tp86kuta – Page 13

Conflicts, Organisations, Men, and Ideas in Republican China

Wednesday
11:00 am – 12:45 pm
Room 1

Organised by Clemens Büttner and Edward A. McCord
Chaired by Egas Moniz Bandeira
Edward A. McCord, “Toward a Social History of Modern Chinese Warlordism”
Vivienne Xiangwei Guo, “Achieving the ‘Good Government’ with the ‘Good People’: Wu Peifu and the May Fourth Intellectual in 1922”
Harold Tanner, “From Shangdang to the Dabieshan: Liu Bocheng and the Challenges of Military Professionalism in the Chinese Civil War”
Kwong Chi Man, Discussant

Military events provided the context for major turning points in the formation and conception of the modern Chinese nation-state. In China, wars shaped the borders of the state, led to the collapse of old and the establishment of new regimes, motivated a re-evaluation of the military profession, and provided the impetus and starting point for many discourses on the Chinese nation and its place in the world. By analyzing the effects of military conflicts, organizations, men, and ideas on Republican China, this panel aims to highlight the importance of the military as a driving force—and mirror—of modern Chinese history. Going beyond the political and military activities of warlords, Edward A. McCord aims to identify the main elements of a social history of modern Chinese warlordism. Focusing on Wu Peifu’s 1922 call for a “Good Government,” Vivienne Xiangwei Guo examines the intellectual, ideological and cultural aspects of warlord rule. Clemens Büttner recontextualises the “fascist turn” of the Guomindang regime in the 1930s by relating it to the often-overlooked militaristic strand of modern Chinese nationalist thinking. Harold Tanner traces the professionalization of Communist forces under the command of Liu Bocheng during the Chinese Civil War, which laid the foundation for Communist victory in the Huaihai Campaign and expedited the collapse of GMD rule on the mainland.

Edward A. McCord, “Toward a Social History of Modern Chinese Warlordism“

Since the assumption or seizure of political power was a defining feature of modern Chinese warlordism (and indeed for warlords in most contexts), it is not surprising that the main focus of scholarship on warlordism has been on their political or military activities. Nonetheless, warlordism emerged from a social context and once established also had a social impact. To date, however, there has been little effort to construct a social history of warlordism in any comprehensive way. This article seeks to begin a process of identifying the main elements of a social history of modern Chinese warlordism, starting with possible contributions to this project by current scholarship. The article will first look at the social background and status of commanders, officers, and soldiers in the warlord era. For example, the article will examine the various ways in which the control of military force by warlord commanders was translated into elite power through social status, political influence, and financial wealth. Second the article will look at the broader impact of warlordism on development of Chinese society in the early 20th Century.

Vivienne Xiangwei Guo, “Achieving the ‘Good Government’ with the ‘Good People’: Wu Peifu and the May Fourth Intellectual in 1922“

In 1922, after Wu Peifu had secured his victory in the Zhili-Fengtian Clique War, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, and other prominent intellectual figures published a political statement, calling for the establishment of a Good Government. This intellectual-led movement was immediately echoed by Wu, who expressed his commitment to realising a government that is ‘constitutional,’ ‘open to all,’ and ‘with a plan.’ The exchange of ideas and political collaborations between Wu Peifu and China’s leading intellectual resulted in the birth of a remarkable, albeit short-lived, cabinet comprising mainly Wu’s amanuences and intellectual associates.
What were the political and cultural thoughts imbedded in the blueprint for the Good Government? What were the ideas into which Wu and the intellectuals were united and what set them against one another? How did they initiate and sustain their communication, and, indeed, how and why did their collaborations dwindle eventually? Most importantly, how should such collaborations between China’s military strongmen and the intellectual be understood in the shifting contexts of state-building?
Focusing on the intellectual, ideological, and cultural aspects of warlord rule while breaking the historiographical boundaries between the man of guns and the man of letters, this paper will initiate in-depth research into Wu Peifu’s political thought and persona, and, most importantly, into the communication and networking unfolded between him and the May Fourth intellectual during the crucial period of China’s cultural renewal and state-making.

Harold Tanner, “From Shangdang to the Dabieshan: Liu Bocheng and the Challenges of Military Professionalism in the Chinese Civil War“

When China’s War of Resistance against Japan drew to a close in early August 1945, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee ordered Communist forces in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan border region to occupy the key north-south railway lines and take control of all of North China (华北). At the time, Liu Bocheng, commander of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan forces and his political commissar Deng Xiaoping had around 125,000 poorly-equipped regular forces under their command. over the next two and a half years, Liu and Deng led their forces in a series of successful campaigns, from the Shangdang campaign in southeastern Shanxi province to the crossing of the Yellow River and reoccupation of the old Communist base area in the Dabie Mountains. In the planning and conduct of these operations, Liu Bocheng applied his wealth of experience and his Russian training to the task of transitioning his soldiers from guerrilla and warlord styles of combat to the conventional operations and centralised command style, thus laying the foundation for Communist victory in the Huai-Hai Campaign. This paper will analyse the process of military transformation and professionalisation of Liu’s forces as seen in operations from the Shangdang campaign through the Dabieshan campaign.

Cross-Cultural Currents in the Qing and Republican Periods

Wednesday
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Room 1

Organised by Harrison Huang
Harrison Huang, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Remembrance and Re-Appropriation of the Poet Cai Yan and the Conquest of Xinjiang”
Yuan-ju Liu, “The Significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) Collection of Works”
Wen-huei Cheng, “Cross-Cultural Flow and Subject Identity: A Study on the Visual Modernity of Cai Zhefu’s Quasi-Photographic and Natural History Drawings”
Federica Casalin, “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s Instructions to the Members of Young Italy (1831)”
Jianhua Chen, Discussant

