Event category: Special Event

The Chinese Engineers Relational Database (Pelzer et al., 2021) has recently reached its milestone of encompassing all 15,000+ biographies of engineers collected by the Chinese government between 1936 and 1941. The database is part of a research project on engineers in pre-war China (1906–1937), operating within the Leipzig Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 on “Processes of Spatialization.” The idea of the database is to provide a pool of digitised and cross-referenced data that researchers can then analyse to answer their own specific research questions. For the Leipzig project, these questions concern the ways in which engineers operated under, but also shaped, formats and visions of space.

As the name of the database suggests, our aim has been to gather information about every Chinese individual who worked as a professional engineer in the first half of the last century. Where available, their biographic data may include time and place of birth, educational institution, major, degree, and year of graduation, and time and place of each work commitment. The database can act as a simple encyclopaedia to conduct research on over 15,000 persons. However, the database also provides insight into the rise and fall of popular universities, the scope of important infrastructural projects, and the organizational structure of historical companies. As each location is georeferenced, we can also map academic mobility and workplace migration on different regional scales.

• 18:00-18:30 Introduction of the Chinese Religious Text Authority (CRTA) database
  project, chaired by Vincent Goossaert, EPHE;
• 18:30-19:00 SSCR business meeting, chaired by Ann Heirman, U Ghent: progress
  reports on Journal of Chinese Religions & European Network for the Study of
  Religions in China (ENSRC), discussion of future SSRC activities in Europe,
  upcoming events;
• 19:00-19:30 reception & informal conversation.
  

• Organised by Yuming Liu

The topic of this workshop will focus on one issue: the possibility of applying Chinese philosophy to consulting practice as one branch of practical philosophy. This issue arises from the practice of philosophical consultancy. Despite being trending in China, the absence of theoretical backup has caused philosophical consultancy to be undefined and marginalised among the existed counselling service. There is a requisite for a practical philosophy theory that expresses the distinction between the novel and traditional counselling theories, i.e., psychology and psychiatry. I would propose that Chinese philosophy, which in nature being practical, can fill this lack. Additionally, empirical cases in other countries, such as the USA and Israel, where the philosophical consultancy has been proved successful, may be helpful to assess the applicability of the proposal.

• Sascha Klotzbücher
• Bart Dessein
• Frank Kraushaar
• Alexis Lycas
• Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

The Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies is the recently launched open-access journal of the EACS. The first issue will be online in early Summer 2020. The editors of the journals introduce the scope and content of the journal and discuss with the audience how the editors and the EACS could improve the journal and how they can increase visibility and the number of readers. After special issues on “censorship” (vol 1) and “youth” (vol 2), this event aims to identify challenging topics for future issues and potential teams of guest editors.

Organised by Monumenta Serica Institute-Sankt Augustin

Leopold Leeb Presents Book Series: Roman Malek (ed.), The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, vol. 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4a, and 4b (2002–2019)

The book series The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ was initiated by the late Roman Malek SVD (1951–2019), the former Director and Editor-in-chief of the Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin, Germany. It was conceived as “a comprehensive interdisciplinary work on the manifold faces and images of Jesus in China, which unites the sinological, mission-historical, theological, art-historical, and other aspects” (from the introduction to vol. 1, p. 21). The series gradually evolved into six volumes: four text volumes divided chronologically, featuring scholarly articles and “Anthologies” with a wide range of other texts; one volume presenting an annotated bibliography and a final volume with supplementary material such as a general index. Leopold Leeb is very familiar with the work The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ because he translated the four text volumes into Chinese, together with a Chinese collaborator. In his presentation he will outline the main ideas connected with the representation of Jesus in China through different ages and in different contexts, enhancing his talk with visual material on the topic.

Presentation by Matthias Kaun

CrossAsia – a German National Infrastructure for Asian Studies – Current Situation and European Perspective Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) has been developing and running the platform CrossAsia (https://crossasia.org) for more than a decade. CrossAsia was launched in 2005 to provide an easy-to-use and central point of access to the printed and electronic resources in the library’s collection relating to East, Central and Southeast Asia. The collection is partly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Over the years, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin has continuously adjusted the objectives for CrossAsia, incorporating and in some cases anticipating the demands of academia and research.

In my presentation, I will focus on two topics. First, I will introduce the CrossAsia cosmos (https://blog.crossasia.org/about/?lang=en), including collection building, inter-library loan (ILL) services, metadata and full-text data searching, digitisation and visualisation, contextualisation of collections, and support for Open Access publishing and (research) data services. I will also show what services are freely available for researchers in Germany, Europe and beyond.

My perspective is that of a library and information infrastructure that is rethinking its mission to support Asia-related scholarship and research in an ever more globalised and digitally connected world. I will show how CrossAsia seeks to organise access to collections – regardless of their physical form and/or usage limitations due to licensing restrictions – in ways that make the materials findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable wherever possible.

Secondly, I will present some ideas how to improve the access situation for the European research community. Based on international cooperation and reliable coordination between partners and networks, an at least partial improvement of access conditions could be achieved for the European research community. In view of the diverse use cases and usage scenarios, especially in the context of electronic and digitally available texts and sources as well as in the context of digital humanities a joint and coordinated approach seems more promising.

