Abstract. The Chinese writing system originated in the Shang dynasty and has undergone continuous reshaping over the course of millennia. It is a unique form of linguistic organization that goes beyond the role of a simple representational tool. This paper argues that the internal structure and historical development of Chinese characters can be fruitfully interpreted through Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy framework. Unlike phonetic alphabets, which prioritize linear sound-symbol correspondence, Chinese characters integrate semantic and phonetic components, enabling meaning, form, and usage to evolve dynamically in relation to social practice and linguistic context. The Chinese writing system's evolution is marked by processes such as creating new characters, extending and reassigning meanings, loangraphs (jiajiezi), and adapting to the spoken lexicon. These mechanisms generate a system characterized by openness, indeterminacy, and morphological fluidity rather than rigid structural closure. These features highlight the dynamic nature of Chinese characters, which are continually reconstituted through use, interpretation, and historical contingency. From a process-philosophical perspective, the Chinese writing system emerges not as a static assemblage of discrete symbols, but as an interconnected, self-transforming network of relations. Its enduring capacity for regeneration and transformation exemplifies Whitehead’s ontological claim that "becoming" is more fundamental than "being" and that stability is provisional, arising from ongoing processes rather than immutable essences. Situating the Chinese script within this philosophical framework offers a novel theoretical lens through which to understand its structural complexity and remarkable continuity across historical periods.

Abstract. The development of anthropological and ethnological research in China began in the 1930s; however, much indigenous knowledge has continued to be produced and transmitted beyond formal academic frameworks. In this paper, Ildikó Gyöngyvér Sárközi provides insight into this decades-long process by focusing on her research among the Manchu-speaking Sibe people and on the role of indigenous researchers. To achieve this objective, she examines the work of an amateur Sibe ethnographer from Xinjiang.

Abstract. In 2013, as part of a Hungarian–Chinese research collaboration, my colleague Dávid Somfai-Kara, our Chinese partner Xiulan, and I conducted fieldwork in Hongwansi, in the central Sunan Yugur Autonomous County (肃南裕固族自治县). Our aim was to document the cultural and religious life of the Yugur minority and to continue earlier investigations in the area. The Yugur population in Gansu is linguistically divided: some speak a Turkic language and maintain shamanic practices, while others speak an archaic Mongolian dialect and follow Buddhist traditions. Dávid Somfai-Kara focused on recording and clarifying shamanic texts he had previously collected; my research concentrated on local Buddhist practices and the community’s relationship to Buddhism. With the Yugur minority numbering just over 14,000 in the 2020 census and tracing its lineage to the Uyghur Empire of Tang-era Inner Asia (745–840), I approached the field expecting to find continuity with earlier Uyghur Buddhist traditions. This presentation summarizes our findings on whether local Buddhism represents a persistence of historical Uyghur Buddhism or a later adoption, and on how Buddhist rituals and identities are enacted in the community today.

Abstract. Salyr ethnic group (Salazu 撒拉族) is a Turkic-speaking group in China that belong Oguz group. Their majority live in Qinghai Province along the Huanghe in Xunhua Salyr Aut. County (appr. 100.000). In 2011 courtesy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences I had the opportunity to visit Xunhua and conduct a short fieldwork among the Salyr observing how the local communities try to preserve their ethnic culture and language. My paper intends to summarize my observations during my fieldwork among the Salyr a Muslim ethnic group that lives among majority Buddhist Tibetans. During our fieldwork with Mihaly Hoppal we collected folklore regarding the ethnic identity of the Salyr, their origin story about their migration from the Samarqand region. Our 89-year-old informant Dawabu  also told very important information about their traditional spirituality including their belief in spirits and a special soul (khudu) that can leave the body.

Abstract. There is a clear distinction between Chinese paleography and linguistics. Typically, writing is regarded merely as a symbolic carrier of language, while words constitute the fundamental units of language. However, the unique nature of ideographic character allows them to break down the boundaries between writing and words to a certain extent, thereby influencing the development of word meanings. This article takes the Fanxun（反訓） words in ancient Chinese as an example to explore how the meanings embedded in ideographic characters affect word meanings and their evolution. The concept of Fanxun" was first proposed by the Jin dynasty scholar Guo Pu (CE 276–324) in his marginalia for Erya (《爾雅》). Initially, Fanxun was considered a method of interpreting words, but it is now recognized as a lexical phenomenon in which a single word encompasses two opposite meanings. Consequently, words that simultaneously carry two contradictory meanings are referred to as Fanxun words（反訓詞）. The influence of the ideographic features of writing on the meanings of Fanxun words primarily manifests in two ways: 1. The character depicts a static entity, from which two opposite action-related meanings are derived; 2. The character represents a certain action, and different meanings are interpreted from the perspectives of different actors. Additionally, there is a special case: the character "亂" (disorder), long considered a classic example of a Fanxun word, actually evolved into a pair of antonyms due to graphical corruption. Strictly speaking, it does not belong to the category of Fanxun words, but it still provides an excellent perspective for observing the relationship between writing and semantic development, and thus will also be discussed.

Abstract. For a long time, Hungarian Turanism received little attention either inside or outside Hungary. At best, this ideological movement was regarded as a distant memory of the lost world of the Kingdom of Hungary and as romantic enthusiasm that had somehow emerged from long-outdated linguistic efforts of the 19th century and at worst as a collection of racist ideas whose adherents, based on the question of the ‘original homeland’ (‘Urheimat’) of the Hungarians somewhere in the vast steppes of Central Asia, sought to unite the relatives of the Magyars with them in a great empire and to displace or subjugate other peoples or language groups. Of course, none of these assessments were accurate, not even to a limited extent. Although Hungarian Turanism also had its origins primarily in linguistic efforts to establish a primordial relationship (‘Urverwandtschaft’) between the Uralic and Altaic languages (here primarily in the form of the Ural-Altaic theory), if not a Turanian language family (as postulated, for example, by F. M. Müller in the 1850s and 1860s), these did not directly coincide with the question of the original homeland of the Hungarians or even the search for it. Müller’s superphylum of Turanian languages in particular encompassed numerous language families that were already established in his time and went far beyond the boundaries of the Uralic and Altaic languages. All this was extended once again by the representatives of Hungarian Turanism, which saw the light of day on the eve of the First World War, to other peoples and languages of Asia, in which they now wanted to see relatives of the Hungarians or of the Hungarian language (insofar as the linguistic dimension was targeted). The aim was not to create a political entity of any kind, but rather to prove the possible kinship. As shown in the contributions, the parallelisation of Hungarian Turanism with Turkish Turanism and Pan-Turkism (some contemporary articles even spoke of ‘Pan-Turanism’) was only undertaken by Turkish authors, who sometimes saw themselves as spokesmen, if not pioneers, of such a pan-ideology with political aspirations. This naturally raises the question of the distinction from or inclusion of the Sino-Tibetan languages (at the beginning of the 20th century, there was still some talk of ‘Indo-Chinese’ languages). As shown in the contribution, Hungarian Turanism did not seek to draw boundaries, as one might assume, but rather attempted to establish connections. China attracted a great deal of attention from Hungarian Turanists, who regarded the Chinese as a Turanian people and incorporated them into the world view of the representatives of this somewhat enthusiastic and idealistic intellectual movement in the first half of the 20th century. This contribution uses a number of examples to illustrate how Hungarian Turanists perceived China and the Chinese people.

Abstract. Empires and hegemonies have often been described as flexible political forms—systems that rule through the incorporation of differences. Recent scholarship, including the work of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, has emphasized that empires thrived not through uniformity, but by accommodating plural practices. Yet such plurality has always been precarious. This panel foregrounds the fragility of difference under unipolar political orders—whether imperial, ideological, or Cold War hegemonic—by examining how East Asian regimes sought to incorporate and subordinate internal heterogeneity in the name of coherence. Cai Yixuan explores the evolving image of the Spring and Autumn statesman Zichan, whose diverse portrayals were later “harmonized” into a Confucian moral hierarchy supporting imperial legitimacy. Zhang Zhirui traces successive empire-building efforts that contested the pluralist tianxia ideal, revealing the persistent fragility of diversity under statist centralization. Sun Danni examines Manchukuo’s censorship regime, where efforts to impose aesthetic uniformity paradoxically generated unexpected artistic heterogeneity—only to render itself unsustainable. Lin Ye investigates how right-wing socialists in Taiwan and Japan imagined alternative socialist futures, which were ultimately neutralized by Cold War liberal hegemony. Together, these papers argue that while empires and hegemonies could tolerate difference, they worked to co-opt its implications in service of centralized control. The drive to subsume competing visions reveals not only the contradictions of unipolarity, but also the vulnerability of difference itself under projects of unity. By tracing how political orders attempted to domesticate plurality, this panel contributes to scholarly debates on identity, legitimacy, and the shifting boundaries of political imagination.

