Final Version - Université Paris Diderot

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EACS XIXth CONFERENCE
Paris
5-8 September 2012
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
(Final Version, August 27th)
Abstracts are listed in alphabetical order according to the surname of the authors. When a paper was submitted as part of a panel, the title of the panel is provided after the title of the paper. You will find in your conference bag a printed version of the Book of Abstracts, together with a thematic programme. Please refer to the the day by day programme (on line on our website and regularly updated) to know when the papers are programmed, and to check the chairpersons planned for each session. ADAMSKI Susanne , University of Bonn Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies
Email: [email protected]
Archery as a Means of Politics? An Analysis of Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions
Until very recently, Japanese and in particular Chinese scholars of early China have come to
divergent views on the function and significance of ceremonial archery during Western Zhou
times (1045-771 BC) as part of the “Zhou ritual system”. The attributed functions range from
leisure activity and military training to certain political and religious significance. Although the
scholars’ focus tends to encompass bronze inscriptions and traditional records alike, their
preference of the latter still results to a considerable extent in a distorted image of Western Zhou
archery ceremonies. Being authentic material of the Western Zhou, several bronze inscriptions
mention archery (she) ceremonies held by the Zhou king. Of these, two inscriptions dated to the
middle and late Western Zhou period stick out for their reference to a royal shooting outside the
Zhou central domain together with lords (hou) and officials of Zhou states and leaders of nonZhou states respectively. This configuration and the fact that these shooting ceremonies took
place in times of the slow decline of the Western Zhou royal power and increasing military action
of regional tribes and former allies against the Zhou raise the question of their underlying
political and diplomatic significance. Through separate analysis of the relevant inscriptions with
regard to the respective places and participants in the shooting as well as other activities
mentioned, the present paper will explore the question whether ceremonial archery as seen in
some bronze inscriptions can be considered as an event of political import and a political means
serving diplomatic purposes rather than an arbitrary activity of the Western Zhou aristocracy.
Hopefully, this will shed some further light on the role of archery and elite society during
Western Zhou times.
ADLAKHA Hemant, Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS), Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India
Culture in 21st Century China: Silencing Lu Xun
Besides Mao Zedong, Lu Xun has been revered as the biggest symbol of the twentieth century
Chinese revolution and revolutionary culture. But that was until the beginning of the reform era.
Soon after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, while there started a subtle de-Maoification
campaign – as a crucial ingredient of the just unleashed ‘political’ de-politicization movement
against the anti-politics of the Cultural Revolution – there was no change in the political
patronage by the CPC towards Lu Xun. However, following the hundredth birth anniversary
celebrations of Lu Xun at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 1981, the CPC attitude
towards the greatest cultural icon of the twentieth century China, began to change. In the three
decades since his centenary celebrations, in the official political and cultural discourses during the
2 CPC reform regime, the treatment meted out to Lu Xun has been changing from ‘ignoring him’
to ‘dismissing him’ to ‘silence him’. This paper offers a critical analysis of the evolving cultural
discourse in China brought upon by the country’s rapid economic and social changes since the
late 1970s. Analysis focuses on the ideological reasons and political nature of attacks on Lu Xun
in the past decade. In particular, the analysis seeks to interpret the removal of several of Lu Xun’s
literary creations including his master piece The True Story of Ah Q from the school text books.
AIRAKSINEN Tina, Asian Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland
Finnish Narratives from China
Imperialist policies had opened China for residence, foreign trade and missionary work, and by
the beginning of the twentieth century numerous treaty ports were opened for foreigners.
Foreign political, religious, cultural, and economic ambitions were transmitted to China via semiimperial and imperial outposts stationed in treaty ports. Evidently China was subject to multiple
formal and informal imperialisms. Accounts how Western Europeans viewed Asian peoples and
cultures in terms of racial ‘otherness’ refers correctly to the countries that had treaty port
settlements and extraterritorial rights with China. For the smaller nations’ existence in China it
was crucial to define whether their identity was imperial or non-imperial. Finland had received
independency from Russia and disconnection from the Russian Empire was identified as
fundamental in foreign politics and also in constructing national self-identity, even among the
Finnish living in China. After independency, Nordic and European model of politics, culture and
economy attracted. European imperialism in Asia was however, sometimes recognised alien, and
indeed, Finnish constructed alternative forms of identity and sought after co-operation with
China. The Treaty of Equal Relations between two countries was signed in 1926, and thereafter,
Sino-Finnish relations were based on principles of reciprocity and equal treatment. The treaty was
at that time exceptional as most of the agreements made between China and another country
were unequal for the Chinese. Preliminary purpose of this research is to evaluate Finnish settler
society particularly during the first part of the twentieth century. During the beginning of the
twentieth century Finnish settlers in China carefully constructed their own national identity which in times coincided with Chinese rise of radical nationalism. Naturally Finnish contacts with
Chinese involved identification, differentiation, of sameness as well as otherness, of desire and
attraction as well as revulsion. The research also seeks to observe whether the Finnish created
alternative definitions beyond contemporary dichotomies such as self-other or westernerseasterners that were common among foreigners in China. Research has an interdisciplinary focus
and it uses methods and theories from various disciplines such as history, international politics,
cultural studies, sociology and literary criticism.
3 ALEXEEVA Olga V., Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada
Energy and Environment Issues in Chinese Geopolitics: A case-study of Mekong River
Conflict
The Mekong River conflict opposing China to its southern neighbors – Myanmar, Cambodia,
Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, has recently emerged as a testing ground for China’s public
diplomacy and soft power in South East Asia. The Mekong River that begins on the Tibetan
plateau in China and runs through five Southeast Asian countries is an important shared resource
which is supporting the livelihood of an estimated 60 million people (drinking water, fish,
transport, irrigation water to the fertile land and forest products etc.). But it’s recent large-scale
hydropower development undertaken by China who has already built five dams on the upper
Mekong and is planning to construct several more, pose serious problems within the river basin.
For the past several years, the Mekong River water level has dropped to its record level, and
riparian areas in the countries south of China have been suffering severe draughts and have
registered the continued reduction of populations of many of the migratory fish species that are
most important in Mekong wild-capture fisheries. Though there is no conclusive proof that
Chinese dams and water policies are responsible for these negative ecological and economic
disasters, five Southeast Asian countries are blaming Beijing for this situation. This paper
analyzes the growing links between energy, environment issues and geopolitics in contemporary
China by examining the case-study of the Mekong River conflict and its transformation from the
minor regional problem to the major international issue. How the conflict has affected China’s
relationships with its Asian neighbors? What place does the Mekong River development occupies
in China’s current energy policy and geopolitics? The answers on these important questions will
help to throw a new light on our apprehending of the challenges that China is facing today and
will be facing in the future.
ALTEHENGER Jennifer, King's College London, UK
Communist China’s Portias: Women Jurists and Professional Agency in the Early PRC,
1949-1957
(Panel “Serving the State: The Professionalization of the Social Sciences and Civil Service
in China, 1937-1957”)
In the early 1950s, highly qualified women jurists were called on to serve the new Communist
4 party-state. Some became professors at the new universities, others took up office in the Ministry
of Justice, and many staffed the local courts in the capital and beyond. Those that chose to
remain in the PRC and continue their professional careers under the Communist Party quickly
became involved in the negotiations over how to construct a new society and define law under a
one-party rule. This paper examines the careers of four jurists: Shi Liang, Minister of Justice; Tan
Tiwu, legal advisor to the Government Administrative Council; Lei Jieqiong, Professor of
Sociology and co-drafter of the Organic Law; and Wang Ruqi, co-drafter of the Marriage Law
and senior staff in the Ministry of Justice. These four women experienced socialism and the
construction of a Communist legal system in very different ways. Although all were members of
the women’s federation, this paper argues that their professional identities as jurists were equally
crucial. Contrasting their careers and later fate during the Anti-Rightist Movement illustrates a
diversity of professional experiences that cannot easily be subsumed under the label of “womanwork.” Based on archival records, memoirs, and materials published as part of the Anti-Rightist
Movement, this paper thus questions the links between gender and professionalism in the field of
law during the founding years of Communist China.
ALTENBURGER Roland, Ostasiatisches Seminar, Universitaet Zuerich, Switzerland
“Two Cousins: Towards a Reappraisal of Abel Rémusat’s Yu Jiao Li Translation”
(Panel “Toward a New History of Literary Flows in Sino-European Encounters, 17001830”)
Jean-Pierre Abel Rémusat’s (1788-1832) Iu-kiao-li, ou, Les deux cousines (1826), the French
translation of the early-Qing scholar-beauty romance Yu Jiao Li, was among the earliest full
translations of a Chinese novel into a European language. Within a short time, Rémusat’s
translation was retranslated into other European languages and indeed became a considerable
success with the readership all over Europe. Rémusat, the holder of the first chair of Sinology,
gained from it the reputation as the leading Sinologist of his time. However, several decades later,
when Stanislas Julien (1799-1873), his successor at the Collège de France, published a new
translation of the same work by the title Yu-kiao-li, ou, Les deux cousines (1864), it presented itself
not only as a pedantic revision of Rémusat’s previous work, but in fact as its whole-sale rejection.
This outright negative evaluation of Rémusat’s translation has since disparaged and
overshadowed its true achievements. The present paper proposes a reappraisal of the impressive
accomplishments of Rémusat’s Iu-kiao-li from three angles: (1) the basic reliability of the
translation, given the limited tools at the translator’s disposal; (2) the translator’s philological
endeavor to establish a reliable textual basis, as materialized in a published critical edition; (3) the
translator’s extensive preface, comprising 82 pages, that prepared the common reader for the
reading experience, and at the same time provided the first systematic discussion of some of the
basic issues in translating Chinese texts.
5 AMSLER Nadine, Universitaet Bern/Switzerland
Gender Roles in Intercultural Contact: Changing Ideas and Practices in Chinese
Christian Communities (Panel: “Sino-Western Relations – New Research Perspectives on
the Early Modern Period”)
Many historians have observed that gender concepts of pre-modern China differ strongly from
European gender concepts of the post-Enlightenment era. However, only few of them have
focused their attention on the striking similarities of Chinese and European gender concepts in
the early modern era. Before the nineteenth century, gender concepts in China as well as in
Europe were not anchored in beliefs about biological sex, but in ideas about social roles and
family structures. Consequently, when European and Chinese gender concepts came into contact
through the China mission of the Jesuits, there was a common ground for the two sides when
speaking about gender relations. This paper will show that the category of gender provides a
promising research perspective on Sino-Western cultural exchange, as it brings to the forefront
important aspects of social life in the “contact zone” of Chinese Christian communities. I will
argue that through the intercultural contact initiated by the Jesuit China mission, gender roles
started to shift slightly on both sides. On the one hand, the Jesuits adopted the Confucian ideal
of the separation of the sexes (nannü zhi bie), building for example separate Churches for women,
something unknown in Europe. On the other hand, Chinese Christians were urged to reconsider
aspects of their traditional gender norms, when for instance some men left their concubines in
order to become Christian. The subtle shifts of gender roles taking place through intercultural
contact sometimes caused harsh reactions by observers outside of Chinese Christianity. These
will be analyzed in a second part of the paper. I will show that these reactions were not the result
of fundamentally divergent, but of basically compatible conceptions of gender relations. For in
early modern Europe as well as in early modern China stability of gender roles was thought to be
intrinsically linked with the stability of society.
ANOOP Yun, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, USA
Telling a Foreign Story to Chinese Readers — Lin Shu’s Rewriting of La dame aux
camélias
This paper studies one of the most important fiction translations in Chinese history—Lin Shu’s
Bali chahuanü yishi published in January 1899 in Fuzhou, which was based on the French novelist
6 Alexandre Dumas, fils’ (1824-1895) La dame aux camélias (often translated as Camille or The Lady of
the Camellias in English). Lin’s translation of the novel, sometimes considered the first famous
European literary piece introduced to China, has drawn great attention in scholarly studies.
However, with the development of the concept of translation, the re-examination of Lin’s
translation often leads to a conclusion that his work is full of alteration and mistranslation of the
original content; some hold that Lin’s work was a product in a time when theoretical ideas of
translation had not yet been fully developed. But in fact, translation has multiple forms, and its
essence is always to rewrite a text to meet the needs of a particular society and culture. The paper
adopts André Lefevere’s idea of translation as rewriting: all kinds of rewriting reflect certain
ideology and poetics and are manipulation; while rewriting brings in innovations, it also has a
potential to reshape a given culture. Lin Shu’s work, therefore, should be seen as a fruitful
outcome of an intentional operation rather than inaccurate translation. Through selecting and
altering the original materials (which has already gone through Wang Shouchang’s interpretation
and re-narrating), Lin Shu not only creates images of a certain writer, piece of fiction and genre,
but also makes several important decisions for his indigenous culture, such as which elements of
the text to strengthen and which elements to modify. This paper will compare the first two
chapters of the French original and Lin Shu’s work to illuminate Lin’s translation strategies, and
argue that Lin’s rewriting has served its purpose—to establish a proper text that he considers best
meeting the needs of the society for Chinese readers.
ANTONUCCI Davor, “Sapienza” University of Roma, Italy
Missionary approach to the Chinese society: emotions and prejudices
(Panel: “Emotions, Sensations and Imagery: Representations of the State of Mind in
Chinese Culture”)
From the very beginning of their arrival in China in the sixteenth century western missionaries
had to deal with a new and very different civilization. In this new context they started their
propagation of the Christian faith, and at the same time they contacted people from different
social strata. The reading of missionaries' correspondence helps us to discover their personal
feelings and prejudices on their approach to the Chinese people and society of the time, as well as
their filtered interpretation of the reality.
AOYAMA Rumi, Waseda University, Japan
Internet, Nationalism and China’s Foreign Policy
(Panel “Whither the Chinese Political Regime? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”)
7 The last two decades witnessed the strong rise of nationalist currents in China. In the meantime,
China's approach to international cooperation, called "new diplomacy," is also gaining
prominence. Particularly starting in the late 1990s, China has actively participated in international
regimes, abided by international rules, and has gradually come to accept international norms.
Does nationalistic sentiment leads to assertive foreign policy? What kind of role does the internet
play in shaping China’s foreign policy? The study finds that a resurgent nationalism does not
necessarily lead to a nationalist policy. A new behavior pattern has been followed more in recent
years, which is adopting internationally cooperative policies externally while promoting
nationalism domestically. Especially in the realm of non-traditional security, with domestic public
opinion widely divided, Chinese government may move to a more cooperative approach, partly
in an effort to mute the criticism from other countries. The Internet plays two roles in a
pluralistic system. First, the Internet acts as a public space in which actors such as provincial and
local governments can announce their views on issues, as well as debate them. In addition,
internet makes the relatively weak voices in the traditional media being heard. Since the Internet
news platforms operated by each media outlet carry the articles published in the newspapers and
magazines of their respective outlets, opinions on issues that are not as frequently represented as
others in print (such as those of dam development opponents) can also be made known to much
of the general public. In sum, the internet makes Chinese society more and more pluralistic and
divided. In this sense the Chinese government has more freedom when making decisions.
ARRAULT Alain, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, EPHE, Paris
Images in Time, Time in the Images: Supports and Functions of Traditional Calendars
During the First Half of 20th Century
(Panel: “In between borders: Visual Culture in Transition in early 20th century China”)
At the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese calendars were displayed on different supports,
associated with both traditional and modern formats, such as booklets, prints on single sheets,
and posters. While maintaining a ritualistic and propitiatory function inherited from past
practices, the continuity of the support also gave way to innovation through the employment of
images and illustrations. Additionally, the new format of the poster (yuefen pai) gave calendars a
new function as part of new practices of commercial advertising which reflected the ongoing
state of change in Chinese society at the time.
ARSLANGUL Arnaud, Inalco, Paris
8 How French learners of Chinese L2 refer to space in narratives
This work intervenes in the domains of second language acquisition. His objective is to
understand how French-speaking students of Chinese refer to space (motion and location) while
they are engaging in a verbally complex task. The procedure used is the analysis of an oral corpus
comprised of the verbal production of advanced language learners (of Chinese as a foreign
language) and of adult native Chinese and French speakers (Chinese and French mother tongue,
the control groups). The discourse produced is a fiction story based on an image-book entitled
“Frog, where are you?”. To achieve the goal of the study, we first identify the available linguistic
means in both Chinese and French, and then study how the two groups of native speakers apply
these means to introduce and maintain space reference in this story. And then we compare those
results with the learners’ way to retell the story in Chinese L2. The analysis shows that the
Chinese native speakers use a particular form to mark step by step the major locations where the
principal character of the story is arriving to. This global organization is not present in the other
groups. The way to introduce the new ground of dynamic predicates is also different between
Chinese L1 on one side and French L1/L2 learners on the other side. The organization of spatial
information into a sequence of successive utterances also has an influence on the way spatial
information is chosen within utterances, especially in the use of the deictic verbs.
AU Chung-to, The Hong Kong Institution of Education, PRC
Comprador Culture: A Study of Hong Kong’s Material Culture in Leung Ping-kwan’s
works
Chinese merchants in Hong Kong colonial times, the so-called compradors, were always
associated with negative traits such as treacherous, unreliable, selfish and cunning. Recent
research, however, shows that there were also compradors who were patriotic, reliable and
generous. In addition, according to those researches, comprador is more than a profession,
which, in fact, has already developed into a particular kind of colonial/postcolonial or hybrid
culture. This kind of comprador culture is manifested in the “things” we create and use on a daily
basis, namely, architecture, food and print culture (such as literature and magazine). Leung Pingkwan (P. K. Leung) is one of the few writers who depicts colonial/comprador architecture and
food in his literary works. In addition, he also contributes to the publication of Zhongguo Xuesheng
Zhoubao, in terms of submitting his modernist literary works as well as being the editor of the
literary magazine in the 1970s. One major aim of this research is, through studying the literary
works of Leung, to examine the comprador culture, a mixture of Chinese and western cultures,
embodied in foods and architecture in Hong Kong. In terms of bicultural print culture, the
literary magazine Zhongguo Xuesheng Zhoubao in which Leung played a significant role will be
analyzed. Another aim for this study is to examine the extent to which those “things” can reflect
the relationship between the British (the colonizer) and the Hong Kong people (the colonized).
9 AU Ka-lai, CEFC, Hong Kong, PRC
An Imaginary City: Colonial Hong Kong as seen by Eastern and Western writers
Colonized for one hundred and fifty-five years (1842-1997) by the British, Hong Kong is a city
born under a double influence, that of the East and West. Its identity varies according to the
different eyes posed on the city. Hong Kong is one of those mysterious oriental places for the
development of an imaginary space that generates, especially among Europeans, a stream of
exotic images: “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance,
exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” Remarked Edward W. Said.
Chinese intellectuals passing through Hong Kong saw her as a piece of living flesh torn from
China, a lost child, or perhaps a distorted territory, almost alien. If the eyes of a Westerner in
Hong Kong is tainted by a typically orientalist sense of superiority, that of a Chinese intellectual is
not neutral, but often marked by the strong conviction of the superiority of the culture of Central
China. Although a significant amount of research has been conducted over the past two decades
to "reconstruct" the history of Hong Kong, the city’s identity remains ambiguous. What image
does the writer Eileen Chang, raised in a dual culture of Hong Kong and Shanghai, have of this
city? What share of the imagination and exoticism is in the accounts of Western travelers in Hong
Kong, such as Henri Michaux and Jean Cocteau? Conversely, what are the view of Hong Kong
Chinese revolutionaries and of thinkers such as Wen Yiduo, Lu Xun and Ba Jin? How do these
very different and sometimes opposite views weave a multi-cultural and hybrid image of the
culture of Hong Kong? This research focuses on an uncharted and unexplored area of study: the
literary links between Hong Kong, China and the West.
BAKER Jr Timothy, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
The Concept of Sacrifice in the Han Dynasty
There has, in the past decade, been substantial research on ritual practices during the Western
and Eastern Han dynasties, especially the state rituals, and the most commonly used term in
English for these activities is “sacrifices”. Other European languages similarly use terms also
stemming from the Latin sacrificium or from offerre, though these terms of current usage are
essentially synonomous. This paper investigates the concept of sacrifice and how this concept, as
exemplified in the Han ritual activities, compares to the concepts that lay behind activities
referred to by this same term in approximately contemporary European cultures. Although
Western terms such as “religion” are notably problematic when applied in historical Chinese
10 contexts, this paper circumvents that issue, accepting the fact that the Western term may not
completely conform to related Chinese terms, such as ji祭 or si祀. The objective of this paper is,
rather than simply terminological clarification, to obtain a deeper conceptual understanding for
this range of activities during the Han by placing them within current theoretical conceptions –
anthropological and theological – of the nature and function of ritual in its historical contexts. In
the Chinese culture of this period, the rituals took place in both public and private contexts:
publicly, the state sponsored sacrifices to mark the seasons, to commemorate deceased emperors,
and on certain special occasions, such as crises; private sacrifices, which are less well documented,
covered a similar range of situations. From this range of rituals and as part of a broader
investigation into this issue, the sacrifices considered in this paper include the Western Han state
rituals of jiaosi 郊祀 and those at the zongmiao宗廟, representing the state as a territorial entity
and as the imperial lineage.
BARENGHI Maddalena Ca' Foscari University Venice, Italy
On the Preservation of Books: Zheng Qiao’s (1104-1162) Jiaochou lüe (Treatise on
Collation and Textual Studies)
Zheng Qiao’s (1104-1162) Jiaochou lüe (Treatise on Collation and Textual Studies) is important to
modern scholars as partial but sometimes unique source of inquiry on Song material which is no
longer extant. In some cases the details it provides have enabled scholars to identify catalogues
that had since long lost. At the same time the many inconsistencies make the whole work less
reliable than other Song sources. This value of historical significance is irrelevant to the role of
this work in the time when it was produced. This paper analyses Zheng Qiao’s Jiaochou lüe in the
context of the consistent book collection campaign taken by the Song imperial agencies and
private collectors in the late 1140s and 1150s. I will attempt to question its actual impact on the
development of the bibliographical studies and librarianship in the Song period. Zheng’s interest
in bibliography was certainly linked with the great cultural impulse generated by the efforts put by
the Song Emperors in the reconstitution of the Imperial Library collections. Although he was
never officially involved in it, this event was probably seen by Zheng as an opportunity of getting
himself noticed by the court. The setting of the Jiaochou lüe is an overview of the problematic
concerning the retrieval of books and library science with a historical perspective. Zheng’s
advocacy for librarianship, as stated in the general preface of the Tongzhi, grew from the concern
for the lack of rules in the preservation and circulation of books rather than for the problems of
collation. This aspect becomes more evident when perusing the Jiaochou lüe. The whole work is
conceived as a vade mecum for scholars engaged in the administration of the library collections, yet
it is far from been exhaustive on the various aspects of bibliography. In the present essay I will
not analyze in details each topic; instead I will try to deepen those sections that appear to be
more significant for an overall understanding of Zheng’s work.
11 BASCIANO Bianca, University of Verona, Dept. of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, Italy
Are all resultative compounds really resultatives?
In this paper we will take into account two kinds of Mandarin resultative compounds (Yong
1997): simple change resultatives (1), which express an instantaneous change but allow a process
preliminary to the final change, and complex change resultatives (2), which allow a gradual
development, with different stages, toward a predetermined culmination.
(1) dǎ-pò 'hit-break, break'
(2) lā-cháng 'pull-long'
According to Yong, while all resultative compounds are incompatible with the durative aspect
marker zhe, the two kinds of resultatives in (1) and (2) differ in their (un-)ability to be used with
the progressive marker zài/zhèngzài, which is generally allowed only with activities but
ungrammatical with achievements, i.e. it is incompatible with the encoding of a result (see Xiao &
McEnery 2004). While simple change resultatives never allow the progressive, complex change
resultatives do allow the progressive, e.g. zài cā-gān 'PROG wipe-dry', zài lā-cháng 'PROG pulllong'; see (3):
(3) wājuéjī zhèngzài wā-kuān lùjī
escavator PROG dig-wide roadbed
'The escavator is digging the road wide'
(www.baiyang.gov.cn/news/xinmao/2011/623/J761.shtml)
To account for these differences, we will propose a syntactic analysis along the lines of those
proposed by Ramchand (2008), Son & Svenonius (2008), and Basciano (2010) for Chinese
resultative compounds, which are similar in spirit to Sybesma's (1999) small-clause approach. The
event structure can be decomposed into a maximum of three subevents: the causing subevent,
the process subevent (the core of dynamic predicates) and the result subevent, which provides a
telos. Lexical items contain category features, which allow particular configurations to be built. We
will show how this kind of decomposition enables to account for the different behaviour of the
compounds at issue, capturing the differences at the structural level. We will argue that only
compounds like those in (1) actually have a result in their event structure, thus being real
resultatives, while those in (2) do not necessarily have a resultative layer in their eventive
structure. This is possible due to the nature of the V2 involved: while pò 'break' in (1) is a change
of state verb that necessarily possesses a [+result] feature, result constituents like the one in (2)
can be considered as degree achievements (see Tham 2009), since they are able to express gradual
change of state and, as such, do not necessarily entail result (see e.g. Hay, Kennedy & Levin
1999). We will show that the different properties of the V2s involved would lead to different
structures, resulting in different aspectual behaviour too.
12 BAYEN Aurelie , EHESS, Paris
State Communication Policy on the Internet in China — The Cat & Mouse Game —
When the Civil Society appropriates State Discourse
The paper demonstrates that the Chinese State Communication Policy consists in reinforcing its
domination over the cyberpopulation by means of discourses adjustments, mixing panoptical
control and seductive speeches. This double approach enables government to sway online public
opinion in order to control it. Up to the present, this adjustment policy has been able to limit the
federative and protest uses inherent in the internet as observed in Eastern Europe or in the
Middle East (as for “Arab Spring”). On the one hand and building on Foucault, this political
study asserts that technology enables new panoptic structures among cyber population; people do
not know if they are monitored or not by the police or even by other internet users. On the other
hand, the paper explores the sociological effects of this policy, observing how the civil society
online found how to get away the censure by using speeches launched by the regime himself in
order to defend its own interest (arguing nationalism, ecology or modernisation). This
demonstration is based on a new methodology that mobilizes specialized technological tools
(such as website watchers or the traceroutes of websites), thus allowing the establishment of a
scientific credibility for researchers of 21st century in the Social Sciences in the collection and the
identification of sources on the internet, considered both as ground for study or the object of
searches. The hypothesis of this study supposes that internet in China has introduce, not a
sudden Revolution (like Tiananmen in 1989) as predicted by the international community in the
late 1990’s, but a deep change of mentality in the Chinese society. Indeed, State and Civil Society
both learn how to mobilise public opinion to defend their cause or legitimacy. This dialogue
between State and citizens - sometimes in tense climate - contributes to improve the slow but real
democratisation of the country in pursuing a common purpose: Placing China first among all
nations.
BEHR Wolfgang, East Asia Seminar, University of Zurich, Switzerland
“The semasiology of some primary Confucian concepts” revisited
Roughly one sexagenary cycle ago, Peter A. Boodberg (1903-1972) conducted a hermeneutic
“experiment” of “cultural stereoscopy”, resulting in the “radical Anglicization of … Chinese
concepts” based upon his identification of the “etymonic karyosome” of a series of Confucian
key terms. While his mostly neo-Latinate renderings of Confucian key terms such as zhèng
13 ‘regimen’, dé ‘enrectitude, arrectivity’, lǐ ‘Form’, rén ‘co-humanity’ , or yì ‘selfshipful compropriety’
(PE&W 1.4, 1953, 317-332) were predictably shortlived, biological metaphors continue to
flourish in theories of lingustic and literary evolution. Meanwhile, Koselleckian style “conceptual
history” and “Cambridge school” approaches to the history of political thought have sufficiently
cautioned us against a static view of ideas, values, and processes and their linguistic expression,
unremittingly pointing to the need of a diachronic contextualization of the historically contingent
lexical items. While Boodberg’s idea that “contour forms of etyma” could successfully be
rendered in compact and learnèd Western translation equivalents, yielding “a silhouette of
sufficiently congruous perimeter”, may seem overly optimistic today, the dramatic change in our
knowledge of Early Chinese phonology and morphology over the last half century (e.g. ZhèngZhāng Shàngfāng 1984, 2003, Старости 1989, Baxter 1992, Sagart 1999, Pān Wùyún
2000, Jīn Lǐxīn 2002, 2006 etc.), of its Sino-Tibetan backgrounds (Peiros & Starostin 1996, Jeon
Kwang-jie 1996, Xíng Gōngwǎn 2001, Matisoff 2003, Schuessler 2007 etc.), as well as the flurry
of newly excavated texts offering fresh insights into the early usage of such concepts, would
certainly seem to justify a revisit of the “viscious and cryptoplasmic mass of … connotations”.
Acknowledging the problematic of a proper delineation of a “Confucian” (Lewis 1999, Nylan
2001, 2009, Nylan & Csikszentmihalyi 2003, Puett 2004, Dennecke 2010 etc.) school in pre-Qín
times by widening Boodberg’s selection of primary concepts to those shared by several other
textual communities (cf. also Nikkilä 1982, 1992), the present paper will also discuss the
etymologies of the terms dào ‘way’, shù ‘reciprocity’ and tiān ‘heaven’, and, in the spirit of what
Mei Tsu-lin (1996) has called “the (linguistic) morphology of ideas”, argue against the deplorable
reduction of these terms to a mere “vocabulary of role ethics” in Ames (2011).
BERG Daria, in collaboration with Mohammed Shafiullah, Dept of Chinese Culture and
Society, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St Gallen, Switzerland
The Rhetoric of Cultural Communication in the Works of Chinese Bloggers and Artists
As China is catapulted towards its new status as a global superpower, a new generation of urban
citizens communicates fresh visions of what constitutes the ideal society in the twenty-first
century. This project investigates the rhetoric of cultural communication in China to find out
how artists and writers critique contemporary Chinese society using both traditional and the
digital media, in particular Web 2.0. Analysis will focus on two case studies: first, bestselling
novelist-cum-blogger Han Han; and second, the lesser-known ‘Utopian Team’ artistic duo He
Hai and Deng Dafei. They share a social conscience that drives them to merge their art with
social activism, using the new social media as their vehicle of expression. They belong to the new
Generation X (xinxin renlei) of children born in the late 1970s and 1980s who have no personal
memories of Mao, grew up during Deng Xiaoping’s era of reforms and witnessed the consumer
revolution in China. Since Han Han started blogging in 2005 his mix of satire and social critique
14 has made him China’s most widely read blogger. His site has been visited over 551 million times.
Han Han’s works thrive on social and political satire targeted at China’s education system, the
establishment, authority, corruption, current affairs and media censorship. Through the medium
of performance art and blogging, He Hai and Deng Dafei, too, critique local culture, the impact
of globalization and the spectacular transformation of urban life in China today. They have
tackled social issues such as poverty and the plight of the migrant workers in China’s emerging
world cities. The Chinese government reacts with censorship, fearing the cultural scene and webbased forms of communication as potential catalysts for revolution. This study aims to discover
how these members of the new generation of writers, artists and intellectuals in China negotiate
cultural communication and censorship. It will analyse the rhetoric of cultural communication in
the works of these writers, bloggers and artists within the contemporary cultural and sociopolitical contexts. This research will shed new light on our understanding of cultural
communication as a social and political barometer.
BERNARD Marie-Hélène, UR Patrimoine et Langages Musicaux- Université Paris IV-La
Sorbonne
Tan Dun: How a Chinese composer became a star of global cultural industry
Tan Dun’s path is like a contemporary fairy tale. This composer who during the Cultural
Revolution planted rice in the countryside, like many other young people, heard a Western
orchestra for the first time when he was 19. About twenty years later, he was the first foreigner
musician to win an Oscar award for the score of Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
This creator was a rebellious student during his Conservatory training in Beijing after the Cultural
Revolution and became a famous downtown avant-garde artist during his first years in New
York, thanks to his energy, his originality, and his performer’s talent. With his concept of
« Organic Music », he introduced natural noises with water or paper along with symphonic
orchestras, paying a great attention in his shows to visual aspect. As Tan gained international
recognition in the late 1990s, however, he began to write more « accessible » works, quite close to
Hollywood style. He refined his marketing strategy by elaborating a marvellous storystelling of his
life in China for the Western media and by playing on a very superficial « Chineseness »: for
instance, he linked his music to the Hunan’s shamanistic rituals. At the same time, he used his
celebrity to seduce the Chinese authorities who rather suspected him. The turning point was in
1997: he composed his Symphony 1997 for the Hong Kong’s reunification with China ; this piece,
featuring the Zeng Hou Yi bell-chimes, marked the triumphant return of Tan Dun to China.
Whereas he had been rather critical towards Chinese regime, he began to glorify China’s past, like
in his opera The first Emperor, created at great cost by the Metropolitan Opera and directed by his
friend Zhang Yimou. Like Chen Qigang, he gained major commissions offered by the Chinese
government at great events (like Beijing Olympics or Shanghai World Expo). This choice of
composers who made their career abroad is paradoxical. In China, music is often linked to
15 political and symbolic power. By analysing Tan Dun’s path, we also can ask questions about
today’s Chinese cultural identity and its global expansion.
BETZL Joachim, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
River Crab Harmony - Implications and Perspectives
What made strolling and drinking tea so popular last year? Who is pushing the red line in the
Chinese internet using hexie? How do those phenomena materialize in the real world? My short
answer is River Crab Harmony. This construct was shaped by writing my master’s thesis. Its focuses
on implications of Chinese internet culture and its fresh perspectives. These fresh perspectives
are useful if not necessary in an environment which prefers fairy tales instead of naming hard
facts. While the "development of a harmonious society" is promoted in China, censorship is a
common experience for more and more users. Chinese netizens circumvent this control by using
neologisms like "river crabbing" or "harmonizing". Whole narrations are playing with the
ambiguity of decontextualized terms like hexie. The story of the river crabs chasing the grassmud-horse sounds like a fairy tale. It was told in popular video clips in early 2009 and has been
declared as a political issue after foreign media reported on the dynamic phenomenon. Though
the term “river crab” had been harmonized on the Chinese internet, political satire kept
flourishing. Once the confrontation between bloggers and censors was spread outside China,
various forms of it materialized worlwide. What started as confrontation between two mythical
creatures in the Internet already reaches out into reality. Does River Crab Harmony induce
protests and train accidents in the real world or merely advertisement and plush toys? It would
hardly be possible to deconstruct China if there were no constructions at all. River Crab
Harmony is an approach of forming a story out of some fragments which were discovered by
chance.
BEVAN Paul, Soas University, London, UK
Covarrubias and China — Miguel Covarrubias and Pictorial in Shanghai
The Mexican artist, Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) and his wife Rose made two trips to Bali, the
first in 1930/31 on the couple’s honeymoon and the second as part of an anthropological
research project undertaken during the years 1933/34. This has been well documented, both by
Covarrubias, in his book Island of Bali and by scholars involved in the disciplines of anthropology
and ethnography. However, the significant impact of Covarrubias’ artwork on the countries he
16 visited en route to Bali remains largely un-documented, despite the fact that he is perhaps the
single most important foreign artist to have inspired the work of a group of artists working in
Shanghai during the 1930s. This group includes some of the most important cartoonists and
commercial artists working in that city; Zhang Guangyu, Zhang Zhenyu and Ye Qianyu.
Although links between these artists and Covarrubias have been recognized by many writers in
the past, the extent of the impact of his work on them and exactly how it manifested itself in
their output has never been fully examined. Evidence of Covarrubias’ artistic styles, assimilated
and modified by the Chinese for their own purposes, can be seen in many of the most popular
periodicals of the 1930s, several of which were published by the artists’ friend and colleague,
publisher and poet Shao Xunmei. These include Lunyu (The Analects), Shiritan (The Decameron)
and Shidai huabao (Modern Miscellany). Through an analysis of the available Chinese and English
language primary source material, this paper examines the diverse ways in which Covarrubias’
work was adopted in Shanghai; adding significantly to the knowledge of the history and
techniques of modern art in China, the USA (where Covarrubias worked during the 1920s and
1930s) and in his native Mexico. Not only was Covarrubias’ work highly influential on the art of
China but he adopted some Chinese painting techniques in his own work and was to become
increasingly interested in many aspects of Chinese culture, demonstrating evidence of a
significant intercultural exchange between two divergent cultures - Covarrubias’ America and the
thriving metropolis of Shanghai, locus of Chinese modernity in the 1930s.
BIANCHI Alice, INALCO, Paris
The portrayal of marginal groups during the Ming-Qing dynasties: Paintings of the
jianghu (river and lake) people
This paper will focus on pictorial representations of some marginal groups produced during the
Ming and Qing dynasties. Alluding to the wide world of the jianghu (literally “river and lake”),
these paintings describe the realm of characters — often associated with the underworld society
— who were always in transit, such as wandering beggars, blind musicians, itinerant entertainers
and performers, fortune-tellers and so on. From the Ming dynasty onwards, these colourful
characters, popularised and romanticised by fiction and novels, started to be treated as an
independent theme in pictorial art. In paintings, they are often described in comic or picaresque
situations, such as quarrelling or even fighting scenes. This paper explores visual depictions of
this particular group and deals with the following questions: What function and meaning did such
works have? Are these images plausible portrayals of real-world situations or are they carrying
social or political undertones? Through these inquiries, I argue that these works might be seen as
painted counterparts to the fictitious world of satirical or grotesque novels. Thus, the painted
characters were used as a commentary on society’s (especially the educated elite’s) vices and
shortcomings, becoming a subject suitable to express social or even political frustration. 17 BIZAIS Marie, Université de Strasbourg, Département d'études chinoises, Strasbourg, France
“Another on the Same”: A diachronic study of topoï in Chinese medieval poetry
Chinese medieval poetry is a turning point in the history of Chinese literature for a series of
reasons, among which: 1/ the rise of literary consciousness; 2/ the development of literary
thought; 3/ the structuring of poetry through tone-patterns, new and ancient style poetry and the
sedimentation of topics and topoï. This paper addresses the apparent paradox that poets use a lot
of clichés when they are exhorted to compose poems that taste fresh and new. Xin (novel) is in
fact a cornerstone in literary theory. Yet, possibly influenced by their education as literati, those
who write poems use and reuse snippets extracted from other texts. Of course, such practice is
not particular to China. Experts even suggest that intertextuality and repetition contribute to a
grammar of writing and constitute the textual set called literature. Still, the number of echoes that
a reader should identify when trying to understand a Chinese poem is peculiarly high. Then, what
role does intertextuality play in Chinese poetry, and how do writers show their ability to
innovate? How do sameness and uniqueness combine? To answer these questions, we shall focus
on representation of self through Middle Ages (from the Wei to the Tang). Before the Tang
established the examination system, literati were hired after they were noticed and co-opted. Thus
on the one hand, they had to demonstrate that they shared values and culture with their alter
egos. With topoï and intertextuality, literati proved that they had the same cultural references as
their colleagues and friends. On the other hand, they also had to show that they were special in
order to get promoted. The ambivalence of their posture is visible through their behavior in
social intercourse and through self-depiction in poems. We shall see how, through centuries,
many of them compared themselves to a peng (tumbleweed) which, with its superficial roots, is
tossed by the wind. Although this will not lead to the discovery of a first occurrence of the
stereotype, it will help answer the following question in a diachronic perspective: Did these literati
all use this metaphorical cliché in the same way or are there original ways of echoing one's peers?
We will also observe that some literati expressed their uniqueness by creating “literary isolates”.
Were such exceptions more appreciated and did they carry more meaning than so-called common
places? Light will be shed on the limits of conventions and that of originality.
BLITSTEIN Pablo Ariel, Inalco – Asies-Cec / Collège de France
Writing and political legitimacy in the Wenxin diaolong (Panel: “Uncarving the Dragon:
Retrospective and Prospective Views on Wenxin diaolong”)
18 In different chapters of his Wenxin diaolong, Liu Xie discusses the role of writing in imperial
administration. From his assertion in the chapter “Chengqi” (Measuring capacity) that writing
should be an “ornament” of the scholar-official to his idea in the chapter “Zhang biao” (Reports)
that reports are the “flowers of the empire”, Liu Xie gives writing a high status in the imperial
administration. What is the relation between this status given to writing and his implicit ideas of
political legitimacy? How can we understand the status he gives to writing in the larger context of
an administration that recruits officials on the basis of their writing capabilities? In this paper, we
will try to understand some important aspects of Liu Xie’s ideas about the political role of writing
in the light of the practices of the imperial administration of his time.
BÖCKING Felix, Modern Chinese Economic and Political History, University of Edinburgh
Chinese Economists between State and Market, 1937-1956: Wartime Economy, New
Democracy and the Hundred Flowers Campaign
(Panel “Serving the State: The Professionalization of the Social Sciences and Civil Service
in China, 1937-1957”)
This paper discusses the experience of economists working in the early PRC in the light of their
background in the wartime Nationalist administration. Nationalist wartime economic policy was
based on a move towards a government-directed economy that prefigured 1950s economic
planning in many ways. Hence, recognizing the personal continuities between the two planning
bureaucracies is important in understanding the CCP’s economic policies of the 1950s.
Economics played an important role in the CCP’s efforts to build a socialist China during the
New Democracy period (1949-1953) and the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957). Primarily, the
party-state used economics and economists both to address pressing economic issues, such as
curbing inflation, price controls, and developing national income accounts. Increasingly, though,
economists were also appointed to positions of responsibility for solving problems on the border
of economics, such as demography, or plainly outside that border, as becomes apparent from the
case of Zhou Youguang, who headed the Chinese government’s efforts to simplify the Chinese
script in the 1950s. In economics, as in other parts of Chinese public life, the 1950s saw a
reconsideration of the Stalinist model of development that intensified after Stalin’s death in 1953.
This reconsideration, which was urged forward by the party-state leadership in the mass
campaign of the Hundred Flowers Movement (1957) produced a number of thoughtful pieces
from Chinese economists about the design of the Chinese economic system such as an article by
Gu Zhun which suggested that even in China’s socialist economy, commodity prices should be
determined by supply and demand. In this paper, I will argue that Chinese economics is part of
an intellectual tradition that bridges the common historiographical divide of the establishment of
the PRC in 1949, and that it constituted an important state building tool for the newly established
Chinese Communist state.
19 BODOLEC Caroline, CNRS, CECMC, Paris
The Impact of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural
Heritage on popular art practices in Contemporary China
On December 2, 2004, China became the sixth country to ratify the 2003 UNESCO Convention
for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. In 2011, the country holds the largest
number of elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
(29 of a world total of 232) and on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent
Safeguarding (7 of 27). This can be seen as another expression of the international cultural "Soft
Power" of China (Li 2009; Huang 2006; Kurlantzick 2007), but it would miss the national impact
of the UNESCO Convention. The translation of the concepts into the Chinese cultural laws has
had profound consequences for all the elements now called Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). The
first part of this communication will present the modifications of the Chinese administrative
structure subsequent to the ratification of the 2003 Convention (Wang Li 2010). This highlights
some of the ideological concepts mobilized by the government to integrate its previous cultural
policies. In the same way, it is important to see how the convention principles were read and
interpreted through actual national ideology as for instance the hexie shehui, the "harmonious
society". In the second part, I will try to unveil the compiling of the files, starting from the local
survey to the inscription on the UNESCO Representative List through the example of the
Chinese paper-cut practice, a form of popular art performed predominantly by women. The
analysis I present here is based on information gathered during my ethnographic field researches
in Shaanxi province since 1995 (Bodolec 1999, Bodolec 2005, Bodolec 2010 (1), Bodolec 2010
(2), Bodolec 2012) and the study of provincial and national ICH lists. This communication aims
at presenting the many different actors, the parts they played and the channels of communication
they used at every step of the process. The purpose is to examine how the new international
concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage can affect local cultural policy.
BOGUSHEVSKAYA Victoria, University of Urbino, Italy
Color Naming and Color Categorization in Chinese
The issue of color categorization and color naming is one of the main fields of the cultural and
cognitive anthropology. The studies on cross-cultural color categorization were initially done by
proponents of the concept of linguistic relativity, which holds that languages are arbitrary systems
and they classify the world in unpredictable manner. Instead, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s now20 classic study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (1969) promoted a form of linguistic
universality, based on the theorized linkage between perception, visual neurophysiology and
cognition. Their hypothesis underwent numerous revisions, but the principle findings remained
unchanged: 1) there is a restricted universal inventory of basic color terms (henceforth BCT) and
the categories they name; 2) a language adds BCT in a constrained order, and there are no
indications of the loss of a BCT. The theory also holds that languages vary in numbers of basic
color terms, from a minimum of two terms to a maximum of eleven (twelve in two exceptional
cases). Mandarin was classified as one of the problematical cases and was treated as an example
of Stage V (out of VII) with basic color words for black, white, red, green, yellow and blue.
Employing the Berlin and Kay’s criteria for defining BCT, the present study attempts to verify
the current evolutionary stage of Chinese color terminology and to examine its qualitative and
quantitative diachronic changes. The data was taken from 15 etymological dictionaries, both
mono- and bilingual, as well as from the anthologies Shijing, Tang shi sanbai shou and Song ci sanbai
shou. The results show that color categories, encoded in the history of Chinese language, did not
follow the evolutionary sequence discovered by Berlin and Kay: terms for purple and pink
appeared earlier than qing (Chinese equivalent for GRUE) split into green and blue. Another
specific finding is the loss of the BCT for pink. Color terms defined as basic in contemporary
Putonghua are: white bai, black hei, red hong, yellow huang, green lü, blue lan, brown he, purple zi
and grey hui. This makes Mandarin Chinese a Stage VII language.
BOROKH Olga Institute of Far Eastern studies, Russian Academy of Science
Yan Fu and the first Chinese translation of The Wealth of Nations
In 1902 Adam Smith's book “The Wealth of Nations” has been published in Chinese language
under the title “The Origins of Wealth” (Yuan fu). It was translated by well-known thinker and
public figure Yan Fu. This publication marked the beginning of penetration of Western
economics into China. Study of “Yuan fu” could help to find out early patterns of adaptation of
Western economic thought to Chinese cultural context. Yan Fu took creative and selective
approach to the original text, he had excluded some fragments and emphasized ideas that were
similar to his views. His choice of classical literary language for translation had been caused by an
aspiration to put foreign ideas into familiar forms of Chinese tradition. The paper focuses on the
basic features of translation by Yan Fu and on his explanations of key economic ideas. The
translator had encountered the conflict of Chinese and Western notion of economic life and its
moving forces. Traditional Confucian disrespect to profit constituted an essential obstacle for
propagation of Western economic ideas in China. Yan Fu asserted that economic science is an
independent discipline which is placed outside the sphere of morality. The Chinese tradition
influenced Yan Fu’s attempts to place the interests of the state above the interests of individuals,
for the translator the enrichment of the state was more important than the wealth of individuals.
Well-known metaphor of the “invisible hand” was rendered in Chinese text by the means of
21 traditional notions of impersonal natural order. The most considerable divergence between Yan
Fu and Adam Smith could be found in criticism of the labor theory of value. Western notion of
free competition looked as development and continuation of the ideas of evolution that were
earlier presented in Chinese translations by Yan Fu. However the book of Adam Smith has not
caused similar broad sympathetic response among the nationalist intellectuals in China. Although
they aspired to strengthen the material might of the state they were not ready to accept
unconditionally western economic liberalism and individualism as means to achieve it.
BOUTONNET Thomas, PhD, Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies, Jean
Moulin University, Lyon, France
The « consumption of whiteness »
(Panel: “Sociology of consumption”)
The infatuation of Chinese people for white skin colour in contemporary China is not a new
phenomenon. White skin colour traditionally served in China a symbolic purpose of social
distinction: pale colour face meant a higher social status, for darker faces were associated with the
outdoor and sun-burning activities of the peasantry. In the popular imaginary, white skin
distinguished urbanites from peasants, intellectual labour from manual labour, the rich from the
poor. During the 1980s and the 1990s, the rise of a consumer society deeply impacted Chinese
people cultural practices and social behaviours, and drastically reshaped Chinese public space
around consumption of goods. Inevitably, the original material purpose of purchasing and
consuming (to address basic needs) got outrun by the spectacular purpose of identity shaping
process (to appear), massively promoted by the advertising industry. In that context, whiteness
conferred therefore a more polysemic and complex symbolic value. Based on a selection of
public advertisements and billboards from the 2000s, this paper will analyse the representation of
whiteness and its intrinsic symbolic value. While it is still associated with urban and non-manual
labour life, whiteness of skin also acts as a new standard for beauty, as a result of the Western
cultural hegemony embedded within the market economy. But post-colonial studies tell us that
whiteness is not only a colour, it is also a metonymy for standardized Western way of life, and
this paper will also show that whiteness in Chinese contemporary advertising is often implied or
implicit. By promoting « white » behaviours and practices, Chinese consumer society and
advertising industry seek to promote a new ideal, the way of life of western middle class, by
duplicating globalized standards.
BREUER, Rüdiger, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Faculty of East Asian Studies, Germany
22 Email: [email protected]
Youxi rensheng: Material Aspects of the Acting Profession of the Ming and Qing Periods
(Panel: “The Valuation of Work in the Ming-Qing Era: Beyond the Dichotomy
‘Lowly’/’Honorable’”)
The Chinese theatre of the Ming and Qing, and especially the predominant genres of zaju,
chuanqi/kunqu and Beijing opera, have already commanded much scholarly attention. The great
majority of these studies concern aspects such as genre, role types, costumes or masks, that is,
they consider theatre as a form of artistic expression. Others have focused on ques-tions of
biography, authorial intention, or social backgrounds. Comparatively little attention has been
directed to the life of those who enacted these plays, especially for the years before the early 19th
century. This talk will present results of an ongoing project focusing on the material aspects of
the acting profession during the Ming and early to mid-Qing. I am interested in theatre life
behind the scenes, in the paraphernalia of the art of acting, particularly in data on questions of
income, expenses, living conditions, expenditures and other financial matters, as well as in
societal, organizational aspects: actors’ guilds, mechanisms of mutual security, death and burial
customs, or the restrictive effects of laws on performance practices and actors’ status. The paper
will consider instances in Ming and early Qing theatricals that mention and incorporate such
material aspects. One focus will be on the private troupe of the Late Ming and Southern Ming
official Ruan Dacheng (1587-1646) and the portrayal of his outstanding troupe in the ‘chuanqi’
drama by Kong Shangren (1648-1718), Taohua shan (The Peach Blossom Fan, 1699). Although
information is sparse and scattered, it suffices to demonstrate that conditions varied greatly, not
only between private troupes, independent professional companies and state-run institutions, but
even among troupes of similar ownership structure.
BREZZI Alessandra, University of Urbino, Italy
Why still translate the Divine Comedy in the 21st Century? Some remarks on the recent
translations of Dante’s poem
(Panel “The Experience of the Translated Text”)
Why still translate the Divine Comedy into Chinese in the 21st century? Why add a new translation
to the numerous already existing? Why not try to spread the most famous poem of Italian
Literature, and also the most difficult to translate, in different ways, for example, through some
forms of intersemiotic translation? We will try to answer these questions through the reading and
the analyses of some translations, in prose and in verse, proposed by different professors or
translators during the last two centuries, in order to grasp the different readings and
interpretations that those Chinese interpreters have given to this ‘encyclopedia’. Each translation
23 is a new text, a new reading of the original work, but it is also an original product of the cultural,
temporal and social context in which it was born, and the relationship that it has with previous
translations. The paper will focus on an analysis of some ‘poetic’ translations published in China
during the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st Century, Qian Daosun (1921), Huang
Wenjie (2000) and Wong (2003), with the intent of interpreting the Chinese reception, or misreception, of the Divine Comedy, as well as the aim and contribution to the target culture of these
translations. The analyses will also attempt to demonstrate that modern Chinese language, in
some cases, is more apt than modern English in rendering Dante’s verse scheme as Wong
suggests (Wong 2008).
BROMBAL Daniele, “Ca’ Foscari” University, Venice, Italy
Institutional Determinants and Quality of Policy-Oriented Research in P.R. China
Since the early 1980s, there has been a consistent effort by Chinese authorities to make use of
well grounded policy-oriented research to pursue the strategic development goals of the country.
This tendency has been strengthened by the Hu-Wen administration in the last decade: The
concept of ‘Scientific development’—in itself describing a model of development balancing
economic with social and environmental concerns, aiming at the realization of a so-called
‘harmonious society’—can indeed be understood through the lens of an increasing reliance on
scientific research as a tool to guide definition, implementation and evaluation of national
policies. Despite the increased reliance on scientific work to address issues of public concern and
the growing amount of pertinent literature, quality of policy-oriented research is often questioned
in epistemological terms, by both domestic and foreign trained scholars. Indeed, recent research
on the issue shows how in transitional China avenues to produce and construct knowledge can
be influenced by institutional determinants—cultural, social, political—or, in other terms, how
research, especially when implying the collection of first-hand data through on-field activities, can
still be considered a sensitive activity in itself, potentially constricted and biased by institutional
factors. Drawing largely from observations made during a four year appointment as policy
analyst, researcher and health program officer of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China,
this presentation intends to introduce a preliminary assessment of institutional factors potentially
impacting on the quality of policy-oriented research, introducing methodological considerations
which hopefully will provide useful in bridging the broader epistemological debate to the everyday practice of policy research in China.
BUDRIŪNAITĖ Agnè, Vytautas Magnus University, Department of Philosophy, Kaunas,
Lithuania
Gaudium essendi: experiencing joy in Daoism and Existentialism
The paper investigates into the theme of joy in the Daoist tradition of thought and existential
philosophy. Gaudium essendi is an existential joy without any particular reason for it. Existentialists
usually do not pay much attention to any kind of joy or talk about it as merely conditional and
transient emotion. The tradition of the existential philosophy following Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert
Camus emphasizes the “tragic” aspect of existence (suffering, guilt, absurd, despair, alienation,
nausea and loneliness). Consequently, the concepts of Nothingness, Emptiness and “empty Self”
are most often taken as a basis for comparison between the existentialism and Daoism. This
notwithstanding, the joy is a concept articulated from different perspectives in Daoism. It
manifests itself clearly in the style and basic ideas of many Daoist texts, especially in the Zhuangzi.
The aim of this paper is to compare the concept of joy found in the Zhuangzi with different
notions of joy found in the texts of existential philosophy. The paper makes clear that some
similarities to Daoist notion of joy may be found even in the writings of Sartre and Camus. The
thoughts of religious existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel and Søren Kierkegaard are
prominently more allied to Daoism and help us to understand the unconditional character of
gaudium essendi. In the second part of the paper, the main attention is focused on the concepts of
joyful serenity (die Heiterkeit) and uselessness (kuinzige) employed by Martin Heidegger in his text
“Der Feldweg”. Some key features of this joyful serenity are compared with the concept of true
“joy without joy” of the Daoist sage.
BULJAN Ivana, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Croatia and
Ghent University, Belgium
Ruler’s techniques of maintaining power in the chapter no 20 of the Chunqiu fanlu
My presentation deals with ideas on rulership as outlined in the chapter “Bao Wei Quan”
(“Preserve Position and Power”) of the Chunqiu Fanlu. It is a compendium of Chinese philosophy
and statecraft which had a great impact on generations of scholars in traditional China. Its vision
of sovereignty was highly relevant to the development of the ethico-political discourse of Chinese
Confucianism. It is traditionally ascribed to a pivotal Confucian scholar from the Former Han
dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE), Dong Zhongshu (c. 179 – 104 BCE). “Bao Wei Quan” is the chapter
(pian) no. 20 of the text. It is written for a ruler or a candidate for rulership, as a kind of advice,
aiming at protecting his interest. It prescribes the techniques (shu) that will enable the ruler to
protect his strategically advantageous position of the throne and his political status. The
presentation discusses main concepts and ideas of the statecraft theory as exposed in the “Bao
Wei Quan” chapter. It will focus on BWQ’S treatment, analysis, and techniques regarding the
relationship between the ruler and ruled, and the methods by which the latter can be controlled.
As it will be shown, the Bao Wei Quan emphasises the concepts of rewards/punishments
25 (shang/fa), positional advantage (shi), non-active rulership (wuwei), human nature, achievement and
reputation (gong/ming), political and moral power (de/quan) and natural administration. In
addition, I will discuss how and to what degree the “Bao Wei Quan” turned these concepts into
its own vision of rulership and statecraft. This process of recomposing demonstrates how
originally non-Confucian ideas have transformed the development of Chinese Confucianism and
made a profound impact on the subsequent development of Chinese political thought in general.
BUMBACHER Stephan Peter, Universities of Zurich and Tuebingen
Critical edition of Zhuangzi
According to the Shi ji, the version of Zhuangzi available to the Grand Astrologer Sima Qian
around 100 BC comprised “more than 100.000 characters”. The received text which can be
traced to the version compiled by Guo Xiang (ob. 312) contains some 63.000 odd words within
thirty-three chapters. Whatever the size and structure of the text may have been during the
decades that followed Sima Qian, there is evidence that Liu Xiang (79-8 BC), or his son Liu Xin
(ob. AD 23), brought the version(s) available to them into a “standardized” (ding 定) form, to be
stored in the imperial library. This was in all likelihood the Zhuangzi in fifty-two chapters (pian 篇)
Ban Gu (AD 32-92) listed in his Han shu presenting the catalogue of the imperial library of the
Former Han. The aim of the present Zhuangzi research project at the University of Zurich,
financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is twofold. First, as much as possible of the
lost Zhuangzi is to be identified in direct and indirect quotations to be found in a broad range of
sources. (E.g., the Tang literary anthology Wen xuan alone contains in its commentaries roughly
800 quotations of which 46 quote lost Zhuangzi passages; the Song lei shu Taiping yulan yields about
640 quotations, including some 82 fragments of lost pericopes). These fragments are to
“complement” the received text, eventually resulting in a more complete version. Second, by
collating all quotations found of a given pericope, a critical version of each pericope accompanied
by a comprehensive variorum apparatus to construct. This presentation discusses the actual state
of the project, addressing some of the problems encountered and offering first results for critical
examination.
BUSQUETS Anna, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
The Zheng Maritime Power: Riccio and Koxinga’s aspirations
In the second half of the XVIIth century, Zheng Chenggong had managed to establish his
26 domain on the Southeast coast of China and, after his conquest of the Dutch island of Formosa,
wanted to expand his power over the sea by incorporating the Philippines, that were under
Spanish control. He chose the Fujian Dominican missionary Victorio Riccio as his ambassador
and, from this moment, Riccio made several trips to the Philippines islands. Some years before,
Riccio had been assigned by his superiors to Xiamen, where he stayed until 1658, and this marked
his future given that at that time Xiamen had become the epicentre of the Zheng family, led by
Zheng Chenggong, known in European sources as Koxinga. At that moment, Zheng family
dominated the trade in the south Chinese Sea and controlled all the maritime resources in the
south of China. Riccio was an exceptional witness to Zheng family’s activities and when he wrote
his story, he incorporated his first-hand news about this family and his maritime activities, as well
as about the Manchu arrival in China. These aspects were incorporated in his history Hechos de la
Orden de Predicadores en el Imperio de China. Containing more than 350 manuscript pages, this
document is divided in three large parts and it can be found in the archives of the Dominican
convent of Ávila. Even if one passage of it has been published in an anthology of Spanish texts
on Taiwan (the passage describes the relations with Zheng Chenggong), the document remains
unpublished. This paper will discuss the figure of Riccio as a great informer about the Zheng
family, their organization and maritime activities, and especially about Zheng Chenggong
(Koxinga) and his aspirations on Manila, bearing in mind the possible ties which may exist
between Riccio's manuscript and Martini's De Bello Tartarico, published in 1654.
BUSSOTTI Michela, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris
Email: [email protected] New Formats for Old Contents? Pages of Printing Transition
Western printing techniques and publishing practices introduced to China since the second half
of 19th century prompted important structural modifications in the practice of editing and in the
publication of traditional texts. This paper will focus on a few examples of ancient editions
(primers, morality books, almanacs) reprinted in Western format, often in the new medium of
lithography. In these new publications, ancient contents are arranged in different ways and
associated with new motifs. This kind of hybridity between old and new appears, for example, as
modern forms of publicity and sale are adopted to promote the publication of Chinese traditional
texts, or through the coexistence of commercial advertising and religious propaganda in almanacs
published by Western missionary presses for Chinese readers. These materials, often coexisting
with more classic items derived from the xylographic tradition, show hybrid formal solutions that
are symptomatic of this period of political transition and cultural transformation.
27 CANDELISE Lucia, CNRS, SPHERE
Medical practice and sinology: itineraries of acupuncture from East Asia to France
(Panel: “Individual itineraries and the circulation of scientific and technical knowledge in
early modern China [16 th -20 th centuries]”)
This presentation focuses on itineraries of globalisation, in the case of the transmission of
acupuncture to France from China and French Indochina, showing how it was appropriated
within the French medical profession. The careers of George Soulié de Morant (1878-1955) and
Albert Chamfrault (1909-1969) represent two important stages in this process, while both
showing the role of Chinese medical classics in legitimising acupuncture as part of medical
practice.
CASACCHIA Giorgio, Oriental University, Naples,
GIANNINOTO Rosaria, Université de Grenoble 3, France
Italy,
in
collaboration
with
Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Dealing with Western model: continuity and evolution in the conceptualization of
grammatical categories
The development of grammar studies of the Chinese language was an important innovation of
the linguistic studies during the Qing dynasty; it was maybe the most important innovation in the
study of the Chinese language, as in the Chinese tradition the systematic descriptions of the
language were scarcely represented. The genre of bilingual grammars involved adapting the
methodologies elaborated for Western languages to Chinese. Even though the Western model
was predominant, bilingual grammars progressively integrated aspects of Chinese linguistics,
borrowing categories and methodologies from the Chinese linguistic tradition (such as the
concepts of empty and full words in Prémare’s grammar or the monographs of particles in
Julien’s work). Moreover, in their attempt to give account of the specific features of Chinese,
missionaries and scholars also developed new categories and theories, absent both in Western
and Chinese traditions (for instance, the particulae numericae in Martini’s grammar, the analysis of
word formation in Bazin’s and Edkin’s works, Marshman’s and Julien’s focus on word order, or
Gabelentz’s notion of psychological subject). These topics deserve further studies, as the models
of Western grammars were then adopted by Chinese scholars in their studies on European
languages (first of all Latin, but also English and French) written in Chinese, and also in the first
grammars and handbooks of the Chinese language.In this perspective, we will focus on two
points of grammatical description that can be considered as emblematic examples of these
processes: the categories elaborated in the analysis of word-formation (destined to become an
important topic of subsequent linguistic studies) and the way of describing empty words
28 (particularly significant in reason of its link with the Chinese philological tradition and to the
debate on the parts of speech in Chinese). Our intervention aims to retrace the evolution of these
categories in the history of Chinese linguistic studies. We will focus particularly on the tension
between the analytical models of European origin and the descriptive obligations for the specific
features of the Chinese language, trying to highlight to what extend these concepts and categories
impacted on the history of XX century linguistics.
CASALIN Federica, Università di Roma "Sapienza", Istituto di Studi Orientali, Italy
China meets the “Other”: the descriptions of Italy in Wang Xiqi's Xiaofanghu zhai yudi
congchao
During the very first years of the 20th century, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao sailed westwards
hoping to find some useful suggestions to modernize China. In the Foreword to a volume on the
Chinese perception of America, John K. Fairbank observes that Liang only visited the United
States in 1903, more than forty years after the Japanese reformer Fukuzawa Yukichi had been in
the same country. According to the American scholar, “forty years was an index of China's
lethargy and Japan's aggressiveness in meeting the modern world”. This statement cannot be
easily contradicted. Nonetheless, some 19th century attempts by the Chinese to gain a deeper
knowledge of the outside world are worth highlighting. One such case is that of Wang Xiqi
(1855-1913), who devoted some decades of his life editing the Xiaofanghu zhai yudi congchao, a huge
collection of geographical works aimed at spreading detailed and up-to-date information about
the Qing empire and the rest of the globe among his fellow countrymen. The collection was first
issued in 1891 and was then enlarged three times before 1901. It contains a number of works on
world geography that had been translated in Chinese since the 1840s. Significantly, it also
includes eighty-four diaries of travel abroad. In these diaries, the “Other” is seen and described
from the point of view of the first Chinese who had the chance to go abroad before Kang
Youwei and Liang Qichao. Fourteen of these diaries report the experiences and impressions of
the travellers who sailed along the Italian coasts or visited the country in the second half of the
19th century. Why did they stop in Italy? What were they looking for? What were their
impressions? And what idea of this newly unified country did they convey in their writings? This
research aims at collecting and comparing all relevant information to answer to the above
questions. It will thus try to reconstruct the image of Italy that any Chinese might have had after
reading the Xiaofanghu zhai yudi congchao, including Kang Youwei, who visited this country in 1904.
CASAS-TOST Helena, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Trtaducció i
Intrepretació, Barcelona, Spain
Teaching Chinese for Translation: the case study of onomatopoeia
Within the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language for special purposes little has been
published yet dealing specifically with the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language for
translation. Although many students of Chinese subsequently find work as translators, in the
foreign language-classroom little emphasis has been placed on the development of certain skills
useful for translation. As a consequence, they may not always be suitably prepared for such an
activity. An example of his phenomenon can be seen in the translation of a specific grammatical
category: onomatopoeia. After analysing the translation into Spanish of several contemporary
Chinese novels, a very different treatment of this type of word has been observed between those
translated by expert translators and by non-expert ones, resulting in the neglect of these words by
the latter. One of the reasons that may account for this is their lack of real understanding of these
words and of their use and function in Chinese. This paper seeks to explore how the features that
distinguish teaching Chinese as a foreign language for translation are key to develop certain skills
that are crucial for translating, which include a deep understanding of the language from a
contrastive point of view. Taking onomatopoeias as a case study, it will present the results of the
analysis of several translations and will highlight the features that these words have both in
Chinese and Spanish and that consequently should be taken into account when translating. An
approach to teaching Chinese as a foreign language for translation should consider these issues
and help improve the quality of translations as well as the understanding of the foreign language
and its linguistic resources.
CELLI Nicoletta, Università di Bologna, Alma Mater Studiorum, Dipartimento di Studi
Linguistici e Orientali, Italy
The earliest images of the Buddha in China: models, copies and transformations
The subject of the transfer of iconographic models from India to Central Asia and China and the
correlated conundrums concerning the earliest Chinese Buddhist images have recently returned
to the fore following the publication over the past decades of important new material. The
discussion turns principally on the interpretation of an array of medieval bronze statuettes (2nd-4th
c.), which mostly portray the Buddha seated in dhyanamudra. The present paper garners the fruit
of a close comparative stylistic and iconographic analysis of Indian and Chinese material to
reconsider the problems left unresolved by earlier studies and puts forward some innovative
proposals regarding the earliest Chinese Buddhist works and their relationship with Indian
models. The aim of this research is to define the criteria according to which works of this period
can properly be said to be Chinese (the corollary being a discussion of the origins of the images
traditionally regarded as Chinese) and to outline an associated chronology, as well as to offer an
iconographic and iconological reading of these first images of the Buddha, revealing the Chinese
30 interpretation of them.
CESARINO Loredana, Istituto Italiano Di Studi Orientali, University of Rome 'La Sapienza',
Italy
Courtesan’s poems in the “Quan Tang shi”: new perspectives on the scroll 802
Tang courtesans were among the freest and most cultivated women of their time. Many of them,
apart from being well trained in the art of seduction, were also distinguished artists endowed with
literary talent. Through the centuries a fair number of poems written by them have been
preserved in sources of different nature (especially collections of anecdotes, poetry anthologies
and biji) and, in the early eighteenth century, have been included in the “Quan Tangshi” (hereafter
QTS) , thus becoming part of the Tang poetical canon. Since its publication in 1707, in fact, the
Quan Tangshi has been considered the most faithful and complete expression of this canon.
