Representation Of China Research Articles

High-Resolution History: Downscaling China’s Climate from the 20CRv2c Reanalysis

AbstractA Met Office Hadley Centre regional climate model, HadRM3P, is used to dynamically downscale the NOAA Twentieth Century Reanalysis, version 2c (20CRv2c), to generate a fine-resolution reconstruction of China’s climate from 1851 to 2010. The downscaled dataset has a small warm and seasonal wet bias (1.4°C; 0.9 mm day−1) relative to recent observations but otherwise represents spatial and temporal trends realistically. Analysis focused on temperature and precipitation shows that downscaling 20CRv2c is found to improve its representation of China’s climatological annual cycle, particularly over areas with sparse observational coverage such as the Tibetan Plateau. The downscaled dataset better represents the interannual variability and trends in observed temperature since 1901 and suggests that China has experienced a significant and sustained increase in temperature of 0.05°C (10 yr)−1 since the 1850s. Chinese precipitation trends have not changed significantly in the recent past or over the past 160 years. This analysis serves as an initial yet imperative step toward improving in-depth understanding of the characteristics and multidecadal drivers of high-impact events over China such as heat waves, droughts, and extreme precipitation.

Ghādat al-Ṣīn: the literary trace of Arab–China relations in the Nahda

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, Nahdawi writers increasingly turned their attention to China. This article explores the political and literary function representations of China served in Nahdawi discourse by examining Ṣāliḥ Jawdat’s 1889 Ghādat al-Ṣīn. By illustrating the triangular circuit of textual exchange through which Chinese cultural material entered Arab consciousness mediated by European translation, I demonstrate the political agency acquired by Nahdawi translators who modified and reappropriated the Orientalist strategies of power in European writing about China. Jawdat repurposes the European representation of Chinese men as incapable of self-rule, using these depictions of deficient East Asian masculinity to create a narrative space for female empowerment. What becomes apparent is that the key issues of the Nahda such as free marriage and women’s access to the public sphere took shape along axis of South-South relations.

Examining Experimental Theater in Contemporary China

This article charts the history of experimental theater in China. In doing so it suggests three heights of experimental theater: the birth of Chinese theater itself as a kind of “experiment” in the late nineteenth century, the establishment of realist “modern drama” in the 1920s, and the resurgence of avant-garde theater in the 1980s to the twenty-first century. Through this genealogy of experimental theater we can elucidate some of the form’s essential qualities. Ultimately, the notion of experimental theater itself is not immutable; rather, it is contingent upon historical and cultural contexts. The strong exploratory and avant-garde spirit of experimental theater has had and will continue to have a profound impact on mainstream theater, and any new developments should be worthy of our attention.

The Representation of China in Nyoning-geijutsu: An Analysis of the Records of Women Who Crossed from Japan into China

The Representation of China in Nyoning-geijutsu: An Analysis of the Records of Women Who Crossed from Japan into China

Re-constructing “China” in a transnational context

This study critically examines two Chinese newspapers’ representation of China as a “nation” and “culture.” Prior studies have deeply and broadly explored various ways through which China, Chinese culture, and nationalism were constructed in popular media forums. What has been missing is a continued exploration of these constructions offered by the Chinese media sources that are published outside the dominant Chinese cultural, national, and political contexts. Using World Journal and Sing Tao Daily, two major Chinese immigrant newspapers, as the texts for analysis, this study produces important findings that demonstrate how China is constructed as a contested, multi-layered, powerful, and divided culture and nation. Based on the study’s result, future inquiries can continue to analyze the representation of China across multiple media and linguistic platforms.

