FORMER CELEBRITY RESIDENCES IN QINGDAO

Many famous cultural personages in the history of modern China dwelled or .stayed in Qingdao, a beautiful coastal city in east China. Their former residences are now well preserved as cultural heritage, which add to cultural richness and natural beauty to this beach paradise.     

Alexandria in the Ninth/Fifteenth Century: A Mediterranean Port City and a Mamlūk Prison City

Abstract

While modern scholars, medieval European and anachronistic Arab sources paint a portrait of Mamlūk Alexandria as a bustling and thriving international port, contemporary Arabic writings of the second half of the ninth/fifteenth and the first quarter of the tenth/sixteenth centuries present quite a different image. This article analyses Arabic chronicles to demonstrate that, from the Cairene perspective, Alexandria was a frontier city that was utilised as a jail for banished political prisoners. In contrast to other parts of their realm, investment in Alexandria by the Mamlūk regime was largely limited to fortifying it against seaborne threats; the sultans did little to embellish the city for civilian or religious purposes. Thus, the city was marginalised, politically and socially, even while still maintaining its role as a gateway to Egypt.     

Big city,little worries? Little city,big worries? How immigration levels and city size shape safety perceptions in urban Europe

With increasing immigration in European cities, questions surrounding social inclusion and exclusion rise. Although research has often analyzed how the size of the immigrant population in a country or a neighborhood relates to perceptions of safety (even though there is no demonstrated link between immigration and crime), research has not analyzed the presence of immigrants in the wider city, despite the fact that cities are highly diverse places that comprise the daily rounds of most residents. In our study, we analyze how the size of the non-EU immigrant population in a city is linked with how Europeans perceive safety in their neighborhood and their city. Using a survey of approximately 28,000 Europeans from 63 cities in 25 countries, our multilevel binary logistic regression analyses show three primary findings. First, urban Europeans on average feel more unsafe in their cities than their neighborhoods. Second, city-level percentage non-EU born is important only in conjunction with a moderator: city population size. We find that respondents feel more unsafe in cities with more non-EU immigrants in less populous cities, but in more populous cities respondents feel safer in cities with more non-EU immigrants. Third, in an analysis of subset of cities for which crime data were available, the second finding holds when controlling for homicide rates. Our conclusions connect how cities can be an important scale to understand links between immigration and fear of crime.     

‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

In 1942, a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilised by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country’s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case study, this article charts the activities of the city’s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city’s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth’s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation’s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so.     

Old Colonial Architectures in Tianjin

Tianjin is a low-profile city in the coastal area in north China. Its Western-style mansions in past colonial cessions have long lost glamour and vitality as the North Sea Warlord rule ended in the early 20th century. The city has no grandeur and solemnity as Beijing, no metropolitan prosperity or hubbub as Shanghai, and no hilly and riverside charms as Chongqing. But when you really incorporate yourself into it, you can taste a truly different flavor of the city. On the Five Avenues or J…     

Our city of colours: queer/Asian publics in transpacific Vancouver

This article examines the contested relation between discourses of ethnic subjectivity and queer critique of homophobia and transphobia in Vancouver, a transpacific city in Canada that is being touted as “the most Asian city outside of Asia.” I analyse the perceived association of Chinese communities with moral conservatism and the concomitant existence of a vibrant queer Asian cultural scene in the city as a discursive clash between two cultural publics. I examine the underlying dynamics of their antagonism as well as their potential for mutual engagement.     

Cultural Flavors of Tianjin

The charm of the city of Tianjin is manifested not only in its modem high-rise buildings, but also in its unique culture and traditions. Over the past several hundred years, a distinctive cultural style has developed in this port city in north China.[第一段]     

Choir Brings Friendship and Love An Interview with Beijing Hand to Hand Choir Conductor Katya llyakhina

In Beijing, a dynamic amateur choir is gaining a growing profile in the music circle and beyond. Twice a week, rain or shine, 38 choir members come from different comers of the city for rehearsal to the middle school at the East Second Ring Road. With a short history of less than three years, the choir has presented dozens of performances for charity or public good purposes, These music amateurs have transmitted their energy to dying old people and handicapped children with their encouraging singing, bringing them love, joy and hope. It is not a professional choir, but its well-trained performers have captivated many people and won several international awards with their melodious singing. From the concert in honor of doctors and nurses fighting against the SARS epidemic to the TV competition for Chinese singing foreign songs, the choir members have demonstrated the charms and passions of their art and brought lyrical serenity and purity back to city dwellers who live in urban hurly-burly all day long.     

