Chinese Cultural History Research Articles

중국 경극 검보를 활용한 패션문화상품 디자인개발: 중국의 사대기서를 중심으로

Beijing Opera is one of the leading representatives of Chinese culture, which includes literature, music, dance, martial arts, and a type of performance that stems from the Chinese cultural history that is still relevant today. purpose of this study is to develop fashion-cultural products from the Lian Pu of the Beijing Opera, a Chinese cultural tradition that receives abundant positive feedback from around the world, showing its value in both academic and practical fields. This study was carried out first as a theoretical study of the literature, definition and types of facial make up used in the Opera, as a way of examining the formative aspect. Secondly, an analysis was conducted on the main characters, `Guan Yu` and `Zhang Fei` of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, `Li Kiu` and `Lu Zhishen` of All Men are Brothers and `Monkey King` of Journey to West, employing the collection belonging to `Yongqi Zhao` who is an expert on the Chinese Beijing Opera. Thirdly, two concepts were categorized, based on the analytic results of the abovementioned characters, each of which were then further categorized into three sub concepts. In regard to cultural development designs, the results of an analysis on the facial make-up color, form, and texture of the four main characters were utilized to construct the themes, Modern Chic and Splendor. simplest form that has been represented in the four figures has been applied to Modern Chic to show a modern image in which black, white and light blue has been used alongside the vivid red, which is a Chinese favorite, to highlight the characters. In Splendor, which is focused on the stage art of the Opera, we see more artistic traditions and colors, to further appeal to our emotions. Traditional motifs have been applied using traditional Chinese arts, in order to develop strong and brilliant colors. two styles of cultural products were developed in the form of women`s scarves and men`s ties; a total of 24 designs were expressed, using Illustrator CS6. In the final step, 4 scarves and 6 ties were produced as a sample, using high quality silk. development of these cultural fashion products will bring an opportunity to show how Chinese traditional culture can be widely utilized in commercial market design.

Development of Chengdu and sustainable utilization of the ancient Dujiangyan Water-Conservancy Project

Abstract. The Dujiangyan Water-Conservancy Project is a great water irrigation works in Chinese cultural history, which led the Min River water to the vast Chengdu Plain, and created fertile and pretty "land of abundance". Now Chengdu is facing increased water demand stress due mainly to rapid urbanization. This paper first analyses the available water resources of Chengdu based on historical hydrological data from 1964 to 2008. The results show that the average annual water resources were 8.9 billion m3 in 1986 and 7.9 billion m3 in 2008 under various environmental conditions. The future tendency of water demand in city development planning is predicted by the Policy Dialogue Model (PODIUM). Finally, the strategies for water resources exploitation accompanying the sustainable development pattern are studied. The result illustrates that rational and careful management are required to balance the gap between water supply and demand

How Do Start-Up Companies Explore the Strategies to Pursue Market Share and Benefits—Take Maotai-Flavor Liquor in Renhuai as an Example

Maotai originates from the famous capital of porcelain in China—Renhuai city. With the conduct of the State Council Document (No. 2) in 2012, Maotai-flavor liquor steps into the market, with its geographical advantages richly endowed by nature and historical goodness. Industry of Maotai-flavor liquor rapidly emerges in Renhuai. As a representative, the development situation of Maotai has a bright future, with the collection of raw materials, production, supply, sales in one of the state-owned enterprises. It works as the second aircraft carrier after Maotai group, mainly named as “Chinese wine capital—Renhuai”, setting up by Renhuai government and relying on the attraction of original geography. By the means of developing provincial agent and investment for marketing, it aims to increase the area’s GDP and Maotai-flavor liquor’s market share. Adhering to the principle of honesty and trustworthiness, gaining profit as well as making production and management philosophy, “the most fragrance Maotai-flavor liquor in the world originates from Renhuai” makes healthy Maotai-flavor liquor culture in China. Wine is a special drink which has been given to man by god. In a sense, the history of the Chinese nation is the history of wine culture and Chinese culture with wine culture has combined closely to each other. Wine has been Chinese people’s bone marrow. Wine industry is a traditional industry, a never declined human society, shining farming civilization brilliantly, full of the wisdom of creation and cultural charm.

