2021 Southeast Regional Conference of the Association for Asian Studies

Violinist Haoli Lin is an internationally recognized talent. The youngest winner of the China National Violin Competition in 2008, and the winner of the Andrews University International Violin Concert in 2013, Haoli Lin has performed in prestigious concert halls throughout China, Southeast Asia and the United States. He has served as guest concertmaster with The Jakarta Symphony in Indonesia and the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra in China. Haoli Lin is the founder and artistic director of the New World Chamber Players and has led the ensemble on three tours of China. A Starling Scholar on a full scholarship, Haoli Lin is currently completing his doctoral degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, studying with the pre-eminent violin pedagogue Kurt Sassmannshaus.

1. He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, “Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto”

Composed by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang in 1958, the famous “Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto” is based on the legend “Butterfly Lovers” (Liang zhu). Today I will perform the final part of the composition known as “Hua die” (the lovers’ transformation into butterflies) that describes the final moments for these lovers amidst the pain and joy of life before they are transformed into butterflies. The beautiful main theme has three parts. The first part involves recalling and describing their love, then the violin’s tremolo signals the beating of the butterfly’s wings. Finally, the entire ensemble joins in expressing the main love theme.

2. Chen Yi, “Fisherman’s Song” (1979)

Professor Chen Yi, who teaches composition at the conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City describes the piece as follows: “The pentatonic melody represented in the beginning (on violin) and the ending part (on piano, with supporting lines on violin) is in a lyrical Cantonese folk song style.  The middle part, as a contrast, is more active and energetic, with a momentum brought to a climax before the recapitulation. The melodic material is drawn from the folk tune of a fisherman’s song in China’s Southern Sea.” Performing the fisherman’s song has a special significance for me since I am from Chaoshan and now live in Shenzhen.

3. Ma Sicong, “Nostalgia”

The next piece is Ma Sicong’s “Nostalgia,” one of the most popular compositions in China. This piece was composed in 1937 after the outbreak of the Second World War in China. Known as China’s “King of the Violinists,” Ma Sicong (1912-1987) was from Guangdong, but in this composition (the Inner Mongolia Suite) he evokes a folksong from Suiyuan (present day Hohhot in Inner Mongolia).

4. Li Zili, “Jinqing” from “The Taihang Mountain Caprice” (2019)

The next piece describes Shanxi province in northern China and is called Jinqing. Jin refers to Shanxi province. Qing means feelings or scene. It is from the second movement of the ninth violin concerto (The Taihang Mountain Caprice) I premiered the concerto recently with the Kunming Symphony. My impressions of Shanxi music are similar to my friends from Shanxi. Unlike the refined style of the South, Shanxi music is bold and direct. This movement has three parts. The first part describes the poverty of the mountainous area and the people’s discontent. Professor Li inserts many dissonant notes and chords to echo the first movement’s theme of war. The second part is more lively and exuberant and is a clear contrast with the main theme to express the Shanxi people’s warmth, honesty and boldness. In the final scene one hears a clash between dissonance and folk melody, which describes the ruins of war, a theme that permeates the entire concerto.

5. “On the Banks of the Solo River” (Indonesian folk song)

In our next piece, I would like to perform the Indonesian folksong “On the banks of the Solo River” which has been arranged for violin and piano. This composition has a jazzy feel. I’m very pleased to be able to perform it with pianist Jacky Zhang.

6. “Arirang” (Korean folk song)

I’d like to perform now the famous Korean folksong “Arirang.” The story of Arirang involves a young couple, who struggled with hardship in their daily lives. The husband thought to help his wife enjoy better days so he secretly went out one night in search of work. After leaving home, another man pursued his wife, but she rejected the man. After returning home the husband began to hear gossip and left in a huff. The wronged wife followed him and sang this song. In the end the husband was emotionally moved and the couple reconciled. The song is sung today in both North and South Korea, a symbol of unity in an otherwise divided region, since the Korean War. I am delighted to perform this piece, especially for all my Korean friends in the U.S.

7. Mao Yuanyu, “New Year’s Happiness”

Soon Asians will celebrate the Spring Festival. I end the recital with “New Year’s Happiness” composed by Mao Yuanyu in 1952. The main theme is based on the Hebei folksong “Dumpling sales” offering a cheerful and warm mood. The secondary theme conveys a gentle mood based on musical material from the Jiangnan (Yangzi Delta) region. The piece vividly conveys the celebratory mood of the Spring Festival.

