Yiwu: Historical transformation and contributing factors

ABSTRACT

Yiwu has transformed from one of the poorest rural counties in the 1970s to one of the richest modern cities in China during the 2010s. This paper examines this significant historical transformation and its key contributing factors along the five dimensions: marketization, industrialization, urbanization, internationalization and digitalization. It also identifies what historical and contemporary factors stimulated the rapid growth of Yiwu and how Yiwu is a special case in comparison to other Chinese localities. This paper argues that business entrepreneurship, local government and their interaction have played particular roles in promoting Yiwu’s transformation. This study builds on and contributes to literature across the fields of development, entrepreneurship and anthropology. It demonstrates how entrepreneurship can promote development even if a region is lacking in what are often assumed to be necessary resources for development. However, for this to be the case there is the need for a supportive and risk-taking government.     

Beyond Bukhara: Trade,identity and interregional exchange across Asia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the nature of inter-Asian trade dynamics through a consideration of the role played by traders from northern Afghanistan’s Central Asian borderlands in the Chinese international trade city of Yiwu. It explores the role that traders from this region have played in commercial exchanges involving China, the Arabian Peninsula and a range of settings in West Asia. In addition to documenting the inter-Asian scope of these traders’ activities, the article also addresses the shifting nature of their identity formations in relationship to successive waves of migration. The traders often identify themselves in relationship to ethno-national identity categories (Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik) that are politically salient in Central Asia and Afghanistan today. At the same time, the traders also emphasise their being from families that migrated from the territories of the Emirate of Bukhara during the early years of communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s.     

Woman's Work in the Service of Empire: Lady Margaret Field (1905–94) from School Teacher to Governor's Wife

The presence of single and also of married British women in overseas colonies, especially those employed by or married to men in the Colonial Service in the later colonial period, has been the subject of scholarly enquiry. Their lives, roles and values and their distinctive contribution, if any, to the development of empire and of its ending have been debated. Their gendered roles were usually subordinate in a masculine culture of empire, and especially as wives they are commonly regarded as marginalised. The archived records left by Lady Margaret Field reveal her commitment as a single woman to a colonial mission and her sense of achievement as a school teacher and educational administrator, while also acknowledging the independence and career satisfactions she subsequently lost when she married a senior Colonial Service officer who rose to be a governor. But it is also apparent that, though incorporated and subordinate as a governor's wife to her husband's career, she was not marginalised to a separate sphere. As is evident from this case study, governors’ wives had important and demanding political duties, and such responsibilities need to be acknowledged.     

北大藏秦水陆里程简“阳”县考辨

北京大学入藏的秦代水陆里程简册中记载秦代有"阳"县存在,关于这一新出现的秦县,前辈学者认为可能是位于今河南省方城县的秦汉"阳城"。然而,从简册中记载的"阳"县下属各乡到其他地区的距离来看,"阳县"不太可能在今方城附近,而更有可能是位于先秦"唐"国故地的"唐"县。其他出土材料所见的"唐"县一般写作"阳",清华简《系年》中还有楚国曾灭"唐(阳)"置县的明确记载。秦代的阳县应该就是继承了楚灭唐国之后所设的阳县。     

从“良渚全考古”到“良博全展示”——以良渚博物院2018年改陈策展为例

良渚考古工作历经八十余年,考古内涵不断丰富,考古价值不断提升,已进入到"良渚全考古"时代,是边发现、边研究、边保护、边利用、边传承的模式。2018年良渚博物院改陈,进入"良博全展示"阶段。现有的展览全面展示良渚考古成果,全面呈现良渚文化内涵,全面阐释良渚文明价值,全面解读良渚遗存信息。良渚的展示除了依靠文物本身或图文所呈现和传递的信息,还采用过程性展示、功能性展示、复原性展示、对比性展示、演变性展示、场景性展示等多种手段,多角度、全方位地解读和展示遗物,力图将良渚文物的故事讲清楚、讲明白。     