Chinese Opera in Turn-of-the Century Canada: Local History and Transnational Circulation

One of the most curious aspects about Canadian Chinese cultural history is the role of opera theatres. They served as the public face of the community, cultural ambassadors or even artistic curiosities, but at the same time provided Chinese audiences the intimate world of emotive musical drama. Because of their public role, they were often ambitious projects. Since first appearing in Victoria in the 1860s, Chinese theatres played an integral role in its community life. Featuring performance of Cantonese opera, the regional genre known to the majority of Chinese immigrants that came from the Pearl River Delta of southern China, these theatres provided crucial entertainment. Chinese theatres’ success in Victoria, and later in Vancouver, was not an isolated phenomenon, but rather closely connected to other cities along the Pacific coast. The opera business waxed and waned, in large part as a result of the Chinese exclusionist policy in Canada and United States. In the 1910s and 1920s, through joint ventures, Chinese in Canada and the United States succeeded in forming a network of opera performance and revived their fluidity of movement in the Pacific Northwest region. Because this network returned significant mobility to troupes and performers, Chinese theatres flourished again in North America. This article provides a preliminary overview of this body of troupes and performers in Canada, its impact and the national and transnational forces that shaped it. It addresses key issues related to this history: the effect of immigration control, the relevance of Chinese theatres to community life, and the transborder crossings.

Observations on the Life and Works of Liu Yiqing

As the compiler of several noted collections of Chinese tales, Prince Liu Yiqing was one of the most important figures in the history of early medieval Chinese culture, yet his life has never been fully studied. This article provides the first complete English translation of Liu’s biography, observations on Liu’s life from three different perspectives, and a discussion of his works.

Trouble in the middle: American-Chinese business relations, culture, conflict, and ethics

@SelectedContents: Introduction 1. Rationale for and Outline of the Book 2. Trouble in the Middle: The Ethics of Cross-Cultural Business Relations Culture and History 3. Central Control and Its Shadow: A Brief History of Chinese Culture and Institutions 4. Confused Motives and Deep Ambivalences: A Brief History of American-Chinese Cross-Cultural Relations in China Government and Corruption 5. The Turtle and the Hare: An Essay on Political and Economic Reform in China 6. Business-Government Corruption in China: Americans Suffer Only the Half of It Culture and Conflict 7. One's, Two's, and Three's: The Roots of Cultural Conflict in American-Chinese Business Relations 8. Culture, Corruption, and Business in China: The Conflicting Worlds of American and Chinese Intellectual Property 9. Clear as Mud: The Ethics of Intellectual Property in China 10. Power, Property, and Culture: American-Chinese Conflicts over Intellectual Property in China Conclusion 11. Notes on the Cultural Middle Epilogue 12. Three Years Later: 2010

Tao Yuanming: A Symbol of Chinese Culture

A writer of enormous impact on Chinese literary history, Tao Yuanming 陶淵明 (ca. 365–427) became a cultural symbol through his deep and pervasive influence on generations of scholar-officials. What emerged was the image of an individual pure and high-minded, freethinking in spirit, reconciled to poverty, and upholding “ineptitude.” Through a survey of the mu Tao 慕陶 (idolizing Tao) phenomenon in Chinese cultural history, this essay discusses the process by which Tao assumed the status of a wenhua fuhao 文化符號 (cultural symbol) and explores the factors that made it possible. Specifically, this essay maintains that Tao achieved this exemplary role through the cultural work of later scholar-officials who reimagined, constructed, and selectively formulated a paradigmatic character-type on top of the base supplied by his own core character. Finally, this essay discusses the international and contemporary significance of Tao Yuanming.