However, today this canon must be reconsidered in the light of the material unearthed in
Dunhuang and of the researches conducted on this anthology over the past 30 years both in
China and abroad which have proved how the QTS not only misses a fair number of
compositions ascribed to Tang poets, but also contains several errors, textual variants and double
entries. The most interesting thing is that, in several cases, the biographical information and/or
the authorship of the works contained herein are unreliable or even false. As we can imagine, the
researches on the problems of QTS initially focused almost exclusively on male authors.
Fortunately, since the late 90s of the last century there was a reversal of this trend and so these
researches have also focused on women’s literature that, from this point of view, not only proved
to be a particularly fertile territory but also a not fully explored one (see Su Zhecong 1991; Chen
Shangjun 1992, 1997 and 2010; Zhao Weiping 2010). In line with these researches and through
the analysis, both diachronically and synchronically, of the most recent literature on this subject,
this paper will discuss the latest theoretical and methodological approaches which have allowed
scholars to cast new light on the QTS, to reconsider its accuracy and the accuracy of the whole
image of Tang poetry as it has been handed down, generation after generation, during the last
300 years and it will focus specifically on the image of Tang female poetry that came from it. In
particular, this paper will examine the cases of doubtful authorship that concern some poems
attributed to courtesans in the scroll 802 of the QTS and with particular reference to those that
involve Liu Caichun and an anonymous female dancer. The analysis will be carried out using the
data extracted from the original sources used by the very compilers of QTS – such as the “Yunxi
Youyi” by Fan Shu (Tang dinasty), the “Tangshi Jishi” by Ji Yougong (Song dynasty), the “Tang
Caizi zhuan” by Xin Wenfang (Yuan dinasty) and the “Tangyin Tongqian” by Hu Zhenheng (Ming
dynasty), just to name a few – as well as through the lens of the most recent theories and
researches on the QTS. In particular, the author will discuss the manipulations carried out on the
original sources by tracing back the steps of that long process that led to the creation of these
women’s poetic identities which are as fascinating as questionable.
31 CHAN Pak-ka, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, PRC
The Achievement of Okamura Shigeru’s Research on the Early History of the
Compilation of Shijing
Among the research on the early history of the compilation of Shijing (Book of Songs / Book of
Odes), the speculation on the “Confucius’ expurgation of odes” has long been one of the core
topics. Comparatively, the investigation on the formation of Shijing prior to Confucius is
underdeveloped. In 1986, an article on this topic written by Japanese scholar Okamura Shigeru
was published. His researches on two-times compilation of Shijing was partially adopted by some
Chinese scholars. However, their adoptions were sometimes inaccurate. This is caused by the
confusion of the concept of shi (odes) and Shi (Book of Songs). Consequently, while some of his
arguments have been cited by Chinese scholars, the major contributions of his works have been
in eclipse. Okamura considered the “Airs South of Zhou”, the “Airs South of Shao”, the “Airs of
Bei”, the “Airs of Yong”, and the “Airs of Wei” were part of imperial odes of the Zhou dynasty.
They were different from the other “Airs of the States” for their earlier period of being compiled
as the Shi. This paper analyzes the editing of the “Airs of Bei”, the “Airs of Yong” and the “Airs
of Wei”. These three chapters are regarded as the “three songs of Wei”. The compilation history
of the “three songs of Wei” plays a significant role in Okamura’s study. Moreover, the late
Warring States bamboo slips “Kongzi shilun” (“Confucius’s Discussion of the Odes”) also makes
it possible to re-examine Okamura’s study. The bamboo slips recorded the authentic name of
different chapters of the Shi. In addition to clarifying the concept of shi and Shi, based on
Okamura’s study, we may gain new ideas on discussing important Shijing controversies, such as
the independence of “The South”.
CHAN Yuen Lai Winnie, University of Oxford, UK
Garden Knowledge Exchange between Qing Court and Yangzhou
(Panel: New Perspectives on the Qing: The Uses of Art Inside and Outside the Court)
As with painting, the Qing court expended significant time and resources towards the building
and connoisseurship of gardens. Typically, garden knowledge circulates unidirectionally: the
imperial appropriation of ‘Southern’ (i.e., Yangzhou) cultural practices, learned through the
Southern Inspection Tours, with Southern gardens adapted for the Qing palaces. New
documentation and thence a more complex understanding of Qing imperial power reveal that the
32 exchange was bi-directional, that the Yangzhou elite learned from the Qing court as much as the
Qianlong emperor came to ‘learn from Yangzhou’. Parallelism between the Yangzhou salt
merchants’ taste and that of elite bannermen families in Beijing appears in their architecture,
interior décor, and exotica. Official painting records also showed that numerous artists and
craftsmen trained in Beijing returned South and popularised what they had learned in the capital.
In Yangzhou huafang lu (The Pleasure Boats of Yangzhou), the author Li Dou relates his contact
with Imperial Household officials and master carpenters in charge of court properties in Beijing.
This text, along with contemporary surveys of the capital city and the Yuanmingyuan, provides
an insider’s view of the high level of garden crafts attained in the emperor’s public and private
realms, built upon the dynamic exchange of knowledge between the Qing court and Yangzhou.
CHANG Lily, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge
Humanitarian Concerns: The Legal Treatment of the Young in Wartime China, 1937-1945 At the turn of the twentieth century, as major Western powers coped with the aftermath of the
First World War and later the Great Depression, China was an isolated nation, where after two
thousand years of imperial rule, a republic was established and the monarchy was overthrown by
a group of revolutionaries. Despite such social and political changes, it was also a time when
China’s legal system remained in a state of flux - a transitional period lodged somewhere between
the imperial legal system and attempts to embrace new ideas and legal reforms imported from the
West. Drawing on previously unexamined archival legal case records from China and Taiwan, this
paper demonstrates the evolution and development in the formation of ideas about the legal
treatment of the young from the early Republic to contemporary China. More specifically, it
examines how the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance against Japan from 1937 to 1945, more
commonly folded into the Pacific component of the Second World War, served as a crucial
catalyst to crystallising ideas on how the law should treat the young, and the construction of the
legal boundaries of childhood. The aim of this paper is to therefore demonstrate how courts
attempted to challenge the liminal space occupied by juvenile offenders within the legal sphere,
and examine how the social impact war on juveniles brought about a new legal and social
understanding of children and childhood in twentieth-century China. Although the People’s
Republic of China did not formally develop a juvenile justice system until the early 1980s, the
judicial landscape of contemporary China with respect to the concept of juvenile justice was
forged from the fundamentals and precedence set during the wartime period, which was later
revived in the 1980s and 90s, as part of the country’s social and legal movement towards a rule of
law. However, Western, Chinese, and Japanese language scholarship on the development of a
juvenile justice system in contemporary China have largely neglected the importance of legal
developments that occurred before the rise of the Communist Party in 1949. Developments in
the first half of the twentieth century therefore marked an important period of transition and
transformation within the judicial realm for China, as new legal norms were formed and ideas of
33 social justice were being tested.
CHEMLA Karine, SPHERE (UMR 7219, CNRS & University Paris Diderot) / ERC Advanced
Research Grant SAW, Paris, France
Approaching the scientific work at play in the analysis of standard measuring vessel in
ancient China (3rd—7th centuries)
(Panel: “Meanings and Uses of Measuring Units in pre-modern China”)
The presentation aims at highlighting and analyzing aspects of the scientific work that Chinese
scholars active between the Wei and the Tang dynasties carried out in order to analyze systems of
measuring units and material standards designed in the past to embody these measuring units. It
is hoped that this investigation can help us approach the work involved in the actual design of
systems of measuring units and the making of material standards associated to them. To deal with
this topic, the presentation will focus on measuring units for capacity and standard vessels
attached to them. It will also mainly concentrate on the measurement of grains. In a first part, I
shall suggest that mathematical documents provide in this respect a precious source of evidence
and I shall offer arguments establishing authorship for some of the passages that they contain
and that are contested. The deployment of these arguments will require that we rely on the
“Monograph on pitch pipes and the calendar 律曆志” of the History of the Jin dynasty 晉書 and the
History of the Sui dynasty 隋書. In a second part, I shall discuss which hypotheses these connections
between the official histories and mathematical sources suggest with respect to the status and use
of these mathematical books. These hypotheses in turn help us understand how we can use the
evidence provided by the latter documents, in particular to investigate the history of the design of
systems of measuring units and the material standards embodying them.
CHEN Helen Kai-yun, Dept of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University & Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-Marseille Université
Constructing comparative corpora of French and Mandarin disfluent repetitions with
prosodic annotations
This study provides a description on the construction of comparative speech corpora that focus
on the sound profiles of repair/disfluency in naturally occurred, face-to-face French and
Mandarin interactions. Specifically, the current study examines the sound profiles of the
34 particular example of disfluent repetitions that involve repetitions of certain syntactic
constituents, such as the following (1) and (2):
(1) le [R1] le [R2] terrain commençait à glisser beaucoup (Henry and Pallaud 2003)
(2) ta na shihou mai- [R1] mai [R2] zhege song ipod
3sg that time buy buy this-classifier give PN
‘(At) that time, it was buying- buying this one and getting one IPod free.’
The reason to focus on repair is that it is a commonly occurring phenomenon in human
interaction; speakers often stop before the end of the turns to make adjustments, i.e. to add, to
correct, to elaborate, or to qualify what they have said during the conversation (Jasperson 1998).
In the process of executing such same-turn self-repair, various linguistic resources, including
grammatical elements, sound manifestations, even non-verbal gestures, are all involved in order
to facilitate the production and comprehension of the on-going interaction. Serving various
functions, such as holding the turn for word- or content-search, the action of repair itself
involves diverse linguistic representations at not only syntactic or semantic levels, but also
prosodic level, and mostly, interaction among interlocutors. The current study proposes to
construct comparative corpora of both French and Mandarin disfluent repetitions that are
annotated with the prosodic information. Examples of disfluent repetitions are identified and
extracted from naturally occurred interaction in both languages, and each instance is tagged in
terms of its prosodic realization, i.e. duration, pitch, loudness of, and silence around R1 and R2 in
carrying out the repair. With the construction of these comparative corpora, the goals are to
provide a language resource that can offer rich information for further analyses on the syntactic,
semantic, and most of all, interactional aspects of the French and Mandarin repair in correlation
with sound realizations. Eventually, the corpora annotated with prosodic profiles could shed
lights on further comparative studies of various linguistic aspects between the two languages.
CHEN Liana, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, George Washington University,
USA
“Guest Ritual and Court Theatre during the Qianlong Reign: A Case Study of George
Macartney’s 1793 Visit to China”
(Panel: “Toward a New History of Literary Flows in Sino-European Encounters, 17001830”)
The fact that the Qianlong Emperor’s birthday fell on the hunting season prompted court
officials to incorporate birthday ceremonial activities into the prescribed ritual program of Qing
court’s annual trip to the Summer Palace in Rehe. During the birthday celebrations, sumptuous
state banquets were held, and entertainment programs were offered to impress both Inner Asian
nobles and visitors from all over the world. How did the court determine which delegate was
35 eligible to receive the imperial favor of attending such a performance? What are the responses
from the audience? How do the themes of ceremonial dramas reflect the ideological construction
of the guest ritual discourse? This paper examines the pedagogical role of Qing court theatre in
state-sponsored ceremonial events. My case study focuses on Lord George Macartney’s visit to
Rehe in 1793, when Qianlong celebrated his eighty-third birthday. I argue that as a principal form
of imperial bestowal, theatrical entertainment represents the emperor’s benevolence and
generosity towards his subjects. Plays featuring imperial subjects presenting tributes could be seen
as behavioral guidelines for the emissaries attending the performances. Here and in other forms
of bestowal, whether each foreign delegation would receive such a favor depends on the imperial
court’s evaluation of the subordinate country’s relationship to the Qing court. Court theatre was
mobilized to accommodate the ideological requirements of empire-building and the emperors’
perceived need for displaying their power and grace.
CHEN Shuowin, Chinese Literature Department, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Lost in Transnation/Translation? A study of Zhang Ruogu’s Yiguoqingdiao and his
Translation of George Soulié de Morant’s Ce qui ne s’avoue pas même à Shanghai
(Panel: “Alter-/native Imagination, Alternative Image/nation: From Translating the
Other to (Re) Creating the Self”)
Urban novels, which were popular in 1930s Shanghai, have been of interest to scholars for
decades. These stories, derived from traditional Shanghai school literature, were formed by
cosmopolitan atmosphere and fantastical encounters. They referred to the inspiration of Japanese
neo sensualists’ novels, French literature and worldwide popular urban culture. For example,
Zhang Ruogu (1905-1967), as one of the famous Shanghai urban writers who published several
famous stories by adapting certain narrative strategies, had admitted that he was encouraged to
write about his city after reading George Soulié de Morant’s (1878-1955) novel Ce qui ne s’avoue
pas même à Shanghai. However, what kind of inspiration he embraced? What were the
characteristics of Zhang Ruogu’s “Shanghai school urban literature”? By comparing and
examining these texts: “Ce qui ne s’avoue pas même à Shanghai” of George Soulié de Morant, Lin
Weiyin’s Chinese translation version, and his own novel Exoticism (Yiguoqingdiao), this paper
attempts to analyze the differences of Shanghai urban images presented by Shanghai writer of
1930s and the French writer of early 20 century. In other words, in analyzing these texts, as well
as the allegories hidden behind the characters and plot arrangements, this paper investigates how
Zhang Ruogu reshaped a new vision of Shanghai stories by adopting several western literary
narrative strategies and his imagination of the city. This paper exercises this discussion as a
starting point to analyze the cultural connotation of Zhang Ruogu’s translation and his work
from a point of view of Chinese “alter-native modern imagination” to explore the complicated
problems affiliated with colonialism and cosmopolitism in the Asian city during the early 20th
36 century. This contradiction therefore also makes the “Shanghai school urban literature” a good
case to explore the East Asian modernity.
CHEN Wenyi, Institution of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Writing For Help: Informal Collective Support among Yuan Literati
This paper will discuss one kind of informal, collective support mechanism among Yuan (12061368) literati: assistance obtained through a special literary genre, the presentation preface
(zengxu). The xu was originally an introduction (preface or postface) to a book. By the Tang (618907), a derivative type known as the zengxu had appeared, first serving as a preface to a group of
farewell poems but later also composed independently as a farewell gift in its own right. This
presentation preface became especially prevalent amongst Yuan literati, for whom it embodied a
structure of social interaction, an open and circulating means by which social networks and
cultural bonds were established. One common subtype of zengxu in the Yuan was a circular
seeking aid for individuals. A recipient raised money from his literati fellows by showing a
presentation preface that called for aid for certain needs, most often related to emergencies like
parents’ burials or food shortage for family, but also not rarely to personal needs like building a
house, travel expenses, or even buying books. Modern scholarship has taken notice of charitable
organizations starting from the Song (960-1279) like “charitable estates” (yizhuang) or associations
of mutual aid like “estates for examinees” (gongshi zhuang), but this kind of non-institutional yet
collective assistance deserves more attention. This paper will analyze the mechanism of and
cultural values behind this form of voluntary help, and its implications for the literati community
and the socio-economic structure during a conquest dynasty. It will also compare this function of
presentation preface with shu, originally a religious solicitation to raise money for building
temples or public services like bridges or roads, to explore how collective action differed under
public and private or religious and secular circumstances.
CHEN Yunju, Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, UK
Beyond Medical Texts: Medical Concepts of Circumstances and Epidemics in Song
Urban Areas (960-1279)
(Panel: “Genres and Concepts in Middle Period China”)
This paper discusses intersection between three themes: medical concepts of lands, epidemics,
37 and changing living circumstances, by investigating how these concepts, especially the concepts
of filth, were applied to explain epidemics brought about by changing urban living spaces in Song
times. This type of application, according to extant Song sources, appears in genres other than
medical texts. These genres range from correspondence between the Song literati, memorial
records of successful attempts to dredge water channels, to religious reports to deities. This paper
aims to demonstrate medical pluralism by investigating how medical concepts were applied
differently in medical texts and other Song genres, particularly differences in pathogenic
explanations, as well as personal and administrative responses to epidemics.
CHI Chih-chang, Department of Chinese Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Study on Thoughts of Zhouyi in Six Dynasties in the Interplay between Confucianism
and Buddhism
Culture of Zhouyi has been the profound and influential paragon in Chinese civilization, and is
closely related to Chinese philosophy, religion, academia and folk custom. The purpose of this
study is to legitimately reorganize and describe how the thoughts of Zhouyi functioned in Six
Dynasties in the interplay between Confucianism and Buddhism. During that time, the thoughts
of Zhouyi was popular in the practice of pure conversations. In such culture, the effect of
thoughts and theory of Zhouyi on Buddhism passed to the east is an issue to be explored. The
theory of the heavenly induction of mind, metaphysics and methodology of Zhouyi has been the
criteria of the traditional scholars to imagine the religious situations. Thus, regarding Buddhism
spread to the East, this study intends to find how monks or scholars interpreted doctrines,
thoughts and ritual of Buddhism by the analogy of related thoughts. For instance, the terms used
by Hui Yuan in the related papers were usually associated with the language of Zhouyi. Tsung
Ping, the disciple of Hui Yuan was a scholar who supported the theory of Interaction between
the heaven and people. They intentionally or unintentionally developed “religious metaphor” was
based on theory of Zhouyi. It suggests that at the time, theory of Zhouyi was extensive and
internalized in the thoughts of literati. However, in “Analogical Interpretation” of interplay
between Confucianism and Buddhism, it seemed that Buddhism has been gradually Sinicized.
This study includes four sections: 1) metaphysics and Immortal Soul; 2) heavenly induction of
mind and karma; 3) the positional distinction of Zhouyi and monastic ritual; 4) “getting the
meaning” and Buddhahood.
CHI Yumei , Soochow University, Dushu Lake campus, Suzhou, PRC
Origins of the particle ‘DI’ appeared in Medieval Chinese
This paper is devoted to the origin of the structural particle ‘DI’ which appeared during the LateMedieval Chinese (6th – 13th century AD). ‘DI’ is considered as the embryo of ‘DE’, the most
employed structural particle in Modern Mandarin Chinese. This work, focused on the 6 main
functions of the structural particle ‘DI’, aims to understand the origins of this particle. Both a
diachronic and a cognitive approach to analyse the data revealed from the selected classical
sources of vernacular language from Pre-Archaic Chinese (14th – 11th century BC) till LateMedieval Chinese have been adopted. The 6 usages of ‘DI’ are classified as follows: Particles of
type a (Part.a) in the structure ‘N1+DI+N2’, of type b (Part.b):‘Adj+DI+N2’, of type c
(Part.c):‘V (VP)+DI+N’, of type a’ (Part.a’) :‘N (PD) (PP)+DI’, of type b’ (Part.b’) :‘Adj+DI’ and
type c’ (Part.c’):‘V (VP)+DI’. Two steps of evolution have brought about the final particle ‘DI’.
The first stage is composed of the appearances and then the changes of two traditional particles,
‘ZHI’ and ‘ZHE ’. From Early-Archaic Chinese (11th - 6th century BC), ‘ZHI’ and ‘ZHE’, through
‘reciprocal strategy’ and grammaticalization, gave birth to the particles of type a, type b, type a’,
type b’ and type c’. Till Late-Medieval Chinese, together, ‘ZHI’ and ‘ZHE’ assume the 6
functions. Meanwhile, the new particle ‘DI’ arrived. ‘DI’ also covers these 6 functions. This
phenomenon is considered as the second stage of the evolution. Surprisingly, the appearance of
‘DI’ is abrupt and atypical, out of the classical process of grammaticalization. The appearance of
‘DI’ does not seem to be from a ‘genetic origin’, but rather from an ‘emblematic one’. It means
that ‘DI’ doesn’t necessarily inherit ‘genetic property’ from the traditional particles, but it is
chosen to be an ‘administrator’ for all the particles’ functions, through a subjective decision due
to cultural customs. This phenomenon corresponds to the theory proposed by Traugott &
Dasher (2002): analogy > metonymy> subjectivisation (metaphor).
CHIANG Nicole, SOAS, London, UK
Reconsidering the Collection of the Qing Imperial Household in the Qianlong Reign
(1735-1796)
(Panel: “New Perspectives on the Qing: The Uses of Art Inside and Outside the Court”)
This paper addresses the very definition of ‘collection’, against the received wisdom that the
Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795) utilised the collection to impress his subjects with his cultural
sensibilities. However, evidence shows that while furnishings were on display, objects that
entered the collection through a careful selection process were in fact boxed up and removed
from the public gaze. This often-overlooked fact necessitates a re-evaluation of the function and
purpose of the imperial household collection. Since it was not visible most of the time, the
collection could not have been used to make a public political statement. Consequently, through
39 comparative studies, it will be argued that magnificence through the display of objects is not
necessarily the universal goal of all rulers. Viewing imperial collections as demonstrations of
power and authority draws from Eurocentric notions of collection and display not necessarily
applicable in the Qing case, where political significance and function embodied in the collection
were internalised, and the collection existed for the singular gaze of the emperor.
CHOU Tan-Ying, Inalco, Paris
Jinsuo ji, The Rouge of the North and Yuannü: reflections on how Eileen Chang’s literary
language has changed through her bilingual writings
Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was one of the few bilingual Chinese writers whose works were edited
both in Chinese and English-speaking countries. Having received bilingual education since
childhood, Chang started writing essays for the English-language press in Shanghai as she was a
young girl. She became a famous novelist by the early 1940s, during which time most of her
major Chinese works were published. Before her immigration to the United States in 1955,
Chang worked in Hong Kong as a translator for USIS, thus translated several renowned
American authors. In the same period, she published her first novel written in English The RiceSprout Song (1955). Encouraged by the success of this book, she aspired to carry on her brilliant
career as a writer in USA. Yet after the strenuous effort of self-translation and rewriting, Chang
had to give up her literary ambition within the English-speaking world: The Rouge of the North,
published in 1967, in some way marked her vain attempt at the end. The novel The Rouge of the
North was actually derived from Chang’s rewriting of her best-known novella – Jinsuo ji (1943),
while Yuannü (1968), the Chinese version of the former, went through a re-creative selftranslating process, which pushed Chang to rework her original English manuscripts. Between
Jinsuo ji and Yuannü, differences in narrative structure, characters, and metaphors, etc. have been
analyzed either through a judgmental view of their incomparable literary values, or to
demonstrate the author’s female bias and humane perspective through the rewriting. Chang’s
bilingual writing ability and skills have also been examined through the comparison of The Rouge
of the North with Yuannü. Still, we know little about the impact of Chang’s bilingual (re)writing,
self-translation and even her translating experiences on her own literary language. By comparing
these three works, being highly related one to another, this paper will thus reconsider the
bilingual detour within Chang’s rewrite of Jinsuo ji into Yuannü. Aside from their different target
readership, I will try to clarify how Eileen Chang’s bilingual mode of writing might have played
its role in the evolution of her style.
40 CHUANG Ya-Han, Paris-IV Sorbonne University. Paris, FRANCE
Global diaspora, Trans-local networks: the role of Qiaoban in the rescaling of Wenzhou
Much has been written on Chinese state’ political incorporation towards its emigrants since the
1978 reforms (Liu 2000, Thunø 2001, Nyril 2001); less attention has drawn on their interaction
on the meso-level. Based on a multi-site ethnography between Paris and Wenzhou region, this
paper is interested in the mutating relation between China’s Qiaoxiang (region with long tradition
of emigration) and their emigrants. It puts a special emphasis on the function of Qiaoban, the
“Offices of Overseas Chinese Affairs”, and will reveal how it bridges and recreated the relation
with emigrants on the meso-level and the discrepancy between official discourse and emigrants’
feedback. The paper starts by presenting the evolving linkage between the region and its
emigrants. Whereas Wenzhou emigrants in Paris have benefited from and participated in the
circulation of goods and currency, Qiaoban has played a key role to promote the emigrants’
economic achievement as the paradigm of the Wenzhou model, especially through the heritigisation
of emigrant history and the designation of the narrative of “global Wenzhou diaspora” (xijie
wenzhouren). The article then goes on to present numerous institutional tools to build up
transnational networks, including numerous voluntary associations in both sending and receiving
localities who cultivate relationship with political and economic actors, and the various summer
camps targeting young generations as means of re-diasporisation. Finally, I will conclude by
examining the discrepancy between the official discourse and migrants’ feedback. Despite these
attempts of “rescaling” of Wenzhou municipal government, interviews with emigrants show that
their effects do not always echo the authority’s expectation, but vary widely due to the uneven
level of development and infrastructure among the sending townships.
CHUNG Pi-fen, University of Edinburgh, UK
“Translation” of Images — Esoteric Buddhist Elements in Astral Paintings of Tangut
(1038-1227)
Images can be regarded as a silent witness who records and remains what is happening and
meanwhile, are carriers of ideas. They would attest to the truth of the word by examining these
paintings uncovered from archaeological sites- including Khara-Khoto, Ningxia and Ganshu
provinces in China. With the most sensational discovery on the ruins of a Tangut city of KharaKhoto in western inner Mongolia in 1908, Kozlov and his companion uncovered over 3500
sculptures, paintings, manuscripts and so on. Among this vast collection of paintings, we find a
special motif of pictures--the astral images. By exploring the roles and functions of astral
41 paintings, we get a picture about the interaction between beliefs and artistic traditions. Exploring
the development of images, we can realize how Esoteric Buddhism reformed idea of heaven.
Hence, the main thesis of my paper includes 2 aspects: Internally, how did Esoteric Buddhism
reform people’s perception of heaven in Tangut? Then, how was such perception of Buddhist
heaven reflected in their visual production? Externally, how did the Tanguts apply Chinese visual
cultures to their traditional art? As Buddhism flourished and spread, it brought new impacts to
each culture it entered. Reciprocally, each culture transformed Buddhism to meet its individual
needs. It was adapted to serve powerful emperors and illiterate masses. By probing the astral
images, some questions then arise: Why did astral images emerge and gain popularity in Tangut
between the 12th and 13th century? How did the Tanguts decipher and construct the notion of
Benminggong (original destiny) and the astral worship? To answer these questions, I approach the
topic from the view of Buddhist iconography. “The meanings of things,” points out Herbert
Blumer, “are handled in and modified through an interpretive process used by the person in
dealing with things he encounters.” The idea could be constructive in the discussion of how
people react to and interpret the Buddhist knowledge and images, and then create new religious
symbols. In the study, we try to dig out the iconographic and textual sources that would recover
the history and meanings of Buddhist astrology of Tangut empire.
CIAUDO Joseph, Inalco, Paris
The uses (and abuses) of philosophical comparisons in the works of Zhang Junmai:
hermeneutical and political issues
The aim of this paper is to question the uses of philosophical comparisons in the works of the
modern Neo-Confucian Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang, 1887 – 1969) in order to excavate a
framework of understanding. Ranging from Das Lebensproblem in China und in Europa (1921) to The
Development of Neo-Confucian Thought (1962), the paper tries to explain the multiple uses of
comparisons by considering their types (conceptual, personal, historical, etc.) and the language
used (German, Chinese and English). Through the selection of exemplary samples, the paper
highlights the different functions of comparisons in writing the history of Chinese thought.
Without focusing too much on the question of philosophical relevance, the paper notes that
some connections raise hermeneutical and political issues. While a few uses seem purely
explicative or ornamental, others show a systematic will to rationalize or legitimate Chinese
thinkers. For instance, in 1923, during the controversy over science and metaphysics, Zhang
stated that the “Song learning” (Songxue or Neo-Confucianism) was the equivalent of western
idealism and vitalism, while “Han learning” (Hanxue) was the counterpart of Anglo-American
materialism and pragmatism. In fact, this advocacy could be understood as a mean to defend the
Neo-Confucian tradition from the attacks of the New-Culture Movement, embodied by Hu Shi
and Ding Wenjiang. From an historical approach, one can then notice that the uses and the
functions of philosophical comparisons in the works of Zhang rely broadly on the political
42 context. Debating during the Fourth May period, rethinking one’s own tradition in the thirties or
introducing Chinese philosophy to Westerners in the end of the fifties are different settings that
imply specific ways of writing the history of Chinese thought. Therefore, in the case of Zhang
Junmai’s comparisons, the paper focuses on the question of legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy
not from the standards of philosophical accuracy but from that of political opportunity.
CLAUDE-SOLLIER Nathalie, PhD, Aix Marseille Université, France
Shanghai Xiaozi and their bodies (Panel: “Sociology of consumption”)
The paper will deal with the way members of Shanghai “petite bourgeoisie” (xiaozi) relate to their
bodies. During the Maoist period, individual bodies were hidden and standardized in the context
of an egalitarian society. Social and structural changes since the 1980s have led not only to an
individualization of the society, but also to a new relation to physical bodies. Taking care of your
own body contributes to define individual as well as social identities. Xiaozi people, young urban
residents socially moving upward, take care of their physical bodies in a very specific way: they
make use of luxury products and are looking for an inner well-being as well as they intend to
reveal their social success. The paper is based on a corpus of texts collected on the Internet and
on a field survey carried in 2009 in Shanghai. It aims at revealing how members of the xiaozi
relate to their own bodies: what is at stake is not only the idea of fitness, but also a taoist
conception of the individual; the harmonious relation of each individual with his/her own body
echoes with an harmonious relation with the society at large, through the search for individual
happiness.
COMINETTI Federica, Università Roma Tre, Roma, Italy
The information structure of shi... de constructions.
Chinese shì... de sentences constitute a subtype of copular sentences (namely sentences whose
structure is [XP copula YP]) whose superficial structure is [NP copula REL[ative clause]]. It is
proposed that [NP copula REL] structures may correspond to three underlying syntactic and
informative structures: pseudo-clefts (specificational sentences), predicational sentences and
identificational sentences. In pseudo-clefts, the initial NP is focused: “The child is the one who
broke the vase (not the cat)”. In predicational sentences, what follows the copula is new
information: “Here comes Anna with her son. The child is the one who broke the vase (not the
cat)”. In identificational sentences, a definition is provided: “The journalist is the one who writes
43 articles”, but “The child is the one who breaks vases”. This paper will describe the information
structure of Chinese shì... de sentences. Specifically, it will be proposed that shì… de sentences,
very frequent in written language, should not be interpreted as pseudo-clefts (specificational
sentences), but as predicational or identificational constructions. The different syntactic and
informative properties of different shì... de sentences (w.r.t. the voice of the verb, the new
information, whether NPs are definite or indefinite) may locate them either among predicational
or among identificational sentences, which is a very debated issue in theoretical linguistics
(among others, Den Dikken 2001, Frascarelli / Ramaglia forthcoming). Specifically, Chinese data
suggest that, when the meaning of the verb is active, only the identificational function is
acceptable. As concerns Chinese shì… de sentences, corpus data (with reference to Chinese
GigaWord 2 Corpus) show that the case is quite rare where the initial NP is focused, excluding a
specificational interpretation. Moreover, when the meaning of the verb is active, the
identificational function only appears to be acceptable: this is the reason why jìzhě shì xiě wénzhā
ng de (identificational) is grammatical, while háizi shì d ǎ pò hu ā píng de (which would be
predicational) is not. On the contrary, when the verb has a passive meaning, the predicational
interpretation is acceptable: huāpíng shì háizi dǎpò de (predicational), as well as wénzhāng shì
jìzhě xiě de (identificational).
COMO Michael, Columbia University, NY, USA
Dream Angel: The Jade Maiden and Cultic Practice Beyond Temples and Shrines
(Panel: “Knowledge on the Move: Chinese Ritual Forms in Japanese Religious Contexts”)
This paper represents a first attempt to clarify the career of the Jade Maiden, the somewhat
peripheral Chinese astral deity from the Daoist pantheon that burst into prominence in a variety
of contexts in medieval Japan. Although the worship of the Jade Maiden in Japan has been
discussed at some length in Buddhist and even onmyōdō (yinyang dao) contexts, the paper will
argue that, hundreds of years before her appearance in Buddhist writings, the Jade Maiden may
have been worshipped beyond the confines of the temples and shrines by members of the
populace at large. Recent archeological finds indicate that the earliest worship of the Jade Woman
in the Japanese islands probably took place together with a number of cults of continental origin
that were central to the daily lives of commoners. This paper will therefore propose a
reconsideration of the role of Daoist traditions in Japan not in terms of their scriptural or
institutional aspects, but rather in terms of the beliefs, practices, and deities that were integrated
into the foundations of material and technological cultures across East Asia.
44 CUI Yan, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International
College, Zhuhai, P.R. China
Gender Differences in Storytelling: A Comparative Study of Two Chinese Storytellers in
Contemporary China
Folktales have long been viewed as the reflections of communal heritage rather than the recreations of individual tellers. Until recently, scholars of the field always look for the generic
characteristics of tales, thereby overlooking the fact that it is only with the individual tellers’
subjective adaptations that folktales can live through different ages and become enriched.
Everyone is rooted in a given society and the special way in which each single storyteller adapts
the traditional tales reveals his or her own worldview. It is therefore worth exploring the
relationship between the tellers’ narratives and the specific cultures in which they are situated. In
this paper, The author discusses the significance of studying folktales using the gender-specific
approach challenges conventional theories like formal analysis and universalizing approach,
which pay little attention to the gender identities of the tellers, in the field. It explores how
gender categories function in the tellers’ lives and storytelling. It starts with an overview of the
gender related differences that inform the apprenticeship of storytelling of a group of male and
female tellers of the time. Then it is followed by a more detailed comparative study of this
apprenticeship of Jin Deshun as a female storyteller and that of her contemporary male
counterpart, Liu Depei, which addresses the Chinese cultural contexts in which the male and
female tellers’ tales are situated. The author compares two tale motifs in both Jin’s and the male
teller’ works and examines how tales sharing similar subject matters vary when they are narrated
from different gender perspectives. In contrast to the conventional feminists who often criticize
fairy tales for stereotyping women, the author has suggested that the gender identities of the
tellers should be taken into consideration and the research area of tales should be extended to
include folktales’ studies. Jin’s tales show that folktales told by female tellers might offer an
alternative gender model. In brief, the cultural and gender identities of folktales’ tellers should be
acknowledged.
CURA Nixi, Christies’s Education; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow
Finger Painting as Contemporary Art at the Qing Court
Turning to the collection of painting at the Qing court, this paper focuses on the appreciation of
finger painting by the Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735) and Qianlong emperors. During this period,
finger painting evolved primarily within Han-martial (Hanjun) bannerman circles in the civil and
45 military bureaucracies within and outside the court. The patronage of finger-painting—literally
discarding the brush to work directly with the fingers—tantalisingly suggests a harmonisation
with the ideal bannerman, who performed wen (culture) and wu (martiality) in equal measure.
However, instititutionalised mistrust of Chinese culture eventually culminated in the ejection of
most ethnic Chinese from the Eight Banners between 1742 and 1779. Finger painting, then,
occupies an unstable space, both in terms of its alterity to sanctioned orthodox definitions of
literati painting, and in terms of its symbolic value as a short-lived ‘contemporary’ art embedded
in the visual culture at the Qing court.
DAL LAGO Francesca, CRCAO, Collège de France Paris, France
New Forms for New Contents: Book Covers of the Republican Period
The booming publishing industry that emerged during the last decades of the Qing imperial rule
reached a typographical height during the early Republican period. The rush to translate foreign
literature triggered by the May Fourth Movement, combined with new forms of printing
technology, generated a rich production of books that were new in content, binding format and
graphic style. This profound editorial transformation brought book covers to the fore as a new
form of visual presentation and commercialization in ways unparalleled in the traditional book
industry. The enthusiasm for new forms of knowledge was marked by new publishing strategies
that included the adoption of the Western form of book binding (read from left to right and with
pages turned from right to left), new typographic characters and, most importantly, attractive and
often colorful covers. This new production is defined by a definite modern value and glamorous
look, which by far exceeds any other visual production of the time, such as, for example, oil
painting or other forms of high art. In this preliminary study, I will analyze a few examples of
book-cover design to try to suggest possible ways to understand the reasons for such flamboyant
and visually enticing graphic production. I will suggest that the visual literacy derived from the
practice of calligraphy and the strong visual character of the Chinese script may provide a way to
understand the success of a graphic production which emerged as refined and mature from its
very start.
DARROBERS Roger, Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre, France
Zhu Xi and the Wu-shen fengshi
46 (Panel “Political Realism in Song Confucianism”)
The Wu-shen fengshi or Sealed Memory of the Year wu-shen (1188) is the most important of the three
“sealed memorials” sent by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) to the emperor Xiaozong (r. 1162–1189) . It
followed two other “sealed memorials” already addressed by Zhu Xi to Xiaozong in 1162 and
1180. The Wu-shen fengshi provides an acute description of the political situation of the empire at
the end of the reign of Xiaozong, in a country marked by corruption and its elite’s abdication of
responsibility. Zhu Xi manifests a remarkable capacity for analysis and great political courage.
Political discourse is here closely related to the moral philosophy of Zhu Xi. In the Wu-shen fengshi
Zhu Xi developed the concept of “human heart” (renxin) and “heart of the Dao” (Daoxin),
repeated the following year in exactly the same words, in his Introduction to Zhongyong (Zhongyong
zhangju xu, 1189). The author will present and analyze the political thinking of Zhu Xi throughout
this fundamental that text the author has recently published in French translation.
DE BRUYN Pierre-Henry, CEFC- Hong Kong
The Chinese soft power: concept, debates and facts
The Chinese « soft-power » is more and more present in the western as well as in the Chinese
media. In this paper we intend to clarify the different understandings (as well as
misunderstandings) of this concept and resume the main aspects of the important debates which
are risen around this question. For this we will stem from important academical debates and
political discourses as well as different uses of this word in the Chinese and western press. We
will finally show how different understandings of this concept can lead to divergent perceptions
of the growing Chinese presence on the international scene. This study will discuss different
researches done recently on this field (among others the attempt done by Xin Li and Verner
Worm to present recently a broad understanding of the concept, the reflexions of Joseph Nye
over the evolution of « soft power » to «smart power », the distinction proposed by Hyun-Binn
Cho between offensive and defensive soft power...) as well as some decisive milestones in the
chinese world in the most recent history of the concept (The Chinese Soft Power Forum held in
Hunan University in November 2009 and co-hosted by Beijing University and the Peoples’ Daily,
the discourse of Hu Jintao published in Qiushi on January 2012 emphasizing the importance to
build a strong nation on a socialist culture...). In conclusion, we will reflect, as examples, what the
use of this concept entails on the perception of the growing network of the Confucius Institute
or on the reception of traditional Chinese medicine in western academic circles.
DE BURGH Hugo, (in collaboration with Zeng Rong and Chen Siming), Professor of
47 Journalism, University of Westminster Director, China Media Centre
Chinese television “internationalization” and the search for creativity.
In order to maintain competitive edge over both domestic rivals and international competition,
Chinese television companies have been looking abroad for ideas. A number of political and
commercial concerns have come together to inform a sudden interest by Chinese media
companies in creativity and innovation. Hunan Television has been at the forefront, carefully
deciding on the UK and selected partners with which to work. In the course of its explorations
abroad Hunan has changed its objectives from narrowly technical and managerial ones to
strategic ones. It now buys foreign formats, develops its own ideas and looks forward to
exporting those ideas and perhaps formats abroad, a hitherto inconceivable ambition which
reflect urgent Chinese government concerns about the country’s need to expand its international
‘soft power’. Meanwhile Hunan TV’s initiatives have not gone unnoticed elsewhere in China and
other television companies are following suit. This paper describes how this came about, what
measures are being undertaken as a result of it, and discusses the implications of such ambitions.
DE REU Wim, Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Searching for Unity in Diversity: A Study of Zhuangzi 7
(Panel: “Metaphor and Cognition in Early Chinese Philosophy”)
Categories are traditionally defined in terms of the properties shared by their members. Work
within the field of cognitive linguistics, however, has shown that ordinary human categorization
crucially involves imaginative mechanisms such as metaphor, metonymy and imagery. Focusing
on chapter 7 of the Zhuangzi (Ying diwang, “Responding to Emperors and Kings”), this paper
explores how the latter way of thinking about unity and coherence may be helpful in explaining
the prima facie medley of material that makes up many of the Zhuangzi’s chapters. Even though
the title “Yingdi wang” betrays a general political concern, this concern is not readily visible from
its longest section. Rather, this section deals with physiognomy and bears no obvious relation to
political considerations. Moreover, while some other sections do deal with politics, their message
often cannot be understood but through the images employed: uncarved states, unlimited fields,
and mirrors, to name just a few. By analyzing the main concern of the section on physiognomy
and some of the other images and their interrelations, I hope to show how this chapter operates.
In doing so, we will gain an understanding of the text that is both direct and philosophically
relevant.
48 DE TOGNI Monica, Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Italy
Non-violence in China: Mohandas K. Gandhi in the Chinese press
The life and the ideas of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) have been widely analyzed
by scholars from various Countries both from the point of view of the history of Indian
decolonization and in relation to his contribution to humanity as a whole in terms of the
adoption of non-violent means of political action (satyagraha “non-violent resistance”) to achieve
the respect of human rights. It is very interesting how his example is used in many countries in
the world (among the numerous publications, see, for instance, Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West:
The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest, Cambridge UP, 2011, Ramachandra Guha, An
anthropologist among the Marxists and other essays, Delhi, Permanent Black; Bangalore, Orient
Longman, 2001, and Marietta T. Stepaniants, Gandhi and the World Today. A Russian Perspective,
New Delhi, Rajendra Prasad Academy, 1998), including China. There are relatively few
publications available in the Western world devoted to Gandhi’s historical figure and to his
theoretical contributions of satyagraha to social changes and political upheaval in China or that
compare him to Mao Zedong’s figure (Jean Lacouture, Anti-impérialistes et tiers-mondistes: L'Orient à
l'assaut du ciel, Romorantin, Martinsart, 1977, Ratan Das, Gandhi and Mao. In quest of analogy, New
Delhi, Sarup & Sons, 2004; Anthony R. DeLuca, Gandhi, Mao, Mandela, and Gorbachev:studies in
personality, power, and politics, Westport, Praeger, 2000). At the contrary, in China, the publications
devoted to Gandhi have been fairly numerous since the Republican period (i.e. Mi Wengai, Xue
Liusen, Shengxiong Gandi zhuan, Shanghai, Shanghai yinshuguan, 1948; Yuan Yuelou, Gandi
shengping jiqi sixiang, Nanjing, Xin Zhongguo cbs, 1948). In order to describe Gandhi’s legacy in
China, in my paper I will present an analysis of how his biography and ideas spread in the
Chinese press since the beginning of the XXth century, in the aim of illustrate if and how nonviolent political action was and is received in this Country where studies on this subject are
considered minor in relations to studies on the Nationalist and Communist Party.
DEFOORT Carine, University of Leuven, Belgium
How important were the ten Mohist theses?--with a focus on ‘inclusive care’
(“Panel Many Mozi’s for different times”)
The book Mozi is known for its criticism of the elite rulers of its time, Warring States China (5th
till 3rd cent. B.C.E.). Contemporary textbooks describe the founding philosophy of Mohism in
terms of ten dogma’s or theses (shi lun 十論), and more specifically the ideal of ‘inclusive care’
49 (jian ai 兼愛). However dominant in contemporary academia, this consensus appears to have
been non-existent in the early Chinese corpus, namely in late Zhou and Han texts. When, how
and why did the current presentation of early Mohism in ten theses come into existence? I
suspect that it is the result of a least three major factors: (1) titles of the core chapters and one
fragment (in chapter “Luwen”) in the book Mozi; (2) the overwhelming influence of Mencius’
view, especially since the Song dynasty; and (3) the late 19th and early 20th century interpretation
of Mozi as a true philosopher defending a systematic theory. A deconstruction of the book Mozi,
the Mencian influence and the modern interpretations goes hand in hand with a reconstruction
of the various stages of the book’s reception history. Four periods that will be considered are: (1)
The book Mozi itself, (2) late Zhou and Han sources, (3) post-Han till 19th century sources, (4)
modern and contemporary sources.
DI NALLO Ileana University of Urbino "Carlo Bo", Urbino (PU), Italy.
Carlo Goldoni’s Italian theatre in 20th century Chinese theatre: an intercultural exchange
The theatre of Carlo Goldoni, one of the symbols of Italian and European culture, has
surprisingly played an important role in the development of Chinese theatre in the second half of
the 20th century. Goldoni’s plays have been performed in China since 1956, when the company of
the Central Experimental Theatre of Modern Drama (Zhongyang shiyan huaju yuan) staged for
the first time The Servant of Two Masters (Yi pu er zhu) in Beijing. Goldoni’s theatre was taken as a
model in the promotion of a popular theatre when the huaju revolutionary theatre was promoted
by the Chinese government and scholars as the most effective means of communication with the
masses. According to Michael Gissenwehrer1 and to other scholars’ researches 2 on both the
reception of Western theatre in China and the process of intercultural exchange in Chinese stage
production, it could be argue that firstly, performances of western plays in China have never been
merely imitative actions, but have had an experimental function in the creation of new theatrical
models and secondly, the productions have always implied important ideological meanings. This
contribution attempts to deepen our understanding of the process of assimilation of Goldoni’s
theatre into the Chinese cultural context and of its ideological meaning. I will illustrate the aspects
of some of the most important performances of the Servant of Two Masters (the most successful
Goldoni's comedy in China), the reason of their success in China and the meaning assigned to
them by Chinese critique. I will also explain the theory of Huang Zuolin on “Commedia
1
2
Cfr. Michael Gissenwehrer, “To weave a silk road away, thoughts on an approach towards the unfamiliar: chinese
theatre and our own”, in E. Fischer-Lichte, J. Riley, M. Gissenwehrer (ed.), The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre,
Own and Foreign, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990, pp. 151-161.
Cfr. He Chengzhou, Henrik Ibsen and Modern Chinese Drama, Oslo, Unipub Forlag, 2004; Yu Weijie, “Topicality and
Typicality. The Acceptance of Shakespeare in China”, in Erika Fischer-Lichte, Michael Gissenwehrer, Josephine Riley,
The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990, pp. 161-168; Zhang
Xiaoyang, Shakespeare in China: A Comparative Study of Two Traditions and Cultures, Newark-London, University of
Delaware Press-Associated University Press, 1996; Antony Tatlow e Tak-wai Wong (a cura di), Brecht and East Asian
theatre, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1982.
50 dell'arte” and the theatre of Goldoni in his research for a new theatrical method that
combines Western theatre with the traditional Chinese one. In his research, Huang Zuolin, in
fact, compared some of Goldoni’s theatre elements with Peking Opera, which helped the
assimilation of Goldoni’s comedies in Chinese cultural context.
DOESCH Martin, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
‘Taking Coherence as Grounds for Contemplating Things’ — Shao Yong’s (1012-1077)
Conception of the Sage
(Panel: “Sages (Sheng) through the Ages: Wisdom and the Sacred in Li Deyu, Shao Yong,
Zhu Xi and Wang Fuzhi”)
This paper analyzes passages from the Huangji jingshi shu (HJJS) in order to explore the epistemic
qualities of the sage. Although sheng is an element of the human realm, at the same time it stands
at the very pinnacle of it. This encompasses special epistemic skills: the sage perceives with his
eyes or mind, and also takes coherence (li) as a measure for contemplating things. The twelve
‘inner chapters’ (neipian) of the HJJS establish a system of being, time, and order of the world. In
this system the sage is one of the key elements for the human realm. Contemplating, generating,
and balancing are the main activities of the sage. The presentation explores the status of the sage
in the order of things, his perceptual accomplishments, and his importance for the human realm.
DOMBERNOWSKY Laura, Arhus University, Denmark
Teaching students to make international propaganda
(Panel: “Professionalism, politics and pedagogics: Chinese education from within”)
As China’s national media go global, new ways to communicate are needed to attract the
international audience. In the search for professional media workers with international
communication skills, the attention has been turned towards training in universities. Here
Western media theories are combined with Marxist ideology. The focus of this paper is how
prospective media workers perceive the dilemma of balancing ideals of objectivity in reporting
without being allowed complete independency from state interests. The paper is based on
interviews with students of International Journalism and Communication. The paper discusses
how students negotiate their own role between different ideological stances.
51 DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN Vera, EHESS-CNRS, Paris, France
Trees as Cartographic Symbols in Chinese Maps: from the Wheel Maps back to the
Fangmatan
(Panel: “Traditional Chinese Cartography: New Aspects and Perspectives”)
The so-called “Wheel Maps” or “Maps of the Under-heaven” (Tianxia tu, Korean Ch’ônhado,) of
a supposedly late provenance (ca. mid. 18th century?) provide an excellent illustration of the
persistent influence of ancient Chinese spatial concepts in East Asian cartographies. The Wheel
Maps embody the survey scheme of the world outlined in the Shanhai jing (Itineraries of
Mountains and Seas, compiled in the 1st century BC), the most comprehensive and systematised
ancient Chinese terrestrial description. As described in this text, the extreme North, East and
West in the Wheel Maps are marked by huge trees that serve a cosmological function. The
surviving copies of these maps are very numerous. Their structural framework and the set of
basic landmarks are much the same, but interesting differences do still exist between them, for
instance, the depiction of the cosmic trees. Trees in the Wheel Maps are not a simple mise en
valeur of what is described in the Shanhai jing. Far removed in time from their textual source, the
Wheel Maps contain later geographical information and also bear some indications of later
influences, especially of Buddhist cartography. In particular, many East Asian Buddhist maps are
distinguished by depictions of oversized trees. Less eye-catching, but more numerous and
consistent occurrences of trees can be found in many other Chinese maps, once one takes a
closer look at them. The origins of the interest in trees in Chinese cartography goes back to the
earliest Chinese maps known to us, the maps on wooden boards discovered at Fangmatan (ca.
239 BC). Here trees are extensively mentioned in writing, but are not yet attributed any graphic
symbol. I shall try to trace how trees become a highly standardised cartographic symbol in maps
of the Chinese Empire produced from the Song dynasty onwards. In conclusion, I shall make
some comparisons with the usage of tree symbols in other cartographic traditions.
DOSSI Simone, Torino World Affairs Institute, Italy
China’s discourse on international politics: An analysis of “national defence” textbooks
used in Chinese universities
Since 1984 “national defence education” (guofang jiaoyu) has become a compulsory subject for all
Chinese university students. National defence courses are taught with special textbooks, whose
52 content is decided by a “syllabus” (dagang) jointly released by the Ministry of Education and by
the PLA General Staff Department and General Political Department. As such, these textbooks
are a useful source for research on the evolution of China’s discourse on international politics
over the past twenty-five years.The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand it aims to
provide an introduction to the system of national defence education in Chinese universities; on
the other hand, it draws on national defence textbooks to analyse how China’s discourse on
international politics has evolved over the past twenty-five years. The first part of the paper
addresses the institutional arrangements concerning national defence education in Chinese
universities. It provides a brief account on each of the two components of national defence
education: “military theory teaching” (junshi lilun jiaoxue) and “military training” (junshi xunlian).
The former consists of classes taught alongside regular courses during the whole first academic
year. The latter is a short training period, which students in their first academic year undergo in a
special PLA training centre. The second part of the paper draws on a sample of national defence
textbooks to describe the evolution of China’s discourse on international politics since the late
eighties. The paper analyzes the discourse on the transformation of the international system after
the end of the Cold War, with a focus on the concept of “multipolarization” (duojihua). In
addition, it also considers the discourse on the security environment in the Asia-Pacific region.
Compared with governmental documents (such as the white papers on China’s national defence),
university textbooks provide a richer and more nuanced picture.
DRAGAN Pavlićević  see PAVLIĆEVIĆ Dragan
, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, UK
Governance Innovation, State-building and Democratization in Urban Zhejiang
This paper aims to contribute to the existing academic discussion about the ongoing political
reforms in China by taking an innovative conceptual approach. Departing from the scholarship
on state building and democratization, the study adopts a theoretical perspective that
distinguishes between access to power and exercise of power. The focus is on the innovative governance
mechanisms in urban Zhejiang, including citizens evaluation of officials (minzhu ceping), public
hearings (tingzheng hui) and different forms of consultative meetings (minzhu kentan). These
innovations, already under implementation in number of localities in Zhejiang and China, have so
far largely evaded the scholarly attention. They aim to improve the quality and responsiveness of
governance by allocating greater space for political participation to Chinese citizens and
increasing the importance of the public input in the process of policy making. They are, however,
firmly placed within China’s one-party system. The paper aims to understand how these
mechanisms are implemented, what are their limits and achievements as well as evaluate their
capacity to translate popular preferences into policies and measures. In concluding segment, the
paper will discuss whether these mechanisms contribute to party-state’s state building efforts and
53 democratization of China’s polity. The study draws on first-hand data collected in Zhejiang in
2012.
DURAND-DASTÈS Vincent, Department of Chinese studies and CEC-ASIEs, Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris
Gangs and constellations: Group novels in Ming Qing fiction
(Panel: “Gatherings, Batches, Assemblies: The Formation of Groups in Chinese
Tradition”)
A rather large part of Ming Qing vernacular novels are centered, not on a single character, but on
a group of heroes. Those groups, very often, seems to be constituted at random, one hero
recruiting another by meeting him during his wanderings. This feature of late imperial xiaoshuo 小
說 has very often been considered as a narrative weakness, and received a rather harsh judgment
from the literary critics. However, it seems to be more in those group formation processes than it
may appear at first sight. Those chance encounters take place very often in the open space of the
“lakes and rivers” (jianghu 江湖), which offers unrivaled opportunities for subversion or renewal;
the groups thus formed become quite often very powerful, either from a military or religious
point of view; though apparently constituted by chance encounters, those groups are often
eventually said to fit in a pre-existing order of an higher sort, and their random characteristic may
only be a veil put upon a hidden necessity. Our analysis will take into account various novels,
from bandits or sorcerers cycles (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳, Pingyao zhuan 平妖傳) as well as military
(Yang jia jiang 楊家將) or religious (Baxian zhuan 八仙傳) narratives.
DURRANT Stephen, University of Oregon, USA
Criticize and Copy: Some General Observations on Ban Gu’s Use of Sima Qian
(Panel: “Han Dynasty History and Historiography”)
In this paper I will explore the Ban Gu’s use of Shiji. Ban’s borrowing is not without precedent:
Sima Qian himself, as scholars have repeatedly demonstrated, draws freely upon an array of
earlier texts, frequently saying nothing about the source that he sometimes quotes virtually word
for word. This paper will briefly review Ban Gu's use of Shiji, drawing upon such Hanshu
biographies as those of Dong Zhongshu and Gongsun Hong, and will note some of the ways in
54 which Ban Gu adapts his source. It then moves on to a larger question: how are we to
understand Ban Gu's frequent extensive use of Shiji accounts, even when other extant,
authoritative texts might have had slightly different versions (e.g., Chu Han chunqiu in at least
several places)? Is there any compelling reason why Ban Gu might not have wanted to
acknowledge his debt to Sima Qian? One discussion of citation without attribution among
historians in the Western classical world, the first chapter of Paul Veyne's Les Grecs ont-ils cru à
leurs mythes? (Paris, 1983), provides a provocative explanation of this phenomenon in the West. I
will conclude my paper by considering to what extent Veyne's argument might or might not apply
to an apparently similar practice among the early Chinese historians Ban Gu and Sima Qian.
DUTOURNIER Guillaume, Ph.D. candidate, CEC-ASIEs, Institut National des Langues et
Civilisations Orientales, Paris
The Awakening of the Sages: Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan
(Panel: “Questioning transmission of knowledge: masters-disciples relations in Song
dynasty”)
What do we learn from the records of the youth of Song Confucian literati, both in terms of
common ideological features and regarding the singularities of some specific figures ? The highly
hagriographic reconstructions of the first experiences of Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan will prove to be
both patterned by common features, and influenced by distinctive approaches to sagehood. The
analysis of those narrations will shed light on the broader conceptions of education of both
thinkers.
EIFRING Halvor, Dept of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo
Ridding the mind of thoughts: Meditation objects and mental attitude in Hānshān Déqī
ng’s dharma talks
In his dharma talks, the Late Ming Chán 禪 master Hānshān Déqīng 憨山德清 (1546-1623)
often talks about the mind’s spontaneous flow of random thoughts, variously called niàn 念,
wàngniàn 妄念, wàngxiǎng 妄想, niántou 念頭 etc. While psychoanalysis views “free associations”
as a key to treatment, and modern brain research discusses the functions of a “default network”
of restful brain activity, Hānshān starts his spiritual quest with the aim of ridding the mind of
55 thoughts, reflecting a common theme in both Eastern and Western meditative traditions, where
random thoughts are looked upon with suspicion, as a problem to be overcome. Hānshān
recommends the “investigation” ( 參究) of “keywords” ( 話頭 or 公案) as a particularly
efficacious method. He accords a decisive role to the mental attitude of the practitioner and
recommends both non-clinging and non-laxness, on the one hand warning against the active
suppression of thoughts, on the other hand seeming to recommend the use of force to drive
thoughts away. In addition to keyword investigation, Hānshān also recommends several other
meditative practices, in particular buddha invocation (念佛), sutra chanting (誦經), and mantra
repetition (持咒), none of which is usually associated with Chán. His near-equal treatment of
these meditation methods is sometimes interpreted as an expression of the syncretism for which
he was famous, and which was a widespread feature of Late Ming Buddhism. In fact, however,
his inclusion of other methods is restricted to practices built on recitation, and the recited words
or formulas are then turned into objects of Chán investigation. Rather than syncretistic
acceptance, therefore, his interest in other methods reflects a wish to transform practitioners of
these methods into Chán meditators. In the end, Hānshān is by no means unequivocal as to
whether keyword investigation has helped him in his quest for a mind without random thoughts.
Instead, some passages hint that his goal has changed. He no longer seeks a mind without
thoughts, only a mind that is no longer attached to those thoughts without seeing through their
illusory nature.
ELBAZ Pascale, Inalco, Paris, France
Translating the terms of physiological origin as criteria in appreciation of Chinese
calligraphy through the Shugai (Synthesis of calligraphy) by Liu Xizai (1813-1881)
(Panel: “To translate, or not to translate; or how to transmit an aesthetic notion specific to
an art or a culture”)
From the Tang Dynasty to the present day, the physiological metaphors are documented, used
and commented. They are contained in the discourses of calligraphy and dictionaries of
aesthetics. In the volume of Cihai dedicated to the art, one finds this judgment: "Yanjin Liugu ",
"Yan (Zhenqing) tendons and Liu (Gongquan) bones". The Shugai (Synthesis of calligraphy),
published in 1863, summarizes the criteria in appreciating calligraphy and incorporates the
aesthetics in critical terms used throughout history, mentioning particularly jin (tendon), gu
(bone), xue (blood) and rou (flesh). In the calligraphic tradition, these terms were used as criteria
for assessing the quality of a work. They come from the vocabulary used in Chinese medicine and
physiognomy. They combine with other words relating physically, emotionally, spiritually to the
body, namely: ti (body-root), jing (substance), qi (energy) and shen (spirit). To understand the
meanings of the combined bodily rooted expressions, we need to take a step back from their
56 literal meanings as elements of the human body to emphasize their critical use as building blocks
and visual elements of the artwork. This assumes that one is aware of the Chinese conception of
the body as a living structure in perpetual relation to the universe and of the calligraphy artwork
as a living body, a projection of the artist's body and a universe in miniature. How do we make
sense, in translation, this three dimensional meaning of human, visual and cosmic? Should we
emphasize the human bodily origin of each term, its acceptance as a building material or the
resulting visual effect in the artwork? Can we and should we bring these three levels into one to
account for this rich aesthetic appreciation and build an original and complex expression?
EPIKHINA Raisa, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State
University, Moscow, Russia
Can vertical integration solve China’s electricity industry problems?
China’s electric power sector is one of the largest and fastest growing in the world. At the same
time it is characterized by a complex of issues that hinder its sustainable development. Many of
them are predetermined by the very structure of electricity generation, which is dominated by
coal (76,8% in 2010), as well as coal transportation and electricity transmission bottlenecks and
relatively low levels of energy efficiency. Furthermore, coal prices in China are set through
market mechanism and rise faster that electricity tariffs that are still determined by the
Government and do not reflect actual costs of power generation. As a result the more electricity
coal-fired power plants produce, the more their losses are. Since the beginning of 2008 black- and
brownouts have affected more than a half of Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities, and not only during the peak summer months, but also in winter, and even in the
offseason. In the absence of stable power supply a number of industrial and commercial
enterprises have shut down, some foreign companies withdrew production from the country.
Generation of electricity, that once was among the most profitable businesses in China, has
become marginal. Through the analysis of press, statistical data and other materials, this paper
investigates the role of vertical integration in solving these problems. It argues that the ongoing
consolidation of coal, generation and transportation firms may enable electricity production costs
decline and increase of the integrated companies’ profitability without any changes in the current
pricing policy. It may ensure more stable electricity supply in the upstream and play an important
role in increasing levels of energy efficiency and safety in the sector. On the other hand, it may
raise competition issues and create preconditions for China’s further heavy dependence on coal.
FALASCHI Isabella, Université “Charles de Gaulles”, Lille 3, France
The borderland on the stage: an area of ambivalence in “Autumn in the Han Palace”
The Han shu relates how in 33 BC Emperor Yuandi gave the Han palace lady Wang Zhaojun in
marriage to Huhanye, the leader of the Southern Xiongnu (a policy of pacification between China
and the Xiongnu known as heqin), and how she bore him a son. Almost thirteen hundred years
after this historical event, Ma Zhiyuan’s zaju Yuan drama Hangong qiu (Autumn in the Han Palace)
attributes to Wang Zhaojun an eternal love for the Han emperor Yuandi. In order to avoid the
disgrace of becoming the wife of a barbarian king, Ma Zhiyuan makes her committing suicide by
throwing herself into the Heilong River on the border between China and Xiongnu territory. Her
love, purity and loyalty to her country are thus totally preserved. The interesting feature of this
play is that not only does the khan not seek vengeance for this outrage, but on the contrary,
enlightened by the edifying display of the heroine’s virtues, he buries her with full honours at the
border. Bearing this point in mind, we shall explore the way the dramatist handles the depiction
of the border framing the actions of the two antagonists – the Chinese woman and the barbarian
chieftain. This border is viewed here as both a place of “protection” and “transit”: it stands for
life as well as death, certainty and loss of identity, segregation and desire to reach out to others.
By cutting short her journey towards the steppe, Ma Zhiyuan keeps Wang Zhaojun within the
physical and moral boundaries of China; but at the same time, the barbarian’s redemption avoids
self-satisfied isolation by allowing Chinese moral values to “transit” into a foreign land. The aim
of the paper is thus to understand how this “passage” is given dramatic presence through the
representation of the border, in all its connotations.
FAN Lin, McGill University, Canada
Revisiting zhentu in Northern Song Cartographic History
This paper attempts to re-examine the ontological nature and function of zhentu 陣圖 in
Northern Song cartographic history. In surveying Song historical sources between the reigns of
Taizong 太宗 (976-97) and Renzong 仁宗 (1022-63), one frequently encounters instances in
which commanders were said to be following zhentu issued by the emperors during large military
campaigns. In their respective studies, Qi Xia and Deng Xiaonan have argued that such practice
had severely limited the agency and adaptability of military officials, which represented one of the
many flaws in the Northern Song court policy of “generals obeying commands of the central
government” (jiang cong zhongyu 將從中御). In his Records of Famous Paintings (Lidai minghua ji
歷代名畫記), the late Tang connoisseur Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 (a. 9th century) reports seeing
several sets of zhentu in the collections of some aristocrat families. He categorizes these zhentu,
58 alongside other visual representations of mantic arts, under the genre “secret paintings and
precious images.” From the early Song on, most of these “secret images” were banned from
circulation citing their potential threat to the regime. They were only allowed among military
officials for the purpose of training troops. These diagrams of military tactical formations are
probably what Deng and Qi have in mind when evaluating Northern Song military policies.
However, through a close examination of the Song hui yao 宋會要 and Xu zizhitongjian
changbian 續資治通鋻長編, I argue that the zhentu issued by the emperors to commanders were
not the same as the battle formation diagrams that Zhang Yanyuan had seen, nor were they the
diagrams used for military training purposes. In fact, they were detailed topographic maps
combined with strategic battle formation diagrams. Furthermore, I argue that zhentu in this
historical period belonged to a larger category of graphic representation of space, which included
public works, imperial ceremonies, and defense systems.
FANG Ling, CNRS, Groupe Sociétés-Religions-Laïcités (EPHE-CNRS), Paris
Chinese Temples and Gods in France
(Panel: “Chinese Religions in France”)
Since the 1970s, the number of ethnic Chinese from China and Southeast Asia has grown very
rapidly in France. These people do not constitute a homogeneous population, but are
distinguished by their place of origin within China. Such distinctions are expressed in dialects
used but also in religious practices. Indeed, in Chinese culture, communities (notably kin-based,
local, regional and professional ones) are organized around the worship of their own gods.
Chinese migrants as a rule take their gods with them, and first place them in their homes and
shops. Then, Chinese people from a common origin start to organize and build shrines for these
gods. A further stage is reached when several such shrines cooperate for festivals and
processions, as is now the case in the Paris 13th district Chinese New Year parade. This paper will
retrace the process of Chinese gods settling in a migrant community as it unfold in the case of
Paris, show that it evinces a remarkable vitality of Chinese traditional religion and raise the
question of its acceptance within the local religious landscape.
FAVRAUD Georges, Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (LESC, UMR
7186), Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre.
The construction of the cult community of Increasing transformations (Hunan, Liling).
59 (Panel: “Gatherings, Batches, Assemblies: The Formation of Groups in Chinese
Tradition”)
As it is demonstrated through the analysis of the ancestral masters altar (citang祠堂) of the
Belvedere of Increasing transformations (Zenghua Guan 增化觀, in the village of Litang 櫟塘,
Eastern Hunan), the ritual organization of the local community inherits from the agnatic kinship
relations of the local Chen lineage, crossed with the ritual parenthood of the regional Pure Yang
Taoism (Chunyang純陽). How to explain this situation? During the Republic (1911-1949), the
patrilineal linage system came to be considered as a “patriarchal-feudal” enemy of the NationState and the industry. Reacting to the decline of the lineage system, Chen Jiashu 陳嘉樹 (18451930), an elder leading the ancestral cult of the Chen, launched in 1922 the construction of the
local temple of Increasing transformations. Afterwards, he placed two of his female direct
descendants – who had been initiated in Pure Yang Taoism - at the direction of the liturgy. This
new ritual organization endured to a great degree the following periods of prohibitions and
destructions. In the 1990s, this local transmission enabled the community to reconstruct a cult to
two ritual genealogies, installed back-to-back on the ancestral masters’ altar: one devoted to
female Pure Yang masters; and a second essentially devoted to Chen elders, entitled “Men of
Dao, practicing ritual fasting and vegetarianism” (zhaisu daoren 齋素道人).