Abstract. This paper traces the postwar trajectories of right-wing socialists in Republic of China (ROC) and Japan, examining how their vision of alternative socialism unraveled during the Cold War. Emerging from early Asian Communists who had turned away from Marxist orthodoxy in 1920-30s, figures like Teng Jie in the ROC and Nabeyama Sadachika in Japan envisioned a socialism rooted in tradition and opposed to both Western and Soviet imperialistic intervention. However, the post-1945 geopolitical landscape posed serious challenges to this vision. As the Cold War polarized the globe, the ROC and Japan firmly aligned with the U.S.. This realignment forced right-wing socialists to reassess their positions. In joining the anti-Communist bloc, they abandoned not only their foundational anti-imperialist stance but also key elements of their socialist ideals. By the 1960s, they had become largely indistinguishable from mainstream conservative intellectuals in the West. Instead of sending his children to the frontline, Teng Jie, now submitting to the US, proudly spoke of his Berkeley-educated daughter’s marriage to a wealthy white man and renounced his hope of reclaiming the mainland—symbolizing his embrace of elite transpacific liberalism. In Japan, Nabeyama drifted into cultural chauvinism against Koreans and endorsed capitalism in public. Through a comparative analysis of both cases, this paper argues that the realignment of right-wing socialists was far more than a political shift but the beginning of the end of right-wing socialism in Asia as an available alternative, illustrating the dangers of abandoning a vision of social totality in the pursuit of political expediency.

Abstract. The present paper explores the portrayal of China’s Belt and Road Initiative within the Slovak context based on the media coverage in three periodicals: Pravda, SME, and Dennik N. To investigate its representation in Slovak media and the gradual shift in the media outlet’s attitude towards the initiative, relevant textual data published from 2013 to 2024 were collected through a keyword search to create a specialized corpus of newspaper articles. Through a mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis, this specialized corpus was used to systematically map the reporting activities in the studied periodicals linked to the portrayal of the Belt and Road Initiative. The aims of the study are: to explore the extent of reporting activities in the periodicals analysed, to identify the key topics of reference linked to the initiative, and to advance our understanding of its representation to the general public taking into consideration the variables such as newspaper type, time frame, key topic, and attitude. Considering the complex role of media as both mirror and moulder of public sentiment, the analysis revealed divergent editorial stances and shifting tones over time, what can be further exploited by situating media portrayals within the larger context of Slovakia’s foreign policy orientation, public attitudes toward China, and perception of global power dynamics.

Abstract. This paper examines the evolution of the narratives surrounding Zichan, a capable politician and diplomat from the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE). These narratives are presented in anecdotal accounts from various sources, particularly early Confucian texts. Zichan often serves as a rhetorical device that conveys different messages in early Chinese anecdotes. Meanwhile, recurring themes of fire and water in the Qinghua Bamboo Slips and the Zuo Tradition suggest collective creation and dissemination by an intellectual community associated with Zichan during the Warring States period. This collective narrative production invites a closer look at Zichan’s inconsistent portrayals in early Confucian anecdotes—sometimes as a rival to Confucius’s sagehood, other times as a figure who reinforces it, suggesting competitions among early Confucian schools. In late Han, however, Zichan was firmly placed in a nine-tier evaluation system in the "Gujin renbiao" (Table of Figures, Past and Present) in the Hanshu. This table ranks over 2,000 names and serves as the ultimate distillation of previous anecdotes, including those of Zichan. This paper argues that the contradictory attitudes toward Zichan—and his placement in the Confucian evaluative hierarchy—reveal a dynamic historiographical process in early China. Through the elaboration and reworking of specific anecdotes during and before the early Han period, competing views were negotiated and gradually standardized. This integration reflects the evolving priorities of early Confucianism and served broader political aims, as the emerging imperial state endorsed a coherent moral order by rewriting and distilling these narratives.

Abstract. The secularization of Wang Yangming’s(1472-1529) Neo-Confucianism unfolded alongside its transformation into a shared East Asian intellectual tradition vis-à-vis European civilization at the turn of the twentieth century. As Wang’s learning was reframed as a moral-intuitive alternative to “Western rationalism,” it became a symbol of Chinese, Japanese, and even Pan-Asian cultural identity. His image and statue were retrieved from local shrines, while his teachings were institutionalized through textbooks, political pamphlets, and state propaganda. This paper argues, however, that this very process of secularization paradoxically generated a re-religionization of Wang’s Neo-Confucianism. The paper examines the evolving religious dimensions of Wang’s thought through its entanglement with modern political authority and religious reform movements. First, it analyzes how twentieth-century state power provided the discursive foundation for new Neo-Confucian constructions, focusing on Taixu 太虛(1890-1947), a leading figure of humanistic Buddhism (renjian fojiao 人間佛教). Although initially dismissive of Wang’s Neo-Confucianism, Taixu changed his evaluation as the Nationalist regime elevated Wang’s learning as a symbol of “traditional” Chinese culture. Reframing its late-Ming Buddhist entanglements, Taixu appropriated Wang’s moral philosophy to advance a modern, socially engaged form of Buddhism, thereby transforming state-sponsored Neo-Confucian veneration into a vehicle for Buddhist renewal. Second, the paper places Taixu in comparative dialogue with Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三(1861–1930), a Japanese Protestant thinker who drew on yōmeigaku 陽明学(Yangming’s learning) to develop the non-church movement in early twentieth-century Japan. Emphasizing individual agency and innate knowledge, Uchimura articulated a form of Christianity independent of ecclesiastical institutions; instead, it stressed the direct personal access to divine truth. Through this comparison, the paper argues that the state-led secularization of Wang’s Neo-Confucianism did not simply desacralize this intellectual tradition; rather, it rendered it publicly accessible in ways that enabled religious actors to reemploy it for sacred missions. In this sense, political secularization became the very condition of possibility for Wang’s modern re-religionization.

Abstract. In 1875, driven by the Self-Strengthening Movement's principle of 'translating through manufacturing,' William Hughes's Mathematical Geography was translated at the Jiangnan Arsenal Translation Bureau as Huidi Fayuan. Compared to the English original, the translation exhibited localization and pragmatism in its terminology. This study analyzes the translation strategies employed and discusses their significance within the broader context of late Qing knowledge transfer.

Abstract. Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843) is usually introduced as a major figure in late Tokugawa Japan, yet his intellectual world was fundamentally embedded in the wider Sinographic sphere. Like many early modern East Asian scholars, Atsutane was trained above all in kanbun reading practices, Confucian textual culture, and the authority of Chinese books. This paper situates Atsutane not primarily within a national intellectual genealogy, but within a transregional world of Chinese texts, focusing on his encounter with Chinese-language Christian writings and the role they played in the formation of his mythological and eschatological thought. At the center of this study is Honkyō gaihen (Outer Chapter of the Original Teaching, 1806), Atsutane’s extensive reading notes on Chinese Christian works, especially Matteo Ricci’s Jiren shipian and Giulio Aleni’s Sanshan lunxue ji. These texts, composed in late Ming China and written in a Confucian idiom, introduced Christian doctrines of the soul, divine judgment, and the afterlife through the conceptual vocabulary of the classical tradition. For Atsutane, they did not appear to him as ‘Western’ theology, but as culturally and textually legible Chinese writings addressing fundamental problems of cosmology, morality, and human destiny. This paper argues that Chinese Christian literature provided Atsutane with a set of conceptual structures that enabled him to radically reconfigure Shinto mythology, especially with regard to death and the postmortem world. Through these texts, he encountered a linear model of the soul: a single earthly life, followed by judgment and an irreversible afterlife. He selectively translated this model into a Shinto framework, reformulating it through indigenous categories such as kami, the visible world, and the hidden world. In doing so, he transformed the ancient Japanese myth from a narrative of origins into a comprehensive moral cosmology that linked human conduct, divine governance, and posthumous destiny. The paper demonstrates that this reconfiguration was not a matter of isolated borrowing, but part of a broader process of Sinographic knowledge circulation. Jesuit authors in China had already articulated Christian theology through classical quotations, Confucian moral language, and debates over principle, material force, and human nature. Atsutane’s theology thus emerged from a second-order translation: from Christian scholasticism into Confucianized Chinese discourse, and from that discourse into a Japanese mythological system. The authority of these ideas for Atsutane lay precisely in their textual form as Chinese books, embedded in the long-standing prestige of the Chinese canon as a repository of universal knowledge. By tracing how Atsutane appropriated and transformed Chinese Christian discussions of the soul and the afterlife, this paper highlights the role of Sinological scholarship as a mediating intellectual field in early modern East Asia. It suggests that Atsutane’s Shinto mythology cannot be fully understood without recognizing Chinese Christian literature as a genre of Sinological scholarship, one that transmitted global religious concepts through the language and epistemic norms of the classical tradition. In this sense, the making of Atsutane’s mythological worldview exemplifies how the Sinographic sphere functioned as a conduit through which new cosmologies were absorbed, reclassified, and redeployed within local traditions.

Abstract. This article examines the 17th-century work Yuanxi qiqi tushuo luzui 遠西奇器圖說錄最 (Diagrams and Explanations of Ingenious Machines from the Far West: A Selection of the Very Best) as a case of cultural encounter and knowledge circulation in late Ming China. The book was born from a direct collaboration between the Jesuit missionary Johann Schreck (Deng Yuhan 鄧玉函, 1576–1630) and the Catholic Chinese scholar-official Wang Zheng 王徵 (1571–1644). In addition, its final form was further shaped by a network of local agents, including preface/postscript authors and publishers. Shifting the focus away from a missionary-centric narrative, this study highlights Wang’s decisive agency, from initiating the project and selecting the content to translating Schreck’s oral explanations into literary written Chinese and redrawing the diagrams. Furthermore, discrepancies across multiple editions illustrate the active role publishers played in altering the work's presentation. Through these combined efforts, Qiqi tushuo transformed diverse European sources on mechanics and mathematics into a coherent text. Shifts took place during the process: the tradition of Euclidean geometry and mathematical exposition was recast into a problem-solution format reminiscent of ancient Chinese mathematical treatises; units of measurement were localized, and diagrams of mechanical instruments were culturally adapted. The result was a hybrid embodying the intersection of two knowledge systems. The work also joined the late Ming current of ‘solid learning’ (shixue 實學) by raising the status of technical learning and linking it to practical utility and statecraft. For Wang, this turn to Christian knowledge offered an alternative intellectual resource, beyond Buddhism and Daoism he had turned to earlier, in response to the moral crisis at his time. Its wide circulation from Ming to Qing China as well as to Japan and Korea illustrates how Chinese Christian translation, thanks to cultural encounter and rooted in collaboration, functioned as both a channel and a catalyst for the transmission and reconfiguration of knowledge in early modern East Asia.