Introduction

Introduction Wen-hsin Yeh (bio) In 2011, the centennial of the 1911 Revolution, the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released a set of publications that includes a narrative history of the Republic of China (Zhonghua minguo shi, 12 volumes), a chronology (Dashiji, 12 volumes), and a collection of Republican biographies (Renwuzhuan, 8 volumes). The result of decades of work since the founding of the Institute’s History of the Republic of China unit in 1956, this monumental set pays tribute to the foundational research of multiple cohorts of Chinese historians on the subject of the revolution. Now that many previously accepted “facts” have been more or less tamed, the moment has come, in China as well as elsewhere, for the field to take up the issue of how best to approach the history of the Republic of China from various perspectives. To capture some sense of the changing dynamics in this historiography, in fall 2012 the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of East Asian Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, jointly organized a workshop on the subject of “Law, Politics, and Society in Republican China.” Nine research papers were presented, in which participants considered the use of law as well as the dynamics of codification, whether as discourse or practice, in a variety of settings in Republican Chinese society. It was not the purpose of the workshop, to be sure, to produce a history of law in Republican China. The objective was instead to generate new [End Page 303] insight on Republican history through an examination of law. With the latter goal in mind, workshop participants took the opportunity to raise questions that broadly concern issues in three areas: historical periodization, encounters between China and the West, and the tension between aspirations and practices. Is it the most productive approach, the participants asked, to rely upon a political chronology of regime shifts (1911, 1927, 1949) to examine the changes in Republican law? Or, conversely, how does a legal approach to Republican Chinese history shed new light on the nature of modern Chinese regime shifts, including their chronology? Modernity in Chinese law, as is well noted, has much to do with the Xinzheng (New Policies) reform of the late Qing in the 1900s and the state-sponsored wholesale adoption of Western legal reasoning and institutions. How do historians a century later make sense of the Western factor in the continuity and discontinuity of Chinese legal politics and culture? Were the Chinese, while duplicating non-Chinese texts and models, able to retain their subjectivity and subject position in the making of a Chinese legal system in the modern period? If so, then might a history of Chinese legal culture beyond the discourse of modernization and revolutions be possible? The Republican years, above all, saw many disappointments with regard to aspirations for constitutional governance and the implementation of a system of rule of law. What are the consequences of this long-standing tension between aspirations and realities? What, indeed, is the significance of a legal approach to Republican history? The three papers published in this issue of Cross-Currents represent a selection from the original workshop. Joshua Hill, in “Voter Education: Provincial Autonomy and the Transformation of Chinese Election Law, 1920–1923,” offers a thoughtfully researched paper that zooms in on a paradigmatic shift in Republican ideas of representation: the move among the political elite away from the practices of indirect and selective representation toward a system that aspired to direct and universal voting. Hill shows that late Qing gentry traditions of public-mindedness in the civil sphere, so well documented in the works of Mary Rankin and others, proved vulnerable to violence and corruption in the Republican years. In response, a new discourse of universal voting emerged in the early 1920s that gained circulation among the provincial elite before it caught on with national leaders such as Sun Yat-sen. Hill’s paper highlights the role of the provincial elite and offers a new look at that group’s [End Page 304] quest for provincial autonomy. It cautions against a simple acceptance of the conventional wisdom...

The Making of a Subcultural Revolution

The Making of a Subcultural Revolution Xiaobing Tang (bio) Paul Clark. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 368 pp. $88 (cloth), $26 (paper). Paul Clark. Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 294 pp. $90 (cloth), $30 (paper), $24 (ebook). To read the two most recent books by Paul Clark, renowned for his earlier contributions to the study of Chinese cinema, is to marvel both at his vast and enviable knowledge of the subject matter and at the vast and fast-changing landscape of modern and contemporary Chinese cultural experiences and expressions. It is to be constantly amazed by the dots that the cultural historian connects, by the different terrains that he leads us through, and by the expansive vistas that he brings into focus. Students interested in almost any aspect of modern and contemporary Chinese culture (from film to fiction to music to dance to bodybuilding) will appreciate the wealth of materials and references contained in these two volumes. Similarly, scholars of the Cultural Revolution and the developments since will have much to think about and to address, because what Clark presents here is a richer and more complex narrative of recent Chinese cultural history than has heretofore been packaged or popularized. It is a narrative that underscores the continuing evolution of modern Chinese culture in the twentieth century and beyond. [End Page 529] It makes good sense to read Clark’s examination of “youth culture” from the 1960s into the twenty-first century as a sequel to his patient cultural history of the Cultural Revolution, which focuses on the decade from 1966 to 1976. The “assertion of youth identity” that he reconstructs in the first main chapter of the 2012 study, for instance, originated with the rebellious Red Guards, who became “sent-down youth” in the last years of the 1960s. “The developments in these years,” states Clark at the outset, “laid the groundwork for the emergence of youth popular culture in the 1980s and later” (Youth, 10). This groundwork took the form of new spaces being opened up for youthful expressions, either of political idealism or of personal sentiments. Such new spaces, or domains of possibilities, receive careful investigation from the historian in the final chapter of The Chinese Cultural Revolution, where the structural tension between “public and private fictions” undergirds the narration of the ineluctable ending of the Cultural Revolution. Alongside a robust underground movement among the young of writing, storytelling, and even translation—which proved to be “in the long term the most significant” literary activity of the early 1970s (History, 226)—Clark also notes that many key and innovative writers of the 1980s and beyond, such as Han Shaogong and Jia Pingwa, made their literary debut in official publications in the final years of the Cultural Revolution. Yet these two studies are not conceived of or organized in the same way, as they tell of different subjects and have divergent plotlines. The history of the Cultural Revolution, as Clark narrates it, begins with the orchestrated efforts made by what he identifies, aptly and later in the book, as the “cultural insurgents” to modern Chinese opera in the first half of the 1960s. One plotline of this history therefore revolves around how these insurgents, headed by Jiang Qing with the backing of Mao himself, created model operas with tremendous resources at their disposal, sought to institute and perfect them, and mandated systematic transplantation of model opera aesthetics and creative methods onto other forms of cultural production. In the process, these “Cultural Revolution insurgents” or activists ascended rapidly as “power-holders” and authorities, eventually turning into desperate “defenders of Cultural Revolution faith.” It is, in other words, a sad tale of a radical avant-garde project betraying itself and growing tout court conservative and “decidedly rearguard” (History, 217–235). [End Page 530] The protagonist of the subsequent tale about youth culture is, by comparison, both more amorphous and yet more constant. Different youth groups or identities, from the Red Guards of the 1960s to the “post-1980” generation, are profiled and treated in turn, but the main story is how successive “youth...

