New Books in Chinese Studies

The modern popularity of acupuncture and herbal medicine belies the long history of Chinese medicine in the U.S. In Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace (Yale University Press, 2019), Tamara Venit-Shelton (Claremont McKenna College) examines the historical contexts that shaped perceptions of traditional Chinese medicine from the colonial period to the present. Venit-Shelton draws from court records, material culture, census records, oral interviews, and newspapers to uncover the multi-faceted roles that Chinese herbalists played in both Chinese and non-Chinese communities during the “long Progressive Era.”Through self-Orientalizing presentations, these health practitioners enterprisingly navigated, accommodated, and resisted waves of rising xenophobia and medical regulation. After a period of struggle between the 1930s and 1970s when depression and war disrupted supply chains, Chinese medicine made a roaring comeback even as increasing numbers of Chinese Americans trained in Western medicine, leading to the rise of integrative medicine. Herbs and Roots deepens our understanding of histories of medicine and public health, American Orientalism, Asian immigration to the US, and the environment and ideas of nature.Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of "good wives, wise mothers" in support of male empire-building.Although many feminist critics have articulated women's active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building have been largely supported and rectified. In contrast, the roles of marginalized women, such as sex workers, women entertainers, hostesses, and hibakusha have rarely been analyzed. This book addresses this intellectual lacuna by closely examining memories, (semi-)autobiographical stories, and newspaper articles, grounded or inspired by lived experiences not only in Japan, but also in Shanghai, Manchukuo, colonial Korea, and the Pacific. Chapters further explore the voices of diasporic Korean women (Zainichi Korean woman born in Japan, as well as Korean American woman born in Korea) whose lives were impacted, intervening ethnocentric narratives that were at the heart of the Japanese empire. An appendix presents the first English translation of a memorable statement on comfort women by former Japanese propaganda actress, Ri Kōran / Yamaguchi Yoshiko.Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki's book Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire (Routledge, 2021) will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and film studies, as well as gender, sexuality and postcolonial studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Jie Li, author of 'Cinematic Guerrillas', discusses the Chinese media revolution, grassroots labor of mobile projectionists, memories of film workers and audiences, and the role of humans in China's media practices and propaganda networks.

Why would an inkstone have a poem inscribed on it? Early modern Chinese writers did not limit themselves to working with brushes and ink, and their texts were not confined to woodblock-printed books or the boundaries of the paper page. Poets carved lines of verse onto cups, ladles, animal horns, seashells, walking sticks, boxes, fans, daggers, teapots, and musical instruments. Calligraphers left messages on the implements ordinarily used for writing on paper. These inscriptions—terse compositions in verse or epigrammatic prose—relate in complex ways to the objects on which they are written. Thomas Kelly develops a new account of the relationship between Chinese literature and material culture by examining inscribed objects from the late Ming and early to mid-Qing dynasties. He considers how the literary qualities of inscriptions interact with the visual and physical properties of the things that bear them. Kelly argues that inscribing an object became a means for authors to grapple with the materiality and technologies of writing. Facing profound social upheavals, from volatility in the marketplace to the violence of dynastic transition, writers turned to inscriptions to reflect on their investments in and dependence on the permanence of the written word. Shedding new light on cultures of writing in early modern China, The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China (Columbia UP, 2023) broadens understandings of the links between the literary and the material.Huijun Mai is an Assistant Professor in Medieval Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Dr. James Cummings explores the everyday lives of gay men in Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China. Taking an ethnographic and phenomenological approach, it asks how these men construct and experience ways of ‘sexual being’ – as gay, homosexual, tongzhi and/or in the scene – and what these mean for the ways of living they see as possible within a socio-cultural, political and material context characterised by pervasive heteronormativity. It explores what it means for gay men in Hainan to ‘come into the scene’, how internet and mobile technologies figure in their everyday processes of sexual categorisation and how these men negotiate orientations and disorientations towards the future in relation to dominant heterosexual life scripts of marriage and reproduction.This book offers vital insights into the production and restriction of non-heterosexual lives in diverse settings, while addressing universal questions of how certain ways of living are enabled and curtailed in living together with others through powerful conditions of uncertainty and precarity.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world, respectively, have maintained a delicate relationship for four centuries. In addition to a four-thousand-kilometer border, they have periodically shared a common outlook on political and economic affairs. But they are, in essence, profoundly different polities and cultures, and their intermittent alliances have proven difficult and at times even volatile.In China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale UP, 2023), Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between these two global giants. Looking at politics, religion, economics, and culture, Snow uncovers the deep roots of the two nations' alignment. We see the shifts in the balance of power, from the wealth and strength of early Qing China to the Tsarist and Soviet ascendancies, and episodes of intense conflict followed by harmony. He looks too at the experiences and opinions of ordinary people, which often vastly differed from those of their governments, and considers how long the countries' current amicable relationship might endure.Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Wayne Soon discusses his book on the diasporic history of global medicine in China, highlighting the crucial role of overseas Chinese. The book explores their contributions to medical knowledge and expertise, establishment of key medical institutions, and mobilization during WWII. Topics include mobile medicine, blood banking, medical training, and post-war health insurance in China and Taiwan.