Abstract. Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis (1669) famously records a Japanese cosmogonic account in which a bull breaks a cosmic egg and brings the world into being. This “bull-and-egg” creation myth has often been cited in modern discussions of early modern European knowledge of Japan, yet its origins have remained unclear. This paper re-examines both the narrative and its accompanying image in Montanus, placing them within a broader context of cultural transmission. It argues that Montanus’s “Japanese” creation story emerged from the convergence of two different elements: first, visual models derived from South Asia; and second, Japanese medieval and early modern religious traditions in which Chinese and Japanese figures were closely intertwined, particularly around Gion (祇園) and its deity Gozu Tennō (牛頭天王), who was often associated with Pangu (盤古). From a visual perspective, the humped bull, the egg-like object, and the stone basin filled with water described by Montanus closely resemble the iconographic pairing of Nandi, Śiva’s bull, and the Śiva-liṅga set on a yoni pedestal—a combination widely found in Hindu art and ritual. Montanus is known to have reused non-Japanese images elsewhere in his work, making it plausible that the “bull hall” image also drew on South Asian visual sources that were later presented as Japanese. The narrative attached to this image—which made Montanus’s reuse of imagery related to Śiva’s bull from Hinduism possible—reflects Japanese traditions that linked Pangu, Susanoo (素戔嗚), and Gozu Tennō, as well as later hybrid figures such as Ban’gyū-ō (盤牛王), in which Pangu appears in a bovine form. Within this religious environment, ideas of a cosmic egg, a bull-like creator, and Chinese creation narratives could be combined and reinterpreted in multiple ways—by Japanese religious specialists, by foreign visitors encountering partial explanations, and by European authors assembling information from diverse sources. By examining how Montanus’s bull comes to break open a “Japanese” cosmic egg, this paper highlights a broader early modern pattern: creation myths were especially fluid as they moved across languages, images, and religious traditions. Rather than representing a simple European misunderstanding of Japan, Montanus’s account reveals a complex process in which Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and European elements were brought together to produce new forms of mythological knowledge.

Abstract. As the only Jinling Twelve Beauties (principal register) figure in Dream of the Red Chamber whose characterization reaches a relatively complete and stable form, Qin Keqing is rendered in markedly different ways in the Zhiyanzhai-annotated manuscripts and the Cheng–Gao printed editions, especially in terms of role positioning, personality construction, and the underlying motives of textual revision. This study finds that the Zhiyanzhai tradition preserves extensive original narration surrounding the “licentious funeral at Tianxiang Tower” as well as sensorial descriptions of furnishings and setting, thereby shaping Qin as a complex, multidimensional figure that functions both as an emblem of erotic desire and as a locus of ethical controversy—one that exposes the structural decay within the Ningguo House. By contrast, the Cheng–Gao text “purifies” the language and reattributes the source of tragedy to pathology, transforming an “erotic tragedy” into a “physiological destiny.” In doing so, it recasts Qin from an embodiment of desire into a “virtuous and filial” sign aligned with mainstream moral norms. This remaking—from a “guide within the realm of illusion” to a “ritual object” under didactic orthodoxy—reveals how mid-to-late Qing aesthetic tendencies intervened in the shaping of the literary text. The lexical displacements and narrative fissures between editions not only register the patriarchal appropriation of the female body through textual practice, but also broaden the cultural implications of Dream of the Red Chamber’s tragic imagination.

Abstract. Abstract: The Dream of the Red Chamber constructs a narrative space, which is part of the general narrative of the novel and also plays a role in the local narratives of its various episodes. The space in the novel can be divided into two categories, namely the external and internal spaces of the Jia mansion (including the Ningguo and Rongguo mansions), and the internal space can be further divided into private space, public space, and semi-public space. Space always exists in relation to humans, so space in the novel can be space perceived by the characters, but it can also be space inhabited by the characters, and space that exists for the characters. Space perceived by the characters can reflect the characteristics and meaning of the way in which narrative space is constructed in the novel. In their particular ways and at particular points of time, Granny Liu and Lin Daiyu are each an “outsider” entering the Jia mansion (mainly the Rongguo Mansion), and the narration of the its internal space as perceived by them not only serves to outline the physical space of the mansion, but also plays a unique role in describing the spirit of the Jia family, the temperaments of the characters, the interrelationships among the characters, and even in foretelling the fate of the Jia family. That, indeed, is the great significance of the narrative space constructed by the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Abstract. From the creative theme perspective, Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) has very few connections with Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo (Scholar-Beauty Novels), standing in opposition to that in terms of "truth" and "emotion". In the aspect of textual content, many seemingly similarities between Honglou meng and Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo are actually deliberate rebellions from the former to the latter. Honglou meng and Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo are two entirely different types of works; while they share similarities in many aspects, they are fundamentally different. From the perspective of historical context of composition, Fengyue baojian (The Mirror of Love and Lust) and the Mingyi’s edition of Honglou meng, serving as the foundation for the current version of Zhiyan zhai chongping shitou ji (The Story of the Stone with Commentary by Zhiyan Zhai), naturally connect with Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo. Given Cao Xueqin’s view of Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo, the connection between Honglou meng and scholar-beauty novels is based more on objective literary laws than on the author's subjective intentions. Honglou meng did not consciously inherit and develop it. In terms of its historical significance of novels, early Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo was a reaction against erotic novels represented by Jin Ping Mei (The Golden Lotus), while later works were lessons drawn from by Honglou meng in opposite side. The strong commodity attributes of Caizi jiaren xiaoshuo make them incapable of assuming the transitional role of an intermediary in the evolution from Jin Ping Mei to Honglou meng.

Abstract. In Chapter 22 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the lyrics of the aria "The Parasitic Grass" (Jishengcao) are recited through the voice of Xue Baochai, establishing a narrative intertextuality between the song and the character. The lyrics bridge the figures of Lu Zhishen and Xue Baochai; the two distinct dimensions of "seeking refuge in Zen" (Tao Chan) shape the underlying tone of Baochai’s personality—one that is "unfeeling yet moving." Xue Baochai and "The Parasitic Grass" demonstrate an intertextual correspondence in terms of imagery morphology and cultural core. The tension between the repression and the unrestrained growth inherent in parasitism influences Baochai's attitude toward worldly affairs. Serving as a concealed prophecy, the aria complements and intertwines with other omens associated with the character. Through the interplay of "heat toxin" versus "cold fragrance," and the paradox of the "timely Baochai" ultimately suffering from "untimeliness," the tragic fate of the "parasite" is vividly revealed. In Dream of the Red Chamber, "The Parasitic Grass" signifies not merely a state of existence but is also internalized into the character's spiritual world, establishing a unique literary paradigm of the parasitic grass.

Abstract. From the perspective of biopolitics and gender critique, the kinship system in Dream of the Red Chamber reveals a profound paradox in female authority. Within the novel, Grandmother Jia serves as the living embodiment of patriarchal ethics and an "institutional mother" of the great clan. Utilizing the authority inherent in patriarchal norms and her cultural capital, she employs a soft power model of "governance" aimed at harmonizing, uniting, and morally cultivating the family. In contrast, Wang Xifeng embodies the figure of a "power-driven actor." Her defining trait—zhi (忮), or "consuming ambition"—stems from complex origins; it is a proactive aggression born of the politicization of fear, with contention and control at its core. Historically, the reproductive order of the family and the ethical facade of harmony have constituted the hidden boundary within the patriarchal kinship system. The authority granted to women under this system functions as a "conditional loan." The fates of Grandmother Jia and Wang Xifeng illustrate two divergent outcomes determined by their respective degrees of alignment with this patriarchal logic: the former exemplifies the highest reward the system bestows upon women who safeguard its operation, while the latter's zhi, having transgressed this implicit boundary, subjects her to comprehensive discipline—encompassing ethical censure, loss of authority, and physical and psychological collapse. This study demonstrates that the patriarchal system sustains itself precisely through this mechanism of "conditional empowerment," which co-opts, utilizes, regulates, and ultimately disciplines women, thereby exposing the universal structural predicament faced by women within its confines.

Abstract. This study examines the speech of Granny Liu in Hongloumeng with the aim of identifying the sociolinguistic mechanisms that structure her interaction with other characters and reveal the circulation of values within the novel. To understand how this system operates, the work is interpreted as a semiotic system that requires analysing the context of interaction between an individual and their human environment (Halliday, 1978, p.147). Granny Liu’s speech events reveal a remarkable contextual adaptability: she alternates linguistic registers according to participants, setting, and communicative purpose, guided by filial piety and the pursuit of harmony. Although illiterate compared to the other educated ladies in the novel, her popular wisdom, pragmatic acuity, and mastery of instrumental aims position her as an ethical and discursive reference point. The results of the analysis show that Granny Liu provides a critical gateway to understanding the social dynamics of eighteenth-century China.

