New Books in Chinese Studies

Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, Tiantian Zheng's Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stability, and Intimate Partner Violence in Post-Socialist China (Bloomsbury, 2022) brings to the forefront women's experiences of, negotiations about, and contestations against violence, and men's narratives about the reasons for their violence. Using an innovative methodology - online chat groups, it foregrounds the role of history, structural inequalities, and the cultural system of power hierarchy in situating and constructing intimate partner violence. Centering on men and women's narratives about violence, this book connects intimate partner violence with invisible structural violence - the historical, cultural, political, economic, and legal context that gives rise to and perpetuates violence against women. Through examining the ways in which women's lives are constrained by various forms of violence, hierarchy, and inequality, this book shows that violence against women is a structural issue that is historically produced and politically and culturally engaged.Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves in the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio. On Twitter: @slissw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

How are women represented in Chinese crime films? In what ways do the representation reflect traditional Chinese values and contemporary Chinese social-cultural norms? How did boys’ love culture emerge in China? What is the role of the Chinese state in queer media production and queer culture in China? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Tingting Hu talked about her book Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals: The Representation of Women in Chinese Crime Films and her latest research on A Transmedia ‘Third’ Space: The Counterculture of Chinese Boys’ Love Audio Dramas.Tingting Hu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. Her research interest lies in the articulation of film, media and cultural studies with feminist theories, and transmedia studies in various social and cultural contexts. You can connect with Tingting at tingting.hu_academic@hotmail.com.Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals examines the representation of women in relation to violence in Chinese crime films made on the mainland, and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It introduces a new trajectory in the investigation of the cinematic representation of female figures in relation to gender issues by interweaving Western feminist and postfeminist critiques with traditional Chinese sociocultural discourse.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Today I sit down for an in-depth conversation with my good friend, Michael Stanley-Baker, a scholar of Chinese religion and medicine. We talk about Mike’s international childhood and how his family history influenced his intellectual life, his training as a Chinese medical practitioner, and his book co-edited with Vivienne Lo, the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2022), which is groundbreaking... and open access! We also talk about Mike’s new book with Manchester University Press, Situating Religion and Medicine in Asia, which opens up a critical conversation about how we understand Asian medicine. Then, we look ahead to Mike’s digital humanities project, called Polyglot Asian Medicines. Along the way we talk rabbit-ducks and how fish know that they're underwater.I hope that you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhist medicine and related topics, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes.Resources mentioned in the episode: Michael Stanley-Baker and Vivienne Lo (eds), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (2022). Available open access here.  Michael Stanley-Baker, Situating Religion and Medicine in Asia: Methodological Insights and Innovations (2023). The Rabbit-Duck (image) Polyglot Asian Medicines project website Polyglot Asian Medicines intro video Mike's publications Dr. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia.Subscribe to Blue Beryl here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

In A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere (Palgrave Pivot, 2020), Altman Yuzhu Peng articulates how feminism and pseudo-feminism become confused in contemporary Chinese society, and how this confusion is invoked by misogynist voices to boycott feminist movements in China’s digital public sphere.Peng examines how Western women politicians are stereotyped from a gendered lens in China’s digital public sphere, and how this gendered stereotyping reflects the continuous exclusion of Chinese women in politics and beyond.The book examines how nationalist sentiment and patriarchal values converge in the Chinese context, and how nationalist rhetoric is deployed by misogynists to distort gender-issue debates in China’s digital public sphere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Taiwan New Cinema (first wave, 1982–1989; second wave, 1990 onward) has a unique history regarding film festivals, particularly in the way these films are circulated at major European film festivals. It shares a common formalist concern about cinematic modernism with its Western counterparts, departing from previous modes of filmmaking that were preoccupied with nostalgically romanticizing China’s image.Through utilising in-depth case studies of films by Taiwan-based directors: Tsai Ming-liang, Zhao Deyin and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai discusses how Taiwan New Cinema represents a struggling configuration of the ‘nation’, brought forth by Taiwan’s multilayered colonial and postcolonial histories. Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals (Edinburgh UP, 2023) presents the conditions that have led to the production of a national cinema, branding the auteur, and examines shifting representations of cultural identity in the context of globalization.Beth Tsai is Visiting Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University at Albany–State University of New York. Her research focuses primarily on the cinema of Taiwan, film festivals, and transnational film theory. She has published in the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Asian Cinema, and Oxford Bibliographies.Li-Ping Chen is Dornsife Teaching Fellow in General Education in Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