Christine R. Yano, “Global Asias: Moving Beyond Spatialized Identities

Professor, University of Hawaii and President, Association for Asian Studies

Asian Studies has been defined and structured geographically, each area within Asia given a certain amount of autonomy and conceptual berth. The Association for Asian Studies has adopted this approach since 1970, with the goal to give each of four areas input to the organization. The creation of four area councils (Northeast Asia, China and Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia) developed out of an interest in equal representation; thus each area council has retained autonomy in its governance, from procedural matter to prizes. However, increasingly, our Asiatic worlds include intersections, crossings, mobilities, migrations, and diasporic communities that preclude a strict areal focus.

In 2021 I ask us to consider the conceptual moves that cross these regional foci, cross national spaces in a framework that I call Global Asias. In this talk I ask, what do we gain by focusing on the spaces of betweeness created by the trans-geographic? Based in and through mobilities that shape many people’s lives, identities, affiliations, and consumption practices, that betweeness creates its own dynamic friction. Embedded within that betweeness are elements that do not fit established models, that refuse to be “disciplined.” This is the dynamic lens of Globa Asias. The reframing includes not only the immigrant communities that have established lives outside of Asia (e.g. Asian America and Asian communities elsewhere) but also those diasporic Asian communities within Asia itself (e.g. Chinatowns in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Philippines, etc.). Reframing also includes some of the effects of new juxtapositions, including settler colonialism by which Asian immigrant groups may adopt the dominant practices of their new homes at the expense of disadvantaged indigenous populations.

Jan Bardsley

Professor Emerita, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Gavin James Campbell

Professor, Doshisha University

Rebecca Copeland

Professor, Washington University in St. Louis

Jennifer Prough

Associate Professor, Valparaiso University

Investigating diverse “kimono imaginaries” leads our panel beyond typical readings of this deceptively simple Japanese garb. We uncover traditions invented, anger inscribed, and lively masquerades blurring ethnic and gender boundaries. Presenting cases from our current book projects, we invite audience engagement with questions of kimono play, authenticity, cultural invention, and appropriation. Crafting her debut mystery Kimono Tattoo, literary scholar Rebecca Copeland drew inspiration from the afterlives of kimono animating Noh, Enchi Fumiko’s writing, and Terry Milhaupt’s pioneering kimono scholarship. Copeland discusses how this legacy led her to fabricate a diabolic plot within a plot that turns on a kimono tattoo. In Fashioning Japan: Menswear in Japan from the Shoguns to the Salary Man, cultural historian Gavin James Campbell highlights the critical role sartorial politics played in legitimizing masculine power in the shogunal court and displaying prestige in ceremonial spectacle. Properly worn, the kimono ensured the very survival of the Tokugawa regime itself. Tracking a different kimono register, anthropologist Jennifer Prough and literary historian Jan Bardsley examine contemporary costume play. In Revisiting Kyoto: Heritage Tourism in Contemporary Kyoto, Prough draws on extensive ethnographic research to examine how the interests of government, commerce, communities, and tourists coalesce to fashion new tourist experiences. She discusses how domestic and international travelers clad in rental kimono stroll prime heritage sights, embodying new preferences for the experience of “being” over “seeing,” and feeling part of the heritage atmosphere themselves. In Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan, Bardsley explores media representations of Kyoto’s apprentice geisha (maiko) as an icon of exemplary girlhood. She shows how the vogue for maiko cosplay inspired an entire light-fiction series about a kimono-garbed boy embodying this role.

Asynchronous Material

Session B

Xiaolin Duan, “Visualizing Famous Places for the Tourist Market: Yang Erzeng’s Newly Compiled Striking Views within the Seas in Seventeenth-Century China”

Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

Keywords: Visuality

During the seventeenth century, the rapid development of urbanization and sightseeing activities paved the way for woodblock prints that advertised various famous sites. One of the most remarkable collections was Newly Compiled Striking Views within the Seas (1609) by Yang Erzeng. This collection served as a travel guidebook, including visual images and geographical information centering on places of interest. This paper examines the visual strategy adopted by this book and its popular acceptance, discussing how the images presented in the book meditated between traditional gazetteers and the newly developed tourist market in reshaping the concept of place and mobility. It argues that these images reflect the influences of both landscape-painting manuals, which offered iconic representations of the natural environment, and woodblock drama illustrations to broaden their appeal to both elegant and mass-market audiences. This paper focuses specifically on a set of prints of West Lake, discussing how it adapted images from an earlier gazetteer by juxtaposing them with poems written in varying calligraphic styles. With a combination of poems, paintings, and calligraphy, these images catered to the literati taste for interchangeability of poems and paintings, as well as affluent people’s desire to consume high culture in one entity. Consumers of these books and images saw them as tangible embodiments of cultural tropes, as suggestions for sightseeing, and as a particular way of seeing. Exploring woodblock prints as an conversation between publishers and audiences, this paper contributes to the discussion of visual culture and its role in constructing place identity.