Abstract. This paper examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is narratively positioned in contemporary Chinese visual culture, focusing on the notable absence and reconfiguration of the trope of “AI rebellion.” While Western AI imaginaries have long framed artificial intelligence as a potentially autonomous subject whose rebellion dramatizes the limits of human control, Chinese AI narratives rarely center on such scenarios. Rather than interpreting this absence primarily as the result of censorship or technological immaturity, this study treats it as a meaningful narrative choice embedded in broader ethical and political rationalities. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Chinese science-fiction films and television dramas alongside policy documents and ethical guidelines, the paper argues that AI in Chinese narratives is predominantly constructed as a moral and technical mediator within an already constituted social order. Instances of malfunction, conflict, or crisis are typically attributed not to AI’s autonomous will, but to human error, institutional failure, or moral imbalance. In this framework, AI does not rebel against humanity; instead, moments of disruption function as signals of disorder within human governance itself, to be resolved through reintegration, regulation, or sacrifice. By situating these narrative patterns within traditions of relational ethics and governance-oriented understandings of technology, the paper shows how autonomy, responsibility, and ethics are redistributed between humans, institutions, and intelligent machines. AI is imagined less as a rival moral subject than as an instrument through which ethical order is stabilized and enacted. In the context of China Studies Between Worlds, this study highlights how Chinese AI narratives articulate an alternative technological imaginary that diverges from liberal-democratic assumptions centered on individual autonomy and rebellion. It concludes that contemporary global tensions in AI governance are not only institutional or regulatory, but also narrative in nature, rooted in different assumptions about where disorder originates and how it should be addressed.

Abstract. In China, ‘The English Bourgeois Revolution’ is a widely accepted interpretation of the seventeenth-century English Revolution. It was influential among intellectuals and political elites in the early twentieth century and remains part of history textbooks today. Although the term ‘the English Bourgeois Revolution’ is not widely accepted in academic circles, it was constructed as a political discourse in the first half of the twentieth century to support China’s revolutionary agenda. This article examines the formation and evolution of this discourse and analyzes the two contrasting images constructed by different political factions. The article is divided into four parts. The first section traces how the seventeenth-century English political events were regarded as a ‘revolution’—a new term introduced by Qi Chao Liang in the early 20th century. The second part examines how, in the context of the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, the English Revolution came to be understood as a civil rights or democratic revolution. The third part explores the crucial stage in the formation of ‘the English Bourgeois Revolution’ as a political discourse, focusing on the influence of Marxist publications. The final section compares the two contrasting images of ‘the English Bourgeois Revolution’ constructed by Sun Yat-sen and Marxism followers and discusses their effects. The article argues that the English Revolution of the seventeenth century was interpreted to serve the progress of the Chinese revolution in the early twentieth century. Although it was transformed into a political discourse, it still reflects a significant interaction between Western and Chinese political civilizations, leaving a profound mark on the modern political history of China.

Abstract. China’s urban neighbourhood (shequ) has become a central arena for the organisation of everyday governance. This significance was amplified during COVID-19, when grassroots actors delivered frontline services, enforced public health measures, and mediated residents’ needs. Yet the post-pandemic period raises a wider question: how do governance arrangements evolve when top-down institutional design intersects with local improvisation, uneven resources, and shifting expectations of participation? This paper addresses this question through a mixed-methods study of neighbourhood governance, drawing on document analysis, ethnographic participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and survey research conducted across selected neighbourhoods in Suzhou, Shanghai, and Nanjing. Analytically, it applies Giddens’ structuration theory to move beyond static actor-centred approaches and conceptualise governance as a recursive process shaped by the interaction of structure and agency. The findings highlight three dynamics. First, governance reforms do not produce uniform outcomes, but are adapted through local implementation processes. Second, emerging governance arrangements, particularly grid-based governance, have strengthened the role of intermediary actors in operationalising state authority through reporting, service delivery, mobilisation, and dispute mediation. Third, participation has expanded through both formal and informal channels but remains structurally conditioned by institutional and resource constraints. By treating the shequ as a governance locale rather than a mere administrative unit, the paper contributes a practice-based account of neighbourhood governance in post-pandemic China. It shows how governance is produced through the everyday interactions of state and non-state actors, highlighting the processes through which governance arrangements are reproduced, adapted, and occasionally reshaped over time.

Abstract. Overseas Chinese youth were important participants in wartime propaganda and mobilization during China’s War of Resistance against Japan. Recent works have focused on mapping diaspora associations and their capacities for mobilization. Yet less attention has been paid to the emotional and sensory dimensions of propaganda’s travel. Drawing on lived experience, this article adopts an approach integrating the histories of knowledge, emotion, and the senses and argues that national salvation propaganda knowledge operated through a dynamic process of circulation, production, translation, and enactment. Within this process, the Chinese language functioned as a material medium, stirred emotion, engaged the senses, and moved people to act. Individual emotional shifts and bodily sensations, lying hidden beneath wartime propaganda, could push the translation and enactment of propaganda knowledge to the breaking point. By tracing how wartime propaganda interacted with lived experience, this study not only transcends conventional political-ideological paradigms of propaganda but also extends the understanding of how national salvation propaganda circulated transregionally and translingually across the Southeast Asian diaspora.

Abstract. This paper puts the contemporary image deficit of China into long historical perspective, from the Jesuit idealisation of the 17th–18th centuries through the negative inversion of the long 19th century to the present. It argues that the most plausible single explanation of the current image gap is neither the foreign press nor a coordinated Western strategy, but the country's measurable position on two indices the international public has internalised — public-sector accountability and conditions of public expression — and examines domestic narrative production (live-streaming and television) inside contemporary China and what its inward-facing self-image contributes to its outward image.

Abstract. In China, rural women have long endured structural barriers to socioeconomic participation following marriage, and these barriers become even more noticeable after childbirth. In comparison with well-educated young unmarried women, they are disadvantaged due to their limited education attainment, the constraints of traditional gender roles that confine mothers to housework and childcare, as well as their older age and less favorable physical appearances, all of which hinder their job-hunting efforts. Nevertheless, the booming of digital economy has brought significant changes, as it features low entry barriers and welcomes anyone looking to engage in digital economy via live-streaming platforms, such as Taobao Live, Douyin, Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu and Kuaishou. Unlike the offline job market, live-streaming platforms place less emphasis on factors like education, age, physical appearance and childcare responsibilities. As such, these platforms have become vital spaces for economic opportunity, social connection, and self-expression for groups traditionally marginalized in mainstream economic discourse. Moreover, while doing live-streaming, rural women can leverage the strengths of rural people’s straightforward and honest character, and local resources and products. Yet, how live-streaming specifically empowers rural women (socially, psychologically, and economically) remains underexplored. This study seeks to explore the journey of how these women overcome initial barriers of family disapproval and psychological anxiety, gain acceptance from audiences, build a digital identity, and ultimately convert their rural social capital into economic benefits and even sustainable livelihoods.

Abstract. Female-oriented short-form dramas have emerged as a widely circulated category within China’s mobile media landscape and have become a significant type of platform-based content production. These works rely on highly compressed narrative structures and standardized genre motifs. Through plot patterns such as rebirth and revenge, system-assisted progression and transmigration survival, these works aim to achieve a fast-paced storytelling and immediate emotional payoff. Within this mode of production, narrative variations are narrowed into recognizable and replicable paths, making the viewing experience increasingly predictable and stable. Existing research on the culture of Chinese digital platforms mostly focuses on algorithmic distribution and industrial mechanisms, while gender studies pay more attention to the increased visibility of female images. However, when the image of a strong female protagonist becomes the default narrative starting point for female-oriented short dramas, an underdeveloped question emerges. Within the combined framework of platform-based production and template-driven narratives, female subjects may be organized into a calculable and replicable normative form. This paper develops its analysis around this question. Taking the Hongguo Short Drama (红果短剧) as a case study, this paper examines how its explicit division between male-oriented and female-oriented content provides an institutional foundation for the stabilization of narrative templates. Platform classification not only organizes viewing groups but also prescribes the forms of action and emotional trajectories expected of different gendered subjects. Through algorithmic distribution and industrialized production practices, the female subject is shaped into a highly recognizable and reproducible visual form. Based on this framework, the paper selects three female-oriented short dramas on Hongguo Short Drama (红果短剧) that are representative in terms of viewership and genre features. It further examines the patterns in female character construction and the repetition of plot structures. The study argues that the development of female protagonists in Chinese female-oriented short dramas often revolves around the continual performance of correct choices. Character growth unfolds through clearly defined stages, with conflicts emerging and resolving at a rapid pace. Strength shifts from lived complexity to procedural judgment and efficient action. Empowerment no longer appears as an open process of experience but takes the form of a repeatable narrative structure. As a result, the subject appears decisive and proactive while remaining confined within a predetermined trajectory of success. By integrating narrative form analysis with the study of platform structure, this paper examines how female-oriented short dramas are organized into a normalized form of gendered subjectivity within China’s digital platform context. Female-oriented short dramas are therefore not merely a popular media trend but also offer a concrete way to understand how contemporary Chinese platform culture participates in the construction of gendered subjectivity.

