLARY WORLD OF FEMALE TALENT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CHINA Ellen Widmer1 When we attempt to reconstruct the social context within which women wrote poetry or painted in late imperial China, it is convenient to reach for the eighteenth-century novel, Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber, or Story of the Stone), which describes a family poetry society, the so-called Crab-Flower Club (Haitang shishe). Because most of the members of this club were women, their activities provide a useful model of the circumstances under which one important category of women's poetry emerged. Dream of the Red Chamber presents a group of well educated , upper class women, most of whom belonged to a single extended family. Club meetings were festive domestic events, which took place primarily during the heyday of the Jia family in its garden, the Daguan yuan. A contrasting model of literary and artistic composition by women can be derived from the life and work of Yuan Mei (1716-98). Like their fictional counterparts in Dream of the Red Chamber, the women of Yuan's circle came mostly from gentry families and had good educations. They were less likely to be related, they did not live together, and certain of their activities took place at the home of their patron and teacher, Yuan Mei. In both cases, women produced poetry for a circle of personal acquaintances and did not reach out to a wider reading public.2 The poetry circle of the novel conformed to proper Confucian standards for gentle female conduct, since it operated within domestic confines. By contrast, Yuan's circle seemed more scandalous, inasmuch as its female members met outside the home and mingled socially with male talents. Another view of the circumstances under which women might read, write or paint is made available by the writings of a group of creative 1 I am indebted to the following individuals for suggestions on this essay: Patrick Hanan, Irving Lo, Susan Naquin, Marsha Weidner, and Judith Zeitlin. Kou Dezhang and Ou Jiefang Lee helped with translation. The original version of this essay was presented at the symposium , "Views from the Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists 1300-1912" held at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, October 1988. 2 On Yuan Mei, see Waley 1957, also Hummel 1967:955-957. Late Imperial China 10, No. 2 (December 1989): 1-43 T by the Society for Qing Studies Ellen Widmer Portrait of Shang Jinglan, by Ren Xiong (1820-57), from Wang Ling, ed., Yu Yue xianxian xiang zhuan zan (Commemorative Portraits and Biographies of Former Worthies of the Yue [Zhejiang] Region), 1856. Reproduced courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library. For more on Ren, see Howard Rogers and Sherman E. Lee, Masterworks of Ming and Qing Painting from the Forbidden City. Lansdale, Pennsylvania: International Arts Council, 1988, pp. 203-4. The Epistolary World ofFemale Talent in Seventeenth-Century China3 gentry women who lived in Jiangnan a century before Yuan Mei's time, during the Ming-Qing transition. These women formed a loose literary network, exchanged correspondence and encouraged one another's endeavors. They had male friends and patrons who regarded them with a mixture of admiration, paternalism and unease. Their relationships show the importance of solidarity among women themselves, rather than associations centered on men, in developing female talent. As teachers and disciples , as audience and critics for each other's work, these women reached out to each other across geographical and social barriers, linking domestic circles with literati salons, and the world of secluded wives with those of courtesans, merchants and professional artists. Modern Letters To understand the landscape of female talent among this network of seventeenth-century women, we must first pay attention to the three anthologies of literati letters known as Modern Letters. These letters are the major source through which the voices of the women studied here are heard. As a series of volumes selected and published by men who knew many of them, Modern Letters is a text which reveals both female artistic culture and male responses to it. This series was published in three installments (1663, 1667, and 1668) under the general editorship...

From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Puyi the Last Emperor of China. By Aisin-Gioro Puyi (transl. by W. J. F. Jenner. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 502 pp. £5–95.] - Twilight in the Forbidden City. By Reginald F. Johnston. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 486 pp. £7–95.

From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Puyi the Last Emperor of China. By Aisin-Gioro Puyi (transl. by W. J. F. Jenner. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 502 pp. £5–95.] - Twilight in the Forbidden City. By Reginald F. Johnston. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 486 pp. £7–95.] - Volume 119

THE LEOPARD QUARTER DURING THE CHENG-TE REIGN

AbstractDuring the first years of the sixteenth century a great change took place in the Imperial City. The Cheng-te emperor (r. 1506–1521) moved out of the residential palaces in the Forbidden City and into a new residence in the northwestern part of the Imperial City near a place called the Leopard Quarter. He lived there and conducted the business of the imperial government there from 1508 until his death in 1521.