Original editions of Chinese gazetteers in the Yale East Asia Library

PurposeChinese gazetteers are one of the most important primary sources for the study of history of Chinese economy, politics, culture, military, and science and technology. Since the very beginning, the Yale East Asia Library has been keen on collecting Chinese gazetteers. However, unlike its peer research libraries in the USA, the Yale East Asia Library had never compiled a catalog or written an article about its gazetteer collection. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review, for the first time, original editions of Chinese gazetteers held in the Yale East Asia Library to reveal the holdings and research value.Design/methodology/approachThe author conducted a survey of original editions of Chinese gazetteers in the Yale East Asia Library by searching the Yale online library catalog and comparing with existing catalogs of Chinese local gazetteers compiled by other research libraries in the USA. The paper focuses on the edition, coverage, rarity and variety of Yale's holdings.FindingsAccording to the author's findings and preliminary research, Yale holds approximately 337 original Chinese gazetteers. The majority of them is rarely found in other North American research libraries and thus has high research value. They cover almost all provinces and municipalities in China and have a great variety of types.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the author tried to use various search strategies to look up in the Yale online library catalog to ensure high retrieval, the results here may not be accurate. Also it is likely that a number of Chinese gazetteers are not recorded in the Yale online library catalog because of backlogs. A physical survey of Chinese gazetteer holdings at Yale and more research need to be done in the future.Originality/valueThis paper is the first of its kind to provide a systematic review of original editions of Chinese gazetteers held in the Yale East Asia Library.

Genetic Structure of the Tree Peony (Paeonia rockii) and the Qinling Mountains as a Geographic Barrier Driving the Fragmentation of a Large Population

BackgroundTree peonies are great ornamental plants associated with a rich ethnobotanical history in Chinese culture and have recently been used as an evolutionary model. The Qinling Mountains represent a significant geographic barrier in Asia, dividing mainland China into northern (temperate) and southern (semi–tropical) regions; however, their flora has not been well analyzed. In this study, the genetic differentiation and genetic structure of Paeonia rockii and the role of the Qinling Mountains as a barrier that has driven intraspecific fragmentation were evaluated using 14 microsatellite markers.Methodology/Principal FindingsTwenty wild populations were sampled from the distributional range of P. rockii. Significant population differentiation was suggested (FST value of 0.302). Moderate genetic diversity at the population level (HS of 0.516) and high population diversity at the species level (HT of 0.749) were detected. Significant excess homozygosity (FIS of 0.076) and recent population bottlenecks were detected in three populations. Bayesian clusters, population genetic trees and principal coordinate analysis all classified the P. rockii populations into three genetic groups and one admixed Wenxian population. An isolation-by-distance model for P. rockii was suggested by Mantel tests (r = 0.6074, P<0.001) and supported by AMOVA (P<0.001), revealing a significant molecular variance among the groups (11.32%) and their populations (21.22%). These data support the five geographic boundaries surrounding the Qinling Mountains and adjacent areas that were detected with Monmonier's maximum-difference algorithm.Conclusions/SignificanceOur data suggest that the current genetic structure of P. rockii has resulted from the fragmentation of a formerly continuously distributed large population following the restriction of gene flow between populations of this species by the Qinling Mountains. This study provides a fundamental genetic profile for the conservation and responsible exploitation of the extant germplasm of this species and for improving the genetic basis for breeding its cultivars.

