AAS 2024 Prizes
https://www.asianstudies.org/aas-2024-prizes/
列文森图书奖：
Joseph Levenson Prize (China, pre-1900)
Susan Naquin, Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 (Brill)
Honorable mention: Christian de Pee, Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 (Amsterdam University Press)
Honorable mention: Lawrence Zhang, Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center)
Joseph Levenson Prize (China, post-1900)
Ho-fung Hung, City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule (Cambridge University Press)
Honorable mention: Joseph Esherick, Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China (University of California Press)
https://www.asianstudies.org/aas-2024-prizes/
列文森图书奖：
Joseph Levenson Prize (China, pre-1900)
Susan Naquin, Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 (Brill)
Honorable mention: Christian de Pee, Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 (Amsterdam University Press)
Honorable mention: Lawrence Zhang, Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center)
Joseph Levenson Prize (China, post-1900)
Ho-fung Hung, City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule (Cambridge University Press)
Honorable mention: Joseph Esherick, Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China (University of California Press)
Association for Asian Studies
AAS 2024 Prizes - Association for Asian Studies
Prizes for Books and Scholarship East and Inner Asia Council Joseph Levenson Prize (China, pre-1900) Susan Naquin, Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 (Brill) Honorable mention: Christian de Pee, Urban Life and…
嘗試新鮮的生產力工具是一件很值得做的事
1. 嘗試新的工具能夠拓展「知」的邊界
2. 拓展知的邊界後，就更有機會知道自己要什麼、不要什麼
假設能夠在嘗試新工具時，持續研究自己好奇的地方，詢問自己的偏好與理由，得到一點結論，慢慢累積起來，一定會非常棒的。因此我認為嘗試新鮮的生產力工具是一件很值得做的事。
https://world.hey.com/mimir/a-letter-from-pj-c7ec139a
1. 嘗試新的工具能夠拓展「知」的邊界
2. 拓展知的邊界後，就更有機會知道自己要什麼、不要什麼
假設能夠在嘗試新工具時，持續研究自己好奇的地方，詢問自己的偏好與理由，得到一點結論，慢慢累積起來，一定會非常棒的。因此我認為嘗試新鮮的生產力工具是一件很值得做的事。
https://world.hey.com/mimir/a-letter-from-pj-c7ec139a
Hey
A letter from PJ - 嘗試新鮮的生產力工具是一件很值得做的事
昨天在 Twitter 上面看到一篇推文，我想起近兩年前自己寫過的短短一段話，剛好可以趁這機會來擴寫一下。 一直以來常常在社群上看到一派說法是，不要為物所役，不要花太多力氣在什麼生產力工具上，努力把事情做掉才是最重要的。我自己不完全這麼想，原因如下： 1. 嘗試新的工具能夠拓展「知」的邊界 大部分的新工具透過社群或媒體出現在自己面前時，可能是他有某個特殊的賣點，這個賣點可能是針對既有品項的某個缺點去特化改良，或者是提出了一套新的互動方式或工作流，這些東西不見得是市場上的主流標準，因此若不嘗試新東西，就很…
The Real Roots of Xi Jinping Thought
Key to Xi’s thought is pairing Marxism with Confucianism: in October 2023, he declared that today’s China should consider Marxism its “soul” and “fine traditional Chinese culture as the root.”
In The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, his magnum opus, Wang Hui, a scholar of Chinese language and literature at Tsinghua University, returns to the late-nineteenth-century thinkers who worked to reshape Chinese philosophy.
Wang analyzes the connections between political theory and more concrete issues of governance over a millennium of Chinese history. But he notes that “explanations of modern China cannot avoid the question of how to interpret” the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1912.
In one sense, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought makes Xi’s attempted synthesis of Marxism and Confucianism seem less implausible. It has a history; serious thinkers have tried it before.
But Wang’s analysis also reveals where the CCP is going astray. The party expresses its new ideology in simplistic, brassy terms, drawing on unsubtle readings of classics and disallowing critiques.
Wang argues that the problem that bedeviled the late Qing empire was not just a geopolitical one in which other states had secured material advantages over China. It was a crisis of worldview. Scholars have long asserted that the ways in which Confucianism was applied to nineteenth-century Chinese politics had left the country sclerotic—unable to engage with modern Western ideologies such as capitalism, liberalism, and nationalism.