Abstract. As digital media grounded in embodied interaction, Action Role-Playing Games (ARPGs) transcode underlying code into visual, auditory, and haptic signals, delivering an embodied experience of combat and progression. Within this virtual space, avatars act as cybernetic extensions of the player's body. By manipulating these avatars, players receive multi-sensory feedback and construct synesthesia. These sensory experiences seamlessly integrate into the game's narrative, unconsciously reshaping players' perception of specific cultural contexts. Entering the global stage in 2024, Chinese AAA games shoulder the dual mission of disseminating Chinese culture and challenging international technical standards. Black Myth: Wukong visually reconstructs ancient architecture via photogrammetry, auditorily integrates traditional folk storytelling, and translates mythological spells—such as "Immobilize" and "A Pluck of Many"—into tangible, kinesthetic avatar actions. This allows players to achieve an imaginative identification with Chinese culture through the embodied journey of "The Destined One". Conversely, while WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers draws upon Sanxingdui civilization, Ancient Shu culture, and late Ming history, it heavily incorporates Cthulhu aesthetics into its visual and auditory design, with a haptic dimension bearing significant traces of "Soulslike" mechanics. This creates a sensory-cultural dislocation, rendering the presented Chinese history a distorted, spectacularized "floating signifier." Ultimately, for Chinese single-player AAA games, only when sensory logic aligns with cultural resources can the narrated Chinese stories evolve into an embodied experience that resonates with global players.

Abstract. Among the various editions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there exists a group whose layout is sixteen lines per half-leaf, with forty-one characters per line. These are twenty-juan editions, belonging to the abridged-text lineage, and fall within the “Heroic Chronicles group”, specifically the “earlier-expanded, later-abridged” sub-group. At present, six such editions have been identified. Of these, the Xi 4 copy and the copy held by the Harvard-Yenching Library are complete, while the remaining four are fragmentary. Furthermore, the Xi 4 copy shares the same printing blocks as the Zhang Jia copy, Xi 28 copy, and Xi 29 copy, whereas the Harvard copy shares the same blocks as the Xi 58 copy. In other words, the six sixteen-line, forty-one-character editions actually comprise two distinct editions: one represented by the Xi 4 copy (hereafter Edition I), and the other represented by the Harvard copy (hereafter Edition II). A comparison of the main texts of Edition I and Edition II shows that Edition I contains more accurate readings and smoother phrasing than Edition II. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Edition I served as the base text, or possibly the archetype, of Edition II.

Abstract. The Huawentang edition and the Xiaohuaxuan edition are two relatively important printed editions of the scholar-beauty novel Qingmeng Tuo, yet there exist significant differences between these two editions in terms of textual content and chapter-end commentaries. Compared to the Kangxi-era Xiaohuaxuan edition, which simplifies the chapter-end commentaries, omits the general comments, and excises elements such as character dialogues and actions from the text, the Huawentang edition is essentially consistent in textual content with the seven-volume Shunzhi edition held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the six-volume edition held at Peking University Library. Additionally, it is identical in its treatment of the character "玄" (Xuan) as a taboo character and in the rendering of the term "嚼蛆" (jue qu) in the third chapter. As for the "Yiyuan wuzhong" (a Series of Five Books from Yiyuan) edition from the Daoguang period, although its text also shows signs of abridgment, its narrative content is also closer to that of the Huawentang edition.Taking into account various factors—such as the evolution of Qingmeng Tuo from the early seven-volume edition to four-volume and six-volume editions, the possibility that the six-volume edition may also bear the commentary attribution of "Buyue zhuren" (Master Bu Yue), and the fact that the Xiaohuaxuan edition is not found in public or private collections in Japan—it can be inferred that the Huawentang edition likely dates from the Shunzhi to Kangxi period and is highly probable to be earlier than the Xiaohuaxuan edition.

Abstract. The Yiyuan Sizhong (漪園四種), engraved by Prince Li (Yong-en禮親王永恩) of the Qing Dynasty, has remained largely under-researched. While the Gudian xiqu cunmu huikao(古典戲曲存目彙考) acknowledges its existence as a Qianlong-era private edition containing four plays, a recent examination of the Harvard-Yenching Library edition reveals an additional volume, Du Languan（度藍關）, which provides crucial evidence for correcting extant bibliographic records. This study focuses on the textual structure of Siyou ji (四友記). Comprising fifty-five acts, the play features a unique structural core: from Act 12 to Act 43, it systematically progresses through the four seasons, with specific sequences dedicated to Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. This design distinguishes Siyou ji as the only known Chuanqi drama in Chinese theatrical history to utilize a four-season framework as its primary structural thread. By conducting a comparative analysis based on the Harvard edition, this paper aims to explore the significance of this seasonal structure within the context of operatic aesthetics and temporal narrative.

Abstract. 上海图书馆藏周显宗刻本《陶渊明集》以一早期刊本《三国演义》残叶为衬纸。通过分析残叶文本（普通异文、“十三从人”异文、文字推定、特殊标点“中圈”等），推定其可能处于壬子本已增加注释、未插增静轩诗的早期阶段，其版刻形式受北京刻本影响。 通过梳理周显宗的生平，推定“陶集”可能刊刻于嘉靖中后期。通过对《宝文堂书目》的著录、张映初藏书印、“陶集”修复方法等项的分析，推定“陶集”的修复与残叶的刊刻处于同一时期，残叶可能是山东刻本。 通过对残叶文本、版本的综合分析，推定上图藏《三国演义》残叶可能是明嘉靖中后期至万历前期（约1550至1580年代）的山东刻本。

Abstract. The pinnacle of Chinese classical novels, A Dream of Red Mansions, has become a classic model for digital humanities research due to its textual classicism, complex composition, and multifaceted issues. Since 1952, when Bernhard Karlgren pioneered quantitative research on A Dream of Red Mansions using mathematical statistics, the field has evolved over more than seventy years.The research in this field has shifted from being led by overseas scholars to being deeply cultivated by domestic scholars, upgrading from manual statistical word frequency analysis to multi-dimensional quantitative research driven by artificial intelligence, forming three core research topics: author and book writing process, narrative time and space, and character relationship network.This article systematically reviews the development of digital humanities research on A Dream of Red Mansions, focusing on the research results and academic debates on core issues such as author verification, spatiotemporal analysis, and character networks, analyzing common problems such as lack of version awareness, insufficient method innovation, and shallow integration of disciplines in research, combining cutting-edge technological trends such as natural language processing, machine learning, and social network analysis, it is proposed that future research needs to achieve a development path of problem diversification, version refinement, interdisciplinary methods, and technological depth.This study believes that the core value of digital humanities research in "Dream of the Red Chamber" is not to replace humanistic interpretation with technology, but to provide empirical support for traditional Redology through quantitative analysis, construct a complete research chain of “computational verification - humanistic interpretation - cultural dissemination”, and promote the transformation of Redology research from traditional literature verification to a new paradigm of “digital empowerment + depth of humanities”.

Abstract. 《红楼梦》中的大观园作为中国古典小说极具典范性的文学空间，承载着叙事功能、象征意蕴与人物命运逻辑。本研究以空间语义学为理论框架，结合文本细读与数字人文方法，对大观园的建筑布局、人物活动、情节关联等进行结构化标注，构建面向文学空间研究的大观园知识图谱。通过系统抽取120回文本中的建筑实体、空间关系及人物与场所的关联，将所得图谱以交互式可视化呈现，可揭示部分观测模式：如居民以怡红院为中心的放射状分布、悲剧人物在空间边缘的安置，以及大观园从乌托邦飞地向崩解之地的语义收缩轨迹。本文尝试以知识图谱为中介，聚焦空间句法（Space Syntax）分析，旨在为理解古典小说的空间诗学提供一种可视化的实证支持。

Abstract. 1934年，谢国桢《明清之际党社运动考》以“党社运动”内涵运及历史，此后的1948年，郭绍虞以《明代的文人集团》一文雏形文学社史，乃至民国学人推潮“坊社”体例构建文学史著。“党-社”成为文学书写新范式。这在方法范式多元化的21世纪，有必要从“党-社”角度重读中国古代文学。本文即以明清传奇文体为例，考察明清作家以党社语境介入文学的客观规律。明代传奇“曲海词山，于今为烈”，无论取材对象还是意旨思考皆与党社结亲，才子佳人爱情剧、神佛魔幻剧多受浸染。传奇作家关注党社时局表现在“朝之党”与“下之社”两个方面，具有“幽奇”“刺喻”“实录”性，在戏曲应效方面更具深刻性和普遍矛盾性。因此，当我们重新审视明清传奇爱情“主题-艺术-考证”的多重阐释时，深感传奇体党社语境的“温度”缺失。“党-社”范式可为古代文学研究拓展一条可行路径。

Abstract. Originated in Chicago in the 1980s, poetry slam is a performative form of poetry that requires poets to present their work on stage through voice and bodily movement and win the prize in a competition mechanism. Since 2010, this form has been popular in the field of contemporary Chinese poetry, where poets are confronted with the challenge of negotiating the relationship between poetry, voice, and performance on the stage. On the basis of it, this research examines two cases, the “Poets’ Mobile Unit” in mainland China and the “Poetry Slam” in Taiwan, to discuss the challenges poetry encounters in its transition from written text to stage performance, and how does the perceptual medium of voice help poets to the enable the transmedial translation between two different semiotic systems. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of medium and Anne Ubersfeld’s theory of theater performance, this research mainly examines the relationship between form and medium in poets’ performance scripts, video recordings, and interview materials. It argues that poetry slam should not be understood as a genre defined by either written text or performance, but an artistic practice that is positioned in a “middle ground” between text and performance, in which many factors are dynamically adjusted with each other. By highlighting the interplay between text, sound, and performance, this research provides a new perspective to understand the communication and innovative form of contemporary poetry on the scene, which can inspire further research of phonic poem writing in the future.