음향오행(陰陽五行)과 십간십이지(十干十二支)의 원류와 연원에 대한 고찰 -고대 중국 문화집단과 신화를 통해서-

This study is to examine the cultural and mythological origins of Chinese five-element and ten celestial stems and twelve earthly branches which have been the most important symbolic and comprehensive system of calendar, history and Change in Chinese and East Asian culture. The cosmic dualism Yin and Yang and five elements are originated from ancient Shang(Yin) dynasty, which have been the sub-prime culture in China. The trinitarianism of heaven, man, earth are originated from north-east Asian shamanic and nomadic tribe has been the functional system, contrasted with substantial system of Yin and Yang, five elements in Chinese philosophy. The most part of Yin and Yang, five-element mythology were originated far before Shang dynasty, but literated during the dynasties of Imperial China, are concerned with ten suns, twelve moons, the sun-god, mulberry trees(called 扶桑), There was another cultural dwellings, who had produced the prime Chinese culture. This tribe, lived in the north and middle part of China, had made and maintained the essence of confucianism, and produced the concept of Yin - Yang dualism and five-element. We can easily find out philosophical dual concept in our East Asian culture. They are, first of all, heaven-earth, being-nonbeing, man-woman, up-down, sovereign-subject, water-fire, beginning-ending, etc. All of this concept came from the ancient phallicism, sexual reproduction. The concept of centrality also came from this tribe, who thought they had lived in the central part of the universe. This concept expanded to the doctrine of the mean or centrality and commonality, which is one of the most important Confucian classics. This centrality was connected with the totemic tree called 建木 and the mountain 崑?山, through which they could communicate with sun-god and heaven. which might be thought the mountain 泰山 in the western part of Shandong peninsulla nowadays. The concept of number five and six were popular in Zhou dinysty, and those of ten and twelve were in Shang dynasty, which were deeply connected with the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. First of all, endless, repeative, circulation concept is the most important doctrine of the Change.

Ten Years of Queer Cinema in China

“Ten Years of Queer Cinema in China” is a photo memoir with twenty photographs and commentary that documents two important cultural events rarely mentioned in US discussions of Chinese underground cinema. They are the First Chinese Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held at Beijing University in November of 2001 and the February 2001 screening of Andrew Cheng's Shanghai Panic (2001). Both events mark the moment when queer cultural activists began organizing their own events and establishing their singular film culture. What is unique about this period in Chinese cultural history is that Chinese queer cinema played an important role in the broader movement for Chinese personal and artistic freedom. During 2001 and 2002, Chinese were attending the same underground film events. They heard about them on the Internet or by word of mouth. Some traveled a long distance to attend them. And this led to an emerging sense of community and sometimes a collective euphoria about embracing a new culture that openly challenges repressive social boundaries.