Nanjing Brocade： last Milestone of Chinese Silk Fabrics

Nanjing is an old city where ten dynasties and regimes in Chinese history founded their capitals. Over its 2500-year history, ancestors in this city have left behind numerous brilliant masterpieces of cultural heritage, among which yunjin is one of the most valuable.Yunjin refers to the incredibly beautiful brocade. Yun in Chinese means clouds, and jin means brocade. The image is lovely—a delicate and ossy piece of brocade that feels just like soft clouds. An inch of the Nanjing brocade was…     

Hot-Heads,Gentlemen and the Liberties of Tradesmen

Abstract

Over the summer and autumn of 1739 Philadelphia’s two newspapers published competing versions of a hearing in the Pennsylvania assembly that was described as the ‘Affair of the Tanners’. What began as a minor property dispute in the colonial assembly became, with the aid of the local press, a citywide paper war for the support of the urban populace. This article argues the affair provides unique evidence for competing conceptions of the common good in the eighteenth-century colonial city, and was an expression of conflict with deep roots in Philadelphia’s history. The affair also shows how the medium of print could reflect both transatlantic cultural processes as well as distinctly local grievances, as a group of prosperous city artisans and their opponents utilized the city’s newspapers to articulate competing commonwealth ideologies.     

Reinventing Nagasaki: the Christianization of Nagasaki and the revival of an imperial legacy in postwar Japan

This paper explores how Nagasaki was reinvented from an imperial city to an “International Cultural, Christian city” and elicits the continuity of Japanese imperialism in postwar Nagasaki as well as the discontinuity between the war and postwar periods in the city. The paper seeks to determine what history and whose memory have been excluded or erased in the process of remaking Nagasaki into an international Christian city; it examines the particular historical and political conditions that enabled Nagai Takashi, Urakami Catholics and Kitamura Seibou’s Memorial Peace Statue to symbolize Nagasaki’s atomic bomb memory and postwar city identity as an “International Christian city” that “prays.” While Nagai is widely known as a spiritual, religious leader in postwar Nagasaki/Japan, and Kitamura’s Peace Memorial statue dominates Nagasaki’s commemoration space, this paper analyses how US dominance over Japan enabled the country to rehabilitate its imperial past and to revive the imperial legacy by appropriating the GHQ’s (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers’) demilitarization and Christianization policies. It argues that Nagasaki’s postwar reconstruction signifies the failure of what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010 Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) calls the “deimperialization” of Japanese consciousness and subjectivity.     

Using human figure drawing as a tool for examining self-perception and emotional attitudes among Jewish and Arab children in Israel

The study examined ingroup and outgroup perceptions among Jewish and Arab children in Israel. The sample comprised 191 children aged 10–12, 131 Jewish and 60 Arab participants who live in a mixed city. The main instrument used to examine the children's perceptions was a multidimensional analysis of Jewish and Arab figures drawn by the participants, as well as a questionnaire relating to the drawn figures. The findings revealed that, even though they lived in a mixed city and studied in the same classes, the Jewish children differentiated between the figures and overwhelmingly preferred Jewish figures to Arab figures. Moreover, they revealed negative stereotypes and expressed aggression in drawings of Arab figures. In contrast, among the Arab participants, the findings were inconsistent. In most of the variables, they did not distinguish between the various figures. However, in the quality variables, they tended to prefer figures of their own nationality and rejected Jewish figures. The findings are discussed in relation to the context of the residential environment (a mixed city), majority-minority status, and the Israeli-Arab conflict.     

A regional gateway: Japanese popular culture in Hong Kong, 1990–2005

Abstract

In popular culture, Hong Kong is probably the most “Japanese city” outside Japan. It is home to a wide variety of Japanese popular cultural products and a regional base to many of the Japanese music and television companies who expanded their operations in the city in the early 1990s. Hong Kong's emerging middle class, especially the younger generation, has enthusiastically accepted Japanese contemporary culture and lifestyle, making the city one of the biggest destinations for Japan's cultural exports. Based on fieldwork surveys and interviews, this paper looks at the organizational aspect of popular culture during the heydays of Japanese popular culture in Hong Kong in the 1990s and early 2000s. The investigation focuses on the marketing strategies and promotional efforts used by agents of Japanese popular culture in Hong Kong and the role of popular culture piracy in this process. Beyond analyzing the Japanese case, the paper introduces a new framework to examine the transnational expansion of popular cultures across markets in East and Southeast Asia, highlighting the role of companies and promoters in this process.     

Frankish Captives in Mamlūk Cairo

Latin presence in the Middle East came to an end with the fall of Acre in 690/1291. Among the last prisoners, Roger of Stanegrave, who gave testimony of his captivity in Cairo, was released around 715/1315. Therefore, how can we explain that Egyptian chroniclers kept on telling the life and tribulations of “Frankish captives” (asārā min al-Afranj) in Cairo as late as the last decades of the fourteenth century? This article looks first at the conditions of the Latin prisoners in Mamlūk Cairo and at their forced labour on the building sites of the city. It investigates afterwards the astonishing life and business of their descendants, trading wine and dealing with entertainment and prostitution in the city centre of Cairo, before being confronted with repression by Mamlūk authorities and being scattered over the most disreputable areas of the city. The history of Cairo and its urban fabric gives a unique opportunity to bring to light the life of people still referred to as “Frankish captives”, one century after the end of the crusader wars, and to understand how they finally became indigenous.     

NOTHING SHINES AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

The 52nd edition of the Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition opened its doors for previews on June 7, drawing artists, collectors, curators, dealers, critics and art patrons to     

Designing policy: collaborative policy development within the context of the European capital of culture bid process

ABSTRACT

How do ideas become policies? What route do they take from inception to implementation and what criteria are used to evaluate one set of proposals against another? This paper examines the development of the Creative Work Fellowship policy proposal in Limerick, tracing the origins of the idea, itself a contended and negotiated object, from discussions between academics and policy-makers through to scoping, pitching and scaling the policy to its eventual users. This policy idea was designed during the Intelligence Unit (IU) commissioned by Limerick2020 as part of the city’s bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2020. The IU took the form of a policy think-tank, tasked with generating insights, ideas and policy proposals into the place of culture within Limerick city and region. The IU structure created a set of actors and an epistemic community capable of both generating and using ideas effectively, chiefly through two mechanisms. The first involved a robust critique and rebuilding process that every element of the policy was exposed to; the second involved feedback from interested parties at specific stages in the process. This created a series of “policy entrepreneurs” capable of taking a fully costed and modelled policy suggestion to government. The findings presented in the paper include an analysis of the collaborative nature of this policy development process, Based on this framework, we also consider the role of the European City of Culture bid process as catalyst for policy development in a regional context, and present findings on this subject.     

Not exotic,but too familiar…

ABSTRACT

Urbanization over in last three decades in China has produced and accumulated more and more complex problems and challenges in everyday life. People need different spaces and ways to learn about them, not only to understand what kind of problems they face, but also find a way to act together in order to change their passive situation and take part in the process which always seem to be dominated by government and technology. “Womende Chengshi” (Our Cities) citizen forum was built in 2012 and has lasted for almost 5 years in Shanghai. It aims to create a new educational space for citizens to discuss emerging city problems and to imagine alternative ways of urban life. After a concise introduction about this forum in Chinese social context, this paper will focus on three points. First, while the ideal setting suggests that citizens are everyone living in the city, “Our Cities” actually confronts the concrete ones shaped by various spaces and limited times in the whole city system. So how to struggle with different forces in limited time and space in everyday life is the main duty this forum needs to face. The third point follows: what kind of standard we could have to estimate such self-education process?     

Bade logon ki tarah: pregnant and poor in the city

Abstract

This paper shores up the overdetermined web of fear-desire-helplessness-aspiration that impinges on the birthing experiences of women at the economic periphery of urbanity, i.e. the urban poor, positioned at the borders of the urban and its outside, affluence and its lack. The urban poor (pregnant) woman, by dint of being physically located in the city remains unable to be part of the state healthcare network in rural areas; at the same time she is marked by an inability to purchase healthcare from high-end urban private providers. Consequently, she is positioned in an in-between space of access and care, aspirations and resistance, occasionally getting (even physically) trapped in a limbo between the hospital/institution and its outside. For this woman, the materiality of the hospital symbolises development-modernity; in accessing the hospital, the urban poor woman accesses an ontology that is “like the well-off people,” the “legitimate” claimants of the city. Between her dreams of approximating the space of urbanity and development, and an experience of being pushed back to the city's periphery—locationally and metaphorically, the urban poor woman gets inscribed by conflicting and counterpoised experiences of birthing, which is what this paper maps.     

The Salisbury Annual Musical Festival 1770–1800

ABSTRACT

By analysing the factors that precipitated the decline of what had been a flourishing provincial institution, the Salisbury music festival, this article captures late eighteenth-century provincial culture at a stage of transition from a society dominated by aristocratic patronage to an increasingly commercial society. It argues that the displacement of gentlemen amateurs from the heart of Salisbury's musical culture and their replacement by professional musicians and concert managers brought about a change in attitudes to music in the city. Ultimately, these modernizing influences of commercialization and professionalization proved detrimental to the grand occasion of the Salisbury musical festival, prioritizing alternative concert forms and a commercial, rather than civic, attitude to music.     

Spectral city: San Francisco as Pacific Rim city and counter‐cultural contado

Abstract

San Francisco, since its global takeoff in the Gold Rush Days and long‐standing trafficking in Bohemian, socialist, queer, and left‐leaning energies in and beyond the Beat era of the 1960s, has a complicated global/local history of trying to disentangle its city‐space and urban imaginary from the Greco‐Roman will‐to‐supremacy that would turn California into a frontier settlement of Asian/Pacific domination and US‐framed empire. Forces of social becoming like the Beats and post‐Beat hippies as well as more experimental authors like Jack Spicer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, and Bob Kaufman helped to forge a different literary‐social vision of San Francisco and the Pacific Rim city as a porous community of transnational innovation and outer‐national becoming. This paper will invoke some literary and film texts from Howl and Tripmaster Monkey to Vertigo to Margaret Cho stand‐up performances as well as some geopolitical studies, such as Gray Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco and City Light Press’s Reclaiming San Francisco to substantiate this double vision of San Francisco as global/local US site of (a) imperial ratification and (b) counter‐orientalist deformation.