FERRI Carlo, Inalco, France
Tianjin Binhai New Area: Economic and urban changes in northern China
Since the introduction of the Reform and Opening up policy at the end of the late seventies, China has
experienced important transformations. These changes have particularly affected the urban
society. Cities have been at the heart of the development, becoming the field for innovation in
many different domains. However, authorities have mainly focused their attention on southern
and central regions, neglecting the northern areas. Therefore, for many years, one of the main
inequities of China’s economic development has been its geographical disparity. In recent years,
the Communist Party of China (CPC) decided to readjust the national urban structure through
the implementation of a new policy: the National Comprehensive Reform. Authorities thus promoted
the establishment of an economic growth pole in northern China, through the development of
the coastal metropolis of Tianjin and its free economic zone: the Tianjin Binhai New Area. Under
the influence of a powerful local elite, the “Tianjin Clique”, composed by local and national
leaders, including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and current Minister of Transport Li Shenglin, the
city has experienced dramatic changes. Tianjin thus represents an ideal case for analysing
contemporary China. What are the policies implemented in the coastal metropolis? Which are the
local and national political implications of this project? To investigate these questions, my paper
introduces Tianjin and its contemporary development with a transdisciplinary approach and a
60 wide range of different sources.
FEUILLAS Stéphane, CRCAO, Université Paris Diderot, France
Song Dynasty Debates on “Powerful Ministers” and “Influential Ministers”
(Panel: “Diarchy or Usurpation? The Problem of the Sovereignty of the Minister in
Imperial China”)
The perspective we have chosen falls within political theory, we attempt here to explain what,
under the Northern Song Dynasty, has been labeled under the somehow cautious and often
casuistical distinction between “powerful minister” (quanchen) and “influential minister”
(zhongchen), the first being largely disqualified while the latter is the subject of moral and political
developments. The analysis of various texts ranging from the Su brothers to Wang Anshi (20211086) or Sima Guang (1019-1086) should allow us to draw a typology of situations in which the
diarchy is acceptable. The minister's position seems to be enhanced in at least three situations:
while facing a social and political crisis; while maintaining dynastic continuity and while politics is
relying on the intimacy between a sovereign and his minister. In these three cases, a number of
specific questions arise: Does the critical situation make possible the diarchy, is it inherent in the
system or should it only be seen as an opportunity for the minister to take his advantage? When
the succession is problematic (no direct heir, childhood of the sovereign), is the role of the
minister or the group of ministers an opportunity to redefine how to articulate the two powers,
or is it exceptional and temporary? Similarly, does the intimacy between a prince and his minister,
the hold that the latter has on his sovereign as in the relationship (considered as all too exclusive
by contemporaries and historians) between the emperor Shenzong (r. 1067 -1087) and Wang
Anshi (1021-1086), lead almost inevitably to a strengthening of autocracy and a struggle of
factions?
FIASCHETTI Francesca, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für Sinologie,
München, Germany
Does Ethnicity Matter? On the Representation of Ethnic Minorities in Yuan Sources
Ruling a cosmopolitan Empire, the Yuan Dynasty had to deal with many different cultures and
ethnic groups within the territory of China. The way in which they organized the society through
the creation of fuzzy ethno-political categories (semuren, hanren, etc.) can be differently interpreted
61 as economically oriented (Meng Siming) or depending from political and military criteria (e.g. the
order of submission to Mongol rule) and not necessarily as a matter of culture or ethnos. This
leads to the question, when dealing with such “hierarchization of alterity”: does ethnicity matter?
And how is ethnicity constructed in Yuan sources? In this paper I analyze the use of ethnicity as
a criterion for the representation of alterity in Yuan sources, especially in relation to the
descriptions of minorities in the Southern Chinese border regions. These were granted with a
high degree of autonomy, and were actively integrated in Yuan administrative structures. A
common usage in several territories under Mongolian rule, this practice meant a positive
acknowledgment and integration of cultural differences into the system of the Empire. But if we
look at the Yuanshi (and especially at the waiyi chapters on “Foreign Lands”), where ethnic
minorities in the South are mentioned in the frame of military narrations, we find that the
ethnographical elements are scarce and definitions of alterity (in some cases even of “Barbarity”)
are mostly connected with a rhetoric of rebellion and military opposition. Through the
comparison of these passages with more detailed ethnographic descriptions from other sources
(e.g. the Yunnan zhilüe), I will try to show that the Yuan construction of ethnicity and perception
of cultural alterity is strongly influenced by criteria of usefulness and military loyalty to Mongolian
rule.
FINLAY John, Paris
From the Qianlong Court to Enlightenment France: The ‘40 Views of the Yuanming
yuan’ in International Circulation
This paper explores the pictorial representation of imperial gardens in 40 Views of the
Yuanmingyuan, completed in 1744. Forty poems by the Qianlong emperor accompanied 40 images
of the imperial garden-palace, his favorite residence. Even before completion of this superb
album, the emperor ordered a woodblock-print edition—now furnished with a massive
commentary drawn from the Confucian classics, official histories and traditional poetry—and
thus guaranteed wider circulation among selected imperial palaces, members of the imperial clan,
and important court officials. Almost immediately, copies of the 40 Views, varying widely in
quality but nevertheless duplicating the original compositions, began to appear outside the strictly
regulated court context within China and as far away as Europe, as attested by Qing court
archival documents, letters from the Jesuit missionaries active at the Qing court, records of
Chinese paintings, and printed books in Europe—especially those in the possession of HenriLéonard Bertin, a Minister of State under Louis XV (r. 1715-1774). Their diffusion far beyond
the court implies a knowledge of their existence and a very real desire to possess them. And their
reception in Europe illustrates the mechanisms by which views of a distant China played an
active role in the Age of Enlightenment.
62 FLORENCE Eric, University of Liege, Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies, Belgium
The cultural politics of migrant labour rights in South China: from narrating the
“dagong” to online boundary-spanning
(Panel: “Debating political contention and social mobilization in early 21st century
China”)
For the last two decades, in a context of combined flexible capitalism and “decentralized legal
authoritarianism” (Lee Ching-Kwan, Against the Law), factories of the Pearl River Delta have
been witnessing a growing spate of collective actions by rural migrant workers. In this paper the
narrative categories and “frames of contention” mobilized by migrant workers in claim-making
will be investigated. The focus will be put chiefly on two differently mediated genres of
narratives, i.e. migrant workers’ narratives in magazines on the one hand, and more recent online
written practices centred on the politics of rights and identity on the other hand. Such cultural
politics of migrant labour has been insufficiently taken into account when considering the greater
right awareness and surge in collective mobilization in China for the last decade. The paper
develops the argument that workers’ written practices within magazines help constituting a space
for struggle and negotiation around major values, state polities and legislation linked to workers’
rights. Secondly, drawing on the notion of “disorderly media” (Latham), it will be argued that
some of the online written practices by migrant workers may provide platforms for more radical
articulations of the politics of rights and collective mobilization. What are the points of discursive
rupture and contention around which processes of reversal, reapropriation, affirmation or
euphemization occur? What kinds of material, socioeconomic and political relations do these
identification and legitimization processes reveal? These are the questions that will be
investigated. A vast body of data will be used for this paper, including songs and poems by rural
workers, participant observation, in-depth interviews, published and unpublished letters to the
editor of several migrants’ magazines, etc.
FOLCH Dolors, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Ming criminal justice as seen in XVIth Century Spanish sources
González de Mendoza's highly influential book on China, published in1585, used both
Portuguese sources and Phipippine's documents, mainly the accounts of two Castilian
expeditions to China. In the first one, 1576, went Martin de Rada and Loarca: their journey was
63 treated by the Chinese as a tributary mission and provides a unique account of the proceedings of
those. In the second one,1579, went Tordesillas and Dueñas: entering China without permission,
neither from the Chinese nor from the Manila authorities, they provide a quite different vision of
China. González de Mendoza used his sources to put forward a strongly positive vision of China,
which pervades all his book and that is nowhere more obvious than in his three chapters centered
on Chinese justice. This paper will show that his paradigm of Chinese good justice was based on
two premises: the first one is to highlight those elements that deeply contrast with Imperial
Spain's practices, such as the public question of witnesses, the legal and public frame of torture,
the multilayered revisions of penalties, the public placing of the monetary fines, and the mise en
scène of the death penalty. The second one is to omit from his sources those elements that could
provide the hardliners with arguments, the just title, to conquer China: he never mentions the
nefandous sin in spite of having a very specific case of legal procedure which involved homosexual
practices in the Loarca Relacion, 1576; and he doesn’t mention either the death by a thousand cuts,
described in detail in the Dueñas narrative, 1579.
FRENKIEL Emilie, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
With or Without the Chinese People? Intellectual Representations of Social Instability in
early 21st century China
Drawing on a corpus of texts (CPAT) written by a dozen prominent politically-committed
academics and interviews conducted with them, I will show that the institutional solutions they
put forward to the current political challenges - mainly issues of legitimacy and improved
governance - that China now face should be understood as connected with their representations
of social mobilization and social instability. Conceptual historians of politics (Pierre Rosanvallon,
Kari Palonen) have stressed the importance of taking into account « systems of representations in
order to understand the way a generation, a country, or social groups lead their actions and
consider their future » (Rosanvallon 1986). Their object is defined as understanding political
rationalities so as to account for the unceasing interaction between reality and its representation.
Chinese scholars and officials have reached a basic agreement on the assessment of the current
social and political situation in China. However, the solutions offered by influential academics
such as Xiao Gongqin, Pan Wei, Kang Xiaoguang, Wang Shaoguang, Xu Youyu, Ren Jiantao or
Cui Zhiyuan to the political challenges commonly identified vary immensely. My hypothesis is
that their propositions for political reform can be partially related to contrasted representations
of social instability. Having presented the intellectual debate on political challenges and
institutional reform from this particular perspective, I will suggest new categories to identify the
divides structuring China’s current intelligentsia as I surmise opposing the “New Left” to
“Liberals” does not provide adequate assistance to understanding the ins and outs of China’s
intellectual debates.
64 FROISSART Chloé, Rennes 2 University, Rennes, France
The Changing Aspects of Migrant Workers’ Movement and its Impact on Workplace
Democratization
China”)
Contrasting empirical findings with theory, many students of China labour issues have pointed
the fact that Chinese workers collective actions are unsustainable, target local rather than national
authorities and do not directly challenge the authority of the Communist Party to stress that they
fail to appear as a full-fledged social movement. Such a view is embedded in the fact that scholars
often equate workers’ collective actions with strikes rather than considering them as part of a
broader movement implying the interaction between different actors and focus on episodes of
contestation rather than paying attention to longer-term evolution. Without denying this view,
this paper seeks to nuance it by relying on a historical approach that not only takes into account
the change in the forms of migrant workers collective actions (claims, repertoire, performance)
but also the evolving interactions among workers, authorities and third parties such as workers
organizations (so-called “NGOs”), intellectual elite and the media. We thus argue that China is
now confronted with a somehow mature workers movement capable of exerting a continuous
pressure on local authorities and employers - namely thanks to the emergence of new
professional brokers- and that has already significantly changed power relations between local
authorities, official trade unions, employers, workers and their supporters. We will first trace back
the origins of migrant workers collective actions by highlighting the factors that enabled them to
shift from silence to protest. We will then analyze the changing aspects of migrant workers
collective actions by contrasting two waves of strikes in 2004-2005 and in 2010 as well as
analyzing the changing standing of migrants’ supporters and contenders and the way they interact
with them. Finally, we will consider the impact of such mobilization in terms of trade union
reforms and, more convincingly, on the emergence of new forms of mediation and negotiation
that redefine the norms of workers representation and participation in the workplace.
FUKAMACHI Hideo, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan
Why has a Jasmine Revolution not Occurred in China? The 100th Anniversary of the
Xinhai Revolution
(Panel: “Whither
Perspectives”)
the
Chinese
Political
65 Regime?
Historical
and
Contemporary
While dissatisfaction against the widening gap between the rich and the poor and widespread
corruption of the bureaucracy—the dark side of the rapid economic development — cause
protest and riots from the masses around the country, a significant number of democratic
intellectual activists are in prison or under surveillance by the authorities—this might be the
image of contemporary China often reported globally. So, unlike the cases of some Middle
Eastern counrties, why does a Jasmine Revolution not occur in China in spite of these
conditions? By a curious coincidence, China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai
Revolution last year. Some often argue that the current situation where riots occur frequently is
similar to one in the final phase of the traditional dynasties and is a sign of the collapsing
Communist regime. Some foreign media reports related to the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai
Revolution said, “Among the Three Principles of the People—nationalism, democracy, and the
people’s livelihood—advocated by a revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen, only democracy has not
been achieved yet.” This might imply that “China, therefore, should experience a Jasmine
Revolution.” If so, an important fact is ignored. That is, the single-party regime in modern China
is not a transitional system before democratization, but was chosen based on the experience of
failure in democracy. China is achieving a rich and powerful state and nation—which has been their
ardent wish for 100 years—under the current authoritarian government, which is an intermediate
regime chosen after a history of chaos and destruction caused by two extreme political regimes,
democracy and totalitarianism. This achievement of the current administration is generally
recognized by the Chinese people, and is apparently the very foundation of governmental
legitimacy for the regime.
FUMIAN Marco, Università G. D'Annunzio Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Chronicles of Du Lala’s promotions: an “example” of capitalist realism?
While socialist literary heroines were selfless, wholeheartedly devoted to communist revolution
and unfalteringly loyal to the Party line, Du Lala, the heroine of a bestselling novel published in
China at the end of 2007, is an individualist, self-conscious, nonconformist young woman
committed to the improvement of her personal life. Her story, Chronicle of Du Lala’s promotions (Du
Lala shengzhiji), develops as follows: a female graduate obtains a low-level position in an American
transnational company and, thanks to her hard work and smartness, manages to climb the top of
the occupational ladder and attain economic success and personal happiness. Du Lala thus seems
clearly in tune with the spirit of our times: in fact, she looks as a champion of a neoliberal
individualism and a promoter of a capitalist “middle class” subjectivity, completely at odds with
the values expressed by the literature of socialist realism. The purpose of my paper, though, is to
stress the similarities, rather than the divergences, between two ages appearing on the surface
irreducibly different; I wish to suggest that, although displaying an entirely new subjectivity, Du
Lala might play a role akin to that of the heroes of socialist realism: namely, she would serve as an
“example”, a model providing a standard for a correct social behavior in line with the ideological
66 values supported by the government. As a matter of fact, Du Lala’s subjectivity fulfills very well
the basic tenets of the “socialist market” ideology, and fits perfectly with the goals of the “quality
education” policy, which aims to produce subjects both independent and creative in order to
strengthen the national forces of production and disciplined and responsible in order to
safeguard domestic social stability. Much commentary about the novel also suggests that Du Lala
is supposed to work as a model; critic Zhang Yiwu proposes to consider her as a “mirror”,
functioning as a touchstone for the aspiring white-collar workers who seek to improve
themselves, while Li Ke, the author of the novel, declares that her story is certainly meant to
entertain readers but is nevertheless primarily a “tool” (gongju); this is, by coincidence, the same
role assigned to literature during the Maoist era. It is therefore tempting, following this thread
leading to socialist realism, to call Du Lala’s story as an example of “capitalist realism”.
GAFFRIC Gwennaël, Institute of Transtextual and Transcultural Studies, Université de Lyon 7,
Lyon, France
Wandering in the Mangroves: An Ecocritical Reading of Taiwanese Contemporary
Nature Writing
This presentation will consider the development of the genre of nature writing (ziran shuxie) in
Taiwan, since the early 80's until today. Along with the growth of environmental issues (global
impact of climate change, disruption of local ecosystems, endangered species, “ecological
colonialism”), some writers from Taiwan try to rethink the relationship between humans and
"nature”. This presentation will explore the way in which Liu Ke-xiang, Wang Jia-xiang and Wu
Ming-yi’s literary works investigate ecological questions and offer new perspectives on
environmental concerns. By doing so, I will discuss the following topics: the changing
conceptions of “nature” in the evolution of nature writing in Taiwan, the multi-directional forms
of writing and the literary explorations of science, history and anthropology in Taiwan. In
rediscovering Taiwan biotopes, these writers attempt to imagine alternative modes of inhabiting
the place and the Planet.I will conclude by arguing that the rhizomatic trajectory of nature writing
in Taiwan makes it an eco-genre, a negotiation between literary and ethical discourses.
GALAMBOS Imre, University of Cambridge, UK
Chinese characters written by non-Chinese among the Dunhuang manuscripts
The Chinese script is one of the most powerful symbols of Chinese culture, one of the key
67 elements by which the people of China to this day define their national identity. With a
documented history of over three millennia, it lies at the core of the modern vision of historical
continuity, and its significance in the formation of a coherent cultural narrative cannot be
overestimated. Paradoxically, the majority of the written witnesses from the country’s iconic and
quintessentially “national” dynasties, the Tang and the Song, come from the northwestern
peripheries of the Chinese domain, including the oasis town of Dunhuang. One of its most
astonishing features of the manuscripts found in Dunhuang is their linguistic diversity,
manifested in a mixture of languages and scripts. This paper examines Chinese manuscripts from
the 9-10th centuries written in a reverse direction, i.e. in vertical lines going from left to right. The
collection has dozens of such examples, making it clear that these are not random or haphazard
cases but a phenomenon that came to being as a result of a particular social background. Because
writing in vertical lines from left to right is a particular feature of the Uighur script, I shall argue
that the Chinese manuscripts written in this manner reflect a Uighur influence and were most
likely written by people whose primary literacy was not Chinese but Uighur. The fact that these
manuscripts are often written in an extremely crude hand with highly idiosyncratic orthography is
yet an additional evidence to support the hypothesis about the non-Chinese identity of those who
produced them.
GALVANY Albert, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain ; University of Cambridge, UK
Dismantling sagehood: the metaphor of the child in early Daoist literature
For some of the most important political and philosophical doctrines of the Warring States
period the forging of a virtuous man, of a respectful, obedient subject and, by extension, of an
orderly social body requires the deployment of a complex pedagogical project of explicit
corrective vocation. This almost invariably entails straightening out, polishing, rectifying and
improving a natural condition which, lacking this painstaking intervention through study and
ritual, would succumb to the most disastrous disorder and unruliness. Nonetheless, this shared
ideology, for which the model of perfection is the adult male individual who has successfully
accomplished a tenacious and meticulous process of self-cultivation, is subjected to severe
criticism in Daoist literature of pre-imperial China. One of the forms adopted by this critical
perspective is use of the metaphor of the child, the newborn infant, with a view to dismantling
this prevailing individual and social project. In my paper I shall attempt to shed light on the
principles and consequences that one might draw from the sustained use of this intriguing
metaphor.
68 GAMSA Mark, Tel Aviv University, Israel and University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Harbin and Baltic Mixed Cities Compared
This paper proposes a comparative angle on Harbin, the Russian-founded city in Northeastern
China (formerly Manchuria), which during the first half of the twentieth century was home to
Russian, Chinese and Japanese populations. The conclusions of my own research on cross-ethnic
relations in Harbin are juxtaposed here with the findings of new publications on ethnically mixed
urban societies in the Baltic provinces of the Russian empire during the late tsarist period: the
cases of Riga (present-day Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). Rather than with
Asians, Russians shared these cities with members of the local Baltic nationalities, as well as with
Germans, Jews and Poles. An exercise in “the comparative imagination”, the paper aims both to
counter parochial interpretations of Harbin as a unique case in terms of its multiethnic and
multilingual experience and grapple with a key methodological question: what cities can be
compared? Beyond the common Russian connection, I shall argue that it is indeed useful to
compare the concurrent existence of several cultural identities within a single European city, the
phenomenon recently demonstrated for Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius by scholars of Baltic history,
with the situation in a city in China roughly at the same time. If so, then what is it that the
realization of similarities and differences across such distant geographical settings may add to our
understanding of urban history? Of history, tout court?
GAUDU Agnès, Head of the Asia Desk, Courrier International
Chinese media: professionalisation at the internet era
China”)
Over the last fifteen years, the media landscape of China has been transformed, and journalists
have tried to endorse a more professional attitude. New publications were designed to address a
growing urban audience. While censorship and propaganda remained, some discording voices
appeared. Journalists have endeavoured to report on social events, crises and conflicts, as
professionals whose duty it is to make news available to sustain a public debate and empower
citizens.This reshaping of the Chinese media landscape has taken place along the emergence of
the internet. The traditional press, more powerful with the digital circulation of its contents
nationwide, met on the internet with new forms of individual expression. Blogs, forums and
social media have been observed and quoted by professionals of the press as a new expression of
the public opinion. But with the apparition of micro blogging in its Chinese version of Twitter,
Weibo, individuals are now able to be at the source of information in real time - the details of the
69 railway accident in Wenzhou in July 2011 were first broadcast by eyewitnesses on Weibo. This
challenges not only the authorities, but also professional media in their search of the building up
of better professional standards as well as a freer press. Some Chinese journalists utilise Weibo as
a new source of first hand information, a practice that other consider as challenging professional
standards. Others have used Weibo to get information circulated without prior screening by the
censorship apparatus, a practice that already comes under scrutiny. In 2012, a first batch of new
administrative measures were announced whereby every microblogger should register under his
real name. This probably signals the launch of an offensive by the authorities to counter the
emergence of Weibo as an alternative tool of information. This paper will describe the permanent
moves made by journalists working under a controlled system to push toward more
professionnalism and a free press, in the hope for media in the internet era to become an arena
for public opinion.
GEHRIG Sebastian, University of Heidelberg, Department of History, Germany
Divided Nations: The People’s Republic of China’s Impact on Cold War Germany
After World War II, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC)
faced each other at the “Bamboo Curtain.” In Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) developed along the “Iron Curtain.” Both divided
nations remained points of reference for each other across the blocs in the global Cold War. This
paper discusses the influence of the PRC on the two Germanys. In the 1950s, the two German
states saw China primarily as a region in the developing world. Yet, the Sino-Soviet split
catapulted the PRC in the German-German political arena. When the superpowers moved to
politics of détente in the 1960s, the role of the PRC in world politics and Mao’s project of a
Cultural Revolution began to attract intense interest among West Germans. While radical leftwingers searched for new models for their revolutionary agendas, West German political and
intellectual elites argued over the PRC’s impact on German-German relations and Cold War
politics. Meanwhile, the GDR tried to suppress any interest and support for the PRC’s
“revisionist line.” In the 1960s, subcultural “Maoists” were seen as a danger to the state’s stability
East and West Germany. During the Neue Ostpolitik, the PRC suddenly backed the FRG’s claim
of a still exiting German nation and countered the GDR’s notion of two independent German
states. Thus, West German left-wing activists and some conservative politicians saw the PRC as a
key to German unification by the late 1970s. Based on archival sources, left-wing pamphlets,
culturo-political magazines, and writings of leading politicians, this paper demonstrates how Cold
War politics turned the PRC from a threat to West Germany’s stability into a potential ally in the
struggle for national unification. At the same time, the PRC turned from a socialist “brother
state” into a threat for the GDR’s stability.
70 GERTH Karl, Oxford University, UK
Compromising with Consumerism in Socialist China: Transnational Flows and Internal
Tensions in ‘Socialist Advertising’
(Panel: “The Politics of Cultural Consumption: Socialism, Entertainment, and Everyday
Life in the Early PRC”)
What happened to China’s highly politicized and ideologically fragmented consumer culture after
the communist victory? Based on materials from the Shanghai Municipal Archives and
newspapers from the 1950s this paper demonstrates that even as imported consumer goods
largely disappeared and industry was nationalized, communist leaders remained ambivalent about
the consumer culture that remained. The consumerism of the pre-communist era was rarely
completely vilified or discredited, and in China and throughout the socialist world, earlier forms
of consumerism persisted, often despite explicit government attempts to end or limit them and,
surprisingly, sometimes with government support. In line with recent scholarship on Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union, an examination of the persistence of markets and consumerism in
China challenges the still pervasive assumption of Western Cold War scholarship that China
under Maoism was a realm of pure asceticism without room for any consumer desire after 1949.
Exploring the persistence of consumerism thus reveals hidden dimensions of Chinese life in the
Mao era while simultaneously examining the transnational flows among socialist countries and
between capitalist and socialist economies, flows that, in effect, kept consumerism alive in
socialist countries like China.
GIELE Enno, Institute for Sinology, Heidelberg University
Writings for the Dead
(Panel: “A New Perspective on Early Chinese Manuscripts”)
In the wake of many important archaeological discoveries of texts in early Chinese tombs terms
such as "tomb texts" or "funerary writings" have gained widespread currency. It is not altogether
clear, however, what these are, or even what these realistically could be. There is no single
indigenous term to describe such texts in the sources themselves. Seemingly straightforward
definitions such as "all texts found in tombs" or "all writings used in a funeral" (including those
that went into the tomb) would make for categories that are so broad as to be epistemologically
meaningless in many research contexts because there is hardly any type of text that is not found
in tombs. In fact, just because of this, the biggest challenge to a contextualized understanding of
71 manuscript texts from tombs is to answer the question of how they may have differed--if at all-from texts outside a funerary context. It has become a commonly voiced suspicion (to which this
author has also subscribed more than once) that many texts from tombs may have been
somehow altered or significantly influenced by the presumably religious or ritual background of
the funeral. But if we are unable to pinpoint and show wherein exactly this difference lay, this
general suspicion does not lead anywhere. As a practical, if partial, solution to this problem, this
paper focuses on those texts from funerals that were demonstrably written specifically for the dead,
i.e., which could have been produced only after the tomb occupant(s) died, instead of just being
taken from an already existing body of manuscripts. Arguably, this is the only criterion by which
a selection from among texts from tombs can claim to avoid becoming arbitrary or shifting with
individual research agendas. The paper attempts to describe this body of texts and contextualize
them by showing their relationship to all textual production within a funeral context, including
texts that did not end up in a tomb, as far as we can know about them. This serves to give some
meaning to the discourse about "tomb texts" by sharpening our terminological tool-kit.
GIJSBERS Annick, University of Leuven, Belgium
Hou Wailu’s refutation of Guo Moruo’s arguments against the Mohist ghosts: A case
study of 20th century discussions about Mohism
(Panel: “Many Mozi’s for different times”)
This paper is a part of a larger research on the various ways in which twentieth century authors
such as Hu Shi 胡适 (1891-1962), Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873-1922), Guo Moruo 郭沫若
(1892-1978) Hou Wailu 候外庐 (1903-1987) and Ren Jiyu任继愈 (1916-2009) dealt with the
topic of “Percipient Ghosts 明鬼”, chapter 31 of the Mozi. While the 20th century revival of
Mohism was mostly inspired by its perceived scientific insights (as exemplified by the works of
Hu Shi and Liang Qichao), the “Percipient Ghosts” chapter for obvious reasons presented a
challenge to this view, and spurred a great variety of responses from twentieth century scholars.
In my research, “Percipient ghosts” thus serves as a prism through which to explore twentieth
century scholarly discussions on Mohism, because of the difficulty of its interpretation, and wide
range of responses it elicited. In this paper, I want to offer an insight into how under the same
umbrella of Marxist ideology, two widely different opinions on this chapter – that of Guo Moruo
and that of Hou Wailu - could coexist. Making use of close-reading techniques, in this paper I
construe Hou Wailu’s discussion of the Mohist ghosts in his various works from the vantage
point of his refutation of Guo Moruo’s views on the same topic. First, I provide a general
introduction presenting the polemic surrounding the Mohist ghosts in the 20th century, followed
by a short biographical section of Hou Wailu. The second part traces Hou Wailu’s acknowledged
lineages. The third main section probes deeper into the different arguments composing this
refutation, and looks into how these arguments are construed. The conclusion revisits the
72 question of mutual influence (first mentioned in the introduction and the discussion of Hou
Wailu’s lineages), and briefly summarizes the different methods of refutation Hou Wailu
employed.
GLEDIC Jelena, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Associative Portrayals of Chinatown: Analysis of Film Plot Keywords
Western entertainment media are frequently perceived as an influential and thus authoritative
source of information that defines concepts and images of social groups for a large population.
As such, their objectivity is often critically assessed and scrutinized and there are often reports on
stereotyping and misrepresentation. However, this is usually provoked by concrete individual
cases. This paper firstly looks into the issues of conducting thorough and comprehensive
investigations of stereotyping in media, mainly the amount and availability of data and the
possibilities of measuring exposure and influence. Secondly, we suggest a methodology that uses
online media databases to retrieve material and we conduct a small-scale case study. Due to the
lack of accurate control of the reception of images represented in different media, it is practically
impossible to speak of uniformity in shaping images through unbalanced portrayals. However,
one can attempt to determine prevailing trends. In this paper we suggest using online media
databases to explore cultural implications by researching media content, portrayed characters,
storylines, plot keywords, user comments etc. Furthermore, based on a report of the Media
Action Network for Asian Americans we explore the context in which Chinatowns are portrayed
in US mainstream films by analyzing plot keywords in a small-scale case study. We try to explore
the perspectives of utilizing the large amount of data available on the Internet to reach objective,
precise and evidence-based conclusions about different aspects of our cultural reality.
GOLDSCHMIDT Asaf, Dept. of East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Measuring the Body – Locating Acupuncture Loci during the Northern Song Dynasty
(960-1127)
When the topic of measurements comes up in the history of medicine it is often either associated
with the amounts each drug that makes and ingredient on a medicinal formula or associated with
measuring the body and locating the acupuncture loci on it. Surprisingly, at least from a Western
73 perspective, the former received rather limited attention in Chinese medical literature. This is
probably due to the fact that, unlike their contemporary Western counterparts, Chinese doctors
focused more on the quality of the drugs making the formula than on their specific quantity. In
contrast, measuring the body and thus precisely determining the location of the acupuncture
points was a topic of interest in medical treatises. This was probably due to the fact that inserting
a needle to an incorrect spot could cause a severe injury.
In this paper I would like to discuss the Tang to Song transition with regard to measuring
the body and locating the acu-points on it. This shift, which brought back the prominence of
acupuncture in comparison to moxibustion, was achieved by implementing new means of
transmitting spatial knowledge of the body via drawings and even a bronze figure. The latter, on
some level, may be compared to the golden meter in its usage. I will begin with the earliest
concerns about measuring the body from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty. I will then
present the solution brought forward by Song dynasty doctors and scholar officials.
GÓMEZ Muriel, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelon, Spain in collaboration with
BUSQUETS Anna, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
[email protected]
Chinese and Japanese women through the Spanish texts from the XVI to XXth century
The main aim of this paper is to analyze the information about the Chinese and Japanese women
through the Spanish texts from the XVIth to XIXth centuries. This research is focused on two
historical moments. The first one focuses on the main Spanish texts from the Sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries because it is the time with largest presence of the Iberians in both
countries. Spanish archives preserve a lot of testimonies about Chinese and Japanese societies
written by missionaries and some travelers in this period. In our presentation, we will pay special
attention to the missionary texts -Dominican and Jesuits ones-, which provided us a complete
and very different picture of the reality of both countries. The second one focuses on the main
Spanish texts from the nineteenth century and the first years of twentieth century. Although in
this decades Spain had few diplomatic, economic or cultural contacts with China and Japan
(unlike other European countries), in the Spanish archives there are very interesting testimonies
of diplomatic, missionaries, scholars, writers, journalists and travelers who tried to show the
reality of those countries to the Spanish isolated society. In both cases, we focus our presentation
showing the main aspects related to women’s life and their role in Chinese and Japanese societies
from XVIth to XIXth centuries, and show the Spanish historical overview about Chinese and
Japanese women.
74 GOODMAN Bryna, University of Oregon, USA
“Law is One Thing, and Virtue is Another”: Vernacular Readings of Law and Legal
Process in 1920s Shanghai
This paper examines vernacular understandings of legal process in 1920s Shanghai, in the context
of contestations over Chinese legal modernity and sovereignty. By examining printed trial
transcripts, media coverage, commentary and archives emanating from a controversial case, it is
possible to map ideas of law, evidence, personnel and institutions, and the interplay of legal and
moral authority among various participants, including the reading/writing public. The case
involves the 1922 suicide of Xi Shangzhen, who hung herself at her workplace, the offices of the
liberal, politically outspoken Chinese newspaper, the Journal of Commerce. Xi’s family members
accused Xi’s employer, May Fourth activist, businessman, and journalist Tang Jiezhi, of two
crimes: 1) defrauding Xi of funds in the new Chinese stock exchanges, and 2) provoking her
suicide by pressuring her to be his concubine. Tang’s arrest, trial, and imprisonment stimulated
debate about legal procedure, reform, judicial independence, and human rights. A multitude of
public associations agitated on both sides of the case. Jurisdictional questions were particularly
fraught because of a popular nationalist movement to abolish the Mixed Court and reclaim
Chinese legal sovereignty. Trial testimony and newspaper commentary were marked by the varied
rhetorical universes inhabited by the twin spectacles of suicide and the stock market. The
financial details of the case invoked global capitalist financial instruments and terminology
beyond the grasp of most participants, and beyond the specificity of the law. Judicial reform
activists advocated the creation of a separate Commercial Affairs Court. Suicide, on the other
hand, invoked an older rhetoric of grievance, chastity, and honor, mingled with new language of
women’s rights and equality. Commenting on the contradictions of the case and confusion over
notions of justice, rights, and legal independence, the interested observer Chen Bulei wrote
despairingly of the Chinese public: “How may we speak to them about legal common sense?”.
The paper analyzes contesting vernacular notions of law, morality and justice in the case.
GOOSSAERT Vincent, CNRS-EPHE, Paris
The modern history of Daoism: state of the field (Panel “Daoism”)
This paper will present major trends and results in recent research on the modern history of
Daoism. While scriptural studies remain a strong base within the developing field of Daoist
studies, modern-historical approaches, based on a combination of fieldwork and first-hand
documents have been lately providing ever more important contributions to Daoism’s place in
75 Chinese society and culture. The paper will first sketch the publication over the last two decades
of massive compilations of new first-hand material (rare scriptures, gazetteers, and other writings,
mostly dating from the late Ming to the present) and discuss their significance and how these
sources can change our understanding of Daoism. Secondly, it will point out major trends in the
most recently published or on-going research using these materials along with other non-Daoist
historical sources. This will also serve as introduction and contextualisation for the three case
studies that follow.
GORBUNOVA Svetlana, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Moscow
Chinese Students – Religious Believers: Their Present and Future
Rough estimates of the different sociological investigations show that there are not less than 10%
of religious believers among 30 million students of high school in PRC. This figure grows about
4 times if we speak about Muslims and national minorities. The majority of students-religious
believers are the adepts of Taoism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Muslims. Some of
them are the followers of traditional cults and new religious movements. The main aim of this
paper is to describe the situation and their present position in the context of the main tendencies
of different confessions activity. For example it will focus on the dynamic spread of young
Protestant believers among university students of Beijing and Shanghai. It seems particularly
important to examine the reasons of the growing recognition of the western values in their
environment. At the same time the emphasis will be done on the part of the students (Buddhist
and Taoist believers) who are not satisfied to distance themselves from the Chinese traditions.
There are many ways and approaches available to our study. This question may be thought on the
sociological and also on the ideological level. One of the latter level aspects which can be
analyzed – is the strong state and Party total control under the student’s religious-believers in the
state universities. According to high school regulations (March 2005) the ban was placed on
religious activity and religious organizations. The last Chinese Communist Party decisions in
ideological sphere (January 2012) show that this control will be stricter before and during XVIII
congress of CCP. In spite of the difficulty to compare the status of the students of the state,
private and religious high schools we’ll try to make some prognoses about their future.
Obviously, that the professional opportunities of the state universities graduates will be limited:
only atheist can become CCP member and achieve the level of Party elite. On the contrary the
students of religious academies have more chances to make good career. Hence the analyze of
the problem of the future of the students – religious believers is very important because it can
help to clear up the social prospects and ideological position of this most educated part of
Chinese students.
76 GOULARD Sebastien, EHESS, Paris
China’s province owned companies, getting global and serving local interests ?: the case
of HNA and the province of Hainan
China’s state owned companies are very active in strategic sectors such as energy and transport,
and their expansion to foreign countries may be considered not only as business opportunities
but also as political objectives. The case of province owned companies is different. Although
some of these local companies still need restructuration and lack competitiveness, others are used
by local governments to increase province’s fiscal resources and to implement local development
policies. The most successful ones have expanded their business to other provinces and even
abroad. However, in this situation, province-owned companies may pursue a different objective
from the province’s own agenda. Getting bigger, province-owned companies may be
disconnected from their home region, and as a result conflicts of interests may occur. This paper
looks at the case of Hainan Airlines group (HNA) in Hainan. This company was established in
the early 1990’s by the local government to sustain the newly born tourism sector; firstly involved
in air transportation, the group has then developed activities in hotel management, shopping
centers, real estate, lotteries... It is now the largest company in Hainan, it has expanded to the rest
of China and to the world. How does this expansion affect the province of Hainan? Can we see a
withdrawal of HNA from its home province? Is the development of Hainan enhanced by the
development of this province owned company, or on the contrary can we argue that large
province owned companies may challenge the development of home province, because of
confusion between economic and political interests? This paper aims at analyzing the benefits or
the disadvantages for a province to have province-owned companies getting global.
GRANO Simona, University of Zürich, East Asian Department, Switzerland
Nuclear Energy “Foe or Friend”: The View from Taiwan and Hong Kong
The Fukushima Dai-ichi incident has sparked numerous reactions in the Western world as well as
in Asia. It is in Taiwan and Hong Kong though, that the debate has significantly ignited social
activists’ and common citizens’ hearts and minds. Taiwan in particular has a somewhat similar
situation to Japan: a seismic, overly populated country with nuclear power plants located side by
side to densely inhabited centers and in close proximity to numerous underwater volcanoes.
While many people were, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, hoping for a
future nuclear-free Taiwan (feihe jiayuan), presidential elections held in January 2012 have crushed
those dreams as President Ma Ying-Jiu has firmly stated that the construction of controversial
Longmen Plant n. 4 (NPP-4) (he si) will go on as planned. In Hong Kong on the other hand, it is
the fear of something happening to one of China’s nuclear power plants, located in proximity of
77 the island-city (e.g. Daya wan) that worries citizens and activists. As demonstrated by recent polls,
nuclear safety was among Taiwanese green-conscious citizens’ top concerns in 2011. The
popularity of such stories is highlighted by the media attention to related issues. With the present
article the author aims at analyzing the debate that has been forming recently in Taiwan and
Hong Kong around nuclear energy in general and more specifically in regards to Taiwan’s own
controversial power plant n. 4 and Hong Kong’s geographical proximity to China’s Daya Bay
plant, in the aftermath of a catastrophic event such as the Fukushima incident which has led
many governments to reconsider their previous stance towards nuclear energy. The study will be
made more interesting in virtue of the high percentage of citizens, in both places, informed about
said issues. The author will also try to find out whether local activists have grounds to be
preoccupied or whether, as claims the government, they are just prey to their own irrational fears,
lacking any scientific evidence.
GREBNYEV Georgiy, Moscow State University, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Russia
What's in a posthumous name? The glossaries of posthumous names in the Yi Zhou shu
and their significance
Although the posthumous names shi date back to the Western Zhou (ca. 1046-771 BC), the
origins of this tradition and the exact meanings of the different shi remain unclear or disputed.
Our present understanding is based on a significantly later interpretation, according to which the
shi were bestowed upon the deceased according to their deeds during the lifetime, and each shi
represented a certain – positive, negative or neutral – judgement of one's life. The locus classicus of
this interpretation is the “Shi fa” (“The order of posthumous names”) chapter in the Yi Zhou shu,
which enumerates the different shi and describes each of them in a strictly formulaic way.
However, the received “Shi fa” appears to be a composite text, which combines two partially
overlapping lists. Additionally, Wang Yinglin (AD 1223-1296) in his Yu hai provides somewhat
contradictory information from earlier sources, according to which there had been two individual
“Shi fa” chapters (shang and xia) in the Yi Zhou shu. In this paper, I discuss whether the received
“Shi fa” chapter could derive from the two different chapters mentioned in the Yu hai. I also
offer some preliminary remarks concerning the origins and the distinguishing features of the two
different styles of enumeration of the shi in the Yi Zhou shu.
GUEX Samuel, Université de Genève, Etudes Est-asiatiques, Switzerland
Colonial Korea Through Chinese Eyes
78 Much research has been carried out on Chinese view of modern Japan and on Japanese view of
modern China. For instance, the ambivalence of Japan hands eager to learn from Japan but
somewhat less interested in studying about Japan, or the role played by China hands in the
Japanese military aggression against China are well documented. In contrast, Chinese view of
modern Korea has comparatively not drawn much attention yet, partly because of the lack of
documents on this topic. In this paper, I will present some travelogues and essays from Chinese
intellectuals that deal with colonial Korea, like Zhang Yiliu’s Travelogue from Japan and Korea (Ri
Xian lüxingji, 1919), Pan Yangyao’s From Liaoning to Japan (Cong Liaoning dao Riben, 1931), and
Huang Yanpei’s Korea (Chaoxian, 1929). I will mainly focus on two aspects, namely the national
characters attributed to the Korean, and the assessment of Korea as a Japanese colony. Firstly,
these texts display many similarities when compared with the Japanese contemporaneous
perception of Korean. Lazy, untrustworthy, Korean are also criticized for their lack of patriotism,
which is supposed to explain their annexation by Japan. Even more, in those authors’ eyes,
Korean flaws often seem to serve as a contrast to enhance qualities such as intelligence, diligence,
or politeness associated with the Japanese. Secondly, and more surprisingly, these documents
reveal an appraisal of the achievements of the Japanese in developing Korea’s industry, economy,
and education system. In other words, colonial Korea plays a contradictory role in Chinese eyes:
on one side, it is presented as a warning of what could become of China without an arousing of
Chinese national consciousness; on the other side, Korea is described as an evidence of the
Japanese intrinsic qualities and their capacity as colonial administrators. In order to assess how
these opinions were received by Korean, I will also analyze Yi Siyŏng’s Time Changing Emotions
(Kamsi manŏ, 1938), which was published as an answer to Huang Yanpei’s Korea. It will thus
offer a cross perspective on Chinese and Korean perceptions of each other, with strained SinoJapanese relations as a background issue.
GUIDA Donatella, Università degli studi di Napoli “L'Orientale”, Italy
House Maids and Palace Maids: Family Property and Legal Subject in the Qing Dynasty
Among the broad category of servants and slaves, legal codes such as the Da Qing huidian shili
(Collected statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty, with precedents) list different kinds of workers,
ranging from nubi to changsui and tongpu, to the more reassuring jiaren. To investigate some factual
aspects of these people existence is not an easy task, as they are often considered simply as part
of the family property, together with cattle and the like. Being inferior, they were dealt with in a
different way by law, according to the Confucian principle of ‘li’: the penalties differed greatly
according to the relative statuses of the victim and the offender. Some might have been lucky,
ending to be married off to a good family, even weal-thier than the old master’s, and thus some
traces of their lives can be found in local histories. In the most prominent house, the Imperial
79 Palace, maids and servants were watched over by the Office of Palace Surveillance (gongzheng si)
headed by a palace women official who disciplined the whole staff according to specific
regulations. In this case, the possibility to move upward, from chamber maid to concubine (who
were under the control of the same office), was tiny. Nevertheless, it could happen, and some
lucky few were promoted to the rank of an empress. Apart from this remote possibility, to what
extent was their position meant to be privileged, compared to commoners and their servants?
This paper has a twofold structure: firstly, it aims to explore the living conditions of the house
maids, drawing from local gazetteers, legal compilations, and possibly also some literary sources;
secondly, it investigates the duties of the palace maids, their punishments and rewards, in order to
compare their status with that of their ordinary counterparts.
GUIHEUX Gilles, Professor, SEDET, Univerité Paris Diderot
Consumption spaces and social stratification
(Panel: “Sociology of consumption”)
The will explore the relationship between consumption spaces and social stratification in the
specific case of contemporary Shanghai. As Chinese cities rapidly transformed themselves into
consumerist societies, the relationship between consumers and consumption space has become a
new research area; several researchers have looked at housing (Fleischer, Wu Fulong, Giroir), but
very little attention has been paid to the very places where people actually shop. The paper will
show how the restructuration of commercial spaces have performed significant constructive
functions in organizing consumers from different social classes into different consumption space.
The main issue that will be addressed is the role of consumption in integrating or segragating the
Chinese society.
GUO Jue, Heidelberg University, Germany
317 B.C.E.: The Life of an Early Chinese Official on Display
(Panel: “A New Perspective on Early Chinese Manuscripts”)
Shao Tuo, a fourth-century B.C.E. high-ranking minister of the Warring States Chu Kingdom,
navigated and negotiated the personal, social, political, and religious realms in life. Upon his
death, these realms — the lifeworlds that Shao Tuo inherited, in which he participated, and
among which he lived along with others — were purposefully displayed in a carefully constructed
80 tomb and an elaborate burial, replete with copious grave goods. The burial remained intact
underground for over two thousand years until the tomb was discovered in 1987 in Hubei,
China. In this paper, I pose the question, “How does Shao Tuo’s tomb, archaeologically
designated as Baoshan tomb 2, put his life, particularly that of the 317 B.C.E. on display?” My
argument is twofold. First, through analyzing two categories of the bamboo manuscripts
discovered from Shao Tuo’s tomb, administrative documents and divination and sacrifice
records, and identifying them as “living” records from Shao Tuo’s lifetime, I argue, these
manuscripts, although found in the tomb where death was the ostensible theme, paradoxically
puts Shao Tuo’s interconnected lifeworlds — public and private, political and religious — on
display. They are not, at least not primarily, “medical records” or otherworldly travel
paraphernalia to serve Shao Tuo’s afterlife as some studies have suggested. Furthermore, I argue
that taking these manuscripts as “afterlife texts” is a result of what I term as an anatomical
approach to archaeologically excavated materials, which can lead to misinterpretations of their
content and function. As an alternative, I propose an integrated method that centers on
classification and contextualization in light of Shao Tuo’s case.
GYSS Caroline, CNRS, Groupe Sociétés-Religions-Laïcités (EPHE-CNRS)
Funerary practices among the Chinese in France
(Panel: “Chinese Religions in France”)
Chinese tombs in French cemeteries exemplify Chinese people’s choice to settle in France. In
Paris, they are either scattered in old cemeteries such as the Père-Lachaise, or gathered in several
large sections in the suburban Thiais cemetery; but in any case, the style, decoration and graphic
material linked with these tombs give many clues to the origin and beliefs of people buried there.
Moreover, the strong presence of Chinese families at their relatives’ tombs on calenderical
festivals testifies to their will to accommodate Chinese traditions to diasporic contexts.
HAMILTON Robyn, School of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland, New
Zealand
“The production of knowledge of Qiu Jin (1875-1907): gender, history and texts”
In what is now considered classic writings on the establishment of gender as a category of
historical analysis, the historian Joan Wallach Scott (1986; 1988) posed the question “Does
81 gender give meaning to the organization and perception of historical knowledge?” Historical
material on the late Qing revolutionary woman Qiu Jin provides a rich resource for scholars of
China and leads into questions on how gender has had an effect on history. The paper is based
on my recent research conducted in Taiwan on literary texts by and about Qiu Jin and raises
questions about the influence of gender in the production of knowledge of this iconic woman.
Three areas of focus will be introduced in the paper. First, the influence of Qiu Jin’s daughter
Wang Canzhi (1904-1967) on her mother’s literary remains will be discussed in the light of recent
criticisms of her selective editing methods. My analysis of a “lost” poem by Qiu Jin will be based
on primary and secondary materials and will suggest that gender was a possible factor in editorial
remembering and forgetting. Finally, my comparison of the style and contents of various 1920s1930s editions of Qiu Jin’s literary works will suggest that illustrations and other publishing
devices also manipulated the identity of this iconic woman. The paper will argue that attention to
the influence of gender combined with an in-depth focus on the literary works of Qiu Jin and her
editors can provide a different view of Qiu Jin and her heritage.
HAMMOND Daniel, University of Edinburgh, UK
Rural social assistance: Learning from the urban experience?
China’s social assistance system has undergone significant change since the early 1990s. The
provision of assistance to those deemed in need has moved from a centrally funded and
calculated category based system to a locally funded, administered and adjusted means tested
program called the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system. The MLG system first
emerged in Shanghai in June 1993 and was implemented nationally in urban areas in September
1997. In August 2007 Beijing announced a rural MLG program was to be implemented
nationwide. This paper seeks to address two questions related to the emergence and
implementation of the rural MLG program. First, why was the decision to implement the rural
version of the MLG made ten years after the corresponding urban program was decided on? In
addressing this question the paper will primarily discuss the leadership transition from Jiang/Zhu
to Hu/Wen, the subsequent change in focus from urban to rural development and the extent that
this explains the transformation of the rural social assistance system. The second question
addressed is to what extent did policymakers learn from the development of the urban MLG
program? This section of the paper will first highlight the particular challenges experienced by the
urban MLG and their origins. It will then look at the development of the rural MLG, its design
and implementation. Based on a comparison of the two programs it will be argued that there are
similarities which suggest that learning has not taken place. A final section will discuss these
findings in the context of the policy studies and new institutionalist literature which both attempt
to deal with the issue of learning in policymaking.
82 HAN Si, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm  see SI Han
HANSEN Mette Halskov Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University
of Oslo, Norway
A generation gap of five years: Yong rural teachers’ struggle to improve rural students
morality
In current Chinese debates about presumed “individualism”, “weak morality” and “lack of
Quality” among rural youth, it is often pointed out that schools and teachers have a special
responsibility to establish good role models, and improve the behaviour of the coming
generation. While there are ample examples of morally educating texts in school’s official
curricula, teachers are often at odds about how to live up to this responsibility in practice. Based
on ethnographic data and interviews from a rural high school, the presentation discusses how a
group of young rural teachers interpret their own personal and professional responsibility in this
regard. It explores how, and especially why, young teachers struggle so hard to provide what they
regard as the proper “moral education” to students who are often just five to ten years younger
than themselves.
HARBSMEIER Christoph, University of Oslo, Norway
Aspects of philosophy of numbers in relation to the lexicalized gramm of number words
in pre-Buddhist and Classical Chinese
In this paper I shall consider in some detail and with examples thirty-nine syntactically and/or
semantically distinct functions of number words in classical Chinese. Moreover, I shall try to
argue that all these functions are probably best formally derived from one basic verbal
grammatical function within the system of categorial grammar as laid out and systematically
applied in Thesaurus Lingae Sericae (url: tls.uni-hd.de; see in particular http://tsl.unihd.de/projectDescription/glossary/contentssyntacticCatGen.lasso)
83 HARDIE, Alison, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Political drama in the Ming-Qing transition
In the late Ming dynasty, a new genre of drama arose, which presented on stage recent political
events, featuring real historical persons, some of them even still alive at the time of performance;
this is something different from the Chinese tradition of using historical events of the more
distant past as allegories of present circumstances. This new genre continued across the MingQing transition, despite the possible risk of offending the new regime. In the Chongzhen and
Shunzhi reigns, a considerable number of plays focused on the conflict during the preceding
Tianqi reign between the Eastern Grove (Donglin) faction and the chief eunuch Wei Zhongxian
(1568-1627). Eleven plays on this subject are known, of which three survive: Fan Shiyan’s Eunuch
Wei Grinds Down the Loyal (Wei jian mo zhong ji), the Clear-Whistling Scholar’s (Qingxiaosheng) A
Happy Encounter with Spring (Xi feng chun), and Li Yù’s (1591?-1671?) A Roster of the Pure and Loyal
(Qing zhong pu). Fan Shiyan and Li Yù’s plays about Wei Zhongxian provide a striking contrast
between the former’s sensationalist, supernatural approach and the latter’s more subtle,
sophisticated dramatic interpretation. Another play by Li Yù, Reunion across Ten Thousand Miles
(Wan li yuan), based on real-life events, is concerned with the effect of the dynastic transition on a
particular family from Suzhou. A close reading of these plays, examining how they dramatise and
implicitly comment on recent historical events, will throw light on how contemporaries
understood the political and social change of the late Ming and early Qing, and suggest that
popular performance could influence general understanding of the political events of the Tianqi
and early Chongzhen reigns.
HEIRMAN Ann, Ghent University, Belgium, with the collaboration of Dr. Mathieu Torck
Bodily care in a Buddhist monastic context: shaving the hair and trimming the nails
When Buddhist monks started to travel from India to China, they also introduced objects and
practices into a new setting. Against this background, the present paper studies bodily care and,
more particularly, the shaving of the hair and the trimming of the nails. In Buddhist texts, both of
these practices are very often discussed together, partly because hair and nails are both
detachable, but also continuously growing parts of the body, and partly because they trigger
similar reactions. They are also often taken care of by the same person. In addition, as is well
known, hair is a most essential identity marker all over the Buddhist world, since shaving the hair
of the head symbolizes a lay person’s going forth, marking his or her transition from the lay
84 world into the monastic community. This paper examines what hair and nails stand for in the
monastic context and how they are taken care of. Although a shaven head is well studied as an
identity marker, it is much less known which practices and attitudes shaving or trimming imply.
Which tools are used? What can we learn from sources other than textual? Which emotions are
evoked and which images are brought to people’s mind? Is there any visible change between
India and China? And finally, how were hair and nails perceived by those many Chinese men who
decided to abandon lay life and to enter the monastic community? As we will see, shaving and
trimming are closely connected to decency and dignity, and thus to practices and attitudes that
are to be expected from Buddhist monastics. Cleanliness, decency, purity and identity, here
symbolized by hair and nails, thus evoke emotions of a quite similar nature. However proud a lay
man may have been about his shining black long hair or his long nails, when he enters the
monastic order, it was a fashion he was never to return to as long as he stayed in the monastery.
Instead, his shaven head and short nails symbolized a total and drastic shift from the profane
world.
HENNINGSEN Lena, University of Heidelberg, Institute of Chinese Studies, Germany
Consuming Ideology? Everyday Practices and their Meanings in Popular Fiction of the
1950s
This paper proposes an analysis of descriptions of everyday practices depicted in officially
sanctioned and popular novels from the early PRC such as Yang Mo’s Song of Youth: “In the
morning, Lin Daojing steamed Mantous on the stove and began to read a Course on Dialectics …
by the window.” Such seemingly innocuous passages point to an entanglement of ideology and
seemingly trivial everyday practices. While this characteristic may also be found in other
literatures from other countries and epochs, this particular set of texts offer valuable insights in
discourses on the values and interpretations of everyday life. I argue that both ideological content
and the mundane habits related in the novels are vital for an understanding of how the texts
worked and why they became popular among readers – even though (or, maybe, because) the
two are sometimes at odds with each other. Entertainment, pleasure and enjoyment (of the
novels’ characters and of their readers) are central to such an understanding and invite a
reevaluation of the doctrine of (Socialist) Realism, of its mode of operation and of its effects on
contemporary readers.
85 HO Chi-Chu, R.O.C. Military Academy, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
The Body Posture and Space of the Du Fu’s Writings of Illness
The aim of this paper is to focus on the disease poem written by Du Fu in the Tang dynasty in
order to expand the lyric tradition in Chinese literature by using a new vision in interpreting Du
Fu’s poem. As the illness experiences are irreplaceable and the disease poems expressing clear
self-image of the poet, we attempt to explore the unique illness experiences to uncover the “lyric
ego” in Du Fu’s poems. The perception of the world of the poets suffering from illness would be
different from the past while they were healthy, and thus they were experiencing a new sense of
“space” through replacing the ordinary sense of space due to their eroding condition of health
caused by their illness. This article is divided into three parts: the first part is to interpreting the
new sense of space that exhibiting features of anxiety that caused by the stationary state in life
that experienced by Du Fu’s while he was sick. The second part of this study attempt to switch
the perspective of Du Fu’s disease poem that constructing a new sense of space by the action of
“climbing” in order to inspect whether the patient was able to overcome his anxiety while
standing on a higher plane. The third part of this paper is to study the posture of “lying”,
examining Du Fu expression of his self-image and the perception of the space while suffering
from chronic illness.
HOECKELMANN Michael, University of Münster, Germany
Li Deyu (787-850) and the ‘Manufacturing of Sages’
In writings from the Tang, emperors are often designated as sheng (‘saints’/‘sages’). This
appellation appears in various contexts: First, when a current emperor (or sometimes empress) is
addressed, sheng is used as adjective, as in shengxin (‘sagacious mind-heart’) or shengde (‘sagacious
virtue’). It serves as an epithet without necessarily assigning sagely qualities to the imcumbent. In
addition, there are honorifics that can be bestowed upon the living emperor, sometimes
extending to long lists that often include sheng. Furthermore, deceased rulers can be addressed –
collectively – as ‘the line of sages’ (liesheng) of the current dynasty, and qian- or xiansheng (‘former
sages’) may refer to dynastic ancestors, emperors of former dynasties, Confucius, the Duke of
Zhou, and others. It seems that certain criteria had to be fullfilled before an emperor could
acquire the luxury of having himself being called a sage. Thus, the sage on the throne was living
reality and remote ideal simultaneously. In my talk, I will explore the question how emperors
became sages and the connection between this ‘manufacturing of sages’ and the imperial
ancestral cult. As point of departure I take memorials from the Late Tang, mainly written by Li
Deyu (787–850), that deal with the ancestral cult of the imperial family, e.g., his appeal to grant
86 Emperor Xianzong (r. 805–820) an ‘unmovable shrine/tablet’ (buqian zhi miao). How did Li
deploy the rhetorics of sagehood in these texts? Was continuance of offerings and upkeep of a
shrine conceived of as necessary for sagehood? This relates to the question of how much
religiously inspired the manufacturing of sages under the Tang actually was. In the last step, I will
therefore ask the question whether Late Tang officials saw the imperial ancestral cult as a
religious institution or rather as a cult of remembrance that served to foster cultural identity, but
largely operated in secular terms.
HOFMANN Martin, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Contradictory or Complementary? Remarks on the diversity of spatial representations in
pre-modern Chinese maps
This paper examines the diversity of spatial representations in pre-modern Chinese maps.
Changes and refinements of spatial models are incited by gains in geographical knowledge and
the introduction of competing notions of space through exchanges with other cultures. Yet,
spatial concepts do not follow one another in a strictly chronological order from vague concepts
to ever more scientific, empirical, or mathematical accurate ones. Rather, multiple spatial notions
coexist - sometimes entangled, sometimes incompatible with one another. Focusing on maps
from the 17th and 18th centuries, this paper proposes that the various modes of representation
and organization of knowledge were part of particular, often long-standing discourses. Looking
more closely into the discourses to which maps contributed will reveal why maps of very
different styles and levels of complexity were used at the same time, and all were of relevance in
their own right.
HOMOLA Stéphanie, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France
The Fortunes of a Scholar: When the Yijing Challenged Modern Astronomy
Liu Zihua (1899-1992) was one of the 1500 Chinese students who were sent to France between
1919 and 1921 as part of the Diligent Work and Frugal Study Movement (qingong jianxue). In
1940, he completed a PhD thesis at the Sorbonne on “The Cosmology of the Eight Trigrams and
Modern Astronomy”, in which he stated the discovery of a tenth planet in the solar system
following an “analogical reasoning” which combined modern astronomy and the numerology of
87 the Book of Changes (Yijing). Sinologist Henri Maspero, member of the board of examiners, put
this work in the context of Confucian scholars who, in the 17th century and again in the middle
of the 19th century, faced the challenge of Western science by claiming that it was already
contained in the Chinese Classics. When Liu went back to China in 1945, his constant efforts to
win recognition first came up against nationalist and communist anti-traditionalism but were
eventually integrated in the intellectual and cultural revival of the 1980s. This individual case
study, based on historical sources, first aims at contributing to more general studies of the WorkStudy Movement from the last 30 years. Second, I also rely on anthropological fieldwork to show
that Liu is an emblematic figure of the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of modern
Western categories of science, philosophy, religion and superstition at the beginning of the 20th
century. Liu’s story gives us a concrete example of the changing status of knowledge and
practices related to the Yijing in Chinese society. As they lie at the crossroads of various
disciplines, such knowledge and practices emphasize the inadequacy of Western categories of
knowledge and provide a relevant frame to call for genuine Chinese categories. Thus, they shed
light on the shaping of scientific and academic standards in China and on the connection
between the traditional literary scholar and the contemporary “amateur scientist”. In this context,
I assume that the striking pretentiousness that pervades Liu’s biography expresses the
competitive professional culture of both academics and divinatory arts as well as Liu’s strong
commitment to a Confucian ethic.
HONG C. Lynne, Chinese Culture University, Department of Philosophy, Taipei, Taiwan,
Seeing through the Dao 道: Image Schema Related to Non-obstruction in the Zhuangzi
26 (Panel: “Metaphor and Cognition in Early Chinese Philosophy”)
In this paper, I will analyze the passage introduced by the sentence “acute eyes make for keen
vision” (mu che wei ming 目徹為明) in Zhuangzi 26 (ICS 26/79/1-4). This passage has drawn the
attention of scholars for a number of topics, including perception, dao, xin (heart-mind), and
tianyou (heavenly wandering). The connection among these topics, however, has never been
systematically investigated. Via a discussion of the image schema related to the concept of “nonobstruction”, a cognitive pattern established through our sensory-motor system, this paper aims
at revealing an underlying connection throughout this unique passage. Only when we are aware
of this image schema, I hold, can the passage be understood in a coherent way. In developing my
position, I will also point out how philosophical arguments are embedded in this specific image
schema.
HOPFENER Birgit, Freie Universität Berlin, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Berlin, Germany
Bodily relationality in Chinese Moving-Image-Installations (Panel: “Re-thinking
Relationality in Chinese Modern Art Paradigm shifts and critical negotiations of
relational imaging in Chinese art from the 18th century until today”)
The discussion of “touch” as a constitutive perception aspect in the signification process of an
artwork seems to be a recurrent topic in moving-image installations by contemporary artists in
China. An early paradigmatic work in this regard is the installative video “Old Bench” (Lao deng)
(1997) by Wang Gongxin. It consists of an old wooden bench with an integrated TV screen in its
seating surface. The images on the TV screen show how an index finger continuously touches the
same bench, seemingly emphasizing a bodily relationship between object and subject. The
concern of Chen Shaoxiong’s moving-image installation “Ink City” (Moshui chengshi) (2005) seems
to be to heighten the awareness of bodily viewer engagement by translating photographs into
animated ink drawings and thereby reflecting upon differences of materiality, media and its
respective experiential differences. Yang Zhenzhong’s video installation “Let’s Puff” (Chui)
(2002) physically engages the viewer in the interrelational situation that evolves between the inand-exhaling process of a woman and its effects on images of Shanghai approaching and moving
away accordingly on an opposite projection screen. Having such artworks in mind the paper
analyzes art historical conditions of bodily relationality as an aesthetic premise. Arguing that
traditional image practices in China dominantly did not dominantly function as iconic and
mimetic function of representation, but emphasized indexical relations between the world and
the human being, I am asking in how far the negotiation of bodily relationality can be understood
as a critical negotiation of a Chinese art history of indexicality and in how far indexicality has to
be re-thought in a different cultural and historical context. So far discourses on indexicality have
been dominantly informed by Euro-American art histories and theories that are centered on
critical reflections of a representational understanding of art. In order to widen this Eurocentric
discussion and open a transcultural discourse, I am shifting the focus on Chinese art.
HOSHINO Yukiyo, Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Japan
Artistic Activities of the China Defense League
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Soong Ching-Ling (1883－1981), the wife
of Sun Yatsen, founded the China Defense League in Hong Kong in June 1938. Until the
Japanese occupied Hong Kong in December 1941, this institution vigorously engaged in
donation activities for the benefit of the International Peace Hospital and homes for war
orphans, particularly in the communist-controlled areas in Mainland China. In addition, it
supported and advertised anti-Japanese demonstrations. The institution’s original members
included James M. Bertram (1910－1993), Liao Cheng-Zhi (1908－1983), Liao Meng-Xing (1904
89 －1988), Israel Epstein (1915－2005), and certain foreign journalists and bankers. However, only
biographers of Soong Ching-Ling have mentioned the 1eague’s activities, and little notable
research exists about these activities. This presentation focuses on the charity concerts organized
by the China Defense League in Hong Kong and Chongqing in the 1940s. Specifically, it
discusses how the league combined its efforts with various artists such as ballet dancer Aileen Dai
(1916－2006), cartoonist Qian-Yu Ye（1907―1994）, and bass opera singer Yi-Kwei Sze (1915
－1994). Moreover, through these activities, the league worked with the political department of
the Military Committee of Kuomindang. The information contained in this presentation is mainly
based on these artists’ reminiscences and sources such as a communist newspaper, Xinhua ribao
(New China Daily), founded by Zhou Enlai , and other sources printed in the areas not occupied
by Japan. Subsequently, it explores how the league’s artistic activities influenced the history of
Chinese modern dance and classical music following the war.
HSU Hsin-Mei Agnes, Director of Education and Dean of the Confucius Institute at China
Institute, New York, USA
Use of the Axonometric Perspective in the Tomb Mural at Anping
This paper focuses on the heuristic potential of a specific pictorial representation of geography
created during the Eastern Han dynasty (25 to 220 CE). A mural-size map found on the walls of
a tomb at Anpin, depics an axonometric view of an immense homestead in China's northern
frontier at that time. Formal analysis indicates a level of artistic interest in representing different
forms of landscape; however, when the map is studied in context of the culture that produced
the map, it becomes apparent that in the creative process artistic intention was secondary to
functionality. Further, a contextual interpretation of the material evidence set within the
contemporary historical and philosophical frameworks elucidates the notion of domain and the
structured perceptions of the exterritorial “other” in the early Chinese mind.
HU Yannan, National Taiwan Normal University, Dept. of East Asian Studies, Taipei, Taiwan
Can Sex Therapy Heal Dynastic Trauma?: A Comparative Study of Banqiao zaji and
Mid-Qing Courtesan-Note Novels
(Panel: “Swallowing China’s Pride Page by Page: Writing about Lost Wars in Chinese
90 Fiction”)
This paper shows how the notion of therapeutic writing about dynastic change lays at the centre
of Yu Huai’s Banqiao zaji (Miscellaneous Notes of Banjiao 1693). Written merely fifty years after
the fall of Ming Dynasty, Banqiao zaji is substantially and famously about late-Ming courtesans,
their spaces and lives. It becomes a model for later courtesan-note novels such as Xu Banqiao zaiji
(1785), Qin Huai huafang lu (1817), and Qin Huai Wenjian lu (1835?) in mid-Qing China. This paper
discusses that Yu Huai’s nostalgia for Ming lifestyle and politics is projected through his
descriptions of courtesans’ houses, objects and bodies. The paper also examines how and why
romantic love and sexual desire between literati and courtesans in Banqiao zaiji are therapeutic for
national trauma. Imitations of Banqiao zaji are popular in mid-Qing literature. However, by
comparing the above four novels, the seriousness of traumatic writing and its therapeutic
function are no longer emphasized by later courtesan-note novel writers.
HUANG Fei, Leiden University, Holland
The Picturesque Empire’s Land’? The Best View of Northeastern Yunnan in the
eighteenth century
My research is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of landscape, space and architecture in
eighteenth-century northeastern Yunnan where indigenous people lived for many centuries. Here
the Qing Empire overthrew the indigenous regimes and created new cities and landscapes both in
terms of their actual construction and of their representation by officials and literati in the
eighteenth century. After the walled cities were built and imperial institutions were established,
local scholars identified a series of the most beautiful views in the surroundings of the walled city.
Regardless of the actual locations of these scenic spots, the descriptions of these beautiful views
are not only a sign of literary appreciation, but were also consciously written to represent the wild
frontier to a ‘civilized’ Han Chinese world. Beyond that, the basis for the selection of best views
is examined in the context of geographical descriptions in the local gazetteers that involved
complex political, military and economic interests. In the case of northeastern Yunnan in the
eighteenth century, the connection between the walled cities and copper production forms the
key background for the selection of best views. Notwithstanding the efforts of local officials and
elites to recreate the local landscape, previous indigenous landscapes actually interacted with this
new landscape. In conclusion, taking into account state as well as indigenous perspective, my
intention is to explore the process of mutual interaction between the various discourses on the
one hand and the actual construction of space and landscape by different local groups on the
other. 91 HUANG Jing-jia, Dept. of Chinese, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei
On Imitating Activities of Han Shan Poems by Chan Buddhist Monks in Song Dynasty
(Panel: “Interpretation, Imagination and Imitation----Creation and Recreation of the
Images of Bodhisattvas and of the Eminent Monks in the History of Chinese Buddhism”)
Although we have not had a clear picture of the life of Han Shan, a legendary Tang monk, and in
Collection of Han Shan Poetry (Han Shan Shiji) we either find not clear idea about his major thought
but different ideology which came from Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. However, Han
Shan’s poetry was broadly read by the people belonged to different social status during Song
Dynasty. His poetry was also frequently cited in Chan Buddhist literature in the period.