The Favourable Partner: An Analysis of Lianhe Zaobao’s Representation of China in Southeast Asia

Singapore has, since its founding, had a critical role regarding Southeast Asia’s interaction with China. The city-state has acted as both an enthusiastic promoter of closer ties with China and also as one of the prominent supporters of a hedging strategy regarding the involvement of extra-regional powers in Southeast Asia. To date there has not been any substantial analysis of how China and Southeast Asia are represented in the local media. Given the ongoing significance of news media as a means to communicate ideas and agendas, to both online and offline audiences, this gap is notable. This article will contribute some initial findings based on an analysis of articles related to China and Southeast Asia in the Lianhe zaobao newspaper. Sino-Singaporean relations are presented in a positive sense regardless of whether the focus is economic, political, or social; in contrast, when discussing China and Southeast Asia as a region, issues of insecurity and other negative aspects become more prominent. This suggests that, while the Singaporean media reports China in a positive light regarding bilateral relations, there is a clear willingness to raise awareness of the broader regional challenges of China’s rise. It plays the dual role of both friend and critic.
 At time of publication, the journal operated under the old name. When quoting please refer to the citation on the left using British Journal of Chinese Studies. The pdf of the article still reflects the old journal name; issue number and page range are consistent.

China in Giambattista Vico and Jesuit accommodationism

ABSTRACTThe twentieth-century rediscovery of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) by scholars such as Erich Auerbach and Isaiah Berlin was partly driven by the profound resonance of his hermeneutics for the valorisation of cultural alterity. Yet the actual content of his philological investigations is often difficult to square with this reading of his thought. The representation of China in his works is a case in point; despite the enthusiasm with which many of his contemporaries in Naples embraced China, Vico seems to view the intellectual and artistic achievements of Chinese civilisation with a certain disdain, characterising Confucianism as a “rough and ungainly” philosophy typical of the most primitive stage of civilisational development. Scholars who have maintained Vico’s contemporary relevance have tried to brush aside his apparent Eurocentrism in favour of his hermeneutics, whereas others have cited his treatment of China as symptomatic of the reactionary nature of his thought. The present study does not deny the importance of China to Vico’s polemic with libertinism but argues that his representation of China is best understood in view of its theological significance to contemporary Jesuit accommodations of Confucianism.

Silences, Whispers, and the Figure of China

According to Rey Chow, the “inscrutable Chinese” is “the cross-ethnic stereotype par excellence.” How does this stereotype play out in modern and contemporary American poetry’s tradition of representing China and Chinese literature? For poet and Asian American studies professor Timothy Yu, whose One Hundred Chinese Silences (2016) comprises parodic rewritings of poems that try to engage with the Chinese aesthetic, the representation of China in American poetry amounts to an “orientalist tradition” that “sees China as a source of unchanging aesthetic traits fixed in a remote past,” offering stereotypes of Asians as “silent, reticent, passive, yet also exotic, mysterious, objects of aesthetic contemplation.” But is Yu’s project not at the same time reinscribing a kind of Chinese inscrutability, presenting China as perennially unknowable in its critique of so many efforts to make Chinese culture known? Understanding translation through Judith Butler’s “performativity,” the article looks critically both at Yu’s poems and the texts he parodies, in particular those by Gary Snyder and Ezra Pound, in the context of works by John Ashbery, the Language poets, Jonathan Stalling, and Eliot Weinberger, to argue that Yu’s work represents a translation anxiety and pleads for more translations into English, including into American poetry.

Intertextual and Hypermodal Representations of China's Cultural Confidence in Social Media Communication

ABSTRACTSince the concept of “cultural confidence” was officially proposed by Chinese president Xi Jinping, there have been intensive social media discussions on how to carry forward Chinese cultural traditions. This article draws on the frameworks of intertextuality and hypermodality, and investigates Chinese social media users’ responses to the government’s advocacy of the promotion of cultural confidence. Using the method of critical discourse analysis, this study examines relevant posts on Sina Weibo in order to investigate the textual and semiotic realisations of different viewpoints about cultural confidence and to reveal the public opinions communicated on this social networking platform. The intertextual and hypermodal resources of social media communication present multiple voices representing Chinese netizens’ attitudes toward the government’s policy.

