Qian Mu’s Guoshi dagang : Reflections on a Modern Chinese Conservative

This paper examines the predicament of modern Chinese conservatism. I use the eminent historian Qian Mu (1895-1990) as an example to show that under the influence of modernity and in an effort to preserve tradition, a prominent conservative like Qian needed to “modernize” Chinese tradition so that it could be saved. I will examine Qian’s reconstruction of Chinese history, which was not just a reiteration of China’s past, but a new type of understanding of Chinese tradition influenced by modern Western concepts. By focusing on Qian’s most prominent work, Guoshi dagang, we can get a sense of the struggle of modern Chinese conservatives as they tried to fend off the detractors of Chinese tradition.     

“Our Girls Have Grown Up in the Family”: educating German and Chinese girls in the nineteenth century

In this article, we examine and compare historical changes in girls’ home-based education in nineteenth-century Germany and China. In many ways, girls’ home-based education in these two historical contexts exhibited differences, including the relationship between formal schooling and home education, and the role that new genres played in shifting tradition and structuring girlhood. However, we argue that more commonalities between the German and Chinese cases emerge. By analyzing the relation between talent and virtue, the writing of exemplary lives, and family dynamics, we see that in both cases the home was the critical site for valorizing and reproducing the class-bounded ideology of domesticity and identification for girls as home-based education constituted the means by which knowledge, morality, and practical skills were produced and transmitted from generation to generation.     

“Who Is Reciting the Name of the Buddha?” as Gongan in Chinese Chan Buddhism

Chan Buddhism’s ambivalent relationship with language and literature is perhaps most starkly seen in its practice of gongan meditation. This practice was first instituted by the famous Linji master Dahui and involves an intense meditational focus on the “punch line” (huatou) of what is typically a story about an ancient Chan master or an enigmatic question like “why did [the legendary founder of Chan] Bodhidharma come from the West?” In the Ming dynasty, a new gongan became widely used in Chan meditation: the phrase “who is reciting the name of the Buddha?” This was a reference to the widespread practice of chanting homage to the Buddha Amitābha in hope of getting reborn into his paradise. In using this new gongan, Chan seemingly embraced oral practice in an unprecedented move and appeared to combine the other-power of Amitābha worship with the self-power of Chan meditation. Scholars have struggled to understand this development, and several have dismissed it as an example of the degeneration of Chan and its later pandering to lay people. I argue that the development of this gongan can best be seen as an attempt to reframe the practice of Buddha-recitation in a Chan meditative framework; and further explore the rationale for the practice as given by the influential Buddhist thinker Yunqi Zhuhong, who was a staunch advocate of Buddha-recitation.     

The Cyclical Views of Human History in Thucydides’ Archaeology and Sima Qian’s Historical Records

Many previous thinkers have imagined that there was a glorious or harmonious period in the past better than the world of their own time, but Thucydides and Sima Qian do not describe the early stages of human society as a Golden Age. I suggest that Sima Qian marks a separation between the mythical stories and the historical spirit in China, just as Thucydides did in Greece. Further, they both presented a modified cyclical view of human history. For a better understanding of the basic characteristics of Greek and Chinese historiographies, this paper discusses the cyclical views of human history underlying ancient Greek and early Chinese historiographies through a comparative study of Thucydides’ and Sima Qian’s texts. I analyze some similarities and differences between the two great historians’ conceptions of historical process, and I conclude that Thucydides believes human intelligence develops through a historical spiral, while Sima Qian focuses on dynastic cycles with a strong moral concern.     

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Journalistic Ethics

related to journalistic ethics in China and the west.This paper starts with the comparison of journalistic responsibility ethics.Then from different points,I make a comparative analysis of journalistic ethics.     

The Discourse of Fengsu in the Song Literati’s Writing: The Example of Boat Racing

The category of “customs,” or fengsu, was important for the literati of the Song dynasty in writing local histories. It covers local practices of festival rituals, weddings and funerals, rites for passage into adulthood, sacrificial rites, and the like. The main purpose behind the literati’s efforts to record fengsu was not to acknowledge local variations but to censor local customs and transform society. This paper looks at these type of texts as a discourse that is meant to promote the correct, standard performance of rites and suppress those deemed improper. It uses boat racing in Song records of fengsu as a case study to illustrate how the imperial spectacle of boat racing in spring was propagated and how the linkage between the death anniversary of Qu Yuan and Duanwu were reinforced. Meanwhile, the popular ritual of boat racing during the summer, which bore distinct violent and shamanic attributes, was strongly criticised. Through these efforts by the literati, a normative discourse of the boat-racing ritual was repeated and reinforced in the fengsu recording.     