Furthermore, Chan Buddhist monks of Song Dynasty invited Han Shan into their own genealogy
and regard him as a “San Sheng”(a Free Sage). Many Chan Buddhist monks of Song Dynasty
used Han Shan’s poetry in various Chan Buddhist texts. Quite a number of Chan Buddhist
monks even wrote so-called “ni Han Shan shi”, imitating Han Shan’s poetry, as a kind of
personal literary creation. It is understandable that when a monk who imitated Han Shan’s poetry
would both the reader and the creator of Han Shan poetry at the same time, we also understand
that every writer produces their works through their own cultural outlooks. Therefore a new
formed correlation naturally came between original poetry and imitated poetry when Song Chan
Buddhist monks finished their imitation poetry. By observing the correlation, this paper will
deeply analyze the dissemination and acceptance of Han Shan poetry within Chan Buddhist
society in Song Dynasty basing on Chan Buddhist literature for learning more about image
creation and recreation of Han Shan in the period.
HUANG Ying-Ling Michelle, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University
A Long-awaited Journey to the Far East: Laurence Binyon’s Experience in China
Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) was the foremost British curator to promote an appreciation of
Chinese painting and turn it into a subject of serious and scholarly study in the early twentieth
century. During his 40 years’ service at the British Museum, Binyon acquired a knowledge of
Asian painting from relevant publications by Japanese and Western scholars, while involving in
the acquisition, exhibition, cataloging and publication projects of English and Oriental prints and
drawings. In the early 1910s, Binyon longed for a study trip to the Far East and envied the visits
of his collector friends, including Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) from America and Ernst
Arthur Voretzsch (1868-1965) from Germany, who provided him practical advice on exploring
historic sites and art collections in China. Unfortunately, due to political and economic reasons,
Binyon’s Far East trip had been postponed for over 14 years. It was not until 1929 when Binyon
was 60 years old, he can finally embark on a five-month Far East journey in order to gain his
firsthand experience of seeing important collections of Asian art and to learn about the collecting
and curatorial practice in Japan, China and other countries. This paper focuses on Laurence
92 Binyon’s experience in China and his connection with Chinese scholars and artists, including
Kung-pah T. King (or Jin Cheng, 1878-1926), Sophia Chen Zen (or Chen Hengzhe, 1890-1976)
and Teng Hiok Chiu (or Zhou Tingxu, 1903-1972). With reference to Binyon’s family papers and
other primary documents as found in different archives, I will reconstruct the itinerary of
Binyon’s long-awaited journey to the Far East, tracing his footsteps in Beijing and Shanghai,
where he saw fine works of Chinese art in museums and private houses. I will discuss how
Binyon’s experience in the Far East has verified his vision of China which was largely shaped by
early English writings on Asian art. Considering Binyon’s contacts with Chinese scholars and
artists developed in his later career, I will investigate how Chinese connoisseurship refreshed
Binyon’s understanding of Chinese art and culture with new perspectives.
IEZZI Adriana, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy
Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy between Tradition and Innovation
Since the mid-1980s Chinese calligraphy Art has undergone a radical change and has opened itself
to experimentation. Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy has gradually lost its connection with
Chinese language and has gradually strayed from the concept of linguistic unity which
comprehends sound, signified and graphic sign. A vivid debate on Contemporary Chinese
Calligraphy is involving Art critics in China nowadays. Wang Dongling and the Modernists think
that, despite many changes and influences, we can still refer to the traditional calligraphic lexicon
to describe the calligraphic production of contemporary Chinese Art. They still remain deeply
rooted in the signified system of Chinese writing, even if they break with the strict rules of
Chinese classical aesthetic, contaminating their art with Western elements, especially from art, and
focusing on the stylistic exploration (which means a pictorial approach to calligraphy, a drastic
reduction of the number of characters, a reshaping of characters). Wang Nanming and the
Avant-garde think that “contemporary calligraphy is not calligraphy yet”. It is “anti-calligraphy”: the
contrary, the deconstruction, and the negation of the traditional calligraphy. Their Art aims at a
radical and total transformation of calligraphic art, annihilates Chinese tradition, rejects the use of
legible characters, experiments with new languages and new media within the idiom of international
contemporary art, in order to make people reflect upon human condition or to challenge
conventional thinking. The result is the creation of works of art that could be assimilated to
universally comprehensible forms of art, such as: art, expressionism, Conceptual art, Performance art,
Contemporary dance, Multimedia art, and Street art. This paper aims at showing how still valid
and extremely productive are both these two theoretical and creative/practical approaches to
Chinese calligraphy in China nowadays. Both of them reflect the aim of Chinese contemporary society
at dialectically facing their past tradition and at opening to a new one as well. For all of these artists,
Chinese calligraphy represents the starting point of the creative process but not the finishing line. I
think there can be no finishing line at all, but just an attempt to create a new artistic
language, that turned the art of calligraphy into a medium for global comprehension and communication.
93 IIYAMA Tomoyasu, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
The Rise of New Literati Elite in North China under Mongol Rule
(Panel: “Evolution or Rupture? New Perspectives on Chinese Society under Mongol Rule”)
The Mongol rulers suspended the civil service examinations and showed little interest in
employing Confucian scholars after they conquered north China in 1234. How did northern
Chinese literati, then, react to this change? This paper answers this question by focusing on
northern literati who started their political career as clerks. Relying on The Memoir of His Excellency,
Fiscal Attendant Guo Fuzhai, compiled by a retired northern official named Guo Yu in 1333, this
paper first examines how the new recruiting systems under Mongol rule impacted on the selfrecognition and career-making of a local literatus. It then contextualizes Guo Yu’s case in the
long-term social transition by analyzing more than two hundred epitaphs from the Hebei region
where Guo Yu was born. These sources demonstrate that while trying to maintain traditional
scholarly life, northern literati promptly adapted themselves to the new clerk-officialdom under
Mongol rule. They continued to favor the clerkship even after the examination system was
reestablished after 1315. Those men’s experiences testify to the rise of new literati elite in the
north under Mongol rule.
INDRACCOLO Lisa, Universität Zürich, UFSP Asien und Europa, Switzerland
‘Pointing at Things is not Pointing’: Patterned Speech and Argument Construction in the
Zhiwu Lun
(Panel: “Rhetoric, Linguistics, Hermeneutics and In Between: Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ’s On
Pointings and Things as a Case in Point”)
The Zhǐwù Lùn is probably the most challenging of the texts included in the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ, a
collection of dialogues and essays named after and attributed to the homonymous fictitious
dialectician (Csikszentmihalyi and Nylan 2003; Smith 2003), dating to the Warring States period
(475-221 B.C.), age of the maximum flourishing of early Chinese politico-philosophical debate.
Scholars have diversely interpreted the Zhǐwù Lùn as a dialogue or as a treatise. However, while
all the other texts included in the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ collection make explicit and widespread use of
the classical Chinese verb yuē which typically introduces direct speech, in the Zhǐwù Lùn there is
94 no evidence hinting at a dialogical nature of the text. At the same time, reading the Zhǐwù Lùn as a
treatise has produced no sound translation, as its cryptic nature and the extremely low number of
characters it employs have caused confusion and engendered dramatic interpretative problems. In
my presentation, I will argue that the text does not belong to any of the two above-mentioned
literary categories, but rather assumes a hybrid form. It will be graphically shown that it is
possible to schematize the structure of the text and to identify and clearly disentangle meaningful
clusters corresponding to individual building blocks (Boltz 2005; Meyer 2011). Such constitutive
elements do not only represent fundamental units in the process of argument construction, but
are purposely displaced in order to establish an intricate web of meaningful figures within the text,
such as intratextual cross-references, parallelisms, repetitions, and symmetrical grammatical
structures. A detailed analysis of the structure of the Zhǐwù Lùn shows that the text makes use of
a type of patterned speech, reflecting an underlying oral formulaic nature, where by “oral
formula” is meant a fixed group of words regularly employed in oral composition to express the
same given idea. On this basis, I will argue that the Zhǐwù Lùn is a well-conceived, premeditated
written speech, which however was not meant to be read alone in silence, but to be recited aloud,
performed and delivered in front of an audience, accustomed and receptive to certain specific
modes of argument construction.
JANKOWSKI Lyce, CREOPS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris 4, France
Private collection at wholesale price: From China to the United States, the coin collection
of Luo Zhenyu (1866-1940)
(Panel: “Cross-cultural issues and private collection”/Section 2:“Private collectors and
institutions: incorporating Chinese art in public collections”)
Luo Zhenyu, a prominent Chinese scholar, sold his collection of ancient coins in 1911 to Henri
Ramsden, a British dealer of Asian coins and curios based in Yokohama, Japan. Shortly after, it
was proposed as a whole to various European museums and finally integrated the American
Numismatic Society, in New York in 1916. This valuable collection, constituted during thirty
years, answered the taste of its owner for archaeology and epigraphy, but was also a financial
asset. By following the sale of a private collection of Chinese coins at the beginning of the
twentieth century, this paper aims to unveil, through the study of correspondence, invoices and
publications, the behaviours and motivations of a collector, a dealer and his clients. Indeed,
cultural interests were as present as lucrativ pursuits.
JANOUSCH Andreas, Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental (CEAO), Facultad de Filosofía y
95 Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Spain
A Tale of Two Temples: Religious Cults in the Sociotechnical System of SeventeenthCentury Southern Shanxi
The proposed presentation is part of an investigation project on the history of salt production at
Hedong salt lake in southern Shanxi province. It explores the ways in which technological
innovations, social change, and the rivalry between the principal urban centres in this area –
Yuncheng and Xiezhou cities – interacted with and were reflected in cultural and ritual practices
that developed in the two most important temples located around the lake: the Temple of the
Salt Lake God established in AD 777 in Yuncheng and the Temple of Guandi (Guan Yu) in
Xiezhou. During late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, local temples in the Hedong area
were hotly contested arenas. The first half of the seventeenth century were a period of
particularly intense and profound changes in the salt production methods during which the
imperial state, through its representatives and the members of local society – under the leadership
of the local gentry and resident salt merchants – negotiated their stakes in the production of
state-monopoly salt, in the control of technological innovation, of production methods, and of
local society. During this period, frequent restoration of the two temples resulted in the
reorganization of spatial arrangements and the introduction of new cults to production related
deities. In stele inscriptions that were placed around the temple, authors negotiated various
questions relating to the natural salt resources such as contesting theories about their origins,
questions about their technological exploitation as well as the organization of their administration
and historical precedence. Theatrical performances in the temple’s theatre pavilion explored a
mythological and religious dimension of salt production in dramatic genres. The presentation will
explore how in the seventeenth century distinct processes, such as the introduction of
technological innovation, the reorganisation of the workforce, the design of a new command
structure, the transferral of competences from state officials to local salt merchants, local rivalries
among others, were interrelated and affected each other and how they were perceived, negotiated
and finally represented in the two temples and their religious cults.
JENSEN Lionel M., Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, University of Notre
Dame, Indiana, USA
The Mistery of the Holy Man (shengren) in Zhu Xi (Panel: “Sages (Sheng) through the
Ages: Wisdom and the Sacred in Li Deyu, Shao Yong, Zhu Xi and Wang Fuzhi”)
Among the writings of educated elites and aspiring bureau-aristocrats of the Song period, the
figure of the holy man (shengren) is both salient and diversely understood. From its early
appearance in the post-Zhou (770-221 BCE) as a reference to lineage ancestors in sacrifice, the
96 term displays a considerable range of meanings from excellence to perfection to wisdom. Above
all, it was an ideal of public life, a state of mind visible as a state of being: a divine proportion of
philosophy and performance, honored as a goal of the cultivated man. By the twelfth century
many recognized shengren as a mystic wordless sage, whose excellence was known by his
charismatic effects. For Zhu Xi (1130-1200), a great many of these meanings, old and new,
obtained, which is why his conception of the holy man is particularly interesting. In his tireless
effort to explain the classical phenomenon of the holy man with the help of a newly developing
metaphysical language, Zhu reconceived sheng as a category of inspired, divine wisdom resident in
the human heart and subject to awakening by the sincere, reverent submission of the learner to
the genius zhuzai of his heart. By examining the concept of shengren in the context of Zhu’s
concept of mind xin and its workings fa, this paper will explore its meanings in the interchange of
text and thought to reveal the role of spirit summoning in the path to divine wisdom.
JI Zhe, Inalco, Paris
Chinese Buddhism in France: Religion, Immigration and Globalization (Panel “Chinese
Religions in France”)
Since the end of the 1980s, various types of Chinese Buddhist places of worship have been
established in France, as a result of both the increasing immigration from the Chinese world and
the expansion of transnational Buddhist organizations. This phenomenon raises questions not
only about the globalization of religion, but also about the socio-cultural effect of religion on
globalization.
JOURNEAU ALEXANDRE Véronique, Réseau Asie & Pacifique, Paris
Relation between text and music in ci “to the tune of Qingpingyue” under Song dynasty
The genre of sung poems (ci) « to the tune of … », appeared under the late Tang and was
particularly in vogue under Song dynasty (960-1279). The balance between text and music is
nearly perfect in it. Although poems have been written and passed down from generation to
generation through anthologies, of poems or selections by poet, the music of these tunes has
been lost, unless being passed down continuously from master to disciple, the drawback being,
sometimes, that it remains only as an instrumental play without the textual song. However corpus
of tablatures have been edited in manuals for the play of guqin (qin zither) and a first step consists
in matching tunes and sung poems according to the title of the tune, also mentioned as title of
97 the poem. The ability to decipher old tablatures is required to go further in depth. A second step
consists, for each selected tune, in checking the concordance between text and music from the
metric angle and in studying the variations between manuals during various periods. The third
step is the one in which is made, on a few tunes and ci (sung poems), the analysis of the relation
between the music of a given tune and the texts of poems composed to this tune and of the
schemes the poets used to achieve it. Here one has the possibility to detect, in the art of fitting in
lyrics with music, the emotional intelligence of various poets who composed to the same tuner,
so to revive poetic jousts as they were practiced in times past in China. Following some published
papers concerning the tunes « Changxiangsi », « Zhegutian », « Shuilongyin » and « Shuidiaogetou », the
aim of this contribution is to carry out these steps on the specific example of the tune
« Qingpingyue (Music of the pure peace) ». Feng Yansi (903-960), poet of the Five Dynasties,
appreciated much this theme on which no less than 177 poems have been composed under Song
Dynasty and, among them, six by Xin Qiji and ten by Zhang Yan. In fine, a book on the music of
sung poems, work in progress, would develop these approaches.
JUNTUNEN Riika-Leena, University of Oulu, Dep. Of History, Oulu, Finland
Borrowed Place, Missionary Station as a Local Innovation in the Early 20th Century
Hunan
Although originally a foreign endeavour, a missionary station was always borrowed and modified
for local purposes. The source of this paper is Finnish Missionary Society Archive and it
concentrates on the concept of borrowed place to analyse and compare the missionary station
and different phenomenon centred on it in the context of Chinese society and local culture. The
missionary station offered solutions on many overlapping problems, among them natural
disasters, lack of protective infrastructure, lack of opportunities, and political instability. All these
affected on how the stations were witnessed. The focus is on local agency on the everyday life
level. It was the Chinese members who assessed and identified their role as active partakers and
re-configured the missionary space according to their current needs, making it a social space with
an active community. They were the ones who modified the mission functions, kept what was
useful, advertised its possible benefits, and made sure the structures had a positive impact on
their surroundings and with it on their own life. Thus the station became much more than a
religious centre it was originally intended to be. It became a home for vagabonds, a source of
modernity for lower class scholars, and a place of some financial security, diplomacy, or physical
safety during the restless years. With these the missionary station showed as a sign of change and
something new to be borrowed, until it was time to solve “the foreign problem”.
98 JURGENS Valérie, SOAS/British Museum, UK
The Karlbeck Syndicate 1930-1934: Collecting and Scholarship on Chinese Art in Sweden
and Britain
The Karlbeck Syndicate (1930-1934) was a collector’s group that primarily focussed on collecting
and studying early Chinese art. This syndicate, named after Orvar Karlbeck (1879-1967), included
some of Europe’s most prominent private collectors and significant national institutions at that
time. This paper analyses original, hitherto unpublished, archival data provided by a set of
archives at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Sweden), the Victoria and Albert Museum
and the British Museum (Britain). The mechanics of this interesting collector’s group provides a
contextual understanding of how Chinese collections were formed in this defined period in
Western history. The aim of this study is to provide a historical analysis of the major players and
theoretical orientations that they depended on.
KALUZYNSKA Kaja, Jagiellonian University, Middle and Far Eastern Studies Institute,,
Krakow, Poland
Image of China and the Chinese as presented in Chilean electronic media
The paper is a part of the broader research project which aim is to investigate the perception of
China and the Chinese in Africa and Latin America. The aim of this paper is to present the
general image of China and the Chinese in Chilean electronic media. The Chinese presence in
Chile has become significant as early as in the 19th century. Chile was the first Latin American
country that established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1970, it is
also the first Latin America country that signed a free trade agreement with China in 2006. The
relations lasted both during Allende's government and Pinochet's regime periods and both Chile
and PRC has been acting on behalf of the partner on the international scene. The economical
expansion of China seems to be more and more noticeable in both Africa and Latin America.
However, it has been raising some concerns, related to possible exploitation of natural and
human resources, uneven trade conditions etc. Due to the Pew Research Center, 62% of Chileans
had favorable view of China - being one of the highest results in Latin America. The analysis
would show whether the general (positive/negative) media image of China and the Chinese has
been changing during the last 10 years and which social aspects appear to be most popular in
reference to China. The general image would be established on the basis of both quantitative and
qualitative analysis supported by QDA Data Miner and Wordstat software. Data being analyzed
99 consist of a sample (or rather, at the initial stage, a whole population) of China-related news and
articles published between 2001 and 2011 on websites of Chilean newspapers: El Mercurio, La
Segunda and La Tercera.
KAMO Tomoki, Keio University, Japan
Dancing with local people’s congresses: what are the roles of the Chinese people’s
political consultative conference?
(Panel: “Whither
Perspectives”)
the
Chinese
Political
Regime?
Historical
and
Contemporary
Since the beginning of the 1990s, local people’s congresses (LPC) have become increasingly
active as local legislative institution in China. Recent discussions show that LPCs have changed
from the rubber stamps to the iron stumps. However, another political participation scheme in
China’s authoritarian regime, the Chinese People’s political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)
has been understudied. This paper analyzes the proposals submitted to the Yangzhou Municipal
Committee of the CPPCC. It finds that the CPPCC has collaborated with delegates of the
Yangzhou Municipal People’s Congress (MPC). It particularly focuses on the case of revising an
economic development plan that the Yangzhou Municipal Party Committee drafted. It finds that
delegates of the Yangzhou MPC represented the interests of their constituencies based on their
geographically determined electoral areas while members of the CPPCC represented interest
groups formed based on local business communities. It argues that LPCs and local committees of
the CPPCC have become venues to present and coordinate various competing interests of the
local community.
KATZ Sophia, IKGF, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Wang Fuzhi on Sagely Knowledge and Fate/Destiny
This paper seeks to explore the connection between the notions of sheng (sageliness/holiness) and
ming (heavenly call/fate/destiny) in the writings of the late Ming - early Qing dynasty thinker,
Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692). Due to historical and ideological reasons, the majority of modern
scholars have been emphasizing the importance of the concept of qi (“material power”/ “vital
100 energy”) in Wang’s philosophy, often presenting him as “materialist” and “atheist”. Yet, a careful
reading of Wang’s writings reveals that his philosophical thought has a religious and theological
significance. This is especially manifest in Wang’s treatment of ming. For Wang Fuzhi, ming was
not just a natural law, as it is sometimes suggested by scholars. Ming was intimately connected to
the ruling agent, Heaven (tian). Hence, “[when one] speaks about ming (heavenly
call/fate/destiny), there necessarily should be Heaven which calls (or gives orders).” If so, then
what should be an attitude of the sage to the Heavenly call, fate and destiny? Should sagely
knowledge and understanding of the laws of nature lead one to follow Heavenly orders (shunming)
and accept one’s fate (shouming)? Or, is there a possibility for a sagely person to participate in
creating ming (zaoming)? Is fate personal and is sageliness a matter of inner self-cultivation
(neisheng)? Or is fate seen as collective and sageliness as necessarily connected to social and
political involvements? Answering these and other related questions will allow us to evaluate
different dimensions of the notion of sageliness in Wang Fuzhi’s writings and in Confucian
philosophy in general.
KAUN Matthias, East Asia Department , State Library Berlin, Germany
Find & Access: Looking for and into Chinese materials in Europe
(EASL panel: “Chinese Materials Libraries in Europe”)
During the last 20 years catalogues, full-text databases and electronic content in general have
undergone considerable changes. Since the first online systems were available that allowed writing
and searching in CJK script we today are confronted with an overwhelming amount of
information. There are the records of printed items in our libraries plus those coming from fulltext databases we have subscribed, and maybe also those from open access publications in
repositories or somewhere else in the web. What impact and influence does this have for libraries
on the one hand and for researchers on the other hand? What do we expect today when looking
for research material and what will be necessary for tomorrow in order to serve researchers in the
field of East Asian studies best. What has changed within the last two decades and what will be
necessary in the future? Will there be a change from browsing the internet to finding, and will
providing access be the main issue for us libraries? Looking into the services of different Chinese
libraries in Europe I will shortly present the current status of finding and accessing Chinese
materials in Europe but I will also map out what today’s and tomorrow’s demand might look like.
KAUZ Ralph, Universität Bonn Institut für Orient- und Asienwissenschaften, Abteilung für
Sinologie, Bonn, Germany
Some Considerations on Watermills in Tang China
Étienne Balázs discussed in his "Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der T'ang-Zeit (618–906) in a
rather short paragraph the proscription of watermills during the first half of the Tang dynasty. In
contrast to the mere two pages which he dedicated to the topic, he drew rather far-ranging
conclusions. He stressed the importance of watermills in economical and technical development
which could possibly lead (and in Europe indeed led) to an industrial revolution. In this context
he labeled the Tang society as an "anti-capitalist minded bureaucracy" (antikapitalistisch gesinnter
Beamtenstaat). If the Tang bureaucrats did indeed impede such a development in China, the fact
of these proscriptions deserves further researches. Though later scholars mentioned this fact
occasionally and emphasized also its possible implications, the proscriptions of watermills during
the Tang period were never basically reconsidered. More recent Chinese scholars rather
underlined the antagonisms between agriculture and exploitation of hydraulic power than the
possible social and economical development. Against this background, this paper tries to reexamine the relevant notes in the various Chinese texts and place them into the context of Tang
economy and society in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the proscriptions
and their consequences for Chinese social and economical development.
KERLAN Anne, Institut d’histoire du temps présent, CNRS, Paris
A cinematographic symphony: cultural enterprise and the Utopia of a New China
« We in the film industry have a mission to fulfil, that of propagating the virtues of our people
and of imparting knowledge to the public through the screen ». In the film Two Stars of the Milky
Way (Yin han shuang xing), this is how the goals of the young film company that produced the
movie were presented: the Lianhua company was—between 1930 and 1937—one of the most
important in China. Its founders, members of the Chinese bourgeoisie, branded it with specific
blend of nationalism and cultural conservatism, associated to a call for modernity. The Lianhua
was not just another cultural company: it became a playing field for a group who believed they
had something to contribute to the construction of a new China, to elaborate a political project.
This paper is based on my research on the Lianhua Film Company and my reflection on group
identities. It explores specificities of the company’s identity and the way it was communicated
though photos, newspapers and magazines’ articles, as well as films. As fictions, films offered an
idealized portrait of the Chinese society imagined by the company founders; they revealed how
the company members continuously defined their social role in a Chinese society subject to
turmoil and change. The paper will focus on three films: Two stars of the Milky Way (1931), was a
cinematographic translation of the founding statement of the company; it depicts the ideal
company Lianhua wanted to be. Lianhua’s Symphony (Lianhua jiaoxiang qu, 1936), composed of
eight shorts, was a patriotic call to resist against the Japanese enemy. The company’s identity was
102 both reasserted and put under question by the author of each of the eight shorts that compose it
in different styles. The latter film was produced in the final days of the company, just before the
Japanese invasion. However, in A sea of Talents (Yin hai feng guang) (1937), filmmaking had more
to do with entertainment than politics. Was this turn due to the change in the company’s
management? or a sign that the spirit of Lianhua had faded away? Films, confronted with written
sources, draw a portrait of the film company both as it wanted to be seen and as it was actually seen. In
doing so, the paper will illuminate the hopes, battles and disillusions of a world of professionals
who projected on the screen their vision of a stronger and unified Nation.
KHOLKINA Liliya, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of Asian and African
Studies, Moscow, Russia
Semantic Correlation between Monosyllabic and Disyllabic Adjectives and its Historical
Development (case study of JIAN ‘sharp’, ZHONG ‘heavy’ and CU ‘thick’)
In contemporary Chinese there are monosyllabic and disyllabic adjectives with close meaning,
that are often being used in similar contexts. The conditions of their usage can’t always be
brought down to the rhythmic considerations, saying that monosyllabic adjectives combine with
monosyllabic nouns and dissyllabic adjectives combine with disyllabic nouns (like in zhòng dàn –
chénzhòng de dànzi ‘a heavy burden’). There also is an evident difference in their meanings. The
traditional view on semantic relations between the monosyllabic and disyllabic adjectives is that
the later specify the meaning of the former. This seems to not always be the case: disyllabic
adjectives can develop metaphoric meanings that are not specific for any of their components
(e.g. jiānruì de dòuzhēng/pīpíng ‘sharp struggle/criticism’ meaning ‘intense’ – the meaning that
neither jiān nor ruì have) monosyllabic adjectives have the meanings which can’t be expressed by
any of the corresponding disyllables (e.g. ěrduo jiān ‘ears sharp’ meaning ‘good ear’ or jiān làzhú
‘sharp candles’, meaning ‘thin’ – these meanings can’t be expressed by jiānruì, jiānlì, jiānkè, jiā
nxíng etc.) Thus, there is a complicated correlation between the meaning of a disyllabic adjective
and the meaning of its forming elements. Sometimes it can be accounted for from the historical
point of view. For example, disyllables are not always the result of composition of two
monosyllables, but can also be the result of contraction of four-hieroglyphic combinations (e.g. c
ūlǔ‘rude’– cū bào lǔ mǎng ‘brutal + reckless’). We will trace back the development of disyllabic
adjectives for the three semantic fields (JIAN ‘sharp’, ZHONG ‘heavy’ and CU ‘thick’) to
describe their inner structure and reveal the mechanism of semantic shifts.
KLÖTER Henning, University of Mainz, Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and
103 Cultural Studies, Department of Chinese, Germersheim, Germany, & ZWARTJES Otto,
University of Amsterdam, Netherland
Contextualizing an unknown Chinese grammar of the seventeenth century: The
appendix of the anonymous "Vocabularium Hispanico-Sinense" (Bodleian Library, MS
Marsh 696)
It is generally acknowledged that the early history of Chinese language studies by Europeans is
closely associated with the Jesuit mission in China in the 17th century. At the same time when
Jesuits wrote grammars and dictionaries of Mandarin (guanhua) in China proper, missionaries of
different denominations, mostly Dominicans, documented the Southern Min vernacular spoken
by the Chinese settlers in the Philippines. Whereas most extant sources can unambiguously be
associated with one of the two traditions (Jesuits in China vs. Dominicans in the Philippines), few
sources can be linked to both. One such source is the appendix of the anonymous Vocabularium
Hispanico-Sinense kept in the Bodleian Library. The title of the appendix is Arte de la lengua
mandarina (in the catalogue of Golius’s collection: libellus Hispanicus de pronuntiationibus Charact.
Chinensium, hereafter: libellus). The Vocabularium Hispanico-Sinense, to which the libellus is appended,
was once owned by Jacob Golius (1596–1667), a famous Dutch orientalist and professor of
Arabic at Leiden University. It can be assumed that the manuscript was handed to Golius by the
Jesuit missionary Martino Martini (1614–1661). Placing the libellus in its historical contexts, we
will claim that, on the basis of textual and external historical evidence, the document may be
considered one of the earliest Mandarin grammars written by a Western missionary. We will
furthermore discuss the significance of the libellus in the history of Chinese missionary linguistics
and argue that it is the first known document of its kind that links Chinese missionary linguistics
in the Philippines with the work of the Jesuits in China proper.
KOH Khee Heong, Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore
Neo-Confucianism and the Practice of Kinship: A Case Study on Li Guangdi
Li Guangdi (1642-1718) was the most influential court minister and Neo-Confucian during the
Kangxi reign. He was directly involved in the compilation of a number of major compendiums
related to the ChengZhu tradition. Modern researches on Li have focused on issues revolving
around his personal integrity, his adherence to the ChengZhu tradition, and some aspects of his
philosophical thoughts. My research attempts to integrate two different academic trends. First,
the study of intellectual history challenges researchers to push beyond the discussion of
philosophical thoughts. Since Li and his kinsmen have also written substantially on the topic of
rituals, a comparative study of both Li’s take on Neo-Confucianism and ritualism will be more
fruitful. And to further situate this study in the actual historical context of the Li Clan is vital in
104 understanding the significance of those ideas. Inspired by the works of modern historicalanthropologists, I believe that the study of the Li clan is fundamental in our reconstructing of
that historical context. Being the most powerful lineage in the region from the Ming until present
day, the Li clan went through tides of changing fortunes. The early Qing is an important
rebuilding period for them, and Li’s negotiation of his Neo-Confucian ideas, his support of local
cults, and his take on ritual issues will influence and be influenced by their particular needs,
concerns, and choices.
KOORT Jekaterina, Tallinn University Estonian Institute of Humanities
Utopian communities: The case of the Daodejing and its Estonian translations
In the development of the cultural identity of a smaller nation, a noteworthy roll is played by
contact with a linguistic and cultural Other; which in some places is possible only through
translation, and requires that choices, agreements and certain internal changes be made by the
translator. Tensions, which inevitably appear during the course of identifying with the text being
translated, are more or less related to the given sociohistorical situation and create the
prerequisite for the generation of new meanings which may lead to the formation of new values
and attitudes, which in turn may either support or contradict the norms valid in the target culture.
When viewed in such a light, the Estonian translation tradition of the 20th century proved to be a
field of numerous opposing tendencies, in places cultural and political. In Lawrence Venuti’s
terms it could be called the anticipation of a utopian community instead of simply serving
domestic expectations (Venuti, 2000). In preparing Estonia’s first complete bibliography of
translated Chinese literature, I wished to test the above-described hypothesis using one Chinese
text as an example. The current paper focuses on the Daodejing and its various Estonian
translations. My objective is to analyse the three Estonian language versions of the Daodejing,
each of which was published during a different historical stage and under the conditions of a
different political situation – pre-war Republic of Estonia (Wesley, 1937), Soviet occupied
Estonia (Mäll, 1979) and the restored Republic of Estonia (Kaplinski, 2001) – and, by placing the
translation as well as the translator in their cultural discourses, to observe to what degree the
target text may have been affected by the social and political tendencies of the period. I plan to
focus, above all, on those chapters of the Daodejing relating to political order and the authority
of the state, and to examine how the three translators have intermediated into the Estonian
language such concepts as dao, shengren, wuwei etc. and the accompanying concept clusters.
Alongside other topics, the linguistic characteristics of the Daodejing, the translatability of the
text and the opportunity to talk about the numerous possible directions of its interpretation will
also be discussed.
105 KUAH-PEARCE Khun Eng, Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong
Chinese State and the Emerging Philanthropic Culture
After communism, collectivization for the communal good had meant that the individuals within
the community would be taken care by the state and its associated structures. In a way, this could
be construed of as a nation-wide public philanthropic movement implemented and supported by
the Chinese state. However, the 1978 reform and open door policy has resulted in a neo-liberal
market oriented economy and led to an emergence of a small group of wealthy business elites and
an expanding middle class. Associated with this is the rise of individualism and social inequalities.
The recent spades of protests by workers, villagers, students and patients are grievances pointing
towards unequal treatment of them by the local, regional and national government and their
failure to tackle the root problem of inequality in workplace, school and hospital. These protests
are directed at big corporations and wealthy individuals who made it good through the state
patronage system. To address this issue of inequality, one strategy by the state is to promote a
philanthropic culture and encourage private wealthy individuals and large corporations to engage
in philanthropy. This paper will explore how the Chinese State, through the Communist Youth
League (CYL) Central Committee and the China Youth Development Foundation, established
Project Hope and build Hope schools in rural China. Through this project, the Chinese State,
along with the policies and legislation, encourages and incorporates wealthy individuals and
corporations into these philanthropic activities. Finally, tt will also examine how these individual
philanthropists and corporations negotiate their roles in this newly emerged philanthropic
culture.
KUNG Wing Sze Kaby, SOAS, University of London, UK
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
A Feminist Critique of Li Bihua’s Literary Works and their Subsequent Adaptations
(Panel: “Changing Representations of Hong Kongness in Literature and Film since the
1950s”)
The Hong Kong film industry has always had a close bond with local popular culture, in
particular with popular fiction during the 1980s and 1990s. Therefore, it is worthwhile
investigating Hong Kong cinema in order to examine social change over time. Since Li Bihua has
been regarded as an icon of contemporary Hong Kong popular literature and has played a crucial
role in the Hong Kong film industry (many of her novels have been made into film, and a
number of the films she scripted have achieved blockbuster status), it is not unexpected that her
works have been well accepted by the public and have attracted famous Hong Kong New Wave
cinema directors such as Tsui Hark, Stanley Kwan and Clara Law. A comparative study of Li’s
literary creations and the film adaptations made from them by Hong Kong New Wave directors
106 is crucial as it shows the significance of the impact of popular literature on Hong Kong films. In
addition, seeing that popular culture is an effective channel for spreading feminist thinking,
investigating the image of women in Hong Kong cinema would be a good starting point to
understanding the development of feminist critical thinking in Hong Kong. Even though Li
Bihua does not claim herself to be a feminist, looking from both feminist and postfeminist
perspectives, most of her novels and film scripts do connote feminist and postfeminist
ideologies. Hence, this paper employs feminist approaches to examine the different portrayals of
the female protagonists in the original literary works and then in the different directors’
subsequent film adaptations. The texts and the films that are covered are Rouge (Yanzikou), Green
Snake (Qing She), The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (Pan Jinlian zhi qianshi jiansheng), Temptation of
a Monk (You Seng), A Terracotta Warrior (Qin Yong) and Kawashima Yoshiko (Chuan Dao Fong zi).
A close examination of Li Bihua’s works and their film adaptations will provide significant
indicators of the social status of women in both traditional Chinese and Hong Kong society.
KUNZE Rui, Institute of Chinese Studies, Department of Middle Eastern & Far Eastern
Languages & Cultures, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Down with the Commercial Idol? The Controversies over Han Han's Authorship and His
"Three Texts"
Around Christmas 2011, the three blog posts on revolution, democracy, and freedom by Han
Han (b.1982), a writer, rally driver, and the most popular blogger in China, stirred much
controversy. Before the debate could fully unfold itself, however, another blogger Mai Tian
contended that Han’s reputation as a writer with strong citizen consciousness is a brand image
promoted by his team consisting of his father, his manager, and a group of ghost writers. The
controversy escalated when Fang Zhouzi, a popular science writer and anti-fraud crusader, joined
in on the side of Mai Tian while Han defended his authorship. Han stopped responding online
early this February, but a large amount of contribution concerning this controversy is still
pouring online everyday. A closer look at the two controversies over Han Han and his texts
shows that the second one, involving much wider audience, provides a lively example to the more
or less theoretical debate in the first controversy. Thus we can regard the two controversies as
one case for study. In this case, what is the most noteworthy is how the idea of “freedom,” in
relation to “democracy,” “revolution,” and not the least, “commercialism,” is defined. Pitting
commercialism, especially Han’s commercial success, against his political pursuit of developing
citizen consciousness and freedom, the contenders justify their own criticism by claiming their
right of de-enchanting Han the commercial idol: their freedom of questioning Han’s authorship
and his complicity with the regime, their “scientific” methods of interrogation as opposed to the
mobbing of Han’s fans, etc. This case certainly reveals the interest of Chinese netizens in
discussing the topics of freedom and democracy (interestingly, the censorship of the government
plays the “bad guy” in the arguments of all sides); but more important, it presents a highly
107 complex picture of how certain Maoist “revolutionary” legacy works simultaneously with and
against commercialism in defining “freedom” in Chinese Internet culture. Lastly, the different
functions of Internet genres of forum, blog, and microblog shall be examined in this case in
particular, and in conveying information and opinions on the Chinese Internet in general.
KURZ Johannes, Universiti Brunei Darussalam
The Rebellion of Zhang Yuxian, 942-943
The present paper deals with a minor event in the history of the Ten States period, the rebellion
of Zhang Yuxian in Guangdong and Jiangxi that involved two of the southern empires, namely
the Southern Han (917-971) and the Southern Tang (937-976). At the core of the paper is a close
reading of the rebellion including an analysis of the appearance of a ‘spirit’ that announced Zhang
Yuxian to be an arhat, giving the rebellion an ad hoc millenarian outlook. I will also highlight the
responses to the rebellion by both the Southern Han and the Southern Tang courts, and
scrutinize the reasons for the ultimate failure of the rebellion. Apart from the rebellion as a
historical event that is revealing the mentalities of all players involved, a further point this paper
wants to make is the flexibility of the historical sources in the depiction of the event as expressed
in the attitude of individual authors ranging from Long Gun to some of the major Song
historians such as Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) and Sima Guang (1019-1086) in the 11th century as
well Ma Ling and Lu You (1125-1209) in the 12th century.
KUZNETSOVA Julia, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, Russia
Gao Xingjian's drama “Collection of Mountains and Seas” in the context of his
“omnipotent” theatre
In our research we analyse how Gao Xingjian's concept of “omnipotent” theatre, the main idea
of which lies in the notion that drama should be reverted to its traditional artistic forms, defines
to a great extent the contents of some of his plays. The power of a mythological carnival space
and action, which restores theatre in its right to be the only place where gods and deities can be
presented to spectators in their archetypical images, seems to have possessed Gao's conscience
for a long time. His drama “Collection of the Mountains and Seas” based on the original canon is
a vivid example of how the theatrical form of a modern mystery play mingled with variety show
performances immanent to Gao's theatre system found for itself a harmonious expression in
mythological contents. A grand narrative of gods' deeds reconstructed in the play draws its
108 vitality from the “non-official” “Shanhaijing”. It is worth noting that Gao does not address the
Confucian “Classic of history” or other Confucian-related canons in search of inspiration,
because they are “damaged” by rational interpretations that have destructive influence on the
ancient myths primarily inscribed in them. Thus only revived myths of the “Shanhaijing” can
reflect the animated atmosphere Gao intends to create for the show. Elements of acrobatics and
wrestling, shadow plays and puppetry — to name only few — are implied to turn the drama into
“the hustle and bustle of a temple fair performance”.This carnival spirit is also embodied in the
structural level and the characters' depiction. In regard to time and space we have actions that
take place in the heavenly castles situated in the four sides of the world and on earth in those faraway regions indicated in the “Collection”, we have a grand span of time — from Nüwa creating
mankind to Yu the Great establishing the Xia Dynasty. A quick change of the compressed scenes
introduced by the enigmatic storyteller gives us somewhat of a chaotic impression and can be
defined as a carnival chronotope, whose implementation helps Gao keep the audience amused.
Besides the zoo-anthropomorphic gods and deities who, unlike wise rulers in the “Classic of
History”, first turn the world upside down and then try to find a way out of a predicament, not
only reveal a tragicomedic effect, but also add much to the visual effect of the play.
KUZNETSOVA-FETISOVA Marina, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of
Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Chronology of The Great City Shang: archaeology, epigraphy and written sources
The later Shang (XIV-XI cc. BC) capital which was denoted as “The Great City of Shang” in the
oracle bone inscriptions was situated near the modern municipality of Anyang in the Henan
Province, China. Being the unique example of a second millennia BC settlement, the existence
thereof is attested by all three major categories of our sources for early Chinese history –
epigraphics (found in-situ), archaeological data and traditional written accounts, the “Great City
of Shang” occupies an outstanding place in history and archaeology of the Bronze Age China. In
particular, its chronology plays a key role in the reconstruction of ancient Chinese history and
chronology of Central China archeological cultures. This paper, first of all, provides a critical
reassessment of written accounts about the later Shang capital, covering the range of traditional
texts from the Shangshu to the Shiji. I explore the ways in which the dates for the Shang period
were calculated from these accounts. Secondly, I supply a short characteristic of the oracle bone
inscriptions, their comparative periodization, and the ways to connect it to absolute dates. Finally,
a brief report about the present conditions of archaeological exploration of the area is provided.
The finds include two sites with defensive structures, royal cemetery, many settlements, and
graveyards. I focus on the methods of comparative and absolute chronology of archaeological
remains which are in tight connection with the data extracted from written sources and oracle
bones inscriptions.
109 L’HARIDON Béatrice, Université Paris Diderot, France
Wang Mang: How to Became an Emperor
Imperial China”)
The figure of the Duke of Zhou, minister and regent, was rediscovered and reinvented, through
the study of Classics, under the Han dynasty. He combines to the extreme in his person the roles
of ruler and minister, even though he finally restored the limit by withdrawing and returning
power to his sovereign. It is precisely by relying on this “mythical” figure that Wang Mang (ca 45
BC. BC-AD 23), the great and virtuous minister of the late Former Han, crosses the limit and,
after having climbed the ladder of executive power, becomes sovereign, the first since Yu the
Great, to gain power neither through inheritance nor by a military conquest. Even though the
historical figure of Wang Mang has been almost unanimously condemned in Chinese
historiography, we will still study in detail the circumstances of his seizure of power since, far
from suddenly arrogating the imperial title, he has built at every stage of his career paths of
legitimacy, so that he appears to have established a continuum between the role of the minister
and that of the sovereign.
LABITZKY-WAGNER Anne, University of Heidelberg, Germany
WorldCat, HEIDI & Co.: observations on their basic principles and differences
Why do we find multiple entries in WorldCat for the same book? Why can some books in SWB’s
PICA system be found only via their title? Where do these inconsistencies and limitations stem
from? Some of these peculiarities are due to their approach as “holdings information”. Other
limitations have been handed down from former technological problems (disk space, no original
scripts …) but mostly from cataloguing rules. Where do WorldCat, PICA, HEIDI, SUDOC
differ? Which are the foundations they are based on? What else do catalogues offer? I’d like to
attempt a short comparison of formats, cataloguing rules, translation rules, authority approach.
110 LAI Herby, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, UK
The sceptical elite: Chinese students in Japan
I research on the identities of Chinese students in elite universities in Japan, who are both
migrants from China and a group of potential returnees to China with good overseas
qualifications and work experience. Initial analysis of interview data reveals that, while their selfreported identification as Chinese is clear and unambiguous, there is a tendency for their Chinese
identities to be distinct from what some nationalistic discourses in China have tried to formulate,
namely an individual with a strong affiliation for the family state, and would see returning to
China to contribute to the development of the motherland as their primary aims for an elite
overseas education. In general they are individualistic and pragmatic in their life choices after
graduation; some informants demonstrate a tendency of refusing to interpret negative
experiences in China as Japanese people’s general hatred of China; some are explicitly reluctant to
discuss history and other controversial issues with Japanese people; and many of them are
sceptical of the Chinese media’s portrayal of Japan. Meanwhile, their identities as Chinese are
shaped by their perceptions and impressions of Japan. Despite the economic development and
material prosperity of urban China, Japan as the model of modernity in Asia is still very salient in
the identification processes of my informants. Their admiration for the ‘human qualities’ of
Japanese people also ties in with a discourse in China that one aspect of being a ‘big nation’
(daguo) is to have citizens who behave in a ‘civilised’ manner.
LAI Hongyi, associate Professor and PhD programme director, School of Contemporary
Chinese Studies (SCCS), University of Nottingham, UK.
A Rising China in Global and Domestic Governance: An Overview
(Panel: “A Rising China in Global and Domestic Governance: An Overview”)
The impact of a rising China on global governance has not been systemically and rigorously
examined. In particular, few research approaches the issue by examining the implications of
China’s domestic governance for global governance and for China’s sustainable rise. Against this
backdrop our project will investigate three sets of questions from 1979 to the present, with a
focus on the post-2001 period: 1) How has political and economic governance in China been
transformed? 2) How has China’s role in global governance evolved? 3) How has global
governance and China’s domestic governance affected each other? Specifically, how does
domestic governance shape the nature and sustainability of China’s rise, its foreign policy, and its
role in global governance? How does global governance in turn shape China’s domestic
111 governance? In this paper the rationale and the overall analytical framework for our project will
be examined, methods and data sources will be explained, and tentative analyses will be
presented. In short, in gauging China’s influence on global governance, we will not only examine
selected key aspects of China’s domestic political and economic governance (A) and of China’s
role in global political and economic governance (B), but also analyse the interaction between the
two sets of issues (A and B). A compiled dataset will enable us to closely analyse these issues.
LAMARRE Christine, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales / Centre de
Recherches sur les Langues d’Asie Orientale, Paris
Rubbing salt into the wound: when wǎ ng 'towards' means 'into'
In a motion event, Chinese can encode the path of motion either before the verb, in a
Prepositional Phrase (hereafter PP) -- or after the verb, in a directional, or a goal phrase such as
[–dao + locative noun]. We treat here cases where the preposition wǎng cannot be translated by
‘towards’, and discuss pairs which would have a similar translation in French or English, such as
wǎnghuí zǒu and zǒuhuiqu ‘walk back’, wǎngqǐ zhàn and zhànqilai ‘stand up’ (northern usage),
wǎnglǐ sāi and sāijinqu ‘insert into’, or wǎng zhuōzishang gē and gēdao zhuōzishang ‘put onto
the table’. The most obvious motivation for the choice of one or the other type is aspectual: only
the wǎng PP allows a wide range of aspectual marking, including imperfective aspect markers
such as suffix –zhe or the progressive adverb –zài, and verb reduplication, whereas a postverbal
locative phrase will have a bounding effect on the clause. However, some sentences may hardly
be accounted by this explanation, and we identify a secondary kind of motivation: the use of a wǎ
ng-X phrase in order to emphasize agent control and a deliberate, intentional action. This can be
illustrated by idioms such as bié wǎng shāngkǒushang sǎ yán ‘don’t rub salt into the wound’: to
put the goal phrase ‘into the wound’ back to its logical place – after the verb – would be
grammatically correct but semantically infelicitous. A corpus investigation shows for these
sentences a high number of hortative or prohibitive sentences, and concerning adverb
collocation, we observe adverbs such as piānpiān ‘deliberately’ or shǐjìnr ‘do one’s utmost to’
which emphasize a willful action contrary to objective conditions or requirements, or fēiděi ‘have
to, have got to’. We also discuss a parallel pattern where preposition wǎng combines with a
predicate, as in wǎng sǐlǐ dǎ ‘beat to death’, a mirror image of Verb-Result compounds such as dǎ
sǐ ‘beat to death’. We conclude on the link between volition and preverbal position for locative
goal phrases, and discuss the opinion stated by Zhang Guoxian (2006) that sentences with
postverbal locative phrases are typically non-volitional.
112 LANSELLE Rainier, Université Denis Diderot, Department of East Asian Studies; Research
Center on East Asian Civilisations (CRCAO), Paris
Dying Together — The Exemplarity of Suicide in Pre-Modern Chinese Fiction
Tradition”)
Suicide appears in its very definition to be the most solitary of deaths, so it might seem
paradoxical to deem it a mutual act. And this all the more so since my contribution does not
particularly consider the kind of collective deaths that are categorized under the designation ‘mass
suicides’. My point of view is that suicide, a fundamentally individual act per se, has a disturbing
capacity to spread, to emulate, to inspire imitators, in other words it has a fearsome tendency to
aggregate people. This is quite obvious, as my survey will try and demonstrate, in the abundant
literature of fiction in pre-modern China, either in classical or vernacular languages, where one of
the most commonly expressed topics, besides its horrifying and violent aspects, is the literally
haunting nature of this kind of death. It is a constant assumption that people who committed
suicide tend to transform into ghosts particularly difficult to get rid of, and who are constantly
tempting new candidates. In these numerous and psychologically accurate depictions, Chinese
fiction of the classical era make an invaluable contribution to the semiotics of suicide in general,
expressing some unvarying features that are still true, if studied under a psychopathological light,
in different cultural or epochal environments, beginning with contemporary China, where the
spreading of suicide among specific populations is a nation-wide concern. To commit suicide is
always, in a way, ‘to die together’, or with others. In taking this approach, my paper thus aims at
showing that suicide is a valuable means, if a tragic one, to understand the mechanisms of
identification that lie at the core of any collective paradigm. It will address this important issue
under this negative light: how NOT to be part of the group picture!
LAUREILLARD Marie, University « Lumière / Lyon 2 », Lyon, France
Lu Xun, an eclectic art collector
(Panel: “Cross-cultural issues and private collection”/Section 1:“Collectors at home: crosscultural inspirations”)
Lu Xun was a writer very sensitive to visual imagery. He was an art collector, amassing such items
as old Chinese illustrated books, classical paintings, and rubbings. But, as Lynn Pan showed, he
also sought out models of new forms of Chinese expression through an international array of
113 images (Japanese, English, German, Russian…). The pictures he hung on the walls of his home
in Shanghai showed woodcuts by Käthe Kollwitz, Lyonel Feininger, Augustin Becher, whilst he
especially liked Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings. Through a precise inventory of the works he
collected, as well as a close reading of his texts about art, we would like to recreate his visual
environment and taste, as well as the crucial role he played in the development of the visual arts,
especially in the art of printing, in the first half of the twentieth century. We will to try to show a
less famous aspect of the personality of this writer, which deeply influenced his literary creation
and his contemporaries and contributed to create a new artistic syncretic taste.
LAVAGNINO Alessandra, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
The revival of studies on Wenxin diaolong after the Cultural Revolution
(Panel: “Uncarving the Dragon: Retrospective and Prospective Views on Wenxin
diaolong”)
My contribution will look back to the turning point at the end of the 70's when, in mainland
China, studies on Wenxin diaolong started to be published or re-published. I was in Shanghai in
those years (1977-79) and I had the good fortune to know personally some of the heroic scholars
whose work was fundamental to the revival of the research on Wenxin diaolong. Wang Yuanhua,
Yang Mingzhao, Lin Qitan where among them. They had the courage and generosity to share
their profound knowledge and experience with young scholars, at a time when the study of, and
research in Classical Chinese were still a sensitive matter. They promoted the publication of
essays, critical editions and modern translations of the text. The paper will therefore focus on an
account of this period and on a description of the most significant texts published in those years.
Retracing this path could, at the present moment, be helpful to a deeper understanding of the
revival of research on Wenxin diaolong, of the birth of the Wenxin diaolong xiehui (1983) and of the
development of Dragonology in and outside China.
LE MENTEC Katiana, Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (CNRS, UMR
7180), MAE, Université de Paris Ouest, France
Yunyang County after the Three Gorges Dam completion: The official creation of a
modern county linked to its past and tradition.
Yunyang is a county bearing the brunt of the economical, territorial, social and environmental
114 disruptions after the rise of water in the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir. The county seat, located
on the bordering coast of the Yangtse River, had to be moved in its entirety thirty kilometers
upstream. Fieldworks conducted between 2004-2011 allow me to follow the development of the
county seat after its delocalization. In this mountainous and farming area, the new town is
presented by officials as a modern Chinese city; “green”, equipped with comfortable apartments,
supermarkets and wide streets. The local authorities do not, however, put aside the past and the
sites that have been submerged. They fully incorporated them in the idea of a modern county.
Through local policies and discourses, they establish a seemingly harmonic present and future
integrating the tradition and the memories of the local world before the Three Gorges dam. This
paper will show examples of the processes that present the Dam, as providing the people with
not only modernization but also with an opportunity to renew with the tradition and to remain,
even to a greater extent than before, linked to their past. First, two local government discourses
will be considered. One, developed since 1992, is presenting the county seat delocalization as a
“natural return” to the original location of the county site, a thousand years ago. A more recent
one, developed by the County governor in 2003, incorporates the current Three Gorges Dam
forced migration in a broader “regional tradition” based on “recurring migrations”. Second, the
paper will be present two local government actions aiming to show to the people of Yunyang
that they haven’t actually lost the submerged sites. The authorities are trying to “integrate” the
old places in the new county seat. For example, toponyms of the old county seat and its
environment have been included in the new town. Also, a park has been created in the new
county seat. It includes the Yunyang heritage that have been “protected by delocalization”
through the national Three Gorges Dam Heritage preservation’ project. According to the local
official discourse, Yunyang people can still reach the submerged places, and the past experienced
memories can still be access through this new park. In conclusion, the paper will give a glimpse
on the reactions of Yunyang county seat residents to theses official discourses and actions, that
have been so far observed.
LEANZA Beatrice, independent scholar and curator, Beijing, China
Secret Nature: The situational life of ‘things’ in Contemporary Chinese Art
(Panel: “Re-thinking Relationality in Chinese Modern Art Paradigm shifts and critical
negotiations of relational imaging in Chinese art from the 18 th century until today”)
Looking at a selected group of works by contemporary Chinese artists from the last decade, this
paper takes a specific interest in the animate nature of material objects and the role things play in
the workings of ‘imagining’, ‘making’ and ‘sensing’ the real world. ‘Things’ are here intended as
mediating devices that exist in a “particular subject-object relation” (Bill Brown, 2001), where
images and objects perform across both physical and psychic registers of perception as coded
events by crafting enigmatic encounters beyond the realm of their immediate presence. What
115 comparable aesthetic operations resonate, for example, in Wang Jianwei’s appropriations of
1970s households furniture, in Liang Shuo’s wunderkammers of plastic ephemera from the 2000s
or across the textured surfaces of Liang Yuanwei’s floral canvasses? What experiential parameters
are similarly implicated in Liu Jianhua’s and Ai Weiwei’s sculptural remakes of ancient ceramic
vessels or Yang Xinguang’s miniature replicas of natural landscapes? By exploring the function of
‘mediation as connective thinking’, one that was central to the understanding of literati imagemaking and the appreciation of decorative objects in early modern China, the paper examines
anew the critical implications of traditional technologies of viewing and crafting within
contemporary iconic circuits. It calls upon the relational quality of works which function as
material thought-forms by ‘taking place’ in a performative game of associations specific to
historically transforming contexts, across new forms of material encounter and social networks.
Traditional decorative objects, as historian Jonathan Hay defines them (Sensuous Surfaces, 2011),
are situational objects enlivened by an in-built double-sidedness which operates in-between their
use-value and its metaphorical-affective potential. Objects were than as they are today implicated
in the activation of other immaterial orders and therefore the production of knowing subjects.
Works by younger and more established artists will be discussed by focusing on the treatment of
materials, forms, symbols and crafting techniques to encourage an aesthetic reading that is less
concerned with the visual power of representation than the experiential complexity of materiality. The
paper shall trace a narrative through works that offer themselves to such temporally confined,
momentous revelation as enchanted ‘things’: perceptual relations between subjects and objects
that are animated by a politics of looking that is whole with one of sensing and making.
LEBRANCHU Marc, EPHE, Paris
Reception of Daoism in Europe: phases, problems and questions (Panel: “Daoism”)
This paper focuses on one of the fast-growing new directions of Daoist studies: the growth of a
Western Daoism, both among Chinese migrants and among Westerners attracted to and engaging
with various aspects of Daoism (philosophy, arts, body cultivation, ritual). It argues that the
reception of Daoism in Europe evolved along three major phases, all of which involved a specific
narrowing of this religion’s complexity. As a result, Daoism was instrumentalized in intellectual
and public discourse in Europe in three contexts: in the debates on Christianity vs. secularism; in
the building of the colonial orientalist and positivist mode of knowledge; and last but not least, in
the rise of new age practices of personal development. The paper will end with opening
comparative perspectives, with both the North American experience of accommodating Daoism,
and with the Western reception of other religions.
116 LEE Cheuk Yin, National University of Singapore
Dream and Reality: Zhang Dai's (1597-1680) Reminiscences of the Past
Chinese Culture”)
Zhang Dai, a native of Shanyin (modern Shaoxing), Zhejiang province, came from a family
famous for notoriously extravagant and inclining to all sorts of sensual pursuits in late Ming.
However, with the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, when Zhang was 48 years old, his works
became an important exist in expressing his emotions towards his previous lifestyle and the
defunct Ming regime. The paper examines Zhang Dai's reminiscences of the past and his
dilemma between dream and reality.
LEE Gregory, Institut des Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, University “Jean Moulin”,
Lyon, France
How we imagine China, how we imagine ourselves
(Panel: “Modern China and the Modalities of the imposition of Western epistemologies”)
The epistemological interest developed in this paper is not simply whether the “field” of Sinology
should be interrogated; that is a given of this EACS gathering. My question is rather how we
perceive and represent or misrepresent this part of the world called increasingly, and whether the
continued existence of the field is defendable. The 1960s saw the European reorganisation of the
study of China and Japan. It was the era of the Cold War; a part of the history of the modern
epistemology of what we all do. But the existence of “Asian studies” or in a more limited way
“China Studies,” still does not answer the question: What is Asia (and more worryingly), What is
China – apart from the spaces that we have named and located on the map – and what/who is an
Asianist? Sinology has modernized itself, but do its practitioners remain sinologists, albeit of a
“modernized” sinology? Collectively we may constitute a group of scholars who work
sinologically or disciplinarily ON an object we call China and sometimes Greater China – but
again where are its boundaries? Most if not all of us are disciplinary specialists of one area or
linguistic space; although in Chinese studies that is an increasingly unstable assumption. What we
call China or Greater China, is still being invented. But should it continue to be invented from
the outside, to be reconstituted from some mythical “traditional” past in a way similar to the
“Western” self-invented and self-imagined nation states of the past two hundred years. The
ultimate question is whether we (including Chinese scholars, for the Orientalist discourse has also
formed, and been internalized by, our Chinese colleagues) are content and correct to continue
dealing with China as an isolated scientific object, an object of fascination, an object of desire, or
117 whether rather we should not be working in a more self-consciously comparative, global and
transcultural manner, so that China ceases to be our object and becomes part of a “normal”
world.
LEE Mei-Yen, Department of Chinese Language and Literature at National Pingtung University
of Education, Taiwan, Republic of China
Email: [email protected] ；[email protected]
The Beauty of Chinese Lute Music & the Aesthetics of Taoist Philosophy
The aim of the paper is to discuss the relationship between the beauty of Chinese lute (guqin, qin
zither) music and the aesthetics of Taoist philosophy. First, I introduce the knowledge
concerning the Chinese lute music, especially in regard to the beauty of Chinese lute music. Then
I indicate that the essence of the Chinese lute music is based on Taoist philosophy, an important
consideration in the attempt to understand Chinese lute music. I also explore the different
characteristics between Chinese lute music and Western music. Second, I discuss the key
aesthetic points of Taoist philosophy which influenced ancient Chinese lute music. Then I follow
the enlightenment of Gadamer’s hermeneutics concerning the concepts underlying the texts in
translation to discuss Robert Hans van Gulik’s translation & interpretation in regard to the
beauty of Chinese lute music. I will make comments on his interpretation about the beauty of
Chinese lute music and indicate that the beauty of Chinese lute music based on Taoist philosophy
is difficult to translate into English so that Westerners can clearly understand the insights. Finally,
the findings of the study will reveal the different approaches of the ideology of Chinese lute
music and Taoist philosophy, as well as how Chinese lute music was influenced by the aesthetics
of Taoist philosophy in developing its musical characteristics and styles. In addition, by
examining the introspection of Van Gulik’s discussion on the beauty of lute music, we may learn
about the possibilities and limitations of spreading Chinese traditional texts on the lute music to
Western world.
LEE Sukhee, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Negotiation Redefined: The State and Elites in Yuan Dynasty Qingyuan (Ningbo)
(Panel: “Evolution or Rupture? New Perspectives on Chinese Society under Mongol Rule”)
Recent Western scholarship on the Yuan dynasty tends to view its impact on the history of south
China as evolutionary: the period is understood to have seen a further development of social
118 transformations that had been germinated during the Southern Song. What, then, was new and
unique in Yuan dynasty south China? Taking Qingyuan Route, modern Ningbo municipality, as
its case study, my paper examines the ways in which Mongol rule influenced local society in the
South. First, it is argued that new institutions of the Yuan such as the Seat Transport Tribute
system (haiyun) brought about a significant change in the composition of local elites and their
nature. It is now a conventional wisdom that with the breakdown of the examinations the vast
majority of the elite became more and more separated from officialdom. The forced
estrangement of elites from the state, however, increased the value of their connectedness to the
state as it became a rare commodity. The established thesis of “the separation of elite from state”
needs to be re-evaluated from this dual angle. Although the financial capacity of the local state
became more limited than before, the initiatives of local officials came to be highlighted more
than ever. Through the analysis of the records of local construction projects and the new genre
of qusibei (Stele [Erected] in Appreciation for Departing Officials), my paper argues that local
people chose to rely on the recognition of local officials for the maintenance and promotion of
their social status.
LEE Ting-mien, University of Leuven, Belgium
Mohism in the Han: Evidence And Methodology
(Panel: “Many Mozi’s for different times”)
With regard to the status of Mohism in the Han, the traditional view holds that it disappeared:
the evidence is mainly the perfunctory biography of Mozi in the Shiji and the absence of Han
commentaries on the Mozi. Some scholars have challenged this view: they argue that much praise
of Mozi suggests his importance in the Han, that the frequent conflation of Ru儒 and Mo
indicates Mohism’s comparable position to Ru, and that the Mohist traces in Han thought
confirm its transmission. Nevertheless, the validity and relevancy of the new evidence seem
debatable. First, since praise or descriptions of Mozi can be common lore, they might not always
reflect individual opinions. In addition, many statements believed to be about Mohism are in
effect about “Ru Mo,” which might not always exactly refer to a combination of Ru and Mo.
Finally, some identified “Mohist elements” were probably common lore in the late Zhou dynasty.
To refine the current approach, this paper proposes four methodological suggestions: (1) to
temporarily exclude the statements about Mozi’s life or character from consideration; (2) to
examine the semantics and usage of “Ru Mo;” (3) to investigate which Han thinkers are
associated with Mo or “Ru Mo” by Han accounts; (4) to discover precisely which Mohist
elements are affiliated with Mo or “Ru Mo” by Han scholars. These suggestions when taken
together can exclude some seemingly inconsistent evidence, and at the same time increase the
cohesion of the remaining evidence. Suspending the inconsistent evidence from consideration,
we can avoid struggling with inconsistency such as the tension between Mozi’s perfunctory
119 biography and his well-established reputation. The last three tasks do not only attempt to
strengthen the evidence but also to highlight how the various types of evidence support each
other, and provide more details about the development and transmission of Mohism in the Han.
LEFEBVRE Eric, Museum of Asian Arts of Paris, Cernuschi, CREOPS, University of ParisSorbonne, Paris 4, France
Collection as an embassy: introducing Chinese contemporary art in post-war France
(1945-1960)
Guo Youshou (1900-1978), while studying literature at the Sorbonne, became the companion of
many Chinese artists in Paris during the interwar period. Back in China, he made his career in the
Ministry of Education, but continued to develop ties with the art community and builded up a
collection. After the war, he organized with the latter a series of exhibitions which toured
Europe. This artistic embassy had a political meaning. Instead of the relics of an imperial past,
the new China, reintegrated in the global world, was introducing a creative generation of artists
trained in China, Japan and Europe. In the 1950s, Guo Youshou extended his action by
protecting Chinese artists in Paris. By donating a large part of his collection to the Cernuschi
Museum in 1953, Guo Youshou greatly contributed to the knowledge of contemporary Chinese
art. Featuring a collection of contemporary art as an embassy had been a notable turning point in
the history of collections of Chinese art in the West.
LEIGHTON Christopher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge MA, USA
Poison and Patriotism: Chinese Capitalists in the Resist America Aid Korea Campaign
In 1950 the People’s Republic of China (PRC) sent “volunteer” soldiers to cross the Yalu and
fight its first foreign war in the Korean peninsula. Supporting so ambitious an undertaking just a
year after its own founding presented the fledgling PRC with significant challenges: how could
resources and people be mobilized to ensure its success? This paper examines sources including
contemporary internal circulation intelligence reports (neibu cankao), periodicals, and visual art to
assess the contributions of Chinese businessmen to the Resist America Aid Korea campaign. It
shows how the campaign closely linked home front to battlefront and argues that the campaign
120 provided opportunities for both the government and Chinese capitalists, who entered into a new
phase of a complicated and unequal relationship. The government used the war—and Chinese
capitalists—to extract revenue, marshal support, and underscore its own legitimacy. Chinese
businessmen, in turn, handed over their cash in formal and public ceremonies that affirmed their
patriotism and place in a socialist China as part of a great collective effort. This was clearly an
exchange, often complete with a receipt. Of course it was neither free nor equal, and wellpublicized cases of traitorous businessmen proved the point. Examining this case contributes to
existing scholarship by expanding our understanding the linkages between foreign policy, fiscal
imperatives, and the social history of the early PRC. Attention to this precedent reconsiders the
relationship between capital and politics at least at the elite level, and shows how private business
might make common cause with China’s communist rulers by buying a stake in their nationalist
enterprise.
LEONESI Barbara, Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Orientalistica, Italy
The New Experience of the Translated Text: Goldoni in Chinese
(Panel: “The Experience of the Translated Text”)
This paper is based on the concept developed by Antoine Berman, who positively approached
the translation as a way of exploring and interpreting the original text that can be put together
with the critical essays and the commentary notes (1986). In this perspective, any translated text
can cast new glance at the original and suggest new interpretations. Starting from these basis, this
paper aims to analyze the translation and reception of Carlo Goldoni’s plays in the PRC.
Goldoni’s plays have been translated in Chinese already in the 30’s – 40’s, but we have to wait
until the 50s to watch them on stage. Forgotten during the Cultural Revolution, the interest for
Goldoni and Commedia dell’arte rose again immediately in the beginning of the 80’s. This paper
will focus on Goldoni translations and performances of the 50’s and 80’s, sketching out the
different reception of the Italian author in these two periods: in the 50’s, the translation and
reception of Goldoni’s theatre were mediated via the URSS, and obeyed to the official political
guidelines; in the 80’s, they were based on Italian sources, and aimed at renovating and enriching
the panorama of Chinese literature and stage. The experience of Goldoni’s texts in these two
epochs was therefore very different: the paper analyses the translation projects of these two
periods, showing how different purposes can lead to different translated texts and, vice versa,
how different translated text can lead to different interpretations and receptions. Both the
translations published in books and played on stage will be considered “translated texts”.