China and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis

Vol. 7, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1986 CHINA AND THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CRISIS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr.* Imperial rescript to the Board ofRevenue and other yamen: We are reminded that for a number ofyears now there has been no surcease from military hostilities. Hundreds ofmillions have been spent on urgently needed supplies. Added to that, there have been floods and droughts, and the little people have found it difficult to eat. The local officials cannot soothe and pacify them, and as a result, they become vagabonds who cut off Our roads. The entire world within Our territorial boundaries is part of Our own personal Mandate. Unable to endure the sight and sound ofsuch misery, Wefind no solace in sleeping and eating. The time to rescue and protect them cannot be postponed. The Board ofRevenue and other yamen have charge ofcertain tax revenues . Let them all clearly ascertain the actual amount ofsilver taels in their treasuries, and then quickly come forward and let Us see. Special rescript. Twenty-third day ofthe second month ofShunzhi Eleven (1654)1 The fall of the Ming house (1368-1644) and the rise of the Qing regime (1644-1911) was one of the most colorful and abrupt dynastic successions in all of Chinese history.2 Yet in spite of the Manchus' sudden occupation of Beijing in 1644, only six weeks after the Ming emperor committed suicide just outside the vermilion walls of the Forbidden City, the transition from Ming to Qing was no sudden coup d'état. Whether from our own detached perspective in the present, or from the closer vantage points of * The author wishes to express his appreciation to members of the Berkeley research group in comparative theory who commented on this paper. Research for this project was aided by a grant from the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley and by the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China in Washington, D.C. 1 Number One National Archives of China, comp., Qingdai dang'an shiliao congbian [Compilation of Historical Materials from the Qing Archives], fascicle 9 (Beijing: Zhonghua shudian, 1983), 1-2. 2 See, for its dramatic aspects, Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "Romantics, Stoics, and Martyrs in Seventeenth-Century China," Journal ofAsian Studies, 43, no. 4 (Aug. 1984):653-656. 2 Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Ming subjects and Qing conquerors at the time, the change must appear part of a much longer process: the economic decline of seventeenthcentury commerce, the social disintegration of the Ming order, and the political consolidation of Qing rule. Late Ming China's connection with a global monetary system is by now quite clear to historians.3 Because of a constant deficit in the balance of payments in favor of Chinese goods and industries, silver flowed to China's Weltwirtschaft from throughout the world. "Long before Europeans knew the world in its totality, the globe was already divided up into more or less centralized and more or less coherent zones, that is, into several world economies that coexisted."4 Within the East Asian economic zone during the early 1600s, China probably imported an average of 3348 ,000 kilograms of silver from Japan per year, and from outside that zone even more specie flowed into "the tomb of European moneys."5 China during the seventeenth century, through trade with the Spanish Philippines , became the major recipient of American silver, receiving in a good year between two and three million pesos (57,500-86,250 kilograms ).6 Some historians have argued that this flow of bullion into China 3 Li Tingxian, "Shi Kefa de pingjia wenti" [The Problem of Evaluating the Worth of Shi Kefa], Zhongguo wenshi luncong [Collection of Essays on Chinese Literature and History], no. 1 (1979), 244-245; Wiliam S. Atwell, "Time and Money: Another Approach to the Periodization of Ming History," paper presented at the Sino-American Symposium on Social Change in China from the Song Period to 1900, Beijing, Nov. 1980, 25-28; Atwell, "International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy," Past and Present 95:89-90 (1982); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age ofPhilip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (London, 1972), 1:1, 464. But see also...

Yu Zhuoyun (chief comp.): Palaces of the Forbidden City. Translated by Ng Mau-Sang, Chan Sinwai and Pawen Lee. Consultant editor, Graham Hutt. 332 pp. New York: Viking Press; London: Allen Lane, 1984. £50.

Yu Zhuoyun (chief comp.): Palaces of the Forbidden City. Translated by Ng Mau-Sang, Chan Sinwai and Pawen Lee. Consultant editor, Graham Hutt. 332 pp. New York: Viking Press; London: Allen Lane, 1984. £50. - Volume 48 Issue 3

Chaotou Wenxue--China's New Literature

Previous articleNext article FreeReportsChaotou Wenxue--China's New LiteratureGeremie BarmeGeremie Barme Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 2Jul., 1979 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2158736 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1979-1995), which is continued by The China Journal (1995-present). Copyright Australian Journal of Chinese AffairsPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Shuang Yu Translation and canon formation, FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 18, no.11 (Jun 2020): 86–104.https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.19010.yuBin Xu Memory and Reconciliation in Post-Mao China, 1976–1982, (Oct 2015): 47–60.https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203740323-4TIMOTHY SIM, CHIYI HU Family Therapy in the Forbidden City: A Review of Chinese Journals From 1978 to 2006, Family Process 48, no.44 (Dec 2009): 559–583.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2009.01302.x

The Americans Are Coming!

