“In The Same Boat,” cut paper by Bovey Lee. Photo by Eddie Lam@Image Art Studio.
By John Pomfret, Published: May 16
John Pomfret, the author of “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China,” is working on a book about the United States and China.
‘Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China’ by Evan Osnos已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews, Headlines
Tagged AGE OF AMBITION, China
By EVAN OSNOS May 18, 2014
On a single day this spring – April 30, though it could be any – readers scanning the news on China had reason to be baffled: They learned that China is poised to vault past the United States on a measure of economic dominance, five years sooner than expected (unless it isn’t). They also learned that China is at risk of a grave economic slump, if property prices continue to sink. They learned that world-classgenetic researchers in Shanghai, flush with far-sighted government investment, have collaborated to produce new insight into aging cells. And, lastly, they learned that a Chinese journalist has vanished into detention for daring to acknowledge a date on the calendar that censors consider taboo: the 25th anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square on June 4.
By AMY QIN JANUARY 6, 2014, 4:02 AM 17 Comments
Associated Press
For decades, one of Mark Twain’s satires of American politics was required reading in Chinese schools.
There are few authors regarded as quintessentially American as Mark Twain. With his preternatural gift for capturing vernacular expression and his roguish wit, Twain is still widely seen as the founder of the American voice. More than a century after his death, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Twain’s most celebrated work, remains a mainstay of middle school and high school English classes. Ernest Hemingway famously declared it the book from which “all modern American literature comes.”
Twain’s writings have won him literary fame in China as well. Although “Huckleberry Finn,” with more than 90 different translations in Chinese, is a favorite, a large portion of Twain’s popularity in China derives in fact from another, much more obscure work: a short story called “Running for Governor.”
A humorous account of Twain’s fictional candidacy in the 1870 New York gubernatorial election, “Running for Governor” was taught alongside the writings by Mao Zedong and other prominent Chinese thinkers and literary figures in middle schools across China for more than 40 years. In this time, it was read by several generations and millions of Chinese, making Mark Twain one of the best-known foreign writers in China and “Running for Governor” one of his best-known works.
“Just about anyone who has had a middle-school education in China knows Mark Twain and ‘Running for Governor,’ ” Su Wenjing, a comparative literature professor at Fuzhou University, said in a telephone interview. “And everyone remembers the specific cultural moment and social critique represented in the story, this is certain.”
Published in the literary magazine Galaxy just after the New York gubernatorial election in 1870, “Running for Governor” is a satire that takes aim at what Twain saw as the hypocrisy of the American electoral process and the dog-eat-dog nature of party politics. In the brief yet imaginative sketch, Twain finds himself nominated to run for New York governor on an independent ticket, only to be overwhelmed by a slew of false ad hominem attacks from several unnamed accusers.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY ASIA CENTER, 2013
by CARLA NAPPI on MAY 15, 2014
Xiaojue Wang
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1949 was a crucial year for modern China, marking the beginning of Communist rule on the mainland and the retreat of the Nationalist government to Taiwan. While many scholars of Chinese literature have written 1949 as a radical break, Xiaojue Wang’s new book takes a different approach. Modernity with a Cold War Face: Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature across the 1949 Divide (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013) offers a new perspective on mid-twentieth century Chinese literature by situating it within the international context of the Cold War. After introducing the cultural and political policies of the 1940s and 1950s as espoused by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kaishek, and the New Confucianists, Wang guides readers through a series of chapters that each explore the work of an author who was busily imagining a modern nation while writing from mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. These case studies introduce a collection of fascinating writer-characters that include a historian who had a job writing labels for museum collections, a born-again revolutionary whose feminist writing had material consequences that followed her (and her corpse) after death, a translator of Rilke and Goethe, a compulsive re-writer who created a Nightmare in the Red Chamber, and many more. In the culmination of the study, Wang suggests a “de-Cold War criticism” as a way of thinking beyond the typical boundaries of literary history. Enjoy!
XIAOJUE WANG：Modernity with a Cold War Face: Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature across the 1949 Divide已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews
Tagged China, Cold War, XIAOJUE WANG
Change and Conflict in Modern-Day China
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
by Evan Osnos (Author)
Evan Osnos, Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, describes the profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval occurring in China. In Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, Faith in New China, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions about why a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any in history chooses to put strict restraints on freedom of expression and how two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth has affected Chinese from all walks of life.
A vibrant, colorful, and revelatory inner history of China during a moment of profound transformation
From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy—or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes.
Change and Conflict in Modern-Day China已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews
Tagged Ambition, China, Evan Osnos
By Rachel Vandenbrink
Activists in Hong Kong protest methods used by Chinese state security police, August 2011.CITIZENSIDE.COM
China and North Korea are among the Asia-Pacific region’s worst culprits for torture, according to a new report by rights group Amnesty International which also sees many other countries in the region failing to meet obligations to protect against and punish the horrific abuse.
A poll by the group revealed that 30 years after the Convention Against Torture was adopted by the U.N., almost half of the world’s population still does not feel safe from torture and other forms of ill treatment used “as a favored tool by the forces of repression.”
August 14, 2013
Government intervention, evolving technology, and the quest to end terrorism
Wu Hongfei
Chinese singer and writer Wu Hongfei. Photo courtesy of Tienchi Martin-Liao.
This summer, a wheelchair-bound paraplegic man named Ji Zhongxing Continue reading
Tienchi Martin-Liao: Internet Surveillance, a Visible and Invisible Hand已关闭评论
Posted in Internet Freedom, Tienchi Martin-Liao
Tagged censorship, China, Internet Freedom, Wu Hongfei