Changing Representations of China’s Workers

Changing Representations of China’s Workers

Reversing the view of ‘political pilgrims’: re-examining Italian travelogues about China in the 1950s

Scholars often consider the mostly positive representations of China by Italian visitors in the 1950s as the false and embellished depictions of political pilgrims. This article challenges this oversimplified interpretation. Based on evidence from commonly cited travel accounts, this article argues that Italian writers’ leftist political sympathies did not necessarily lead to self-censorship or intentional embellishment of China, nor did the host country’s control and surveillance over foreigners simply make Italian visitors willing to cooperate or produce positive feedback. Putting these travel accounts in their social and historical contexts, the article shows that Italian intellectuals’ positive representations of China in the 1950s, as well as the severe criticisms that were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, were rooted in reality and reflected the radical changes in Chinese society and Sino-Italian relations over the course of the Maoist era (1949–1976).

China Reinterpreted: Staging the Other in Muromachi Noh Theater

China Reinterpreted: Staging the Other in Muromachi Noh Theater

Forming and Performing: Conditioning the Concept of Chinese Space in the Case of National Theatre of China

This article will examine the case of National Theatre of China, one of the most iconic buildings that have been looming in the skyline of Chinese metropolises in recent years. They are known to the Chinese public for their unprecedented, and often nicknamed, architectural types. Critics tend to deem such examples of contemporary Chinese architecture from recent waves of urban development as merely “bizarre,” taking wacky building forms as the dishonorable outcome of a corrupt conspiracy between capital and politics. Instead of making a similar judgment, this article will discuss the case of the National Theatre as a wishful cultural practice in the context of a complicated sociopolitical drama. The discussion will elaborate on three core issues emerging in the transformation of contemporary Chinese public space: (1) how the meaning of the architectural “face” changes as the urban “body” is redefined, (2) how formal and technical means enhance or weaken the psychological impact that an innovative and adventurous building might have on its patrons, and (3) how rigid urban planning is reconciled with a more dynamic and active theatric space that turns the city itself into an improvised stage.

Writing China from the rest of the west: travels and transculturation in 1920s Spain

ABSTRACTScholarship on the representation of China in the West generally assumes a direct interaction characterized by a colonial dynamics. This article shows what happens when a third agent – neither colonizer nor colonized – enters the picture and looks at two responses from Spanish texts written during the 1920s: whereas Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s China chapters in his well-known La vuelta al mundo de un novelista [1924] dissolve the Spanish position into the voice of the colonizer, Federico García Sanchiz’s La ciudad milagrosa [1926] uses an external perspective to articulate a more critical view of the Western presence in Shanghai that is nevertheless subjected to a formal style that homogenizes the narrative. I argue that both works have trouble offering a coherent representation of China that is driven by their Spanish positionality. This proves not only the ambivalence of (Spanish) representations of China in the twentieth century but also the strength of the discourse generated by colonial powers, which ends up expanding its actual scope: here, domination was not only exerted in China, but also, discursively, within the West itself. This ultimately shows that we must not completely denationalize the study of cross-cultural representations.

Actresses, Gender, and 1920s Theater in China: A Discussion Concerning “Female Involvement in Art Performances”

Actresses, Gender, and 1920s Theater in China: A Discussion Concerning “Female Involvement in Art Performances”

Семантико-прагматический потенциал наречия по-китайски в современных российских СМИ

The research is carried out in the context of pragmalinguistics and is devoted to the question of means of forming stereotypes in the texts of journalistic discourse. The semantics and pragmatics of the lexeme po-kitayski ‘in Chinese’ as a diagnostic language means manifesting collective stereotypical ideas about China are considered. The material for the study is the statements extracted from the modern Russian media in the electronic database Integrum. Texts about policy, state economy, Chinese cuisine and New year’s holiday in China are presented. It is shown that the analyzed adverb is used in verbal and substantive word combinations with concrete and abstract nouns. The material indicates that verbal phrases characterize specific processes occurring in China. The thesis that substantial-adverbial word combinations are used to characterize or reinterpret known concepts is put forward. The article presents the results of the analysis of the contextual semantics of the adverb po-kitayski , which is complicated by the background features that actualize a number of typical characteristics of the Eastern state (a specific form of globalization, a special socialist model, the task of eradicating corruption at all levels, economic breakthrough, preservation of cultural traditions). In the Russian media there is an estimated duality in the representation of China. Stereotypes about China are mostly positive: a prosperous economy, political independence, ancient traditions. In particular, the low quality of goods produced in China and the cruelty of political measures receive a negative assessment.