Abstract. Hong Kong writer Dung Kai-cheung depicts in his novella “Congming Shijie” the experiences of a blind boy named Zhang Juming and a deaf girl named Huicong. Juming and Huicong are fortunate to regain their sight and hearing, but having grown accustomed to darkness and silence, they find it difficult to adapt to their recovered abilities. Both are separated from their original world of the disabled and unable to integrate into the world of able-bodied people, thus consequently swinging between the two worlds. This study will explore how the "deficiency" of sound—hearing impairment—is depicted in the novel; what transformation occurs in the girl's "world" from the deficiency of sound to the restoration of sound; how this work achieves a distant observation through the novel's "simulation" technique described by Dung Kai-cheung—namely, how the first-person narrative, while vividly portraying the subject's experience, also creates a subtle sense of detachment and irony; and how sound contrasts with another sense—sight—to highlight itself. Finally, the study argues that, just as Huicong wanders in the ambiguous space between world of the hearing-impaired and the world of the hearing, the novella, through its depiction of the "lack" of sound, also transcends this "lack," thereby restoring a kind of "sound"—a supra-subjective "sound" of understanding, empathy, and a "sense of commonality."

Abstract. In 1932, the publication of the correspondence between Lu Xun and Xu Guangping, titled Letters between Two (Liang Di Shu), attracted widespread attention, with public discussion focusing on four main aspects. First, regarding Lu Xun's decision to publish their letters, reactions ranged from anticipation to disdain. Additionally, in contrast to Lu Xun’s renown as a literary giant, Xu Guangping was largely unknown to the public, and the release of the letters also served to publicly reveal their romantic relationship. Second, many sought to explore the personalities of the two correspondents through their letters. While Lu Xun was alive, such discussions centered on him; after his death, Xu Guangping gradually received more attention. Third, numerous readers perceived the passion and love embedded in the seemingly "ordinary" letters, categorizing their relationship into three stages. Finally, Letters between Two was not merely a collection of love letters; its exposure of social realities and its guidance for the youth were also recognized and esteemed by contemporaries.

Abstract. "New Southern Writing" has emerged as a prominent topic in contemporary Chinese literary studies, with its core characteristic being a profound concern for the "flowing and juxtaposed realities of life". This research aims to introduce the "mobility turn" theory—a significant paradigm shift in the 21st-century humanities and social sciences—into the study of "New Southern Writing" to transcend the limitations of stability, boundaries, and the "static bias" inherent in traditional regional literary criticism. The study first traces the conceptual evolution of "New Southern Writing," arguing that its inherent uncertainty and inclusiveness are direct manifestations of its mobility characteristics. Subsequently, the article constructs a dual-dimensional analysis framework encompassing "material" and "spiritual" mobilities. At the material level, it explores "tangible" movements such as urban transformation, urban flânerie, and the reorganization of social space triggered by the flow of capital and technology. It analyzes how writers such as Ge Liang, Lin Bai, and Wang William construct a unique "Southern Geographical Poetics" through visible spatial practices. At the spiritual level, it delves into "intangible" flows, including identity crises, the reconstruction of collective memory, and shifts in social strata caused by cross-regional migration, revealing the complex psychological landscapes of modernity in the works of Huang Jinshu and Chen Chongzheng. This study concludes that the perspective of mobility provides a dynamic critical tool for "New Southern Writing". It reveals how these writers transform unique local experiences into modern narratives of universal significance through mobility-based storytelling. This research not only expands the critical horizons of regional literature but also demonstrates the literary-historical significance of "New Southern Writing" in achieving a paradigm shift from "static regionalism" to "mobile regionalism".

Abstract. The New Sensation School is a significant component of Shanghai's Hai Pai literature, emerging in the late 1920s and reaching its peak in the early 1930s. It was China's first modernist literary movement. Influenced by Western and Japanese modernist literature, the school stood out for its innovative experimentation in language and technique, attracting considerable attention at the time. While other literary schools had yet to grasp the concept of modernity, the New Sensation writers began exploring and practicing modernist stylistic expressions. They extensively employed modern techniques such as stream of consciousness, montage, and synesthesia to portray the social environment of modern society, depict the psychology of contemporary characters, and reflect urban life. These efforts expanded the possibilities of Chinese literary creation and continuously pushed the boundaries of Chinese writing, revealing the Shanghai modernists' profound reflections on urban space and the consciousness of modern individuals. Moreover, they addressed a pressing question of the era: whether vernacular Chinese prose, still in its infancy, could effectively express modern life.

Abstract. This paper examines how Pema Tseden’s Snow Leopard is made visible, legible, and consumable on iQIYI within the broader conditions of platform capitalism in contemporary China. Rather than treating streaming platforms as neutral channels of distribution, the paper approaches iQIYI as a socio-technical infrastructure that actively mediates the circulation and interpretation of Tibetan New Wave cinema. Through a case study of Snow Leopard, it asks how Tibetan New Wave cinema negotiates visibility within a platform environment governed by recommendation systems, metadata classification, audience metrics, promotional interfaces, and commercial imperatives. The paper argues that the platformisation of Snow Leopard produces a form of “negotiated visibility.” On the one hand, iQIYI expands the film’s accessibility beyond the limited circuits of festival, arthouse, and specialist cinephile culture, allowing Tibetan language cinema to reach a broader national audience. On the other hand, this visibility is shaped by platform logics that reframe the film through searchable tags, genre categories, affective promotional language, and algorithmically organised recommendation pathways. The film’s complex meditation on human and animal relations, Tibetan lifeworlds, ecological ethics, and spiritual coexistence is therefore not simply transmitted to viewers, but reorganised within a platform economy of attention. By bringing together platform studies, Chinese media studies, and scholarship on ethnic representation, this paper contributes to debates on how minority cultural production is mediated in the age of streaming. It shows that platform capitalism does not necessarily erase subaltern or peripheral voices; rather, it renders them visible under specific technical, commercial, and ideological conditions. Snow Leopard thus becomes a crucial example for understanding how Tibetan cinema inhabits, negotiates, and partially exceeds the infrastructures that make it visible.

Abstract. Northeast Chinese films, hereinafter Northeast films, refer to the films deeply influenced by the rich culture of three provinces in Northeast China (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning). Northeast films, defined by their spatial setting and narrative content rooted in Northeast China, offer a unique lens to explore the interaction between cinematic representation and socio-cultural recognition. From Baudelaire's "flâneur" in the urban context to Lefebvre's theory of "production of space," spatial criticism has become equally significant as temporal studies. Within the realm of film arts, which inherently combines time and space, the concept of cinematic space has been enriched by Michael Dear, who incorporates and builds upon previous spatial theories and applies them innovatively to film analysis. While existing works on Chinese regional cinema often overlooks the Northeast, relevant studies on its spatial analysis remain fragmented—confined to post-2000 texts or isolated case studies, lacking systematic historical coverage and integration of multi-scalar power mechanisms. This research focuses on the evolution of urban narrative space in Northeast films and its connection to regional image construction and cultural recognition. Theoretically, it draws on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial production theory, analysing the spatial practice as lived routines, representations of space as planned official imagery, and representational spaces as lived symbolic experiences. This theoretical framework is further extended from the perspective of scale politics to decipher how national strategies including industrial policies and the Revitalize the Northeast campaigns, global capital flows, and local cultural agency collide and reshape the cinematic city across three divided stages: the Golden Age (until the 1980s), the Downturn Period (1980s to 21st century), and the Exploring Stage (21st century onwards). It addresses core questions about the changing visual characteristics of filmic urban spaces, their alignment with historical socio-economic contexts, and their role in shaping regional identity and audience perception. A multifaceted research methodology is employed, combining the use of a literature review, historical and comparative perspectives, fieldwork, case studies and so on. Firstly, a thorough literature review is conducted to gather relevant information on Northeast culture, film criticism, and historical perspectives on urban landscapes in Chinese films. Then the historical research methods are utilized to trace the development and transformation of urban space in Northeast China. This approach also contains a comparative analysis, providing a broader perspective on the uniqueness of Northeast Chinese filmmaking. Bridging Lefebvre’s framework and scale politics, this study fills gaps by systematically tracing spatial evolution across three historical stages, moving beyond fragmented post-2000 research. Its findings not only enrich regional film spatial studies but also offer actionable references for crafting authentic cultural narratives amid Northeast China’s revitalization, countering stereotypical representations to foster deeper socio-cultural recognition.

Abstract. In the field of literary sound studies, scholars often note that auditory elements are frequently overlooked due to visual-oriented focus. For instance, existing studies on Malaysian Chinese writer Ng Kim Chew often concentrate on themes of Chineseness and Nanyang representations, while neglecting the sound aspects of his work. To address this gap, focusing on Ng’s short story collection Rain, this research regards soundscapes and audionarratives as a lens through which to understand the historical folds and then teases out the significant contribution of sound narratives to Malaysian Chinese literature. The essay examines that the construction of Nanyang natural soundscapes in Rain expanded the mixed dimensions of time and space of Malaysian Chinese in the mid-20th century. The paper also uncovers Ng’s audionarratives reflected on the intergenerational aphasia of the Malaysian Chinese community through silence, portrayed cultural resilience through dialects, and conveyed historical anxieties through modern sounds such as revolutionary arguments and clocks, echoing his ideas on literary theory. Drawing on audionarratology, my reading compares his sound narratives to other Malaysian Chinese novels, which reflected different local care and historical awareness.