Norman Rothschild, “The Chrysanthemum Corona of Female Emperor Wu Zhao: Fashioning a Distinctive Imperial Garland from Yellow Flowers, Sacred Mountainscapes, and Immortal Medicine”

Professor, University of Northern Florida

Keywords: Chongyang Festival

This paper argues that in the seventh century the chrysanthemum (ju, juhua, huanghua 菊, 菊花,⿈花), yoked to newly emerging conceptions of Buddhist and Daoist sovereignty, played a significant symbolic role in Chinese female emperor Wu Zhao’s 武曌 (r. 690-705) construction of a novel paradigm of emperorship. Under Wu Zhao, the chrysanthemum developed into a floral emblem of imperial authority and the Chongyang festival, the holiday with which the yellow flower is closely associated, developed into major occasion to broadcast her distinctive brand of religio-political authority. To mustering evidence of the connection between the late-blooming autumnal flower and Wu Zhao, the paper draws on court poetry, official histories, memorials, Buddhist and Daoist sources, geographical treatises, and medical texts. The paper also examines parallel and related developments in this cult of the chrysanthemum—connected to female rulership, verticality, and immortality—in the kingdom of Silla on the Korean peninsula and in Asuka Japan.

Xiaofei Li, “Images in Space: A Study of Suzhou Prints in The Small Chinese Salon in Palace Esterhazy of Austria”

Associate Professor, Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication

Keywords: Visual Space

From 17th to 18th century, a large collection of printed pictures were exported from China to Europe, together with the other products, such as porcelain, lacquerware, embroidery, and woodcarving. Prints became part of so-called “Chinoiserie” and exerted great influence on European culture. However, compared with other artistic genres, printed images possess unique characteristics as they are not only as isolated artworks, they were also utilized as functional decoration of space designs. The printed pictures which originated from Suzhou in Palace Esterhazy of Austria are perfect examples of this decorative function. This paper will explore the prints’ functions in space design through the following themes: the printing techniques and materials of these prints, how the space designs highlighting the prints, and how the prints help to construct the space and transform the visual contexts of the space.

Session C

Helen Kaibara, “Protecting Creation: The Isha Foundation’s Movement to Save India’s Rivers”

Assistant Professor, Jacksonville State University

Keywords: India, Environmental, Religious

The Isha Foundation, led by well-known, spiritual leader, Sadhguru, has in twenty-eight years grown into a global phenomenon with yoga and meditation workshops held in many different countries. However, a lesser-known activity of the Isha Foundation is having a far-greater role in shaping the world. It has recently launched ecological renewal and conservation efforts which seek to address a myriad of environmental, social, economic, and political issues. The flagship environmental campaign, Rally for Rivers, is currently the world’s largest ecological movement with the support of over 162 million people, has received the cooperation of six Indian state governments, and an endorsement from the United Nations. The campaign has raised funds to grow billions of tree saplings, gathered thousands of volunteers to plant these trees along endangered rivers, and train Southern Indian farmers in methods of ecoforestry with the assistance of governmental subsidies. Southern Indian state governments in particular have been motivated to aid this effort as a result of the alarming spike in farmer suicides which have been caused by the difficulties of growing crops in land which is facing desertification. This campaign to revitalize India’s major rivers, began in 2017 with the Kaveri River–the drying up of which led to deadly clashes in the 1980’s and 1990’s between residents of the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This paper will examine the groundwork of the Isha Foundation in creating the Rally for Rivers campaign, present on the various levels of support it has enjoyed as well as major criticisms, and evaluate its progress toward reaching its stated objectives.

Jarrod Brown, “Vietnamese Hòa Hảo Buddhist Environmental and Agricultural Ethics”

Assistant Professor, Berea College

Keywords: Mekong, Agricultural Ethics

Đạo Hòa Hảo is a southern Vietnamese Buddhism tradition founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ but building on the earlier teaching of the Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương tradition. A syncretic and reformist movement, Hòa Hảo caters to the population of the Mekong River and the social, economic, and spiritual traditions of the peoples who reside there. Hòa Hảo places particular emphasis on place, inter-generational obligations, and agriculture, suggesting that the ideal vocation for a Buddhist is as an agriculturalist. As such, Hòa Hảo provides the resources for a robust ethics of agricultural and environment. This paper argues that Hòa Hảo offers a theory of environmental philosophy that assigns intrinsic value to all living beings and extrinsic value to the inanimate world, that the moral community encompassing both all living creatures as well as ancestors and future generations, and the given the inter-generational moral obligations and the centrality of agriculture for the unique Hòa Hảo of “monasticism at home,” there is an obligation to practice sustainable agricultural techniques to preserve the agrarian form of life for future practioners.