121 LEUNG Shuk Man, SOAS, University of London, UK
The Newspaper Industry and the Creation of Cultural Identity: Discussing Hong Kong
after Fifty Years in New Life Evening Post
(Panel: “Changing Representations of Hong Kongness in Literature and Film since the
1950s”)
This paper will examine the cultural position of Hong Kong in the 1950s by means of a close
reading of the newspaper industry and its literary production. It could be said that Hong Kong
literary production in the 1950s was mainly embodied in the media space of newspapers and
journals, which were primarily established by mainland Chinese literati migrants of various
political persuasions. The New Life Evening Post, or Xinsheng Wanbao, which was founded in 1945
and claimed to be politically neutral, has been considered by many scholars to be one of the
representative newspapers participating in the construction of a Hong Kong identity. The
defining of this Hong Kong identity was especially brought into focus by Feng Hongdao’s Hong
Kong after Fifty Years (Wushinian hou zhi Xianggang), which was serialised in “interesting
anecdotes” in the New Life Evening Post shortly after the founding of the PRC. Significantly,
Feng’s piece begins by commenting on the fact that Hong Kong had not been handed over to
her motherland and remained yet a British colony. In the quest to understand Hong Kong’s
identity formation, this paper will firstly scrutinize the narratives Feng Hongdao employs to
envision the future development of Hong Kong in political, cultural and economic aspects. The
questions to be addressed pay attention to how these narratives were formed and for whom they
were intended for. Secondly, since the serialised novel was written by the New Life Evening Post’s
editor, Liang Kuan, under his penname Feng Hongdao, the paper will shed light on the
interrelationship between identity construction, editorial strategy and the reading public, in order
to reveal how the medium ofthe newspaper contributed to the creation of a Hong Kong identity.
LEUNG Virginia Yee-Yarn Leung, Institute of East Asian Studies, Zürich, Switzerland
Journey to the South: Transmutations of the European Genre "Bildungsroman" in Hong
Kong Literature of the 1950s
In the end of 1940s many Chinese people fled to the South, as a result of the riots and turmoils
which raged across the country. Writers who flooded from the mainland to the South of China
were known as in the research literature ‘Southbound literati’. They were first and foremost
understood as intellectuals who migrated to the South and thus acted as a “transmitter” of
cultural and political ideas of China. These writers were cut off from their places of origin and
their traditional values and often had to adapt to a new cultural, linguistic and political system.
122 Far away from home and being at a new and foreign place, they had to face various cultural and
political differences. Hong Kong was one of these shelters, which was under British colonial rule
since 1841. The object of this current study is the city Hong Kong in the 1950s and the writers,
who had fled there during this time. This project aims to examine the fictions of the ‘Southbound
literati’ in terms of the European Genre ‘Bildungsroman’. These intellectuals, who can be also
seen as ‘natives-in-exile’ were living in a new city and were facing various kinds of existential
problems. Furthermore, it will address questions concerning the theme of initiation. How do
characters in fiction negotiate with their foreign and hostile environment? Under these
circumstances, is the growth of the individual character not doomed to fail? Speaking of the lack
of opportunity for an adolescent to develop, can we read these novels rather as ‘novels of reverse
formation’? It will be argued that the journey which these intellectuals undertook can be
compared as a journey of growth (‘Bildungsreise’). Given the fact the obstacles these writers
encountered in the city Hong Kong would be more challenging and harder to overcome than in
their place of origin, the multiple difficulties, such as financial, cultural, linguistic, they
experienced, would altogether lead to the assumption that the individual growth of these
newcomers might be a formation which goes into a reverse direction. The main focus will lie on
the fictions in the Hong Kong literature of the 1950s, a crucial period for Hong Kong literature
as well as for the growth of the city itself and the formation of the Southbound literati. Their
works will be examined under the aspect how the protagonist correlated with space and time
(Michail M. Bachtin) in the fictions of the 1950s.
LEUNG Wing-Fai, joint paper with Professor Daria Berg, Department of Chinese Culture
and Society, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St Gallen, Switzerland
The Du Lala Phenomenon: Chick-lit in Postsocialist China
The book series A Story of Lala’s Promotion (杜拉拉升职记, The Promotion of Du Lala, hereafter Du
Lala), first published in 2007 and followed by three sequels in 2008, 2010 and 2011, was an
instant bestseller written by Li Ke (李可, birth date and real name unknown), known as the
Chinese J.K. Rowling. The novel was adapted as a feature film (English title Go Lala Go!,
directed by Xu Jinglei who also took on the lead role) and a television drama series in
2010. The novel narrates the story of Du Lala, a post-1970s university graduate with no
family background, who ‘strives for success through individual efforts’ (preface) and ends
up a top executive in a fictional Fortune 500 company. A new consumer culture arrived in
Reform-era China alongside the re-emergence of the discourse of individual agency. Du Lala is
the story of a generation of ‘white-collar misses’ in urban China- professional women who can
make full use of their youth and gain jobs in the corporate world. Lala therefore exemplifies the
postsocialist Chinese dream- a young generation of apolitical, diligent workers who strive for
economic success. The phenomenon can be seen through the lens of the ‘chick lit’/post-feminist
fiction which supports a new gender regime and offers displacement of the feminist challenges to
123 patriarchy through the rhetoric of individual choice. Both television and film adaptations of the
book emphasise the commercial value of this Chinese chick lit phenomenon through focusing on
fashion, consumption and the romantic sub-plot, while skating over the objectification of women
in the office environment. Both media use copious amount of product placement. The Du Lala
phenomenon individualises the gender discourse in postsocialist China, portraying a world of
aspirational middle class and globally influenced values in a depoliticised world. This paper argues
that the media representations of the young professional woman conform to the Hollywood
romantic comedy genre and neglect the struggles over gender and sexuality that continue to exist
for many young women in urban China.
LÉVY Florence, Centre d’Études de la Chine Moderne et Contemporaine, École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Chinese gender norms and international migration – "Going abroad" a solution for local
difficulties for Northern urban middle-class Chinese men and women?
Since the end of the 1990s, a new Chinese migration influx has been oriented toward Europe. Its
composition is very different from typical economic migrants and also from traditional Chinese
migrants settled in France. The majority of migrants are middle-aged city dwellers who used to
belong to the lower middle stratum in northern China. Women, and more precisely divorced
women, count for 70% of this influx. They have left China without knowing anyone in France
and once arrived, they often experience downward mobility and are marginalized in the Parisian
Chinese networks. In line with the sociology of migration, we want to understand the reasons for
their departure and for such a gender unbalanced composition. Our hypothesis is that gendered
representations in China play a role in the "recruitment" of migrants and in the configuration of
migration plans. With the reforms period and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, a part
of the urban population has experienced new form of social, professional and economic
insecurity. While households observed a decline in their income, and risk of being lay off, their
economic needs have rapidly increased. Family relations and gender norms have also come under
pressure and the transformations of the norms of femininity and masculinity have often ended in
divorce. Its incidence has suddenly increased for middle aged persons. Migration has been seen
by them as a new alternative for finding living resources. Based on ethnographic observations
from 2004 to 2010 and on 50 interviews, our research shows that the situations differ between
men and women. Male migrants, who are less frequently divorced, go abroad for economical
reasons and in order to conform to the dominant norm of the male breadwinner. However,
motivations of women are more complex and combine economic, social and symbolic
dimensions. Migration is linked to the status of divorced women. For newly single mothers,
departure is a solution to avoid social stigma and impoverishment. After a few years abroad,
many of them decide to marry in France. Therefore, different social expectations in China based
on differences in matrimonial status result in France in differently gendered migration goals.
124 LI Jing, Inalco, Paris
Error Analysis- Access to Learning Strategies of Chinese Characters by French Students
In the process of learning target foreign language, there is an interlanguage system, which is
constantly changing and getting closer to the target language. The study of orthographic errors is
a way to observe the acquisition process of Chinese characters. The theory of structural
linguistics suggests that errors are mainly due to the negative influence of the native language. But
Chinese and French are two completely different writing systems. Therefore, for French native
speakers, the process of learning Chinese characters is about decoding, activating the
corresponding representation, memorizing, which is more a cognitive approach. The objective of
this paper is to establish a parallel between orthographic errors of Chinese characters and the
learning strategies. Orthographic errors do not only reflect how Chinese characters are stored in
the brain, but also reflect the process of memorizing Chinese characters and the learning
strategies that are used. To some extent, the process of Chinese characters acquisition is also a
process of selecting and building learning strategies. By analyzing the evolution of orthographic
errors at different levels and conducting an experiment which investigates the influence of
learning strategies on the acquisition efficiency, we would like to get some conclusions on the
French learner's Chinese character acquisition process; to provide a detailed description on the
critical periods for the development of different learning strategies; and to understand the
evolution of their learning strategies depending on students' Chinese level. Based on the results
of this experiment, some feasible pedagogical ideas are proposed to provide guidance on teaching
and learning of Chinese Characters.
LI Liang, REHSEIS-SPHERE (UMR 7219, CNRS & University Paris Diderot) / Post-doctoral
scholar ANR Project “History of Numerical Tables”& Institute for the History of Natural
Sciences, CAS, Beijing
Measuring units and quantities in Chinese ancient astronomic tables
Chinese astronomic measuring unit systems, including the units of length, time and angle, varied
in time. In ancient times, a set of length units (1 zhang 丈= 10 chi 尺 = 100 cun 寸) was used in
parallel with the units 1 du or degree 度 =100 fen or minutes 分 =10000 miao or seconds 秒 in
order to describe the position of the different celestial bodies. After Islamic astronomy and
125 European astronomy were transmitted into China in the early and late Ming Dynasty respectively,
the angular unit system arc-degree began to be adopted and widely used. In order to integrate the
different systems of chi and du, during the Ming Dynasty a definition of one chi equal to one du
began to be proposed. The Chinese ancient du system was gradually replaced by the arc-degree
system. This change can be clearly reflected in the changes of units and quantities in astronomical
tables. The presentation will focus on the discussion of the measuring unit du. In Chinese ancient
astronomy, its literal meaning was “degree”. However, it was actually more a linear division than
an angular one. The presentation will show how its meaning was changed in early modern times
in China. The way in which quantities of divisions developed from the usages of fractions and
decimal system to sexagesimal system in astronomical tables will also be discussed.
LI Shiwei , IrAsia - Institut de recherches Asiatiques, Université d'Aix-Marseille
Translating pre-modern Chinese novels in France, from the Age of Enlightenment to
present days
This paper focuses on the history of the French translations of the pre-modern Chinese novels,
from the first translation of this genre in 1735 until present time. The history could be divided
into three stages. The first stage begins with the first translation of three extracts of the Jingu
qiguan in 1735, which draws the attentions of Voltaire and inspires him for his related works and
shorts stories. It has been suddenly discontinued due to the French revolution, when the Jesuit
missions were aborted. The sinology knew its renaissance when sinologists entered the French
royal college in 19th century, as the professor Abel-Rémusat accomplished the first complete
translation of Yu Jiao li. His successors Stanislas Julien and Antoine Bazin continued the
translations in the related field, but the chosen novels were limited to the vernacular stories of
Caizi jiaren (scholar – beauty romances). The last stage starts from the post-war modern period,
with a great rise of pre-modern Chinese novels translations, both in quantity as well as quality,
due to the effort of René Etiemble and his collection « Connaissance de l’Orient ». Four greatest
Chinese novels have been introduced to the collection of Pléiade by the end of 20th century. The
paper aims to analyze the different reasons of French sinologists choosing a certain type of
Chinese literature, and their points of view on the subject. By analyzing some important French
translations of pre-modern Chinese novels, we try to understand why some of these works have
reached a great success and received such good reception in France and in Europe, as well as
how they influenced the French literature. The paper also aims to deconstruct the representations
of pre-modern Chinese novels, through the views of French and European sinologists,
translators and readers.
126 LI Shiyan, Aix-Marseille University, France
The complex expression of xuwu in one aspect of the Chinese Contemporary Art
The expression xuwu is used by critics to designate a movement in the contemporary painting
named literally either Movement of extreme multiplicity (jiduozhuyi) or Movement of extreme complexity
(jifanzhuyi). The two expressions are translated in English by the word “Maximalism”. This word
refers implicitly to the Minimalism in the Western Art. The Maximalism movement gathers
productions that generally are available in the form of abstract paintings (chouxianghuihua). In the
West we know that the notion of Abstract Art is problematic: it covers practices ranging from
Mondrian to De Kooning. In China remains commonly the same ambiguity. Also some art critics
would love to establish a theory of abstraction specific to the Chinese tradition. In the case of
Maximalism there is an ambition to define an Abstract Art specifically Chinese. The abundant
productions of current Maximalism are given equivalent status to the meditative practices that
generally lie within a long-term with the goal of obtaining an emptiness of the mind. However,
this emptiness, for some artists, marks a certain linking with the absence of meaning. The artists
consider that daily life is a sort of endless repetition, a heavy accumulation... up to the boredom.
Through this movement, would it be possible to see that there is a kind of fusion of thoughts
within xuwu which reconciles the emptiness of Taoism, Buddhism and Nihilism? Already, the
work of the scholar Wang Guowei (1877-1927), Reflections on Dream in the Red Chamber (1904),
indicated a kind of fusion between Schopenhauer's thought and the Buddhist. How
contemporary Chinese artists show a reality in which weariness, indifference, nourished despair
and silent contemplation are combined through today paintings?
LI Xiaofan, Amy University of Cambridge Queens' College, Silver Street, Cambridge, UK
Cosmic limits and the idea of infinity in two Taoist classics
This paper examines the idea of cosmic infinity in ancient China. My focus is on the question of
the limits (ji, qiong) and infinity of time and space in two classics of Taoist literature: the Zhuangzi
and the Liezi. I choose these texts because they not only show in an exemplary way ancient
Chinese thinkers’ keen interest in cosmological speculations, but also discuss the concept of
infinity in highly terms. As I will demonstrate, the Zhuangzi and Liezi formally theorise time and
space as manifestations of an infinite cosmos. Nevertheless, although we can experience time and
space, we cannot grasp their infinity because infinity—and therefore the cosmos—is ultimately
unknowable. More specifically, the Zhuangzi sees the cosmos as infinite ‘extension-and-duration’
127 (yuzhou), i.e. time-space. But if ‘outside limitlessness there is again limitlessness’, and ‘before the
beginning’ there was always another beginning, then one never knows if there has ever begun to
be anything because if there has, that beginning would constitute a limit, which would then
contradict cosmic infinity. Turning to the Liezi, we find a similar cosmic agnosticism with
additional theoretical exegeses. A sage professes that he knows the infinity of time and space but
refuses to say that this denies any finiteness of time and space, precisely because infinity seems to
depend on the finite to exist: ‘Outside limitlessness there is yet again nothing limitless’. This
paradox, as I will argue, points to the idea that if time and space are infinite and therefore
unsurpassable, then their unsurpassability i.e. infinity itself would be a limit, since a limit denotes
unsurpassability too. Therefore infinity in the sense of ‘always having a beyond’ already implies
an inclusion of the limited. For this reason, the ‘outside’ of limitlessness i.e. the ‘nothing limitless’
ultimately coincides with limitlessness itself. To better understand these paradoxes about infinity
and cosmic agnosticism, here I would like to refer to the idea of coincidentia oppositorum—as
expounded by Nicholas de Cusa—which equates the Maximum with the Minimum and finally
with the infinite. I will then consider some of the Zhuangzi and Liezi commentaries that give
interpretations similar to that of the coincidentia oppositorum between the limited and limitless, and
argue that an understanding of the cosmos as a ‘finite infinity’ is thus possible for both texts.
LIANG Hongling, Institut des Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, University “Jean
Moulin”, Lyon, France
French knowledge and the Making of Minzuxue in China
This paper considers the impact of global coloniality on the early history of Chinese ethnology.
In particular, it will look at the impact of French ethnology and sociology in China through two
Chinese ethnologists: Yang Kun and Ling Chunsheng, who were educated in French universities
at the beginning of the twentieth century. I will argue that the introduction of ethnology to China
was inseparable from the transmission and naturalization of modern euroamerican-centered
epistemology in the Chinese context, which turned indigenous knowledge into an object of study,
instead of regarding it as sustainable knowledge. Moreover, the epistemological and
methodological paradigm of ethnology in China was embedded within discourses of European
coloniality and modernity. Later, due to political and ideological reasons, ethnology in China
came under the influence of Soviet ethnic theories and policies. By examining the careers of Ling
and Yang, I seek not only to bring renewed attention to the work of two leading twentiethcentury Chinese intellectuals, the often neglected French or European impact on social sciences
and humanities in China. I aim also to open up some important theoretical questions concerning
the wider implications of the coloniality of knowledge within Chinese academic discourse.
128 LIAO Min, Inalco, Paris
Pedagogical design of the aspect markers in Chinese in the French local teaching
materials
The research about the aspect markers in Chinese (le, zhe, guo, meiyou) is very rich, but mainly
targets the English-speaking students in China, who use the textbooks published in China. The
research on the French local materials remains insufficient. That’s reason why this article focuses
on the pedagogical design of Chinese aspect markers in the French local teaching materials. By
comparing the four principal materials through the aspect of ‘what, when and how’, we try to
find out the characteristics about the aspect markers in the French local materials, their teaching
orders, the pedagogical discourse used and the exercises proposed in these materials. According
to the Common European Framework of Reference of Language, the communicative language
competences become fundamental for the foreign language teaching. It’s very important to
associate the grammar explanations and exercises with the communicative language skills. In this
article we use “zhe” as example to demonstrate in French materials how to introduce the aspect
marker ‘zhe’ which is difficult for students, how to explain its usage from simple to complex, and
how to design the related language activities so that students can get familiar with the syntax and
improve their presentation skills at the same time.
LIN Shu-Yuan, Center for General Education, National Taipei College of Business, Taiwan
The Position of Tang Dynasty Monks in promoting Avalokiteśvara Faith
Avalokiteśvara was very popular in Tang Dynasty as one of the most famous Buddhist
Bodhisattva in Chinese society. Some scholars explained the reason of the popularity
phenomenon through psychology vision and emphasized that Avalokiteśvara faith gave power to
protect the country and to provide people the spiritual content. However, those commentaries
pointed out only some aspects of the faith. This article will investigate what important roles
Buddhist monks of Tang Dynasty played in promoting the Avalokiteśvara faith. Many Tang
monks devoted themselves in Buddhist sutras translation, such as Zhi Tong, Qiefan damo,
Vajrabodhi, Bu Kong. Through the translated version they provide the path to people of
understanding the thought of Avalokiteśvara faith, they also offer the methods of understanding
the image and the symbol of Avalokiteśvara. Beside, their experiences of practicing Buddhist
129 rules were viewed as the model way to the others for reaching the final religious goal. This paper
will analyze some biographies of monks and will interpret part of sutras of Chinese Tripitaka, in
order to reveal what and how the Buddhist monks of Tang Dynasty made their contribution in
promoting the Avalokiteśvara faith.
LIN Sufen, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan
Wang An-Shih's Theory of Sage-King: Ideal and Actuality
(Panel: “Political Realism in Song Confucianism”)
Scholars in the Northern Song dynasty generally expected the sovereign to act as “Sage King”
(sheng wang). Their teachings combined to basic approaches: first, the learning to reach “Inner
Sagehood” (nei sheng), and second, the accomplishments as an “Outward King” (wai wang). The
latter refers to the reactions and practical measures of the emperor. Wang Anshi (1021–1086) was
a perfect match to Emperor Shenzong (r. 1068–1085). On the one hand, he was kept in high
regard by Shenzong, which was paired with high expectations Wang had of Shenzong. On the
other hand, Shenzong tried hard to become a good ruler. However, when their idealism met
reality, some hardships were inevitable. In order to meet the needs of his time, Wang Anshi
championed the “Way of the ruler” (jun Dao). Does this concept contain some continuous basic
values? Did the ideal of the “Sage King” end up in nothingness, or was it realized by Wang Anshi
to some degree? What value and meaning did the theory of the “Sage King” have for later
generations? What amendments were made later by the Daoxue Confucians? These are the
questions this paper will deal with.
LIN Yue, Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
China’s outward foreign direct investment in Latin America
According to the newly published 2010 statistical bulletin of China’s outward foreign direct investment,
China’s OFDI flow increased by 21,7% in 2010, putting China ahead of Japan as the fifth largest
investor outside of the country. Concerning Latin America, China’s OFDI flow increased by
43,8% and represented 15,3% of the total OFDI flows in 2010. This article attempts to trace
Chinese government’s regulations on OFDI approval, and uses a special database of 20 115
projects recorded by MOFCOM to build certain facts about China’s OFDI in Latin America.
Based on the comparative statistical analysis of UNCTAD’s time series data and the MOFCOM’s
130 data set, this article demonstrates firstly the time lag between the China’s OFDI rise and the
application of pertinent policies, denouncing the belief that recent China’s OFDI boom is the
sheer outcome of a national deliberate strategy to grasp the precious natural resources of Latin
America, and to use its financial power to bargain other countries’ support of its stance in the
international political issues. Secondly, as the close exam of the project database would show,
there is a dominance of the projects carried out by the local enterprises that are supported by the
local governments whose motives are not necessarily the same as the central government’s
intention. It is thus bold to generalize certain anecdotes published in the mass media.
LIN Zhiqiu, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Critical Issues in China’s Recent Sentencing Reforms
To achieve justice and efficiency in criminal justice has been one of the main objectives of
China’s legal reforms toward the rule of law in past 30 years. However, the most significant
reform achievements in criminal justice system have been associated with trial process; only in
recent years, sentencing process has become a focal point of the reform. This paper intends to
provide detailed discussions of the context and content of recent sentencing reform and its
implications, and a comparison of the current practice with that in some English speaking
jurisdictions. Chinese jurists around 2000 recognized that Chinese judges’ unfettered
discretionary power and lack of transparency in sentencing process were directly responsible for
widespread inconsistent, unpredictable, and unjustifiable sentencing dispositions across the
country. Empirical studies repeatedly demonstrated that similarly situated offenders were often
given widely disparate sentences, even when offenders were sentenced in the same city,
occasionally by the same judges in the same courts. The disparate sentences and the sentencing
process without transparency led the public to suspecting of judicial power abuse by judges and
resulted in the increasing number of appeals by defendants against court sentencing decisions.
Consequently, the public became increasingly skeptical about China’s criminal justice system and
the on-going rule of law reform. To limit judges’ discretionary power and overcome the
widespread inconsistence and unpredictability in sentencing outcomes, in October 2010, China’s
Supreme People’s Court issued important provisional sentencing procedures and guidelines,
which signified a significant reform of China’s sentencing process; however, some problems and
concerns remain. In addition to outlining the provisional sentencing procedures and guidelines,
this paper will also focus on some heatedly debated issues, such as whether China should have a
partially or completely independent sentencing process from trial process? What are China’s
unique sentencing principles in comparing with the practice of some English speaking countries?
What is the significance of newly promoted penal policy of “balancing leniency and severity’ in
the sentencing reform? What is the meaning of “sentencing consistency” in the context of
China’s emphasis that law enforcement needs reflecting disparate social and economic
developments in different provinces and regions?
131 LINKE Janka, University of Leipzig, Oriental Institute, Leipzig, Germany
Going Caterpillar Fungus: Impacts and Dynamics of Marketization in Qinghai
The presentation deals with processes of marketization in North-Eastern parts of the Tibetan
Plateau (Qinghai Province) using the example of the newly emerging 'caterpillar fungus economy'
in these areas. Caterpillar fungus (lat. Ophiocordyceps sinensis) which grows at altitudes between
3,000 and 5,000 m in certain regions of the Tibetan Plateau, has long been valued as a powerful
tonic and aphrodisiac in Traditional Tibetan and Chinese Medicine. Over the last few years the
medicinal fungi have experienced a massive price increase: in November 2010 one kilogram of
best quality caterpillar fungus cost around 240,000,- RMB (approx. 26,000,- € at the time) in
Qinghai's provincial capital, Xining, and is therefore rightly called 'soft gold' (ruan huangjin) by
Chinese traders and consumers alike. Chinese nouveaux riches in cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen
and Guangzhou regard it as a prestigious status symbol, means of displaying their wealth and –
increasingly – a source of higher investment returns. The rise in demand and prices has meant an
enormous impact on livelihoods of Tibetans in nomadic areas who have been the main
beneficiaries of this development due to their favorable access to caterpillar fungus producing
pastures. Based on empirical fieldwork in various parts of Qinghai in 2010 and 2011, the paper
provides insights into local strategies of securing resources in a part of contemporary China
which is generally perceived as marginal, underdeveloped and of limited economic perspectives,
by focusing on the construction, functioning and dynamics of a thriving niche market.
LIU Hong, associate professor, Department of Chinese studies and CEC-ASIEs, Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris
Ye Mengde and the transmission of literati culture
(Panel: “Questioning transmission of knowledge: masters-disciples relations in Song
dynasty”)
Ye Mengde’s (1077-1148) Bishu luhua (Comments noted in a retreat against the heat wave, 1135)
is a biji which concretely shows an integration of the three doctrines (Confucianism, Taoism and
Buddhism) in the XIth century. Through dialogues with two disciples, Ye Mengde discloses the
diversity and richness of literati’s lifestyles, codes or knowledge of bureaucratic institutions. This
transmission from a master to his disciples both implies a classical textual learning and a savoirvivre rooted in a practical level.
132 LIU Huiming, Institut des Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, University “Jean Moulin”,
Lyon, France
Migration of Paul Ricoeur’s Thought in the PRC
In the context of the propagation of the trend of Phenomenology in the twentieth century, this
paper aims at investigating the introduction, the current development and the growing influence
on Chinese intellectuals of Paul Ricoeur’s thought on mainland China. It will also consider the
impediments encountered by the migration of Ricoeur’s thought in its fusion into the Chinese
local cultural and epistemological vision. This paper sees the major cause of this situation as
being found in the structural defects in the present academic research mechanisms of Chinese
local intellectuals, which has in turn led to a disjuncture with the interdisciplinary paradigm of the
international intellectuals in the process of globalization.
LIU Jun, Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Mobile Communication, Contentious Politics and Emerging Counter-Public Sphere in
China
China”)
Digital telecommunication technology has expanded the mobile phone’s potential for being
increasingly used as a weapon against authoritarian rule and censorship. Since the content of
mobile communication is unpredictable and unregulated, cellphones have the potential to breach
state sponsored information blockage. This in turn helps the Chinese people to maintain contact
with each other, receive information from outside the country and make political waves in an
aggressive battle for control over information. This article examines spontaneous mobilization via
mobile phones, with a focus on two concrete popular protests in rural and urban areas,
demonstrating how Chinese citizens have expanded the political uses of cellphones in their
struggle for freedom of information flow, social justice and the rule of law, while seeking to build
an inexpensive counter-public sphere. These processes destabilize China’s conventional national
public sphere by shaping political identities on the individual level and the notion of citizenship
within the evolving counter-public sphere. The political significance of mobile phones in the
133 context of contemporary China’s political environment can be observed by various social forces
that communicate their struggles with the aid of this technology, pose challenges in governance
and force the authorities to engage in new kinds of media practices.
LIU Siyu, Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, UK
Poetry of Philosopher: Literary Representation of Zhu Xi’s Cultivation Theory, Siyu Liu
(Doctoral candidate in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford)
This paper tries to investigate the philosophical meanings of Zhu Xi’s poetry within his theory of
cultivating people’s heart-mind. After the establishment of the new theory of “neutralization and
harmony”, Zhu Xi’s cultivation methods became characterized by the combination of nourishing
the nature (hanyang) and experiential cognition (ticha), with the fundamental attitude of preserving
reverence (cunjing). This new theoretical construction aimed to instantiate the Dao in everyday
social activity, thus raising hopes that it could be more easily apprehended. The practice of this
kind of cultivation was reflected in Zhu Xi’s appreciation of daily affairs anytime and anywhere,
including the introspection and realization inspired by natural sceneries, classics reading and
social communications. As a process of becoming aware of outer objects and empathetically
pervading them with one’s response according to the ultimate Dao, this appreciation is therefore
strongly sensational, which makes the study of stimulus (gan), best represented by Zhu Xi’s
emotional poetic productions, important. My paper argues that, in the framework of his
cultivation theory, Zhu Xi’s poetry has two primary functions: (1) recording the process,
mentality and feelings when the mind expressed (yifa) from total stillness to its functioning when
stimulated; (2) using esthetical emotions, which is the characteristic feature of literature, to assist
readers to experience the activity (both mental and physical) of daily life and, concomitantly, the
creative power of Heaven, so as to reach people’s moral minds. This paper further suggests that,
for Zhu Xi, poetry is a concrete representation of the process of unifying inner and outer (he nei
wai), thus helping to realize the linkage between Neo-Confucian ultimate being and actual
experience.
LIVE Yu-sion, Université de la Réunion, France
The social significance of the Guandi festival on Reunion Island
134 (Panel: “Chinese Religions in France”)
Traditionally celebrated within the family or within the Chinese community, the Guandi festival
at Saint Denis de la Réunion has since 2004 been opened to the larger public with the
organization of cultural events (acrobatics, traditional dances, calligraphy shows, exotic products
fair, fashion shows, massages, etc.). This paper explores the impact of this new type of festival on
the larger Reunion population’s understanding and representation of the Chinese community. It
shows that the community’s representation depends on how people distort and reinvent the
other’s religious practices.
LO Shih-Lung, Paris 3 University, France
The notion of su in Modern Chinese Theater
In Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong, the concept of su is often connected to the rudeness, the rusticity or
the obscenity. The su is opposed to the literary canon founded on the concept of ya, which
suggests the elite and the elegance. For certain critics and writers, however, su is not an absolutely
pejorative term. Xu Wei appreciates su and zhen (nature), while Li Yu prefers su to ya. These are
only two examples which demonstrate the complexity of su as aesthetic criteria. The publication
of Zheng Zhenduo’s Zhongguo suwenxue shi (1938) acknowledges the value of literature which
conveys the spirit of su, including the novel and the theater. Zheng’s categorization is determined
by the literary genres, and not by the subject of the work itself. But the definition of su can be
constantly changing. Shi Zhecun suggests several English translations such as “popular
literature”, “folk literature” or “masses literature” by which he attempts to describe the idea of
suwenxue. The theater is assigned to the domain of the suwenxue, while the multiple connotations
of the term su – the custom, the vulgar, the ordinary or the folkloric – have been one of majors
concerns in theater in modern China (late 19th century-1949). Liang Qichao promotes his
politico-cultural reform plan in the help of theatrical works written in vernacular Chinese (suyu, or
baihua). Along the same lines, the actor Wang Youyou defends the value of the theater accessible
to the ordinary people (tongsu) in order to educate illiterate Chinese people (suren). On the
contrary, the playwright Chen Dabei criticizes the banality which he observes in popular but
vulgar theatrical works, and he tries to promote an amateur “aimeide” theater (literally “adore the
beauty”). In addition, the thoughts developed around su can have influence on the borrowings
from western theater. The modern western theatrical works selected by Song Chunfang
(playwright and university professor) highlight the popular pieces which satisfy public taste, since
the public is the support of the spoken drama. This observation brings out another subject of
study: the translation of works of su and their transmission in modern Chinese theater.
135 LO Shih-Lung, University Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, France
French Comedy and Song Chufang’s Theatrical Writings
Chinese spoken drama has developed along with the translation and the reception of western
theater. The Western-inspired performances of Chunliushe in Tokyo (1907) are well-known
examples. In different issues of La Jeunesse (Xin qingnian), Ouyang Yuqian and Hu Shi have
pointed out the necessity of translating western theatrical works. Ouyang emphasized the
importance of “translating theatrical works, taking them as references and imitating them”. Hu
challenged his contemporary intellectual counterparts to select 300 excellent plays and translate
them, instead of arbitrary translation/adaptation of mediocre works. In 1918, La Jeunesse
published the bibliography “Selection of One Hundred Modern Dramatic Works” (hereafter
abbreviated as “Selection”) suggested by Song Chunfang (1892-1923). Most plays in this
bibliography are selected from works of French (20 entries) or English (19 entries) playwrights.
As the first Chinese university professor to offer western theater courses, Song’s “Selection”
reflects not only his personal taste, but also contemporary intellectuals’ vision in terms of Chinese
spoken drama’s future. This “Selection” is reprinted in the first volume of his Essays on the Theater
(Song Chunfang lunju, 1923), followed by a list of “36 New European Plays”, in which 6 French
plays are cited. In addition to the 26 entries on French theatre, in the three volumes of Essays,
Song analyzes various currents in French theater, as well as their possible inspiration to Chinese
spoken drama. The plays of Eugene Scribe and Eugene Labiche are particularly appreciated by
Song and are regarded as the role models of Chinese spoken drama. The first part of my paper is
a brief survey of the French plays introduced through Song’s writings. The second part is on
Song’s own translation of French comedy. An analysis will be done on his criteria for choosing
French comedy and how he demonstrates to Chinese readers these comic elements through his
translation. The last part focuses on Song’s play A Portrait of the God of Fortune (Yifu Xishen, 1932),
in which Song attempts to internalize the spirit of French comedy and to recreate it in the
context of modern China.
LOMANOV Alexander, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Science, Russia
Moscow
Hu Shi in Moscow: Soviet Experience through the Eyes of Chinese Liberal
136 In summer 1926 Chinese thinker and public figure Hu Shi visited the USSR on his way to
Europe. He stayed in Moscow for three days. Hu Shi had a regular program of foreign tourist (he
visited the All-Union society of cultural communications with abroad (VOKS), the Museum of
Revolution and the model penitentiary center). He also met with Chinese students in Moscow,
exchanged views with Soviet academics and diplomats. His assessments of the Soviet experience
and socialism were closely connected with his political and philosophical ideas. Hu Shi
demonstrated true interest in understanding the essence of Soviet “experiment”. He worried
about one-party dictatorship and the absence of political opposition. At the same time he praised
transformations in sphere of education and affirmed goals of development of the USSR that were
put by the authorities. Hu’s pragmatism dominated in his judgments. He noted that results of the
Soviet “experiment” need to be checked in practice, it is wrong to measure them with stereotypes
or to deny them on the basis of ideological prejudices.
During his short stay in the USSR Hu Shi attempted to sum up his impressions and to make
comparisons with the Chinese realities. Story of Hu’s trip to Moscow helps to get a deeper
understanding of his relations with the left-wing Chinese intellectuals who hoped draw the wellknown thinker on their side into the camp of supporters of the Soviet model. Finally Hu’s
recognition of Soviet success in education and his praises of “seriousness of purposes” of Soviet
leaders did not overshadow his sympathy to the American liberal model that was aimed at social
progress through smooth changes instead of struggle and revolution.
LUCA Dinu, National Taiwan Normal University
Configurations of light: On the rhetoric of vision in Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong
diaolong”)
Tropes of light feature prominently in Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong, in independent constructions, in
powerful binaries (light vs sound, light vs darkness, light vs blindness) or in more extended
rhetorical configurations. Closely or more remotely-related series (figures of brightness, tropes of
vision in general) contribute to the overwhelming visuality of various contexts. In some
situations, such figurality would seem to multiply to the point of becoming self-reproductive; in
some others, in fact, it appears to even assume fundamental articulatory roles. Starting from Paul
de Man’s observation with regard to the suspension of logic by rhetoric (“Semiology and
Rhetoric,” 1973), my paper analyzes several situations in the Wenxin diaolong where the excess of
figurality (as a potential symptom of metatextual malaise) “opens up,” to quote de Man again,
“vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration.”
137 M’BONDJO Maud, post-doc, Research Center on East Asian Civilisations (CRCAO), National
Center for Scientific Research, Paris Email: [email protected] Education (jiao) in the premises of Modern Confucianism: Master Zhou’s (1017-1073)
case (Panel: “Questioning transmission of knowledge: masters-disciples relations in Song
dynasty”) Thanks to Zhu Xi朱熹 (1130-1200)’s architectural construction of the Way’s transmission
(daotong), Zhou Dunyi周敦頤 (1017-1073) is considered as the patriarch that laid the foundations
of modern Confucianism. Education (jiao) is not only central to his thought but also to his life, as
he initiated the Cheng brothers 二程to the Way in 1046 and 1047. Aside from penetrating his
conception of education, we’ll discuss the educational figure of Master Zhou.
MA Tehyun, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
The Ministry of Social Affairs, Chinese sociologists, and the Internationalisation of
Chinese Wartime Social Policies
(Panel: “Serving the State: The Professionalization of the Social Sciences and Civil Service
in China, 1937-1957”)
In 1939, the Nationalist Government established a Ministry of Social Affairs, giving it a mandate
to bring under its umbrella the wartime extension of state activity in areas like conscription and
labour management. Young Chinese sociologists, eager to bring order and prosperity to a society
creaking under the pressure of war, joined the new department. Schooled in the sociological
methods that were in vogue in the United States and Europe, these professionals saw themselves
as brokers, bringing their foreign expertise in the likes of social relief, work relief, and labour
management to the attention of the Guomindang state. At the same time, however, they
remained aware that they needed to sell their policy proposals as suitable to the peculiar
conditions of wartime China. My paper will explore the careers of three of the social scientists in
the department I have been able to trace thus far, showing how their professional status shaped
their work, their international outlook, and their politics. Building on recent work on the Nanjing
Decade, I will consider how they conceptualised the realm of the “social” in wartime, focusing on
how their ongoing engagement with policy questions beyond China’s borders helped them locate
the current position and direct the future course of the new Ministry.
138 MÄENPÄÄ Marjaana, Department of Political Science and Contemporary History, University
of Turku, Finland
State nationalism and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party
Nationalism has often been mentioned as an important legitimating factor for the rule of the
Chinese Communist Party. Both the scholars of Chinese nationalism and of legitimacy
acknowledge that “nationalism matters” for the legitimacy, but the analysis often stops here, the
exception being the research on the Patriotic education campaign. To better understand the
relationship between state nationalism (the officially approved and promoted version of
nationalism) and the legitimation efforts of the CCP, more detailed framing and discourse
analytical research is needed. Max Weber has defined power to be legitimate if those involved in
it believe it to be. David Beetham, who strongly criticises Weberian definition, argues that
legitimacy has three dimensions: it is based on the conformity to rules, justifiability of rules in
terms of shared beliefs and legitimation through expressed consent. The legitimacy of the rule of
the CCP is often said to be based on the rapid economic growth and development, revolutionary
history, control of media and ideology that earlier meant socialism and now nationalism. In the
present research, nationalism is seen as a shared belief and thus an important part of legitimacy.
On the other hand, a growing number of scholars acknowledge the importance of contained
political reforms and the party’s incremental changes into direction of a “governing party”. Some
scholars, such as Baogang Guo, have also suggested that the CCP’s legitimacy can be understood
through traditional Chinese concepts attached to idea of justified rule: mandate of Heaven (tian
ming), rule by virtue (ren zhi), popular consent (min ben), legality (he fa), benefiting the people (li
min) and equality. Yanqi Tong has traced legitimacy to the morality of political elite, benevolent
rule and the responsibility for the well-being of the people. This paper aims at defining the
concept of legitimacy in a way that takes traditional Chinese ideas of legitimate rule into account
but maintains an adequate level of universal applicability. This paper will provide the theoretical
framework for my doctoral dissertation, which explores the relationship between state
nationalism and the legitimation efforts of the CCP by focusing on discourses and frames about
the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.
MAGAGNIN Paolo, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy
Qiu Xiaolong’s “Death of a Red Heroine” and its Chinese translation
(Panel: “The Experience of the Translated Text”)
139 Despite significant research on the specificity and features of “China English” and “Sinicised
English” in the literary works by Chinese authors originally writing in English or languages other
than Chinese (Zhang 2002, Wei 2004, Cheung 2004), the aspects linked to the Chinese translation
of the works produced by such authors remains largely unexplored. If the globalised nature of the
originals undermines the myth of ‘Chinese’ literature (Cheung 2004), an analysis of their Chinese
translations reveals even more complex phenomena at the level of linguistic hybridity, bilingual
creativity, and ideological interference, challenging the very notions of “foreignizing” and
“domesticating” translation (Venuti 1998). This paper attempts a brief outline of such factors as
exemplified by the Chinese translation of Shanghai-born writer Qiu Xiaolong’s first Englishlanguage detective novel Death of a Red Heroine (2000), entitled Hong ying zhi si (2003). By applying
a theoretical model provided by translation criticism (Osimo 2004, House 2006) combined with a
polysystemic approach (Chang 2005), a representative range of linguistic and extra-linguistic
features observable in the translation will be described, in an attempt to account for a specific
case of “round trip” experience of the translated text and for the strategies implemented in its
reception in the Chinese macro-polysystem.
MARICHALAR Olivier, Centre Maurice Halbwachs, ENS, Paris and ECNU, Shanghai
From mobilization to redeployment. Shanghai “rusticated youth” in the reform era
The Cultural revolution – as in any revolutionary sequence – gave way to some startling upward
and downward social mobility. Our study focuses on that which resulted from the “down to the
countryside” or “rustication” mass movement (1969-1979) which drew specific cohorts of urban
middle and high school students away from their initial socialization milieus. We center on the
genesis all along the mobilization process of “rusticated youth” later occupational and status
mobility, starting from the mobilization contexts in the school campuses and neighborhoods up
to the personal and professional redeployment after the movement. This study is based on
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shanghai between 2009 and 2012 with former “rusticated
youth”, mostly from “average” to stigmatized against “class origins” in the Mao era household
labeling system, having left Shanghai for extra-provincial villages during the specific “whole
country is red” period (1969-1971). The social paths of former “rusticated youth” are at present
evenly shared between the first thirty years under the socialist construction period and the
following thirty years spent in the reform era during which revisionist official views of the
foregone “rustication movement” challenged accounts of personal experiences. We analyze the
redeployment phase which took place across both of these distinct periods for most of the
former “rusticated youth”, while taking into account politicization and the state of available
resources at different stages in changing practiced environments, before, during and after the stay
in the countryside, in an attempt to provide a processual analysis of the “rusticated youth”
mobilization and its aftermath. We focus on the use of resources and strategies in what were
often strongly uncertain situations, thereby providing the necessary background to understanding
140 the social conditions of different types of redeployment after the movement. This paper
eventually discusses the possibility of drafting a typology of the redeployment of former
“rusticated youth”, thus overcoming two major coincidental factors which are the vagaries of
revolutionary situations and the profound changes introduced during the reform era.
MARŠÁLEK Jakub, Institute of East Asian studies, Phaculty of Arts and Humanities, Charles
University, Prague
“Voting with feet” and one of the sources of the ideology of the benevolent rule and care
for the people in Early China
In my paper, I will discuss strategies used by the ruling regimes of the Warring States period to
maintain population within the borders of their states on the one hand, and to attract people
from other states on the other. My arguments will be based on the various texts of that period,
such as Mengzi, Daodejing, and mainly Shangjunshu. Mobility of population seems to become
considerably greater by the end of the previous Spring and Autumn period, when peasants were
at least partly allowed to own land, and competing aristocratic lineages of that times had to react
to this new situation. Mobility of population was still a serious problem even for the centralized
states of the following Warring States time, as is attested by the Qin legal documents from
Shuihudi. From this reason, strategies how to maintain population within the borders of one's
own state and to attract people from neighbouring states were widely discussed in various texts
of the Warring States period. Although „philosophical“ orientation of the above-mentioned texts
considerable differed, strategies they suggested were very similar: ensuring the loyalty of the
population by offering concrete material advantages and also care for the material well-being of
the people. Greater mobility of the population on the one hand, and an attempt of the Warring
States to enlarge their economic and human resources on the other, thus became one of
important impulses for the further development of ideology of the benevolent rule, formerly
originating in ancient Zhou idea of the rule through the charismatic power de.
MARTIN Eléonore, Paris 8 University of Vincennes-Saint-Denis, France
Translation of the expression yanshen in Chinese opera
141 The xiju expression yanshen conveys a quality a good performer must possess. It is made of yan
(eye, glance) and shen which is a notion related to the divine or the spiritual, and here borrowed,
according to Wu Yuhua (1937-), to painting and poetry; in calligraphy, it corresponds to the
highest level of achievement (the hierarchy goes from neng, talented, to miao, wonderful, then shen
the translation of which is still unsatisfying). The expression introduces the idea of going beyond
something and takes the meaning of something beyond what is conceivable, therefore beyond
what is utterable. It comes into a variety of forms in the artistic field, generally implicitly except if
a second term is linked to it. Through the apprenticeship under a master of the Beijing
Vocational Institute of Local Opera and Arts, our understanding of yanshen meaning led us to
think that the possible translation of yanshen can be “presence”, but how can the presence
conveyed by the eyes be rendered? In the West, “presence” is an expression not easy to define or
to apprehend because it refers to the invisible, something being divine, exceeding the esthetic
form. This particular “presence” of the Chinese performer Mei Lanfang was noticed by famous
stage directors of the early twentieth century as Brecht, Stanislavski, Meyerhold, and then on the
sixties, by Grotowski, Barba (among others). The parallel between the two expressions yanshen
and presence seems to fit in a same esthetic notion, essential to live performance, but can’t be
strictly translatable from one language to another one (here, French and Chinese). From the
ethnoscenological perspective, we will present briefly the terms in their respective cultural
context to show their specificities and similarities. Then, from this analysis, we intend to show
that the vernacular vocabulary can express a particular performing style not transposable in
another culture. The thorny question of the translation reflects the choice of what one wants to
mean: do we have to translate yanshen by an equivalent, here presence, and, consequently, to lose
the notion of glance, of eye? Or should we invent a new word?
MASSACCESI Daniele, Irish Institute of Chinese Studies, University College Cork, Ireland
Migration as a means to female emancipation
In the contemporary globalized society, migration and urbanization have become pivotal
processes that involve large parts of the world population and draw the attention of analysts.
Scholars from a variety of disciplines have analyzed these two phenomena all over the world
from different perspectives and with different aims. Important studies on Chinese migration
from a gender perspective started in the early 1990s. This presentation explores the present
situation in the study of the so called “dagong mei” (or young Chinese migrant women), who
reach big cities from small villages, seeking social emancipation or escaping from patriarchy and
other social impositions they are pushed to accept as young women. Female emancipation has
been an important goal for the Chinese Communist Party even before the establishment of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949. Following Friedrich Engels’ «The Origin of the Family,
Private Property, and the State» Marxist theory of female emancipation as a class issue, the CCP
tried to get Chinese women involved in labour (i.e., farming and industrial labour). During the
142 ‘80s this policy began to be criticized by feminists and intellectuals, because it failed in its goal to
bring emancipation to Chinese women. My research revolves around the future plans of migrant
workers and focuses on the question: “Will they eventually go back to their home village?”. An
under researched and often neglected topic, I intend to explore their thoughts on and
interpretations of the contemporary Chinese countryside. This in my opinion is of central
importance for the debate about migrants’ “way back home”. It also should prove helpful in
contextualizing the challenges of urbanization in China. According to the results of the survey,
“freedom” has different meanings in Beijing's young female migrants, but we can sum them up in
three correlated categories: freedom as economic freedom, that includes economic independence
and no necessity to rely on other persons (family or partner); freedom as absence of familiar or
relatives' control; freedom of discovering new urban realities and make experiences of great
importance for their personal development and education.
MATTHYSSEN Mieke, Gent University - Department of Chinese Studies, Belgium
The wisdom of foolishness: a contemporary philosophy of life expressed in proverbs
Many Chinese proverbs and sayings reflect a strong inclination to, and even an appreciation of,
an ignorant, foolish or muddled attitude in life. These proverbs and sayings represent a wisdom
of life strongly rooted in mainly Daoist but also Confucian notions, such as wisdom as nonwisdom, constant change and cyclic thinking, self-cultivation and moderation. Such sayings are
often expressed in a dialectical way, opposing wisdom to foolishness (cf Da zhi ruo yu), and clarity
to muddledness (cf Nande hutu). The philosophical foundations of these philosophies of life that
emphasize the virtue of being emotionally and rationally indifferent (Daoism), and that focus on
cultivating a modest and tolerant attitude in interpersonal relations (Confucianism), have been
much popularized in contemporary society. In their contemporary interpretation, these wisdoms
of life not only are products of a cultural philosophical tradition, but also serve as ways of dealing
with daily-life issues. On the one hand, they embody individual strategies for coping with
conflicts, failure, grief and feelings of powerlessness, as such presenting ways to not only stay
mentally, but also physically healthy. On the other hand, often these sayings also offer advice on
how to behave in interpersonal relations (zuo ren). This paper will deal with a few of these sayings
on wisdom and foolishness, and will try to show that, although they might have lost some of
their philosophical depth, these sayings nevertheless are very popular and particularly ‘useful’ in
contemporary China. In addition, this paper will shed some light on the philosophical and
(psycho-)social dimensions of this particular kind of ‘foolish’ wisdom of life.
MAU Chuanhui, Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Mapping South-Western Region of China (Panel: “Traditional Chinese Cartography:
New Aspects and Perspectives”)
The Southwestern region of China refers to the Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan and Guizhou
provinces which border the southwestern frontier of China. This region is well known for
amount of ethnics and natural sources. Since the inclusion of Yunnan province into Chinese
territory under Mongolian rule, the counter of this region differed following the evolution of the
empire. While this region live a great number of non-Han ethnics, Mongolian rulers continued to
administrate there by aboriginal chiefs. During the early Qing, Yongzheng emperor (r. 17231735) decided to strictly apply the Policy named Gaitu guiliu that aimed to replace the aboriginal
chefs by officers sent by the Court. That caused continual struggles in the region. Numerous
maps were draw for showing emperors efficient strategies for maintaining the region peaceful.
This paper aims to gather as large as possible of maps representing the region of the topic,
including general maps of the empire, region maps and separate province maps from the Yuan
period to the Qing dynasty. The goals of this study are to have a general view of the whole maps
relative to this region, and to clarify what means traditional Chinese maps through influences of
Islamic and European cartographies.
MENDES Carmen, Faculdade de Economia,Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
China and the Portuguese-speaking countries: Does multilateralism matter?
This paper analyzes how multilateralism interacts with bilateral channels in the relationship
between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries. It argues that interest in using multilateral
institutions for developing relations is lower in cases where bilateral interaction is mature. On the
contrary, multilateral mechanisms are perceived as important to foster bilateral relations when
these relations are not well established. The paper will first focus on countries with which China
developed a solid relationship, such as Portugal, Brazil and Angola, highlighting the absence of
their clear commitment towards the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China
and the Portuguese-speaking Countries. China and Portugal have a long tradition of historical
links established through Macau. China and Brazil have meaningful political and economic
bilateral relations and multilateralism is mostly used by both countries as an instrument for image
projection in the world. The China-Angola expressive economic and commercial connections
also evolve at the bilateral level. The paper will then focus in the relationships where historical
links or economic trade is not so noticeable and multilateralism is perceived as a very useful tool
to increase cooperation and mutual understanding. Guinea, Mozambique, Cape Verde and East
Timor are taken as case studies to highlight the role that multilateralism can play in their
relationship with China, even if the bilateral channels are acknowledged to be the most important
ones. Conclusions will be drawn from findings of extensive fieldwork carried out in all above
144 mentioned countries, considering the perceptions of its political, economic and business elite.
MEROLLA Sabrina, PostDoc at Shanghai University Center for Contemporary Cultural
Studies
“Save the Children!” Re-thinking an Intellectual Mission for China Contemporary
Cultural Studies
In the last decades wenhua yanjiu, cultural studies, as a new field of research, have undergone
remarkable developments in Mainland China. The spread of this local trend has obviously been
intertwined with the global intellectual contexts of postmodern crisis, though staying definitely
local in many ways. While one of the last decades' massive historical and intellectual turning
points, in Europe, was the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, Mainland China's theoretical 're-birth' -in
the view of those intellectuals from the zhiqing generation who felt to have 'failed' to accomplish
their missions as red guards in the 60s and as young liberals at the end of the 70s and 80s- only
began by the end of the 90s with the the 're-emergence' of the debates on the concept of xiandaihua,
'modernization'. Between the end of the XX century and the very start of the new millennium,
questioning the very concept of 'modernization' in PRC became the central focus of numerous
paradigmatic and counter-paradigmatic discourses about the past history and the future developments
of China. These debates slowly configuring Chinese Cultural and Postcolonial Studies as both,
new theoretical doctrines and concrete answers to the contradictions of contemporary Chinese
and global societies. We will focus on the de-construction and parallel re-built of some concepts
which are still at the very root of Chinese cultural studies fever in Mainland China, in the attempt to
describe the rhizome of some Chinese intellectuals' fascination with this discipline, disclosing the
story of an intellectual and generational crisis, depicting the identity re-definition of a new
generation of zhishi fenzi, raised by a new will to influence future China, through the charming
pedagogic ideal of intellectual re-education to research.
MIDDENDORF Ulrike, University of Heidelberg, Germany
The Sense of Order in Text Architecture: Liu Xie on fu hui (“Contiguity and Coherence”)
diaolong”)
It is well known that Liu Xie’s (ca 465 – ca 532) “Fu hui” (“Contiguity and Coherence”) chapter,
145 Wenxin diaolong 43, is closely related to discussions in other chapters of his monumental work on
genre, rhetoric, and text production. These are “Qing cai” (“Affect and Coloration”), “Rong zai”
(“Casting and Cutting”), “Sheng lü” (“Tones and Pitches”), “Zhang ju” (Stanza and
Verse/Paragraph and Colon), and “Li ci” (“Pairing and Phrasing”). It is especially “Zhang ju”
that like “Fu hui” focus on the issue of text organization and orderly arrangement of parts and
whole, taking into consideration the complexity of the operations of the “patterning mind” (wen
xin). This paper takes as its starting point the postulate that the “Fu hui” chapter is a prime
example of Liu Xie’s own practice of fusing together his “material” of snippets and parts into a
unified whole. Based on this assumption, I will discuss this chapter under the following headings:
First, selection of material regarding the sources of conceptual issues; second, choice of wording
and use of metonymies and metaphors; and third, rules of orderly arrangement of parts and
whole with regard to the four items of the “text body” defined by Liu himself: affect and
intention/mental content, matter and meaning, phrasing and coloration, and tonal patterning.
The analyses of the above points suggest that the “Fu hui” chapter recognizes the organized
complexity of a text. It acknowledges that contiguity and coherence as fundamental qualities of
text organization are determined through an intrinsic rationale, in which relations between at least
two events or units are established. Such “minimal pairs” would be alter and ego, subject and
object, topic and comment as well as binary causal, temporal, and spatial relations. From this can
be inferred that the process of text composition does not only mean an orderly arrangement of
single parts into a complex whole, but also that these parts are congruently distributed over a
string of words, which by nature have certain properties and entertain certain linguistic (syntactic,
semantic, phonological) relations among each other. Deconstructing “Fu hui” also confirms, by
implication, that words are containers of creative power that entertain a part-whole relationship
with the “body-person” of the author.
MIDDENDORF Ulrike, Institute of Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University
Psycho-Philosophy in the Guodian Yu cong er (Collected Sayings, Two): Morality of
Emotion, Affective States, and Personality Traits
The Guodian Yucong er (Collected Sayings, Two), for a large part, focus on the world of the
human psyche and moral issues in ancient China and their relationship with human nature,
ultimately dependent on Heaven and its decree as source of life and destiny. Most notably, the
short phrases of Yucong er, with maximal two tetra syllabic parallel structured cola per strip,
describe the emergence of various cognitive and affective states (including primary and secondary
emotions) as well as personality traits like “strength” (qiang) and “weakness” (ruo) as part of a
larger processual movement. This movement proceeds from inherent “inner” (nei) qualities to
those acquired in the course of socialization through interaction with the environment and
identified as “outer” (wai) qualities. At the same time, the movement implies the principle of
causality, in which an event (the cause) will produce a certain response in form of another event
146 (effect). Based on a linguistic analysis of Yucong er and its intra- and intertextual network of
relationships, this paper explores the highly intriguing ideas about the genesis and operation of
the various affective and cognitive key concepts and terms that appear in sets of strings. It offers
explanations of the rationale behind the particular string types and construction procedures
utilized. The generative order of terms determined by the particular discourse structure, in which
passivization, repetition, climax, and rhyme are employed to highlight and make more memorable
what has been uttered, provides the semantic bedrock of liturgical inculturation of feeling
patterns and behavioral scripts to be either enacted or avoided by the players of social roles,
known, for example, from Xunzi, and characteristically found in teaching texts and oral
instruction with emphasis on elucidation of specific psycho-philosophical terms of moral
significance and value.
MIERZEJEWSKI Dominik, University of Lodz, Poland
[email protected]
Real-constructivism and Chinese foreign policy rhetoric
The relationship between the West and China should not be explained from a short-time
perspective, but rather in from a broader perspective on the issue. The article attempts to analyze
the Chinese foreign policy rhetoric since 1978. The author compares different type of language
used by Chinese policy makers regarding foreign affairs and rhetoric-related reasons and
consequences. The diplomacy, as well as others aspects of social activities of the politicians needs
language as a tool for communication with internal and external public. The Author takes a realconstructivism approach to discuss the impact of China's diplomatic language in shaping Beijing's
influence. To some extant states behavior has been shaped by its rhetoric, in a sense of building
credibility and confidence. Only once the government officially breaks its principles other would
treat it distrustfully. In this context China has been facing big challenges. As being "nonWestern" in the Western system Chinese government has to make a real effort to convince other
of being a positive player. Through research into public discussions, speeches and political
statement the author attempts to explore whether there is a direct correspondence between the
language of Chinese diplomacy and China's ability to shape preferences of other. The major
issues to answer are: 1. How have the rhetoric changed over last 30 years? Whether there has
been any big shift or rather cosmetic changes?, 2. How China tries to built its impact in the nonmaterial sphere in the international relationship?, 3. What kind of vision or alternative Chinese
tries to slip in their political statement?
147 MIKHALEVSKAYA Arina, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University,
Russia
Among the “Southern Barbarians”: The Flight of Last Southern Ming Emperor to Burma
After the fall of Ming, the Qing dynasty forced the remaining Ming loyalists (so-called Southern
Ming dynasty, 1644–1662) to retreat to the South of China, while the last Southern Ming emperor
Yongli eventually had to flee to the lands of today's Burma (Myanmar). Although much research
has been done on the history of the Southern Ming and China-Burma relations, a detailed study
of Yongli’s refuge in Burma has not yet been conducted. The research is based on translation and
analysis of several memoirs of Yongli’s officials who travelled with him into Burma and relevant
parts of two major Burmese chronicles. This paper explores the actions and aims of different
groups, namely Yongli and his officials, independent Chinese military units that followed Yongli
into Burma, small polities in the border region and Qing forces, in order to better understand the
nature of their relations. One of the specific things this paper aims to look at is the Chinese lack
of knowledge on Burma (and their consequent clinging to a traditional image of it as a “barbarian
chieftainship” that can easily be subdued) – in contrast to Burmese higher awareness of China’s
internal affairs. It resulted, in particular, in Yongli being taken hostage by the Burmese, who
made him issue edicts to send Ming loyalist armies away, while gradually killing all the ablebodied man in his party and contacting the Qing to negotiate the terms of handing him over.
MOERMAN Max, Barnard College, Columbia University, NY, USA
Promissory Notes: Talismans, Oaths, and Contracts in Premodern Japanese Religion
The proposed paper examines talismans produced at temples and shrines in late medieval and
early modern Japan. Inscribed on the reverse side of many of these talismans were written
pledges, promises, and contracts of various kinds, which if broken, carried the threat of not only
legal but also divine retribution. These talismanic contracts were used by people of all classes, by
warriors and military commanders to swear their allegiance to their lord, by merchants as
promissory notes and testamental claims, by farmers in pledging unity among co-conspirators of
peasant uprisings, by prostitutes and prostitution houses to document economic and sexual
servitude, and by those same prostitutes as pledges of undying devotion to their patrons. This
paper examines this largely unstudied body of material to analyze the relationship between Daoist
and Buddhist ritual forms in China and Japan and also the relationship between religious, legal,
and economic practices in East Asia.
148 MOLLIER Christine, CNRS, France
Talismans and Astrology: Archaeological Materials and Dunhuang Documents
This paper will demonstrate how certain talismans are reflective of the variety and breadth of
astrological knowledge that circulated in China during the first millennium CE. This analysis will
rest primarily on excavated documents from the Dunhuang cache, but also from archeological
materials dating from the early centuries of the Common Era. A survey of these talismans will
provide a synoptic genealogy of the apotropaic and funerary ritual practices that incorporated
astronomical data from the Han to the late medieval period.
MOLL-MURATA Christine, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Ostasienwissenschaften,
Germany
The Valuation of Labour in Agricultural Occupations in the Ming and Qing
As Sima Qian stated in his “Record of the Money-Makers”, farming is no quick avenue to fame
and wealth. But does it at least convey an honourable reputation? Later orthodoxy placed the
farming occupations as the next in rank to scholar-officials within the “four occupational
groups”. Yet this rough categorization did not take account of the wide range of farming
occupations, from large landowners to landless labourers. This paper explores the valuation of
agricultural labour in the period of commercialization during the late Ming and the Ming-Qing
transition. It first presents agricultural hand-books, which were usually written by managing
landowners for their peers, and tend to focus on grain production, and on contents such as
typologies of soil, plants, sometimes animals, procedures, and tools. Notable exceptions, “Mr.
Shen’s book on agriculture”, ‘Shenshi nong-shu’ (c. 1640), and its sequel, the “Amended
agricultural handbook”, ‘Bu nongshu’ (c. 1658), discuss human labour. From a legal perspective,
hired agricultural labour was considered “menial” in the Ming. In the course of the eighteenth
century, the legal status of hired labourers was gradually raised. Yet in the period under
consideration, tenancy rather than wage labour in agriculture was the dominant means of making
a living. For those who possessed no or not enough land, allocation of these two factors of
149 production, land and labour, complemented each other. Nevertheless, contemporaneous sources
in the era of increasing commercialization by and large focus on land, and legal issues involved
entitlements and rights about land rather than labour conflicts. These phenomena have been
explained in various ways: as a rise of agricultural capitalism or of commercialisation, of
emancipation of the landless class, or conversely as an increase in exploitation. The paper
concludes with an appraisal of the points that can be made for such divergent interpretations.
MONNET Nathalie, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Paris
Ancient Books, New Resources: Online Access to the Ancient Chinese Collections at the
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The Bibliothèque nationale de France is one of the world's major repositories of ancient Chinese
documents. The paper will present an overview of the collections that comprise thousands of
Dunhuang manuscripts from the first millennium of the Christian era and Chinese books from
the Ming and Qing dynasties, kept in the Department of Manuscripts. Detailed instructions as to
how to access the latest online catalogues and digital images will be provided.
MOORE Oliver, Leiden University & National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, The
Netherlands
Authentic Persons in Early Chinese Passport History (Panel: “In between borders: Visual
Culture in Transition in early 20th century China”)
Policies to resist migration resulted in practices that implement categorical ethnic/individual
identification and social control in many parts of the globe to this day. One of the modern
technologies that has long supported these efforts is photography, which was/is deployed via the
authenticating form of an individual passport. Scholarship on photography claims that its portrait
frame was the burden of a class of ‘fetishized Others’. However, early forms of Chinese
passports suggest origins for Chinese regimes of identification in which the infrastructures
actually minimized—or even disregarded—subjects’ visual identities. The larger point is that
apparently global regimes of identification contended with locally formed ideas of social control.
This history demonstrates the inimical encounters of different visual cultures at national
borders—visual cultures in migration, perhaps—and reveals the tension between global
visualizing ambitions and resistant preferences to affirm the status of a ‘portrait’ locally.
150 MYLNIKOVA Yulia, St. Petersburg State University, Russia
The Tang-Song transition: Woman as a victim in sexual offence and as a subject of
responsibility in breaking moral norms
The legislation regulating the gender order of the society could be found in the relevant chapters
of the Tang and Song codes: in the articles regarding marriage order, inheriting of property and
illegal extra-marital relations. In comparison with considerably profoundly studied issues of
marriage and women’s property rights in the inheritance regime of imperial China, the studies of
the Tang and Song legislation regulating sexual relations in the society are poor. The author has
made an attempt to investigate the legal status of women in Tang and Song dynasties on the basis
of the legislation regarding crimes against sexual inviolability (rape, sexual harassment) and
breaking general moral and ethical norms (unfaithfulness of the wife or husband, incest etc). In
the Chinese Imperial legal system the abovementioned offences are referred to as “depraved
intercourse” (fan jian zui). The traditional Chinese law contemplates the three main categories of
accusation: for rape (qiang jian), adultery (he jian) and breaking the moral rules (luan lun). The
analysis is done basing on the three sources: the Tang code “Tang lü shu yi”, the Song code “Song
xing tong” and the Southern Song legislation “The collection of laws compiled during the Qingyuan period” (“Qing-yuan tiao fa shi lei”). The traditional Chinese law reflected Confucian ideology
and the clan structure, moral principles and norms were projected on family and clan, and every
person was connected by strong family and clan ties throughout one’s life. From the analysis of
the legislation of the two periods (VII – XIII centuries) it can be concluded that the tendency to
protect the ethical system of relations between people has been preserved, and the Song law
more carefully treated women`s rights and paid more attention to the welfare of marital relations,
seeking to maintain stability within the society in general. In comparison with the Tang law, the
Song legislation on sexual offense, especially the Southern Song law, was more
progressive and tended to greater rationalization. The Song law prescribed bigger restrictions on
illegal sexual acts by a man and to a bigger extent protected personal rights of women. It is not
about whether punishment was severe or soft, but about the fact that the Song legislation paid a
great attention to the gender order.
NAGEL-ANGERMANN Monique,
Ostasienkunde, Münster, Germany
WWU
Münster,
Institut
für
Sinologie
Strategies for the re-establishment of order in times of turmoil during the Jin dynasty
151 und
The period of the Western and Eastern Jin was characterized by the vain effort to establish an
effective central administrative and political control. Nomadic invasion and internal struggle led
to a massive migration from the central plain towards the south, where the Eastern Jin tried to reestablish their dynasty. In the north however, sixteen very short living regimes established by
semi-nomadic leaders mostly competed with each other. Constant warfare seemed to have made
it nearly impossible to re-establish order. Nevertheless, all the different leaders in the north as
well as the rulers of the Sima family in the south were facing the problem to restructure their
realm. The official histories of the period provide us with their account about how the various
regimes dealt with this challenge. Looking at the heterodox representations of these regimes in
the histories different pattern of legitimization can be observed. Another interesting point is the
reference to the care or re-establishment of institutions. Exemplary debates about criminal law
instruments might give us further insights about changing attitudes towards law in times of
turmoil. Based on these aspects the paper will evaluate different strategies and discourses about
the re-establishment of order as they are depicted by the transmitted histories of this special
period of history.
NAKAMURA Motoya, Tsuda College, Japan
Reconsidering the Political System of the People’s Republic of China by Studying the
Structure of the Constitution of the Republic of China (1947) (Panel: “Whither the
Chinese Political Regime? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”)
The political culture in China has generally been accepted as being conducive to a single-party
autocratic regime. However, China attempted a range of constitutional reforms in the first half of
the 20th century. Taking into account the success and failure of these reforms, the country
developed a number of diverse constitutional theories. Political reform and political reform
theories based around the idea of a constitutional government culminated in the Constitution of
the Republic of China, which came into effect in 1947. The enforcement of this Constitution was
strongly connected to the global transition towards liberalism and constitutionalism at the time.
However, the liberal Constitution of the Republic of China was not accepted by the People’s
Republic of China, which instead opted for a socialist government. Nonetheless, a complex
relationship between the two does exist. This report will study, in detail, the following
relationships: 1) Systematic similarities between the National Assembly of the Republic of China
and the National People’s Congress ― Influence of Germany (the Weimar Constitution) and the
Soviet Union (socialism). 2) Systematic differences from the viewpoint of the provision on
rights/liberties ― Constitutional reform issues in modern and contemporary China: political
parties and the parliament. 3) Reevaluation of constitutional reforms during China’s republican
period (1912-1949) and the China Law Society (1990’s - ) ― Harmony and antagonism between
democracy and constitutionalism.
