Imagined Geographies is a pioneering work in the study of history and geography of the pre-1800 world. In this book, Gunn argues that different regions astride the maritime silk roads were not only in
Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness is a distinctive work that explores the much-neglected Chinese perspective in broader international relations theory. Using the concept of “self-feminizing”―adoption of a feminine identity to oblige and achieve mutual caring as a relational strategy―this book argues that postcolonial actors have employed gendered identities in order to survive the squeezing pressure of globalization and nationalism in their own ways. Sovereign actors who have historically claimed to act on behalf of Chineseness have taken advantage of the images of femininity thrust upon them by transnational capitalism, the media, or intellectual thought.Shih illustrates the feminist potential for emancipation through a range of empirical examples, showing that women of various Chinese characteristics, acting on behalf of their nation, city, and corporations, reject the masculinization of their groups of belonging as remedy f
The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR (the ‘NSL’) promises to be the most important legal development in Hong Kong since the advent of the Basic Law. Many wondered in the aftermath of the NSL how the foundations of Hong Kong’s system might be changed and in what way the freedoms valued by Hong Kong may be affected. Supporters view the law as essential for the preservation of public order and the national security of China and to support the fundamental well-being of “One Country, Two Systems”, an arrangement that has been in place since the return of Hong Kong to China. Critics fear an adverse impact on the spirit of “One Country, Two Systems”.From a discussion initiated by the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law, this collection of essays brings together leading experts on Hong Kong and Chinese law to offer an exploratory study of the NSL and its impact on the legal system and the principle of the rule of law in Hong Kong
This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers di
In Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, a variety of scholars explore the history, aesthetics, and politics of Chinese cinema as the Chinese film industry grapples with its place as the second largest film industry in the world. Exploring the various ways that Chinese cinema engages with global politics, market forces, and film cultures, this edited volume places Chinese cinema against an array of contexts informing the contours of Chinese cinema today. The book also demonstrates that Chinese cinema in the global context is informed by the intersections and tensions found in Chinese and world politics, national and international co-productions, the local and global in representing Chineseness, and the lived experiences of social and political movements versus screened politics in Chinese film culture. This work is a pioneer investigation of the topic and will inspire future research by other scholars of film studies.
The first exhaustive English-language history and analysis of the Chinese opera genre, Kunqu. In Kunqu: A Classical Opera of Twenty-First-Century China, Joseph S. C. Lam offers a holistic and interdisciplinary view of Kunqu, a 600-year-old genre of Chinese opera that has been fashionably performed inside and outside of China. The first comprehensive and scholarly book on Kunqu written in English, this book explains how and why the genre charms and signifies Chinese culture, history, and personhood. Approaching the genre from several perspectives, ranging from those of performers and producers to those of casual audiences, dedicated connoisseurs, and scholarly critics, Lam also employs a judicious blend of Chinese and international theories and methods. Herein, he establishes the significance of Kunqu not only in the sphere of Chinese music but among the cultural heritage and performing arts at a global level as well.
What does it mean to be queer in a Confucian society in which kinship roles, ties, and ideologies are of such great importance? This book makes sense of queer cultures in China—a country with one of the largest queer populations in the world—and offers an alternative to Euro-American blueprints of queer individual identity. This book contends that kinship relations must be understood as central to any expression of queer selfhood and culture in contemporary cultural production in China. Using a critical approach—“queering Chinese kinship”—Lin Song scrutinizes the relationship between queerness and family relations, and questions Eurocentric queer culture’s frequent assumption of the separation of queerness from blood family.Offering five case studies of queer representations across a range of media genres, this book also challenges the tendency in current scholarship on Chinese and East Asian queerness to understand queer cultures as predominantly counter-mainstream, marginal, and unde
This is the first collection of essays in English, contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, dedicated to the poetry of Du Fu, commonly regar
Promoting All-Round Education for Girls presents the history of Heep Yunn School, one of the oldest girls’ schools in Hong Kong. Amalgamated from two British mission schools founded in the 1880s for d
This book offers a glimpse into the wide-ranging 50-year career of the internationally renowned Hong Kong photographer/designer through his work in collages and photomontages. From his early album covers when he was an art director/designer for the music industry in New York, Los Angeles and London in the 1970’s, through his diverse international assignments and personal works, to his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong. The story encompasses the long journey from cut-and-paste collages to the computer-composited photomontages of dreamscapes in this Carnival of Dreams.In his introduction titled ‘The Man from Everywhere’, Pico Iyer writes: “For decades now, Basil Pao has been the global eye through which I’ve taken in almost every country, as clearly as the world within… I never know where to place Basil; I can’t get my head around him. Album-designer, loving father, covert Chan master—21st century Renaissance man—Basil is always bringing the many worlds inside him together to create so
For students of Chinese art and culture this anthology has proven invaluable since its initial publication in 1985. It collects important Chinese writings about painting, from the earliest examples th
As the Opium War unfold in Guangdong Province, the painter Su Renshan (1814—c.1850) exploded onto the art scene with a bold, paradigm-turning new voice. A Defiant Brush takes a fresh look at this unde
The essays in this volume address a diverse range of issues in China’s narrative art and visual culture mainly from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to the present. These studies attend to the complex way
Chinese opera embraces over 360 different styles of theatre that make one of the richest performance arts in the world. It combines music, speech, poetry, mime, acrobatics, stage fighting, vivid face-
Water Driven presents stirring tales from around the world recounting humankind’s endeavours to solve water crises. Our creative solutions in the face of adversity have driven agricultural, industrial
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the imperial powers—principally Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Japan—signed treaties with China to secure trading, residen
Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 sheds new light on the history of charity among Chinese overseas and its place in the history of charity in China and in the wider history
Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social en
The Later Tang was the first of several ephemeral states created by the Shatuo Turks in tenth-century China and Li Cunxu, a martial genius, was its founder. In fifteen years, he turned a small satrapy
Hong Kong is the twenty-first-century paradigmatic capital of consumerism. Of all places, it has the densest and tallest concentration of malls, reaching tens of stories. Hong Kong’s malls are also th