Chinese thought has always best contributed to China’s flourishing when it has been free and disputatious, not closed and sterile. This is the aspect of Chinese tradition that today’s CCP cannot afford to ignore.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/china-real-roots-xi-jinping-thought
Key to Xi’s thought is pairing Marxism with Confucianism: in October 2023, he declared that today’s China should consider Marxism its “soul” and “fine traditional Chinese culture as the root.”
In The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, his magnum opus, Wang Hui, a scholar of Chinese language and literature at Tsinghua University, returns to the late-nineteenth-century thinkers who worked to reshape Chinese philosophy.
Wang analyzes the connections between political theory and more concrete issues of governance over a millennium of Chinese history. But he notes that “explanations of modern China cannot avoid the question of how to interpret” the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1912.
In one sense, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought makes Xi’s attempted synthesis of Marxism and Confucianism seem less implausible. It has a history; serious thinkers have tried it before.
But Wang’s analysis also reveals where the CCP is going astray. The party expresses its new ideology in simplistic, brassy terms, drawing on unsubtle readings of classics and disallowing critiques.
Wang argues that the problem that bedeviled the late Qing empire was not just a geopolitical one in which other states had secured material advantages over China. It was a crisis of worldview. Scholars have long asserted that the ways in which Confucianism was applied to nineteenth-century Chinese politics had left the country sclerotic—unable to engage with modern Western ideologies such as capitalism, liberalism, and nationalism.
Chinese thought has always best contributed to China’s flourishing when it has been free and disputatious, not closed and sterile. This is the aspect of Chinese tradition that today’s CCP cannot afford to ignore.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/china-real-roots-xi-jinping-thought
Foreign Affairs
The Real Roots of Xi Jinping Thought
Chinese political philosophers’ long struggle with modernity.
TomBen’s Web Excursions
The Real Roots of Xi Jinping Thought Key to Xi’s thought is pairing Marxism with Confucianism: in October 2023, he declared that today’s China should consider Marxism its “soul” and “fine traditional Chinese culture as the root.” In The Rise of Modern Chinese…
汪晖. 2004. 现代中国思想的兴起. 4 vols. 北京: 生活·读书·新知三联书店. https://book.douban.com/subject/1038736.
Wang, Hui. 2023. The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought. Edited by Michael Gibbs Hill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674293021.
Wang, Hui. 2023. The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought. Edited by Michael Gibbs Hill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674293021.
豆瓣
现代中国思想的兴起（全四册）
《现代中国思想的兴起》一书中有一条贯穿全书的线索，即知识与制度之间的互动关系，例如天理与郡县制国家的关系、公理与现代民族主义及其体制的关系等。在讨论康有为时，我特别地提到了他对儒学普遍主义的再创造，而...
TomBen’s Web Excursions
Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/burning-money-the-material-spirit-of-the-chinese-lifeworld/ 烧钱：中国人生活世界中的物质精神 https://book.douban.com/subject/30294526/
From housewives to students and high-ranking officials, people from all social backgrounds in China and Taiwan visit fate calculation 算命 masters to learn about their destiny. How do clients assess the diviner’s skills? How does one become a fortune-teller? How is a person’s fate calculated? The Art of Fate Calculation explores how conceptions of fate circulate in Chinese and Taiwanese societies while resisting uniformization and institutionalization. This is not only due to the stigma of “superstition” but also to the internal dynamic of fate calculation practice and learning.
Homola, Stéphanie. 2023. The Art of Fate Calculation: Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng. New York: Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738126.
Homola, Stéphanie. 2023. The Art of Fate Calculation: Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng. New York: Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738126.
TomBen’s Web Excursions
柴静谈《三体》人物原型叶企孙：科幻和现实，哪个更残酷？ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8YW3wN9Fpw
看了这个视频，我想推荐一篇论文和一本书：
Wang, Zuoyue (王作跃). 2002. “Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China.” Osiris 17 (1): 291–322. https://doi.org/10.1086/649367.