152 NERI Corrado, University Jean Moulin, Lyon 3, France
Politics of anthropophagy: shifting representation of cannibalism and cultural identity in
Hong Kong cinema
What we eat defines us – and the taboo surrounding food defines national identities, imagined
communities, ethnical or religious enemies. This paper will concentrate on different
representations of eating and definition of cultural communities. Reflecting on Chinese food
culture it seemed to me that Hong Kong, as a very specific site of post-colonial allegorical
representation, could be investigated as a specific, peculiar yet global center of production of
discourse on self and the other, search for identity and the fear of losing one’s distinctiveness.
Immediately it appeared that, in the cinematography of Hong Kong, a very specific declination of
food culture came to the foreground: cannibalism. This article explores the interaction of the
allegory of “cannibalism” and the symbolic of the borders. These aspects can and will overlap
and merge, creating opaque texts open to interpretation. I chose to analyze 3 films that speak of
cannibalism and tell different stories of madness, excess, horror. Thorough their depiction of
cannibalism, it is possible to read anxieties related to the (re)definition of national identity and the
peculiar relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China, negotiating who is the original
and who the colonizer, who detains the ancient wisdom or ancient madness, where the
“traditional” culture is to be found – and the concern related to the fact that (what defines itself
as) modern world (capitalist Hong Kong) wants to find the “original” truth lost in an (imaginary)
past. Even if maybe it’s not ready to deal with what it will find “out there”. The films date from 3
decades: one from the eighties (Tsui Hark’s We’re Going to Eat You), one from the nineties
(Hermann Yau’s The Untold Story), and one from the 2000’s (Peter Chan’s Dumplings). The allegory
of cannibalism is slowly shifting from inacceptable to acceptable, showing how the cultural
system is moving, how the values and the resistance vis-à-vis the retrocession will change in the
eyes of these prominent directors.
NG Ka yi, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, PRC
This-worldly Solutions Towards Otherworldliness: Zhuangzi’s Unknown Discourse on
Politics, Economy and Sociality and Secret Appropriation of Confucianism and Legalism
Confucianism and Daoism have traditionally been held in the polarised positions of active human
intervention in/ transcendental seclusion from this world, complementary in their real-life
application only because of the extremity of the scholar-officials’ ups and downs in the rigorous
153 dynastic politics. Amongst the Daoist classics, Zhuangzi has particularly been deemed archetypical
of China’s classical nihilism, with its ideal advocated but an unrealisable throwback based on a
radical sentiment of wholesale castaway and denial of politics, sociality and indeed humanity and
human organisations of whatever forms. This purported one-sidedness towards spiritual freedom
has in turn reinforced Daoism’s entrenched image of unconcern about the mundane. Through
copious enumeration and intense textual analysis, this paper seeks to disprove the above. Taking
from On Seeing Things as Equal (Qiwulun) – long deemed most enunciative of his pure otherworldliness – his writing on “walking two way” (Liang-xing), this paper uses it as an organising
framework and brings back in it Zhuangzi’s practical and not infrequently pragmatic discourse on
the way to equipoise when put under specified circumstances – political (war/tyranny), economic
(agriculture/handicraft industry/commerce) and socio-cultural (custom/norms/ethnographical
rituals). This paper further argues that, without extrapolation or heavy interpretive effort, a
Zhuangzi that readily recognises the constancy of human subjection to the constraints of the
Nature, society and the self is rather obtainable, as from rereading (of the ostensibly concluded
passages), more careful reading (of the layered/interlocked messages) and better attention (to
statements customarily relegated to unimportance). These lead towards: (i) fleshing out Zhuangzi
with its pragmatic dimension which focuses on the here-and-now immediacy of the real world
and the practical steps that may be taken to lead to the ultimate ideal (subsequently wrongly
reduced to be his ONLY dimension); (ii) discovery of how, in depicting this pragmatic way
alongside the more -idealistic way (cf Liang-xing), Zhuangzi had actually appropriated the
Confucian discourse on humaneness, righteousness and courtesy (ren, yi, li) and the Legalist
discourse on a general order under law (qi yu fa), and hence the disinterment of their hidden
dialogue; (iii) a general rereading of other classics along a similar line, and rediscoveries of other
kinds.
NG Yau-nang William, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist
University, China
Chinese Ghost Story and Political Discourse in Colonial Hong Kong
This paper seeks to interpret the hidden political discourses in the different re-presentations of a
short Chinese ghost story in the Hong Kong cinema. The paper will focus upon the written text
of a short story entitled “Nie Xiaoqian” in Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and
five movies adapted from that story. In order to show the changes in content and characters,
comparisons among these film texts will be made. The paper will, then, seek to explain these
changes against the political background under which these movies were made. The paper tries to
demonstrate to the extent that political discourses like the so-called “reconquering of mainland”
of the KMT government in the 1960’s, the Tiananmen Square Protest in 1989 and the
immigration trend in Hong Kong since the Sino-British negotiation on the return of Hong Kong
to China have influenced the re-presentation of this folklore ghost story. The ghost story not
154 only reflects the fear of supernatural power but also the fear and uneasiness of the Hong Kong
people in facing China. These movies, in this light, can be viewed as a counter political discourse
in cinema based upon a reinterpretation and representation of a pre-modern ghost story.
NIENHAUSER William, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Narrative and Rhetorical Structures in Han-dynasty Accounts of the Yue Peoples
This paper examines the attitudes expressed towards the tribes on the southern borders of the
Han. Although the basis of Ban Gu’s “Xinan Yi, Liang Yue, Chaoxian zhuan” (Memoir on the
Southwestern Yi, the Two Yues, and Chaoxian) was the four parallel chapters in the Shiji, these
accounts were abridged in the Han shu (chapter 95). In so doing Ban Gu obliterates some of the
subtleties of the Shiji accounts, distorts Sima Qian’s narrative and rhetorical constructs, and
simplifies the relationships between the Han and their southern neighbors as Sima saw them.
This paper will re-examine Sima Qian’s constructs and their possible meaning before speculating
on Ban Gu’s motives in his revision.
NIETO Gladys Center for East Asian Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Reflections on Uses of Time and Space among Chinese Young People in Madrid
In the last three decades, Chinese migrants’ flows to Spain have secured the setting up of families
from the People’s Republic of China and their descendants in our country. Research fieldwork on
Chinese second generation or Chinese immigrants’ children in Spain is still partial with the
exception of some unpublished reports and results of restricted circulation, applied for the City
Council and other public institutions. Based on a current research aiming at filling the gap on
investigations on Chinese young people living in Spain, in this paper I analyze the forms in which
Chinese young migrants spend their time and the places they go to regularly or avoid. The way
Chinese young people build meanings on the use of time and place may come into contradiction
with the meanings assigned by institutions such as the family, the school, the State, civil
organizations, law enforcement agencies, etc. Therefore Chinese young people negotiate, agree
and contest the demands originating from such agents and social institutions. ‘Youth’ uses to be
experienced from inside if young people recognize it as a state that nurtures from the present.
But it can also be identified from outside when social institutions consider it as a transitional
155 phase of training for the future, from a teleological point of view. My study object is limited to
Chinese young immigrants or Spanish-born Chinese of both sexes, bachelors, no matter their
origin were rural or urban, between 15 and 24 years old. Examples are taken entirely from Usera
neighborhood, the district that concentrates the majority of Chinese population living in Madrid
City.
NIKITINA Alexandra, St. Petersburg State, Russia
“Song of Ouyang Hai”: deconstruction of an ‘ideal hero’
The article deals with the main character of the novel “Song of Ouyang Hai” by Jin Jingmai
(1965) and aims to evaluate the extent to which the author was successful in depicting a
persuasive and well-rounded image. Ouyang Hai, having a real prototype – a PLA-squad leader,
was one of the plenty of literary “ideal heroes” promoted by the China’s official propaganda in
the 1960s. The author was given an instruction from higher authorities “to show the changes in
the army through the mental evolution of Ouyang Hai”. In the beginning of the novel we see a
small boy suffering from cold and poverty with his family. The character seems very vivid and
the reader believes in his hardship and appreciates his kindness and compassion to his relatives.
As Ouyang Hai grows older, the reader observes the deconstruction of the image. After joining
the army his speech gets gradually filled with new words and set phrases: ‘serve the people’, ‘serve
the revolution’, ‘revolution demands’, ‘build the socialism’. The philosopher Merab
Mamardashvili remarkably interpreted such slogans in relation to the Soviet Union stating that
they do not convey any certain meaning but only substitute the items of reality. Ironically, the
author unintentionally takes part in recent postmodern experiments of that time using the
method of intertext and simulacra. The novel is full of intertextual references: Ouyang Hai is
fond of reading books about revolutionary heroes and works by Mao Zedong, which were
adored by majority of Chinese people at that time. The character himself becomes a sum of
cliché, he no longer convinces a reader that he personifies a real man. The author enables
Ouyang Hai to think that he is ‘serving the revolution’ and ‘building socialism’. As noted by
Mamardashvili, such words represent something that does not exist in reality, being only a sign
with no signified object. All other characters are meant to shade out the image of Ouyang Hai.
The novel becomes a quasi-reality where only shades of real people interact. Ouyang Hai made of
artificial propaganda slogans is ‘deconstructed’ into these elements. The author fails to create a
trustworthy image with individual features and the reader no longer believes in it.
NÜRNBERGER Marc, University of Munich, Germany
Investigating the Plotters of Revolt - A Critical Reading of the “Memoir of Huai-nan and
Heng-shan”
This paper will focuses on the Shiji chapter in which the events centered on Liu Ch’ang, King of
Huai-nan, and his sons, unfolds. All three became finally victims of “rumors of revolt.” In the
case of Liu Ch’ang we are told, that his overbearing behavior towards Emperor Wen, his older
brother, cumulated in an plot to revolt. Exiled to the far West, he died en route under curious
circumstances. While the memoir does tire of mentioning the regrets of the Emperor, his actions
speak a different language. As king, Liu An led Huai-nan to an unparalleled prosperity. Unlike the
physical strength of his father, he is characterized as a man of letters. But oddly his biography
suddenly loses interest in his learned achievements and focuses exclusively on the ever more
absurd depiction of him preparing a revolt. In the last part of the memoir the reader witnesses an
incredible net of envy and malevolence that unfolds around the King of Heng-shan, as if only to
prove the saying that the people of the South have always been “fond of revolt.” The proposed
presentation will investigate once more the background of these so called revolts of the South
that ended with the extermination of Liu Ch’ang and his heirs. Some questions to be considered
are: why some commentators accused Emperor Wu of jealousy and the intriguing ministers of
feigned loyalty? What was the role of the court? And who were the real plotters of revolt?
NYLAN Michael, University of Berkeley, History Department, California, USA
Western Han Courts – Consultative or Absolute Monarchies?
Imperial China”)
My talk will discuss but one of twelve Western Han imperial courts, the court of Han Chengdi
(33-7 BC). I will confine my remarks to three types of evidence to determine the delegation of
powers and responsibilities at Chengdi's court: (1) the writings of Yang Xiong, (2) the memorials
of Gu Yong, and (3) various applications to the throne submitted by members of the ruling Liu
clan. In addition, I will examine the different descriptions given of Chengdi's reign in two
authoritative works in the received tradition -- Ban Gu's (32-92) Hanshu (compiled ca. AD 100)
and Xun Yue's (148-209) Hanji -- the better to ascertain the aspects of Chengdi's court that still
evoked controversies during Eastern Han. These materials, when read together with Cai Yong's
(132-92) Du duan, lead to the inescapable conclusion that Chengdi's court functioned less as an
absolute monarchy than as a consultative monarchy upholding a sort of unwritten constitution
built from legal and administrative precedents (cf. England after 1066). Needless to say, this
157 conclusion may not hold for all Western Han courts (e.g., Wudi's court). More work needs to be
done before we can reasonably ascertain whether Chengdi's court constitutes a major exception
to most of Western Han rule, but I suspect not.
OLIVOVÁ Lucie, Department of Asian Studies, Philosophical Faculty, Palacký University,
Czech Republic
Representations of Women in the Book Yangzhou huafang lu, 1795
My research for this topic basically relied on a single historic source: Yangzhou huafang lu,
published in 1795. It is a detailed book about Yangzhou, a city in Jiangnan which had become –
at the time – the dazzling cultural centre, similar to Paris at the end of the (19th) century. The
text in Chinese covers more than 400 pages (of the modern edition) and overflows with various
information about the city, its topography, history, but also about the people who stayed there,
and about their lifestyle. Almost 1700 persons – men and women – were written about, and have
their names recorded. However, women hardly reach three percent of the total amount. Is this
number adequate to the social standing of urban women in the second half of the 18th century?
It is also striking that one half of them were singsong girls. What social groups did the other
women represent, and why were certain groups treated in more detail than other? These are some
of the questions my paper attempts to answer. To reach a conclusion which would characterize
the memory of women in this book, I shall profit from the specific data it contains, for example,
the fates of some women. Moreover, the structure of the text makes possible to indicate in which
parts of the town women, or women’s communities, lived: this is revealing in the cases of women
who earned living by themselves.
ONG Chang Woei, Dipartment of Chinese Studies, The National University of Singapore
Literary Archaism and the Problems of North and South in Mid-Ming Court Politics: The
Case of Li Mengyang
This is a study of Ming dynasty scholar Li Mengyang (1473-1529), who achieved great fame for
being the most important pioneer of the archaist movement (fugu, literally “restoring the ancient
way”) in literature and who was retrospectively regarded as the leader of the literary group “The
Former Seven Masters.” In standard textbooks on Chinese literature, the “Former Seven
Masters” were often applauded for rejecting the “Cabinet Style”—the signature literary style of
the grand councilors—and also the Eight-Legged Essays used in the civil examination. At the
158 same time, they were castigated for blindly imitating the ancient styles. Views similar to this have
dominated our understanding of the “Former Seven Masters” and the archaist movement. As
scholars have pointed out, modern Chinese intellectuals’ hostility toward Ming dynasty archaist
movements was motivated first and foremost by a May Fourth anti-traditionalist stance, which
tends to portray all intellectual ventures that took the past seriously in a negative light. As such,
much of the effort in the past decades has been devoted to determining whether proponents of
the archaist ideals were really norm-conforming and stubbornly anti-expressive. More recently,
scholars have begun to explore the regional characteristics of the movement. The fact that out of
the seven “masters,” six were northerners did not go unnoticed. But less attention has been paid
to exploring the interplay between regional consciousness, politics at court and the crafting of
literary ideals. The purpose of this paper is to explain how intense political struggles, fueled by a
rhetoric of north-south divide, caused Li Mengyang to invoke a unique idea of an ideal past to
counter the conventional literary practices of his days.
OVERGAARD Signe, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Business
Communication and Information Science, Sonderborg, Denmark
Cultivating China’s soft power – an act of nation branding
In recent years soft power has become a key issue at the highest political level in China, focusing
especially on cultural soft power. This is reflected in important political documents, such as five
year plans, plenum meeting summaries, as well as speeches by Hu Jintao and other politicians at
the highest level. The repeated mention of soft power has also been accompanied by a wide
range of efforts to strengthen China’s image abroad. These efforts include hosting major events,
such as the Olympic Games and World Expo, establishing a worldwide network of Confucius
Institutes, as well as organizing more local level activities, such as establishing friendship town
relations and organizing local cultural events abroad. This research paper analyses China’s efforts
to improve its soft power image as an act of nation branding. First, it looks into the discourse on
soft power in political documents including speeches in order to find out what kind of national
image towards the outside world the government wishes to convey. Furthermore, examples of
events and activities organized by Chinese government institutions, which are targeted at a
foreign audience, will be analyzed in order to find out what kind of image of China is being
conveyed, and how this image matches the soft power discourse in the political documents.
PALTEMAA Lauri, Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland, and VUORI
Julia
The Lexicon of Fear – Quantitative Analysis of Micro Blog Censorship in the People’s
Republic of China
The paper analyses the ‘sensitive word list’ at the Sina micro blogs. The list has been generated by
Sina micro blog users through crowdsourcing and contains over 1000 sensitive words. While
Chinese Internet censorship has been extensively studied, thus far little attention has been
directed to actual word-level structure of the censorships lexicon. In the paper, the lexicon is
sorted out and analyzed quantitatively. It is argued that censorship mostly targets proper names
of both natural persons and organizations, and only to a lesser degree phrases or concepts such
as ‘democracy’. Censorship is also very contextual: it is as important who says what as what is
being said. Moreover, censorship has flexible and stable parts. The on-average stay-time of most
sensitive words is only a few months, yet censorship also contains the ‘hard core’ of semipermanent sensitive words, which are not allowed in free popular discourse. Focaultian concepts
of good, bad, and dangerous ‘circulation’ can be fruitfully used to conceptualize such government
of words by security experts.
PAN Junliang, École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
Possession, Identification and Exorcism in Medieval Daoism
(Panel: “Daoism”)
Spirit possession is a recurrent topic in the texts of Medieval China and all kinds of exorcism that
cope with it rest on the identification of the origin of possessing demons. This is because
punishment and reward of spirits can only be applied through a system of naming, which consists
in describing every possible spirit that one may want to control. Daoist masters must memorize
the corpus of such names and descriptions so as to identify the possessing ghost and choose the
most appropriate way to treat it. Uttering an exorcistic text is not necessary since in China it is
writing which is sacred, and the oral element is secondary in the exorcistic rituals; the Daoist
master primarily sends document to celestial or earthly bureaus in order to request spirit powers
to remove the demons. Yet, Daoist masters cannot heal all patients with his knowledge of
demonology only, especially in the case of patients who fell ill because of their own wrongdoings.
In other words, when the patient is possessed by his own sin, he can only be healed through
moral treatment: confession. This is what historians who were witnesses to the Daoism of Great
Peace and of the Celestial Master observed, notably in the case of the latter. The issue of
identification is crucial in Daoism since the Daoist master is not only expected to identify
demons in order to deliver patients from spirit possession, but also has to identify the origin of
the pneuma that he is covered with when he engages in self-cultivation. He then evinces the same
symptom as a possessed person and needs go to see his master in order to receive a new register
160 which “answers” the convocation-spirit. The paper thus aims at clarifying the historical origins of
exorcistic and naming practices that still define the Daoists’ liturgical roles today.
PAN Shaw-Yu, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
From Fascination to Fashion: Zhou Shoujuan and His Semi-Monthly Ziluolan (Violet)
Apart from being a famous Mandarin Duck and Butterfly (yuanyang hudie pai) novelist and
translator, Zhou Shoujuan (1895-1968) was also one of the most active editors of popular
magazines during the Republican period. Among the dozen of magazines that Zhou edited, the
semi-monthly Ziluolan (Violet, 1925-1930) witnessed the maturity of his editorship and his lifetime obsession with the icon “Violet.” Zhou’s tragic love affair with a girl named Violet (Zhou
Yinping) had not only become the most important drive to his sentimental writing, but also
inspired him to construct a fantastic world of “Violet” of his own. Most of the objects that Zhou
owned, including his pseudonyms, his residence, garden, art collections, and stationery were
related to this particular image that signified love and beauty to him. This paper investigates how
Zhou combined his passion for “Violet” with the promotion of popular literature and Western
modernity in the magazine Ziluolan, which played an important role in shaping Shanghai urban
culture in the late 1920s and early 1930s, against the thriving ideologies of communist and
nationalist during the same time period. On the one hand, Zhou relied on various English and
American popular magazines (such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, The London Magazine, and
The Strand Magazine) as editing models and sources of translations; on the other hand, he
endeavored to make Ziluolan his “garden of literature” that helped to advertize his personal
fascination with “Violet” and eventually to create a fashion of “Violet.” By inserting separate
columns into the magazine, Zhou provided “private” spaces for different groups of writers (most
of them belong to the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly school) who were invited to his secret
garden to share his romantic feelings. Nevertheless, the highly artistic design, photos, paintings,
and numerous advertisements of items of modern/Western life in this magazine showed a clear
awareness of fashion and strong commercialist intention. As a result, I argue, Ziluolan can be seen
as an editing project that perfectly integrated personal/affectional and public/commercial
purposes, while its success further enhanced Zhou’s act of self-fashioning.
PAN Tsung-Yi, Department of History, Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
From “May Fourth” to “April Fifth”: Poeticizing the Voice of Protest and Chinese
Revolutionary Memory at Tiananmen Square
161 The purpose of this article is to consider the significance of the 1976 April Fifth Movement at
Tiananmen Square by a close reading of the Tiananmen Poems from the perspective of the
politics of memory making. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Tiananmen
Square was constructed as a performance stage to display state disciplinary power and a memorial
space to embody Mao’s revolutionary discourse. However, during the April Fifth Movement in
1976, the place was converted into a short-lived public sphere in which grassroots activists found
an outlet to voice their protest against state power by posting memorial poems at the base of the
Monument to the People’s Heroes (Monument). It was through those memorial poems from
Tiananmen Square, or the Tiananmen Poems, that a popular discourse on the movement was
invented. The Tiananmen Poems thus constitute a mnemonic vehicle to embody the popular
memory of Zhou Enlai and the movement. As the carrier of popular reminiscences of the event,
the Tiananmen Poems constitute valuable materials to examine the politics of historical memory
involved in the public commemoration for Zhou Enlai at Tiananmen Square. They document the
war over memory between the state and the people, in which popular mourners broke through
the state discipline and official blackout to express their mourning over the late Zhou by posting
memorial poems. They open a window to look at the spatial and physical framework of memory
making implicated in the political drama of the April Fifth Movement. They disclose how the
mourners from below conceptualized Tiananmen Square as the sacred site of the communist
revolutionary tradition during the movement while projecting their future envision of Chinese
modernity. They allow us to explain why the mourners went to the specific spot around the
Monument to memorialize an individual, Zhou Enlai. Finally, the Tiananmen Poems lead us to
look into the politics of the uses of memory and history during and after the April Fifth
Movement. Along with the political struggles and transitions within the Chinese Communist
Party in post-Mao China, the popular discourse embodied in the Tiananmen Poems was
sanctioned and manipulated by the party to serve and justify its political demands, such as the
Four Modernizations and the Four Cardinal Principles.
PATERNICO’ Luisa Maria, University of Rome "Sapienza", Italy
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Chinese Language Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Europe – The Need for
Standardization
A European project is currently carried on by a team of four Universities: London School of
Oriental and African Studies (UK), University of Rennes 2 (FR), Freie Universität of Berlin (GE)
and University of Rome “Sapienza”(IT). It is called “European Benchmarking Chinese
Language” (EBCL). The aim of the project is to create a benchmark framework for Chinese
language based upon the “Common European Framework of Reference” (CEFR), taking into
consideration both linguistic knowledge and inter-cultural competence. It aims at seting a
common pattern to evaluate the four main skills (spoken production, spoken reception, written
production and written reception) in a scale of levels. Every year in Europe, Chinese language
162 becomes part of a growing number of University courses and is included in more and more
secondary school’s curricula. For European languages a commonly accepted and widely used
framework of refercence has been set: it prescribes exactly the linguistic competences that the
learner must acquire to reach a certain level. It also sets the criteria to assess them. The only
framework that has been so far used for Chinese language is that provided by Hanban for the
“Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi” (HSK) which, however, is very distant from the European framework.
Nowadays, different countries, universities or institutions throughout Europe use different
criteria for Chinese language learning, teaching and assessment. This has many disadvantages and
affects negatively the students’ mobility. The main challenges of the project are: would it be
possible to use the existing CEFR for Chinese language, being Chinese quite distant from other
European languages? How can the CEFR be implemented in order to meet the needs of the
European learner of Chinese? Overcoming these problems will mean being able to benchmark
Chinese language, and this will provide a useful reference to standardize Chinese language
teaching and assessment throughout Europe.
PAVLIĆEVIĆ Dragan , School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham,
UK
Governance Innovation, State-building and Democratization in Urban Zhejiang
This paper aims to contribute to the existing academic discussion about the ongoing political
reforms in China by taking an innovative conceptual approach. Departing from the scholarship
on state building and democratization, the study adopts a theoretical perspective that
distinguishes between access to power and exercise of power. The focus is on the innovative governance
mechanisms in urban Zhejiang, including citizens evaluation of officials (minzhu ceping), public
hearings (tingzheng hui) and different forms of consultative meetings (minzhu kentan). These
innovations, already under implementation in number of localities in Zhejiang and China, have so
far largely evaded the scholarly attention. They aim to improve the quality and responsiveness of
governance by allocating greater space for political participation to Chinese citizens and
increasing the importance of the public input in the process of policy making. They are, however,
firmly placed within China’s one-party system. The paper aims to understand how these
mechanisms are implemented, what are their limits and achievements as well as evaluate their
capacity to translate popular preferences into policies and measures. In concluding segment, the
paper will discuss whether these mechanisms contribute to party-state’s state building efforts and
democratization of China’s polity. The study draws on first-hand data collected in Zhejiang in
2012.
163 PAYNE Christopher N., Academy of East-Asian Studies, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul,
Korea
Refusing the Self/Refusing Hong Kong: Anti-sociality and the Refusal to Be in Dung
Kai-cheung’s Androgyny and Paired-Bodies (Panel: “Changing Representations of Hong
Kongness in Literature and Film since the 1950s”)
In the run-up to the retrocession of Hong Kong in 1997, there was a veritable boom in cultural
production exploring the city: its people, history, culture and future(s). Finally, Hong Kong
seemed to be no longer on the “margins of the margins.” In the heyday of this Hong Kong
culture fever, two important novels by the now well-known novelist Dung Kai-cheung (Dong
Qizhang) appeared on the literary scene: Androgyny (Anzhuozhenni) in 1996 and Paired-Bodies
(Shuangshen) in 1997. Whilst both works received critical recognition upon publication (mostly
in Taiwan, however, where both were printed), neither has been considered at length for how
they relate to the attempt in the 1990s to realise and (re-)construct a Hong Kong cultural identity.
To help fill this void, this paper argues that Dung’s novels certainly do speak of this yearning to
be Hong Kong, but not in a manner that is expected. Rather, Androgyny and Paired-Bodies explore
this desire to be by means of negation. In their purposive refusal to narrate a coherent sense of
self, both texts, it is argued, symbolically challenge the very legibility of Hong Kong. That is, the
psycho-social effacement of the central character in Androgyny, read in conjunction with the
determined narrative refusal in Paired-Bodies to overcome the mental and social angst endured by
the body/ies of an (unintended?) M/F transgendered protagonist, perform an anti-social revolt
against any and all singular re/presentations of Hong Kong. Within this refusal to be, Dung’s
novels “resist mastery” and challenge the dominant mainstream (PRC?) language of what it
means to live in/as Hong Kong. To play with Ackbar Abbas’ popular phrase, this essay delights
in how Androgyny and Paired-Bodies revel in the city’s “failed” culture of dis-appearance.
PEJCOCHOVA Michaela, National Gallery in Prague, Collection of Asian Art, Czech
Republic
Chinese or Western – The ambiguity of the painting styles of some 20th-century masters
of Chinese painting, as reflected by works preserved in collections outside of China
It is widely acknowledged that the discipline of Chinese painting underwent tremendous changes
caused by foreign influences during late 19th and early 20th centuries. A large number of Chinese
students received artistic training in Japan and Europe and Western teachers helped to establish
programs that incorporated the use of Western media and techniques into the curricula of
Chinese universities. Consequently, number of Chinese painters emerged, who were able to use
both traditional Chinese ink painting and Western painting techniques to create their works of
164 art. Moreover, although other painters were working mainly in traditional media, later historians
and critics described their works as influenced by Western painting styles, this being at times even
unacknowledged by the artists themselves. While the specific painting styles and lifetime corpuses
of the artists’ oeuvre have been receiving due scholarly attention for many decades now, in-depth
studies of the unique forms the mutual influences of Chinese and Western elements and resulting
stylistic ambiguities acquire in case of many individual painters are still rare. In addition, it has to
be noted that collections of Chinese painting outside of China (mainly in Europe and Japan) are,
due to the singular conditions of their genesis, often capable of presenting a significantly different
picture of the artist or his oeuvre from the notorious one based mainly on his works housed in
Chinese collections. In my paper, I would like to inquire into the specific stylistic features of
paintings by Qi Baishi, Wu Changshi, Lin Fengmian, Li Keran, Xu Beihong and others, which
might be discussed in terms of Chinese/Western ambiguity. I will attempt to show that some of
them were caused by the unique conditions stemming from the complex situation of artistic
exchange between Chinese and European worlds, which occurred in the first three decades of the
20th century, and were not – as is sometimes suggested – mere “adoptions” of Chinese or
Western features or stylistic elements. I will use mainly paintings housed in collections outside of
China to illustrate my points, which have not, to my knowledge, been previously studied in a
complex manner. This will, eventually, also bring forth interesting observations concerning the
nature of the foreign collections of Chinese painting themselves.
PELLAT Valérie, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University, UK
The translation of narrative mode and narrative point of view in Chinese nursery rhymes:
dealing with gender and time-frames in the discourse of the rhymes in Chinese- English
translation and how translation may impact on the implicit ideological messages of the
rhymes.
The translation of narrative mode and narrative point of view in Chinese nursery rhymes: how
translation of gender and time-frames in the discourse of the rhymes may impact on the implicit
ideological messages of the rhymes. Chinese traditional nursery rhymes and children’s rhymes are
rhythmic, rhyming poems. They follow the pattern of traditional Chinese poetry in their
concision, which is in part due to the paucity of personal pronouns and time reference and the
absence in Chinese of grammatical case and gender. These features are related to the topic
prominent nature of Chinese, in which a reference chain may background a main protagonist
through the use of zero anaphoric reference and even zero grammatical subject. This means that
the rhymes as they stand are highly implicit. For children and adults in the culture, it is not
difficult to construe a situation and allocate a narrative point of view: they can infer and imagine a
first person narrator, a second person addressee or audience, or a third person protagonist, as
they see fit. Translation into English and various other European languages requires grammatical
precision which entails the introduction of a more specific, explicit narrative point of view.
165 English requires grammatical subjects and objects. These are necessarily expressed through the
medium of personal pronouns which carry person, gender and number, and verb forms which
specify time frames not made explicit in the source text. Choice of a specific narrative point of
view inevitably influences the narrative voice: the way a girl talks about her own predicament will
differ subtly from the description made by a third party, however sympathetic. This paper aims to
show how translation can conceal or reveal attitudes to gender-related issues in the rhymes
through choice of narrative mode and narrative point of view, particularly in the ‘Little cabbage’
and ‘Third Sister’ sub-genres. What help is given in the context of the rhymes to enable the
translator to establish a narrative point of view for the translation? How can a translator justify
the point of view that is chosen and the narrative voice that accompanies the point of view?
PENG Chang Ming, University “Charles de Gaulle”, Lille 3, France
Collecting Far Eastern paintings in France from the nineteenth to early twentieth
century: actors, issues and artistic implications (Panel: “Cross-cultural issues and private
collection” /Section 1:“Collectors at home: cross-cultural inspirations”)
The artistic impact in France of Far Eastern painting, and particularly Chinese was often
overlooked, unlike that of Japanese prints. And yet Chinese paintings were to be seen in many
collections (Deveria, Goncourt, Gonse, Thiers, Bing, Hayashi, Degas, Doucet...). The analysis of
archives, auction catalogs, exhibitions and writings gives an idea of the content of these
collections. A change in taste is then associated with a more scholarly approach. Because of the
social relationships developed among collectors, dealers, scholars and artists around these
collections, one shall also consider the diversity of issues and impact (contribution to training and
building the vision of that art, changing the discourse on painting of Far East, and artistic
resonances). Indeed, artists such as Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Marquet,
Matisse were sensitive to Far Eastern painting, as shown in some of their productions. This paper
aims at deepening these aspects of nineteenth and early twentieth century in French collections.
PETRONE Valeria, University of Naples “L'Orientale”, Italy
Exploring “Lower Body” in Chinese Women Poetry: Does Gender Discourse Still Make
Sense?
My study will focus on two young representatives of the Xia Ban Shen “lower body poetry” e.g.
Yin Lichuan and Wu Ang, who seek to provide new insights into most recent developments of
166 contemporary Chinese poetry. Dismissing both classical and western great masters, this new
generation of poets regards the body as the authentic source of artistic inspiration and physical
perception. Filling their works with scepticism, irony and cynicism, these poets strive for
alternative perspectives against a society that increasingly replaces socio-political ideals with
materialistic values and homologation. Young women poets’ undeceived eye on the most prosaic
realities of life, seem to suggest a new direction in Chinese Women’s poetry since 2000; discarded
from any ism, ideology and cliché, poetry now originates from the interaction between poetical
subjectivity and outside world, where meditation about gender identity still represents an
important subject, but it is not anymore a guarantee for being included in “Women’s poetry”. It
is argued that this new trend, which emerged in 2000, can offer new angles on Chinese Women’s
poetry, as alternative to the previous dominant confessional style. In doing so, the paper also
intends to show how in relegating women poets in feminist/confessional categories, mainstream
poetry attempts to contain the “threat” of women’ s rich and multifaceted writing potential.
Lower body poetry written by women can provide a way to get out of the impasse women’s
poetry have been in for long time: the representation of prosaic realities can be regarded as a
reaction to the recent consumerist tendencies proving, in this way, an overcoming of gendercentred discourse, opening to different literary subjects such as the critical observation of
contemporary society and culture. This does not imply the loss of any sexual identity; on the
contrary, these poets do succeed in finding a new inspiration free from self-imposed cultural
boundaries and instrumentalization from male dominant culture.
PETTIER Jean-Baptiste, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
The quest for ideals:distrust, disputes, and mate-choice strategies in today's urban China
In recent years, the question of moralities in China has grown as one of the most heated debates
in the sino-anthropological domain. The crisis of social trust (Peng & Zheng, 2003), the
perception of an overall individualization of society (Yan, 2009), to quote only a very few
examples, as well as their consequences on personal lives and the public controversies they
generate, enriches our understanding of the impacts of the general evolution China is currently
passing through. Still, the observation of such an figure as a “moral crisis” remains indeed very
difficult to approach. In this paper, I propose to examine it through the observation of the
transformations in mate-selecting criteria in urban settings. This, analyzed in particular from
within the parental gatherings of xiāngqīn – marriage partner prospection – which developed in
the city parks all over the country along the 2000s decade. The appearance of such anxious
bachelors' parents gatherings clearly brought questions to light concerning approaches to the
question of marriage, and the social issues that the connection of two families through this social
contract engages. Thus, the interconnection of personal sentiments, concrete considerations, and
desires of success, appear as a very controversial issue. This amongst parents as well as between
them and youngsters generations. From fieldwork and interviews conducted within urban
167 parental meetings, I propose to present the social strategies they reveal, the paradoxical everyday
politics they imply, and the way parents discuss – and dispute – them.
PFISTER Rudolf, Basel, Switzerland
The special role of the kidney-heart dyad in Chen Shiduo’s medical texts and
physiological alchemy
Chinese Culture”)
Chen Shiduo (1627–1707) argues consistently for the double interplay of the heart—as the
mental and emotional centre in the breast region—and kidneys—related to sexual problems and
of the urogenital system. The paper will try to explore the possible sources of this doctrine in
texts on physiological alchemy (nei dan), as well as contrast it to the classic formulation of a
distributional arrangement— localizing emotions, cognition, and states of consciousness in the
human rump—within the framework of the five phases that Chen Shiduo also harbours
prominently in his writing.
PORTYAKOV Vladimir, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow, Russia
Some Features of the PRC Foreign Policy (2009-2011)
China’s achievements during the world economic crisis stimulated Beijing to pretend on much
more active, than ever before, role on the international arena. Simultaneously, the practical course
of China's foreign policy became more assertive and even rigid. The first case was the incident in
March 2009 with the American intelligence ship "Impeccable". In 2010 China intensified political
contacts with Pyongyang and increased economic assistance to North Korea. This prompted the
U.S. politicians to accuse Beijing of weakening its interaction with the West in resolving the
Korean Peninsula problems. In September 2010 the detention of Chinese fishing vessel’s crew
and arrest of its captain in the disputed area of Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands caused an unusually
sharp reaction in Beijing and even led to anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. The aggravation
of disputes between China and some countries in Southeast Asia on sovereignty over the islands
in the South China Sea gave Washington an excuse for strengthening opposition to China's
growing influence in the region. This turn of events threatened China with serious deterioration
168 of the external environment for its development. Since the end of 2010 the Chinese leadership
began to make certain adjustments in its foreign policy. On September 6, 2011, the State Council
promulgated the "White Paper" on China's peaceful development. In the second half of 2011
Beijing sought to ease tensions with Vietnam and the Philippines caused by the disputes about
sovereignty over the South China Sea islands. Also the efforts were taken to "repair" relations
with India and to prevent serious deterioration of China-US relations. However, a full return to
pre-crisis foreign policy has not happened. First of all, the economic power of China continues to
grow fast. Second, Beijing’s official adherence to such important concepts of 2009-2010 as "core
interests" and “interests of development" still significantly influences the theory and practice of
China's current foreign policy. In this regard, the foreign-policy platform of the upcoming 18th
Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China is of special importance and interest. PUETT Michael, Harvard University, USA
Re-reading Confucius: Sima Qian’s Presentation of Confucius in the Shiji
In this paper I will revisit the question of whether there is a coherent view of Confucius in the
Shiji and ponders whether there is even a coherent view of Confucius in the chapter devoted to
the figure, namely, the “Kongzi shijia.” If there is, what is that view? And if there is not, how do
we explain the inconsistencies? This paper will explore this issue through a close reading of
passages where Confucius plays a significant role in the Shiji, particularly the “Kongzi shijia.” My
goal will be to explicate the tensions underlying the presentation of the Confucius in the Shiji and
to discuss the significance of these tensions for our understanding of the Shiji.
RABOTTIN Florent University of Angers, France
Evolution of China’s Import and Export Technology Regime
These recent years, transfers and technology imports have become recurrent issues of crucial
importance for foreign investors wishing to develop their activities in China. Since the country
opened to the "socialist market economy" in 1979, the Chinese government became aware of the
damage incurred by 30 years of Maoist economic policy. To cross the technologic chasm
accumulated during this period, Deng Xiaoping developed policies encouraging foreign
investments and technology transfers. At first, this primary legislation was clearly in favor of
169 Chinese companies who had the right to acquire the technology at the contract termination.
However, we will see that the evolution of the legislation in this area, especially since China
joined the WTO in 2001, has undergone a major overhaul. The approval regime of systematic
cross-border transactions has gradually given way to a simple registration regime and the
establishment of differentiated legal regimes for the importation of technology according to the
fact that it is considered free, restricted or prohibited. This will allow us to deepen our study by
analyzing the progressive changes in the framework regulating technology cross-border flows.
These legal guidelines are determined by economic policies. They favor the import of high
technology as China develops and assimilates the foreign know-how. We will see that we have
moved from a protective regime, establishing an imbalance in favor of the obligations of the
licensee, to a specific and more flexible regime, benefiting a trend of importation of technology in
compliance with WTO regulations. This major evolution, which is part of a trade liberalization
trend in China, remains nonetheless a thorny challenge for foreign investors. Our study will
explore the various strategies available to them in order to control the scope of the technology
transferred and the rights granted accordingly. Then, the end of this presentation will be open for
debate and exchange of opinions on how to implement solutions in order to improve the existing
legal framework and thus to allow a more efficient completion of the technology transfers for
both sides of the deal.
RAHAYU Titik Puji, Airlangaga University, Indonesia
Chinese-Indonesian Journalists and Chinese-Indonesian Identity in Teenage Journalism
The Indonesian government, from the “Old Order of Soekarno” (1945-1966) to the “New Order
of Soeharto” (1966-1998), had limited and even symbolically annihilated the expressions of
Chinese identity in the mainstream Indonesian media. Today, the Indonesian Reformation,
globalization and the economic interest of media industry have made Chinese identity visible in
mainstream Indonesian media. The Jawa Pos Group (JPG), as the second largest press empire and
the fastest growing media group in the state, is seems to have great concern with ChineseIndonesian issue. Since 1998, this media group has published the leading Chinese-language
newspapers, namely Guo Ji Ri Bao. Additionally, the JPG also has formed Indonesia Tionghoa Culture
Centre. These phenomena then raise a question: why? Moreover, this study will analyze the
representation of Chinese-Indonesian teenagers’ identity in teenage journalism published by the
JPG, namely “DetEksi”. DetEksi is a prescision journalism produced by and targeted at
Indonesian teenagers. This teenage print media was awarded as the “World Young Reader
Newspaper of the Year” by World Association of Newspapers and News Publishing in 2011 (Rahayu,
2011, p.2). In discussing the representation of Chinese-Indonesian teenagers’ identity in DetEksi,
I am taking the stance of Hoon (2008), who critically questions: “which Chineseness is being
represented?”, “is it homogenous, primordial, unchanging and eternal, or heterogenous,
hybridized, flexible and evolving?”, and finally “who will decide which Chineseness will be
170 represented?” (p.178). In fact, Sen (2006) has argued pessimistically that “the openness of current
Indonesian culture and politics, while providing the necessary condition for re-imagining the
Chinese Indonesians, does not ensure a radical shift in a politics of representation” (p.171).
Furthermore, this study will take into account the limited number of Chinese-Indonesian
teenagers as journalist in DetEksi. This phenomenon is in contrast to the fact that ChineseIndonesians have significant role in the development of the Indonesian press industry since the
colonial time. It is also in contrast to the fact that many of DetEksi readers are ChineseIndonesian teenagers, who loyally participate in teenage journalism event conducted by DetEksi.
Thus, it is crucial to analyze why contemporary Chinese-Indonesian teenagers, who have good
journalism skill, seem reluctant to become professional journalist. These Chinese-Indonesian
teenagers are having the potency in redefining the discourse of Chinese-Indonesian through the
media.
RIBOUD Pénélope, Department of Chinese studies and CEC-ASIEs, Institut national des
langues et civilisations orientales, Paris
Looking the part: the use and meaning of groups of foreigners in Chinese classical
painting
Tradition”)
Although they were never an artist’s favorite pick, foreigners nevertheless seem to have been a
popular source of inspiration for painters and artisans of the Sui and Tang dynasties. Few
museums around the world do not own at least one Tang dynasty terracotta “hu 胡”, bulky
foreigners with big noses and deep eyes that were placed in aristocratic tombs as part of an
ensemble of “spirit utensils” (mingqi 冥器) that could add up to hundreds. From the Tang dynasty
onward foreigners also appear on paintings in various contexts, often in groups of five to ten
individuals wearing feathered hats or shimmering brocades that identify them as representatives
of their remote countries. In both types of representations, these figures epitomize the attitude of
contemporaries towards otherness in the sense that they were clearly integrated in a composition
because of their exoticism. In a prospect of studying the dynamics of group formations, this
paper will concentrate on the second type – groups of foreigners – and will aim at understanding
what criteria motivated the choice of individuals, what contexts they appear in, and ultimately
what message a group of hu conveys as opposed to a single one.
RICHAUD Lisa, Ph.D. candidate, Université libre de Bruxelles – Laboratoire d’Anthropologie
171 des Mondes Contemporains & FNRS
Email:[email protected]
Is it really innocent to sing « red songs »? — An anthropological glance at some choirs in
Chinese parks
Tradition”)
In the years after the founding of the Republic of China, the imperial domains were opened to
the public and converted into parks (gongyuan 公園). These places, bearers of a prestigious
historical heritage, were considered suitable for the new citizens to enjoy and learn how to take
part in the building of a new order. This explicit political policy was long unfulfilled, but a few
years ago, these parks have been reinvested by groups of older people, and more specifically by
revolutionary vocal ensembles gathering there to sing « red songs », and perform some pieces of
revolutionary opera (Yangbanxi 樣板戲). Can these practices be understood as simple pastimes
for people nostalgic of their long-lost youth, or are these more meaningful strategies performed
as discordant voices in the neo-liberal harmony? Are these groups in line with propaganda
activities lead during the first years of the revolution? Can we find an overarching structure that
organises these gatherings or, on the contrary, do they function as a constellation of parallel
micro-networks? These questions have been examined through the analysis of fieldwork
observation lead in different neighbourhoods (juweihui 居委會) and parks of the capital.
RICHTER Antje, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Keeping the Destructive Potential of Writing at Bay: The Role of “Nurturing Vitality” in
Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong
diaolong”)
It is intriguing that Liu Xie (ca 465 – ca 532), author of the monumental work of literary theory
Wenxin diaolong, dedicated one of this book’s chapters to the destructive potential of writing, or
indeed any demanding intellectual endeavor. Chapter 42, “Yang qi” (“Nurturing vitality”), takes a
unique and fascinating look at the individual preconditions of successful literary creation and
scholarly writing, which Liu Xie considered to be influenced by the physical and psychological
condition of writers as well as by the type of literary text they were attempting to produce. Based
on a close reading and analysis of chapter 42, my paper will introduce the patterns of spiritual
exhaustion and harmony that Liu Xie describes along with his recommendations for how to
avoid the frustrations that so often accompany the process, or standstill, of writing. The analysis
172 takes into account earlier warnings of spiritual exhaustion that are expressed throughout early
Chinese literature and that Liu Xie may have considered in forming his ideas. It also discusses the
placement and function of chapter 42 in the overall composition of Wenxin diaolong.
RICHTER Matthias L., University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Written Early Chinese Texts as Repositories of Didactic Content
In the past decades, the heterogeneous nature of Warring States literature has found increasing
attention. While the heterogeneity of compilations, most of which were probably first put
together in the late first century BCE, has become widely recognized, the composite nature of
individual chapters of such compilations, however, is less obvious and still little discussed. The
proposed paper argues that in the Warring States period some texts were not only composed
from material taken from different sources but functioned altogether as repositories of textual,
usually didactic, material without aiming to be a coherent text. These textual units that were
collected together in a manuscript, many of which were handed down to us eventually as printed
chapters of books, were not meant to be understood as a continuous texts in a particular order
with consistent content, intended for linear reading. These written documents were “passive
texts” in the sense that readers did not necessarily read them from beginning to end but chose
the parts they needed, thus constructing their own text, which became in each individual instance
the “active text” that was in effect communicated. In their later history, such “passive texts” were
either simply misunderstood as continuous texts (due to readers’ changed conceptions of books or
simply reading habits) or they underwent complex redactional changes, shaping them into
coherent texts. Using examples from transmitted literature (Da Dai Liji, Liji, Kongzi jiayu, Hanfeizi)
and manuscripts (from Guodian and Shuihudi as well as the Shanghai Museum and Yuelu
shuyuan), the proposed paper will illustrate how a reading of repository types of texts as coherent
expressions of thought tends toward overinterpretation and reflects the textual culture in the
early empire rather than that of the Warring States.
RODIONOV Alexey, St.Petersburg State University, Russia
Lao She and Right-Wing Journal “Wenyi Yuekan” in the early 1930s
During the first five years of the literary career Lao She was closely related to the “Literary
Society” and published his prose exclusively in “The Short Story Magazine” and Commercial
Press. The demolition of the both during the siege of Shanghai in the beginning of 1932 pushed
173 Lao She to look for new channels of publication. It took him two years to establish contacts with
the major literary and publishing circles. According to the statistics, the journals, which published
Lao She most frequently in 1932-1934 were Shanghai humoristic journal “Lunyu”, Qilu
university journal “Qida yuekan”/ “Qida Jikan”, supplement “Ziyou tan” to Shanghai newspaper
“Shenbao”, Shanghai miscellaneous journal “Huanian” and Nanjing nationalist monthly “Wenyi
Yuekan”. No left-wing periodicals were involved. The paper examines the background and
characteristics of Lao She’s cooperation with “Wenyi Yuekan” – a major journal of the
movement for the nationalist literature, launched and sponsored by the Central Committee of
Guomindang. The writer published there 5 short-stories and 2 poems between January 1, 1933
and January 1, 1934. Most of publications appeared with a regular interval of two months. We
believe that there was an annual agreement between Lao She and “Wenyi Yuekan” for a certain
amount of works without any provisions on its content. Though Lao She at that time was a
writer with a strong nationalist sentiment and critical view of communism, we suppose that
ideology was not the base of this cooperation. It was mainly the lack of choice for Lao She in
1932 and the generous honorarium, offered by the journal, which cemented the relationship.
However, as soon as Lao She became better connected to the liberal literary circles, he decided
not to prolong the agreement with a pro-government journal with no personal friends among the
editors in favor of the liberal periodicals, run by the new and old friends of the writer.
RODRIGUES Helena, Center of Social Studies from the Faculty of Economics from the
University of Coimbra, Portugal
The role of Macau in EU-China relations
The development of bilateral relations between the European Union and Macau is grounded in
the 1992 Trade and Cooperation Agreement, hold in parallel with the policy pursued by the
Union, to raise the profile of its relations with Asia and the PRC. Notwithstanding, due to the
“one country, two systems” framework, and its strong European heritage – Portuguese historical
and cultural legacy – as well, the sharing of values in areas such as economy, environment and
education, it is our believe that Macau also occupies a specific position as platform for the sinoeuropean relations, concomitant to the one to improve China’s relations with Portuguese
Speaking countries, although in a different perspective. Macau is a unique example of coexistence
of Eastern and Western traditions, a platform for cultural exchanges, within a broader objective:
to improve mutual understanding between Europe and Asia. Therefore, this paper reflects how
this micro-territory, preserves the European ties and its real functionality in the European and
Asia (Chinese) interests.
174 ROMAGNOLI Chiara, Roma Tre University, Italy
The Lexicographic Approach to Modern Chinese Synonyms
The semantic relation of synonymy has long been discussed and analyzed by Chinese scholars
and different interpretations have been provided to account for the semantic sameness
abundantly present in Chinese lexicon. Along with the theoretical analysis, the large number of
synonyms in Chinese has also encorauged the compilation of many dictionaries over the years:
although different in various respects, such as tipology, target reader and size, these tools yet
share in many cases the same structure, which often does not resemble that of their counterparts
in Western languages. Even though much research has been done on the classification and
composition of synonyms in modern and classical Chinese, less has been written on the
lexicographic treatment of this class of lexicon: to have an idea of the criteria adopted by Chinese
compilers we can rely only on a few studies (as Liu Shuxin: 1982, 1983; Li Zhichu: 2009), apart
from the indications given in the introductive pages of the dictionaries and the reading of the
single entries. Despite the scarce attention paid to this issue, it is yet worth reflecting, in my
opinion, on the choices made by Chinese compilers concerning the tipology of synonyms which
can include only content words or also function words, words of different lexical class,
reduplicated forms and couples of words sharing at least one morpheme. Moreover, by analyzing
the data, the internal organization and the information included in the entries, we can infer the
view of synonymy adopted by the compilers and the role played by these lexicographic tools. In
order to provide an overview of the dictionaries of modern Chinese synonyms, I will choose a
number of lexicographic works, all recently published, and select a set of synonyms to carry out
the comparison among the dictionaries trying to identify the different methods and criteria
adopted.
ROVIRA-ESTEVA Sara Departament de Traducció i Interpretació, Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, Spain
Chinese linguistics in Spain: historical and institutional overview
From its beginnings in the 16th century up to the 18th century, the study of Chinese linguistics in
Spain was almost exclusively in the hands of missionaries, who made an important contribution
both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Spanish Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were
the first to study the language, ideas, customs and history of China in order to better understand
the Chinese and thus more easily convert them to Christianity. Although their work was of more
political rather than cultural importance and was mainly addressed to the Church and the
monarchy, it was thanks to these Spanish priests that Europe came to learn about China.
However, with the expulsion of missionaries from China in the 18th century and the decline of
175 colonial power in the late 19th century, Spain turned its back on Asia. Since the late 1950s, and in
particular since 1973, when diplomatic relations between China and Spain were resumed, Spanish
sinologists and Chinese hispanists have had to work under very difficult conditions. The literature
on Chinese Linguistics in Spain comprises publications in a number of different fields but as
distinct from the United States or other European countries, there is no long-established
tradition of Chinese Studies in Spain. It is therefore paradoxical that Spaniards, who were
pioneers both in the systematic study of the Chinese language and its dissemination in Europe,
are no longer to be found at the forefront of the field. Over the past decade, several initiatives
have been taken regarding post-graduate courses in East Asian Studies or Translation and
Interpreting from Chinese into Spanish, but these aim largely at training students for the
professional workplace rather than for academic pursuits. Therefore, we should not expect a
substantial increase in academic research output related to Chinese linguistics in the short run. It
is to be hoped, however, that the steady increase in East Asian Studies courses on offer in
universities in Spain will stimulate research in Chinese linguistics in the medium term. By means
of a thorough literature review and sharing the author’s personal experience this communication
will provide a historical and institutional overview of Chinese linguistics in Spain, starting with
the pioneer sinologists of the 16th century, followed by the advent and evolution of Chinese
Studies since the late 1970’s both as a field of research and as a choice at tertiary institutions, and
concluding with a summary of current scholarship and future perspectives.
SACHSENMAIER Dominic, Jacobs University, Bremem, Germany
The Study of Sino-European Relations and New Historiographical Developments –
Approaches in China and Anglophone Countries
(Panel: “Sino-Western Relations – New Research Perspectives on the Early Modern
Period”)
The talk will map out some changes within the historiographical landscapes and their impact on
the study of Sino-European relations during the early modern period. In a first step, I will outline
key developments in various research fields, ranging from maritime and colonial history to global
and conceptual history. For instance, during the past few decades these fields witnessed a
growing problem-consciousness of categories such as “civilizations” and a concomitant interest
in the history of entanglements. In a second step, I will offer some comparative perspectives of
relevant academic debates in China and the Anglophone World. I will argue that the patterns and
rhythms of research on Sino-Western relations have been internationally connected; however, at
the same time they remain seasoned by local factors ranging from academic traditions to
department structures and public discourses. I will discuss some specific examples and then
develop some ideas for potential collaborative research projects.
176 SAJE Mitja, Faculty of Arts Department of Asian and African Studies, University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia
Development of Modern China in the View of Economic Cycles and Globalisation
After liberation the economic development started on a realistic ground, but it soon moved into
ever more unrealistic spheres under the pressure of ideology. As the result the development
started to follow political cycles. The ideological pressure came to culmination in Pi Lin pi Kong
campaign in 1974 which marked the turning point of the ideological cycle. Then the policy of
reforms caused its decline and political changes started to follow the dynamics of economy. The
ideological influence on economic sphere almost disappeared in mid 90-ties when Chinese
economy became normal, which marked the end of ideological cycle. From mid 90-ties on the
Chinese economic development is increasingly determined by global situation. Though being a
country of continental proportions China has experienced one of the fastest economic growths
since 1978. The degree of integration into world economy was for the first time felt in 1997 when
China was affected by Asian financial crisis. Since China entered WTO in 2001 the dynamics of
its economy is increasingly dependent on the conditions of world markets. The outburst of the
world financial and economic crisis in 2008 confirmed that global economic situation is the most
decisive factor determining the dynamics and conditions of Chinese economic development.
Because of its size, China had more possibilities for protection from foreign influences and
harmful events and was less affected by the crisis then most other countries. China succeeded to
maintain more than 8% GDP growth during the years of crisis with a rather fast recovery, but
will nevertheless have to adapt to the new situation in which the role of domestic market will be
increasingly important and in which China will have to change its economic structure accordingly.
At the same time there will be growing need to expand the welfare system in order to stabilize
domestic markets and the importance of urbanization in the process of social changes. As the
consequence of the World financial crisis China will have to give greater importance to the
growth of domestic demand, increase the income of workers and gradually introduce social
security system for its working force with the consequence that labour intensive production will
become less competitive. Accordingly China will have to change the structure of its export
industries and assume more responsibility in global monetary system.
SAMOYLOV Nikolay, St.Petersburg State University, Faculty of Asian & African Studies,
Russia
Maimaicheng and Kyakhta in the 18th century: the focal point of Sino-Russian sociocultural interaction
177 The socio-cultural interaction of two countries is significantly more complex than simple bilateral
cultural contacts or cultural interference. In this case historians face the interaction processes
between both different cultures and societies. These differences allow discussion of the varying
degrees, phases, and modules of the interaction process which is inherent to socio-cultural
communities at defined stages of their social and cultural development. The influential 1727 SinoRussian treaty of Kyakhta has since become viewed as having predetermined specific features of
socio-cultural interaction for the next several years. The significance of the treaty is now readily
admitted by Russian, Chinese, and Western historians due to its placing Russian-Chinese trade as
the main communication channel for socio-cultural interaction. Precisely, trade promoted mutual
distribution of elements of Chinese and Russian civilizations throughout both countries. The
Chinese trade center Maimaicheng and Russian Kyakhta should be recognized as the focal point
for the initiation of socio-cultural interaction. Different parts of Russia and Qing Empire were
involved in Russian-Chinese trade. Chinese merchants aspired to receive long-term orders from
Russia, and special workshops manufacturing fabrics and other things according to Russian taste
and requirement were created in China. In the process of business and trade between Russian
and Chinese merchants in Kyakhta and Maimaicheng there appeared a special business language:
the Maimaichensky (Kyakhtinsky) patois. This patois was the first variant of Russian-Chinese
pidgin, which greatly expanded during the process of increasing Sino-Russian interaction in a
frontier zone. It’s also important to compare the Maimaicheng-Kyakhta System of Trade with the
Canton System. Maimaicheng and Kyakhta became original communication channels and
transmitters of the socio-cultural interaction between Qing Empire and Russia. They played a
very important role in formation of a new geocultural space within a frontier zone.
SANTANGELO Paolo, “Sapienza” University of Roma, Italy
The darker world in the Zibuyu’s discourse (Panel: “Emotions, Sensations and Imagery:
Representations of the State of Mind in Chinese Culture”)
Zibuyu is a collection of fantastic tales of the zhiguai genre. Although Yuan Mei in his preface says
that tales should not be taken seriously and they just aim to dispel boredom, it is a work with
different reading levels. It can be considered as a collection of fragments of the representation of
our paradoxical existence, where the subconscious life emerges in the apparent normality of
everyday actuality: no pilgrimage with a definite process in an allegorical reality of punishmentrepentance-forgiveness chain, but rather a chaotic interference of what we try to ignore and
forget, death, sickness, desires and passions, that destroy the Apollonian vision of the socialcentered Confucian perception. Disgust, surprise and laughter are constantly evoked, by keeping
the reader in a continuous mood of attraction and repulsion that reminds the perturbing
bewilderment of the unconscious desire. The ambiguous atmosphere introduces us in a world of
a lost innocence where contamination between ‘magic’ and ‘real’, dream and consciousness,
charm and horror, fantasy and rationality seem natural, but at the same time the darkness of
178 existence is dominating.
SATO Masayuki, National Taiwan University, Dept; of Philosophy, Taipei, Taiwan
Why Did Ancient Chinese Political Philosophy Require Two Conceptions of Sincerity?”
A Comparative Analysis of zhong and cheng (Panel: “Can Comprehension of Pre-Qin
Ideas be Improved? The Expression Commonly Understood as “Loyalty” –zhong”)
In early Chinese political thought, the concepts of zhong or “sincerity/loyalty” (also as zhongxin or
“loyalty/sincerity and trustfulness”) and cheng or “sincerity/co-creativity” have interchangeable
meanings. In the text called “Zhongxin zhi dao” found in the Chu bamboo manuscripts of
Guodian, for example, the term zhongxin denotes the loyalty of the monarch toward his country
and people. Here, the meanings of zhong and xin are respectively defined as “the substance of
benevolence” and “that by which the virtue of righteousness is expected to manifest itself”, and
are analogically interrelated with Heaven and Earth. Similarly, in the “Bugou”-chapter of the Book
of Xunzi the concept of cheng is closely associated with the virtues of benevolence and
righteousness, as well as with Heaven and Earth. In both texts, the concepts zhongxin and cheng
are regarded as the moral power used by the ruler to attract his people and make them feel
affinity towards him. Although during this period the term zhong denoted the virtue of the ruler,
from the end of Warring States to the Qin-Han period its scope of meaning became narrower, to
uniquely denoting the virtue of ruled people. Bearing these developments in mind, the research
presented in this paper aims to delineate the evolutionary process of interaction of these two
terms in regard to their function as ethical-political ideas, and to clarify their similarities and
differences in Warring States and Qin-Han intellectual discourses. In doing so, this project
provides a context from which to depict the evolutionary change that took place in early Chinese
political thought and its relevance to the intellectual history of early China.
SCHIMMELPFENNIG Michael, Institute of Chinese Studies, University of ErlangenNuremberg, Germany
Obscured Ideas, Lost Complexities: The Complex Meaning of the Term Zhong (Panel:
“Can Comprehension of Pre-Qin Ideas be Improved? The Expression Commonly
Understood as “Loyalty” –zhong”)
Classical Chinese contains a variety of expressions that are (in)famous for bearing particular
analytical trouble. Expressions commonly rendered as way (dao), virtue (de), righteousness (yi),
179 humaneness (ren) etc. require special status since they stand for central ideas. Yet these ideas vary
even among roughly contemporaneous authors. Though Sinologists have devoted a large amount
of energy into pinpointing these ideas, communication with Western philosophers is still
hampered by the ideas' "cloudiness." For expressions like zhong – commonly and persistently
rendered as “loyalty” - the process of understanding has only begun quite recently
(Ames/Rosemont; Goldin, Masayuki Sato). The present paper attempts to give an idea of the
complexity of early meanings of zhong, trying to demonstrate that the term formerly occupied a
position similar in importance to those central ideas mentioned above, and that the idea of loyalty
only very gradually gained in prominence, finally to obscure but not entirely conceal these other
and earlier meanings. Ultimately a contradiction between two groups of meanings will be
considered to be responsible for the continuing difficulties in translating the term within a given
text. A hermeneutical and contextual analysis of examples from various pre Qin texts like the
Zuozhuan, Lunyu, Mozi and Han Feizi will be employed to present the argument.
SCHNEIDER Helen, Department of History, Virginia Tech, USA
Chinese Women’s Professional Circles: Careers in social welfare from the 1930s-1940s
(Panel: “Serving the State: The Professionalization of the Social Sciences and Civil
Service in China, 1937-1957”)
This paper will interrogate the usefulness of “big figure” biographies for understanding broader
changes in society--particularly the place of women--by investigating how scholars might use
career trajectories of less-well known educated Chinese women who were involved in social
reform efforts of the 1930s and 1940s. Using mini-biographies of “minor figures” such as Wang
Minyi, Ma Deyin, and Xiong Yana, this piece will argue that elite women’s mobilization activities
during the War of Resistance marks a turning point in the ways that women were involved
nation-building. It will discuss the limitations and advantages of looking at mid-level professional
women, social workers, educators, and bureaucrats (or civil servants) who have not generally
shown up in biographical dictionaries but who nonetheless helped change notions of state-society
relations. Through short biographical sketches of women who were engaged with relief and
reconstruction activities, it will stitch together a picture of these women as a group whose
educational background, training (including study abroad), beliefs, family connections, and work
experience situated them in an ambiguous position between state and society, as neither stateagents nor as purely separate from the Guomindang. Using official reports of relief providers,
published accounts of their wartime activities and alumnae publications this paper will show the
ways they were called on by the government, and the ways they called on the government, to
solve the social dislocations caused by the Sino-Japanese War.
180 SCHNEIDER Holge, Lehrstuhl für Sinologie, Erlangen, Germany
Mining into Official Administrative Handbooks
The present discussion will investigate the "Collectanea of guanzhen" (Guanzhenshu jicheng), a
collection of 101 government handbooks for local officials and clerks from different periods of
traditional China between Tang dynasty and the Republican era, with the majority dating from
Qing dynasty. I will set out with employing methods of text mining on a quantitative lexical level
on this multi-million character corpus. Following a diachronic line, we will look for a change in
the usage of certain terms, their substitution with other terms over time and the co-occurrence of
phrases and terms in n-grams. This way of more or less "raw text processing" represents an
empirically oriented approach and will produce a number of diagrams and figures that may help
to illustrate the evolution of a lexicon of political and administrative consultancy. Secondly,
several key aspects of recent scholarship concerning the Guanzhenshu jicheng (Liu 1992, Pei
1999, Cui 2005) will be contrasted to the material gathered above, thus reconciling close reading
and not-reading of the vast amount of material. Taking into account that computational methods
of information retrieval for investigation into historical texts are only beginning to take root in
the routine of humanities scholars, we shall thus reflect upon potentials and limitations of this
approach based on this practical work. The presentation will be accompanied by footnotes
regarding technical problems such as pre-processing of and errors in digitalized sources, use of
programming languages and regular expressions, theoretical models of natural language
processing and machine learning and visualization of results.
SCHNEIDER Nicola, Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale (CRCAO,
UMR 8155), Paris
Female incarnation lineages in Tibet: some remarks on its features and functions.
While male incarnation lineages are quite well known for the political and social roles they play in
Tibetan society, not so much is known about female lineages of which there are only very few in
numbers. A decade ago, the French tibetologist Anne Chayet asked the question whether there
has been some deliberate restriction to female incarnations (e.g. some famous historical women
having been reborn as men) drawing in particular on the example of one of the so-called Gungru
Khandromas3. Since then, new research has become available on female incarnation lineages. The
purpose of my paper is to present the lineage of a contemporary khandroma (mkha’ ’gro ma) —
3 Anne Chayet, “Women and reincarnation in Tibet: The case of the Gung ru mKha' 'gro ma”, in Bianchi, E. and Cadonna, A. (eds.), Facets of Tibetan Religious Tradition and Contacts with Neighbouring Cultural Areas. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999, pp. 65‐82. 181 “female saint”—, Khandro Chöchen. Living in exile since several years, she has been recognized
as the incarnation of mythical religious women as well as of several important historical women,
some very well known, others not. I will first present the life narrative of Khandro Chöchen and
the circumstances that have led to her recognition as an incarnated khandroma. I will then
analyze and compare her lineage with some other known female lineages. Comparisons will also
be drawn with male lineages in the light of the classifications given recently by Tulku Thondup
Rinpoche4. I will finally show that there exist some particular female features that cannot be
found in male lineages.
SCHWABE Wolfgang, Foguang University, Dep. of Philosophy, Taiwan
Correcting Expectations: Emotional Transformation in the Zhuangzi (Panel: “Emotions,
Sensations and Imagery: Representations of the State of Mind in Chinese Culture”)
Emotions have a complex structure. Expectations as one aspect may play a role in determining
the nature of an emotion, since the expectation of future trouble or happiness will influence the
emotions we have now. In the Zhuangzi wrong expectations are one reason for the unhappy state
of humanity. Thus in many stories wrong expectations are shown to be at the root of present
confusion. This paper will look at some stories where the Zhuangzi plays with the expectations of
the actors in his stories. Focusing on the two emotions of surprise and fear the role of
expectations, met or unmet, in the text will be analysed. Based on this analysis the role of
expectations in the transformation of emotions in the Zhuangzi will be discussed.