Abstract. This article examines how contemporary Hong Kong cinema practices a de-identificatory dark ecological writing through its visual engagement with urban remainder, focusing on two films by director Cheang Pou-soi: Limbo (2021) and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024). Both films share a persistent concern with the dark material spaces expelled from mainstream urban order, and with the failure of identity that occurs within them. Drawing on dark ecology and Sinophone studies, this article demonstrates how, in the legal vacuum of the Walled City, identity's legitimacy is displaced by embodied practice; and how, in Limbo's waste-saturated ecology, the ontological boundary between human and non-human is radically flattened. Together, Cheang's two formally disparate films gesture toward a cinematic possibility that transcends Hong Kong's current binary identity anxiety—replacing ‘who am I’ with ‘I survive here’—and offer a material-ecological supplement to the concept of ‘locality’ within Sinophone studies.

Abstract. Abstract: Chapter 12 of *Dream of the Red Chamber*, "Wang Xifeng's Poisonous Scheme of Unrequited Love; Jia Tianxiang Gazes into the Mirror of Love and Lust," has traditionally been regarded as an allegory with a "discouraging lust" message. However, if we combine it with the "Mirror Stage Theory" of 20th-century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and re-examine it in contrast to contemporary generative AI and virtual reality (VR) culture, the symbolic meaning of "The Mirror of Love and Lust" far exceeds the scope of traditional moral education. This article argues that "The Mirror of Love and Lust" is not only a mirror reflecting desire and death, but also a cultural device with the functions of "projecting desire" and "generating illusions," and its operating mode shows a striking similarity to the mechanism of today's AI algorithms. This article first points out that the core problem revealed by Lacan's mirror theory lies in the fact that the "subject" is built upon a misperception of the mirror; what people love is often not the other person, but the "ideal self" reflected by the other. Re-examining Jia Rui's infatuation with Wang Xifeng based on this, we can find that what Jia Rui truly indulges in is not necessarily Wang Xifeng herself, but rather the self-illusion generated by Wang Xifeng as a mirror of desire. Therefore, Wang Xifeng is not merely a fictional character, but more like a highly sensitive "desire algorithm" capable of accurately responding to, amplifying, and manipulating the deepest emotional needs of the viewer. Secondly, this article further views "The Mirror of Love and Lust" as a classical version of a "generative illusion system." The image of Wang Xifeng appearing in the mirror is not objective reality, but a seductive projection instantly generated based on the viewer's desires. The description of Jia Rui "swaying into the mirror" is not merely watching, but an immersive virtual experience. This structure, composed of mirror, desire, and immersion, highly corresponds to today's technological and cultural phenomena such as AI-generated images, deepfakes, AI-powered emotional companions, and VR virtual spaces. Furthermore, this article reinterprets the profound philosophical significance of the two sides of the "Mirror of Love and Lust." The front of the mirror symbolizes the pleasurable illusions, ideal projections, and sensual gratification fed by algorithms; the skull reflected on the back symbolizes nihilism, death, and the collapse of subjectivity. The Taoist's saying, "Do not look at the front," actually contains a profound warning against humanity's mechanism of indulging in illusions. Therefore, Jia Rui's death is not merely the result of uncontrolled lust, but also the collapse of the subject's loss of control within the system that generates self-desire.

Abstract. Medicine and narrative are closely related, and legendary literature, with its unique narrative tension, has become an important carrier for presenting disease phenomena, doctor-patient relationships, and social medical landscapes. Interpreting “The Peony Pavilion” from the perspective of “the history of life medicine”, Du Liniang's lovesickness is not only a true portrayal of the medical scene in the Ming Dynasty, but also a social metaphor that showcases identity dilemmas, the role of doctors, and ethical morals. The binary opposition between upper level Confucian doctors and peripheral shamans in the text not only reflects the phenomenon of class differentiation in the local medical system of the late Ming Dynasty, but also exposes the game of knowledge power in the medical field. This provides a new interpretive path for understanding the intertextual relationship between disease writing in literary narratives and social medical history

Abstract. Since its emergence in the Yuan dynasty, Xixiang Ji 西廂記 (The romance of the western chamber) has been attributed to Wang Shifu 王實甫 (1260-1307). It was not until the Chenghua era 成化 (1465–1487) of the Ming dynasty that questions regarding its authorship began to arise, subsequently sparking debates over the “four-volume” versus “five-volume” structure of the play and the admiration of the act “the Dream of the Straw Bridge” 草橋驚夢 as its conclusion. This paper examines the influence of the Buddhist revival in the late Ming on traditional drama, tracing the origins and development of the argument for concluding the play with the “the Dream of the Straw Bridge”. It posits that the late Ming vogue for discussing Buddhism and engaging in Chan shaped literati’s reinterpretations of the structure and underlying meaning of Xixiang Ji. The paper focuses on two extant annotated editions attributed to Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521-1593) : the Tianshuiyue shanfang bei xixiang cangben 田水月山房北西廂藏本and the Chongke dingzheng yuanben pidian huayi bei xixiang 重刻訂正元本批點畫意北西廂, both from the Wanli era 萬曆 (1573–1620). These works are identified as the earliest late-Ming examples that, rooted in the philosophical interplay of “dream” and “awakening”, judge the first four volumes and the fifth volume in terms of their structural and thematic quality. Furthermore, this paper explores other annotated editions from the late Ming, including the Xin juan Li Zhuowu yuan ping xixiang ji 新鐫李卓吾原評西廂記, San xiansheng heping yuanben bei xixiang 三先生合評元本北西廂, Citan qingwan: Panke Shuoren zenggai dingben 詞壇清玩·槃薖碩人增改定本, Huizhen liu huan 會真六幻 by Min Qiji 閔齊伋 (1580-1662), as well as the Diliu caizi shu xixiang ji 第六才子書西廂記 by Jin Shengtan金聖嘆 (1608-1661). By investigating this trend of interpreting Xixiang Ji through a Buddhist lens, the paper reveals how this perspective not only shaped contemporary evaluative practices but also fostered the creation of a distinct category of editions informed by Buddhist thought. Ultimately, using the reinterpretation of Xixiang Ji as a case study, this paper delves into the dynamic interaction between Buddhism and drama in the late Ming, driven by the literati. It examines how Buddhist thought gradually became “public knowledge” within the cultural framework of the literati and actively “participated” in the literary and cultural activities surrounding the interpretation, critique, and publication of dramatic works.

Abstract. The table of contents is a core element in the book compilation process, which has the dual function of revealing the author's intention to compile and providing readers with an efficient text retrieval tool. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the prosperity of opera creation and commercial publishing, the catalogue compilation of various opera monographs and anthologies showed a diversified development trend. Among them, the naming of works included in the opera catalogue is a specific cultural symbol, and its formal characteristics and metaphorical connotations have significant research value. However, previous studies have mostly analyzed the naming of opera works and their strategic meanings in isolation, and have not been able to effectively use the arrangement style, bibliographic information and framework structure provided by the catalogue itself. Therefore, taking the Ming and Qing opera catalogues as the starting point and reference frame, this paper analyzes the naming characteristics of specific opera works in the catalogue, and on this basis, draws on the relevant theories of cultural semiotics and social history, compares the three types of opera catalogues of official repair, workshop engraving and private compilation, and explores the naming and presentation of opera works in the context of different compilation subjects and times, which may be regarded as a new research approach.

Abstract. 敦煌本《王昭君变文》是研究唐代蜀地讲唱艺术的重要样本。学界虽已认定该文本源于蜀地昭君转变故事，但对其背后蜀地讲唱的演艺形态与文本特征尚缺乏系统研究。本文以敦煌本《王昭君变文》为中心，结合吉师老、李远、王建等蜀地诗人作品及历史文献，采用内外互证方法，复原唐代蜀地讲唱艺术的独特风貌。研究发现，蜀地昭君讲唱呈现三重典型特征：其一，女性艺人深度参与创作与表演，形成独特的第一人称女性叙事视角；其二，讲唱表演高度依赖图文配合，呈现手持画卷、边展边唱的视听融合形态；其三，文本呈现明显雅化倾向，在语言修辞、情感表达等方面达到较高水准。这些特征的形成，与蜀地才女传统、造纸绘画工艺、文人活动等独特文化生态密切相关。本研究在蜀地本土讲唱文本难以追溯的困境下，探索了以外部流传文本逆推本地文化景观的研究路径，为区域性民间文艺研究提供了方法论参考。

Abstract. The movement notation of Kunqu performance of Qing dynasty have unique features—individuality, performative dynamism, and functional specificity—that require specialized collation and analysis methods. To systematize them, classify by repertoire and build a multidimensional framework integrating role types, textual variants, and supporting documents. This enables clearer reconstruction of historical performances and tracking of repertoire change over time. Methodologically, move beyond textual criticism and literary studies. Instead, adopt an intangible cultural heritage framework that treats the notation as living, embodied practice—not static text. This links notation directly to performance, reveals how repertoire evolves, and highlights its cultural, aesthetic, and educational value.