Special Section on Gender and Medicine

Special Section on Gender and Medicine Marta Hanson Two articles in this issue of Late Imperial China pay intellectual tribute to the illuminating scholarship on the history of gender and medicine in China of Charlotte Furth. Yi-Li Wu's contribution, "Body, Gender, and Disease: The Female Breast in Late Imperial Chinese Medicine," carries out an unpacking of the layers of meaning of the diseased and lactating breast comparable to that done by Furth for the gendering of blood and the body in Chinese medical history. Hsiu-fen Chen's analysis, "Between Passion and Repression: Medical Views of Demon Dreams, Demonic Fetuses, and Female Sexual Madness in Late Imperial China," does for the gendering of emotions, dreams, and madness among non-reproductive women—nuns, widows, and spinsters—what Furth did for our understanding of the history of women, gender, and reproduction in late imperial Chinese medicine. Before Furth turned her attention to comparable subjects in the cultural history of Chinese medicine, however, she started her career in the 1960s in intellectual history at Stanford, where in 1966 she finished a dissertation on the geologist and public intellectual Ding Wenjiang. The resulting book, Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture (Harvard, 1970), approached the British-educated scientist as a modern-day scientific positivist and elite technocrat who also had a Confucian ethic of social responsibility. She argued that his approach to western science as a type of epistemology helped shape the "new culture" of the May 4 movement. After this book, she developed an interest in the nexus of science, politics, and reform among Chinese conservatives of Ding's generation. This led to the edited volume Limits of Change: Conservative Alternatives in Republican China (Harvard, 1976). Her chapter on "Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Movement, 1895-1920" in the Republican Era volume 12 of the Cambridge History of China (1983) also developed from her initial research questions. While she was a Fulbright fellow in China from 1981 to 1982, however, her interests shifted to both the deeper past of late imperial China and the literate medical tradition. Her shift from intellectual and political to social and cultural history, engagement with feminism, and work on kinship, gender, [End Page 49] and sexuality during the Ming-Qing periods resulted from engagement with the broader transformations in history from the 1970s to the 1980s. This analytic reorientation also dovetailed with her role as co-editor with James Lee of Late Imperial China for eight years from 1985-93. Her prodigious scholarship on gender and medicine culminated in A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History 960-1665 (Stanford, 1999). The rich Chinese tradition of medical case histories she mined for this monograph became the subject of an even broader synthesis of "case reasoning" in the co-edited volume on Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History (Hawai'i, 2007). After eighteen years of teaching in the Department of History at the University of Southern California in 2008 she became Professor Emerita of Chinese history. This transition in her position, however, has not decreased her intellectual contributions to the field through editing the work of others or publishing her own. Co-edited with Angela Leung, Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Public in the Long Twentieth Century (Duke, 2010), once again expands our collective vision, provides a new synthesis, and opens yet further paths of productive inquiry. [End Page 50] Marta Hanson Department of History of Medicine Johns Hopkins University Copyright © 2011 Society for Qing Studies and The Johns Hopkins University Press

Essays in Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History by Paul W. Kroll (review)

Essays in Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History by Paul W. Kroll (review)

Eifring, Halvor, ed., Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature

As Halvor Eifring explains in his introduction (1–36), this book represents the fruits of a conference on qing 情 held in Finse, Norway, in 1997. The purpose of the collaboration was evidently to answer the question with which the editor opens the book: “To what extent are emotions universal?” (1). The difficulty, as Eifring aptly notes, is that qing and “emotion” are by no means coterminous; as we shall see, qing includes some senses comparable to our word “emotion,” but it comes with divergent philosophical underpinnings and also bears senses unlike anything that ordinary speakers of English associate with emotion. Thus Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature is a book that fails to solve the original problem to which it was devoted but proves extremely useful for different reasons. Although comparatists with a global perspective may not find in these pages all the answers to the problem of universal human psychology, students of Chinese philosophy and cultural history will treasure this book as the most detailed investigation in English into the various senses of qing and their usage through many centuries of Chinese writing. Were it not for the otherworldly list price ($193 as of this writing), I would recommend that any reader of Dao purchase this book. The following discussion considers all of the contributions but two: Robert E. Buswell, Jr., “The Transformation of Doubt (yiqing 疑情) into a Positive Emotion in Chinese Buddhist Meditation” (225–36), and Waiyee Li, “Languages of Love and Parameters of Culture in Peony Pavilion and The Story of the Stone” (237–70). Qing has been the source of considerable consternation in the study of Chinese philosophy, inasmuch as the earliest Sinologists, who were eager to attach every Chinese concept to some convenient entity from the Western tradition, recognized that it often means something like “emotion,” but just as often it also means something perplexingly different. To readers of late imperial literature, meanwhile, qing has a related yet distinct sense: “passionate feelings for another human being,” sometimes as a general sort of affection, but more typically as a profound and life-altering passion like romantic love. In other words, while it is possible to feel qing for one’s father or mother, a protagonist is Dao (2010) 9:237–240 DOI 10.1007/s11712-010-9165-2

Essays in medieval Chinese literature and cultural history

Contents: Preface In and About the High T'ang: The dancing horses of T'ang The flight from the capital and the death of Precious Consort Yang Verses from on high: the ascent of T'ai Shan Lexical landscapes and textual mountains in the high T'ang Nostalgia and history in mid-9th-century verse: Cheng YA 's poem on 'The Chin-yang Gate'. Poetry from Different Angles: 7 rhapsodies of Ts'ao Chih The image of the halcyon kingfisher in medieval Chinese poetry The egret in medieval Chinese literature The memories of Lu Chao-lin Tamed kite and stranded fish: Interference and apology in Lu Chao-lin's fu The significance of the fu in the history of T'ang poetry Index.

