Recalling the War in China： The Dahoufang Project in Chongqing and the Restoration of a Legacy

This article presents a rare inside view of a unique project currently underway in China to study and preserve the memory of possibly the single most seminal event in Chinese modern history, the War of Resistance against Japan （1937-45）. The article introduces a multi-faceted program to preserve the wartime cultural heritage; the work is ongoing in the thriving western metropolis of Chongqing, once China＇s bomb-torn wartime capital and international Allied command center. It describes how, seven decades after World War II, scholars, cultural workers, government experts, and artists in China are joining hands in an unprecedented, all-encompassing project to record, restore, and recount the extraordinary legacy of China＇s War of Resistance in its local, as well as national and global contexts.     

The Indian Outflow Water-dock before the 5th Century A.D.,Based on the Case Study of Sardulakarnavadana

Water clock is a vital instrument to tell the time in ancient societies. The Indian water clock stayed in a stereotype since the 5th century A.D., till the entering of British, both in literature and people＇s life.     

Discuss for the view that“media representation of crime serve fundamentally as a form of social control”

Media with the Politics
It＇ s not fresh news to anyone of us that the politics can use the media as an efficient strategy to present themselves and their political views. With the rapid development of the mass media and communications, it offers political figures to employ the strategies of symbolic construction with the purpose of presenting and promoting themselves in front of the audience （Schlesinger and Tnmber, 1994）. With the purpose of keeping public orders and reduce the crime rate, the media plays a very important role in .＇broadcasting＇ the ＇advertising＇ for the government,     

Chinese Socialism as Vernacular Cosmopolitanism

This paper follows the life of an idea, a fundamental concept in modern Chinese intellectual life： socialism. It explores this idea as an alternative form of Chinese cosmopolitanism, drawing from Pheng Cheah＇s identification of two kinds of Chinese cosmopolitanism： mercantile and revolutionary. If part of what we mean by cosmopolitanism is the local use of an external, or international, or otherwise ＂independent＂ （relative to local power and practice） ideology or discourse to promote an agent＇s sense of social good at home and connection to the world, then the ways that socialist thought, ideology and praxis have been employed in China in the twentieth century constitute one such strain of cosmopolitanism. Shehuizhuyi （socialism） meant related but significantly different things to Chinese in the twentieth century. This essay argues that Chinese socialism can be viewed as a version of vernacular cosmopolitanism through two examples： Wang Shiwei in the 1940s and Deng Tuo in the 1960s, as well as the discourse of Pan-Asianism before and after the Mao era. Chinese socialism was as much a terrain of debate and contestation about what it means to be ＂Chinese and modern＂ as it was a shared vocabulary and set of aspirations. All along it has been able to play the role of cosmopolitan thought for some influential Chinese thinkers and doers--connecting China to the world in order to pursue universal values.     

Ng,Wing Chung.The Rise of Cantonese Opera

Wing Chung Ng's long-awaited second monograph does not disappoint.Ng turns his scrupulous analytical and research skills to the unwieldy,transient world of stage performers and the business of Cantonese opera as it evolved from the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century.Drawing on his nostalgia and experiences with popular regional entertainment while growing up in Hong Kong,the author has pieced together a vivid portrait of a constantly adapting,transnational business whose networks reached far into the Cantonese diaspora.     

From Democracy to Bureaucracy： The Baojia in Nationalist Thought and Practice, 1927-1949

In the 1939 New County Reforms, the Nationalist government made the baojia system the lowest level of self-government in the country. This decision was the result of more than ten years of discussion among Nationalist administrators and writers who were searching for a tutelary system to train the people in their political rights in preparation for constitutional rule. In the 1920s and 1930s, Nationalist writers claimed to be following Sun Zhongshan＇s （Sun Yat-sen） philosophy by reinventing the baojia as a form of democracy. Harkening back to a reimagined national past, they ＂discovered＂ that the imperial baojia was not a system of local control, but a traditional model of bureaucratically-designed local self-government. Nationalist writers dovetailed this new baojia with Sun Zhongshan＇s philosophy in order to rationalize its position as the foundation of the Three Principles of the People State. Once philosophically legitimized, Nationalist writers endorsed the baojia as a top-down bureaucratic system that would transform the political, social, and economic life of the country; it would become the core political unit of their state-making and nation-building projects. In so doing, the baojia came to represent the Nationalists＇ deeply-held belief in the power of human agency to create state institutions capable of entirely remaking society and transforming the nation.     

＂Bankers Are Stingy？＂ Re-Examining Stock Exchanges and Public Debt in Prewar Shanghai （1920s-1930s）

This review article surveys new studies of China＇s economy in the early twentieth century that have been published in both China and the West. It analyses the nuances that we find in these recently published studies and how those might improve our conventional understanding of the era, with particular emphasis on the link between fiscal revenue and stock-exchanges. First, a detailed introduction treats the evolution, beginning in the nineteenth century, of Shanghai＇s segmented stock exchanges in the context of wider global currents. Section two reprises the still common notion that heavy domestic borrowing by the Nationalist （Kuornintang, or GMD） government in the 1920s-1930s forestalled industrialization. Section three discusses at length the degree to which Chinese banks in that period may be seen as merely a GMD conduit of borrowing. Chinese banks were probably more conducive to Shanghai＇s industrialization than is usually acknowledged, and they also played a key role in stabilizing China＇s monetary environment well beyond their perceived focus on managing public debt. But more evidence needs to come to light, and this article sets out the areas in which future research might advance our knowledge. The conclusion will underscore how the various findings of scholars might, as a whole, remould current conceptions.     