In order for us at CrossAsia to better understand the needs and the wishes of the research community, we are offering a virtual booth at EACS where we are happy to get in contact with you. In addition, we kindly ask you to take part in our online survey on “Access to Resources in Europe” (https://umfragen.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/index.php/948214) so that we can better assess the situation in the different regions.

Reservation required (booked out)

Room G is the meeting point to walk to the museum.

• Agnes Schick-Chen, Moderator
• Katja Levy, Author
• Knut Benjamin Pissler, Author

Why do Chinese set up charitable foundations? How do Chinese foundations operate in the People’s Republic of China? Which role can and do they play in the authoritarian system? What is the legal and political framework in which they operate? And how do they cope with it?
Katja and Knut Benjamin have conducted extensive fieldwork and document analysis to answer these and other questions about charitable foundations in China. On the occasion of the publication of their book Charity with Chinese Characteristics: Chinese Charitable Foundations between Party-state and Society, the two authors will share their insights on one important actor in China’s charity sector.

• Organised by Fo-Guang-Shan-Tempel, Berlin e.V. and College of Humanities, Fo Guang University.
• Venerable Yungdong, The Development and Evolution of Blood Writing Sutra in Chinese Buddhism (中國佛教刺血寫經的發展與演變)
• L. H. Hsiao, The Construction Method of the History of Chinese Buddhist Literature (《中國佛教文學史》建構的方法論)
• Yen-Chiu Tu, The Study on the Bao-Liang’s Thought of Paramarthasunyata (寶亮第一義空思想研究)
• Li-Ling Liang, The Development and Characteristics of Buddhist Scripture Translation Literature in the New Translation Period (新譯時期佛經翻譯文學的發展與特色)
• Jen-Yu Lin, The Manuscripts’ Type and Application of Dunhuang Buddhist Hymns (敦煌佛教讚歌的寫本類型與應用)
• Chin Yi Wu, The Study about Buddhist Delight Poems of Bai Juyi (白居易禪悅詩研究)
• Wan Chun Chiu, Comparative Research between the Guanyin Records of Miraculous Responses and Tales of Numinous Manifestation in the Lotus Sutra (觀音應驗記與法華應驗記比較研究)
• Susan Hu, The Formation of Monastic Literati (詩文僧的形成)

Chinese Buddhist literature began with the translation of Buddhist scriptures. It covers three categories: Buddhist scripture literature, Monastic Literature and Literati Buddhist literature. It runs through more than two thousand years since the Eastern Han Dynasty, the initiation of the Buddhist scripture translation. In addition to the literature of translated Buddhist scriptures itself, many other literary styles have been introduced by propagating the translated Buddhist scriptures, such as narrative literature, parable literature, Bianwen (illustration of the Buddhist scriptures), novels, operas, etc. In respect of the length of history, the breadth of literature and the depth of cultural impact, a book specific to the history of Chinese Buddhist literature is indeed needed for an overall vision and perspective. The History of Chinese Buddhist Literature containing two volumes edited by Professor L. H. HSIAO and co-authored by more than 20 experts and scholars in the field of Buddhist literature elaborates on the evolution of Buddhist literature from Han and Wei through Ming and Qing Dynasties. On the occasion of the publication of the 2 first volume of The History of Chinese Buddhist Literature, the workshop will present a series of related papers on the history of Buddhist literature, which aims to intrigue much more academic attention to this issue. (中國佛教文學始於佛經翻譯，涵蓋了佛 經文學、僧人文學和文人佛教文學三大範疇，從東漢以降，貫穿二千餘年，除了佛經 本身的翻譯文學外，更注入了許多新文體，諸如敘事文學、譬喻文學、變文、小說、 戲曲等，無論從歷史的長度、文學的廣度或對文化影響的深度，都需要一部專門的史 書來提供完整的視野。《中國佛教文學史》由蕭麗華教授主編，匯集了二十多位佛教 文學領域的專家學者共同撰寫，全套分上下兩冊，系統性地論述了從漢魏以至明清佛 教文學的流變。值《中國佛教文學史》上冊出版之際，本次活動之工作坊將發表一系 列佛教文學史的相關論文，拋磚引玉，廣邀學界共同關注。)

• Organised by Michael Lackner and Matthias Schumann

Divination, broadly defined as the various practices and techniques that aim to reveal the hidden significance of events or knowledge related to the future, is an almost ubiquitous phenomenon in Chinese societies past and present. For the last ten years, the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg Fate, Freedom and Prognostication: Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe has explored the numerous Chinese divinatory practices and their changing role in society from an interdisciplinary perspective. From the technical practices based on the Book of Changes to the inspired prognostications of temples mediums, the numerous visiting fellows that conducted research at the Consortium showed the variety of divinatory practices, their differing social assessment and their surprising persistence in light of legal prescriptions and modernist critiques. However, the widespread engagement in divination in Chinese societies—historically shared by both commoners and the literati elites—calls for further explanation and systematic study. The Consortium has therefore in recent years established the study of
divination as a distinct field of research. To that effect, an International Society for the
Critical Study of Divination, an academic journal—The International Journal of Divination and Prognostication—as well as a book series have been established. During an interactive session that begins with a brief introduction of the Consortium and its research, the field of divination studies and the related publication platforms will be discussed with interested scholars.