Chinese Objects in Eurasian Empire: On the Cultural Meaning of Chinese Art in Russia in the Late 17th–Early 18th Centuries

This article examines special features of “Chinoiserie” or “Chinese fashion” (“Kitaischina”) in Russia from the late 17th to the early 18th century: The reign of Peter the First. It discusses this cultural phenomenon’s historical origins, demonstrates the role of Chinese luxury goods and art objects in the era’s Russo-Chinese cultural exchange, and illustrates how Chinese decorative arts were used in Russian palaces. While Chinoiserie in Russia was influenced by similar trends in Western Europe, it was rooted in the unique history of regular contacts between Russia and the Qing Empire. Chinese objects not only appeared as commodities in the higher levels of Russian society, they also contributed to the prestige of the Russian state. Peter the First had a political purpose behind the collection, display and imitation of Chinese art objects in Russian palaces, as these practices demonstrated the growing wealth and power of newly established Russian Empire, which enjoyed trade connections with the Qing Empire. While contemporary perceptions of China in Russia were derived mostly by the exotic images of export art, ethnographic collections of genuine Chinese utensils, which were founded during that period, also contributed to Russian views of China. This research uses a comprehensive methodology, combining studies of material objects preserved in Russian museums and written sources, including archival records.     

Sports,Politics and Ethnicity in the North. Workers’ Sport in Western Finnmark in the Late 1930s

Abstract

Internationally, ethnicity in sports has become an independent field of research amongst sports historians focusing on phenomena such as colonialism, immigration and indigenous populations. Studies demonstrate that sports have simultaneously been able to assimilate different groups, promoting majority concepts of identity and majority values, and enable groups to fashion their own singular ethnic identities in contrast to those of majority societies. In Norwegian historical research, sport and ethnicity has been given only scarce attention. Norwegian sports historians have mainly seen Norway as an ethnically homogenous society where sport has played an essential part in creating a unifying national identity. A major concern for Norwegian sports history research has been the political split in Norwegian sports in the 1930s. Research on this event has mainly been occupied with the relationship between the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) and the “bourgeois” National Sports Federation (NLI), and by AIF's significance as a political movement. Less attention, however, has been given to its cultural impact. This article investigates the establishment and function of AIF in the multi-ethnic area of West Finnmark, a geographically and politically peripheral region of Northern Norway, at the end of the 1930s. The town of Alta, the main focus of attention, was in the 1930s a small fiord community with an ethnically mixed population of indigenous Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians, sharp political divisions and a vibrant sporting milieu. Although the political division of Alta's sports establishment displays many of the traits that characterize similar events in the country at large, the ethnic factor brought another, important, dimension to it. This highly politicized period in Finnmark sports underlines the importance of sports as an arena for the construction and reinforcement of not only political identity, but also for the production of ethnic and local identities.     

Calling the bluff of the Western powers in the United Nations disarmament negotiations, 1954–55

This article, based on British and American archival sources, examines the response of the Western powers (mainly the US and the UK) to the Soviet disarmament initiatives in 1954–55. We shed some light on the Western states' attitude to the UN disarmament negotiations of this period, arguing that the two sides never actually came close to a settlement, since at least the Western side was hesitant to commit to any actual measures of disarmament. This article challenges part of the Cold War historiography that has incorrectly portrayed this particular period as the most opportune time for achieving disarmament.     

Embellishing Appearances with Fragrant Cosmetic Cases : Transforming Women’s Bodies to Nourish Life in the Late Ming

Through a close examination of late Ming publisher Hu Wenhuan’s Embellishing Appearances with Fragrant Cosmetic Cases, this article shows how beautification techniques became part of the culture of nourishing life. Hu encouraged women to make and use cosmetics as a way of practicing womanly work. For men, these techniques became a means of investigating things and cultivating the self. Hu’s text is an example of amateur experimentation involving medical knowledge in late imperial China that went beyond proprietary expertise. The practice-oriented recipes in Fragrant Cosmetic Cases helped readers to translate written knowledge into practical knowledge, and to circulate them to a broad group of users that included women, the less literate, and even the illiterate. By the early seventeenth century, what Hu marketed as knowledge to nourish the lives of women had become common knowledge for male elites.     

Chinese Aid in the South Pacific: Linked to Resources?

Abstract

China’s emergence as a global development actor has implications for developing countries and “traditional” donor agencies. Its current provision of foreign aid and other forms of development assistance to developing countries throughout the world presents both opportunities and challenges for all actors. At the same time, China’s growing need for natural resources and its policy of securing access through state-led “resource diplomacy” are causing concern. While most scholars and commentators are focused on the “China in Africa” dimension, China’s engagement in the South Pacific region has also been growing rapidly over the past decade and offers some interesting and unique insights. This article examines the dynamics of China’s provision of foreign aid and its quest for natural resources in the South Pacific region, with comparative references to other regions. Drawing particularly upon interviews and site visits in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, it argues that although major commercial resource contracts do appear to be supported by Chinese Government assistance, resources deals are not explicitly part of Chinese foreign aid in the region.