“非遗”传承人权利保障机制地方法制评述:兼论“非遗法”的反思与完善

《中华人民共和国非物质文化遗产法》("非遗法")颁布实施以后,我国已就非物质文化遗产(非遗)传承人权利保障相关问题进行地方法制实践。这些地方立法不仅保留了"非遗法"相关规定之精华,同时亦在此基础上进行了创新。这些地方法制的做法不仅具有正当性,还具有诸多亮点和启示。为缓解非遗领域不同位阶法律适用冲突以及平衡、协调非遗传承人权利与义务之间关系,"非遗法"应就非遗传承人权利保障机制等问题进行规定,以最终实现非遗法律体系形式功能与实质功能的统一。     

基于GIS的沈阳旧城区叙事空间研究

20世纪60年代,叙事学作为一门学科始于西方历史学、文学领域。直至20世纪末,叙事学开始转向空间领域研究形成空间叙事学,并被逐步应用到城乡规划中,尤其是城乡空间结构等领域。空间叙事学不仅关注城市发展中的物化要素,更加注重物化要素所代表的城市文化和城市记忆等非物化要素的深入挖掘,是探究场所本体与场所精神的重要研究思路。本文从空间叙事学出发,基于GIS平台运用核密度及K函数对古代、近代、现代三个时期沈阳旧城区人工叙事要素和人文事件叙事要素进行点模式量化分析,得出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的总体结构,以及叙事点核、叙事廊道、叙事簇群等叙事空间结构单元,指出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的动态发展性、功能多样性和历史传承性特点,探讨了叙事空间的经济驱动、自然要素、城市定位和交通发展四大演变机制。从人文地理学的视角出发,结合叙事空间理论对沈阳旧城区叙事空间进行分析,结果具有文化地理和城市地理双重属性,丰富了城市研究在该视角下的研究成果。     

Urban commons are more‐than‐property

Urban commons are characterised in the literature as collectively shared property in the city shaped by a context of scarce resources, population density, and the interaction of strangers. In the broader commons literature, commons appears as a verb, a noun, and a process made by practices of commoning—albeit still with a focus on property. In this paper, I argue that an understanding of urban commons as more‐than‐property is needed to recognise how present but elusive urban commons are. I use examples from interviews and observations conducted at a Women's Library to discuss how the access, use, benefit, care, responsibility, and ownership of this urban commons bring it into being through particular practices of commoning. By questioning current ways of defining urban commons, urban scholars gain a grounded understanding of the role of property, and other practices, in maintaining an urban commons over time.     

A journey to Mars: John Dewey’s lectures and inquiry in China

ABSTRACT

Instead of the framework of influence–acceptance commonly used in previous studies, the author uses new sources to reexamine John Dewey’s visit to China from the perspective of interactive experience. This study presents Dewey’s lectures in China as the result of interrelationships among a variety of elements – Columbia University, different hosts and audiences, the media, all levels of the Chinese government, the domestic situation in the United States, the international situation, and Dewey’s expectations and work – against the general background of China’s New Culture Movement and new educational reforms. Dewey’s speeches on democracy, science, and new education were remarkably successful in the first year of his visit to China, but began to meet with resistance from some students beginning in June 1920. Because of the Red Scare in the United States, Dewey had to stay in China. In the second year of his visit, he gave warmly welcomed lectures on the same topics in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong Provinces. With a deeper understanding of China, Dewey not only identified himself with reform plans but also began to pay more attention to China’s economic problems. His inquiry into the problems confronting China is a good example of what he advocated in his lectures: seeing democracy, science, and new education as a way of thinking and carrying out actions and making intellectual choices while moving forward.     

Loyalist,patriot, or colonizer? The three faces of Zheng Chenggong in Meiji Japan and late Qing China

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transformation of Zheng Chenggong’s image in Meiji Japan and late Qing China. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Zheng Chenggong was often depicted as a Ming dynasty loyalist in Chinese narratives and as a Japanese hero adventuring in a foreign land in Japanese narratives. The two groups of narratives converged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transforming Zheng Chenggong into a patriot, an anti-imperialist hero, and a conqueror and developer of Taiwan. Underlying the convergence of Chinese and Japanese narratives of Zheng Chenggong was surging nationalist sentiment in response to different forms of imperialism. This study aims to show how different nationalist agendas activated efforts to recreate Zheng Chenggong’s image in China and Japan at the turn of the nineteenth century.