The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield by Minjie Chen

Reviewed by: The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield by Minjie Chen Claudia Nelson The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield, by Minjie Chen. Routledge Studies in Education and Society in Asia. Routledge, 2016. In The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature, Minjie Chen takes on two subjects that have received less attention in the West than should be the case: the China theater of the Second World War (which here extends from 1937, when the Japanese invaded and occupied much of the country, to 1945) and Chinese youth literature. Her principal interest is in how the latter represents the former and why the representations take the particular shapes that they do, but because she is aware of how much context her English-speaking readers are likely to need to make sense of the information provided, the book's focus is by no means unitary. Chen provides a brief history of children's literature in China from its beginnings to the present; a thorough discussion of [End Page 227] lian huan hua (LHH), a form of small paperback picture story book packaging fiction and nonfiction narrative that, like British chapbooks before the eighteenth century, addresses readers of all ages; a set of oral histories collected from elderly women in Yunhe, Zhejiang Province, and dealing with their memories of Japanese germ warfare as directed against their town; and an overview of Chinese American children's literature culminating in a discussion of the thirty-one titles that she has identified as dealing with the Sino-Japanese War. She is interested in political and military history, in gender, in illustration, in book history, in questions of readership, and more. While sometimes a bit of a grab bag, the result accordingly offers readers enlightenment and information on a variety of important topics. Following a brief introduction laying out research questions and offering background on the war, the book is organized into five chapters. "Chinese Youth Literature: An Overview" discusses the literature from its roots in the work of American missionaries to the present, and argues for the importance of LHH in any investigation of Chinese children's reading. "The Sino-Japanese War as Depicted in Chinese Youth Literature: The Big Picture" explains Chen's approach to gathering sources and lays out "publication and thematic patterns" to be found in LHH; the chapter offers "a quantitative analysis of how the history of the SJW has been reflected in 360 LHH titles and twenty-two youth literature works that also exist in LHH adaptations, published in mainland China from 1937 through 2007" (74). "The Sino-Japanese War as Depicted in Chinese Youth Literature: A Thematic Analysis" looks at the portrayal in LHH of military combat, violence and atrocities, social class, and partisan membership. "Family Narrative as Information Source: A Case Study" argues for the importance of considering the transmitted memories of elders alongside print sources as an alternative, potentially less heavily censored means for children to learn about the wartime past. The final chapter, "Ethnic Chinese Wartime Experience in American Youth Literature," provides a comparative dimension to the volume by tracing the social and political pressures that have historically operated to discourage the development both of a robust Chinese-American children's literature and, more specifically, of a body of works for children and adolescents focusing on the Sino-Japanese War that would not be as "disappointingly tiny … largely outdated, out of print, and contributed by white authors" as the works that we in fact have (205). Chen, a project cataloguer for the East Asian Children's Collections at Princeton University's Cotsen Children's Library, earned her PhD [End Page 228] in Library and Information Science (her dissertation, which won an award for outstanding doctoral work from the University of Illinois, was an earlier version of the present study), and her approach to her materials is accordingly more social-scientific than literary, with much discussion of data collection, methods, and the like. Techniques of close reading are not much on display in this book, and Chen's major question about her chosen texts—namely the extent to which they are historically accurate—may...

Media Representations of China: A Comparison of China Daily and Financial Times in Reporting on the Belt and Road Initiative

ABSTRACTUtilising critical discourse analysis with corpus-assisted methods of analysis, this study examines the representation of China by English-language newspapers in China versus media in the UK. The study focuses on the linguistic realisation of attitudinal meanings in news reports about the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative. A sample of news reports by China Daily and Financial Times, dated between March 2015 and March 2016, was collected. Assisted by the corpora and corpus software AntConc and ConcGram, the study first investigated themes from the headlines and key paragraphs in the corpora of China Daily and Financial Times and then compared the classification scheme of the lexis using the concordance lines of key concepts in the Belt and Road Initiative in the two corpora. It was found that China Daily, like other Chinese mainstream media, has attempted to emphasise the initiative's positive attributes and construct positive images of China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. Images of China as represented in Financial Times are mixed and conflicting: on the one hand, China is portrayed as having a significant impact on the global economy; on the other hand, images of China as an authoritarian state, a militant and obstructive force, and a geopolitical threat prevail. The paper concludes with a recommendation that China continues to develop a locally grounded and globally minded media practice, in parallel with its renewed efforts to underline the power of Chinese culture in national development and international politics.