This panel centres on cross-cultural intersections in the global flow of emergent technologies, knowledge regimes, and translations in the Qing and early Republican Periods of China. Emphasising intersectionality instead of influence, we frame the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures and institutions in terms of complex mediations, re-appropriations, and disjunctive formations. The first three papers focus on new pictorial and print technologies: Harrison Huang juxtaposes the Jesuit copper-plate prints celebrating the Qianlong emperor’s conquest of Xinjiang with his remembrance and re-purposing of the traditional paintings and centred on Cai Yan (3rd c.), a figure of resistance against foreign steppe peoples; Liu Yuan-ju investigates the paradox presented by the print collection of Ye Dehui (1864–1927), who, despite his reputation as culturally conservative and backwards-looking, had curated prints that exemplified new technologies in visual reproduction and print-making; Cheng Wen-huei examines Cai Zhefu, who innovated pictorial techniques to mimic photographs (xie sheying 攝影) and Western science illustrations, in order to fashion a modern epistemological regime that could act as mutually corroborating interface between Western scientific knowledge and Chinese classics of natural science. In these papers, the aim is not to entrench familiar dichotomies of Chinese and foreign, traditional, and modern, but to recognise the complex interventions and divergent re-appropriations that characterise cross-cultural flows. The fourth paper by Federica Casalin brings together the panel’s larger themes of radical change and global intersectionality by examining the contested meanings of “revolution,” analysed as a process of translingual practice involving key protagonists in the Italian Risorgimento and the new Chinese Republic. Casalin traces the process of textual transmission and cross-cultural translation by which Liang Qichao (1873–1929) engaged with Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), who, in his efforts to unify the Italian kingdoms, formulated concepts of revolution and insurrection that Chinese reformers adopted, contested, and re-purposed. By emphasising intermediary and interventional processes, Casalin shows that the epitome of modernity—revolution—was not a linear formation but a site of complex intersectionality and divergence within global flows of knowledge.

Harrison Huang, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Remembrance and Re-Appropriation of the Poet Cai Yan and the Conquest of Xinjiang”

Harrison Huang’s paper analyses the cross-cultural intersectionality of The Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute 胡笳十八拍 (hereafter, Eighteen), a multi-media series of paintings and poems which the Qianlong emperor restored, inscribed by hand, and appended with a verse in 1742. Huang first traces the manifold frames of reference and complex cultural memory embodied in the Eighteen: the touchstone poems of the female martyr Cai Yan 蔡琰 (3rd c. CE), who represented “Chinese” resistance against the foreign Xiongnu; Tang dynasty imitations of these poems; the Song Emperor Gaozong’s (r. 1162–87) commissioning of paintings on Cai Yan, now appropriated to represent Song resistance against the steppe Jurchens; and finally the Qianlong emperor’s re-appropriation of the anti-foreign figure of Cai Yan to represent the Manchu court’s embodiment of Chinese civilisation, in contrast to steppe outsiders. The genealogy of the Eighteen shows how the dichotomy of “Chinese” vs. foreign culture acquires new and fluid, and even disjunctive, frames of reference over time. Huang also contextualises the Eighteen in the Qing conquest of Xinjiang, which Qianlong celebrated with copper-plate depictions painted by Jesuits at his court and engraved by plate makers in France. Situated in this larger geopolitical context and imperial pictorial regime, the Eighteen is examined as a site where the indigenous intersects with the alien, and the traditional Chinese arts of poetry and painting are deployed and refashioned alongside new print technologies from Europe.

Yuan-ju Liu, “The Significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) Collection of Works”

Liu Yuan-ju’s paper focuses on the significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) collection of works that exemplify various breakthroughs in printmaking. From the late Qing to the early Republican period, photography was not the only reproductive technology: transformative innovations emerged, such as lithography, collotype, and the hand recarving of “shadow” plates—all of which are exemplified in Ye’s collection. Showcasing various reproductive paradigms, his collection includes his own recarving of the woodblock for Collection of Wonders from the Southern Marchmount 南嶽總勝集; a stone rubbing of Notecards in Regular-script from the Jin and Tang 晉唐楷帖; and a colotype print of the Real Vestiges from the Collection of Arts 藝苑留真. Ye’s collection presents a paradox: he was branded as a conservative who looked to the past, yet he was quick to adopt the latest techniques in printmaking. His collection encapsulates sudden technological changes and embodies his particular response to the intellectual and material conditions of his times.

Wen-huei Cheng, “Cross-Cultural Flow and Subject Identity: A Study on the Visual Modernity of Cai Zhefu’s Quasi-photographic and Natural History Drawings”

Cheng Wen-huei’s paper explores the revolutionary aesthetic practices and visual modernity of Cai Zhefu 蔡哲夫 (1879–1941), who made drawings that mimicked photographic processes, and conventions of Western scientific illustrations. To accentuate his own methods, Cai adopted new rhetorical strategies such as “quasi-photography” (ni sheying 擬攝影), “ copying photography” (chao sheying 抄攝影), and “tracing photography” (lin sheying 臨攝影), with which he created painting series such as “Sichuan Landscapes” (Suzhong shanshui) and the “Archaeopteryx.” Cheng argues that Cai’s methods were not simply acts of mimicry but represented a new regime of knowledge that enabled verification between Western scientific knowledge, such as visual inspection and authentication, and Chinese natural science classics; while, interfacing with English, German, French, and Japanese translations. This facilitated a deeper connection between the discourse of “technologized visuality” and modern sensory revolutions and ideological enlightenment. Cai’s series of realistic natural-history drawings conveyed a regional consciousness and subject identity, calling for social action that befits patriotism for the homeland. Cai exemplified the scientific truth-seeking spirit of modern rationality had become the new cultural logic governing the translingual practice of modern Chinese intellectuals as they participated in the flow of global knowledge.

Federica Casalin, “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s ‘Instructions to the Members of Young Italy’ (1831)”

Federica Casalin’s paper serves to cap the panel, as it reflects on how radical change was conceived during the transformative cross-cultural currents of early Chinese modernity. Entitled “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s ‘Instructions to the Members of Young Italy’ (1831),” the paper is a case study that analyses the complex meanings of “revolution” as a process of translingual practice in the early Republican period. The case study focuses on Liang Qichao (1873–1929), who was the first to translate into Chinese the “Instructions to the Members of Young Italy” by Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), one of the key protagonists in the unification of the kingdoms of Italy into a modern nation-state and independent republic; as such, Mazzini drew Liang’s attention in his own efforts to reform and modernise the Chinese polity. Casalin traces the textual transmission by which Liang came to engage this text, and compares the source and target texts to analyse the contestation and re-appropriation of “revolution” and “insurrection” in the project for political independence. Germane to the panel’s broad theme, this paper frames how radical upheaval was debated and conceived in the modernity of transformative cross-cultural interactions.