Jerski Jarzen Duria, “Unhidden Truth: Impacts of Neoliberal Policies of Philippine Government vis-à-vis Environmental Degradation”

Research Specialist, Central Luzon State University

Keywords: Hegemony

Climate change and global warming are indeed, the greatest threat and challenged to humanity. It cannot be solved individually. What we need are global solutions to this global problem. However, from Kyoto Protocol to Paris Accord, it is evident that there are no significant beneficial changes in the global context. Instead of combating the problem, global actions and policies worsened the scenario. Due to these circumstances, this paper critically analyzed the impacts of Philippine government’s neoliberal policies vis-à-vis the alarming environmental degradation in the country. This paper showed that the neoliberalism’s tenets which include privatization, corporatization, deregularization, exploitation, hegemonic dominance and dependence are part of the structural adjustment programmes or policies (SAPs) of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These policies were imposed by neoliberal hegemons particularly by U.S. and China. Using critical discourses, paradigmatic analyses and dependency theory as apparatuses of scrutiny, this paper aimed to understand the linkages between the imposed neoliberal policies and its’ ecological consequences and to some extent to global capitalism. Moreover, the study showed that with the imposition of neoliberal policies, the disparity between the developed and developing countries arises which resulted to “catching up” of the developing countries causing more environmental crisis.

Session D

Jera Lego, “Uighur ‘Exiles’ and Rohingya ‘Refugees’: Forced Migration of Persecuted Muslim Minorities”

Independent Scholar

Keywords: Forced Migrants, Refugees, Migration

This paper includes preliminary research for examining the forced migration of two of the world’s most persecuted Muslim minorities. It begins with a brief historical context for understanding how they came to be marginalized in their respective countries of origin and then proceeds to discuss the kinds of oppression and persecution they currently face. The paper will then elaborate on the nature of their displacement, tracing their migration routes and destinations, how countries of refuge respond to their arrival/ presence, how they themselves manage in these host countries, the kinds of transnational networks they have formed, and the kinds of responses they have elicited from the international community. The paper will then compare the similarities and differences, and analyze whether and to what extent these can be attributed to (1) the root causes of displacement, (2) the nature of displacement, (3) the kind of country from which these forced migrants originate, (4) the identity of those forced migrants, (5) geographic factors, and (6) existing transnational networks.

MinJee Lee, “Representing, Re-membering, and Mobilizing Diasporas: Discursive Analysis of Homeland’s Representation of Koryo Saram Diaspora in South Korean Media”

Graduate Student, Yonsei University

Keywords: Media Representation

This paper aims to explore mass media texts representing ethno-national diaspora as a site and medium of homeland’s ‘discursive’ mobilization, instrumental re-imagination and re-membering of its overseas diaspora. In the ‘triangular relationship’ between diaspora, host society, and homeland, it is not only myths and beliefs about diasporic homeland that are actively exploited, but also ideas about ‘diasporas’ abroad that are constructed, exploited, and mobilized to serve the homeland’s cause. Focusing on the case of South Korea’s media representation of Koryo Saram diaspora in the Post-Soviet spaces, this paper explores how stances and discourses about diasporic identity, historical formation, and diaspora-homeland relationship in the two selected TV documentary texts broadcasted in 1992 and 2014 were differently imagined, constructed, and mobilized in relation to the shifting workings of nationalism, developmentalism, anti-communism, and neoliberal globalization of the respective eras in South Korea. The two modes of South Korea’s representation of Koryo Saram respectively embodied discourse on singular nationhood bounded to the Korean peninsula as the national lebensraum, versus multiple nationhood tolerating divergent dynamics of diasporic formation, identities, and diaspora-homeland relationship.

Yanghee Kim, “Minority Parents, Children, and Schooling in China, Taiwan, S. Korea and the U.S.”

Associate Professor, Kennesaw State University

Keywords: Schooling

Since 1980s, many Asians have been moving to the major labor-importing countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to the increased migrant workers, the influx of global ‘hypergamy’ which means women from developing countries migrate to marry men living in the richer countries pushes these countries to become more ethnically diverse nations. It is projected that one third of all children born in 2020 will be so called Kosians (Ko deriving from Korean and sian from Asian). In Taiwan, the number is projected to be even higher. However, because of ethnocultural nationalism that Korea and Taiwan adopt for guaranteeing their citizenship, the second generation of illegal migrant workers is denied to achieve citizenship and thus access to education. Even though China is not considered as a developed country that imports labors, China is included in the presentation because its philosophical aptitudes toward minorities is different from Korea and Taiwan. China adopts liberal nationalism and grants ethnic minorities a right to educate children with ethnic approaches. Under the different approaches, minorities in China may encounter fewer obstacles in interacting with teachers and schools than minorities in Korea and Taiwan. This presentation will compare the current status of minority parents and children and school barriers that minority parents perceive in their child’s schooling in these countries using a framework developed in the U. S by presenter. In the framework, five school barriers* are proposed. The comprehensive framework may contribute to enhance the equality and equity of education for minority children in the world by focusing on school barriers rather than parents’ barriers. *Kim, Y. A. (2018). Chapter 78: School roles in ethnic minority education in Korea. In M. T. Hue (Ed.). Section 15: Ethnic Minorities. In Kennedy, K. J., & Lee, J. C-K (Eds.). Routledge International Handbook of Schools and Schooling in Asia. Oxon: Ox. New York: NY.