Atsushi Nakajima’s Representation of China - Depiction of Chinese People in “Hoppoukou”(北方行) -

Atsushi Nakajima’s Representation of China - Depiction of Chinese People in “Hoppoukou”(北方行) -

Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000–1400 by Jeehee Hong

Reviewed by: Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000–1400 by Jeehee Hong Aurelia Campbell Jeehee Hong, Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000–1400. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. x, 236 pp. US$59 (hb). ISBN 978-0-8248-5537-6 Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000–1400, by Jeehee Hong, focuses on an important shift in the history of Chinese mortuary art, when tombs began to reflect the everyday world of the living much more closely than ever before. The book spans the Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties (960–1368), a time when theater flourished among all levels of society and provided a steady stimulus for artistic production. The geographic region on which Hong concentrates, northern Henan and Shanxi provinces, constituted a particularly vibrant center of the performing arts during this time. There, theater could be enjoyed at a number of different venues: on the streets, in temples, at commercial theaters, in private households, and even at funerary rituals. The importance of theater to the people of this region is reflected in their tombs, which prominently feature actors and theaters within their decorative programs. These elaborate tombs belonged to the local elite, namely wealthy merchants and farmers, and help fill a gap in the textual record regarding how this segment of society lived and their attitudes towards the afterlife. Hong argues that most previous scholarship on these tombs has used their theatrical representations to help flesh out our understanding of the history of theater in China. Scholars have also attempted to locate specific aboveground models for the depictions of actors and theaters within these tombs. According to Hong, this “misleading practice” tends to reduce what was in fact a “complex and nuanced picture of the various representations and discourses [within tombs] into an iconographic caricature” (p. 5). To this end, Hong avoids providing the reader with any kind of systematic introduction to theater in China during this time. Instead, her discussion delves into a host of theoretical questions that center on how theatricality was seen and represented: How did “people see performances in various circumstances”? “To [End Page 210] what kinds of images were they exposed”? “What inspired them to represent theatrical images in specific ways”? And “What kinds of visual or ritual experiences shaped the meanings of those theatrical images”? (pp. 13–14). One of the main arguments Hong develops in the book is that tombs bearing theatrical representations reflect the shifting social landscape of middle-period China. Specifically, she claims that these tombs became an important means by which the non-literati elite exhibited their cultural tastes and distinguished themselves from other social groups during this time. For instance, in the first chapter, “Theater and Funeral,” Hong examines a detailed depiction of a funerary ritual that is engraved on the side of a stone coffin (ca. 1056) belonging to a well-off local man. The ritual includes, among other things, a troupe of actors and Buddhist monks clanging cymbals. Although Hong briefly touches upon the religious significance of the ritual—suggesting that it was meant to help transfer the soul of the deceased to the heavenly realm—she is more concerned with the ritual’s sociological implications. She explains that even though entertainments during funerals were condemned in the writings of leading Confucian literati of the time, this engraving demonstrates that the elites of this region regularly held these kinds of controversial performances. Hong argues that in doing so, they “repositioned the funerary discourse away from the official and orthodox sphere and toward the lived social world.” By visually recording the rituals, these individuals furthermore “actively recognized and celebrated [their] own cultural standing in society” (p. 42). Despite its merits, this chapter does not adequately address the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was rarely actually practiced in China. Another argument central to this book is that the means by which theater was represented within tombs indicates a narrowing of the perceived distance between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. In the second chapter, “Theater for the Dead,” for example, Hong examines...