SCHWERMANN Christian, Universität Bonn Institut für Orient- und Asienwissenschaften,
Abteilung für Sinologie, Germany
Collective Authorship in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions
I propose to analyse indicators of authorial presence in early Chinese bronze inscriptions and
show that the author figuration in these texts is an important criterion for testing the validity of
existing interpretative approaches to Chinese epigraphy. With a few notable exceptions, students
of bronze inscriptions tend to disregard the problem of authorship or still follow the traditional
account, which claims for epigraphy exactly what it has to say about received texts, namely, that
inscriptions are integral works by individual authors with singular intentions. This view is
4 Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, Incarnation. The History and Mysticism of the Tulku Tradition of Tibet. Boston, London: Shambala, 2011. 182 questionable because, in a likely sequence of events, as many as four individuals may have been
involved in the production of an inscription: (1) the owner as commissioner, (2) a composer who
wrote the text or reworked pre-existent materials for publication, (3) a calligrapher who produced
a master copy for the casting, and (4) a caster. Even if we disregard the production of the
epigraph as a menial task irrelevant for its contents and composition, we still have to
acknowledge that the author functions of responsibility and composition were divided among at
least two individuals and end up with a clear-cut case of composite authorship. Things are further
complicated when we consider that the responsibility function may have to be assigned to a
person different from the owner of the vessel or may even have been divided among two
individuals. According to a hypothesis proposed by Matsumaru Michio, most inscriptions were
cast in the king’s foundry and therefore written from the point of view of the king and his
scribes. If this was in fact the case, we would probably have a joint commissionership with a
highly asymmetric author constellation. In an attempt to throw more light on this complex case
of composite authorship, I propose to first analyse a piece of pseudepigraphy from the Records of
Rites, which may furnish us with indirect evidence of the author constellation in bronze
inscriptions as reflected inadvertently in its early imperial reconstruction. In a second step, I
would like to compare this reconstruction with the actual author figuration in selected Western
Zhōu bronze epigraphs.
SELBITSCHKA Armin, Institute for Sinology Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich,
Germany
I Write, Therefore I Am: the purpose of ‘secular’ texts in tombs
(Panel “A New Perspective on Early Chinese Manuscripts”)
During the last thirty odd years, much has been written about manuscripts recovered from early
Chinese tombs. Extensive research on excerpts of Laozi, Sunzi bingfa, Liji and Yili and many
other texts considerably changed our appreciation of their received counterparts. Through these
findings, at least some editorial work finally became tangible; yet, its motivation remains heatedly
debated. Unprecedented insights are provided by a magnitude of legal documents, medical
manuals, hemerological companions (rishu), and divination texts (e.g. xingde). All of which have
been abundantly studied; thus illuminating practical aspects of ancient Chinese culture below
official level. We have learned, for instance, the scope of punishments for larceny; we are familiar
with various methods of how people dealt with the uncertainties of live. How to keep oneself
healthy? What was an auspicious day to marry? How to get rid of annoying ghosts who kept
pestering the family? These questions clearly relate to the fate of living people. Moreover,
philosophical as well as prescriptive records ultimately aimed at individual and social betterment.
Why, then, do we find these ‘secular’ texts in tombs? What purpose did they serve? By treating
them for what they were, i.e. burial goods this paper adopts a new perspective. Not textual
183 content is going to be primary focus, but archaeological context. Analyzing how manuscripts
relate to findings and features of individual graves as well as surrounding burials reveals that only
a certain clientele was interred with particular kinds of documents. At the same time, the majority
of contemporaries did not care for manuscripts at all. ‘Secular’ texts thus were means to transfer
particular lifestyles into the hereafter. Respective grave owners distinguished themselves through
knowledge of certain topics in writing, and often through the ability to write itself, as suggested
by brushes and ink stones accompanying many manuscripts. A distinction venerated in life
obviously should also continue in the afterlife.
SHAPIRO Roman, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
Chinese literature in Western languages and for Westerners
The paper discusses several Chinese authors who write in English and French, as well as works in
Chinese intended for the Western reader. The tumultuous 20th century has brought to the
literary foreground the ancient phenomenon of writing in second languages. I will study the
contemporary cases of Dai Sijie, Shan Sa and (partially) Gao Xingjian who write in French; Jung
Chang and Ha Jin who write in English; and Gao Xingjian and Yu Hua who sometimes write in
Chinese for the Western audience. They will be compared with earlier Chinese authors connected
with the West (Lin Yutang, Lao She etc.) The basic impulses for writing in foreign languages are
obviously a wish either to introduce life in China to the West, to popularise Chinese culture or to
describe the Chinese emigre experience. Typical features of these works include political conflicts
in China described from a Western point of view, the atmosphere of traditional Chinese culture
explained and even adapted to the needs of a Western reader (e.g. translating Chinese names,
approximising specific Chinese realities, japonisation, as Japan may be better known in the West
than China). The traditional Chinese allusions may be explained or not (for the latter cf.
references to Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai and the Pure Land in Shan Sa's work). Sometimes
westernisation may be uninteded (e.g. a Japanese officer quoting Ecclesiastes), sometimes the
Western reader is told superfluous things (cf. Yu Hua's explanations that Homer is a Greek poet
and Dante an Italian one). Chinese and Western ways of life are often juxtaposed or even
confronted in these works (e.g. Lin Yu Tang, Ha Jin, Dai Sijie). As typical for modern Chinese
literature in general, the authors discussed here use Western literary genres and devices (e.g. the
alternation of viewpoints in Shan Sa's or Gao Xingjian's fiction), however the 'spirit' or
Weltanschauung is rather Chinese (though Lin Yutang's Moment in Peking may present an
exception, as it has a strong Christian element).
SHI Lu, Lyon Institut of East Asian Studies, University Lyon 3, France
Female migration within China and search for identity
Migration traditionally belongs to the male sphere. This was always true until a certain period of
the economic reform. In recent years, we find as many men as women migrants in Chinese cities.
This progressive increase of the female workforce - of rural origin for most- cannot be explained
only by the significant development of the tertiary sector in the city, but also by rural women’s
search for social identity. If poverty or inequalities between town and countryside were the main
reasons for migration for the first generation of migrants in the 80's, the search for personal
development and discovery of a modern world are often quoted by the new generation of
migrants as main reasons for departure. In addition, for the migration of women, matrimonial
strategy is also taken into account in the overall migration strategy. My presentation will draw on
several case studies of migrant women: merchants, maids and entrepreneurs. Through their
different careers and life experiences, I focus not only on the socioeconomic situation of these
migrant women, who are too often regarded as socially excluded from urban society, but also to
their social itinerary or their personal struggle for social status. How was this itinerary
experienced and how did it allow them to evolve? From these few examples, I will try to outline
some of the characteristics of female migration in China since its economic reform.
SHIH Chih-yu, National Taiwan University, Dept. of Political Science
Comparative intellectual history of China studies: Micro-identity and Macro-civilization
This article will introduce a transnational project, entitled Comparative Epistemology of China
studies, the project's rationale, stage of development, and methodology. The project is a response
to the postmodern call for reflexive scholarship and rides upon a resurgent interest in
civilizational politics. However, its focus is on individual adaptation to and agency for change.
The approach to intellectual history is anthropological. The project treats the production of
knowledge as a human phenomenon, evolving between one's choices of identity strategy and
one's encounter with various larger forces, contexts, and relationships, discursively as well as
socially. The project conceives of an individualized intellectual history critical of mechanisms of
civilizational evolution and exchange. The project, which includes an oral-history component and
a curriculum component leading to the writing of M A and Ph.D dissertations, encompasses the
study of intellectual history embedded in civilizational and international politics. The hosts of the
project are the Research and Educational Center for China Studies and Cross-Taiwan Strait
Relations in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University. Funded with a
grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation in 2004, the current sponsors of the project
include the National Science Council of Taiwan, the College of Social Science at National Taiwan
University and the Graduate Institute of Political Science at National Sun Yatsen University,
along with a number of other smaller grants, the project has continued through 2012 and will
185 remain ongoing thereafter. The project has generated over 100 interviews with institutional and
individual participants all over the world, over 50 monographs, and a number of periodical
articles. The combination and recombination of ideological and civilizational sources and the
historical, institutional and social practices of these possible agendas provide a rich repertoire of
how the mutual constitution of Sinology, Sinologists, and their Sinic world has proceeded
through individual career paths. This project thus contributes to the development of an
anthropological interpretation of social knowledge as well as a humanities-based foundation for
understanding international relations regarding views on China. By the end of 2012, four books
are or will be published from the Japanese, Indian, and Russian oral history projects.
SHUMAN Amanda, University of California, Santa Cruz, Dept. of History, Santa Cruz, USA
“Scientific” Tiyu in the early PRC
In the early 1950s, tiyu (sports and physical culture) became an ideological pillar of the new Partystate. Leaders criticized past tiyu under the Guomindang government as “Western”, “capitalist”,
and inclusive of only a minority of people (shaoshu ren). Tiyu, they claimed, was a fundamental
aspect of communism that should instead serve all “the people” (renmin) because strong, socialist
subjects of all backgrounds were needed for socialist construction, labor production, and national
defense. Significantly, they followed the logic of population science in the early PRC, which
justified using tiyu as a primary way to improve the physique (tizhi) of citizens. Leaders and
experts developed centralized and standardized tiyu activities for schools, factories, and work
units that they claimed were “scientific” (youkexue de). The largest program was the “Ready for
Labor and Defense System” (laoweizhi) based initially on the model found in the Soviet Union in
the 1930s and first implemented nationally in May 1954. In addition to outlining detailed
regulations for tiyu activities, this program also recorded personal and health information on each
participant and provided the most up-to-date “scientific” guidelines for frequent testing in
specific activities. In an effort to promote continued participation, those participants who passed
different levels of the exams received awards (e.g., badge pins and certificates). Current
scholarship is divided on the origin and definition of “scientific” tiyu. Some historians argue that
it stemmed primarily from earlier models found under the Guomindang, while others trace it to a
combination of CCP experiences in Soviet base areas and programs introduced under “Soviet
Learning.” Using handbooks, manuals, and archival materials collected in Beijing and Shanghai
on the laoweizhi and related programs and activities, I argue that “scientific” tiyu in the early PRC
involved the cooperation of experts from different backgrounds. I also show that even though
they sometimes disagreed over tiyu models and goals, in the end they created an entirely new
framework. Cadres with previous tiyu experience in Soviet base areas and Soviet experts worked
alongside Western-trained tiyu experts from the Guomindang period to construct a new
“scientific” tiyu that simultaneously regulated and helped create socialist subjects.
186 SI Han, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm
A Chinese Story of Images - From “tu” to “xiang” and there in between
The Chinese practices and theories of art and art history have been fundamentally influenced by
the West during the last century. During the last two decades, visual studies or image science new approaches in the field of art history – have also been introduced to China. Terms such as
“pictorial turn” or “iconic turn”, works by among others WJT Mitchell and James Elkins have
been promptly translated into Chinese and widely circulated among scholars and students in the
history of art and images. However, if we examine closely how terms or vernacular words such as
“picture”, “image”, “bild”, “iconic” or “visual” are translated into Chinese, we would find that
varieties are many and confusing. This paper focuses on several Chinese words related to the
studies of images and the visual, and discusses the possibilities and impossibilities of translating
them into English and German/Swedish language. Part of the results is based on my doctorial
dissertation, published in 2008 with title “A Chinese Word on Image – Zheng Qiao (1104-1162)
and his thoughts on images”, in which terms such as “tu” and “xiang” are analyzed from a
historical and comparative perspective. During the last few years, I have had also opportunities to
discuss about some of the questions that I raised that with many scholars who are interested in
the concepts of images and art from a global perspective. So part of the results presented in this
paper is also based on many discussions at conferences such as “What is an Images?” at Stone
Summer Institute in 2008 in Chicago and “What is Chinese Contemporary Art?” in Beijing in
2009.
SIEBER Patricia, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
“Arcade Houange (1679-1716), Caizi jiaren Fiction, and the Invention of Chinese Belles
Lettres in Europe”
(Panel: “Toward a New History of Literary Flows in Sino-European Encounters, 17001830”)
This paper will revisit one of the early modern Chinese sojourners in Europe, Arcade Houange
(Huang Jialüe, 1679-1716), in order to redefine his role as a mediator between the Chinese literary
187 corpus and European belles lettres. An offspring of a Catholic literati family from Fujian,
Houange served as a royal interpreter at the Bibliothèque royale in Paris (ca. 1712-16). During
that time, Houange partially translated Yu Jiao Li, a popular early Qing romance, a draft of which
survives in manuscript form. Given that modern critics have been consistently puzzled by the
particular titles that figured among the first novels to be translated in Europe and elsewhere, the
paper seeks to contextualize the choice of this novel in an effort to delineate Chinese agency in
the emergence of the European canon of Chinese world literature. First, the paper examines (1)
the multiple factors that motivated the emergence of this particular novel as an object of
translation, (2) Houange’s translation strategies in relation to other translations from the Chinese
current at that time, and (3) this translation’s impact on other translations of Chinese fiction,
most notably J.P. Abel Rémusat’s (1788-1832) Iu-kiao-li (1826). The paper makes a case that
Houange should be not only be credited as the first translator of a Chinese belles lettres into a
European language, but that he pioneered the representation of a literary voici among European
translations.
SIEBERT Martina, East Asia Department , State Library Berlin, Germany
The Changing Landscape of Chinese Digital Resources
When the first digital full texts became available for us sinologists they were like a magical trick to
find a quotation we would have otherwise spent hours to find. Nowadays we find databases that
show connections between articles quoting the same source or that locate the term “snow” at a
certain rhythmic position in all of the Tang poems. Databases have changed ever since, the
research work has changed, and they are mutually changing each other. My presentation tries to
give an overview on "genres" of databases and developments on the commercial and "free" eresources market. I will address the issue of boon and bane of these database wonderboxes and
how they are glorified or bedevilled, depending on whom you ask. Working at the centre of
Germany’s East Asian e-resources hub CrossAsia we have to reflect on all these issues, on the
role of present and future libraries and the balance between paper and non-paper.
SILIUS Vytis, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Confucian Role Ethics: New Role for Chinese Ethics?
188 In recent years new suggestion was raised for interpreting early Confucian ethics in a way that
avoids Western conceptual schemes and presuppositions. The proponents of this new approach
(Henry Rosemont, Roger Ames) claim that early Confucian ethics is sui generis form of ethical
reasoning (East or West, past or present). This position is called role ethics, because communal
roles are taken as a focus point of early Confucian ethics. This position opposes not only the
emphasis on the and universal principles in the deontological and consequentialist theories, but
also the reliance on the essentialist notion of human nature in the Aristotelian virtue ethics. The
role ethics proponents are stressing the importance of taking into account the somatic, relational
and dynamic aspects of most of Chinese philosophical terms. They argue that these terms are
referring to specific notion of the fundamentally embodied, encultured, and social person who is
born into a manifold of interpersonal relations, or roles. In this view, one truly achieves one’s
personality only by developing these roles. Because the role ethics approach is formulated as an
opposition to all previous philosophical interpretations of the early Confucian ethics, I will raise
three problematic questions that challenge role ethics as a novelty in the studies of early Confucian
thought: (1) Does our reading of the early Confucian ethical thinking become more consistent,
articulated and coherent by concentrating our attention on the social traits, that is, on the roles,
instead of personal traits, that is, the virtues? (2) Does our reading of early Confucian ethical
thinking become more consistent, articulated and coherent by taking interactions rather than actors,
agents or actions as the locus of the ethical considerations and evaluations in the context of early
Confucian texts? (3) Does the role ethics approach provide new vistas both to the interpretations
of the early Confucianism and to the ethical thinking in general, applicable cross-culturally in the
21st century? In other words, can Confucian role ethics grant Chinese ethical thinking a new role
in the contemporary ethical and political discourse as a “genuine alternative” to the main Western
moral theories?
SKROBANOVIC Zoran, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Western Ideogram and Oriental Exoticism:Paul Claudel and Victor Segalen
China as inspiration plays an important role in the literary work of Paul Claudel and Victor
Segalen. The two French authors may be regarded as a missing link between Modernism and the
literary traditions that preceded it. In this context, Claudel’s and Segalen’s interest in Chinese
literary forms, language and script represents an anticipation of the later modernist
preoccupations and experiments based on Chinese influences. Taking Chinese script as a rolemodel, Claudel attempts to iconize the symbolic system in his own language, thus creating new
and authentic poetic forms, whereas Segalen introduces a very personal perception of China
enriched with informative sinological observations. This paper argues that, with their creative
perception of China, both Claudel and Segalen succeeded in exerting a double influence: on one
hand, they acquainted the Western reader with various valuable segments of Chinese cultural
traditions, and on the other, they also provoked a series of questions concerning the role,
189 freedom and strategies of a writer as an objective interpreter of other cultures.
SMIRNOV Dmitry, Institute of the Far East, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
To the 20-th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping trip to the South
At the beginning of the 1990-s in the world there occurred cardinal changes connected with the
USSR dissolving and turning the world from bi-pole to multi-pole one, the process which
required re-comprehension of the problems confronted China from the point of view of
providing the country development stability and its international position strengthening in the
new historic conditions. Cardinal changes in the world influenced the public moods in China
where at the end of the 1980-s the population became discontent by the prices growth on the
corruption background – the situation was used by the opposition. Simultaneously in the CCP
management there outlined a split in the question of the attitude towards the opposition protests
which even worsened the situation ended in tragic events on Tian’anmen. Following these events
a 3-years’ period of struggle against “bourgeois liberalism” brought about either leftist moods
strengthening in China which revealed themselves, in particular, in the market contraposition to
socialism and misgivings concerning “peaceful regeneration” or the appearance of some
communists doubts concerning further socialism development. The analysis of the established
situation was made by Deng Xiaoping in the course of inspection trips to the South of China in
January-February of 1992 when he urged to conduct the reforms and open policy within 100
years seeing in it the guarantee of socialism and conservation of the CCP public support in China.
The “key” to “the chance use and self-development” he saw in the economy development urging
to use this socialism system advantage allowing “to concentrate forces for greater fulfillment” the
most important of which considered the CCP possession of political authority. Deng Xiaoping
brought forth the idea that plan and market under socialism don’t contradict each other being
“economic instruments” and urged not to be afraid to go on a risk in social-economic experiment
undertaking demanding ideological obstacles removal in the manner of “climbing down” into
capitalism fear. For this purpose he brought forth the idea of subservience of the whole work of
the state to the 3 criteria: productive forces development support; total state power growth;
public well-being level growth. As the guarantee of socialism conservation while reforms and
open policy undertaking he considered “the 4 main principles” observance. The CC CCP spread
the text of Deng Xiaoping speech as the document “The CC CCP № 2, 1992” thus formed the
basis of coming then Party Congress decisions. Brought forth by Deng Xiaoping theoretical and
political directives meant the conservation of the economy gradual liberalization course in
combination with the existing political regime conservation and played an important role in the
country situation stability and further expansion and deepening of the reform and openness
policy.
190 SOFFEL Christian, University of Münich, Germany
Daoxue Confucians and the Song Foundation Myth (Panel: “Political Realism in Song
Confucianism”)
In traditional Chinese historiography, the foundation of a dynasty was often glorified. This
phenomenon has a long history, which can readily be traced back to antiquity. The establishment
of the Song rule by Zhao Kuangyin (later styled Emperor Taizu, r. 960–976) is no exception. His
wondrous deeds soon became one of the recurring motifs in the writings of Song scholars, until
the very end of the dynasty. But the inspiration it gave to political thought and philosophical
theory has often been overlooked. This paper will examine the various levels of influence of this
myth. Initially, its function was mainly to solidify the unified rule of the Song house over a
country that had been divided for decades. Later, the focus changed and it had a strong impact
on the way the Song rulers fostered their political legitimacy. This paper will in particular examine
the change from Northern to Southern Song. The reality of being formally subordinated to the
northern Jurchen Jin dynasty stood in sharp contrast to the Song’s claim to superiority in terms
of dynastic and civil legitimacy. The myth then served as foundation to reassert the cultural selfconfidence of Song scholars. This new experience enforced an even stronger reliance on this
motive, and eventually even lead to philosophical consequences in the thought of Daoxue
theorists on general questions about human culture and scholarly succession.
SPICQ Delphine, Collège de France, Paris
Linqing 麟慶 (1791-1846), official handbooks and the diffusion of knowledge about water
conservancy in nineteenth century China
early modern China (16 th -20 th centuries)”)
This study deals with the role of officials in the circulation of technical knowledge. It
concentrates on the link between the career of Linqing 麟慶 (1791-1846) a high ranking official
who eventually became head of the Jiangsu province water conservancy and his writings on water
conservancy. The purpose is to evaluate how and to what extend the handbooks Linqing wrote
which were dedicated to lower officials working in the field did actually help spread and circulate
the scientific and technical knowledge in this specific field.
191 STALLING Jonathan, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA
Adjoining Two Houses of Being: Sound, Feeling, and Interlinguistic Poiesis
(Panel: “Translation and Emotion”)
In his short piece, "A Dialogue on Language: Between a Japanese and an Inquirer" Heidegger
fictionalizes a dialogue based on an actual conversation with Tezuka Tomio in order to essentially
deny the possibility of an East-West dialog based on the incommensurability of East Asian and
European Languages. While Heidegger’s dismissal can be attributed to his recalcitrant Eurocentrism, his anxiety about the possibility of inter-linguistic philosophical dialogue helpfully
foregrounds the very real difficulties of translating philosophical and poetical ideas across
languages, which are according to Heidegger “different houses of being.” In this paper I explore
different ways of adjoining these houses by creating new structures of feeling capable of
producing poiesis in more than one language at a time. Poetry even more than philosophy
appears to only ever exist in one “house of Being” at a time, so how far can one take the sound
of one language into the house of the other before one loose the poetic quality of one or both
languages? With different cultural ways of hearing, how important are sounds in themselves? Is it
possible to model forms of translation that imagine “translation” going beyond the field of interlinguistic semantics to fields of experience that take engage both physical and cultural bodies and
their complexly interwoven emotive/affective interfaces with language into account? These are
the questions I will explore by “modeling” different forms of aurally translated and hybrid
language poetry and poetics.
STANDAERT Nicolas, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/Belgium
“In-Betweenness”: Conceptualizing Encounters Between Chinese and Europeans
During the 17th Century
(Panel: “Sino-Western Relations – New Research Perspectives on the Early Modern
Period”)
The talk will deepen the framework of "interaction" by exploring how the concepts of
"circulation", "networks" and may help to understand the concrete "encounters" that took place
between Chinese and Europeans in the seventeenth century. I argue that one of the tasks of an
historian is to catch a glimpse of these original encounters, to reconstruct the networks and to
retrace the circulation. Central in my argumentation is the idea of "in-betweenness" (jian), which
allowed not only the encounter between people in the past, but also between historians and their
192 subject in the present.
STATU Nicolae Cristian, Universitaet Heidelberg, Zentrum fuer Ostasienwissenschaften,
Sinologisches Seminar, Heidelberg, Germany
Text patterns in Chen Kui’s Wen ze
Compiled by Southern Song scholar and official Chen Kui (1128-1203), the Wen ze (preface dated
1170) is as close as one can get to an exposition of the poetics of gu wen prose. Structured in ten
chapters, the text outlines 62 patterns or rules (ze) of good style (perhaps best thought of as
similar in nature to Shklovsky’s priem, “devices”) and illustrates them with a profusion of
examples from classical texts. The present paper proceeds from two observations: Firstly, by its
own account, the Wen ze can only be prescriptive by being descriptive: formulating canonical
rules of composition ultimately comes down to analyzing canonical texts and following the
example of the sages and worthies of antiquity. Secondly, under these circumstances, the text can
only live up to this descriptive task by following the very prescriptive rules that it thereby brings
to light: put slightly differently, as a metatext, the Wen ze is necessarily in a position to serve as its
own paratext. The paper further argues that from this perspective it becomes possible to
disengage the rhetorical patterns and argumentative structures of the Wen ze and thus discover
behind the rather random bulleted list of 62 items a complex and tightly organized theoretical
exposition.
STEAVU Dominic, Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies, Institute for
Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University
Pacing the Stars: Talismans and Diagrams in the Jade Maiden’s Concealed Return
(Panel: “Knowledge on the Move: Chinese Ritual Forms in Japanese Religious
Contexts”)
This study considers a class of divinatory rituals that originated in early Chinese masters of
recipes (fangshi) techniques before becoming a pan-Daoist phenomenon a few centuries later. As
a subcategory of “hidden stem” (dunjia) rituals, the “concealed return of the Jade Maiden” (yunü
fanbi) is characterized by the use of talismans as contractual bonds (fu; qi) with the gods and a
pronounced reliance on cosmic diagrams and astral symbolism. It affords adepts the possibility of
summoning the Jade Maiden, and with her help, of concealing themselves from the world in
times of chaos or ill fate. This paper will ponder the role of talismans as bonds and reflect on
193 their relation to astral deities. As a bridge to the last of the four presentations, the proposed paper
will also briefly survey medieval Japanese reformulations of “concealed return” rituals.
STECHER Anna, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für Sinologie, Germany
Staging Lu Xun: On the Unfinished Biographical Movie Lu Xun (1958–1961)
This paper is part of a study on the reception of Lu Xun and his work on stage and screen, from
its beginnings in the 1920ies until now. If we observe Chinese theatre and film works inspired by
Lu Xun, we well make a startling discovery: not only Lu Xun’s short stories, but also Lu Xun’s
life seem to be favourite themes for theatre and movie makers. Thus, Lu Xun’s part changes:
from author to main character, he becomes sometimes a very human and sometimes a
supernatural hero of documentary-like or quite fictional plays. In this big process of “Staging Lu
Xun” (which has to be seen not only in the context of performance arts, but also in the context
of politics and society), the biographical movie Lu Xun (1958–1961) can be considered a very
special attempt of telling the true story of Lu Xun to the broad audience of cinema: With a
production start during the time of the Great Leap Forward, a new Lu Xun image on screen
should be developed by a team of famous specialists in the fields of Lu Xun Studies and theatre.
After years of intensive trials and discussions, at the end, Lu Xun remained an unfinished project.
As such, it displays a huge amount of interesting questions for rethink Lu Xun and the Chinese
Century – the staged “Lu Xun” is intimately linked with – today. In this paper I would like to
summarize the central moments and questions of the making of the movie. My research is based
on the fragmentary Lu Xun film script published in 1961 as well as on the two-volume book
Notes of Personal Experience in the Preparation for the Movie Lu Xun by Shen Pengniu published in
2011.
STERCKX Roel, University of Cambridge
Agriculture and metaphor in early China (Panel: “Metaphor and Cognition in Early
Chinese Philosophy”)
Warring States and early imperial Chinese political philosophy is replete with imagery that draws
on agricultural practice. Recurrent tropes such as the well-field, plowing, the granary, planting,
harvesting and many others are adduced to impart ideas about the moral behaviour of
individuals, the organisation of society, the character of those in power as well as those who
sought to escape from it. In this paper, I start by discussing a select number of these images as
194 they appear in texts and visual culture (mostly Han murals and decorated bricks) and identify
their semantic fields. Next I will pose some question marks surrounding the hermeneutical
assumption that all this imagery can simply be taken as a metaphorical referent to a world beyond
agriculture. I will illustrate the types of problems one incurs in our understanding of references to
agriculture, and human-nature interaction at large, when reducing our readings to a world of
analogies or referents.
STOROZHUK Alexander St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Email: a. [email protected]
Social Role of Poet in Early Tang. “Four Outstandig”
The article covers the problem of individuality and artistic pattern in Early Tang poetry. Thus the
main object of the research is comparison of classical poetic heritage with poems by “Four
Outstanding”, undertaken by Tang literary experts. “Four Outstanding” — four talented poets of
Early Tang Wang Bo (王勃, 650 — 676), Yang Tong (楊烔, 650 — 693?), Lu Zhao-lin (盧照鄰,
635? — 689?) and Lo Bin-wang (駱賓王, 640? — 684) — seem to have been highly estimated
for their social activities rather than for their actual poetic achievements; hence even great Du Fu
(杜甫, 712 — 770) in his analysis of Tang poetry insists on their eminence and criticizes their
opponents. Clue to this contradiction can be found in revision of attitude towards poetry as to a
social and, what is more important, ritual act, which seems to be typical for the followers of Tang
“Return to Antiquity” movement. Thus a poet becomes more than a lyricist in the technical
meaning of the term and is appreciated for his personal integrity and social role none less than
for his literary talent. The last assertion doesn’t mean disproof of the commonly acknowledged
statement about traditional impersonality and canonist essence of classical Chinese literature. A
man of art (poet) was supposed to be an extraordinary personality, otherwise he wouldn’t be able
to conduct the supreme universal law embodied in words, but his work must be free of
egocentric narcissism and thus tend to canonic forms as a part of the Great Ritual. These
propositions were not new for Tang literature, and the history of Chinese culture gives us
numerous proofs of the same concept in many historic periods starting from Zhou. Nevertheless,
by the beginning of Tang necessity for poets of regaining the role of a social model had become
burning, and the Tang tradition gives us a great number of proofs of this statement; “Four
Outstanding” just open the list.
STRAFELLA Giorgio, The University of Nottingham, School of Contemporary Chinese
Studies, Nottingham, UK
195 The Representation of Socio-Cultural Change in the Renwen Jingshen Debate (1993-95)
The Chinese ‘debate on the spirit of the humanities’ (renwen jingshen taolun) in 1993-95 mainly
addressed two issues, viz. the public function of humanist inquiry and cultural production, and
the intellectuals’ response to commercialised mass culture. The participants in the debate were
mainly humanist scholars and literary authors. In this sense, this paper suggests that the renwen
jingshen debate can be considered an intellectual meta-discursive event. Even though the debate
forged divisions among China’s intellectuals that persist to this day, virtually every participant
agreed that mutations of great scope and depth were occurring in the country’s culture and
society. This paper analyses the representations of social and cultural change as found in a corpus
of 50 articles from the renwen jingshen debate. The analysis explores the rhetorical strategies that
intellectuals employed to express their viewpoint on these changes and their position on the
wenren’s appropriate response to them. To do so, the paper elaborates on the theoretical
perspective developed by Norman Fairclough in his analyses of the language of ‘change’ and
‘transition’ in the political discourse of late Twentieth century Britain and Eastern Europe. The
paper argues that the representations of change in the debate reflect the intellectuals’ retreat from
the discussion and critique of the effects of Reform and Opening up on China’s social and
cultural life. Even when they disapproved of them, the participants consistently adopted
rhetorical strategies that background agency and responsibility in the processes they observed,
while portraying such processes as necessary and already accomplished. Such strategies mainly
include passivation, metaphorical language, nominalisation, and the rhetoric’s of transition and
modernisation. The findings suggest an acute ‘depoliticisation’ (Rancière) in the Chinese
intellectual field. While existing literature on the debate in Chinese, English, and French focuses
on the participants’ division in factions and refers to a small number of articles, this paper
identifies shared elements within a corpus that better reflects the scale of the renwen jingshen
debate. By doing so, it sheds light on a crucial phase of contemporary Chinese intellectual history.
SUTER Rafael, Universität Zürich, Institute of East Asian Studies, Switzerland
Negation, Pointing, and Material Criteria: Making Sense of Gōngsūn Lóng’s Zh ǐ wùlùn
(Panel: “Rhetoric, Linguistics, Hermeneutics and In Between: Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ’s On
Pointings and Things as a Case in Point”)
The Gōngsūn Lóng Zǐ (GSLZ) is as unique in early Chinese argumentative literature as it is
notorious for its textual history. The shortness of the text and its dense formulations have
provoked an immense array of fundamentally differing interpretations. Generally, one can
differentiate between two basic approaches to the text, one concentrating on logical
formalization, the other departing from a perspective of comparative philosophy. Both often
suffer from similar shortcomings: Interpretations tend to depart from ready-made translations,
hardly arguing for particular decisions on the basis of syntactical interpretations and specific
196 choices of vocabulary. Consequently, they easily lose sight of the Chinese original. My paper
presents an interpretation of the “Zhǐwùlùn” (“On Pointings and Things”), probably the most
obscure among the treatises of the GSLZ. My analysis proceeds in four steps. Essentially relying
on parts of the text excluded by Graham (1956, 1986) as a result of his philological findings, I
start from the “Essay on Understanding Change.” The characters for animal names appearing
there I propose to read “putatively.” They represent identifying criteria for objects of their
respective kind and can therefore be used for constituting classes. Second, I proceed to
discussing the negative “fēi” which appears in the same context. I argue that the author of
“Understanding of Change” shows that there is no inherent connection of a negative criterion to
the material criteria which define the objects it selects. Third, I shall present evidence for verbal
uses of the word “wù” (“thing”) attested, e. g., in the Zuǒzhuàn, arguing for a strong link
connecting the examples taken from there to discussions of epistemological processes in the
Xúnzǐ and the GSLZ. Fourth, I suggest that the argument of the “Zhǐwùlùn” is closely related to
the one presented in the above-mentioned section of “Understanding Change.” I finally try to
substantiate the thesis that all this amounts to a claim that the “Zhǐwùlùn” includes an ad absurdumargument against the “nominalist” and “conventionalist” standard view on the relationship of
names and realities in the Warring States period.
SVENSSON EKSTRÖM Martin, Dept. of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, Sweden
Mimology in Early Chinese Philosophy, or What’s the Opposite of ‘Speaking Straight’?
That the language spoken and written in Confucius’ time involved what we today call metaphors
is obvious. How early Chinese thinkers conceptualized ‘metaphors’ and ‘metaphoricity’ is a much
trickier question, which involves not only a laborious mapping of early statements about linguistic
‘deviation’, ‘doubling’ and ‘betrayal’, but also a critical investigation of the Western concept of
metaphora and its formation. The present paper investigates early Chinese concepts of
metaphoricity in a reverse mode. The first part is thus a cursory exploration of the notion of zhi
yan 直言, of ‘speaking straight’, which is both lauded and condemned in early texts. The second
part deals with the fu 賦 (the so-called Han Dynasty Rhapsody) as a meeting point between
several artistic and philological discourses and practices. The fu is quite obviously a hybrid of
poetry, literary exegesis, and lexicography. But the fu also employs techniques borrowed from
cartography, painting, landscaping and the plastic arts, not merely from earlier poetic genres. The
working hypothesis is thus that the fashioning of a new vocabulary of Chinese characters was not
merely linguistic in nature but also an endeavour intimately related to visual art, in that it aimed at
an exact representation of the poet’s vision. Coined as a concept by Gérard Genette in 1976,
mimologics refers to the notion that language should ideally re-present the world by words that are
197 intrinsically similar to the things they represent, a notion Genette traces to Plato’s dialogue
Cratylus. A comparative reading of the Cratylus and the “linguistic” chapters of Xunzi and Lüshi
chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (complied in 239 B.C.) will, in the Chinese case, point to a proto-Saussurian
idea of an arbitrary link between words and referents: the meaning of a linguistic sign is mutually
“agreed-upon” (yue 約) by the members of the linguistic community. The task of the individual
language user is to keep to these agreements, and preserve the zheng ming 正名, the “correct
wording.”Against this background, the commitment of the Han Dynasty fu-poets to
verisimilitude by way of a poetic lexicon fashioned to represent the external world in scrupulous
detail represents a new trajectory in early Chinese language philosophy, and is analyzable in terms
of mimologics.
TABERY Thomas, Oriental and East Asia Department, Bavarian State Library, Munich
Germany
Digitisation of Collections on East Asia in European Libraries
Digitisation has become a standard method for providing worldwide access to printed and
handwritten information. In recent years, European libraries have initiated various projects to
digitise their East Asian Collections, and further projects are being planned. These initiatives may
differ in their approaches, but they share the common goal of preserving cultural heritage and
providing convenient and timely access to their collections for the public and the scholarly
community worldwide. This paper provides an overview of ongoing as well as planned projects,
including information on content and access of existing and currently emerging digitised
collections. Conservational and technical aspects of digitising East Asian printings and
manuscripts are also taken into account. In addition, challenges and perspectives shall be
discussed. Considering the growing number of digitisation projects, the major challenges of
digitising East Asian collections are not technical, but amongst others are associated with
improving the visibility of the digitised collections, integrating them into established and widely
used search environments, ensuring the long-term preservation of digitised objects, and
coordinating the various digitisation initiatives at an international level, e.g. with regard to the
selection criteria for items to be digitised.
TAN Tian Yuan, SOAS, University of London, UK
198 Between the Worlds of “Elite Theatre” and “Court Theatre”: The Case of Wang Wenzhi
(1730-1802)
The historiography of Chinese drama commonly presents “elite theatre” and “court theatre” as
two separate spheres with different agents and conflicting principles. Elite playwrights usually
wrote for readers and audiences belonging to their literary circles, and their plays are perceived as
an evidence of their literary talents and as a vehicle of their self-expression. By contrast, court
drama was assumed to be mostly written by anonymous court professional writers or performers
for the purpose of imperial entertainment and the celebration of imperial occasions. However,
such binary distinctions fail to capture the rich exchange and interaction between these two
forms of theatre in eighteenth-century China. This paper will focus on the case of Wang Wenzhi
(1730-1802) who cannot be easily classified either as an elite playwright or a court dramatist. On
the one hand, like most elite playwrights, Wang kept a private drama troupe, wrote commentaries
on plays, and also co-edited an anthology of musical arias. On the other hand, he was also known
to have once received a huge payment from the local officials in Hangzhou to compose a series
of plays for the emperor’s entertainment at the West Lake. Through this case study of Wang
Wenzhi, this paper explores the ambiguous status of a number of Qing dynasty playwrights who
were situated between the theatre worlds of the elites and the imperial court.
TEREKHOV Anthony, The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, St.-Petersburg, Russian Federation
The Reception of the Myth of Miraculous Birth in the First Century A.D. China
Concept of the “Sages” (shengren) was one of the main components of the Ancient Chinese
political ideology. At least from the Warring States period (Zhanguo, 5 – 3 c. B.C.) the Sages were
regarded as the idealized examples of an intellectual, moral and spiritual perfection. By the time
of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 220) they had become an important part of the state
religion, in which they were believed to be not simply the best among men, but the demigod
beings in possession of the unique world-harmonizing powers. One of the most important
features of these Sages was their divine origin, which was manifested through the miraculous
circumstances of their births. The idea of the supernatural conception was an ancient one:
references to it can be discovered in China's earliest literary sources, such as Shijing (Book of
Poetry), and can be traced to the totemistic beliefs. During the Han dynasty this idea was most
widely elaborated in the corpus of religio-political texts designated as chenwei (apocrypha), which
took its shape in the first half of the first century A.D. There are enough reasons to suppose that
a number of the stories about miraculous birth which appear in these texts were manufactured
after the pattern of the earlier textual or oral versions with its adaptation to the contemporary
political and ideological requests. Did the first century A.D. Chinese really believe these stories?
“Qiguai” (On Miracles) chapter from Wang Chong's (A.D. 27 – c.102) Lunheng (Balanced
199 discussions) may let us answer to this question. In this essay, dedicated entirely to the question of
the miraculous births, author analyses and refutes some of the most famous examples of the
stories of this kind. But did Wang Chong alone reject these beliefs? Did all the others held to
them? What were, if any, the political motivations in the question of the acceptance of these
stories? In my paper I’m going to analyze Wang Chong's arguments and some of the
contemporaneous sources to discuss the ways of reception of such kind of views on the “sages”.
THIRIEZ Régine, Cnrs, Lyon, France
Hong Kong and Canton, two early photographic illustrations of local cultural identity
The earliest known photographs of China were created in 1844 by Jules Itier, a Frenchman. He
photographed Canton and Macao, but omitted Hong Kong which he visited but did not like. He
had no immediate followers however, and it is not until the late 1850s that photography grew real
roots in the Pearl River delta. Canton had been a familiar name in the West for several centuries.
It was the traditional centre of the international "China Trade", and, as such, a source of
important exchanges with Europe and the U.S.A. Traditional representations of its landscapes
and people included paintings, many of them in the long-established "Canton school" style of
export painting. Early Canton photography became in some way a continuation of the wellestablished iconography known as "China Trade Painting". Conversely, Hong Kong was a new
place, built under Western control and for foreign use, and in need of a local mode of
representation. As soon as technology allowed it, this iconographical gap was filled by newly born
photography. In both cases studied here, however, the images were most often commercial work
created in answer to western demand. In consequence, photographic visions of both Hong Kong
and Canton were suited to Western taste—but the public expectations for one or the other port
were very different. This paper will study the specific developments of the representation of
Hong Kong and Canton over the first 30 years of the photographic process. The purpose is to
show how each place was portraitured, and how specificities can be explained. Local history,
foreign and internal conflicts, development of international trade, or Western interest for the
"real" China, are some of the factors which will be studied, as being influential in the
photographic illustration of the two areas.
THØGERSEN Stig, Arhus University, Denmark
Imagining Western education: Chinese pre-school teachers on the move (Panel:
“Professionalism, politics and pedagogics: Chinese education from within”)
200 Teaching and learning are fields characterized by strong and often quite stereotyped perceptions
of “the West” vs. “China”, perceptions linked to both cultural, political and personal norms and
values. The focus of this paper is on how prospective Chinese pre-school teachers perceive
“Western” and “Chinese” education, particularly in relation to concepts such as play, creativity,
individuality, and independence, which are becoming increasingly important for Chinese middle
class parents disgruntled by the exam-oriented Chinese education system. The empirical data
come from interviews with coming pre-school teachers who have entered an international
exchange program. The paper discusses how studies abroad become a way for students to
integrate perceived Western values and competences into their personal biographies in order to
increase their value in a highly competitive job market.
Tomoyasu Iiyama  see IIYAMA Tomoyasu
TÖRMÄ Minna, Christie's Education / Glasgow University, UK
Scholarly souvenirs: Chinese art in the design of an auspicious environment for
intellectual pursuits
(Panel: “Cross-cultural issues and private collection” /Section 1:“Collectors at home: crosscultural inspirations”)
A fair amount of research has been conducted on the role of ceramics and porcelain in the
interiors of wealthy collectors, such as Fredrick Leyland. In the late nineteenth and the early
twentieth century, collections became more diversified, containing bronzes, jades, sculptures and
paintings, like in Osvald Sirén's residence, designed to house his collection. This paper will
discuss examples of displays staged by European collectors, who can be considered either
academics or amateur-scholars, in the interiors of their homes. The objects were acquired on one
hand as materials for research; however, photographs of the interiors reveal that other
motivations were at play as well. They could be souvenirs from travels in East Asia, arrayed to
facilitate a kind of role-play by transporting the owner to ’another world’ in his imagination.
TSAI Mei-chih, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan; CRLAO, EHESS, Paris
The differences between the conception of space in Chinese and English tourist guides
Recent research in cognitive linguistic has proposed schemas that structure the spatial
expressions across languages. For example Tai (1993) showed that the whole-part schema holds
201 not only for describing spatial locations in Mixtec (Lakoff 1987), in Tzotzil (de Léon 1993), but
also in Chinese. In this study, we would like to know whether these schemas are adequate to
represent the conceptual structure at the discourse level. In their analysis of descriptions of
apartments by English speakers, Linde & Labov (1975) have found that many English speakers
gave their listeners a walking tour, during which much of the information is given in a definite
form. By contrast, the Chinese speakers appear to focus much more on space and less on the
relationship of the people to the apartment and its contents. Hatch (1992) noticed that the
descriptions of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students do not seem to take
readers on a tour: rather, they gave a picture of a well-organized space, where presentatives are
used to list objects in an indefinite form. In this paper we will identify some common schemas
between the discourse form of Chinese and English tourist guides. In order to account for the
conceptual structure of the tourist space in two languages, we will investigate (i) the thematic
progression patterns, (ii) the text types as well as (iii) the frames of space reference. Specifically,
we will study different types of spatial relationships, such as, for example: whole-part,
containment, path, link and center-periphery.
TSUI Lik Hang, Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, UK
Bureaucratic Influences on Epistolary Sub-genres in Middle Period China: From
Etiquette Books to Literary Epistles
This paper discusses the influence of bureaucratic documents on letters exchanged by literati
officials from Tang to Song China. Building on existing scholarship on shuyi texts, I explain the
bureaucratic nature of epistolary models from the Tang and the Five Dynasties, especially those
from Dunhuang manuscripts. I will also underline the transition from such models to the more
literary formulations such as Shuyi by Sima Guang (1019-86). Then, by examining manuscripts
and transmitted texts of several Southern Song writers, I question the rigidity of epistolary genre
categorizations. To place the fluctuating epistolary norms in the context of genre developments
in the Song period, I provide a reading of texts from the zhazi sub-genre and discussions about
the uses of epistolary sub-genres in miscellaneous notes by figures including Lu You (1125-1209).
The formal features of court documents were seeping into writing practices of letters and they
constantly reshaped how epistolary communications were composed, as contemporary writers
have observed. This was the result of the interactions between officials and ideas about epistolary
sub-genres, which I explain in the next section. By charting the bureaucratic influences on these
writings and taking examples from actual epistles and epistolary models, I argue for a
reconceptualization of “personal” letter writing in middle period China.
202 TSUI Wai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
France in the Eyes of a 19th Century Chinese Intellectual: A Discussion of Wang Tao’s
(1828-1897) Studies of France
In 1867, Wang Tao王韜, a failed civil examination candidate, invited by James Legge (18151897), departed from Hong Kong and journeyed to Scotland. The next year, he arrived in France
and stayed in Paris for some time. Apart from sightseeing, he observed meticulously and made
notes and comments of this extraordinary new world. He was so attracted to France that after he
returned to Hong Kong in 1870, he started researching into the history and culture of France and
became a pioneer in the studies of France in 19th century China. The article focuses on Wang’s
three important works of France, extracts from Manyou suilu 漫遊隨錄 (Jottings of My
Roamings), Chongding Faguo zhilue 重訂法國志略 (A Revised Short History of France) and Pu Fa
Zhanji 普法戰記 (A Record of the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871). It first explores how Wang
came to know about France, researched into its history and presented it to his fellow countrymen
in different styles of writings. Revealing others, especially in a cross-cultural context, is a
reflection of oneself. Wang’s ultimate objective in studying France lies in his passion to save
China. France is seen as the window of knowing and predicting the development of Europe. The
article analyses Wang’s evaluations of France, especially his comments of the France-Prussian
War. It gives explanations to his strategies in building the images of France and his deep down
thoughts about the reforms in China. While he regarded Britain as the perfect model of modern
state, his research enabled him to gain insight into various aspects of France, not only its military
strength, but also people’s lifestyles. His feelings toward France are mixed and the image he
created is a more vivid and multi dimensional. Last but not least, by comparing Wang’s works
with other studies of France before and after him, the article sheds light on how the Chinese
impressions of France had grown from simply a military power, which is not different to other
European states, to a richer and realistic image.
TU Yen-Chiu, Dept. of Chinese Literature, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
“Tathagatas” and the Related Researches---Taking the Example of the Interpretation of
Vimalakirti by Seng Zhao
This paper aims to investigate whether or not the Chinese people thought over their own
203 capabilities of attaining Buddhahood before the introduction of Nirvana Sutra. If the answer is no,
how do the monks of the time persuade themselves to go through religious practice and
dedicated themselves to a task which is never able to be accomplished. On the other hand, if the
answer is yes, then what is the basis of such affirmation, and on the basis of such affirmation,
what are the routes of practice being taken place? In both Chu sanzang jiji (Collection) and
Hongming ji (Collection), so far we can scarcely find any evidence related to such aspect, the only
term found in The Interpretation of Vimalakirti by Seng Zhao is “Tathagatas”. Kumarajiva, Seng
Zhao, and Zhu Daosheng all believe that “Tathagatas” is the most important basis, by holding
this basis Buddhist will attaining Buddhahood through their diligent religious practices. However,
this theory is not established upon the aspect of Buddhist nature, it is rather stated from the idea
of “the rise of evilness will be overcome by goodness, whereas the birth of goodness will bring
about the evilness”. Hence, an unavoidable question is that whether such a theory is sufficient for
Buddhist to keep their religious practices and to attain their Buddhahood? This paper will
propose results of some related researches which may answer the questions.
UHER David, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, Palacky University in Olomouc,
Czech Republic
Prosodic Image of Chinese Text
The paper follows up on the tradition of research of Chinese language prosodic features at the
Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. It continues the
work of the team led by Prof. O. Švarný (1920-2011) from 1994 to 2008. New projects realised
by the departments have recently applied Prof. Švarný’s prosodic transcription and his analysis of
single isolated sentences, included in the Learning Dictionary of Colloquial Chinese (Publishing House
of Palacký University in Olomouc 1998-2000), on dialogues, on an audio-recording of two
Pekingese speakers carrying out conversation in particular. A comparison between the results of
Prof. Švarný’s analysis and an analysis of the dialogues is also part of this paper. It enables us to
examine prosodic features, e. g. the approximate length of syllable clusters (a segment), segment
clusters (a colon) and colon clusters (a sentence); changes in segment length over the course of an
audio-recording; alternations of arsis (ictus-bearing) and thesis syllables in accordance with their
prominences; the structure of a segment as a basic rhythm-bearing unit in the text; distribution of
acronymic, ascendant and descendent rhythms; as well as accentual types of colons and
sentences. This prosodic analysis creates an improved identification of tonal languages
phonology, syntax of analytical languages and finally the pedagogical and didactic meaning of the
text.
204 VALJAKKA Minna, Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies
University of Helsinki, Finland
Negotiating the site specificity and transculturality of urban art in Hong Kong
This paper explores the impact of Hong Kong as a multicultural city on the emergence and
development of urban art since the early 1990s. Hong Kong is known as a site of hybrid visual
culture where various elements of “Chineseness” and “Westernness” are negotiated, adapted and
modified for the local needs. An intriguing example of the cultural interaction is the fusion of the
traditional and new forms of urban art in various public spaces. Based primarily on my fieldwork
and information deriving directly from the urban artists of Hong Kong my aim is to analyse what
are the characteristics of the urban art images in Hong Kong and how the content, style and
language reflect the local interests. As I have argued elsewhere in detail, urban art images can
include pictures, text and objects. This approach allows us to study all the varying forms of
contemporary urban art without entering the highly problematic debate how to define graffiti or
street art, especially outside of Euro-American context. Furthermore, I have found the visual
studies approach, combining social, cultural, visual and contextual aspects to be the most useful
for studying urban art. As Irit Rogoff (2002[1999], 24) has suggested cultural meanings are
constructed in an intertextual sphere where “images, sounds and spatial delineations are read on
to and through one another, lending ever-accruing layers of meanings and of subjective responses
to each encounter we might have with film, TV, advertising, art works, buildings or urban
environments.” I wish to shift the focus from the sociological studies of urban art on examining
the content, style and intertextual relations of the urban art images. This perspective will enable us
to discover how transculturality and site specificity are negotiated in the urban art scene outside
of Euro-American traditions.
VARGAS-URPI Mireia, Department of Translation and Interpreting, Universitat Autónoma de
Barcelona, Spain
Coping with non-verbal communication in public service interpreting with Chinese
immigrants
It is widely accepted that non-verbal communication plays a key role in face-to-face interactions,
where an important part of the information is transmitted non-verbally (Birdwhistell, 1970).
Non-verbal communication covers different domains (proxemics, haptics, physical appearance,
kinesics, paralanguage or chronemics) and it is culturally-bound, i.e. different cultures may rely on
different non-verbal communication cues to portray and infer different kinds of information.
Research up to date has focused on the role of non-verbal communication between the
traditional dichotomy of Oriental vs. Western societies, while scarce attention has been paid on
205 interactions between Chinese and Latin cultures. Furthermore, despite the acknowledged
influence that non-verbal communication has in intercultural encounters, there is also a lack of
research on this issue from the point of view of public service interpreting. Thus, the present
paper seeks to explore how non-verbal communication affects interpreter-mediated interactions
between the Chinese immigrants living in Catalonia and local public service providers. It will
present real data obtained by means of a qualitative research based on in-depth interviews to
public service interpreters and intercultural mediators working for the Chinese immigrants in
Catalonia (Spain). Their experience in coping with non-verbal cues that could be the source of
misunderstanding in this kind of intercultural interactions will be exposed and analysed. Special
attention will be paid to the examples of the Chinese smile and absence of eye contact, which
appear to be two of the most problematic non-verbal cues in Chinese-Catalan interactions. In the
conclusion, the implications that non-verbal communication may have in the definition of public
service interpreters’ role and functions will be discussed, especially bearing in mind the
restrictions that some public service contexts (e.g. courts) pose on the interpreters’ role and space
for intervention.
VIDAL Christine Université Charles-de-Gaulle - Lille 3, France
Dilemmas and challenges confronting Communist sympathizers in 1950s China: views
from inside the party-state
Access to new sources and the upheavals of the last thirty years have led to a renewed interest in
the first decade of the PRC and inspired new historical research which shows a shift in
perspectives as more attention has been paid to state-building process, state-society relations, and
the ways in which people from various sectors of society experienced these years. And yet, few
scholars have given prominence to some of the strategic actors the Communist party relied upon
after its access to state power: the non-party intellectuals who had long displayed sympathy with
the communists and expected to find a role contributing to the new China. Based on archival
material and private sources, this paper explores how these intellectuals were involved in the
Communist party state making and how they experienced this eventful decade by focusing on
two well-known sympathizers who had a long career in editing and were eager to help, Ye
Shengtao and Song Yunbin. After October 1949, both assumed various, albeit different, tasks.
Indeed, if both were recruited to serve on the Publishing General Administration, their
trajectories diverged as soon as Song Yunbin took up positions with the Hangzhou branches of
the Democratic League and the Federation of Literary and Arts Circles in fall 1951. This career
shift not only moved him from publishing but confronted him with many more complex
problems, until he was criticized as “rightist” in 1957. Drawing extensively on their personal
diaries, the analysis addresses the following questions: Did the tasks they were assigned to match
their expectations? How did they fulfil them? What was their attitude when their professional
ethics came into conflict with them? How did they respond to the political demands of the party?
206 What kind of problems and dilemmas did they face up to? This case study finally highlights the
ways in which they accommodated to the new order and what could be called a “politicization of
appearances”. At the same time, it shows that patriotism, “désir d’État”, and prospects for
modernization acted as powerful cohesive factors which definitely contributed to the
legitimization of the new state.
VILLARD Florent, Institut des Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, University “Jean
Moulin”, Lyon, France
Patriots, Native Guides and the ‘Authentic’ Other: ‘Chineseness’ and China as an object
of knowledge in PhD theses of Lyon’s Sino-French Institute (1921-1949) (Panel: “Modern
China and the Modalities of the imposition of Western epistemologies”)
The Sino-French Institute (1921-1946) in Lyon was a specialized college aimed at integrating and
mentoring Chinese students. This paper is based on an on-going study of the paratexts of the
PhD dissertations of these students. Among the 136-listed theses, 41 explicitly deal with a subject
related to China. Looking at all the PhD dissertations published in France at that time, this ratio
is quite remarkable. Even if it seems obvious that “Chinese” students should work on Chinese
topics, the goal of this paper is to interrogate this common sense position. Reading these texts
from the theoretical and historical perspective of the colonial geopolitics of knowledge
(Mignolo), this paper attempts to shed light on the ambivalences of the geohistorical position of
these young Chinese scholars who were immerged in the “Western” culture of scholarship while
focussing their research on China. The focus is on the epistemological position and the discourse
of these students seeing themselves as - and being in the position of - a universal and objective
“knowing subject” and, at the same time, defining themselves, and being reduced to, an “essential
Chinese subject”, intimately linked with China, their object of study. While defining themselves
as Chinese nationals, they are also limited to the figure of Chinese subject by the institution.
Being patriots, native guides or “authentic” representatives of a traditional culture, they remain in
the local, particular position of the Oriental facing the universal West. The experience of these
students exemplifies an interesting articulation of national subjectivity, orientalist discourse and
colonial distribution of knowledge.
VINCI Renata, University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy
The descriptions of Sicily in Chinese travel diaries and geographic works from Song
dynasty to Qing dynasty
207 Chinese traditional culture is full of ancient travellers’ accounts and geographical treatises:
Chinese merchants and diplomats reached Western countries reporting their experiences, while
Christian missionaries wished to describe their words to Chinese people. In this literary context, I
conducted a strict research focused on the descriptions of Sicily circulating in China from the
first descriptions up to the Qing period. The first description is also the first description ever
found of an Italian region appeared in the Middle Kingdom. It was written by the Inspector of
Foreign Sea-Trade of Fujian Zhao Rugua in his pilot’s book, the Zhufan zhi (1225). Since then a
considerable number of accounts has been produced. First of all the Uighur Nestorian Christian
monk Rabban Sauma, who undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and became ambassador of the
Patriarch to Europe, crossing the Strait of Messina and writing about the Etna eruption in 1287.
After his journey the following descriptions are excerpted from the Western Jesuits and
Protestants missionaries’ geographical treatises and maps: Ricci, Aleni, Verbiest, Gützlaff,
Muirhead, all wrote about Sicily, inspiring the XIXth century Chinese geographical
encyclopaedias compilers. Their words are actually quoted or resumed among the sources of Wei
Yuan and Xu Jiyu’s works. Afterwards, with the end of the Opium War and the stipulation of the
Unequal Treaties, China was forced to send diplomatic missions abroad. Among the great series
of diplomatic and commercial envoys to the West, descriptions of Sicily can be found into the
following travellers’ account: Binchun’s Chengcha biji, Zhang Deyi’s Hanghai shuqi and Suishi Faguo
ji, Wang Tao’s Manyou suilu, Hong Xun’s Youli Yidali wenjian lu. The continuously growing
availability of information about the West developed the interest of some more open-minded
scholars who started accepting the cultural and political influence of the West. My study shows
how Sicily appears in some of the works of the two important innovators Kang Youwei and
Liang Qichao. In particular, Liang Qichao, took Sicily and the Sicilian people’s contribution to
the Italian unification process as a model and source of inspiration for Chinese people to obtain
independence from the foreign oppression.
VOLLAND Nicolai, National University of Singapore
Soviet Spaceships in Socialist China: Reading Soviet Popular Literature in the 1950s
The formation of a new popular (or middlebrow) literature in the People’s Republic of China is
generally believed to have drawn chiefly on Chinese leftist experiments and prescriptions from
the 1940s, most notably Mao’s “Yan’an Talks.” Much less well-known is the introduction and
dissemination of foreign, and especially Soviet, popular culture in China in the 1950s. In the
larger context of “Learning from the Soviet Union,” the young PRC saw an influx of Soviet
films, popular music, and literature. Apart from the classics of Socialist Realism, Chinese
publishing houses provided the urban reading public with a wide array of popular reading matter
208 that found an avid audience in China and quickly gained a following. This paper discusses the
translation and dissemination in China of two particularly popular genres, science fiction and
adventure novels, focusing on two popular series (congshu) published in the early and mid-1950s. I
argue that these books not only filled a gap left by the banning of Western pulp fiction after
1949, but also sought to kindle the imagination through the projection of futuristic images like
space stations and interplanetary travel, fearless anti-capitalist spymasters and roaming borderland
scouts. These popular images of a technologically empowered future fuelled by a superior
morality and ideology tied in nicely with the value systems and promises about a future socialist
utopia that the CCP sought to disseminate through other channels, while at the same time
creating a sense of community, drawing Chinese readers into the orbit of a transnational socialist
universe of cultural consumption.
VUILLEUMIER Victor, University Paris Diderot, France
The Representation of Japanese Women in Some Chinese Pro-, and Anti-Japanese Texts
from the Republican Era, and its Relation to modern Chinese Literature
Many Chinese literary works from the Late Qing and Republican eras deal with the
representation of Japanese Women. For example, in Su Manshu’s short stories (1910’s), the
Japanese women might be the incarnation of the ancient Chinese culture. On the contrary, some
writers of the “Creation Society” (1920’s) equate them with the modernity that lures the Chinese
students in Japan (see Shu-mei Shih), or represent them as dangerous trollops. This sexualized
representation of Japan displays a “national allegory”, and most probably goes back to the
popular novel Unofficial History of Chinese Students in Japan (Liu Dong waishi, 1916-1922, see Dong
Bingyue), which establishes the myth of Japan as the “land of debauchery” (maiyin guo), and
prostitution. These literary representations of the Japanese women are so pregnant, that they
inform many Chinese non-literary texts from the Republican period related to the “Japanese
question,” and they are sometimes directly discussed. This paper will thus analyse the
representation of Japanese women in some underresearched texts. I have chosen a series of nonliterary texts, taken from various materials (essays, lampoons, collections, diaries, or travelogues),
written from different perspectives (pro-, or anti-Japanese), and at different times (before, and
during World War II): for example, On Japan (Ribenlun, 1928), The Unhealthy Psychology of the
Japanese (Ribenren zhi bingtai xinli, 1938), A Journey in Japan (Riben youji, 1939), An Outlook on
Japan (Riben yi pie, 1944), among others. These texts represent the Japanese women as objects of
contempt, desire, or admiration, according to the opposite ideological agendas of their writers.
However, even some Chinese collaborationist writers, who eulogize Japanese women, and Japan,
still play implicitly with the topos of Japan as the “land of the debauchees,” perhaps in order to
reassert their own Chinese status. These literary and non-literary sources reveals a continuity in
the way they use these gendered representations, in order to express issues of Chinese identity as
regards Japan.
209 WANG Dan, Hong Kong University
Workplace depoliticized: Rural teachers under corrupt bureaucracy in China
The educational system in China is highly unequal regarding school quality between rural and
urban schools. The poor academic performance in rural schools is usually oversimplified as the
result of inadequate school funding and the low quality of teaching staff. This study, drawing
from ethnographic evidence from one under-performing rural school in Southwest China,
highlights instead the profound impact of a corrupt government on the leadership of the case
school and on teachers’ morale. The paper analyzes different coping strategies adopted by the
teachers to demonstrate the growing apathy and the withering public virtue in the school.
WANG Frédéric, professor, Department of Chinese studies and CEC-ASIEs, Institut national
des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris
Lu Jiuyuan and his four disciples of Ningbo (Panel: “Questioning transmission of knowledge: masters-disciples relations in Song
dynasty”)
When he was professor at the Imperial College during the decade of 1160, Lu Jiuling (1132-1180)
had four students: Yang Jian, Yuan Xie, Shu Lin, Shen Huan, who all originated from Ningbo.
These “four masters of Ningbo” will become the most important disciples of his young brother,
Liu Jiuyuan (1139-1193), the contradictor of Zhu Xi. Thanks to the efforts of these “four masters
of Ningbo”, the school of Lu will be strongly rooted in the region of Jiangnan. The “localist”
dimension of this fellowship, which is a great difference with Zhu Xi’s school (which would
spread all over the South), will be reconsidered through a focus on the long-neglected writings of
those authors.
WANG Hsiao-wen, Taipei College of Maritime Technology, Taipei, Taiwan
210 History in the Writing of Ci in the Late Qing Dynasty
The origin of historical Ci can be traced back to the Jiaqing and Daoguang regimes, when Zhou Ji
first proposes that “Poetry reflects history, and so does ci.” Since then, the development of
historical Ci has proved the truth of his argument. As Ye Jiaying indicates: Many quality Ci works
have been produced since the Jiaqing and Daoguang regimes, a time of political upheavals when
China is on the decline crippled by numerous deprivations and national humiliations. Such
enormous bitterness and grief constitute the beauty of a vulnerable sentiment in Ci, and
contemporary writers are thus inspired to create many excellent works. That is, the miserable fate
of the late Qing Dynasty gives birth to the fruitful achievement of Ci in both quality and quantity.
In light of this, this research centers on the historical Ci in the late Qing Dynasty, a period
spanning seventy-two years from the Opium War at 1840 to the Xinhai Revolution and the
founding of Republic of China. This research places an emphasis on analyzing the contents of
historical Ci in two aspects. The first part focuses on how such major historical events as the
Opium Wars, the Sino-French War, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the war with the EightNation Alliance, are reflected in the works of Ci. The passage begins with an introduction to the
backgrounds of historical events as well as analyses supported by relevant Ci examples. These
literary pieces not only correspond to the historical facts but serve as the outlet for writers’
emotions and the repertoire of individual memories, by which the value of historical Ci is thus
manifested. The second part examines Ci writer’s works on a regional basis. A collection of Ci
from different regions is presented for the convenience of reference. One of the purposes of the
analyses from these two angles is to derive substantial contrasts in terms of regions and subject
matters respectively. On the other hand, this research also aims to explore how Ci writers
transform their individual memory into collective memory through literary creation and finally
construct a cultural memory with permanent values.
WANG Huayan École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Competition for imperial Legitimacy: One God for Two Dynasties
The cult of Judge Cui (Cui Fujun) first emerged in southern Shanxi and Hebei during the 10th
century and then expanded to northern China during the following century. This expansion,
which is closely linked to several Tang and Song emperors, accelerated from the 12th century
onwards in North China under the Jin dynasty as well as in the South, still under the Song rule. In
the new Song capital, Hangzhou, Emperor Gaozong ordered the construction of temples for
Judge Cui after he had been saved as Prince Kang by the deity in Cizhou. Judge Cui—as the
emperor believed—had provided him with the horse he rode to avoid being taken as an imperial
hostage. Any Song embassy to the Jin had first to pray in these Hangzhou temples before the trip
and then to secretly pay their respects to the God at Cizhou, which remained under Jin rule. For
the Jin dynasty, Judge Cui was also an important deity, but he was worshipped as the Second
211 Sacred Peak (Yayue) and benefited from the sacrifices offered to the South Peak (Nanyue), since
this sacred mountain was located in the Song territory. Historians have discussed efforts by state
authorities to control local cults since the Song dynasty, but what is the political and historical
significance behind that? Based on several epigraphic sources collected in various written texts or
during field surveys, this paper will analyze the role of this local cult played in the legitimation of
the emperors of the two dynasties. Because the two governments’ promotion of a local deity
resulted from a careful selection, the building of temples or ranks granted to the deity will be
studied as further evidence of the rivalry between the two empires. The two dynasties’ search for
control of the cult of Judge Cui will be construed as an aspect of the imperial legitimation
through the promotion and expansion of a local deity.
WANG Jinping, University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia, USA
From the Family to the Monastery: Resilient Women in North China under Mongol
Conquest in the 13th Century (Panel: “Evolution or Rupture? New Perspectives on
Chinese Society under Mongol Rule”)
During the Jin-Yuan transition, numerous powerless women in north China strived for surviving
a time of unprecedented military violence. Apart from instructing women to commit suicide in
order to maintain their chastity and loyalty to male family members, Confucian doctrines offered
little practical guidance for northern women living through the decades of disorder in the first
half of the thirteenth century. This paper looks at one single option many northern women
embraced at that time: entering the order of Complete Realization Daoism (Quanzhen dao). It
examines the ways in which women from different social groups participated in the burgeoning
Quanzhen Daoist networks and adapted themselves to a new world under Mongol conquest. It
argues that women in the Quanzhen networks played important roles both in the development of
the Quanzhen school and in the post-war societal rebuilding. Highborn Jurchen women entered
the Quanzhen order and helped to attract the support of local authorities; ordinary women
initiated the construction of convents for widows and orphaned girls; wives of high-ranking
officials directly took charge of Daoist projects under the supervision of women in the Mongol
imperial family. It also emphasizes that most women, especially homeless widows and orphaned
girls, chose to leave the family and to join the monastery because they had no alternative. Yet,
once in the Quanzhen networks, women were able to assume leadership roles in public fields,
including religious organizations, local society, and even government building projects. Those
resilient women imposed significant challenges to traditional hierarchical gender relations in
Chinese society.
212 WANG Mei-hsiu, Dept. of East Asian Studies, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei
Secular Experience and the Image Construction of Eminent Monks in Medieval China--According to the Biographies of Eminent Monks (Panel: “Interpretation, Imagination
and Imitation----Creation and Recreation of the Images of Bodhisattvas and of the
Eminent Monks in the History of Chinese Buddhism”)
Medieval Chinese Buddhist made great contributions to making Chinese society, which took
Confucianism as a foundation to form their tradition and culture, turning their attitude to this
foreign religion from hostility to acceptance. Constructing outstanding images for eminent
monks through writing their biographies was one of effective ways to accomplish the purpose
which medieval Chinese Buddhist expected. Traditional biographies of Chinese eminent monks
had developed its own mode gradually from Northern and Southern dynasties period down to
Ming dynasty and the description of monks’ secular experiences in their early life is an important
part of this biographical mode. In this paper I begin by explaining what sorts of secular
experiences were written in medieval eminent monks’ biographies. Next, based on the
explanation and some historical evidences, I will discuss how this description would help the
image construction of Chinese eminent monk. I will continuously analyse the differences
emerged in the description of the secular experiences between different collective biographies of
Chinese eminent monk by the time changed, and accordingly I will discuss how these differences
led to the changes of image construction of eminent monk in medieval Chinese Buddhist. In my
conclusion, I reflect on the significance of these reading for our understanding of the
transformation of Chinese Buddhism on Chinese culture.
