我国最早向西方“佛朗机”学习的人──汪鋐传略考

本文简要介绍了汪 的生平传略,并认为他是中国最早率军抗击西方葡萄牙殖民者“佛朗机”入侵的要臣,也是引进西方先进武器：“佛朗机铳”并进行大规模推广使用的第一人。     

一个爱国知识分子的人生道路——读《九十春秋——敦煌五十年》随感

享誉世界的敦煌学专家、中国油画艺术的开拓者、著名艺术教育家常书鸿先生,一生执着于艺术,为保护敦煌文物、弘扬祖国文化而奋斗不息。通过常先生自传体回忆录《九十春秋——敦煌五十年》,可以解读一个爱国知识分子的人生历程,使后来者获得有益的思想启迪和精神养料。     

The moment when Peking fell to the Japanese: a “horizontal” perspective

ABSTRACT

Due to its equivocal character, the fall of Peking in 1937 was a historical moment that deserves a thorough revisit focusing on the city’s multifaceted structure. As a narrative strategy, “moment” aims at putting various spatial imageries of multiple events in a minimized temporal unit. This article focuses on two moments after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 7, 1937: July 29, when the Chinese troops withdrew from Peking, and August 8, when the Japanese troops entered the city. It reconstructs these historical scenarios by utilizing the reports of journalists, diary entries, and reminiscences, along with literary works to capture the moment of Peking’s fall. Using a “horizontal” perspective, this paper reveals Peking residents’ communal awareness and attempts to excavate nationalist elements from local experiences.     

Lacras urbanas: Juego,prostitución y mendicidad en el entremés barroco

Abstract

The image of a courtly and cosmopolitan Madrid that enjoyed an intense cultural life where millions were spent on luxurious festivals that attracted famous artists and travelers also contained a marginal space where poor people, the crippled, thieves, soldiers, gamblers, prostitutes, and black people lived and made a living. Where the long walks along the Prado at sunset lost their gallantry and became spaces of the night where ruffians challenged each other to duels and ended up, in most cases, in the overpopulated jails of the kingdom. Where the domestic space was transformed into house brothels and gambling dens, full of gamblers and onlookers. Where in the streets, one did not go only to shop but to beg for alms, to con and rob, or where the churches, a place of knowledge and shelter, became places for amorous and clandestine meetings, and where prostitutes, thieves, and murderers hid to escape the law. In this article, I will examine the social meaning of this underworld in seventeenth-century urban Madrid from the perspective of marginality. My interpretation of the urban centers explores baroque Madrid as a space of conflict. From this conflict, new ways of speaking, living, writing, and reinventing urban landscapes arise. Many of the short pieces written in that time articulate their plots through the relationships between marginal society and the established power structures and exhibit social changes in light of the economic processes associated with the development of Madrid as the imperial capital.     

“Comrade Mzala”: Memory Construction and Legacy Preservation

Adopting the broad inter-disciplinary concept of “memory” and its construction in a public sphere, I examine some of the ways in which memories of Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo, known as “Comrade Mzala” in liberation struggle circles, have been constructed and kept alive since his passing. A leading activist of the ANC, MK and the SACP, Mzala succumbed to an illness in a London hospital on February 22, 1991. A number of commemorative events and other activities, including grass-roots and branch-level initiatives, media releases, memorial lectures, colloquia and speeches and tributary statements, are analysed. Their tone, emotion, style and implicit objectives are explored. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous recognition of Mzala's liberation struggle credentials and intellectual prowess, there is no homogeneity in the manner he is remembered and celebrated; nor is there agreement in the reading of Mzala in a post-apartheid South Africa and its associated political and socio- economic context. Moreover, whilst it is predominantly organisations and individuals within the Tripartite Alliance who have been the main proponents of remembering, honouring and memorialising Mzala, there are others, outside of the Alliance and even antagonistic, who find inspiration in his radical world outlook, work and persona; and often use their memory of Mzala to critique the current political and economic conjuncture.     

Beyond the everyday? Rethinking place meanings in tourism

ABSTRACT

Existing tourism scholarship on place meanings seems to retain an underlying assumption of a contradiction between tourist places and the mundane world. In contrast, this paper contends that the production of the meanings of tourist places is also closely related to everyday life. To make its case, it interrogates the creation of meanings of two scenic sites of Tianya Haijiao and Nanshan in Sanya, a famous coastal destination in southern China. Although both scenic sites have been recently developed, their significance stems from historical and cultural meanings in traditional Chinese culture, which are frequently communicated in people's daily conversations and practices. Besides, the meanings of the tourist sites are neither fixed by legitimate discourses nor dominated by tourism publicity; they are continuously shaped by wider socio-spatial events in mundane societies and re-interpreted through tourism mobilities in accordance with tourists’ everyday concerns. This paper echoes the ‘new mobilities turn’ in tourism studies and contributes to the discussions of the mundaneness of tourist places.