Evening Reception

Nothing More than Particles

Uses, Functions, and Acquisition of the yuqici of Modern Chinese
Tuesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
Room H

Organised by Sergio Conti
Chaired by Carmen Lepadat
Sergio Conti, Marco Casentini, “Learners’ Use of Chinese Sentence-Final Particles in a Tandem-Learning Context”
Valentino Eletti, Chiara Romagnoli, “The Occurrence of Sentence-Final Particle ba 吧 in Relation to Clause Typology: A Study on Italian Teaching Materials”
Carmen Lepadat, “Modal Particles and Right Dislocations: A Pragmatic Analysis of Spoken Mandarin Chinese”
Chiara Piccinini, “Analysis of the Main Pragmatic Functions of Utterance-Final Discourse Markers in a Corpus of Spoken Chinese Language Lessons”

Frequently used in spoken language, Chinese modal or sentence-final particles (SFPs) have been described from different theoretical perspectives and in relation to different linguistic phenomena. However, their definition, classification, and functions still constitute a puzzle for linguists. This panel proposes a reflection on the SFPs of modern Chinese from different research perspectives, with special emphasis on actual language as it is used in specific contexts for the purpose of communication and the role of SFPs in Chinese language acquisition.
Conti and Casentini will analyse learners’ production and use of SFPs in spontaneous interactions with native peers, finding a neglectable correlation between SFP accuracy, SFP variety, and time of observation. Eletti and Romagnoli will conduct an analysis on the occurrence of ba 吧 in the teaching materials for Italian high school learners of Chinese, examining the distribution of its discourse functions and discussing the main implications on language acquisition. Lepadat will examine native speakers’ use of SFPs and their relations with postponed or right-dislocated topics. Basing her analysis on a corpus of spoken Chinese, she will describe the relation between modal markers and the degree of activation/identifiability of the dislocated referents. Lastly, Piccinini will report the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of SFP use in teacher-learner interactions, in order to identify how mother-tongue teachers employed them in the teaching process and observing if students are able to produce them in a guided context.

Sergio Conti, Marco Casentini, “Learners’ Use of Chinese Sentence-Final Particles in a Tandem-Learning Context”

Due to their “light-weight appearance” (Shei, 2014: 318) and their polysemy (Badan & Romagoli, 2018), the acquisition of Chinese sentence-final particles (SFPs) constitutes a criticality for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. Nevertheless, the number of studies addressing SFP acquisition and teaching is still limited. Some studies analysed and classified the errors committed by learners (e.g. Xu, 2002), while others provided suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of teaching (e.g. Xie, 2007). In one of the few examples of experimental studies on SFP acquisition, Badan and Romagnoli (2018) found that ne 呢 and ba 吧 are the most challenging for learners, as there is no univocal correspondence between form and functions.
This study aims to analyse the use of SFPs in the interactions between CFL learners and native speakers of Chinese and how it changes over time. The informants were 13 Italian second-year learners of Chinese who participated in the tandem-learning project with Chinese Marco Polo/Turandot students. The data were collected during a three-month timespan and were transcribed according to the methods of Conversation Analysis. The quantitative and qualitative analysis showed that (i) the most frequently produced SFP is the interrogative ma 吗, whereas other SFPs are seldom or never used; (ii) the use of SFPs does not increase in time, but it seems to be tied to other factors such as the presence of (semi-)fixed chunks or the type of task submitted to the participants.

References
Badan, L., & Romagnoli, C. (2018). “The Acquisition of Mandarin Sentence-final Particles by Italian Learners.” International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (ahead of print publication).
Shei, C. (2014). Understanding the Chinese Language: A Comprehensive Linguistic Introduction. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Xie, B. (2007). “Lüe lun yuqici “ne” de wan ju gongneng zai duiwai hanyu jiaoxue zhong de yunyong.” Shanghai daxue xuebao (Shehui kexue ban), 14(3), 142–145.
Xu, L. (2002). “Waiguo xuesheng yuqici shiyong pianwu fenxi.” Zhejiang shifan daxue xuebao (Shehui kexue ban), 121(27), 89–92.

Valentino Eletti, Chiara Romagnoli, “The Occurrence of Sentence-Final Particle ba 吧 in Relation to Clause Typology: A Study on Italian Teaching Materials”

In the field of teaching Chinese as a second language (TCSL), sentence-final particles, especially ma 吗, ba 吧, and ne 呢 are usually presented at a fairly early stage of the teaching process, thus enabling students to convey different intentions and to perform a range of linguistic acts. From the TCSL perspective, SFPs are also among the first empty words learned by students and share salient graphical features with one another.
This study will focus on sentence-final particle ba 吧, which has been studied from different linguistic perspectives and is still considered to be problematic in its definition (Zhao, 2019) and from the acquisitional perspective (Badan & Romagnoli, 2018).
Shao (1996) found that on a syntactic level ba 吧 mainly appears in three clause types: declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentence. This was confirmed by later studies (Qi, 2008).
In this research we will focus on the occurrence of this particle in the two main teaching materials for Italian high school learners of Chinese (Masini et al., 2016; Ambrosini et al., 2017), presenting qualitative and quantitative data of the distribution of this SFP in relation to the three different syntactical clause types. Our aim is to show if a trend in the functional distribution of ba 吧 is present, in a context where the language input is more normative, such as the one adopted in teaching materials and didactic practices.