Bonnie Wang, Upper School Chinese Teacher, Durham Academy

Yan Liu, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Duke University

Vicky Wang, Upper School Chinese Teacher, St. Paul’s School

Our schools and nation are facing multiple transcendent challenges in the year of 2020. One of them is the discrimination and racism against Asian American during COVID-19. As Asian language and culture educators, we must actively address this critical issue in our culturally responsive curriculum and support students of Asian heritage in the school community. This roundtable session will explore anti-racist pedagogy and demonstrate strategic ways of facilitating difficult conversations with students about race and racism, in particular times like now. Two high school teachers and one college professor will share several curricular examples to demonstrate how to integrate anti-racism perspectives into Asian language teaching. The presenters will also reflect on the successful collaboration between K-12 and postsecondary Chinese programs. Audience will be invited to discuss the sample lesson plans in Chinese language classrooms and how to implement anti-racism into other disciplines of Asian studies or different age groups of learners.

Session B

Quade Robinson, “Transnational Connections in Chinese Post-Socialist Television Advertisement”

Graduate Student, Harvard University

Keywords: Japanese Advertising, Marketing

My paper examines the changes in the social atmosphere of mainland China through the lens of television advertisement, primarily using a comparative study of advertisements from mainland China, Japan, and Taiwan that span the late 70s through the 90s as the framework for analysis. I support scholars’ claims that many Chinese companies initially sought out Japanese marketing techniques, finding that the use of specific advertising techniques, such as information-dense brief messages and the use of jingles, are reminiscent of the “media-mix” marketing strategy that came to prominence in Japanese advertising during the period. On the other hand, China’s socialist past had historically favored truthful advertisements and led to a less rigid gender binary in society. Post-socialist advertising retains elements of its socialist past, but advertisers also sought to undo some of these constructs, marketing directly to female consumers as a form of market segmentation, and employed some of the effective, albeit underhanded, advertising techniques characteristic of market economies. As television came to prominence as a communication medium for both the public and private sector during the post-socialist period, advertisement also became an important way to influence social mores, through promoting consumption and addressing issues such as gender roles in society. The post-socialist advertising techniques adopted by China demonstrate clear transnational connection, as they sought out the techniques of the more economically developed Japan and Taiwan. Rather than create an essentialist system directed only inwards, China looked outwards to develop a system based on other successful Asian systems and techniques.

Ryan Dong Yang, “Framing the Ineffable: Jia Zhangke’s Slow Cinema and the Life of Minor Affects”

Graduate Student, University of Georgia

Keywords: Zhangke Jia

Explicating an ontological inquiry of the vitality of photography, André Bazin in the opening essay of What Is Cinema? writes, “For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man.” The historical function of arts from painting to cinema, for him, shows a unitary effort of the artists to capture and sustain the autonomous life of framed objects through the technique of realism. Such a principle not only influences a generation of French directors, but also extends its impact to art cinema in Hong Kong and mainland China, with the work of Jia Zhangke as a chief example. Ira Jaffe characterizes Jia’s visual style as “slow cinema,” such that the audience experiences a relatively motionless camera and excessive long takes and long-shots, to wear out the overly affective décor, lighting, and color. Jaffe’s study leaves open the question: what is the Jia’s striking presentation of slowness for? This essay therefore attempts to further decode Jia’s slow cinema through an examination of The World (2005) and Still Life (2006) and Mountains May Depart (2015), and argue that his ethnographic cinema exemplifies a style of “brutal realism” that visualizes the otherwise ineffable affects of the voiceless, by letting the camera generously record the silent but wounded feelings of the proletariats under the grand narrative of Chinese modernization. In addition, it is precisely such a technique of slow cinemathat makes possible Jia’s distinctive narrative style of irony.