The Urban “Cultural Nexus of Power”： Intellectual Elites in Shanghai and Beijing, 1900-1937

In the decades before the full-scale war with Japan in 1937, a robust series of institutions connected the bourgeois with intellectuals （which included professionals and journalists, as well as academics） in Shanghai. Collectively, these institutions can be understood as forming an urban ＂cultural nexus of power＂ that allowed non-state actors to effectively control aspects of Shanghai＇s political life. This bourgeois-intellectual alliance was not inevitable; no similar bonds existed between these same two groups in Beijing. It was forged in Shanghai due to the city＇s unique historical position as a Treaty Port and its dynamic economy, which included an extensive structure of private higher education and a market-based publishing industry. Unlike the rural ＂cultural nexus of power＂ originally described by Prasenjit Duara, this urban nexus grew stronger during the political and economic changes of the early twentieth century. War and revolution in the 1930s and 1940s, however, destroyed the connections between the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, ending the vibrant urban environment they had created.     

The Last Stand of Colonialism? The Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils and the Sino-British Negotiations Over Hong Kong, 1982–1984

ABSTRACT

As influential leaders in Hong Kong, the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Council (UMELCO) were arguably the only group of Hong Kong people permitted to take part in the Sino-British negotiations that defined the future of Hong Kong. But almost no studies have explored the broader significance of their participation in the negotiations. Using recently declassified British documents, this article argues that, in the wider history of decolonisation, UMELCO’s petition for British administration belonged to the less noticed voices that called for alternatives to independence. UMELCO’s participation also reveals how the negotiations challenged Hong Kong’s autonomy. Although governors at times advocated Hong Kong’s interests vis-a-vis London, the governor’s autonomy during the negotiations was restricted, so the appeal of UMELCO was further weakened. Although UMELCO wanted to preserve the existing system, their actions inadvertently boosted the rise of ‘Hong Kong people’ as an idea and encouraged local people to demand more democracy. The structure of ExCo, LegCo and the government was mostly inherited by post-1997 Hong Kong, while some of UMELCO shifted to the Chinese side, suggesting the irony that a supposedly anti-colonial China lived with a state that came largely from colonial rule.     

‘An Organic Part of the Whole Structure’: John Curtin's Empire

In March 1957 Harold Macmillan expressed to Dwight Eisenhower that the British government was ‘considering abandoning Hong Kong’. The hitherto unknown Hong Kong Question in 1957 grew primarily out of Britain's imperial decline, and particularly the difficulties of defending Hong Kong. During the Cold War Hong Kong was a colony too valuable for Britain to abandon in peace, and yet too peripheral to be worth committing scarce resources to for its survival at war. The British dilemmas were exacerbated by the 1956 riots in Hong Kong and the general defence review undertaken by the Macmillan government in 1957, both of which raised serious questions about the adequacy of a reduced garrison to maintain internal security. The United States also showed concern about the future of the British colony in the light of Anglo-American differences over the Suez crisis and China policy. As a result of the Bermuda and Washington conferences in 1957, the Anglo-American relationship was restored by Eisenhower and Macmillan, a restoration which, as the latter saw it, made Hong Kong ‘a joint defence problem’ between the two allies. Together with the Chinese communist policy of leaving the colony alone, the Hong Kong Question was thus resolved inadvertently.     

‘Hong Kong is my Home’: The 1940 Evacuation and Hong Kong-Britons

Who were the Hong Kong British, and where did they live? This question sat at the heart of anguished and angry debates prompted by the colonial government’s edict in June 1940 ordering the evacuation to Australia of all women and children of ‘pure European descent’. In this article, I focus on thematic strands in the debate on Hong Kong British identity, such as race, class, legal domicile, reputation and migration, to explore the complex character of such British communities outside the Dominions. This article aims to characterise what it meant to be British in the wider empire, and deepen our understanding about the place of such communities in the picture of colonial migration.     

‘A Haven for Tortured Souls’: Hong Kong in the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War exerted a profound economic and social effect on Hong Kong. Between 1965 and 1970, the British Crown Colony annually hosted about 200,000 US ground and naval personnel on holiday. This influx annually earned Hong Kong about US$300–400 million (in 2012 dollars) and employed thousands of residents working in the colony's service industries. Using English- and Chinese-language archival materials from Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the article examines how US servicemen and the businesses catering to them became contentious issues in local society. Servicemen excited widespread interest, but their misdeeds and their stomping grounds provoked intense anxiety. Hong Kong residents’ ensuing debates exercised the colony's emerging public sphere, from newspaper battles to outspoken unions and neighbourhood associations. In tandem with the more commonly cited Star Ferry Riots of 1966 and the Communist agitations of 1967, US R&R was an essential ingredient in the emergence of a distinctive Hong Kong identity and citizenry during this period. While residents’ objections failed to curb the GIs’ haunts or holidays, Vietnam tourism and its reverberating effects pressed new sectors of Hong Kong people to grasp and articulate their investment as citizens in the territory's future.     