References
Ambrosini, C. et al. (2017). Shuo hanyu, xie hanzi. Bologna: Zanichelli.
Badan, L., & Romagnoli, C. (2018). “The Acquisition of Mandarin Sentence Final Particles by Italian Learners.” International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (ahead of print publication).
Masini, F. et al. (2016). Parliamo cinese. Milano: Hoepli.
Qi, C. (2008). Xiandai hanyu yuqi fuci yanjiu. Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe.
Shao, J. 1996. Xiandai hanyu yiwenju yanjiu. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe.
Zhao, C. (2019). Xiandai hanyu jumo zhuci yanjiu. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Carmen Lepadat, “Modal Particles and Right Dislocations: A Pragmatic Analysis of Spoken Mandarin Chinese”

Right dislocations are constructions in which “a lexical topic NP is positioned at the end of the clause containing the information about the topic referent” (Lambrecht, 1994: 202). For what concerns Mandarin Chinese, it is generally acknowledged that right dislocations follow the sentence-final modal particles when these are present in the utterance (Lee, 2013). However, recent studies on spoken data such as Shi (2017) have pointed out that right dislocations and afterthoughts may also be followed by an additional modal particle in specific communicative contexts. However, while it is clear that right dislocations and modal particles are tightly connected, their relationship has hardly ever been investigated from a pragmatic perspective.
This study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the relations between referential right dislocations and modal particles in Mandarin Chinese through a corpus-based analysis of ca 22 hours of unscripted telephone conversations between native speakers of Mandarin Chinese (CallFriend Corpus, available from http://talkbank.org). The analysis focuses on RDs’ degree of activation and identifiability, co-referential forms, sentence-types and specific modal particles (a 啊, ba 吧, ma 吗, ma 嘛, ne 呢). The results of the statistical models run with R suggest that: i) referent activation degree patterns with different sentence-types, which in turn can be marked by different modal particles; ii) modal particles can optionally mark a referential constituent to increase textual coherence and item relevance (Chu, 2009; Sperber & Wilson, 1995).

References
Shi, Y. 2017. “Renshi ‘hua weiba’- Jianyi ‘juzi suipian’ [Speech Tail and Sentence Fragment].” Yuyan jiaoxue yu yanjiu 1: 57–67.
Chu, C. 2009. “Relevance and the Discourse Functions of Mandarin Utterance-Final Modality Particles.” Linguistics and Language Compass 3 (1): 282–99.
Lambrecht, K. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, K. 2013. “Right Dislocation in Chinese: Syntax and Information Structure”. Korean Journal of Chinese Language and Literature 3: 3–50.
Sperber D., & D. Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Chiara Piccinini, “Analysis of the Main Pragmatic Functions of Utterance-Final Discourse Markers in a Corpus of Spoken Chinese Language Lessons”

This contribution is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of guided conversations in a formative context. The analysis was carried out considering the occurrence of modal particles and other phrases occurring in utterance-final position used as “discourse markers” (DM, following the definition by Schiffrin, 1987; Fraser, 1999, 2006) in Chinese language (Chen & He, 2001; Deng, 2015; Lee-Wong, 2001; Yang, 2006), taking into account both textual and interpersonal functions (Liu, 2011). DMs were observed in audio-recorded and transcribed interactions between a native Chinese-speaking teacher and a group of Italian students learning Chinese as a Foreign Language in Italy. The interactions have been selected from a corpus of 10 hours of spoken Chinese language during Chinese oral lessons.
We distinguished the occurrences of data produced by teachers and by students with the aim of identifying how mother-tongue teachers employed them in the teaching process and observing if students were able to produce them in a guided context. Results suggested that the ability to use DMs by learners in the interaction is linked to the proficiency of the informants, as shown by previous literature (Tsai & Chu, 2017); moreover, we observed that the conscious use of utterance-final DMs by teachers can be a valuable tool to improve Chinese language teaching methodology.

References
Deng, Y. (2015), “Huati biaoji ‘a, ne, ba, ma’ de gongneng yanjiu 话题标记’啊、呢、吧、嘛’的功能研究 [Research on the Functions of Discourse Markers a, ne, ba, ma],” Journal of Qinzhou University 30, pp. 29-35.
Fraser, B. (1999), “What are Discourse Markers?,” Journal of Pragmatics 31, pp. 931–952.
Fraser, B. (2006), “Towards a Theory of Discourse Markers,” in K. Fischer (ed.), Approaches to Discourse Particles, Leiden: Brill, pp. 189–204.
Lee-Wong, S. (2001), “Coherence, Focus and Structure: The Role of Discourse Particle ne,” Pragmatics 11, 2, pp. 139–153.
Liu, B. (2011), “Chinese Discourse Markers in Oral Speech of Mainland Mandarin Speakers,” in Y. Xiao et al. (ed.), Current Issues in Chinese Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, pp. 364–405.
Schiffrin, D. (1987), Discourse Markers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tsai, P.-S. & Chu, W.-H. (2017), “The Use of Discourse Markers among Mandarin Chinese Teachers, and Chinese as a Second Language and Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners,” Applied Linguistics 38/5, pp. 638–665.
Yang, L. (2006), “Integrating Prosodic and Contextual Cues in the Interpretation of Discourse Markers,” in K. Fischer (ed.), Approaches to Discourse Particles, Leiden: Brill, pp. 265–297.

Papers on Language I

Contacts
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room H

Chaired by Alexandra Sizova
Gabriele Tola, “Competing Terminologies and Norms of Translation: A Late Qing Glossary between Lexical Innovation and Japanese Dictionaries”
Yezi Mu, “Foreign Influence or Indigenous Language Change: A Comparative Study on the Expressions of Tense and Aspect between the Daoxing bore jing and its Sanskrit Counterpart”
Alexandra Sizova, “Achievements and Challenges in Teaching Mandarin Chinese in Russia’s Contemporary System of Secondary Education”

Gabriele Tola, “Competing Terminologies and Norms of Translation: A Late Qing Glossary between Lexical Innovation and Japanese Dictionaries”

The speaker discovered the manuscript of an English-Chinese glossary of terms in the field of naval architecture: the text was composed by the English translator John Fryer (1839–1928). The purpose of the speech is to examine the main features of the glossary and its sources; the speaker sketches an outlook of the circulation of terminologies in the period the glossary was drafted. Studying the historical significance and linguistic quality of some translated terms annotated in the glossary, the speaker compares its terminology with the concurrent Japanese one and with other Chinese relevant nomenclatures, demonstrating the complicated interaction in the glossary between lexical innovation and recovery of existing terms.
The purpose of the speech is to help to sketch a clearer outlook of the Chinese language in the late Qing, particularly pertaining to scientific and technical terminology. Exactly at this time, different terminologies were competing with each other. The importance of the analysis of the glossary does not only pertain to the norm of translation adopted; as numerous other lexicographical sources edited during the late Qing, it can also provide a better description and new perspectives on the circulation of terminologies in the time frame considered.