A Note from the Guest Editors

This special issue on Chinese Opera Film includes an introduction to the theme plus eight of the thirteen papers presented at the symposium “Chinese Opera Films after 1949” held at the University of Chicago in April 2009, which was itself the culmination of a series of screenings and discussions initiated by a group of graduate students the year before. The first few Chinese opera films we saw at the screenings were a revelation to us: these dazzling films were made in the 1950s and early 1960s, a time during which Chinese arts, especially cinema, were supposed to follow the rules of socialist realism, portray the people's revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party, and promote the policies that lay the foundations of the newly established state.1 The development of a socialist art surely also involved the refilling of traditional forms such as opera with new content, but how could Chinese state studios embark on such sumptuous costume productions that offered little or nothing in terms of obvious ideological promotion and that were mostly set in a mythical or feudal past? What was at stake in the making of these films, and what did the process of transposition from opera to cinema mean for each medium in the early years of the People's Republic? If these films forced us to revise what we knew about recent Chinese cultural history, it soon became clear that the genre demanded to be approached from a wide range of disciplinary angles, and that it offered a fertile terrain to investigate what happens when different artistic forms, social worlds, and professional fields meet and collide.

Military Culture in Imperial China (review)

Reviewed by: Military Culture in Imperial China Garret Olberding (bio) Nicola di Cosmo, editor. Military Culture in Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. vii, 445 pp. Hardcover $46.50, ISBN 978-0-674-03109-8. In current scholarly circles, the perceived influence of premodern military culture is often eclipsed by the manifold contributions of contemporary literati, those who composed the civilian corps of bureaucrats and court advisors. In comprehensive assessments of Chinese cultural history, military culture has sometimes been given such short shrift that one might conclude that issues of warfare were almost irrelevant. Di Cosmo’s masterful compilation of essays will go far in rectifying any such impressions, for it reveals, among other things, the indelible coloration of militaristic sensibilities in court culture, a keen understanding among civil administrators of the complex problems involved in military administration, and an enduring commitment to the intermingling of literate and military cultures within various strata of society. As di Cosmo explains in his introduction, the concept of culture can incorporate numerous irregularly overlapping social features, from the pragmatic to the theoretical, the concrete to the strategic. Di Cosmo explicitly acknowledges several: systems of conduct and behavior, strategic decision making, a set of values determining a society’s propensity for warfare and the organization of its military, and the aspects of aesthetic and literary traditions that valorize military events (pp. 3–4). Correspondingly, the essays range widely in topic and period. Some, such as Michael Loewe’s, Robin D. S. Yates’s, Jonathan Karam Skaff’s, Yingcong Dai’s, and Peter Perdue’s, detail carefully the composition and structure of armies, the laws that govern them, the economics that sustained them, and the external influences bearing on their evolution. Others engage with historiographical representation, whether of military battles and campaigns, of important figures, or of the personal records of war, such as the essays by the late Edward Dreyer, Rafe de Crespigny, David Graff, Don Wyatt, and Grace Fong. And still others by Ralph Sawyer, Kathleen Ryor, S. R. Gilbert, and Joanna Waley-Cohen address more intellectual issues, such as the interpretation and use of literary texts in the education of military men, the increased militarization of an era’s total culture, or the recondite application of theoretical notions to the pursuit of war. In sum, there is something for scholars and educated readers of almost every stripe. One hopes that the topics addressed will broaden perspectives and the conceptualization of the structure and influence of the military in premodern China. In the remainder of this review, I raise several perspectives introduced by the essays that, while by no means comprehensive of what the volume provides, should allow readers a sense of its distinction. Instead of depicting briefly each contribution, I will instead more extensively limn a single essay illustrative of each topic represented above. My selection is not tied to any evaluative metric but to what the pieces of each of my constructed groupings can highlight of the volume’s merits. I recommend that [End Page 430] interested readers use these representative synopses only as an incomplete guide; each piece presents matters of consequence and general interest. Heading the collection is Robin Yates’s engrossing essay on the imposition of religious ritual norms in military codes, and, just as significantly, the profound influence of early military codes on civilian organization and conduct, even in much later eras (p. 23). Indeed, the fusion of legal and military culture in early China was so close that, “in the view of Han intellectuals, criminal law originated in military law. . . . There was, practically speaking, no distinction between warfare and punishment (bing and xing)” (p. 25). This fusion meant both that military norms were deeply embedded even in civilian law and, conversely, that civil bureaucrats were the masters, at least in law, of military power. Because of the demands enforced by penal and administrative codes, “soldiers were obliged to achieve a minimal degree of literacy,” primarily for daily recordkeeping, but also for keeping cognizant of the prohibitions that could lead to certain punishment, or even death (p. 40). However, the laws pertaining to military life were not merely punitive. Success in military ventures could have...

Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (review)

Reviewed by: Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility Jie Li Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility, Rey Chow . New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 304 pp. After the influential Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema established Rey Chow as one of the most original scholars in cinema studies, her second book on Chinese films, Sentimental Fabulations, provides us with a collection of no less ingenious readings of popular and iconoclastic works by such diverse Chinese directors as Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai, Tsai Mingliang, and Ang Lee. Bringing them together under a discursive umbrella by the name of "the sentimental," Chow examines their culturally specific fantasy structures as well as their engagements with the complexities of globalization. Although often equated in common usage with affective excess, the sentimental, translated into Chinese as wenqing zhuyi or "warm-sentiment-ism," is redefined by Chow as a mood of endurance and accommodation, "a disposition of making compromises [with] that which is oppressive and unbearable" (18). The Chinese films that dramatize such heart-wrenching situations as poverty, familial conflicts, exile, illness, death, and loneliness, however, tend to affirm and perpetuate "an indomitable collective will" embodied by the patriarchal family, clan, village, or nation. Thus, Chow finds filiality, the "age-old moral apparatus" of subjectivization, to be "at the heart of Chinese sentimentalism" (22). In her own dense and sophisticated introduction, Chow not only offers a novel explication of the title, but also sheds light on the various ways her book fits into and contributes to the larger discipline of cinema studies that is increasingly entangled with the study of group cultures. The succinct summary of Western film theory, from the hopeful futurism of Walter Benjamin to the feminist critique of Laura Mulvey, eventually focalizes on the paradigm shift from the ontology of the filmic image (Bazin) and cinematic modes of signification (Metz) to the study of narrativity and ideology. Following Mulvey's "repressive hypothesis"—the notion that the cinematic image has repressed something existing beyond it—critics since the 1980s have "complicated the differential between gaze and image" in terms of group cultural identities (9). The resulting "fetishization of identity," however, can still be broken down into two camps: those who equate artificial images with the lives and histories of "real" cultural groups and those, like Chow, who do not insist on such "anthropomorphic realism." In the case of East Asian cinema, Chow proposes to see Asianness itself as a "commodified and reproducible value," sustained by and contributing to the flows of capital, rather than to go on an "iconophobic" search for some authentic, continuous Asianness beyond the cinematic images. "Part of my goal in this study is to argue that Chinese cinema since the 1980s is an inherent part of a contemporary global problematic of becoming visible" (13), defined as "a matter of participating in a discursive politics of (re)configuring the relation between center and margins" (11). In a sense, Chow's study attempts to put the study of Chinese films (back) in dialogue in—or rather, in the middle of—Western cinema studies, in order to stall the trend of its ghettoization in the history of Chinese culture. Scattered here and there in the book are critiques of what she calls "geographical and chronological compartmentalization exercises" that aim at no greater goals than "information retrieval and canonization" (15, 150). Hence in her readings of two Hong Kong films made around 1997 (Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together and Peter Chan's Comrades, Almost a Love Story), Chow deliberately steers free of linking the films to Hong Kong's return to the PRC. The organization of the book is similarly free of geopolitical [End Page 59] determinates. The nine chapters—each a close analysis of one or two individual films that can be read independently from the rest—are grouped by theme into three parts: remembrance of things past, experiences of migrancy (especially by women), and films about disenfranchised populations. I shall discuss selected chapters that I have found particularly insightful or provocative. By way of continuing her tenacious defense of Fifth Generation directors against criticisms of...