Su-ching Huang, “Double Vision: Glocal Allegory and Transpacific Horror”

Associate Professor, East Carolina University

Keywords: Transpacificism

In his Double Vision (雙瞳, 2002), the Taiwanese director Kuo-fu Chen (陳國富) participates in the transpacific circuit of cinematic remakes. Double Vision begins as a detective film featuring an FBI agent (David Morse) assigned to Taipei to assist with a serial murder case, but as the plot unravels, the narrative gradually takes on a supernatural quality and ends without a generic film noir resolution; it does not offer a clear explanation of the true identity and motive of the perpetrator. Such an ambiguous ending and subversion of detective film conventions yield interesting interpretations when we read the film in its historical and regional context. Released in 2002 and featuring a transnational cast with well-known actors from Taiwan (Rene Liu 劉若英), Hong Kong (Tony Leung梁家輝), and the US (David Morse), Double Vision participated in a renewed cycle of high grossing Asian horror films and their Hollywood remakes, including The Ring (G. Verbinski, 2002), The Grudge (2004) and its sequel The Grudge 2 (2006, both directed by T. Shimizu), Dark Water (W. Salles, 2005), to name only a few. However, instead of simply adopting the horror formula, Chen combines horror conventions with those of noir, buddy film, and family drama to indict the technocratic cult spreading across the Asia Pacific with globalization. The film’s ambiguous ending suggests a connection between the horrifying serial murders and the high-tech startup co-founders (who have returned to Taiwan with graduate degrees from the US) and their protégé-cum-mentor, an innocent-looking Taiwanese girl born with the congenital anatomical anomaly of having double pupils in her eyes. I read the film’s lack of a satisfying closure as a critique of US cultural and political influence over Taiwan on the one hand, and of ineffectual Taiwanese resistance to US imperialism on the other, symbolized by the fatalities associated with the girl’s double pupils.

Asynchronous Material

Session C

Lu Huang, “Huiyan fazhao’s晦巖法照 (1185-1273) ‘home mountain’ interpretation of the ‘essence of precepts’ ”

Graduate Student, Temple University

Keywords: shanjia/shanwai schism

This paper seeks to investigate Huiyan fazhao’s 晦巖法照 (1185-1273) understanding of precepts through a close reading of his Fa hua jing san da bu du jiao ji 法華經三⼤部讀教記. Comparing Fazhao’s explanation of the “essence of precepts” (jieti戒體) with earlier Tiantai天台 masters Zhiyi智顗 (539-598), Zhanran 湛然 (711-782), and the Song 宋 period (960-1279) “later off mountain” (hou shanwai後⼭外) monk Shenzhi Congyi神智從義 (1042-1091), it is clear that their doctrinal stands also influenced their understanding of precepts as well. Moreover, as a follower of “home mountain” (shanjia⼭家) faction in Tiantai tradition, Fazhao inherited Siming zhili’s 四明知禮 (960-1028) “nature-inclusion” (xingju性具) thought and applied it in his exegesis of the “essence of precepts.” Despite “home mountain” faction’s claim to be the orthodoxy in Tiantai, Fazhao’s conflation of “nature matter” (xingse性⾊) with Yogācāra tradition’s “wholesome seeds” (shanzhong善種) seems to fall exactly into the one-sided view criticized by Zhiyi, who regarded it as a kind of “other-production” (tasheng他⽣), which directly conflicts with the dependent co-arising principle in Buddhism. This shows that the exegetical work on the “essence of precepts” can be additional materials for us to understand the doctrinal factions of Tiantai tradition in Song宋 period (960-1279), especially the criticism on “home mountain” faction from the “off-mountain” side.

Seojeong Shin, “Poetic and Personal Landscape Album, Marvelous Verses without Sounds by Xiao Yuncong”

Adjunct Professor, American University

Keywords: Art History, Landscape Painting, Poetic Painting

The Marvelous Verses without Sounds, painted by 17th C scholar artist Xiao Yuncong (1596-1673) is an album composed of 12 leaves of landscape paintings with poems by the artist. It is considered a notable example of three perfection (sanjue), showing a harmonious combination of painting, calligraphy, and poetry, and as a later-given title of the album expressed, the relationship between paintings and poetic texts is an important key to fully appreciating Xiao’s album. However, this album is slightly different from the lyrical painting or poetry painting (shiyi hua) genre, the painting mainly illustrating the poem or expressing a poetic mood. In Xiao’s album, the artist’s poetry seems to comment or complement his paintings. His paintings depicting his mundane life and his melancholic poetry reveal who Xiao was – an aged, learned man who had witnessed the fall of Ming. He longed for the life of a recluse, by layering the references of historical figures, ancient master’s style, or Daoist connotations. This album is an excellent example of a trend of personalized landscape paintings during the late Ming and early Qing period.

