Chinese Lacquer Art （I）

Lacquer, a natural substance obtained from the lacquer tree, is widely used as the environmentally friendly paint, adhesive,forming agent, pigment and dye. As China is home to the world＇s most and best lacquer trees, the lacquer art has been developing in China uninterruptedly for over 8,000 years.     

Cai Guoqiang： I Want to Believe

For Cai Guoqiang, August 2008 means a time full of not only challenge but also grace. As the chief designer of fire display for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Cai demonstrated his aesthetics of gun powder in front of more than 4 billion viewers from across the world. Also in this month, his solo exhibition Cai Guoqiang： I Want To Believe＂ was opened in Beijing, which was co-presented by the National Art Museum of China, Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Center of International Cultural Exchange. Beijing was the second leg of this globa tour. Its exhibition tn Guggenheim in the first half of this year was acclaimed as one of the important cultural events in the world. From February to May,Gugcjenheim moved out all the exhibits, including Picasso＇s, and all its three storeys of exhibition space were used to display Cai＇s works created over the past two decades.     

Intangible Cultural Heritage in China （I）

On December 4, 2013, UNESCO officially listed Chinese Zhusuan, knowledge and practices of mathematical calculation through abacus, as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It is China＇s thirtieth inscribed on the List and made the country to rank top in terms of the elements to be included on the List.     

Chinese Culture Blossoming on Foreign Lands （I）

<正>A Cultural Journey Overseas By the southwest of the Indian Ocean near the Tropic of Capricorn locates an island state with a small population of 1.4 million ...     

Ten Most Important Painting Masterpieces of Ancient China（I）

<正>In the world history of art,master artists of the Western world have left over numerous masterpieces,such as Leonardo de Vinci’s "Mona Lisa",Raphael’s "Madon...     

南海归帆 情何以堪——关于西沙华光礁I号沉船

800年前,一艘满载货物的宋代商船航行至西沙华光礁时触礁沉没。数百年来,浪击水冲,石撞沙掩,与其他沉没南海水下的残舟断楫默默地倾诉勇士未了的航海心路。     

May I have this dance? Dance participation and attendance in Denmark

Although dancing is considered to be an important arts form, and is associated with various positive externalities, our understanding of the profiles of dancers and dance audiences are limited. We address the gap in the literature by exploiting survey data on cultural preferences and habits in Denmark for 2004. Our approach has allowed us to identify the socio-economic background of dancers, as well as their involvement in other cultural activities. Among other factors, we note that dancers are more frequent attendees at dance performances, than non-dancers; that they have typically lower incomes and tend to read more, play more video games and visit art exhibits more often. We are further able to separate the sample of dancers in relation to various types of dance practised, allowing us to provide insights on the differences between them.     

My China Stories （I）Chinese Journalists Take Interview Journeys in Africa

In October 2009,the China-Africa Cooperation Forum held its 4th ministerial meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh,Egypt,with emphasis put on the further development of political equality and mutual trust,economic cooperation and co-win and cultural exchange.The Sharm el-Sheikh Action Plan 2010 - 2012 was endorsed at the meeting, including six major measures designed to increase China-Africa cultural exchange and cooperation. According to this action plan,event series entitled "Chinese Culture in Focus" and "African Culture in     

A Taste of Chine--Chinese Cooking and Food Exhibition in France （I）

<正>The grand exhibition "Temptation For Taste-Chinese Cooking and Food" was opened in the Musée du Quai Branly of France on June 18th. It was organised by the N...     

3eyond the Beauty of Colors Nhite-glazed Porcelain of Ding Kiln （I）

<正>Ding Kiln originated from and prospered in Quyang County of northern China’s Hebei province. As Quyang was under the jurisdiction of Dingzhou in ancient time...     

How Should I Respond to Them? An Emergent Categorization of Responses to Interpersonally Communicated Stereotypes

Political correctness defines stereotypes as inappropriate to communicate. However, responses that interpersonally communicated stereotypes receive in conversation may collaboratively produce a different meaning about the appropriateness of stereotype use. The current research reports two studies that explore responses to interpersonally communicated stereotypes and the role these responses play in the perpetuation of stereotypes. This project contributes qualitative research in intercultural communication that exposes a variety of tolerant response types available to communicators and demonstrates how these responses are managed interactionally in ways that show tolerance for communicated stereotypes.     

Where I’m from? Third Culture Kids about their cultural identity shifts and belonging

This study explored the affect of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) towards their home and host culture(s) and how this affect may indicate possible cultural identity shifts as distinguished in Sussman’s (2000) cultural identity shift model. To this end, the method of poetic inquiry was used. The poems were concerned with TCKs’ affective experiences (Prendergast, 2009). We also investigated whether TCKs described their belonging in terms of personal relationships rather than in terms of geographical locations.Twenty TCKs, ranging in age from 26 to 70 years and from five ‘home cultures’, expressed their early cross-cultural experiences through the free verse poem of “Where I’m from”. A mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative research was applied, by combining poetic inquiry using a free verse poem format and clustering these data by means of coding in Atlas.ti. TCKs’ poems were analyzed using belonging, affect, and practices-food-nature-events as key codes.Findings revealed that TCKs expressed stronger positive affect towards their host cultures than towards their ‘home’ cultures, indicating a subtractive cultural identity shift. We also found that TCKs defined their belonging more in terms of personal relationships than in terms of geographical locations. This study shows that TCKs’ sense of belonging seems more related to the question who than where I am from.     

What Shall I Do With This Sword? Narrative,Speech and Politics in the Carnation Revolution

The vast grassroots movement triggered by the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal represented an enormous challenge to filmic and literary representation. This article analyses how writers and filmmakers tried to come to terms with the event, in particular how they managed to incorporate the proliferation of written and oral discourses during the revolutionary process into their narratives. In the context of an event so deeply influenced by Marxist political cultures that aimed to collapse the distinction between theory and practice, these narratives will also allow us to consider the challenges posed by the history of communism to cultural history.     

What I Want is a Sense of Distance——An Interview with Contemporary Artist Yin Qi

<正>Dogs’ faces, bottles, sofa and fish, they are all ordinary daily objects that are easy to identify. In Yin Qi’s paintings,however, they divorce from the cogn...     

“I disagreed with a lot of values”: Exploring Black immigrant agency in ethnic-racial socialization

Ethnic-racial socialization is a mechanism through which immigrant parents instill in their children a sense of pride in their culture while preparing them for negative experiences with racial and cultural out-groups. For Black immigrant parents, this can include promoting a wariness of Black Americans in their children. Through this lens, we investigated an understudied intercultural dynamic via interviews with 12 first- and second-generation African and Caribbean immigrants. Using deductive and inductive analyses, we first examined the socialization messages they received about Black Americans from their parents, finding that in addition to messages inculcating ethnic and cultural pride, the participants also heard warnings about affiliation with Black Americans. Those messages relied on personal experiences and harmful stereotypes. Second, emergent from the data were examples of the ways the participants rejected their parents’ warnings. Experiences outside of the home appeared to influence views that were alternative to their parents. This novel finding provides avenues for future research investigating Black immigrants’ paths to a sense of connection or distancing from Black Americans.     

“I will not hate myself because you cannot accept me”: Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies

ABSTRACT

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.     

“I am well-cooked food”: survival strategies of North Korean female border-crossers and possibilities for empowerment

Abstract

More than the half the people who cross the North Korea–China border are women, with most leaving home to seek food, economic benefits and a more comfortable life. From the human rights perspective, it is clear that the dangerous nature of their journeys across the border and their illegal status in China place them in a very vulnerable position with regard to human trafficking and many types of sexual and physical violence. However, some women voluntarily and strategically use migration, marriage and gender as arenas of agency through which to improve their lives and empower themselves. This paper aims to reveal the complexity of these experiences, which occur where specific forms of gender, intimacy and mobility meet. In doing so, I hope to argue for the possibility of agency beyond an overly simplified victim discourse of North Korean border-crossing. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea and China to reveal the trajectories of North Korean female border-crossers who developed survival strategies, and employed their gender and sexuality to skilfully use marriage-migration for their own purposes, empowering them to settle or keep moving on to better places. This instrumental orientation to empowerment worked alongside a more normative orientation to helping their “blood” families back in their homeland through remittances or through being able to bring along children from previous marriages. They were willing to adopt the role of temporary “wife” in order to be good “daughters,” “sisters” and “mothers” both now and later. In this sense, the North Korean women and their experiences imply an ambivalent approach to marriage and family.