WANG Shan & XU Hongzhi & HUANG Chu-Ren, Dept. of Chinese and Bilingual Studies,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Light verbs and Their Selected Nouns in Mandarin Chinese
Light verbs are a special class of verbs in Mandarin Chinese. They have been the focus of
linguistic research for a long time. Previous research includes: (a) words included in this class (Cai
1986; Chen 1987; Gong 1961; Zhu 1985); (b) their sub-classes (Diao 2004a, 2004b; Yang 2009;
Zhou 1987a); (c) their nature: nominalized verb (Guo 2002), noun (Zhu 1985), verb(Lv 1979;
Zhou 1985), denotational words(Xing 2003); (d) syntactic properties (Du 2010; Yang 2009); (e)
semantic properties of their objects (Du 2010; Hu & Fan 1995; Yang 2009; Yu 2008; Zhou
1987a; Zhou 1987b); (f) transitivity of jìnxín ‘conduct’(Song 2005). However, scholars have not
reached an agreement on light verbs. In this study, we re-examine them based on corpus data.
The objective of this study is to investigate the properties of light verbs and their selected objects.
All data are first extracted from Sinica Corpus (http://db1x.sinica.edu.tw/kiwi/mkiwi/ , accessed
213 through Chinese Word sketch enginem see http://wordsketch.ling.sinica.edu.tw/), and then a
corpus is established with manually annotated information on the type of light verbs, properties
of light verbs and their objects, and transitivity. Based on this corpus, the main findings are as
follows.
1. Classification of Light verbs: Light verbs are divided into six types: (a) “do” type: jìnxín
‘conduct’, cón shì ‘engage’, 做 zuò ‘do’, 作zuò ‘do’, zuòchū ‘do+RVC’, ǎo ‘do’, àn ‘do’,
nòn ‘get’; (b) “disposal” type: jiāyǐ ‘inflict...on/upon... ’, jǐyǔ ‘give’, yǔyǐ ‘give, grant’, ěiy
ǐ’give’; (c) “suffering” type: shòudào ‘receive’, zāodào ‘suffer’, zāoshòu’suffer’, jīndeqǐ ‘be
able to stand (tests, trials, etc.); withstand’, jīngbùqǐ ‘be unable to stand (tests, trials, etc.)’;
(d) “carry out” type: zhǎnkāi ‘spread’, kāizhǎn ‘carry out’; (e) “cause” type: yǐnqǐ ‘cause’,
cùjìn ‘promote’, zhìyǐ ‘extend’, jìyǔ ‘place (hope, etc.) on’; (f) “receive ” type: jiēshòu
‘accept’, dédào ‘get’.
2. Properties of Light verbs: 1) Most light verbs are polysemous, with one or more senses
representing the dummy feature. 2) Light verbs are matched to (Mei et al. 1983), which shows
that they are from three semantic categories: activity, phenomena and status, and correlation. 3)
We examined the semantic properties of light verbs according to 5 principles: (a) whether it can
be modified by adverbs bù ‘no’ and méi ‘not’; (b) whether it can take an object; (c) whether it can
be reduplicated; (d) whether it can be followed by the aspectual markers zhe ‘progressive aspect
marker’，le ‘aspect marker’’, uò ‘experiential aspect marker’; (e) whether it can from a ‘v not v’
interrogative sentence. The results prove that light verbs obtain most verbal syntactic properties.
4) Transitivity of Light verbs
WANG Shu-Li, Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK
Negotiating Historical Legacies in the Postmodern China - Staging China's
Archaeological Site Parks
Global tourism and heritage industries have brought about a common practice for governments
to adopt the use of ancient artifacts in promoting their significance in the global arena, making
the country itself a kind of giant open-air museum. In the postmodern China, "heritage", or "the
past", which in Mao’s era was considered as an impediment to the country’s modernization, has
been re-interpreted and the images of ancient China increasingly cater to modern China’s national
pride, global economy and cultural identity. National history and cultural identity are rhetorically
negotiated, contested and re-written for the public gaze through staging the nation’s various
heritages on display. In China, the heritage industry has expanded alongside the rise of cultural
tourism, resulting in the Chinese state's recent nomination in 2010 of twelve National
Archaeological Parks. What remains doubtful about this nomination has to do with the question:
214 "what should or should not be conserved?" These sites are usually conserved without being, first,
situated in the context of the politics of conserving landscape among interest groups. In the
Yinxu archaeological site (ca. 1400-1046 B.C.) there have been contesting issues between the
conservation of heritage and the presentation of the past, e.g., how to visualize archaeological
knowledge; notions of authenticity (such as whether a site museum or a theme park?); national
history (Han vs. non-Han Chinese culture); and, debates over archaeological interpretations. Two
other sites, Sanxingdui (ca. 2800-1000 B.C.) and Jinsha (ca. 1200-900 B.C.) are facing similar
dilemmas. Drawing on ethnographical research, I investigate the staging of China’s three national
archaeological parks, focusing on how heritage managers utilize the country's historical,
archaeological and spatial legacies as resources in various local settings in response to the state’s
project, and how it is a possible means of achieving urban development through the presentation
of the sites. I will be asking questions such as what is the contemporary narration of these urban
spaces with the country's rich archaeological heritage unearthed in terms of global vs. Local and
central vs. Marginal perspectives? My aim is to explore the significance of 'heritage' in
contemporary China, and to shed light on current Chinese society by looking at cultural politics
as it is being practiced today.
WANG Simeng, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS - EHESS - ENS), Paris
Medical pluralism face international migrants’ characteristics: example of mental health
seeking among Chinese migrants in Paris
Keywords: Chinese migrants in Paris, medical necessity in mental health, mental health seeking
behaviour, medical pluralism
In the context of globalisation and international mobility, medical pluralism concerning migrants’
characteristics became an inexorable trend when we talk about the locality’s medical support
system. For example, different of French who possess a natural attitude toward mental therapy;
Chinese migrants consider it as a shame even a taboo. That leads the false appearance of mental
succours’ low demand among Chinese migrants. Based on a one year’s field study for my Ph.D.
thesis in sociology, -which mainly consists of elaborate interviews, but also includes
questionnaires, data analysis, and literature study-, the author discovered discordance between
their high need to see shrink and low ratio of real recourse comportment. This communication
tries to explain why we need medical pluralism in French psychiatric system and also to
demonstrate which factors influence this new configuration: linguistic obstacle for most of
Chinese migrants, being a sort of <outsider> especially in socio-cultural perspective, occupying
generally a < unfavourable > social status, etc. By means of presentation of interaction and
negotiation between local professionals and Chinese patients, this contribution attempts to
present an idea much more clear about the construction of multi-level medical services, in
accordance with Chinese migrant’s multi-cultural and multi-social demand. This would inspire
215 local policies and medical institutions to respond better to consequences of migration in respect
of mental health.
WANG Xinhong, Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland
Access to What? An Analysis on Legal Problems and Implementation Obstacles in the
Access to Environmental Information upon Disclosure Request in China
Access to environmental information in China, a recently emerged but dynamic phenomenon,
has not been examined with sufficient attention yet. Through multi-case studies, this article
argues that law implementation in open environmental information, particularly, in the access to
government information upon disclosure request, is not effectively realized. This is due to both
legal and extra-legal problems, namely, the vagueness of rules, inconsistency of rules in various
laws and regulations, restrictive readings of legislation by administrative documents, and the
unwillingness of government officials to disclose environmental information. Moreover, the
interrelations and interactions of legal defects and political problems have rendered access to
environmental information upon disclosure request meaningless to a large extent. This further
shows the complexity and a lack of democratic participation in environmental administration in
China. Studies focusing on open environmental information, and particularly case studies are
lacking. As an inter-disciplinary study, this article aims to fill the gap by analyzing not only legal
problems but also social and political context concerning access to environmental information in
China. Following the introduction part, it first briefly brings together the concept of access to
environmental information upon disclosure request and its political reflection; second, it
introduces three cases of environmental information disclosure requests; third, it makes in-depth
cases analysis; lastly, it summarizes the findings and implications of this study.
WANG Zhengxu, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, SCCS, University of Nottingham, UK.
Interaction of Domestic-Global Governance and Implications for the UK/EU (Panel: “A
Rising China in Global and Domestic Governance: An Overview”)
Part of this project’s goal is to examine the linkage between China’s domestic governance and
global governance. We will first examine the effects of China’s domestic governance on its
foreign policy and its participation in global governance. The fragile and nationalist superpower
hypothesis (Shirk, 2007) suggests that a domestically unstable China will behave in an
unpredictable and a likely hawkish and destabilizing manner in global politics, including global
216 institutions, while an alternative hypothesis suggests that a domestically unstable China may
adopt a gentle global posture for external peace in order to concentrate on domestic issues. We
intend to test these two hypotheses with our empirical data. We will also look at how China’s
participation in global governance (GG) affects its domestic governance (DG). With that, we can
explore implications of a rising China for the UK and the EU, by asking how China’s domestic
governance affect its foreign policy toward the EU and UK, and how the UK and the EU can
help shape China’s domestic governance through engagements of China bilaterally and
multilaterally in forums of global governance.
WEBER Torsten, University of Freiburg, Department of Asian Studies, Sinology, Germany
"The New Quest for 'Asia': A Site of Chinese-Japanese History Politics?"
Unlike in Japan, historically the concept of ‘Asia’ implying Asian commonality has not featured
very prominently in Chinese politico-intellectual discourse. In recent years, however, Chinese
officials, bureaucrats, and public intellectuals alike have adopted a more proactive and affirmative
stance towards ‘Asia’. In this context Asianisms have been rediscovered as apparently meaningful
categories of political affiliation, belonging, and identity. Yet, affirmations of Chinese Asianity
have become a balancing act as they require a revision of the hitherto predominant emphasis on
the Chinese nation on the one hand and of Japanese conceptions of Asianism that had previously
been dismissed indiscriminately, on the other hand. In addition, China’s new embrace of Asianist
conceptions is challenged by rivalling Asianist rhetoric – and implicit claims to regional leadership
– from both Japan and Korea. While official discourse in China attempts to construct a new
Sinocentric conception of Asianism that explicitly draws on models from Chinese history, some
Chinese historians and activists prefer to employ ‘Asia’ as a method to critique the rationale of
globalization, neo-liberalism, and capitalism. Is this new interest in ‘Asia’ an expression of sincere
dedication to regional integration and identity formation or merely an attempt to re-establish a
Sinocentric order in the region? How do Chinese and Japanese conceptions of ‘Asia’ differ? How
is ‘Asia’ defined and what are the underlying assumptions of (I) ‘Asia’ as a contested concept
between China and Japan and of (II) transnational ‘Asia’ discourse that seeks to overcome
nationalisms? With a particular focus on the rivalry between Chinese and Japanese conceptions of
‘Asia’ during the past decade my paper discusses how Asia has become an instrumentalized
concept in public political discourse in contemporary China and examines why the quest for
‘Asia’ has turned into a site of history politics with implications for rivalling claims to regional
leadership in East Asia.
WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG, Anne , Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University,
217 Denmark
(De)Constructing China:Three Installations By Cai Guo-Qiang
This paper deals with transnational Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang (Cai Guoqiang, b. 1957), and
discusses some main themes in his work in the context of the contemporary cultural and social
scene in China. Famous for his large scale gunpowder events (creation and destruction) Cai is a
very versatile artist, whose work immediately associate to a chain of concepts, relating to
processes of construction/deconstruction. Focussing on three different installations, I analyze
the special ambiguity they transmit and the heterogeneous allegorical resonances they create in
the context of the global art world and – especially – in relation to the Chinese cultural sphere.
The recreation of the socialist sculptural icon, Rent Collection Courtyard (Shou zu yuan) (from 1999
on) an act of simultaneous reconstruction and deconstruction, provokes questions of not only
originality/copying but also of individual/collective, a theme which is also present in the
installation Head On (Zhuang qiang) (2006) featuring 99 life-size wolves crashing against a plexiglass wall. The sense of destruction, of senseless forward movement, inherent in this work, is
nicely complemented by the opposite idea of construction, which is the basis of the exhibition
Peasant DaVincis (Nongmin dafenqi), curated by Cai Guo-Qiang in connection with the 2010
Shanghai Expo. However, this collection of airplanes and submarines, built by individual Chinese
peasants, on another level implicitly deconstructs official narratives of linear progress and of the
social role of peasants.
WEITZ Ankeney, Colby College, Waterwille, USA
Towards a Relational Reading of Zao Wou-ki’s Early Work
In his 1988 autobiography, Zao Wou-ki (趙無極, b. 1920) declares that when he arrived in Paris
in 1948, he did not want to paint “chinoiseries”; later, he muses that only by distancing himself
from China did he discover the true value of his Chinese heritage. This paper considers the
relational aspects of Zao’s image-making from 1945 to 1954, a critical period in which his artistic
“research” (yanjiu, 研究, as he would call it) focused on issues of the primitive as a modern
concept, the bridging of Chinese and European visual modalities, and the emergence of a global
language transcending space and place. For Zao Wou-ki during this period, Chinese archeology,
particularly Han tomb rubbings and Shang bronzes, was an important avenue for exploring a
specifically Chinese modernism and visuality. His close studies of Picasso’s work prior to his
departure for Europe (he wrote a sixty-page monograph on Picasso in 1947-48), inspired him to
218 claim these archeological rediscoveries as his own “primitive,” and to develop a new type of
image, one which would be simultaneously “of China” and “beyond China,” simultaneously
personal and universal. This paper uses previously unexplored Chinese letters, newspaper articles,
and essays (including one very significant review of his 1948 farewell exhibition in Shanghai by
his friend Wumingshi (無名氏; aka 卜乃夫, 1917-2002)), as well as paintings and prints executed
in Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Paris. Many of Zao’s works from the late 1940s were experiments
(or “research”) towards building a new visual language, each one pushing against the limitations
discovered in the previous canvas. He tried using thin, diluted oil paint on canvas to evoke the
space and expressive realm of traditional Chinese landscape painting; he introduced antique
forms from Han pictorial art; he played with the figure-ground relationships observed in Han
tomb tiles; he attempted to paint Sino-centric portraits in the style of Matisse, and so forth. In
retrospect, even the best of these experiments failed, but these essays towards a new visuality
ultimately provided Zao with the technical foundation, theoretical apparatus, and refinement of
voice that allowed him to burst onto the international scene in the early 1950s. By 1952, four
years after arriving in Paris, his new work had been reproduced in color, in American popular
magazines like Vogue and Life, heralding him as an up-and-coming international star. Although
Zao’s move to Paris has been characterized as definitive break from his past (by both Zao and his
biographers), this paper looks at the continuities in Zao’s image-making process from China to
France, both in terms of his “research” methods and the products of his brush. This paper argues
that the mysterious sign-making and figure-ground relationships that characterize his early 1950s
paintings were not entirely the result of Zao’s encounter with Paul Klee’s painting (said to have
occurred in 1951), nor were they dependent upon his close friendship with Henri Michaux, who
championed Zao’s calligraphic gesture. Rather, Zao’s early European paintings and his
movement towards “abstraction” in the mid- 1950s demonstrate a maturation of the relational
image-making explorations he began in China in the mid-1940s. This maturation was certainly
made possible by the social and aesthetic milieu of Paris, but it was fundamentally dependent
upon Zao’s earlier image theory and painting practice.
WERNING Jeanette, CES Curt-Engelhorn Foundation / Reiss-Engelhorn Museums, Research
Dept. for East Asian Culture and Archaeology, Mannheim, Germany
The Archaeological Dictionary (Chinese-German) project
An Archaeological Dictionary Chinese-German project is in progress at Mannheim, Germany, funded
by sponsorship through the Curt Engelhorn Foundation at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums. Since
Chinese archaeology is no longer only a topic for exhibitions presenting trophies of excavations,
but realised as offering a considerable potential for cooperations in various fields of
archaeological studies, the lack of an adaequate specialised dictionary has been felt since some
time. For any real cooperation – as in translations, conservation projects or archaeological field
work, exhibitions transmitting contexts and insights beyond mere presentation of wonderful
219 artifacts, etc. – specialised vocabularies are necessary to help improving the exchange of cognitive
and methodical know-how. They are important means to prevent misinterpretations resulting
from inadequate translations. The Archaeological Dictionary Chinese-German is intended to support
the efforts of intensifying and improving such exchange. It concentrates on the specialised
terminology of archaeological field work, site features, methodology and techniques, artifacts and
typology, materials, conservation and restauration, archaeometry and scientific analysis, including
methods of dating, of archaeological theory and exhibitions. Since exhibitions and conservation
projects are prominent and fruitful fields of cooperation, adequate consideration has been
allowed for their glossaries. The bilingual dictionary (in German: Wörterbuch) shall comprise the
Chinese term in simplified and traditional character versions as an entry, supplemented by Hanyu
Pinyin transcription, followed by the German equivalent and its variations. Where necessary, an
abridged context or category information is given.
WINTER Marc, Ostasiatisches Seminar, Zurich, Switzerland
Yongle Dadian for the Ipad: The Chinese «Holdings» in the Universal Library of the
Internet Archive
In recent years, much emphasis has been laid on digitizing texts and making them machinereadable. Because of the vastness of Chinese literature, this is not a very realistic hope for much
of the traditional corpus of texts, nor does a full-text search necessarily lead to manageable
results. In the Internet Archive, where Public Domain texts are stored for everyday users, the
editors chose another way: digitizing the pages of large books as images, and endowing the files
with sufficient meta-information. This method provides texts equal to the one in the
bookshelves, but much easier to carry. The Taiping Yulan on an Ipod? No problem. And throw in
the Sancai Tuhui. In cooperation with the Zhejiang University library and the Beijing University
library large texts such as the large-scale leishu-encyclopedia are available for download in
different formats. In the presentation the particularities of the web-page will be explained and
examples shown of what the web-site has to offer.
WONG Sin-Kiong, Department of Chinese Studies, The National University of Singapore
Modern China and the World: A cross-regional research on a Nanyang intelligentsia
220 This paper discusses about a Chinese intellectual who was born in Southeast Asia, educated in
Europe, and made great contribution to China and the world. He was the “Plague Fighter” Wu
Lien-Teh (1879-1961). He led an eventful life with many accolades to his name as: one of the
outstanding “Straits Chinese” born in Nanyang (Southeast Asia in modern term), a doctorate
graduate from Cambridge University, a plague-fighter in the 1910 Manchuria epidemic, pioneer
of modern Chinese medicine, and an author who introduced the traditional Chinese medicine to
the western world. This overseas Chinese intellectual first appeared on the arena of the modern
Chinese medicine in 1908, when Wu accepted the offer as the Deputy Superintendent of the
Army Medical School in Tianjin. Two years later, his name began to be known world-wide, when
the anti-epidemic medical team lead by him successfully eradicated the plague that had claimed
60,000 lives in Manchuria, followed by a high-profile International Plague Conference in April
1911 at Mukden (now Shenyang) which he convened and presided. After the Qing dynasty was
overthrown in 1911, his legendary achievements remained in the history of Republican China. He
was physician-in-attendance to political figures and nation leaders like Sun Yatsen, Yuan Shikai
and Li Yuanhong. He was the Director of the Manchuria Plague Prevention Service from 1912 to
1930, and later Director of the National Quarantine Service of China. His greatest feats include
establishing over twenty hospitals and medical educational institutions in China and laying a firm
foundation for the modernization of Chinese medicine and epidemic prevention. This paper reexamines this historical figure in a new perspective by straddling time and generations (from late
Qing period to the eve of Japanese invasion), space and regions (Nanyang, Europe, China). It
also discusses about the link between historical data and perspectives by involving the
recollection by involved parties, records by people of that time, and memories by descendents.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance and academic implication of crossregional research methodology on the research of modern China and the world.
WONG Tin Kei, The University of Hong Kong
Historiographic Metafictions and the Representation of Wu Zetian in Modern Chinese
Fiction
In her consideration of the way modern writers reinterpret and revise historic events, Linda
Hutcheon coins the term historiographic metafictions to refer to the “postmodern society
concerns for the multiplicity and dispersion of truth(s)”.5 The purpose of this paper is to apply
this concept to the representation of Wu Zetian in modern Chinese fictions. As the only female
emperor in the long dynastic history of China and an anomaly who made her way through the
institutionalized patriarchal system, Wu has not only been a subject of controversy and debate
among historians and anthropologists, but also an inspiration for numerous novelists and
playwrights. Her representation in the latter is particularly mixed. Some advocate her remarkable
5 p.75 Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism, History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. 221 talent on politics and achievements during her reign, others conceive of her as a vicious, ruthless
and immoral woman who usurped the throne only for her desire. Through the examination of a
number of modern fictions including those by Ge Fei, Su Tong and Zhao Mei, I endeavor to
examine the relevance of Wu’s images in terms of historicity and sexuality. In particular, I look at
their interpretation of number of major incidents in Wu’s road to power related to men around
her, including her second husband Gaozong and her sons Li Hong and Ruizong. Special
attention will be paid to the relationship between the gender politics of the work and background
of the authors, together with the unique cultural and sexual agenda that inform their portrayal of
Wu.
WU Chao-yu, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan
Confucianism, Multiculturalism, and the Making of New Social Unity in Contemporary
Taiwan
After more than two decades of democratization and cultural pluralization, Taiwan has begun to
contemplate on the issue of social integration. Amongst the discourses and strategies for the
building of a civil society, it is Confucianism that incurs the most controversies. On the one
hand, Confucianism is historically the moral basis for the legitimacy of each and every political
regime of China, and the society of Taiwan has till now well remembered the Martial Law and
KMT authoritarian rule under the Movement of Chinese Cultural Renaissance in the midTwentieth Century. On the other hand, politically implicated notwithstanding, Confucianism is
regarded as the rightful traditions and values that the mainstream society should uphold. It is no
wonder that, as it is proposed that Confucianism be reinstituted as the base for the civil culture of
contemporary Taiwan, the controversies ensued have without fail focused on whether its political
orientation is compatible with the principles of democracy, and how the cultural order of the
modern civil society can be established. Since the question of whether Confucianism is
democratic requires a philosophical examination that is beyond the scope of this study, the paper
is focused instead on its attitudes and understandings in contemporary Taiwan. Targeted on the
current phenomenon of ‘Canon Study’ 讀經）, the study follows the lead of cultural pragmatics
and seeks to explore the relationship between cultural order and the making of modern civil
society. It is expected that through the idea of social performance, the social meanings of
Confucianism, as well as the nature of the modern civil society of Taiwan, can be elucidated.
WU Hongyu, Beijing Normal University—Hong Kong Baptist University United International
College, China
Fairy Tale as Enlightenment Discourse：A Study of Modern Chinese Translations of
Western Fairy Tales in Cultural Politics (1900—1930)
Fairy tales, as a western form of literature, were introduced to China in the “Cultural Renovation”
and the “New People’s Movement”. As fairy tales were chosen as one of many Western art forms
adopted by modern Chinese intellectuals in their efforts to save the nation, they play an
important role in the modern Chinese intellectual history. Using Grimm’s Tales and Anderson’s
Tales as examples, this study analyzes the basic traits of the fairy tales and traces back the process
of their translation from a cultural-political perspective. The author then proposes that the
translation and use of fairy tales at this specific social and historical crossroads sheds a new light
on the “New People’s Movement”, the “Children’s Literature Movement”, the “Folk Literature
Movement”, and the “Fairy tale Studies”. The author also attempts to uncover the origins and
motivations behind the drive to translate and use western fairy tales in the thought and societal
structures peculiar to that time. Focusing on Shanghai, which was the center of fairy tale
translation, the author discusses how these fairy tale translations reflect the influence of the
emerging cultural sphere of urban civil society. In addition to anchoring these translations to their
historical background, the author also analyzes their relationship with the developing educational
system, publishing units, and mass media outlets.
WU I-Wei, Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany
A Translation of Vision: Chinese Caricatures at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
From the late 19th century on, imperialism and colonialism triggered the introduction of western
media such as newspapers and nurtured Chinese caricatures. These pictures, rather than as art
works, served from the very beginning as a channel for conveying public opinions and therefore
played an important part in Chinese public sphere. Within this public sphere, cultural
flows/exchanges between the West and China came into existence. For example, the very
successful western satirical/humorous magazine “Punch”; it originated in Britain in 1841. Later a
similar periodical, “Puck” published in 1904, was created in United States of America; afterwards,
the trend began to flow over East Asia. “Tokyo Puck” was initially published in 1908 in Japan,
while “Shanghai Puck”, ten years later, was published in 1918 in China. The diversity of contents
and pictures, as well as the fact that similar images were commonly being used amongst them,
became very valuable. This paper focuses on how these similar images were presented in
different contexts and what ideologies were consequently hidden within by means of retracing
the “journey of pictures”. The whole process can be regarded in a broad sense not as much a
223 translation of words, rather a translation of vision. In the newspapers and magazines, Chinese
caricaturists redefine and (re)invent a new visual terminology for caricatures, a new-style visual
presentation at the turn of 20th century China. Not only did they take images from foreign prints
and adapt some of them to the Chinese context, they also created their own caricatures by
incorporating foreign images with the traditional Chinese iconography. In doing so, caricaturists
familiarized Chinese readers with the universal pictorial languages of caricatures. The
introduction of caricatures in China embodies the translations of vision, which cannot be
ignored, as crucial in the translation of literature, when it comes to the exchange of different
cultures.
WU Mei Feng, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan
Should there be an additional chapter in the Ming Court painting history? Starting from
the discussion on the paintings ‘’painted’’ by Empress Dowager Ciseng（1546-1614）
Freer Gallery of Art, USA has a Chinese painting in its collection which has entitled ‘’Five
Luohans with Attendants Crossing to Ocean’’. It is described as dating on 1610, and was
‘’painted’’ by the Empress Dowager Cisheng（1546-1614）according to the inscription on the
painting. Empress Dowager Cisheng was mother of Emperor WanLi（re. 1573-1620）who was
the 13th emperor of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Not only that, there are over 50 paintings in
Beijing Capital Museum’s collection inscribed as ‘’painted’’ by Empress Dowager Cisheng. Were
all these paintings really done by Empress Dowager Cisheng herself or the ghost-painters of the
court actually ? However, all these out-of-Ming-court paintings have hitherto not been noted or
discussed anywhere in the Ming Court painting history while interest in study paintings of
Emperor Xuanzong or Emperor Xianzong never ceased over the years. Other than this, a lot of
anonymous paintings of Ming court - mostly in liturgical series or religious use, collected in the
gallery or museums all over the world - are also detached from the Ming Court painting history
so far. This paper will address the possible painter might have been for the paintings ‘’painted’’
by Empress Dowager Cisheng. Besides, what is the definition of the Ming court paintings？
Should there be an additional chapter in the existing Ming Court painting history after the
discussions on Empress Dowager Cisheng’s and other court painters’ paintings ?
WU Nengchang, EPHE, Paris
The making of Daoist texts: the case of the Lingyingtang in Western Fujian
224 Over the past few years, much research has been done on Daoism from the perspectives of
religious history and Chinese local society. As an important source of documentation, Daoist
liturgical texts are increasingly valued, collected, reprinted and studied all across the country. But
there is still very little information on the textual sources and the textual production, especially
concerning those texts which are not recorded in the Daoist canon or subsequent collections.
How were these texts produced? Are there relations between these texts and the Daoist classics,
and the texts of other ritual traditions? The present paper tried to address these questions
through a case study, consisting of a survey of the texts used at the Lingyingtang 靈應堂, a Daoist
altar in Shanghang county 上杭縣 in the Hakka core area in western Fujian. It will focus on the
making of those Daoist texts which are not recorded in the Daoist canon.
WU Qianlan, Lecturer, SCCS, University of Nottingham, UK
A Rising China in Global Governance
(Panel: “A Rising China in Global and Domestic Governance: An Overview”)
China’s undeniable rise in the world economy has brought it into the centre stage of global
governance. Has there been any transformation of role(s) played by China in global governance
in line with China’s rising economic power? Is there a discrepancy between the world’s
expectation towards a rising China in global governance and China’ own? What is China’s
strategy, if any, in global governance? This paper is based on field research in China and
international organizations influential on global political and economic governance, such as the
UN, World Bank, IMF and WTO and others. It aims to examine the transformation of China’s
role in these organizations, study and analyze the world expectation vis-a-vis China in global
governance, and to shed light on China’s conception and strategy of its rise in global governance.
WU Shengqing, Wesleyan University, USA
The Topography of Desire: Classical Poetry, Photography and Male Bonding in 1910s
China
This paper deals with the interaction between photography and poetic genres in the 1910s. It first
addresses the representational power of photography, as revealed in the poetry of the era. It
explores the critical question of how photography as a modern visual medium led to subtle
changes in traditional poetic writing, as well as to an entirely new artistic admixture, namely the
225 practice of inscribing photographs with poems. Further, this paper analyzes the function of
heterosexual desire in male bonding that involved the circulation and exchange of poems
inscribed on photographs of gendered images. Primary examples include the artistic life of Su
Manshu, and the compositions of members of the Southern Society written on photos of Feng
Chunhang and Lu Zimei, who were two female impersonators in the Beijing Opera. In the case
of Su Manshu, his poetry written about or inscribed on images extends the ambiguous meanings
that the images represent, endowing them with personal significance. With regard to the practices
of the Southern Society members, their lyrics stabilize or limit the range of meanings a given
image might offer. Put succinctly, one should consider dynamics of relay and closure in terms of
the relationship between image and text. More importantly, this paper delineates the circuitous
path adopted by the exchange of photos and the poems attached to them, as well as the resulting
cultural practices. To paraphrase Catherine Lutz’s idea and use it in this Chinese context, qing is a
social and intertextual phenomenon, rather than an exclusively interior emotional state of the
individual. Qing was transferred and circulated through textual and social practices, which
included quoting the work of revered poets in response to another contemporary poet’s work.
Heterosexual desire served as a glue to cement male friendship and as a compelling force for
cultural transformation in China at the beginning of the twentieth century.
226 XIE Xinzhe, EHESS, Paris, France
Forensics and Politics in Eighteenth Century China – A Beijing Case
In 1786, an ordinance of the Qianlong emperor prohibited the five wards, into which Beijing city
was divided, from summoning the coroner of the Metropolitan Prefecture (Shuntian fu) for a
death investigation and compelled them to recruit their own. The order appears redundant since
regulations codifying the institutional framework of capital coroners’ careers had already been set
forth twenty years earlier. Still, far from being a simple administrative decision, as its laconic
formulation in the institutional literature might suggest, the prohibition was excerpted from a
long rescript expressing mostly the emperor’s accusation that the eminent scholar-official Ji Yun
(1724–1805), the then imperial censor, deliberately borrowed a coroner from the Metropolitan
Prefecture because the re-inquest (fujian) conducted by the same coroner had overthrown an
insincere autopsy report approved by Ji in an earlier murder case in order to protect the
perpetrator, a central official and remote relative of Aguei, a grand councilor who had the
emperor’s confidence. Exploring a series of governmental communications recounting the
above-mentioned and other similar homicides as well as their autopsy reports, this paper
examines the interaction between forensic knowledge and political concerns at the very core of
power. In contrast to the local level, to which the scholarship has mainly contributed, this study
considers Beijing as a particular stage for forensic practice due to the high risk for important
officials to be involved, either as crime investigators or parties. The paper thus sheds light on
how forensics was immersed in the interweaving of fractional conflicts and favoritism within the
capital mandarinate, and how, in such a circumstance, those protagonists manipulated forensic
knowledge while at the same time trying to conform to the autopsy protocol and taking profit
from its epistemic value to serve their political interests.
XU Lanjun, Dept of Chinese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Singapore
Kite with letters from Beijing Little Friends: Internationalism, Young Pioneers and
Popular Culture in the 1950s China
After 1949, the utopian project of the Chinese Communist Party started from the youngest
member of society in order to develop a completely uncorrupted and healthy new generation of
the Communist China. One important component of the “newness” is to have the spirits of
internationalism. For that purpose, the new government organized a series of open experiments,
including encouraging the cultural exchanges among the children of socialist bloc as well as nonsocialist countries, organizing Chinese young students to attend the international socialist
summer camping, requiring the young members to join the Young Pioneers of China following
the Soviet model, as well as encouraging the correspondences between children of different
227 countries. In the 1950s, “international correspondences among children” often became an
important section or theme in the journals, newspaper and films produced for the children in the
1950s. For instance, the film The Flying Kite (1958), the first co-production made by Beijing Film
Studio and a French film studio after the establishment of PRC, narrates a story with how a
“monkey” kite with a letter from a young Chinese pioneer that flies to France recruits little
international friends for the children in Bejing. Interesting enough, the whole story is narrated
through the perspectives of a group of French children, who come to Beijing to look for the
letter writer on the magic strength of the “monkey.” Through reading such trope of
“international correspondence” between children in the 1950s films and journals together with
some other related children’s culture in Mao China of this period, I tries to answer why and how
the newly established communist government children not only tried to invent the child into the
new national child, but also into a young pioneer with a consciousness of internationalist.
XU Shuang, University Paris Diderot, CRCAO UMR 8155, France
Email:[email protected]
Chuanyue – Travel through time and space: a new literary writing in the digital age
During the last decade, web literature underwent a spectacular development in China. Such a
literature shows new multiple fictional writings which shake and deconstruct conventions and
institutions. In the present study, we focus on one genre of these writings, entitled Chuanyue
(Time Travel), known in the Western world for over two centuries, and which is "revisited" in
China and presented in different aspects. Most of committed writers are women born after the
1980s', a generation which grew up in a widely open China and which fully experience world
globalization and cultural transformation inside an ongoing consumer society. Why these women
do make the choice to express themselves in a virtual space through "Time Travel" writing? What
do they think about female identity? To answer these questions, we will rely on corpus edited on
known Chinese websites and will propose the following approaches: First, we will address
different types of Chuanyue and analyze them in their relationship with the Western model and the
Chinese tradition in order to understand their mainspring (raison d’être); secondly, we will analyze
the specificity of personages offered by these writings in order to study how they deconstruct
classical and ideological traditions; finally, we will discuss the new esthetics of Chuanyue writing
under the influence of digital technologies as well as its qualities and limitations for the
construction of a new generation of literature.
YANG Dan, associate professor, Department of Chinese studies and CEC-ASIEs, Institut
national des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris
The Sa nzi jin g and his modern interpreters (Panel: “Questioning transmission of knowledge:
masters-disciples relations in Song dynasty”)
The influence of Song dynasty educational models is visible in contemporary China through so
called “Confucian revival”. By analyzing the way the Sanzi jing (Canon of three characters), a text
traditionally attributed to Wang Yingling (1223-1296) which was used for the early stage of a
scholar’s education, is presented and reused in some mass-media programs in contemporary
China, it will provide new insights on the continuities and discontinuities of the Confucian
education paradigm.
YANG Keming, School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham, UK
The Political Status of Capitalists in Communist China
The fate of the capitalists in China could not have been more dramatic since the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949. Around the time the new regime was established,
top leaders of the CCP treated them (except for a very small minority) as friends or allies. Soon it
became clear that they were not politically compatible with the new regime’s political structure;
consequently they disappeared as a social group from China’s political and economic landscape.
A new generation of capitalists emerged, however, since the start of economic reforms at the end
of the 1970s. After an overview of this process, the paper focuses on the current political status
of the new capitalists. Drawing on results from national surveys, case studies and fieldwork, I
would answer the question to what extent their wealth has been transferred into political power:
How many of them are members of the CCP? Is the membership a sign of political power? How
many of them are members of the People’s Congress (ren da) or People’s Political Consultative
Assembly (zheng xie)? Are these indicators of political power? How do they see themselves
politically? In the end I would argue that the new capitalists remain political dependent on the
Communist state and therefore have no sign of developing into an independent political force,
which leads to a pessimistic prospect of their influence on the process of democratization in
China.
YANG Shu, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon, USA
The Shrew Is Back: Revisiting “New Woman” Image in Early-Twentieth-Century China
229 This paper inquires into the as yet unacknowledged convergence of shrew literature and “new
woman” literature in China at the turn of the twentieth century. As a stock character in Chinese
literature throughout the centuries, the figure of the shrewish wife reached its heyday in the
seventeenth century in large numbers of representations. Although researchers on Ming and
Qing literature recognize that new variations on this figure appeared through the eighteenth
century, they generally maintain that shrew literature finally came to its demise on the verge of
Chinese modernity. This perceived rupture between premodern and modern literature is closely
examined and challenged in this paper, which tries to bring to the fore a resurgence and rebirth
of literary shrews in the early twentieth century. The shrew is back, in a significant number of
early modern popular stories and dramas, written primarily by those known in literary history as
the “Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School”. This resurfacing of the shrew figure is intriguing; it is
all the more tantalizing that these reappearing shrews are a far cry from the impetuous wives in
polygamous households in Ming and Qing literature and have taken on, instead, the novel
characteristics of the modern “new woman”. The “new woman” now constitutes the new shrew,
a convergence that has been neglected by researchers in that few have ever associated the known
characteristics of the “new woman” with the quality of being shrewish. Scholarship to date has
centered on the representation of “new woman” by May Fourth male writers and the selfrepresentation of modern new women writers, neither of which has to do with the aggressive,
unperturbed, free-of-female-trauma image of the shrew. This study thus seeks to shed new light
on the familiar “new woman” icon by uncovering the compelling facet of the “shrewish new
woman”, to look at the continuities and transformations of literary tradition, as well as to
illustrate how this unique convergence of the shrew and the “new woman” in the early modern
period helped––for both modern writers and readers––to negotiate between old and new,
comfort and threat, tradition and modernity.
YANG Tao, Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, JAPAN
Moving Stage: Traveling Dramatic Troupes in Wartime China (1937-1945)
This study examines the traveling dramatic troupes in the war of resistance with Japan, 19371945. After war broke out in Shanghai in August 1937, a group of theater and cinema activists
formed the Shanghai Theater Circle National Salvation Association (Shanghai Xijujie Jiuwang
Xiehui). Thirteen dramatic troupes were organized, and immediately went to interior China to
disseminate anti-Japanese propaganda to the general populace. Chang-tai Hung’s War and Popular
Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945. (University of California Press, 1994) is an
important study of this topic. In his book, Hung considers the popularization of spoken drama as
well as female symbols through analysis several plays, including Lay Down Your Whip, Mulan. In
this paper, I will approach the traveling dramatic troupes from geohistorical perspective, focusing
on the mobility of the itinerant companies. It is necessary to clarify the various parts of the
country in which the troupes performed what routes they followed, how they sustained continual
230 funding during their travel, and what kinds of communication were used on the journeys? It will
also consider the problems experienced by the normally “cultured” urban-dwelling members of
the troupes as they attempted to live and perform in unfamiliar environments. Many dramatists
and players were moving alone or in a group extending over the KMT-held areas, the CCP-held
areas, and the Japanese occupied areas. In this paper, I will also discuss the personal network of
artists, and try to understand their transience amid wartime conditions using as sources
newspapers and official documents.
YANG Zhen, Paris-Sorbonne University, France
A debate in 1935 between two critics returned from France-Ma Zongrong, Liang Zongdai
and how to translate Les précieuses ridicules
At the beginning of 1935, in the literary magazine Literature [Wenxue], several letters from Ma
Zongrong and Liang Zongdai to the editor were published, concerning the translation of the title
of Les précieuses ridicules. Ma Zongrong considered that it should be translated by <Ridiculous
women of the beau monde>, while Liang Zongdai thought that it should be rendered by
<Preciosity>. The apparent tiny difference comes in fact from two totally different critical
conceptions. Based on the keywords of the debate, <people> and <time> for Ma Zongrong,
<generality> and <eternity> for Liang Zongdai, we will reconstruct the critical systems of the
two critics. The essential difference between the two systems, as we will point out, can be seen as
the gap of the aesthetical taste between the realists and the modernists in the Chinese literary
circle of the 1930th. What’s the difference between the images of Molière in the vision of a realist
and of a modernist? How the French literature and criticism play a role in the construction of the
critical systems of a Chinese realist and a Chinese modernist, both French literature critics ?
Beside an analysis on the critical articles, literary translations and creations of the two critics, a
study on the literary norms of Literature (1933-1937) and of the Compendium of Chinese New literature
(Volume of theater)(1935) will help us to better understand the destiny of this French dramaturge of
17th century in the Republic of China.
YI Seokgu, National Taiwan Normal University, Dept. of East Asian Studies, Taipei, Taiwan
Healing is Believing: The Use of Yeon Gaesomun and Xue Rengui in the Making of
Mid-Seventh-Century Tang-Goguryeo War Narratives
(Panel: “Swallowing China’s Pride Page by Page: Writing about Lost Wars in Chinese
231 Fiction”)
This paper examines how historical narratives and fictional narratives treat China’s loss in TangGoguryeo War differently to heal China’s damaged pride. Emperor Tang Taizong (599-649)
invaded Goguryeo in 645 but failed to conquer her because of severe weather and strong
resistance led by Yeon Gaesomun (603- 666). This paper argues that official histories including
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang) and Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang) focus on Emperor Tang
Taizhong’s legitimacy to invade Goguryeo because Yeon Gaesomun’s coup d'etat overthrew
Yeongnyu-wang. These two histories also pay extra attention to Yeon Gaesomun’s negative
characters. Novels about Tang-Goguryeo War including Xue Rengui zheng Liao shilue, Tangshu
zhizhuan tongsu yanyi, and Shuo Tang houzhuan take a different approach to heal China’s wounded
pride. Instead of focusing on diplomatic and military legitimacy, these stories blur China’s loss by
creating a national hero Xue Rengui whose military skills, loyalty to Tang Dynasty, and dauntless
rescue of Emperor Tang Taizong were constantly emphasized.
YIM Choonsung, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Mokpo National University,
Korea
The Identity of Ethnic Minority and Cultural Politics Portrayed in Films of Zhang Lü
Zhang Lu is a Korean-Chinese movie director. He is a marginal man who is not welcomed in
either his mother language (Korean) or national language (Chinese). Zhang is an “accented”
director whit the diaspora experience and the post-colonial ethnicity and identity. He floats
between 'diaspora(n) Korean-Chinese' identity and 'Chinese inteligentsia' identity. Like Freud (in
latter years), who never lost sight of the “essence of a world citizen” while floating between the
role of an objective scientist and that of a a Jewish intellectual who explored his religion, Zhang
does not limit himself to the issue of being a Korean Chinese and elite Chinese, but pursues the
issue of human dignity. In this context, we can understand the esthetics in Zhang’s movies, which
“capture truthful images and emotions while being on guard against the danger of distorting
facts.” Zhang’s esthetical world, which reminds us of “cinéma vérité (truthful cinema)” “or direct
cinema”, seeks places that are suitable for him to express the veracity of the characters according
to his emotional line. Thus, Zhang prefers “actors who observe rather than act out, who make
others observe, who keep silence rather than responding to conversations, and who sometimes
can experiment with endless, meaningless conversations, that is, those who can be called actors
serving as a mediator.” The core of his esthetics can be summed as “elimination of 'cliché'.”
Zhang is one of a few directors in China who make movies about its ethnic minorities from their
viewpoints. Along with the Third-World women, ethnic minorities are some of the most isolated
and oppressed minorities in this global capitalist era. Particularly, the recent movie Dooman River
deserves attention in that it deals with another minority group, namely, North Korean defectors
in China. The ethnic minorities in China were named and summoned by the “Other” consisted
232 by Han ethnic which makes up 94% of the Chinese population, Chinese nation based on Han
ethnic and the state China as its political form. Zhang’s initial agenda was the Korean Chinese, an
ethnic minority in China, which subsequently turned to North Korean defectors and the
relationship between them and the Korean Chinese in Yanbian. Particularly In Dooman River, he
reassures that these two groups of people existed as one community despite their separate lives in
the opposite sides of the border. Zhang, however, does not limit himself to that agenda but
pursues the mankind’s universal value: human dignity, which cannot be given up against all odds.
His movies advocate the need for resistance, as capitalism commercializes the mankind and
materializes our society. Zhang actualizes human dignity through dialectic articulation of
hospitality and appreciation. Zhang constantly traverses the borders like a nomad: From
traversing of languages between Chinese and Joseon-eo, Joseon-eo and Mongolian,
Putonghua(modern Chinese) and the Sichuan dialect, the Yanbian dialect and Joseon-eo, and
Korean and Chinese, to traversing of physical borders between China and Mongolia, the Steppe
and the desert, and the both banks of the Dooman River. He crosses over the ethnic border
through the relationship between Soon-Hee, a Korean-Chinese woman, and a Han prostitute
near in Beijing; the language border between Mongolian and Joseon-eo, and the national border
between a Mongolian and a North Korean in Hyazgar. Hangai and the mother-son pair of SoonHee and Chang-Ho can communicate with each other despite their differences in ethnicity and
language, showing hospitality and gratitude. Even though the banks of Dooman river are divided
by the border, they form one community. The difference is that before, people went from YenBen to North Korea to obtain food, and now it is the other way around. Chang-Ho and JeongJin show hospitality by giving each other whatever they can. Zhang, through his movies,
continues the deterritorialized nomadic journey, dreaming of the diasporic public spheres for the
dispersed minorities.
YUE Isaac, University of Hong Kong
The Barbarian and/or/as the Hero: Archetypes in Vernacular Chinese Fiction
This paper charts the emergence and development of the 'barbarian hero' – a term I use to
describe such characters as Zhang Fei and Li Kui whose physical attributes are reminiscent of the
Han ethnic's traditional depiction of foreigners – in the Chinese fictional tradition and considers
their social and cultural significance. In particular, I pay attention to the interconnection between
the development of this fictional archetype and society's changing attitude toward the idea of
foreignness during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.
The reason for the cultural paradox of the barbarian hero is twofold. One, in spite of their
outlandish physicality with dark skin and the full beard, their presentation is habitually
characterized by such ideological merits as loyalty (zhong) and righteousness (yi). Such traits
unmistakably denote their identity as more Chinese than foreign. More importantly, they imply a
233 certain degree of correspondence with the cultural sentiments of the time in society's gradual
acceptance of further integration between the Han and other northern ethnic groups. The first
part of this paper will address this issue. Two, unlike the highly learned and refined Qiuran ke
from the Tang tales, the Chineseness of the post-Song Dynasty barbarian hero is typically
'compromised' by certain negative attributes such as insolence and a comparatively lack of
intelligence – a trait that is most obvious when considered alongside the contemporary portrayals
Guan Yu and Yue Fei. The fact that both Guan and Yue were, in reality, illiterates who were
subsequently canonized through the vernacular/oral tradition into literati-warriors (rujiang), and
that their development took place concurrently to that of Zhang and Li, suggest a potential
connection between the barbarian-like physical features of Zhang and Li and their apparent
'inferiority'. In the second part of my paper, by examining the parallel evolution of such
characters and considering the extent to which they symbolize society's ideal concerning
Chineseness, I endeavor to gain at a better understanding of the cultural and social significance of
the development of China's fictional tradition and its various character archetypes.
ZANARDI, Claudia, King's College of London - War Studies Department, UK
The Development of the Confucius Institutes: Successful Soft Power Tool or
overambitious Programme?
When I moved to London in 2011, I was puzzled to find a statue of Confucius in the centre of
the town. The out-of-place statue in front of the Maughan Library evoked the erection of an
even bigger statue in Tiananmen at the end of January 2011 and Confucius’ choice to name
China’s cultural institutes. This paper explores the Confucius Institutes (CI) as a growing and
worldwide phenomenon. After highlighting the main characteristics and origins of these
counterparts of the Alliance Française or the British Council, it examines the goals of the CIs, their
main achievements, and the challenges ahead. It aims at filling the literature gap on this relatively
new topic since the first CI was opened in 2005 (Tashkent). Its relevance should be considered in
the broader framework of China’s use of soft power to improve its image abroad. While several
contributions exist on China’s soft power over the last decade, few articles have focussed on CIs.
Based on interviews and analysis, this paper shows that the CIs were created without a
comprehensive planned framework but with a step by step approach following a peculiar Chinese
approach: a new idea is put into practice starting from a pilot action that opens the way to further
developments on a bigger scale. If the results are positive, the same experience is repeated until
when an evaluation takes place to assess its effectiveness, weaknesses and strengthens, with the
aim of making a decision on its further development. The current network of CIs appears to be
successful enough to have developed at a very fast path. However, it is likely to face several
constraints in its further expansion. This paper therefore intends to analyze the nature of these
limits and argues that, in the near future, a decision providing comprehensive guidelines will be
taken by the Communist Party of China (CPC). Regarding the political dimension of the CIs, the
234 main findings of this paper show that, although the renewed interest in Confucianism is evident
in Chinese society, the CCP seems not to lie beyond this trend which is mostly a bottom-up
process.
ZAPPONE Tanina, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Shaping China’s external image: the language of China's leadership in international
contexts
The paper aims to investigate the recent evolution of China’s international communication, as a
tool to reshape the country’s image as responsible global power. Since the early Nineties
institutional reforms and ideological innovations have demonstrated the Chinese realization that a
more effective communication and a more mature approach to foreign audiences could
strengthen China’s position in the international system. However PRC’s ability to influence world
public opinion and the international agenda is still quite limited. This creates concerns among
Chinese analysts and causes scepticism in the West about the apparent dichotomy between
domestic immobilization and international dynamism. How much could communicative
strategies, instead of political facts, persuade public opinion of the peaceful nature of Chinese
development? And to what extent does China’s external representation correspond to China’s
self image and self perception? To contribute and provide useful elements to answer these
questions, the paper provides insight on the lexicon employed by Chinese leadership attending
big international events, pointing out how the Chinese language of international relations changes
according to different identities of its recipients and how it adapts itself to various contexts and
communication ways. The study is based on a 2.000.000 word corpus, ranging from 2003 to 2010
and built up using software of linguistic analysis. Surveying how China defines itself and how it
describes other countries in front of international audiences, the paper tries to cast light on how
China builds up its national image abroad.
ZEMANEK Adina Institute of Middle East and Far East Studies, Jagiellonian University,
Krakow, Poland
Singles and the city: single women in the TV series Haoxiang haoxiang tan lian’ai.
Singlehood is an issue frequently raised in China's popular media; it is usually gender-marked
(related to women) and often becomes the object of (negative) value judgment. This paper is an
attempt at revealing the way single womanhood is constructed in a Chinese TV series released in
235 2005, specifically focused on the issue of being a single woman. The research method chosen is
qualitative content analysis, conducted from a critical perspective. The following topics will be
discussed: singlehood and the way it is perceived against the background of marriage, love as the
central pursuit of the series' four main characters, and the positioning of women and men within
relationships. The paper will end with some remarks on agency as manifested by the series' main
characters, and on the 'safe' view of singlehood proposed by the series, which skilfully avoids
serious problems and does not issue serious challenges to already existent perceptions of single
women.
ZHANG CZIRAKOVA Daniela, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Ink painting in Mainland China since New Wave 85 up to present
Ink painting in China appeared in China in the period of New Wave 85, since Gu Wenda´s ink
works. Works of Chinese artists living abroad, in Taiwan, like for example, Liu Guosong, Guan
Zhizhong, in Hong Kong, as are Zhou Luyun, Bi Zirong and others, as well as Chinese artists
residing in western countries, like Zhao Wuji, Zeng Youhe, had a great influence to Chinese
contemporary ink painting. In mentioning ink painting in Mainland China, we cannot forget the
Movement of Experimental Ink Painting, which is one of the most active movements in Chinese
art in its époque. It can be characterised by its main features, as painting on the easel and ion.
The artists of Experimental ink painting are searching for new logical development. They do not
want to import Western art into China directly, but they want to find new directions inside of its
own tradition. The 90ties brought great increasing (boom) in experimental and modern ink and
wash painting. Most of their works were or semi. This movement in this period has been highly
respected and attracted attention of critics, as we can see from the number of books devoted to
its members, and the level of their works is considered as quite high. Beside the influence of
Western modernism this can be considered as one of the roots of contemporary painting in
China. I would like to present the works of artists who have a great contribution for the
development of ink painting in contemporary China, as for example, Wang Chuan, Song Gang,
which came from the New Wave of 85, as well as Shen Qin, Yan Binghui, Liu Zijian, Chen Tiejun,
Zhang Yu, which are connected with the Movement of Experimental Painting and the others, which
started to paint paintings later, as are Wei Ligang, Wang Dongling, whose inspiration came slowly
from his calligraphic works, and the others. Some of the artists do not more devote to or semi
ink painting now, and for this reason I will present them and especially their works mainly in the
context of or semi ink painting and mentioning actual situation in their paintings in these days.
In analysing the oeuvres of painters, I will provide reproductions as examples of their works
which they created earlier as well their actual achievements in paintings. In the works of some of
artists I can show not only their personal creative process, but also the whole development of
contemporary ink painting in Mainland China.
236 ZHANG Florence Xiangyun, Université Paris Diderot, Paris
The theatrical language under the test of translation - For a re-translation of The Tea
House by Lao She
If Lao She (1899-1966) is among the most translated Chinese writers in France, it is with
astonishment and regret that we note, for his famous play, The Tea House, that there is only one
French translation without signature, published in 1980 by the Foreign Languages Publishing
House in Beijing. There is no denying the quality of this translation, faithful to the meaning of
each replica of the original. The reading is instructive: not only the events and certain names such
as "boxer" or "Tan Sitong" are subject to footnotes, puns and jokes are also explained, and this is
especially useful for Chinese language learners. The reading, however, is difficult if the reader is
not accustomed to the Pekingese context, since some place names translated word for word
often lead to fantasies rather than to true understanding of the facts (eg. the ward name Tianqiao
is rendered as "Bridge of Heaven"). Yet from the moment we speak of reading, we leave out the
very essence of Lao She’s work, for The Tea House is not meant for lecture, but for theatrical
performance. Translating Lao She’s play is not to convey the message of the author or that of the
characters, but to represent the characters with their discourse and gesture on the stage. And
judging the translation of a dramatic work is to weigh the theatrical language and to measure the
possibility of actually setting the play. Our contribution is primarily a translation study.
Proceeding from the characteristics of Lao She’s theatrical language, we will analyze in depth the
existing French translation of The Tea House, in order to emphasize the issue of theater
translation, and to advocate for a re-translation of this brilliant Chinese work. Also we wish to
encourage debate about the meaning of the translation of Chinese plays by putting forward this
question: is it reserved for a specialist audience of Chinese Studies, or open to the world of
theater waiting for a director?
ZHAO Bing, CNRS, CRCAO, Paris
Tang Ying 唐英 (1682-1756): a double itinerary (institutional and individual) inside the
imperial space
early modern China (16 th -20 th centuries)”)
This study pertains to ‘Emperors, their household and patronage’. It will take us to the Imperial
workshops, focusing on the role played there by Tang Ying during the Yongzheng and Qianlong
reigns. Tang Ying 唐英 (1682-1756) a baoyi or bondservant in the Imperial Household
Department, was in charge of the production of ceramics in the imperial manufacture of
237 Porcelain. The focus will be on his role between the imperial workshops in Jingdezhen (Jiangxi
province), Guangzhou, and the Imperial Palace in Beijing in relation with the fabrication of wall
bud-vases (jiaoping 轎瓶) for carriages.
ZHAO Jenny, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, UK
The Symmetrical Nature of Friendship in Confucian and Aristotelian Ethics
Scholars have been interested in the altruistic and egoistic nature of friendship in the ethics and
until recently not much has been written comparatively about the symmetrical nature of
friendship. In this paper, I aim to explore and compare the symmetrical aspect of friendship in
Confucian and Aristotelian ethics mainly by focusing on selected passages from the Analects and
Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics, and discuss whether friendship is required to be
symmetrical in order to possess aesthetic and moral values. An understanding of symmetry, that
is, the equal status of two friends, in social standing and virtue for example, would shed light on
the utility and intrinsic goodness of friendship in the two ethics. This paper argues against Mullis’
proposition that ‘the reader is hard-pressed to find a symmetrical friendship in the Analects’ and
Kutcher’s argument that for Confucius, ‘friendship had its potential for good, but it was a
dangerous human relationship’. While Confucian ethics is traditionally associated with
hierarchical relationships, readers should not generalise where friendship is concerned and
dichotomise the views of the two thinkers. Indeed, despite their apparently very different
treatments of the topic, there are notable parallels between the two thinkers on the benefits and
necessity of symmetry in virtue friendship. By avoiding tendencies for generalisations, we may
obtain a much clearer picture of what Confucius and Aristotle had to offer on the topic of
friendship.
ZHAO Xiaohuan, University of Otago, New Zeland
Crime and Punishment: A Study of Wugu Sorcery as Stipulated in Imperial Chinese Law
Codes
Wugu is a general term for all types of black magic that are performed through using image magic,
poisonous magic, cursing and imprecations drawn from ancient symbols and characters. Wugu
sorcery is a living tradition and has been pratised in China for more than 3,000 years. As a
malevolent and harmful witchcraft, wugu sorcery had been strictly restricted and severely punished
as one of the Ten Abominations (shi’e) in Imperial China since the Sui Dynasty (807-916 AD).
238 This study will take a cross-cultural perspective to examine imperial Chinese legal codes
concerning the wugu crime with focus on (1) definitions of the crime, (2) constituents of the
crime, (3) judicial procedures involved, (4) their underlying ideologies, in hopes of shedding new
light on the interplay between the black magic and the imperial law in traditional China.
ZHAO Yeqin, The Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, Sociology Dept. East China
Normal University, Shanghai, PRC
Housing and Citizenship Rights of Rural Migrants in China: the Case of Yuanhenong,
Shanghai
Since the launch of economic reforms in the late 1970s, China has undergone a tremendous
social and cultural change. Migration and urban renewal, which have become two of the most
important transformations in cities, have reached unprecedented levels. . With the loosening of
the household registration system (hukou), rural people have been “freely” moving into cities to
work and live. Some rural migrants in Shanghai live on construction sites where they are
employed or in factory-dormitories. These migrants whose accommodations are provided by
their company are somewhat fortunate. The majority of them rent private apartments in
“shantytowns” either in inner city or suburbs. These areas are precisely the targets of the current
urban renewal policy. The paper deals with the housing right of rural migrants in Shanghai under
the conceptual framework of differential citizenship. Using Yuanhenong, a shantytown in
Shanghai as a case study, it examines rural migrants’ housing rights in the context of urban
renewal. The author demonstrates that rural migrants (nongmingong) have encountered a “collective
housing exclusion”. As the most vulnerable social group in urban China, they are not only
deprived of the possibility of demanding benefits but also lack the ability to express their
demands. While their predicament is largely caused by the “collective housing exclusion,”
particularly the neglect of migrants’ housing rights, exercised by the authorities, the lack of
reaction from the migrants can be attributed to their own collective unconsciousness.
ZHENG Yiting Ethan, National Taiwan Normal University, Department of East Asian
Studies, Taipei, Taiwan
He Said, She Said: Witness Accounts of the Box Rebellion in Linyü yu and With the
Allies to Pekin (Panel: “Swallowing China’s Pride Page by Page: Writing about Lost
Wars in Chinese Fiction”)
239 This paper compares two historical novels of the Box Rebellion: Liang Mengqing’s Linyü yu
(Words of Neighbor Girl 1903) and George Alfred Henty’s With the Allies to Pekin: A Tale of the
Relief of the Legations (1902). Linyü yu meticulously records both the Boxers’ atrocities and those
later committed by the foreign troops from a Chinese woman’s perspective. George Alfred
Henty’s With the Allies to Pekin: A Tale of the Relief of the Legations (1902) tells the “heroic” story of a
young boy Rex Bateman, the son of an English merchant at Tianjin, who rescues two female
cousins whose missionary parents have been murdered and help them arrive in Beijing during the
Box Rebellion. By examining these two witness accounts of the siege of Beijing, this paper
discusses how the victim image and the enemy image are carefully crafted by the two different
authors to cope with wartime trauma. In Linyü yu Liang Mengqing offers readers a mixed feeling
toward the Boxers and the Allie. In With the Allies to Pekin, Henty transforms historical events
into a series of adventures that focused on the sieges of Beijing and Tianjin from a Western boy’s
perspective, leading all the way from a vague sensation of some unknown danger to the
triumphal rescue that brings the action to a happy ending.
ZHOU Mingchao, Croyance, Histoire, Espace, Régulation Politique et Administrative
(CHERPA), - Sciences po. Aix-en-Provence, France
“Us” and “them”: The School’s Role in the Construction of the Social Identity of Ruralto-Urban Migrants’ Children
Based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews conducted in one of the state-run
private schools for migrant children in Hangzhou in 2010 and 2011, this paper explores the role
of the school in the construction of migrant children’s social identity, namely, how they draw the
“ethnic boundary” (in the sense of Fredrik Barth) between “us” and “them—the urban dwellers”
around school as well as within their families. This paper probes into a school environment
characterized by a particular parent-teacher relationship. Migrant parents used to behave in a
withdrawing and hesitant way with ambiguous and contradictory feelings towards the school. A
sense of conformism could be recognized in some parents while others tended toward rejection,
both of them could be seen as an outcome of the defense or the affirmation of cultural and social
identity faced by the scholar institution. This behavior on the part of the parents can also be
partially imputed to the teachers’ ambiguous and shallow understanding of the parents and
students themselves. The teachers equate migrant family environment with its social background,
confound abnormal family and rural-to-urban migrants’ social background in the same causality,
and generalize moral judgments on their family structure. In this paper, I further argue that in this
type of school, the role of teachers is heightened not only because of the homogeneity of the
children, but also the children’s awareness of the importance of education—the only path to
pursue a better life in the future. In addition, the children consider these teachers as the
representatives of urban society with all its advantages—modernity, culture, wealth, etc.—while
they see themselves as belonging to another group labeled with poverty, indignity and parents
240 who work day and night. These children’s school life is thus glutted with the comparison between
the two social legitimacies (school and family) and an perception of opposition has already been
established which places these children in circumstances surrounded by conflict and controversy,
often reminding them the distinctiveness of “us” and “them—the urban dwellers.”
ZHU Yiwen, PhD Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, CAS, China & Post-doc, ERC
Advanced Research grant SAW
Different mathematical cultures in Tang time period as revealed by the treatment of
measured quantities (Panel: “Meanings and Uses of Measuring Units in pre-modern
China”)
The Tang scholar Li Chunfeng 李淳風（602-670s) ervised a commentary composed on Ten
classical mathematical books 筭經十書 and some of their earlier commentaries. That newly
composed commentary was presented to the throne in 656. Before that time, Li Chunfeng had
also authored three monographs for inclusion in the History of the Jin dynasty Jin Shu晉書 and the
History of the Sui dynasty Sui Shus隋書, which contained a historical treatment of measuring units.
On the other hand, the Tang scholar Jia Gongyan 賈公彥（7century） wrote commentaries on
Rituals of the Zhou dynasty (Zhou Li 周禮) and Etiquettes and Rites (Yi Li 儀禮.) In these two
commentaries on Confucian classical books, Jia Gongyan also developed mathematical
computations on quantities expressed with respect to measuring units. The talk aims to bring to
light that these sources bear witness to different ways of putting measuring units and quantities
expressed with respect to them into play. I shall examine the role played by measuring units in
these different kinds of texts, the goal being to put forward the hypothesis that there existed
different cultures of computation in Tang China.
ZIMMERMANN Basile, University of Geneva Dept. ESTAS, Switzerland
Chinese studies and the study of the present
This presentation sketches an epistemological argument about Chinese studies and the study of
the present. It discusses how humanities specialists can use developments in science and
technology studies (STS) in order to study in their own way material objects such as websites,
mobile phones, advertisement banners, mp3 files, computers, software, or cars. First, data
collected through discussions between colleagues and the author during the past ten years is used
241 as raw material to provide a reflexion on how humanities usually deal with “the present”, –here
used as a concept to confront with traditional topics in sinology such as those related to literary
or historical studies. Then, a case study involving a social networking site and a microblogging
site in China –Happy Network (kaixin001.com) and Sina Weibo (weibo.com)– is presented and
analyzed using grounded theory (GT) and actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s emphasis on the
agency of non-humans is discussed on how it connects with humanities’s traditional interest for
similar kinds of objects of study, and how differences in matter of methodology and theoretical
analysis can be explained by considering the ultimate goals of each academic discipline. Finally,
the elements above are briefly compared with approaches from cultural studies, communication
studies, and digital humanities. The argument is that humanists, and especially sinologists, can
benefit from their own expertise to provide a specific kind of analysis of current physical objects
which I suggest to address as the “present of things”.
ZLOTEA Mugurel, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucarest,
Romania
From Victim to Victor. Changes in Chinese Political Discourse.
Chinese political discourse has changed dramatically, in the last decade, as a result of China’s
story of economic success and continuous growth. The Communist Party has used economic
success not only to legitimize its grip on power, but also as means of imposing its views on
international matters. Once again, China had returned on the international stage as a strong
nation whose opinions must be taken into account. Chinese political discourse nowadays reflects
a major change of the image China projects to the world. If until not very long ago, China posed
as a victim of either the imperialist capitalist powers, or the rightist elements within the Chinese
society, the new discourse underlines the success of the domestic policies implemented by the
Party and the new status China has in the international area. Communist narrative of suffering is
no longer very present in the political discourse, and even when it appears, it is no longer as an
excuse for failure, but an element of contrast, in order to highlight success even more. The paper
analyses the presence of “the Chinese narrative of success” in the political discourse and
discusses how the new type of discourse and the image of a strong China is used by the CCP to
legitimize its actions and safeguard its interests.
ZURNDORFER Harriet, Leiden University, The Netherlands
‘On the Game’ In Late-Ming China (1550-1640): The Lives and Status of Prostitutes and
242 Courtesans in Comparative Perspective
Around the year 1620, the wealthy scholar-literatus Zhang Dai (1597-c. 1676) wrote in his
reminiscences Taoan mengyi (The dream collection of Taoan) about the popularity of prostitution
in China’s wealthiest cities. His essay ‘The Lean Nags of Yangzhou’ is a vibrant description of
that city’s ‘flesh pots’ which conveys in great detail what services customers expected and what
the girls and women provided. This portrayal, along with those by other late-Ming
contemporaries, is the starting point of this paper about female sex workers during the late-Ming.
According to contemporary Chinese judicial regulations, both prostitutes and courtesans were
classified ‘entertainers’, and therefore they belonged to the status jianmin (mean people) which
made them ‘outcasts’ and pariahs in Chinese society. But there were great differences, beyond the
bestowal of sexual favours, in the kinds of work these women performed. That courtesans
operated at the elite level of society, and that they were often indistinguishable from women born
into the gentry class is indicative of this era’s blurry social strata, and the ‘confusions of pleasure’
that prompted scholars and writers such as Feng Menglong (1574-1646) to elevate the place of
the educated courtesan in Ming society. By bringing this morally ‘marginal’ woman to the ‘centre’
of the Confucian moral universe, Feng stressed the possibility of invigorating the world in which
he lived according to Confucian doctrine. In sum, this study pursues three goals: to unravel the
socioeconomic conditions which fostered women into prostitution and courtesanship, to analyse
their position in Chinese society, and to relate what changes occurred at the end of the Ming that
affected their status.
243 

Final Version - Université Paris Diderot

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