Suiyun Pan, “Bai Juyi’s Yuhuan and Homer’s Helen: from Seductresses to Beauties”

Graduate Student, Yale University

Keywords: Confucian Aesthetics, Bai Juyi, the Iliad

Yang Yuhuan has been deemed one of the Four Great Beauties (mei ren) in Chinese culture since the late Yuan dynasty. Nevertheless, the renowned Tang poet Bai Juyi refuses the use of the word mei (beautiful) when he introduces Yuhuan in his narrative poem “Song of Everlasting Regret.” Instead, the poet characterizes her as se (the immorally connoted feminine charm) from the very beginning of his magnum opus. Conventionally, feminine charm (se), with its implication of physical allure and carnality, not only differs from, but is also antithetical to, true beauty (mei). That such a linguistic distinction exists reflects the extent to which aesthetics is associated with ethics in Confucian philosophy. Yuhuan, who is supposed to have kindled the An Lushan Rebellion and the decline of the empire, can understandably be classified as se. However, not bogged down in the stereotypical view of the day, Bai Juyi, with his subsequent exploration of Yuhuan’s morality, eventually elevates his heroine into a Confucian beauty whose external pulchritude is ultimately shown to be congruent with her good moral character, which is increasingly foregrounded over the course of the poem. Sharing a similar fate and reputation, Yuhuan’s western counterpart Helen of Troy in Homer’s Iliad is blamed by her peers for corrupting the Trojan prince Paris and thereby causing the Trojan War. But just like Bai Juyi, the Greek poet Homer exhibits Helen’s morality in a way that calls into question the public’s censure of her. Examined in light of Confucian aesthetics, the Homeric Helen likewise seems genuinely beautiful (mei) rather than merely seductive (se). In this sense, both poets rescue the women from their infamy and transform their traditional image as a prototypical “femme fatale” by means of moral beautification.

Session D

Travis Shutz, “Mobile, Agile, Hostile: Maritime Violence and Territoriality in Sixteenth Century Ming China”

Graduate Student, Binghamton University (SUNY)

Keywords: Piracy

Early in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the first emperor Hongwu prohibited overseas travel (haijin) to limit private contact with foreign agents. Over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Ming government fluctuated between strict and laxed enforcement of haijin. In 1548, however, a more stringent prosecution transformed illegal—yet largely peaceful—smuggling into violent piracy. In 1567, after two decades of rampant raiding, the Ming Longqing Emperor asserted imperial control over private seaborne trade by authorizing commercial vessels to sail from South China to Southeast Asia. While the well-researched policy shift “kaihai” (opening the seas) sought to change illicit smuggling-piracy into licit commerce, it only legalized trade on one side of the Fujian-Guangdong provincial border. Exploring the other side of the historical coin, this paper looks at how the Ming state sought to control maritime violence by eliminating pirates who operated in the supposedly pacified “open seas” period of the 1570s. With maritime warfare remaining largely underexamined in previous histories of China, the paper addresses two important gaps in the literature, naval campaigns and pirate warfare. Taking the pirate group under infamous Guangdong native Lin Feng (known in the Spanish Empire as Limahong) as a case study, it argues re-centralizing control of maritime violence required stripping pirates of their maritime mobility and military might, rather than merely permitting a select number of trading ships to sail abroad. In other words, to adopt the Delueze and Guattarian language of territoriality, the Ming state needed to re-territorialize wayward subjects from a violent and mobile existence to the Ming ideal pacifist and sedentary lifestyle.

Margherita Zanasi, “The Global Origins of Developmentalism: The View from Late Imperial China”

Professor, Louisiana State University

Keywords:

The main objective of my paper is to explore the global origins of economic development, challenging the notion that its basic ideas and policies were the exclusive products of the industrialized West. More specifically, I focus on the Chinese discourse on the economy and the policies it inspired. Starting in the mid-eighteenth century, unprecedented growth in population and declining agricultural production created what Qing scholars and officials described as an economy of scarcity (buzu). This crisis, they believed, presented unprecedented features and required unprecedented measures of state intervention aimed to expand and reorganize economic production.

Paul Gosselin, “Revisiting Ma Zhongying’s 1931 Invasion of Xinjiang: Muslim Identity and Activism along the Gansu-Xinjiang Frontier”

