Author Archives: tp86kuta

Transnational
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room A

• Chaired by Elisabeth Kaske
• Yulia Khristolyubova, “Chinese, Russian, and British Views on the Structure of the Tea Business in China in the Second Half of the 19th Century”
• Ting Xu, “The Impact of International Law in Northeast Asia in the Middle and Late 19th Century—A Positive Study Based on the Chinese Translations of Tongwenguan”
• Olga Alexeeva, “In the Service of the French Empire: Chinese Labour Brokers in Indochina during the First World War”
• Wenchuan Huang, “Politics of Toponymy: The Historical Geography of the Streetscapes in Hong Kong”

Yulia Khristolyubova, “Chinese, Russian, and British Views on the Structure of the Tea Business in China in the Second Half of the 19th Century”

In the second half of the 19th century, after the victory of the European powers in the Second Opium War, foreign entrepreneurs began to organize firms directly in China. Hankou Port immediately becomes the main centre of the tea trade. The three main participants in the tea business: Chinese, Russian and British entrepreneurs, had different ideas about the emerging business structure and those business opportunities that opened up international agreements for foreigners. The protection of their entrepreneurial interests and the different understanding of their rights, superimposed on the national characteristics of conducting trade, often led to international trade conflicts. Although you can find cases of cooperation and mutual assistance between colonies of foreigners. Diplomatic correspondence, memoirs of participants in events often give a new vision of the events that have taken place, and most importantly, a new understanding of their positions and interpretation of actions. In this work, the author examines these different points of view of national diasporas of tea traders and their strategies of behaviour using the example of historical events and archival materials.

Ting Xu, “The Impact of International Law in Northeast Asia in the Middle and Late 19th Century—A Positive Study Based on the Chinese Translations of Tongwenguan”

Through analyzing the dissemination and acceptance of the Chinese translations of International Law by Tongwenguan in Northeast Asia and combining the change of regional international order in specific historical context, this article investigates the impact of International Law in this area in the middle and late 19th Century. Tongwenguan was the Chinese national translation agency that had translated various famous works about international law into Chinese and first systematically introduced international law into Chinese cultural circle. The translations fully realized the transplantation of the basic structure of the discipline and formed the system of international legal terms in Chinese translation. They were not only recognized by Qing Government but also spread to other countries within Chinese cultural circle and exerted much influence, especially upon Japan. During the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), China and Japan adopted international law to safeguard their respective rights. According to the original works of international law and their translations of Tongwenguan, the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean diplomatic archives of modern time, the existing Tongwenguan compilation documents as well as other source materials of letters and memoirs, it concludes that in Northeast Asia of the middle and late 19th Century, because of its authority and popularity, Tongwenguan translations became the most important source of international law knowledge in diplomatic practice and promoted the modern transformation of the traditional international relations in Northeast Asia, in which process, international law gradually entered the perspective of intellectuals of relevant countries and were criticized or misappropriated by them.

Olga Alexeeva, “In the Service of the French Empire: Chinese Labour Brokers in Indochina during the First World War”

At the turn of the 20th century, the French imperial network enabled the subsequent creation of multiple migration routes between different French colonies and dependencies in the Asia-Pacific, thus transforming mobility in the region. Although the French government generated migration by organizing and subsidizing travel and establishing indentured labour regimes, the recruitment operations were often carried by the coolie brokers who thus became important social and political agents of labour relations. Analysing and defining their contribution to the expansion of migrant networks within the French Empire remains an important issue for the colonial history and the for post-colonial studies as well as for the current labour migrations in the Asia-Pacific. During the First World War, France has recruited thousands of Chinese to replace labourers mobilized for the army and to perform all kinds of works related to the allied war effort. The major problem in administration of the labourers was the lack of Chinese-speaking interpreters. Using its imperial connexions, the French colonial administration decided to recruit the interpreters in Indochina among the local second-generation Chinese migrants. While focusing on the recruitment tactics used by the French authorities in Indochina, this paper will assess the role of the local Chinese community in spreading the information about the offered position and finding suitable candidates for the French. Based on the various materials from the French Archives nationales d’outre-mer, this paper will analyse different recruitment arrangements developed by the French in partnership with the local Chinese labour brokers.

Wenchuan Huang, “Politics of Toponymy: The Historical Geography of the Streetscapes in Hong Kong”

The critical study of toponymy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of streets following revolutionary political change since 1980s. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes. For example, after taking back the foreign concessions in 1943, the Wang Jingwei government eradicated all the streets of Shanghai named after foreign figures. The same case as post-colonial Singapore after 1965, where naming streets served to erase the colonial past and assert national independence. Nevertheless, the most of Colonial-Era Street Names still persisted in the city after Hong Kong’s reunification to China in 1997. This research seeks to advance the critical toponymical study through the history and spatial changes of Hong Kong’s street names to explore the street naming operations of Colonial governance with different block spaces in different periods. And further discusses about memory, local identity and the persistence of Colonial-Era street names after 1997.