Yezi Mu, “Foreign Influence or Indigenous Language Change: A Comparative Study on the Expressions of Tense and Aspect between the Daoxing bore jing and its Sanskrit Counterpart”

Early Chinese Buddhist texts as the translations or compositions based on Indian Buddhist texts are supposed to be the earliest outcome of historical language contact between ancient Indic languages, early Literary Chinese and early vernacular Chinese. They demonstrate many linguistic features which are not attested in Chinese pre-Buddhist literature and their contemporary Chinese non-Buddhist texts. Some believe that these peculiar features were triggered by the contact with Indic languages while others argue that they were actually results of native language change. This research focuses on the expressions of two common grammatical categories, the tense and aspect, in an authentic early Chinese Buddhist text, the Daoxing bore jing (DXBR), and discusses whether there could be any Indic influences or not by comparing it with its extant Sanskrit counterpart, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, which basically share the same content. The comparative analysis indicates that although sentences are often marked in the same type of tense in DXBR and its Sanskrit counterpart, there do exist some inexplicable exceptions. Besides, issues concerning the expressions of aspect are even more complicated as no clear correlations can be found. Such inconsistency between the Chinese text and its Sanskrit version suggests that DXBR, or early Chinese Buddhist texts in general, may have mainly adopted the expressions of tense and aspect from Chinese pre-Buddhist literature and ancient vernacular usage with only limited foreign influence.

Alexandra Sizova, “Achievements and Challenges in Teaching Mandarin Chinese in Russia’s Contemporary System of Secondary Education”

This paper presents the preliminary results of the study related to the current situation in teaching Mandarin Chinese at the secondary school level in the Russian Federation.
In the early 21st century, the increased interest to learning Chinese, mainly as a second foreign language (SFL), has been observed among Russian secondary school students. The popularity of this language may be predetermined by the set of factors, including the dynamics of Russian-Chinese strategic partnership, bilateral trade and cultural exchange, energetic PRC’s cultural diplomacy as well as the global trends of internationalisation, multilingualism, informatisation, the rise of attention to students’ communicative and intercultural competences being fully relevant to the modern educational setting in Russia, and others.
Meanwhile, the conceptual, organizational, methodological and practical aspects of institutionalisation and development of Chinese language as a new school subject in Russia has not yet received comprehensive analysis in academia. Based on the wide range of sources, this study aims to highlight some milestones of introduction and regulation of teaching Chinese in the national general education system, analyse the role of internal and external drivers of popularising Chinese language in Russian schools. It also considers recent achievements and challenges in organizing educational process and result assessment, creating relevant teaching materials and applying contemporary language instruction methods (Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), etc.) to Chinese language training practices faced by the pedagogical community and schools for the moment.

The Development of German Sinology in the European Context

Entanglements between Politics, Disciplinary Structure, and Personalities
Tuesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm

Organised by Mechthild Leutner
Mechthild Leutner, “Phases of German Sinology Development with Special Consideration of the Leipzig School and Eduard Erkes”
Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, “Sinology in the Cold War: Developments in East and West Germany”
Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “Dialogues between French and German Sinologists in the 19th and 20th Centuries”

In the panel some basic characteristics of the development of German Sinology in particular from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century will be presented: The different political systems: Empire, Weimar Republic, Nazi period, the two German states, formed the context in which the institutionalization and professionalization of the discipline took place and was handed down or not handed down. In the dialogue with the European and international scientific community—the French context is particularly important here—divergent specialist knowledge, thematic focuses, methodological, and theoretical orientations, and, last but not least, different perceptions of China have emerged. A look at the history of sinology also sharpens the critical view of recent developments in the discipline, of the self-perception, and role of the representatives of the discipline, and their position in the respective academic and political context.

Mechthild Leutner, “Phases of German Sinology Development with Special Consideration of the Leipzig School and Eduard Erkes”

The institutionalisation of sinology (1831) and Chinese studies (1887) at the Berlin University and the establishment of the Gabelentz professorship in Leipzig (1878) each represented different starting points for the professionalisation of the discipline in the outgoing empire. This was also evident in the Weimar Republic in the respective methodological and theoretical development of the discipline and the different views of China. During the Nazi era, the Leipzig School, but also young scholars in Berlin were particularly affected by persecution and emigration, with devastating consequences for the discipline as a whole. The new beginning after 1945 took place in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR under different political and academic conditions. Erkes rebuilt Sinology in Leipzig and left his mark on the next generation in both German states, even after his death. With the end of the GDR in 1989, sinology was completely restructured—here, too, the interrelationships between disciplinary development and politics in Germany are particularly evident.

Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, “Sinology in the Cold War: Developments in East and West Germany”

This presentation will focus on the geopolitical setting of the Cold War and its impact on the development of the field of Sinology in East and West Germany. It will discuss the hypothesis that the rules of the game followed by the representatives of Sinology in both parts of Germany were strikingly similar despite the fact that research and teaching on China developed under the impact of two external political players as different as the US and the SU. In both parts of the country, the dichotomy between focusing on ancient or contemporary China generated the fractionalisation of the field which has up until today left a mark on the development of Sinology in the German-speaking world. However, the different approaches to the study of China are not only political but also different in terms of methodology and the question to which extent philology is the basic methodological pillar of Sinology. The presentation argues that the kind of factionalism which has haunted Sinology since the end of WW II is the main reason why the international impact, as well as the reputation of the field, has not grown simultaneously to the development of Sino-German relations.

Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “Dialogues between French and German Sinologists in the 19th and 20th Centuries”

Regardless of political enmity or alliance between related countries, sinology has been a field of continuous interaction between the German-speaking world and France all along the 19th and 20th centuries. This can be evidenced from personal relations between German, Austrian and French sinologists, from connections between their works and interests, from the mutual reviews of their publications or from their joint projects. The general ground of the ongoing contacts laid on historical legacy and commonalities that have linked together the learned elites on both sides, and which play their role in other fields as well. In sinology, however, the interaction was shaped also by a special framework borne by actual circumstances of fieldwork in China, of specialised journals editing, and of international conferences organization. There were ups and downs in the interaction, but on the whole, its framework has driven to a closer and wider European cooperation in that area of the humanities.