胡大年. 2006. 爱因斯坦在中国. 上海: 上海科技教育出版社. https://book.douban.com/subject/1863621.
Wang, Zuoyue (王作跃). 2002. “Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China.” Osiris 17 (1): 291–322. https://doi.org/10.1086/649367.
胡大年. 2006. 爱因斯坦在中国. 上海: 上海科技教育出版社. https://book.douban.com/subject/1863621.
Osiris
Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China | Osiris:…
The Science Society of China, the first comprehensive Chinese scientific association, was actually organized in 1914 by a group of Chinese students at Cornell University in the United States. Four years later, many members returned to China, where the association…
Mother Tongues
Yiyun Li 李翊云, the Chinese-born writer of fiction and memoir, left in 1996 and has moved on to other settings in her work. But can a writer ever fully escape her motherland?
“I think graduate school was just an excuse to leave China,” Li told me in an interview on the campus of Princeton University, where she now teaches creative writing. “I didn’t actually like China, or at least, I couldn’t really see a future in China. I didn’t think China had any future at the time … so that’s why I left.”
“I don’t think America is such a good country,” she told me, “but it’s more endurable than China.”
Li’s husband is Chinese (they met in college in Beijing), and while she still speaks to him in Mandarin, they switch to English if they are trying to ensure clarity. English, rather than Chinese, is their language of precision.
While she does not reject her Chinese identity, part of why Li has intentionally turned away is because of what she described as China’s insistence on “claiming” people. “Once you’re Chinese, you’re always Chinese” she said. “They put a mark on you. There’s something about China as a country or a group of people where they really want to own you. And I don’t want to be owned.”
Political executions are mentioned matter-of-factly, the Cultural Revolution is never far away, and inequality and injustice punctuate characters’ lives.
Until recently, Li did not allow her works to be translated into Chinese. Now, a translated version of her novel Must I Go (2020) awaits publication in China. She chose Must I Go, which follows a California-based octogenarian, to be her first book translated into Chinese in part because it has nothing to do with China.
Yiyun Li 李翊云, the Chinese-born writer of fiction and memoir, left in 1996 and has moved on to other settings in her work. But can a writer ever fully escape her motherland?
“I think graduate school was just an excuse to leave China,” Li told me in an interview on the campus of Princeton University, where she now teaches creative writing. “I didn’t actually like China, or at least, I couldn’t really see a future in China. I didn’t think China had any future at the time … so that’s why I left.”
“I don’t think America is such a good country,” she told me, “but it’s more endurable than China.”
Li’s husband is Chinese (they met in college in Beijing), and while she still speaks to him in Mandarin, they switch to English if they are trying to ensure clarity. English, rather than Chinese, is their language of precision.
While she does not reject her Chinese identity, part of why Li has intentionally turned away is because of what she described as China’s insistence on “claiming” people. “Once you’re Chinese, you’re always Chinese” she said. “They put a mark on you. There’s something about China as a country or a group of people where they really want to own you. And I don’t want to be owned.”
Political executions are mentioned matter-of-factly, the Cultural Revolution is never far away, and inequality and injustice punctuate characters’ lives.
Until recently, Li did not allow her works to be translated into Chinese. Now, a translated version of her novel Must I Go (2020) awaits publication in China. She chose Must I Go, which follows a California-based octogenarian, to be her first book translated into Chinese in part because it has nothing to do with China.
China Books Review
Mother Tongues | China Books Review
Yiyun Li, the Chinese-born writer of fiction and memoir, left in 1996 and has moved on to other settings. But can a writer ever fully escape her motherland?
TomBen’s Web Excursions
Professors were arrested in Emory University https://fxtwitter.com/middleeasteye/status/1783599259650002973
Lessons from Tiananmen for today’s university presidents
Today’s students at Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Yale, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, Brown, USC and other campuses are mounting an antiwar movement, calling on their institutions to divest from Israel in light of the unprecedented levels of civilian death in Gaza, and for the US government to stop supplying Israel’s offensive war machine.
Here is a solution. It requires compromise, but also offers benefits to both university administrations and student protesters: Form a committee.