Listening to Wartime and Cold-War China (1935–1958)
Tuesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
Room 1

• Jonathan Stock, Chair
• Odila Schroeder: “Disconcerting Assets: Musical Institutions and Concert Repertoire in Japanese-Occupied Beijing”
• Andreas Steen, “Shifting Soundscapes: Records, Technology, and the Politics of Sound in China (1935–­1955)”
• Dayton Lekner, “Echolocating the Social: Listening and Being Heard in the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns, 1956–1958”
• Laura De Giorgi, Discussant

This panel brings together scholars from Europe and Canada, whose work focuses on the politics of music, sound, and listening in mid-twentieth century China. The three papers are deeply rooted in archival research and the analysis of auditory culture, but bridge conventional disciplinary boundaries to achieve a better understanding of the role of sound and listening in the context of violent conflict and political campaigns.
Focusing on wartime Beijing, Odila Schroeder introduces musical institutions and repertoires built and appropriated under Japanese occupation, argues for the agency of the collaboration regimes, and lifts the veil of moral judgement to achieve a more nuanced understanding of wartime musicking. Andreas Steen reviews the contentious politics of international record production in late Republican Period Shanghai and its transformation into a national propaganda enterprise during the early PRC. By introducing selected records, he highlights the materiality of sound and the difficulties to create a new national soundscape. Shifting our perspective to the perception of sound, Dayton Lekner traces the effect of mass campaigns of the 1950s on hearing and listening practices. He calls us to recognise listening as a performative practice and to notice the affective and social dynamics of sonic propaganda. Jonathan Stock (University College Cork) and Laura De Giorgi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), serving as chair and discussant, will share their expertise on musical performance, records, and radio in late republican China and the early PRC, and contribute to our discussion of sound and violence, and historical sound studies in the Chinese context.

Odila Schroeder, “Disconcerting Assets: Musical Institutions and Concert Repertoire in Japanese-Occupied Beijing“

While resistance songs are recognized as an integral part of the Communist propaganda effort and Chongqing as the home of the Chinese wartime musical elite, Japanese-occupied territories are still reduced to the “seductive” voices of Li Xianglan and Zhou Xuan. This paper is part of a larger project focusing on the auditory culture of the occupation-regimes in wartime Beijing, specifically concert life organized by the collaborationist New Citizen’s Society (xinmin hui). It focuses on the Beijing Symphony Orchestra (1940–1944) and Beijing City Music Hall. The significance of both institutions as propaganda assets and manifestations of transnational cultural politics has hitherto not been recognized in scholarship on music in the Republican Period. The paper traces the history of these institutions and their activities based on a collection of concert programs kept at the Beijing Capital Normal University Museum, documents found at the Beijing Municipal Archives, and concert reviews published in the occupation regime’s main news outlets, including the Xinminbao, Huabei xinbao, and Guomin zazhi. Analysis of the repertoires performed by the orchestra throughout its brief existence and for the opening of the Music Hall in November 1942 reveals how the occupation regimes not only co-opted and built musical institutions to serve their propagandistic aims but generated new repertoires and distinct forms of auditory propaganda. I argue that the occupation regimes leveraged private concert life, carefully designed concert programs, and attempted to attach new meaning to both new and pre-existing repertoire.

Andreas Steen, “Shifting Soundscapes: Records, Technology, and the Politics of Sound in China (1935–1955)“

In the Republican Period, Shanghai was China’s centre of record production, which by the early 1930s was dominated by British EMI-China and American RCA-Victor. Largely controlled by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), attempts to revitalise this industry after the war had to cope with the unstable situation during the Civil War and finally came to a halt when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. Record production had changed from international to national, and the foreign factories laid the foundation for the newly established People’s Record Factory.
The presentation covers twenty years of recording history in China. Based on archival documents, record catalogues, and other historical sources, it first outlines the struggle over record production in times of war and nation-building. The year 1949 divides two production periods and marks the beginning of radical initiatives to create a new socialist soundscape. In a second step, the paper highlights specific records and engages with larger questions regarding the materiality of sound as well as sonic continuities and discontinuities.
The cultural and political importance of music records during those decades can hardly be overestimated and, although heavily discussed at its time, has been mostly neglected in scholarly research. Integrated into a larger research project, this paper fills the gap, while also engaging with the fact that sound and music, once recorded, do not easily disappear but may return at any time.

Dayton Lekner, “Echolocating the Social: Listening and Being Heard in the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns, 1956–1958”

What role did sound and listening play in the mass campaigns of the Mao era? Recent research has shed light on the material and aspirational aspects of the CCP sonic propaganda effort, but how did such propaganda interact with pre-existing attitudes toward sound, silence, and noise? Were loudspeakers a direct line to the consciousness of the masses or a sonic intrusion into daily life? This research explores the reception of CCP sonic propaganda through a case study of the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist campaigns of 1956 to 1958. Analysing contemporary diaries and letters, as well as memoirs of the period, I explore how attitudes towards hearing as well as making sound shifted through the mass campaigns. I argue that the most effective form of sonic propaganda (defined here as the reshaping of society through sonic impulse and reception) took place not through the elaborate network of wired and wireless broadcast and amplification, but at the social level as peers, colleagues, and classmates, collectively reshaped society through acute auditory perception and the performance of both sound and silence.