Papers on Gender

Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room 6

Chaired by Astrid Lipinsky
Coraline Jortay, “Scripting Gender: Liu Dabai’s Shifting Poems and Gender-Inclusive Pronouns”
Hantian Sun, “Conservative Feminism in 1914: A Study on Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 [Romance Magazine] (1914–1915) in Shanghai”
Xuanxuan Tan, “Contestation and Consensus: Relocating ‘Female-led Fandom Cyber-Nationalism’ in the 2019 Online Expedition”

Coraline Jortay, “Scripting Gender: Liu Dabai’s Shifting Poems and Gender-Inclusive Pronouns”

This paper explores the shifts in Liu Dabai’s (劉大白 1880–1932) experiments with gendered pronouns and script. As a forerunner of new poetry, Liu Dabai’s poetry can be divided into two phases: Old Dreams (Jiu meng 舊夢), published in 1923 as part of the Chinese Literary Association series, features poems written between 1919 and 1923 where masculine, feminine, and gender-inclusive pronouns are rendered as ta 他, yi 伊, and qumen 佢們. The same poems, republished a few years later (1928 to 1932) with Kaiming Press were identical—save for the pronouns. The masculine, feminine, and gender inclusive pronouns had become 男也/她/他们 while the rest of the content remained unchanged. Liu Dabai’s 男也 (as one character) constitutes a rare example of an invented masculine third person pronoun featuring the 男 (nan, masculine) as a radical used in literature. This paper explores the historical and literary reasons behind Liu’s shifts between pronouns, linking them to Liu Dabai’s involvement with Chen Wangdao and Shao Lizi, with the women’s movement, and with the notion of “common gender.” Doing so allows us to probe how literature can cross boundaries to shape the history of language, and what was “lost in translation” in translingual practices (Liu 1995), when English notions of “grammatical gender” and “gender” travelled through Japanese textbooks of English, and textbooks of the School of Combined Learning.

Hantian Sun, “Conservative Feminism in 1914: A Study on Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 Romance Magazine in Shanghai”

Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 Romance Magazine was a magazine founded by a certain group of feminists focusing on female business in Chinese society in 1914. The editor-in-chief of the journal was Wang Wenru 王文濡 (1867–1935). As a monthly journal, Romance Magazine only published a yearly twelve issues from 1914 to 1915. However, Romance Magazine can reveal a vivid picture of conservative feminists in China.
In Romance Magazine, the editors’ office and many writers focused on “female business,” including promoting female education and working. However, as an opponent to the freedom of marriage and the equality between husband and wife, Romance Magazine represented a very paradox style of feminism. An article eulogizing a good wife studying for the country could be found be next to a column of the monthly news about popular prostitutes in Shanghai. Romance Magazine showed a cooperative attitude toward the traditional ideology of patriarchy.
In this study, by looking into the contrast between different columns, or texts and advertisements in Romance Magazine, this research will discuss the values and problems of these conservative feminists during this transition from pre-modern times to modern society.
In conclusion, this study believes that the advancement of this brand of conservative feminism from 1914 was valuable when most of the modern value has not built in China. However, conservative feminism from the upper classes of traditional society was going to be replaced by new ideas in a short time.

Xuanxuan Tan, “Contestation and Consensus: Relocating ‘Female-led Fandom Cyber-Nationalism’ in the 2019 Online Expedition”

The 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement facilitates the national sentiment of Chinese young people and the online collective action called 2019 Online Expedition. “Fanquan girls,” female fans who worship idols, have become a new group of female nationalists in China, which are similar to the Little Pink since the 2019 Online Expedition. The study conducts Internet ethnography and semi-structured interviews to relocate the discussion of ‘fandom nationalism’ and ‘female-led cyber- nationalism’ in the investigation of two “bodies” exemplified by “fanquan girls” and a zhong ge ge, an alternative representation of China, in the “hidden transcript” and “public transcript” generated in the Online Expedition. The study argues that the 2019 Online Expedition is a masculinity nationalist online collective action. The “female” and “female-led fandom nationalism” in “fanquan girls” and a zhong ge ge are generated from performativity. “Fanquan girls” construct different visual representations of a zhong ge ge with ambiguous or fluid gender temperaments which challenge the conventional argument about the sable linkage of specific gender temperament and nation. In conclusion, the differences and contestation of females and fandom in the “hidden transcript” and “public transcript” generate space and possibilities for Chinese party-state to produce consensus with contested configurations and facilitate intensive national sentiment. Females not only engage in nationalistic expression as involuntary actors, or as symbolic ammunition for different parties but also as genuine participants.

Asian City Crossings

Pathways of Performance through Hong Kong and Singapore
Tuesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm

Andrea Riemenschnitter, Chair
Rossella Ferrari, Ashley Thorpe, “The City as Method: Hong Kong, Singapore, and City-to-City Pathways of Performance”
How Wee Ng, “Dialectics as Creative Process and Decentering China: Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0—Cultural Revolution’”
Mirjam Tröster, “The City and the Artist: Alice Theatre Laboratory’s ‘Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka’ in Shanghai”

This panel explores practices and politics of performance collaboration as practitioners move across cities in Asia. It investigates the dynamics of city-to-city creative exchanges by addressing performance interactions between Hong Kong and Singapore, and between these and other Asian cities. It foregrounds the city as a distinctive locus of transnational crossings and a relational space for forging and performing intercultural connections. Hong Kong and Singapore have emerged from histories of imperialism to become global economic and cultural hubs. Both have played a seminal role in shaping cultural relations across the Sinosphere and the wider Asian region, as focal points of transnational and intercultural exchange. Their shared standing, yet highly differentiated contexts, as postcolonial, multicultural, and multilingual city-states offer unique vantage points from which to explore pathways of creative production across cities in East- and Southeast Asia. Whereas Hong Kong and Singapore socio-economic developments have been compared in many studies, theatre and performance connections between and from these cities have yet to be explored. The panel seeks to theorise the city as a method for performance analysis and illustrate the city-to-city framework through case studies of collaborations between established and emergent performance ensembles that illustrate dynamics of creative exchange and embodied mobility through tours and festivals, and dialectical engagement with questions of identity, transregional politics, and current affairs.