Chinese Refugee Children and Empires: The Politics of International Adoptions in Cold War Hong Kong

With the support of new sources from British and Hong Kong archives, this study casts new light on the post-war international adoptions of Chinese refugee children in the British colony of Hong Kong. It argues that while children were ‘saved’ and found families overseas, they were also used as pawns in a bigger political game. A way to delegate welfare for the Hong Kong government, a symbolic humanitarian concession vis-à-vis a strict anti-immigration policy for Britain, and an anti-communist propaganda tool for the United States, these adoptions also convey the competing power and population politics played over subject children by two multiracial empires: one in decline (the rapidly decolonising Britain), the other on the rise (the new cold war superpower).     

Britain,European Economic Community Enlargement,and ‘Decolonisation’ in Hong Kong, 1967–1973

Politicians and businesspeople in Hong Kong paid close attention to British efforts to join the European Economic Community (EEC). The British colony was exempted from most tariffs in Britain, an arrangement that could not survive EEC enlargement. EEC members were unwilling to extend to Hong Kong, a significant exporter of manufactured goods, the same trade preferences offered to other dependent territories. Instead, the unique provision the EEC made for the colony was limited inclusion into their Generalised System of Preferences scheme, which granted tariff concessions to developing countries. Historians of Hong Kong have shown how the colony experienced British imperial withdrawal in a number of ways, despite remaining under British rule until 1997. This article demonstrates that an important element is missing from this account: how global economic shifts led to an erosion of imperial ties. EEC enlargement from 1973 entailed the end of Hong Kong's privileged access to the British market, but for the colony, the importance of imperial economic links had already faded. At the same time, an assessment of Hong Kong's capacity to pursue favourable terms of trade in global markets independently from Britain offers a more tentative conclusion of the extent of the colony's autonomy.     

香港回归的历史"前奏曲"——1979年3月邓小平与麦理浩的"北京会谈"述略

1979年3月香港总督麦理浩的北京之行,代表英国方面以香港"土地契约"问题为"突破口"逼中国方面对过"九七"的"英国管治"作出让步,第一次将中英两国政府"长期搁置"的香港"九七"前途问题明朗化.而邓小平"叫香港的投资者放心"的正面回应,初步揭示了中国共产党和中国政府关于"九七"以后"香港还可以搞它的资本主义"的战略思考.以此为契机,中国共产党和中国政府开始初步调整当代中国"国家统一"的战略重心,将以"一国两制"的"新思维"解决香港问题的"时间表"提前,探索将"台湾版"的"一国两制"香港化".     

女中豪杰 艺坛奇葩 方召麐其人其画

<正>近期吉林省博物院举办了《师承之路—张大千、方召麐书画作品展》。张大千是人们熟知的20世纪中国画坛最具传奇色彩的绘画大师。她的学生方召麐是20世纪中国画坛上一位极富声望的艺术家、香港画坛泰斗,更是女画家中之翘楚,香港大学美术博物馆馆长刘唯迈将方召麐誉为"艺坛奇葩"。钱松喦评价她的作品"雄厚质朴、浑成大方"。方召麐在追求艺术的道路上不断创新和求变,她的绘画作品不囿于传统,独辟蹊径,自成一格。这与她传奇的人生经历是分不开的。坎坷人生不懈追求方召麐(1914-2006年)又名如麟,生于江苏省无锡市。为江苏纺丝厂实业家方寿颐、王淑英之长女。方召麐的一生,经历了无数坎坷。7岁时,战争爆     

从《部门报告》看战前港英政府的社会福利事业

1909至1939年港英政府的《部门报告》是一份久为人所忽视的档案。该报告显示香港政府在社会福利事业上曾用力不少。与西方相比,其策划规模与客观成就并不落后。     

Policy and creative strategies: Hong Kong CEPA films in the China market

Abstract

This article examines the creative strategies of Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) films in engagements with the China market under the framework of CEPA introduced in 2004. One of the aims of CEPA for the film sector is to boost co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland. In the past 10 years, CEPA has dramatically changed Hong Kong cinema’s relationship with China in that major film directors have moved to produce CEPA films to tap into the rapidly growing mainland market. This shift has been considered as part of HKSAR’s overall mainlandization and subsequent disappearance of a distinct local identity. This article revisits this view by presenting two case studies to see if indeed Hong Kong CEPA pictures are devoid of Hong Kong elements. The case studies analyze textual elements of two CEPA blockbuster films, The Mermaid (dir. Stephen Chow, 2016) and The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D (dir. Tsui Hark, 2014). Citing the intertextual allusions to the directors’ old works seen in these two films, the authors argue that the market advantage granted by the CEPA scheme in effect allowed Hong Kong filmmakers to revive and extend signature creative strategies of Hong Kong cinema, despite censorship constraints.