How did the first newspaper in Macau come into being? What was the first foreign language newspaper on Chinese soil about? How was the dynamic between the Chinese and Portuguese press in the former Portuguese colony and now China’s Special Administrative Region? Hugo Pinto speaks about A Abelha da China (A Bee from China), the first newspaper in Macau, operated from September 1822 to August 1823.In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Hugo Pinto speaks about the book project on A Abelha da China to commemorate it 200th anniversary. Co-edited with Duarte Drumond Braga, the book A Abelha da China nos seus 200 Anos. Casos, Personagens e Confrontos na Experiência Liberal de Macau (The China Bee in its 200 Years. Cases, Characters and Confrontations in the Liberal Experience of Macau) was published by the Scientific and Cultural Center of Macau in 2022.Reflecting the complete historical background of its time, A Abelha da China would be taken up by other political agents. However, its legacy of insubordination would eventually live on. A newspaper that served as an official bulletin, and also as an arena for political confrontation, did not neglect a cultural and even literary dimension, as it carried within itself the mission of instructing its readers and denouncing the absolutist tyranny that, later, in reflux, would take over the newspaper itself.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Don J. Wyatt, author of Slavery in East Asia, discusses the distinctive traits and traditions of slavery in medieval East Asia, its prevalence and influence, notions of racial purity and racism in the region, and the impact of slavery and racism on Chinese historiography.

In her book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE (Cambridge UP, 2023), associate professor of history at City University of Hong Kong Yiwen Li studies the period when the tribute relationship between China and Japan was suspended. Although this official, diplomatic relationship ceased, Li reveals the related development of a vibrant religio-commercial network of Buddhist monks and merchants, who greatly facilitated both trade and Buddhist activity between China and Japan. Carefully analyzing a rich array of sources–both Chinese and Japanese–including Buddhist writings, letters, poems, legal records, archeological findings, and material culture, she recovers relationships vital to Sino-Japanese relations.In this episode, Li shares how she first developed her research interests in Chinese and Japanese history. She then walks listeners through her book, considering major shifts in the network. She touches upon key figures and moments as monks shifted from practices and procedures developed during formal tribute missions to their collaborations with merchants, who helped transport them and material objects–both ritual and commercial–across the sea in exchange for access to their Buddhist networks and political connections. This network deepened over time, especially when Japanese authorities allowed Chinese merchants to permanently reside in Hakata, Japan, and they became important agents in the transmission of Zen Buddhism to Japan. Yiwen Li has crafted a solid, accessible history of maritime East Asia, shedding light on a private network that sustained Sino-Japanese commerce and religious exchange during a 600-year gap in formal tributary relations.Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Dr Gwennaël Gaffric, a French translator and specialist in Taiwanese eco-literature, discusses his research on Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-yi. Topics include the inspiration behind Gaffric's work, the application of ecocritical theory, and the process of translating the book into Chinese. The podcast offers insights into Wu Ming-yi's works and their relevance to ecological issues in the Anthropocene era.

The legacy of the businessmen who built Hong Kong are all over the city. Bankers work in Chater House—named after Paul Chater, the Armenian businessman behind much of the city’s land reclamation (among many other things). The Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel sits along Mody Road, named after Hormusjee Naorojee Mody, a Parsi immigrant who helped found the University of Hong Kong. And that’s not including figures like Robert Hotung, the half-British, half-Chinese magnate who found more power in his Chinese identity.The story of Hong Kong is more complicated than what the British or the Chinese might assert–countless migrants, from all over the world, came to Hong Kong to build the city and make their fortunes. Vaudine England’s Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong (Scribner, 2023) tells the stories of these communities of Armenians, Indians, Parsis, Portuguese, Eurasians, and others who sat between the Anglo-Saxons and the Chinese majority.In this interview, Vaudine and I talk about Hong Kong’s story, the city’s early Wild West–or perhaps “Wild East” days—and the communities of men and women that built the city.Vaudine England has been a journalist in Hong Kong and South East Asia for years. As a historian, she has focused on the diverse personalities and peoples that have gone into making Hong Kong a cosmopolitan Asian metropolis. She is the author of The Quest of Noel Croucher: Hong Kong’s Quiet Philanthropist (Hong Kong University Press: 1998) as well as several privately published works of Hong Kong history and biography.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Fortune’s Bazaar. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate 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