Rossella Ferrari, Ashley Thorpe, “The City as Method: Hong Kong, Singapore, and City-to-City Pathways of Performance”

The city has been discussed widely as a subject, site, and space for performance, but less so as a structure of performance—namely, as the framework that enables its production and circulation. This paper foregrounds the structural functions of the city in enabling pathways of performance—connections between two points—and intersections of performance networks across Asia, taking Hong Kong and Singapore as key referents in establishing a framework for inter- and cross-city referencing in Asian theatre and performance research. The first part of the paper proposes the “city as method” as a new and specific intercultural paradigm to theorise patterns of collaboration in the postcolonial contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore, drawing on an understanding of the city as a strategic (infra-)structure that offers an alternative to nation-to-nation, or state-to-state, patterns of cross-border creative exchange and cultural diplomacy. The tensional dialectic between city, state, and nation resonates with the unique historical conditions of Hong Kong and Singapore, where such notions are constantly negotiated in (re-)defining place identity, political allegiance, and affective belonging. The second part draws on postmodern theory to explore notions of “authenti-city” and “specify-city” and conceptual relations of “city” and “place” in the context of Hong Kong and Singapore in order to foreground city-to-city collaboration as an act of place-making that exposes the distinctiveness of each city because and through the connections they share.

How Wee Ng, “Dialectics as Creative Process and Decentering China: Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0—Cultural Revolution'”

In 2011 and 2012, Zuni Icosahedron collaborated with the Singapore theatre group Drama Box and presented “One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0—Cultural Revolution.” As one of the best-known iterations since its inception in 1982, this is a politically charged and zeitgeist series on history and current global events. This edition is particularly significant for drawing from themes and ideas about revolutions related to and beyond China, including the Cultural Revolution and events in the more immediate socio-political contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore. Based on interviews with the Singapore creative cast, this paper builds upon the research on East Asian intercultural theatre studies. I first unpack the term “dialectics” in Zuni’s practice before examining how actors variously respond to the director Danny Yung’s dialectical approach to theatre. My findings reveal gaps in the different understandings of what an ideal intercultural collaboration should entail, and the role, purpose and agency of actors in relation to the director. Positioning my analysis at the intersecting ideas of minor transnationalism, Inter-Asia exchanges and Sinophone intercultural theatre, I argue that the production decentres China and subverts audience expectations in that it is actually not just about the Cultural Revolution, but rather, the creative process which the Singapore actors underwent, which involves a dialectics requiring them to rebel against their own learned beliefs and training backgrounds and negotiate the potentialities of artistic autonomy and innovation whilst conforming to strict rules, despite tensions, uncertainty and ambiguity.

Mirjam Tröster, “The City and the Artist: Alice Theatre Laboratory’s ‘Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka’ in Shanghai”

In 2010, Hong Kong theatre company Alice Theatre Laboratory staged “Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka” in Shanghai. Interweaving fragments of Franz Kafka’s works and life, the play engages with the role of the artist in multiple ways. It investigates the artist’s need for an audience and the possibilities for exchange in a present-day urban environment or, more specifically, Hong Kong. “Seven Boxes” was performed at the Beijing–Hong Kong–Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season, a specific format that stands at one end of the continuum of performing arts collaboration. The showcase’s title suggests that the play’s focus on both the artist and the city ought to intersect well with this framework. As this paper will demonstrate, however, the format and its multi-layered framing in publicity materials strongly impacted on the meaning-making process during the Shanghai tour of “Seven Boxes” and colluded to divert attention from the production’s focus on the artist to a comparison of the three cities. What is more, precisely by ascribing an alleged “unique Hong Kong flavour” to “Seven Boxes,” “public discourse” (Knowles) delocalised the play, only to force the label of the local on it in turn. Despite the overbearing impact of the showcase format, however, the Shanghai tour of Seven Boxes reveals artists’ perseverance to communicate through art and establish links among soulmates that defy the specific intricacies of city-to-city exchange between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Papers on Arts I

Paintings
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room G

Chaired by Katie Hill
Baihua Ren, “The Cultural Biography of The Water Mill”
Xiaoyan Hu, “The Legacy of Qiyun (Spirit Consonance) in 10th to 14th-Century Chinese Landscape Painting”
Freerk Heule, “Huang Shen and His Innovation in Portraiture”
Josepha Richard, “18–19th Century Sino-British Scientific and Cultural Exchanges as Seen through British Collections of China Trade Botanical Paintings”

Baihua Ren, “The Cultural Biography of The Water Mill”

The Water Mill, currently held in the Shanghai Museum, is a famous jiehua painting which for a long time was believed to have been created by the Five Dynasties artist Wei Xian. At present, most scholars hold the view that it was created around the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). Through the analysis of the cultural biography of The Water Mill, which presents a full collection history of the handscroll since the Northern Song Dynasty, its authenticity could be proved. From historical records and a residual signature, the son-in-law of the Yingzong Emperor Zhang Dunli can be established as the artist of The Water Mill and the painting may have been created around 1068–1100. The interpretation of the painting image supports this conclusion and the hypothesis from the cultural biography—the construction, costumes, climate, culture, military system, etc. —all reflect the characteristics of the Northern Song Dynasty. Therefore, The Water Mill can be seen as a representative architectural painting of the golden age of jiehua and an image representing Song culture. This paper would like to authenticate The Water Mill from its cultural biography and analysis of its collection history, possible artist and time of creation.

Xiaoyan Hu, “The Legacy of Qiyun (Spirit Consonance) in 10th to 14th-Century Chinese Landscape Painting”

One may question whether the notion of qiyun (spirit consonance) initially proposed by Xie He (active 500–535?) in his six laws of Chinese painting and inherited by Zhang Yanyuan (815–875) significantly differs from the notion of qiyun applied by the 10th-century master and theorist Jing Hao (active in the 10th-century), further developed by the Northern Song art historian and connoisseur Guo Ruoxu (ca. 1080) and the early Yuan connoisseur and critic Tang Hou (active around the late 13th century and the early 14th century) in the context of landscape painting as a dominant genre from the 10th century to the 14th century. In this paper, I attempt to argue against the objection to a possible comprehensive notion of qiyun. By examining the notion of qiyun developed by three influential critics Jing Hao, Guo Ruoxu, and Tang Hou, we will see that although there are differences between Xie He and later critics regarding the notion of qiyun, there are also important correspondences. We will see that behind an invisible thread linking them in adopting the same terminology of qiyun, it appears reasonable to seek an understanding of qiyun based on this thread and common grounds between them and justify a continuity of the legacy of a comprehensive notion of qiyun in the context of landscape painting.