Students, you don’t want to slow things down, and may fear being co-opted by such a process. That is a valid fear, and you should resist committee stalling. Had Chinese leaders not panicked in 1989 that the Communist Party itself would split, they might have coopted Beijing students into the system, just as past emperors sometimes granted rebel leaders official posts to bring them into the fold.
https://jimmillward.medium.com/lessons-from-tiananmen-for-todays-university-presidents-0ae41a034513
Today’s students at Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Yale, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, Brown, USC and other campuses are mounting an antiwar movement, calling on their institutions to divest from Israel in light of the unprecedented levels of civilian death in Gaza, and for the US government to stop supplying Israel’s offensive war machine.
Here is a solution. It requires compromise, but also offers benefits to both university administrations and student protesters: Form a committee.
Students, you don’t want to slow things down, and may fear being co-opted by such a process. That is a valid fear, and you should resist committee stalling. Had Chinese leaders not panicked in 1989 that the Communist Party itself would split, they might have coopted Beijing students into the system, just as past emperors sometimes granted rebel leaders official posts to bring them into the fold.
https://jimmillward.medium.com/lessons-from-tiananmen-for-todays-university-presidents-0ae41a034513
Medium
Lessons from Tiananmen for today’s university presidents
25 April 2024
Leaves, Silkworms, Yue Fei: Ways of Imagining the Territory in 1930s China
During the Nationalist period (1928–1949) in China, the notion that China’s territory mirrors the shape of a begonia or a mulberry leaf gained wide recognition. This analogy ingrained itself into public perceptions of modern China’s boundaries and was often assumed without question. As foreign forces—symbolized by silk-worms—encroached upon the leaf-like territory, the leaf trope emerged as a platform for various patriotic appeals during wartime. This research explores the evolution of the leaf trope for China’s territory in the 1930s, probing the historical and cultural connotations embedded in it. The discussion expands to incorporate intellectual resources associated with the Song-era military commander Yue Fei and the leaf trope, as they jointly influenced the portrayal of China’s territory across textual and visual mediums. In this light, territorial conceptualizations in modern China were shaped by ideological constructs envisioning a future rooted in the past.
Chang, Yu-chi. “Leaves, Silkworms, Yue Fei: Ways of Imagining the Territory in 1930s China.” Twentieth-Century China 49, no. 2 (2024): 89–110. https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2024.a925422.
During the Nationalist period (1928–1949) in China, the notion that China’s territory mirrors the shape of a begonia or a mulberry leaf gained wide recognition. This analogy ingrained itself into public perceptions of modern China’s boundaries and was often assumed without question. As foreign forces—symbolized by silk-worms—encroached upon the leaf-like territory, the leaf trope emerged as a platform for various patriotic appeals during wartime. This research explores the evolution of the leaf trope for China’s territory in the 1930s, probing the historical and cultural connotations embedded in it. The discussion expands to incorporate intellectual resources associated with the Song-era military commander Yue Fei and the leaf trope, as they jointly influenced the portrayal of China’s territory across textual and visual mediums. In this light, territorial conceptualizations in modern China were shaped by ideological constructs envisioning a future rooted in the past.
Chang, Yu-chi. “Leaves, Silkworms, Yue Fei: Ways of Imagining the Territory in 1930s China.” Twentieth-Century China 49, no. 2 (2024): 89–110. https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2024.a925422.
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE - Leaves, Silkworms, Yue Fei: Ways of Imagining the Territory in 1930s China
TomBen’s Web Excursions
秦晖：想象下一个十年 02:55 有人说，中国现在经济发展了，但缺软实力。为什么？因为我们老是被西方的理念牵着鼻子走。我们应该提自己的价值，就是「仁义道德」。什么叫「仁义道德」呢？在十九世纪五六十年代，很多汉人出身的理学名臣，根本不知道西学是什么，但是他们一到了西方，第一个感觉就是那才是仁义道德。他们所讲的仁义道德，主要是讲西方国家对自己的人民的确是仁义道德，不涉及西方人对待中国人。 04:52 回过头来一看，中国对自己人是什么态度？很简单，就是不仁、不义、不道、不德。用他们的话来讲：二千年来之政，秦…
又看到秦晖先生讲晚清中国使节眼中的两面西洋，真是搞笑又唏嘘。
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5VmZ53O35co
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6XaNs83juAw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5VmZ53O35co
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6XaNs83juAw
Yuan Yang, the former Financial Times China correspondent, has written an engrossing new book that meticulously reports on a country in the throes of change, using the lives and choices of four women from her own generation as a lens.