Independent Scholar

Keywords: Qing Empire, civic activism

The ‘frontier question’ developed in the post-1912 Chinese republic as one of the most salient legacies of China’s 20th century empire-to-nation transition. Statesmen and militarists in the core debated over whether and how to reclaim the former Qing empire’s non-Han frontiers. As a result, the northwestern and ethno-culturally diverse province of Gansu – straddling Mongolia, the Tibetan plateau, and Turkic Muslim-majority Xinjiang – emerged as a contested sit for Chinese nationalists to reunify post-imperial borderlands. However, scholarship on many republican-era Chinese elites in Gansu often frames their approaches to the ‘frontier question’ in terms of ‘warlord-era politics’, prioritizing military power struggles over the linkages between ‘warlords’ and local civic networks. Confronting these gaps, this paper recontextualizes the Chinese-Muslim officer Ma Zhongying’s 1931 invasion of Xinjiang as part of a broader contemporary pattern of regional Chinese militarists intervening across post-Qing frontiers in defense of national unity. In doing so, it highlights how republican-era politics of reimagining post-imperial identities and borders motivated new civic and activist linkages between core and periphery. This paper demonstrates for the first time that Ma’s military clique was connected to an emergent Chinese-Islamic activist network across Gansu that saw political unity with Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslims and constitutional protections for regional Muslim autonomy as the solution to balancing Muslim communal interests with Chinese national unification. The discourses, strategies, and connections of this activist network – particularly to Turkic elites in eastern Xinjiang – remain understudied, despite its importance to understanding how Ma’s invasion encapsulated locally-formulated political visions as frontier societies confronted and negotiated with national authorities.

Session E

Shibin Yan, “Care Regime in China and India through the Lens of Eldercare”

Graduate Student, Rutgers University

Keywords: India

Most comparative research on care regimes has focused on Europe and the U.S. However, scholars have paid little attention to the care regimes in China and India. Over time both countries have been undergoing a major transition from informal to formal care. In particular, the growth of the elderly population in both countries presents enormous challenges to their longterm care practices. In response, the two nations have been restructuring the relationship among care providers: the state, the family, and the market. However each had done so in different ways. This paper aims to apply Esping-Andersen’s welfarestate regime framework to analyze the health care system in China and India. I develop an index of formal and informal care based on 14 criteria in order to examine the effect of different care-regimes on social development in China and India, focusing on eldercare practices. Using these criteria, I argue that the care regime China is adopting follows the socio-democratic model, relying more on families and the state to provide elder care services. Unlike China, India has utilized a liberal model with a heavy reliance on the market sector. The index provides a critical tool to analzye how differences in care arrangements give rise to different social and economic outcomes in both countries, and establishes a new theoretical tool that can provide a means to systematically analzye comparable changes in other developing countries.

Yanping Ni, “Foregrounding Women Behind Black Lung: Other Caregiving(s) and Other Activism(s)”

Graduate Student, Duke University

Keywords: female caregiving and activism, uncontracted and invisible labor, rural China

Pneumoconiosis, also known as “black lung,” is the most serious occupational disease in China. The enormous number of cases (870,000 by 2018) ironically contrasts with the rapid economic development and the average improvement of living standards for most Chinese. The cause for the disease is mostly years of work in dust-intensive industries like mining and urban construction. Lack of protection expose the workers to the vast dust while other poor conditions make their bodies more vulnerable; Once sickened, the process for compensation can be extremely difficult due to their status as uncontracted laborers. All of these difficulties, along with the incurability of the disease, add up as heavy burdens to both the patients and their families. While the seriousness of “black lung” has gained much attention, missing in the current literature is the role of women in the treatment, fight, and care of those afflicted with black lung. In contrast, females in reality take up most responsibilities after the disease “invades” into the patients’ bodies (usually male) and into the families. Women, first, have to take care of their sickened husbands, brothers, and sons, the part of responsibility that most women in a traditional Chinese family are used to. In addition, women have to learn to be “the men in the house,” taking up physical work and the roles of breadwinner and sometimes protestor, roles previously allocated to the men. Women experience a doubled responsibility of being. My project focuses on women’s invisible, non-wage, subsistence labor, and doubled responsibilities. Through participant observation and interviews, it seeks a better understanding of the effects caused by the non-human agent of dust to the family. It is further dedicated to exploring what Joel Robbin (2013) has called “an anthropology of the good,” in which practices of love, persistence, and responsibility are intertwined with the pain and the darkness in everyday strivings.

Zhen Wang, “China’s Cadre Management Regime: What Do We Really Know?”

Associate Professor, Middle Tennessee State University

Keywords: bianzhi

This article reviews several groups of recent scholarship on four key components of the post-Mao party state’s cadre management regime—the nomenklatura, the cadre performance evaluation system, bianzhi, and the party school system—as well as other less systemically-studied personnel practices. The review suggests that findings of every group of studies are clouded by a great deal of uncertainty due to the extreme complexity and secrecy of the Chinese bureaucratic structure and politics, and that this uncertainty thus challenges the confidence level of research applying these findings to explain cadre behavior. The review also detects a common disconnect both within and among major groups of studies that has prevented a more accurate understanding of the workings of the cadre management regime. This review serves to evoke rethinking on the oftentimes taken-for-granted beliefs of how control and incentivizing mechanisms of the personnel management institutions can predict individual behavior.