The Americans are coming—not merely statesmen and diplomats, not just occasional journalists or teams of scholars or family planners or whatever, but almost anyone with enough money to pay for the privilege and accept some of the nuisance of guided tourism through the People's Republic of China. They jostle for space outside the panda pens of the Peking zoo, madly clicking cameras and shouting greetings at one another. They troop through the courts of the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, mingling with grinning off-duty People's Liberation Army soldiers and hordes of uniformed schoolchildren. They crowd the orchestras of theatres and concert halls, applauding newly revived “revolutionary” operas and dances, often with more spontaneous verve than do the respectfully restrained Chinese around them.The spectacle of Americans in garish, multicolored dress swirling through the lobbies of Peking's halfdozen hotels for foreigners provides a startling contrast to the normal sight of Ma9-suited Chinese bicycling methodically along broad avenues or crowding sidewalks through districts in which tourists until this year were distinct rareties. The Fifth National People's Congress was in full swing in early March when the first batches of American “friends” with no special professional or political affiliations began arriving. By the end of December some fifteen thousand of them had made the tour—a minuscule figure by the standards of virtually any other nation, but a great leap from the tojal of three thousand American visitors in 1977.

Böz - An Exotic Cloth in the Chinese Imperial Court

Böz - An Exotic Cloth in the Chinese Imperial Court

The Forbidden City; The Biography of a Palace

The Forbidden City; The Biography of a Palace

The Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City.

The Splendid Metalwork of Goryeo - Silver-gilt Ewer and Basin at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston -

This set of a silver-gilt ewer and basin was presumably discovered in a royal tomb near Kaesong during the Japanese colonial period. It was purchased from Yamanaka &amp; Co. Ltd in 1935 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (hereafter, MFA). Ewers were invented as a container to facilitate the serving of liquor compared to ladling it from a jar. Basins functioned as a support for ewers while keeping the liquid inside warm. The practice of using a ewer and basin as a set began in Five Dynasties China and became increasingly popular during the Song Dynasty. In Korea, basins were frequently paired with a ewer starting in the Goryeo Dynasty. However, the function of keeping the ewer warm gradually declined, and basins eventually became simply supports for ewers before disappearing completely.In the History of Goryeo, it is recorded that a silver ewer was used in 948, and it also recounts that Goryeo ewers were sent to the Chinese imperial court as gifts in 1072 and 1080. Moreover, ewers were classified as a warming vessel, as was the practice in China. Their structure was similar to that of contemporaneous ewers from Northern Song Dynasty China. In addition, some of the decorative designs on Goryeo ewers and basins are comparable to their counterparts from Liao Dynasty China. In terms of production technique, the MFA example does not display the mature characteristics of repoussé developed in Goryeo around the twelfth century, such as tiny dense patterns in high-relief. Therefore, the MFA set is likely to have been produced at the end of eleventh century.

The Wilson-McCook Scheme of 1896-1897

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY TALE of diplomatic romance between the American republic and Russian tsardom had sufficient charms to soothe even the savage schoolboy. But, to many older Americans of diplomatic and business calling, the narrative, by 1896, had lost its appeal. Determined to use the markets of Cathay as balm for the Panic of 1893, many American political and economic leaders suddenly found in Russia and its Far Eastern policy, not a traditional friend, but a new and formidable foe. Contemporary accounts of pogroms and Siberian prison camps also put Russia in a bad light. Russian actions, culminating in the Li-Lobanov pact of early 1896, had reversed the balance of political power in China. English preeminence, for the moment, seemed gone. Now, instead, Russian diplomats most often prevailed at the Chinese imperial court; Russian engineers reaped the railroad concessions of Manchuria and hastened to complete the Trans-Siberian Railway across Chinese soil; Russian bankers (and their French backers) dominated the financial affairs of Manchuria and fared well in Peking itself in the bitter contest for China's war indemnity loans. In short, Russian power had increased markedly in China, especially in Manchuria, ultimate destination for the bulk of American exports. With this power came a capacity for perniciousness which, if used, might undo the American hope for an Open Door economic frontier in China. Most Americans feared the worst and saw in Russian ac-

China and Afghanistan

When China and Afghanistan signed a Friendship and Mutual Non-Aggression Treaty in 1960, they called it “a new Silk Road,” evoking nostalgic memories of a link between the two countries established 2,100 years ago. The old “Silk Road” stretching from China to Rome was opened by Chang Chien, a special envoy of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (140 B.C.), who was seeking a military ally against the Hsiung-nu tribesmen in China's northwest. The Ta Yueh-chih people, then living in the Afghanistan area, originally lived in the Kansu area of China but migrated towards the Oxus River valley under pressure from the Hsiung-nu tribesmen. The Hsiung-nu, therefore, gave Chinese and early Afghans a common cause for alliance in the following century. As early as 104 B.C. an official envoy from the Afghan kingdom travelled the Silk Road to the Chinese Imperial Court.

A New Date for The Origins of The Forbidden City

A New Date for The Origins of The Forbidden City