Migration is a theme intertwined with hopes and dreams. In Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers (Duke UP, 2023), June Hee Kwon explores the trajectory of the “Korean dream” that has fueled the massive migration of Korean Chinese workers from the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeast China to South Korea since the early 1990s. Charting the interplay of bodies, money, and time, the ethnography reveals how these migrant workers, in the course of pursuing their borderland dreams, are transformed into a transnational ethicized class. Kwon analyzes the persistent desire of Korean Chinese to “leave to live better” at the intersection between the neoliberalizing regimes of post-socialist China and post–Cold War South Korea. Scrutinizing the tensions and affinities among the Korean Chinese, North and South Koreans, and Han Chinese whose lives intertwine in the borderland, Kwon captures the diverse and multifaceted aspirations of Korean Chinese workers caught between the ascendant Chinese dream and the waning Korean dream.June Hee Kwon is Associate Professor in the Asian Studies Program at California State University Sacramento. Her research and teaching focuses include Korean diaspora and transnational migration, borderlands and political ecology, materiality and affect, gendered labor and class formation, and human suffering and memories. Her area of expertise spans contemporary Korea (North and South), China, and Japan and includes postcolonial and post-Cold War culture and political economy across East Asia. She received my Ph.D. from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. He conducts ethnography among ufologists in China. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing–travel across the Pacific to make a life for themselves in San Francisco. Unlike many of their peers, they don’t stay, instead traveling south, to Mexico–in part to escape growing anti-Chinese prejudice in the United States.They thrive, at least initially, in Mexico, as Hugo explains in his book America's Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream (Hurst, 2023). They assimilate and become upstanding members of the Mexican business community–only for things to fall apart during the Mexican Revolution.In this interview, Hugo and I talk about his great-grandfathers, why they decided to make a life in Mexico, and the lost history of Chinese migration to this Latin American country.Hugo Wong grew up between Paris and Mexico City. From the early 1990s, he has lived almost fifteen years in Greater China, including in Beijing, where he has helped found various Sino–foreign joint ventures, such as China’s first investment bank. He has built his career in emerging markets investing at major financial institutions in Hong Kong, London and New York.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of America’s Lost Chinese. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Environmental organising in Beijing emerged in an unlikely place in the 2000s: new gated residential communities. After rapid population growth and housing construction led to a ballooning trash problem and overflowing landfills, many first-time homeowners found their new neighbourhoods facing an unappetizing prospect—waste incinerator projects slated for their backyards.Delving into the online and offline conversations of communities affected by the proposed incinerators, A Spark in the Smokestacks: Environmental Organizing in Beijing Middle-Class Communities (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Dr. Jean Yen-chun Lin demonstrates how a rising middle class acquires the capacity for organising in an authoritarian context. Dr. Lin examines how urban residents create civic life through everyday associational activities—learning to defend property rights, fostering participation, and mobilising to address housing-related grievances. She shows that homeowners cultivated petitioning skills, informational networks, and community leadership, which they would later deploy against incinerator projects. To interact with government agencies, they developed citizen science–based tactics, a middle-class alternative to disruptive protests. Homeowners drew on their professional connections, expertise, and fundraising capabilities to produce reports that boosted their legitimacy in city-level dialogue. Although only one of the three incinerator projects Dr. Lin follows was ultimately cancelled, some communities established durable organisations that went on to tackle other environmental problems.Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and ethnography, A Spark in the Smokestacks casts urban Chinese communities as “schools of democracy,” in which residents learn civic skills and build capacity for collective organising. Through compelling case studies of local activism, this book sheds new light on the formation of civil society and social movements more broadly.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies