Facing history with a sense of awe: an interview with Professor Mizoguchi Yūzō

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yūzō describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China’s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China’s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.     

MIAO PEOPLE CELEBRATES NEW YEAR BY OFFERING SACRIFICE TO TREES

Miao people is an ethnic group with a long history and mainly dwell in Asian countries like China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. China is the birthplace of Miao ethnic group. They originally dwelled in north China but later moved to the depth of mountains in southwest China in order to escape wars. Today Miao people are mostly distributed in mountainous areas in Hunan,     

Historic County of Wu’an

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in 00the Qin Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China. Not long ago, the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China, organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with the Palace Museum and China Institute of Toponymy, was held at the Forbidden City, displaying photographs on the cultures and traditions of the first 16 Historic Counties of China, with an objective to enhance the public’s awareness of the conservation of cultural heritage in these historic counties.Our magazine will cover each of these chosen historic counties in each issue.     

China as method

This is one of Mizoguchi Yūzō’s famous polemical essays in which he rethinks the problems of Japanese sinology. He contends that China has been essential to constructing Japanese identity and consequently Japanese sinologists developed what he calls a “sinology without China.” That is Japanese sinologists projected a subjective image of China and such visions of China said more about Japan than they did about China. In contrast to this, Mizoguchi attempts to outline a sinology that takes China as method and uncovers the internal dynamics of Chinese history. Towards the end of the essay, he also discusses the ideological implications of such a shift in focus. In short, previous sinologists often took something like Western modernity as a method and forced China into this framework. Against this, Mizoguchi underscores the specific logics of Chinese history and hopes then to construct a new universality grounded in specific spatio-temporal logics around the world.     

Zhaoxian County:Bridge Architecture and Buddhist Heritage

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in the Qin Dynasty more than 2000 years ago.Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China.Not long ago,the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China,organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with the Palace Museum and China Institute of Toponymy,was held at the Forbidden City,displaying photographs on the cultures and traditions of the first 16 Historic Counties of China, with an objective to enhance the public’s awareness of the conservation of cultural heritage in these historic counties.Our magazine will cover each of these chosen historic counties in each issue.     

Zunhua : a Historic County

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in the Qin Dynasty more than 2000 years ago. Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China. Not long ago, the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China, organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with th...     

Yuxian: a Historic County

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in the Qin Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China. Not long ago, the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China, organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with the Palace Museum and China Institute of Toponymy, was held at the Forbidden City, displaying photographs on the cultures and traditions of the first 16 Historic Counties of China, with an objective to enhance the public’s awareness of the conservation of cultural heritage in these historic counties. Our magazine will cover each of these chosen historic counties in each issue.     

Dingzhou:Porcelain and Religious Traditions

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in the Qin Dynasty more than2000years ago.Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China.Not long ago,the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China,organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with the Pala...     

Zanhuang County:Historic Temples and Steles

County has played an important role in the history of China since it was first established as a basic administrative unit in the Qin Dynasty more than 2000 years ago. Historic counties have not only performed administrative and economic functions but also carried and preserved basic information about culture and traditions of China. Not long ago, the Photographic Exhibition on the Cultural Heritage of Historic Counties of China, organized by China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation in partnership with the Palace Museum and China Institute of Toponymy, was held at the Forbidden City, displaying photographs on the cultures and traditions of the first 16 Historic Counties of China, with an objective to enhance the public’s awareness of the conservation of cultural heritage in these historic counties. Our magazine will cover each of these chosen historic counties in each issue.     

Mori Kazuko:Eminent Japanese Sinologist

The 4th World Forum on China Studies(WFCS),featuring the theme of coexistence in harmony:China's integration with the rest of the world,was opened in Shanghai in November 6,2010.Four masters received the Research Contribution Award in China Study.They are Igor Rogachev,former Russian ambassador to China,Mori Kazuko,Japanese leading figure in the study of contemporary China,Jacques Gernet,eminent French sinologist,and Philip A.Kuhn,Francis Lee Higginson Professor.This award is a permanent honor granted to th...     

The way our generation imagined the world

Abstract

This paper tells the worldview of a generation that grew up in the Communist revolutionary ideology. For the people of this generation, the world was always divided into two worlds, the East and the West. Throughout China’s modern national history, the West, led by the United States, has been the imperialist aggressor and invader; on a global scale, it has been the hegemonic power that rejected and blockaded China; in social structure and ideology, it was capitalist, countering socialist China, and ever ready to subvert the New China. According to Mao Zedong’s three‐pronged theory of ‘enemy, friends and us,’ the West belonged to the ‘enemy’ side. The Bandung Conference in 1955, and prior to it, the Peace Conference for Asia and the Pacific Region held in Beijing, had a great impact on high‐school students in Mainland China. We viewed these conferences as promising signs that the New China would rid itself of isolation, and felt very close to those countries of ‘neighbors and friends.’     

The trajectory of the “Third World” in early modern Chinese thought

In this essay, I trace two aspects of the thought on the “Third World” in early modern China: how to understand the world revolution, and how to create a new China. While focusing on two trendy notions at that time, i.e. “Chinese revolution” (Zhongguo geming), and “nong country” (nongguo), I argue that the thought on the “Third World” in early modern China breaks free of the shackle of fashionable theories and draws upon local circumstances and China’s own repertoire of power when exploring an ideal of a new world. While the difficulty in confronting the “Third World” consciousness in today’s China is still overwhelming, the fact that we now remember “the spirit of Bandong” signals some progress.     

Igor Rogachev:a Prominent Expert of China Studies

The 4th World Forum on China Studies (WFCS), featuring the theme of coexistence in harmony: China’s integration with the rest of the world, was opened in Shanghai in November 6, 2010. Four masters receive the Research Contribution Award in China Study. They are Igor Rogachev, former Russian ambassador to China, Mori Kazuko, Japanese leading figure in the study of contemporary China, Jacques Gernet, eminent French sinologist, and Philip A. Kuhn, Francis Lee Higginson Professor. This award is a permanent hono...     

The Art of Brush Strokes Sun Xiaoyun and Her Calligraphy Works

Sun Xiaoyun was born in a calligrapher family and began learning calligraphy at age 3. Upon graduation from junior middle school, like millions of youngsters during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), she was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by farmers and afterwards served in the army for 8 years. Except two years of training in jiangsu Chinese Painting Academy, Sun mastered skills of calligraphy virtually by self-study. From the late 1970s, Sun extensively studied works of man…     

Innovating Model of Online Communication:Good Practices of Online Promotion of Culture and Tourism

Due to the global outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 in 2020,over 60 China Cultural Centers(CCC)and China National Tourism Offices(CNTO)around the w orld have ...     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

Chinese Music Opera Dance Online Arts Season in Sri Lanka China Cultural Center in Sri Lanka,together with China National Opera and Dance Drama Theater,has laun...     

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.     

Implications of Chinese empire discourses in East Asia: critical studies on China

Abstract

China is characterized by a long history, vast land, huge population and diversity unprecedented in world history. In addition, she is a unique case that has successfully completed the transition from empire to the nation-state. Therefore, her historical independence and her continuity become very important subject areas for research, and the concept “empire” re-emerges as a major means of explanation. The essential defining features of empire are tolerance and expansion. I have been reviewing discourses on “China as Empire,” looking at studies of the tributary system, the civilization-state, and the Tianxia view raised from both inside and outside of China. A common characteristic of these discourses is the perception that the past, present and future of China cannot be fully explained by Western concepts such as nation-state. They also reveal that the supposed continuity with the past, which is overemphasized in many studies, does not necessarily always correspond with historical reality. The key focus of the empire discourses is the project of future China. Finally, I put a particular emphasis upon the “perspective of peripheries” in order to find ways to demonstrate the benefits of viewing China as an empire, while also overcoming the weaknesses of empire theory. It is the reason why I apply to the analysis of the empire discourses the “compound state” theory incubated as a way of reunification of the Korean Peninsula.     

“China loves Italy”: transnational co-productions between China and Italy behind the mask of market†

Since the term “transnational cinema” first appeared in 1997, most studies have focused on films epitomizing the logic of either profit maximization or ethnic affinity to explain phenomena such as the mainstreaming of Kung Fu movies. Yet, these two logics do not account for the entirety of the transnational projects that have been produced to date, hence the call for more studies on “trans-border patterns” that operate beyond both of them (Berry 2010, 123). In this article, we take up this call and approach the co-productions between China and Italy as exhibiting a “trans-border pattern” which satisfies interests beyond both the market and ethnic affinity. We trace the history of such a “pattern” back to the arrival of the Italian pioneer of Chinese cinema, Amerigo Lauro, in Shanghai in the early 1900s. We contextualize the productions of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo/China (1973), Giuliano Montaldo’s Marco Polo (1982) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) to provide exemplary cases of a non-market oriented affinity between two culturally distinct nations: China and Italy. We conclude by suggesting that China has pursued transnational co-productions with European countries such as Italy to exercise a more productive control than censorship over the ways China is to be represented internationally.     

Chongming islanders in Great Shanghai: an investigation of cultural ecology

The present study investigates the living conditions of taxi drivers in Sanshan Village of Chongming Island, in contrast with those of the long-lived population, a distinct demographic group on Chongming Island as well as in China, whose natural and healthy lifestyles represent a culture of sustainability of people and society. It examines the contributing factors and implications of this culture; such understanding is strongly relevant in the attempt to ease people’s anxiety about the environmental crisis facing China now. At the same time, a study of Chongming Island, a representative case of China’s urbanization, makes it possible for us to weigh in this development path, with a hope to explore and construct a sound relationship between China’s urban and rural areas. In addition, we can gain an insight of the way of life of present-day society through a closer look at “Chongming Islanders in Great Shanghai.”¹ The issue of Chongming Island is therefore of great importance to contemporary Chinese culture.