Private Revolutions takes care to keep Leiya, Sam, June and Siyue’s individuality in focus without forgetting the broader stakes. As Leiya reminds herself: “I’m not the only one in this situation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/private-revolutions-by-yuan-yang-review-an-intimate-account-of-how-china-is-changing
Private Revolutions takes care to keep Leiya, Sam, June and Siyue’s individuality in focus without forgetting the broader stakes. As Leiya reminds herself: “I’m not the only one in this situation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/private-revolutions-by-yuan-yang-review-an-intimate-account-of-how-china-is-changing
the Guardian
Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang review – an intimate account of how China is changing
A social and economic revolution observed through the lives of four women in their 30s
What became of Rahile Dawut? 热依拉·达吾提 راھىلە داۋۇت
In the late 1990s, Rahile became the first Uyghur woman to gain a doctorate in folklore studies from Beijing Normal University.
Academics in Xinjiang were exquisitely aware of the omnipresence of the Chinese Communist party. Racism towards the Uyghurs was prevalent. Foreign academics visiting the Xinjiang capital saw how their local friends, esteemed scholars, “couldn’t get a fucking taxi at night”.
She was fastidious. She made sure her students did not engage with banned books, that they obtained consent for recordings, saw that they cut personal opinions and avoided direct criticisms of government policy from their dissertations.
Her greatest gift as an ethnographer, colleagues say, may have been her ability to “meet people where they are at”. This meant not just putting local, usually poor, worshippers, farmers and craftsmen at ease, but always giving face, due respect, to officials, and seeking the proper permissions for her travels, interviews and recordings.
Rahile had often jokingly told her female students to think of the frequent and invasive body searches they encountered travelling in and around Ürümqi as a free massage.
Another student came to her torn over whether to pursue her studies overseas or stay in Ürümqi to be closer to her family. “Just go,” Rahile told her. “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
In 2017, just months before she disappeared, a colleague warned Rahile: “You and your students are all so interested in religion. Just be careful, religion is sensitive.”
Rahile responded firmly: “Any religion is sensitive, and it is not about religion. This is about how Uyghur life is intertwined, embedded with religion.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ca036415-7ded-4384-ac2d-33825f1a82c3
In the late 1990s, Rahile became the first Uyghur woman to gain a doctorate in folklore studies from Beijing Normal University.
Academics in Xinjiang were exquisitely aware of the omnipresence of the Chinese Communist party. Racism towards the Uyghurs was prevalent. Foreign academics visiting the Xinjiang capital saw how their local friends, esteemed scholars, “couldn’t get a fucking taxi at night”.
She was fastidious. She made sure her students did not engage with banned books, that they obtained consent for recordings, saw that they cut personal opinions and avoided direct criticisms of government policy from their dissertations.
Her greatest gift as an ethnographer, colleagues say, may have been her ability to “meet people where they are at”. This meant not just putting local, usually poor, worshippers, farmers and craftsmen at ease, but always giving face, due respect, to officials, and seeking the proper permissions for her travels, interviews and recordings.
Rahile had often jokingly told her female students to think of the frequent and invasive body searches they encountered travelling in and around Ürümqi as a free massage.
Another student came to her torn over whether to pursue her studies overseas or stay in Ürümqi to be closer to her family. “Just go,” Rahile told her. “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
In 2017, just months before she disappeared, a colleague warned Rahile: “You and your students are all so interested in religion. Just be careful, religion is sensitive.”
Rahile responded firmly: “Any religion is sensitive, and it is not about religion. This is about how Uyghur life is intertwined, embedded with religion.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ca036415-7ded-4384-ac2d-33825f1a82c3
Revel, Jacques. “History and the Social Sciences.” In The Cambridge History of Science, edited by Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, 7:391–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521594424.022.
Cambridge Core
History and the Social Sciences (Chapter 21) - The Cambridge History of Science
The Cambridge History of Science - August 2003