In An Author Who Confronts our Demons, Liu Jun (刘浚) highlights the writing of a contemporary Hani (哈尼族) author: Yunnan writer Cun Wenxue [存文学] grabs readers by the throat and thrusts them into the mountain-locked life of the Lisu people [傈僳族] on page one of his novel Biluo Snow Mountain [碧洛雪山]. No wonder a film … Continue reading Hani Author Cun Wenxue: Questioning Value of Made-in-China Modernity
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Phags-pa Script: Tibetan Links to Kublai Khan’s Unified Script for his Empire
A volume devoted to a Yuan Dynasty script inspired by written Tibetan, Collection of Phags-pa Inscriptions and Annotations (八思巴文碑刻文物集释), will soon be launched. Editor Cai Meibiao (蔡美彪) says the book gathers some 60 years of scholarship. Chinanews.com has published interviews with two scholars who have spent years studying the script. Kublai Khan commissioned the creation … Continue reading Phags-pa Script: Tibetan Links to Kublai Khan’s Unified Script for his Empire
The Unsavory Side of Translated Fiction Publishing in China
In Book Publishers Scramble for Chinese Readers at the NY Times today, one China publisher in particular---Horizon Media---is featured as particularly savvy in recognizing early on the huge demand of Chinese readers for fiction from the West, and for picking winners that it brought to the market efficiently: Wang Ling, Horizon’s chief literature editor, cites as … Continue reading The Unsavory Side of Translated Fiction Publishing in China
Mini-review: Gao Ping’s “Tsangyang Gyatso, The Sixth Dalai Lama “
Leave me to myself. Go away. I have had enough of your demands on me. I didn't ask for it. What right do you have to make me your Dalai Lama? What right do you have to make me a eunuch, while still leaving my body and passions intact? (From Paul Williams' The Erotic Verse of the … Continue reading Mini-review: Gao Ping’s “Tsangyang Gyatso, The Sixth Dalai Lama “
China Census Time: As 2010 Count Begins, a Look back at how Ethnicity was Recorded in 1953-54
We all know that there are exactly 56 ethnic groups in China, yet in the 1953-54 census Yunnan alone reported more than 200. An excerpt from Tom Mullaney's Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China offers a bit of insight into these mathematics: In the first census of the People’s Republic … Continue reading China Census Time: As 2010 Count Begins, a Look back at how Ethnicity was Recorded in 1953-54
Holden Caulfield and the Chinese Shakespeare Scholar
"Chinese youth, growing up in our Socialist Motherland and benefiting from the enthusiastic care and concern of organizations such as the communist Party, Youth League and Young Pioneers, possess high-minded Communist ideals, and a rich, colorful and dynamic intellectual life. Therefore, reading a book like Catcher in the Rye, and comparing one's own fortunate living … Continue reading Holden Caulfield and the Chinese Shakespeare Scholar