Freerk Heule, “Huang Shen and His Innovation in Portraiture”

The non-scholar painter Huang Shen (黃慎, 1687–1772) from Yangzhou painted initially on request both Ming-style landscapes or colourful flowers-with-a-poem to make a living. In traditional landscapes, only miniature figures could be discerned and the iconography of painting an Emperor or elite people was petrified—without personality. Identity was represented with colours and paraphernalia of rank, not facial expression. Huang found a new way for ‘portraiture’ of figures in real-life situations, with frowning eyebrows, mad hat or strange body posture. It was not done to paint old men with fresh girls or naughty children. What were the sources for this revolutionary change?
First, the foreign painters, invited by the Qianlong Emperor, such as Castiglione (1688–1766), educated Western Art. Second, they introduced books of the Italian masters: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Raphael. Painters like Hua Yen (1682–1756) and Yu Zhiding (c. 1647–1709) made the ‘Peking Tour’ and absorbed the innovative concepts. Third, Huang follows the Fujian style with figures from folk stories, history and theatre. Four, he was informed of the Buddhist painting tradition, as developed on the murals in the Dun Huang caves. And five, as a roaming artist, he picked up any new ideas quickly. To conclude, in following these five sources of a breakthrough in portrait painting, by performing The eight Taoist immortals, Zhong Kui with a bat, and many more—to show the weird, the underdog, injustice, and experiences—, he was a true ‘Yangzhou Eccentric.’

Josepha Richard, “18–19th Century Sino-British Scientific and Cultural Exchanges as Seen through British Collections of China Trade Botanical Paintings”

In the 18th–19th century, British botanists collected thousands of Chinese plants to advance their knowledge of natural history. Until the end of the Canton System (1757–1842), scientifically accurate paintings were commissioned from Canton Trade artists in Guangzhou. John Bradby Blake (1745–1773) was the first British botanist to systematically collect Chinese plants in the 1770s, relying on the help of Chinese merchants and translators. Not long after, Chinese export paintings studios in Guangzhou started to mass-produce decorative botanical paintings for the foreign market. Neither decorative nor scientific Canton Trade botanical paintings fit easily either in the European botanical tradition or that of Chinese bird-and-flower paintings but were nonetheless avidly collected by Europeans. This paper demonstrates how untangling the chronology of some botanical paintings allows uncovering the unacknowledged agency of Chinese ‘go-betweens’ (translators, artists, and merchants) in Sino–Western scientific and cultural exchanges in Guangzhou during the late Qing dynasty.

Papers on Philosophy I

Pre-Qin
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room 5

·Chaired by Geir Sigurðsson
Javier Carames Sanchez, “Are qing 情 the Same Thing as Pathos (πάθος) in the Pre-Qin Period?”
Geir Sigurðsson, “Aging in Classical Chinese Philosophy”
Ai Yuan, “Functions of and Attitudes toward Silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋”

Javier Caramés Sánchez, “Are qing 情 the Same Thing as Pathos (πάθος) in the Pre-Qin Period?”

There is a discussion about the meaning of qing 情. Some scholars as Angus Graham and Chad Hansen argue that qing did not refer to emotions in the Pre-Qin period. Others as Michael Puett said it alludes to emotions. This dissertation will focus on the Xingzimingchu 性自命出 and it will discuss that qing and dao 道 are two characters with a complementary meaning that are very similar to the one that the terms logos (λόγος) and pathos (πάθος) have in the Rhetoric of Aristotle.
The methodology I will use is to analyse the metaphors behind the terms qing and dao. I will argue that the meaning of qing in the Xingzimingchu is a metaphor that identifies what is hidden inside the individual with the state secrets. I will also argue that behind dao there is a metaphor that identifies a path with the correct way through which human behaviour must move. Since qing is an inner entity that needs external guidance, I consider it a term similar to the pathos. In the same way as dao, logos is an external object that can be used to guide human behaviour.

Geir Sigurðsson, “Aging in Classical Chinese Philosophy”

In the history of Western philosophy, scarce attention has been given to the notion of ageing. Certainly, death has always been a popular topic, both as a mystical/religious and more recently an existential issue, but, with some notable exceptions, the chronological process leading to natural death has been for the most part neglected. However, in classical Chinese philosophical writings, ageing has always featured rather prominently as a natural aspect of life to be pondered and discussed no less than others. In this lecture, I want to outline mainly two seminal approaches to ageing by classical Chinese philosophers, which rather neatly portrays the main focal distinction between the Confucian and the Daoist schools. I will argue, first, that the underlying importance of temporality in Chinese philosophy necessarily brings about a keen awareness of ageing as a part of life, and, secondly, that the scope and different foci of the Confucian/Daoist views offer together an alluring alternative to the current notion of ‘successful ageing.’

Ai Yuan, “Functions of and Attitudes toward Silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋”

This paper looks beyond the dichotomy of silence (mo 默) and speech (yan 言), and discusses the functions of and attitudes toward silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 as a representative case for the idea of silence in early China. In the West, silence has been widely explored in fields such as religion and theology, linguistic studies, and communication and literary studies, where the consensus has moved away from viewing silence as abstaining from speech and utterance—and therefore absent of meaning and intention, toward seeing it as a culturally dependent and significant aspect of communication. However, beyond a number of studies discussing unspoken teachings in relation to early Daoism and Buddhism, silence has received little attention in early China studies. This paper approaches the functions of silence by pursuing questions regarding its rhetorical, emotive, political, and ethical aspects. Through a survey of dialogues, stories and arguments in Yanzi chunqiu, I show that silence is explicitly marked and explained within the text and used actively, purposefully, and meaningfully, to persuade, inform, and motivate audiences. In other words, silence is anything but natural and spontaneous. Rather, it is intentionally adopted, carefully crafted, and publicly performed to communicate, remonstrate, criticise, reveal, and target certain ideas. That is to say, silence is as argumentative as speech and it is as arbitrary as language.