The Changing Meaning of Vegetarianism in Modern China
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room 1

• Organised by Nikolas Broy and Matthias Schumann
• Chaired by Vincent Goossaert
• Matthias Schumann, “Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China”
• Nikolas Broy, “Care of the Self or Pursuit of a Better World? Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, and Global Concerns in Contemporary Yiguandao Discourses and Practices”
• Shuk-wah Poon, “Vegetarianism and ‘Protecting Life’: The Buddhist Magazine Husheng bao in 1930s China”

This panel explores the evolution of religiously motivated vegetarianism in Chinese societies during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Vegetarianism as the deliberate abstention from consuming meat and related food products was introduced to China in tandem with Mahayana Buddhism and took hold as a defining marker of Buddhist identity already in the fifth and sixth centuries. As a particular powerful form of moral self-cultivation, it also became widespread in many other religious contexts, including Daoism, popular religion, and popular sects. In addition, it was related to temporary practices of meat-abstention, such as fasting in imperial and Confucian ritual. Hence, vegetarianism in imperial China can be considered a religiously induced practice related to notions of morality, self-cultivation, karma and retribution, and ritual purity. Since the early twentieth century, this tradition was subtly transformed through the impact of an increasing internationalization, new ideas and changing food practices—from an engagement with a global animal protection movement in the wake of WWI to contemporary attempts to integrate concerns about global warming, food safety and environmentalism into the discourse. By looking at Buddhist activists in Republican China and the religious movement Yiguandao in contemporary Taiwan and among overseas Chinese, the panel traces the transformation of traditional vegetarian beliefs and practices in modern society. The panel thereby aims to contribute to the growing literature on food practices in modern China in general, but also shed light on the transformation of an important traditional religious practice.

Matthias Schumann, “Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China”

During the Republican period (1912–1949), Buddhist vegetarian practices took on new meanings as they were integrated into a spreading global movement of vegetarianism and animal protection. Chinese Buddhists adopted international models to establish new institutions that were dedicated to vegetarianism and animal protection, most importantly the China Society for the Protection of Animals (Zhongguo baohu dongwu hui 中國保護動物會) that was founded in 1934. Yet, at the same time, they also criticized foreigners for many of whom vegetarianism retained a streak of the radical and the unorthodox. In this context, vegetarianism could be presented as both inherent to Chinese religious traditions and radically progressive within a global animal protection movement. It thereby served to bolster a sense of Chinese cultural identity and to subvert the unequal power relations in a semi-colonial context. This paper will explore this dynamic by looking at the interactions and debates between Chinese and foreign activists in an increasingly internationalized context. During the Republican period, Chinese Buddhist activists travelled to international congresses in Europe to propagate their views, while foreign residents set up societies for animal protection in Shanghai and other cities. These interactions provided an opportunity for Chinese activists to renegotiate Chinese identity in light of a reinvented tradition of vegetarianism and kindness to animals.

Nikolas Broy, “Care of the Self or Pursuit of a Better World? Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, and Global Concerns in Contemporary Yiguandao Discourses and Practices”

This paper seeks to explore how practitioners of the Taiwanese religious movement Yiguandao 一貫道 (“Way of Pervading Unity,” emic transcription is “I-Kuan Tao”) aim to merge traditional vegetarian beliefs and practices with contemporary concerns about global warming, environmental protection, and the care for living beings. While religiously motivated vegetarianism in late imperial China focused very much on the idea of abstaining from killing living beings and consuming their meat as a means to purify the self and to attain salvation through individual moral cultivation, there is also a growing trend among contemporary practitioners to integrate novel discourses about global warming, environmental protection, and the care for animals into their everyday practices. Drawing on published Yiguandao materials, online resources, and intensive fieldwork among Yiguandao congregations in Taiwan, Austria, South Africa, the United States, and Japan conducted from 2016 to 2018, this paper investigates how these modern ideas and concepts are being integrated, reworked, or even dismissed. It thereby looks at the meaning of vegetarian practices in practitioners’ social and religious lives.

Shuk-wah Poon, “Vegetarianism and ‘Protecting Life’: The Buddhist Magazine Husheng bao in 1930s China”

Founded in Shanghai by lay Buddhist Han Shizi 寒世子 in 1932, the Buddhist magazine Husheng bao 護生報 proclaimed itself as the first magazine in East Asia that was specifically devoted to advocating the ideas of animal protection and vegetarianism. While messages of kindness to animals and abstinence from meat were by no means new in Chinese Buddhist teachings, Husheng bao distinguished itself from traditional Buddhist beliefs and practices relating to animals in the following ways: First, the magazine explained the evils of meat-consumption not only by linking consuming meat to the accumulation of bad karma but also by giving detailed illustrations of the sufferings inflicted on animals during the process of slaughtering. Second, references were occasionally made to the animal protection movement in the Western world, thus adding a sense of internationalism to the otherwise outdated Buddhist religion. Third, the use of modern printing technology and the publication of contributions from the Chinese Buddhists in and outside of China helped foster an imagined global community of animal-loving Buddhists. This paper will examine the role of Husheng bao in the creation and dissemination of the new sensibility towards animals in Republican China.