Abstract. This paper reexamines the political meanings of the criticism directed at He Zhen (何震, 1884-1920?), focusing on Feng Ziyou(馮自由,1882-1958)’ s use of the term gongfu-gongqi (“communal husband and wife”,公夫公妻) and the rumors of adultery surrounding her. Rather than asking whether He Zhen advocated “free love” or whether these rumors were factually true, this study treats such claims as representations produced by specific political actors and contexts. It asks why and how these negative images of He Zhen were constructed, and what they reveal about political conflict and gendered judgment in late Qing and early Republican China. The paper first situates Feng Ziyou’s critique within the ideological climate of the 1930s, when gongfu-gongqi had become a charged term commonly used to denounce socialists and communists. By labeling He Zhen—widely regarded as an anarchist—with this term, Feng not only moralized her image but also aligned her retrospectively with ideological enemies he opposed after the First National Congress of the Kuomintang(國民黨) in 1924. This stance was closely connected to Feng’s lifelong anti-Soviet nationalism and his dissatisfaction with factionalism within the Kuomintang. The paper then traces the origins of adultery rumors about He Zhen to Zhang Taiyan (章太炎,1869-1936), arguing that they stemmed from both financial disputes during the 1908 defection crisis and intense conflicts over every day domestic practices when Zhang lived with He zhen and her husband Liu Shipei (劉師培,1884-1919). By examining these layered interpersonal tensions, this study demonstrates that the moralized image of He Zhen was not determined by her own beliefs or behavior but was instead shaped through strained political and personal relationships. Ultimately, this paper argues that gendered scandal functioned as a political language through which revolutionary conflicts were articulated, revealing the entanglement of private life, moral judgment, and political struggle in modern Chinese intellectual history.

Abstract. In the late Qing dynasty, the first generation of Chinese women studied in Japan, initiating Chinese women’s overseas education. Seeking to advance women’s social status, they founded magazines, translated Japanese works, and compiled textbooks based on their studies. Sun Qingru (孫清如), who studied at Seijo Girls School (成女学校) in Tokyo from 1906 to 1907, was among the contributors to the Magazine of the New Chinese Woman (『中国新女界雑誌』). Within a single year, she translated and compiled the content she had studied at Seijo into a ten-volume Female Instructor’s Lecture (『女子師範講義』) in March 1908; three volumes of this work later passed the textbook review of the Qing Ministry of Education, indicating a degree of institutional recognition while also revealing the constraints under which women’s educational materials were evaluated. However, despite their significance, issue no. 6 of the magazine has received little sustained scholarly attention, and apart from the first two volumes, the textbooks have remained virtually inaccessible to former researchers. The materials examined in this study thus open new possibilities for reexamining the content, circulation, and limitations of gender knowledge in late Qing women’s education. Building on the author’s previous study of the networks of Chinese residents in Japan formed around women’s education, the present study shifts its focus to an analysis of educational content and gender knowledge. Drawing on discussions of Seijo Girls School in issue no. 6 of the magazine and a close reading of the textbooks, this study examines how pedagogical ideas, moral values, and gender norms were selected, translated, and reorganized in the process of knowledge transmission. Particular attention is paid to the Japanese educators involved in the instruction and compilation of this textbook series, situating their professional backgrounds and understandings of women’s education within broader educational and intellectual currents in Meiji Japan. Through this perspective, women’s education in the late Qing dynasty is reassessed as a historically situated and structurally constrained configuration of gender knowledge: while the Female Teacher Training Lectures embodied aspirations for women’s advancement and participation in national reform, they simultaneously exposed the limitations imposed on female students, especially their exclusion from forms of knowledge that would have enabled direct participation in state-building.

Abstract. While China's Birth Control Policy has been a well-studied research topic, few scholars have paid close attention to the medical handbooks that accompanied the birth control campaign during the process. These handbooks, compiled to help local cadres and medical staff to carry out birth control surgeries, were critical materials for the barefoot doctors and grassroots physicians. They were published mostly between the 1960s and the 1970s, when the Chinese Communist State started to seriously implement birth control policy on the ground. What particularly stands out in these handbooks is the section of FAQ (wenti jieda), in which the editors provided detailed answers to all kinds of responses to related questions on birth control. These questions would include the usage of IUDs and condoms, as well as on health-related issues of practicing contraception. Hence, in my paper, I utilize and study these medical handbooks, specifically on their FAQ section. By examining the form and the content of these FAQ sections, I argue that these sections served as quasi-catechism in the handbook. They helped to train the medical practitioners with sufficient medical knowledge on birth control surgery, as well as anticipating questions from the patients in various scenarios. In this way, the FAQ section not only illuminated the process of knowledge circulation among the local cadres and medical staffs, but it also advanced the professionalization among practitioners in the process.

Abstract. This paper examines how women were incorporated into the literacy campaign in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, focusing on the gendered practices through which a formally universal and gender-neutral policy was made workable in a deeply gender-stratified society. While the post-1949 literacy campaign has often been evaluated in terms of educational outcomes, existing studies have paid limited attention to the gendered processes through which literacy education was organized, adjusted, and experienced. Drawing on policy documents, organizational reports, and teaching materials, this paper argues that women’s participation in the literacy campaign was neither automatic nor straightforward. Structural constraints rooted in women’s everyday lives—such as domestic labor, childcare responsibilities, bodily conditions related to reproduction, and norms restricting gender mixing—frequently rendered standardized literacy programs inaccessible to married and working women. These limitations exposed the gap between abstract policy design and social reality. The paper highlights the mediating role of the All-China Democratic Women’s Federation (ACDWF) in bridging this gap. Acting as a key intermediary between state policy and local society, ACDWF cadres actively reconfigured literacy practices by establishing women-specific classes, adjusting schedules and teaching methods, and reformulating mobilization discourses. Educational content was gendered through the incorporation of maternal health, hygiene, and household management, while mobilization strategies translated political ideals such as equality and liberation into terms resonant with women’s lived experiences. Rather than treating women’s literacy classes as a stable educational institution, this study conceptualizes literacy education as a gendered political practice. It demonstrates how the ACDWF’s mediation enabled the literacy campaign to function without fundamentally transforming the underlying gender order, thereby revealing the ambivalent relationship between women’s participation, state mobilization, and gendered social structures in early socialist China.

Abstract. This article revisits the popular figure of the “qiao girl” during the Great Leap Forward in order to advance discussions of women in the early socialist period between two existing lines of inquiry: critiques of “degendering” and historical approaches to gender. It argues that the qiao girl was not a thoroughly degendered female labor model. On the contrary, qiao—a quality long associated with women in Chinese culture—acquired new political significance in the context of mass technological innovation during the Great Leap Forward. By examining qiao girl narratives in newspapers and periodicals, production handbooks, dance, literature, and film, and by analyzing the skill sequence from “skilled hand” to “qiao hand” to “all-round hand,” this article contends that women’s qiao was fashioned as a form of skill combining dexterity, meticulousness, and creativity, yet it remained constrained by three mechanisms: first, the visibility of skill was embodied; second, technical authority continued to lean toward men; third, the value of women’s skill took male labor performance as its implicit point of reference and was organized as a compensatory response to presumed differences in physical strength. The qiao girl narrative of the Great Leap Forward therefore does not offer a one-dimensional story of women’s liberation. Rather, it reveals the complexity and contradictions involved in the formation of women’s skilled subjectivity in the early socialist period.

Abstract. Western Sinology and Chinese studies have long been characterized by a tendency to interpret Chinese history through the lens of modern universalism. By applying categories such as "Chinese religion," "millennialism," or "racism," scholars often frame Chinese phenomena as local variations of universal patterns. While this approach aligned with the post-Cold War era's global order—anchored in a monolithic notion of human nature—it struggles to engage with the current deterioration of that order. Relying on the analytical categories of the "Modern Constitution" effectively petrifies the very frameworks that require critical scrutiny. Conversely, the Guoxue (National Learning) movement attempts to reclaim Chinese intellectual autonomy, yet frequently remains ensnared within the same Modern Constitution it purports to challenge. Often, this results in an anachronistic secularization of tianxia. Although there are recent attempts to introduce the "ontological turn" into the understanding of tianxia, they often lapse into essentialist identity-building, sanitizing Chinese history and reducing the multifaceted system to a narrow Confucian ideology. This paper proposes a synthesis, rooted in the ontological turn, that expands the notion of tianxia by incorporating marginalized, non-Confucian source material. I illustrate this methodology by examining the problem of utopia/millennialism and xenophobia/racism in pre-modern China, arguing that moving beyond modern universalism requires integrating the "darker" aspects of Chinese cosmology—often dismissed as mere superstition—into a more reflexive "cosmopolitical" discourse.

Abstract. This paper aims to answer how modern Chinese literature came into being. Doing so illustrates the key role Chinese literature has played in the modern transformation of Chinese thought. The article depicts a paradigm shift in which a new literary paradigm replaced the Confucian paradigm during the transformation of Chinese thought from tradition to modernity. In traditional society, Confucianism had the highest discourse power on almost every aspect of the Chinese society including the universe’s formation, the politics and the people's life. After the wane of Confucianism in modern times, a new literary paradigm provided by the May Fourth new culture movement emerged to take over the intellectual role of Confucianism in society. In doing so, Chinese literature completed its own modernization, and more importantly, played a pivotal role in the modern transformation of Chinese thought.

Abstract. In the history of Confucianism, Wang Yangming particularly emphasized the importance of "wisdom" among the Four Sprouts through his concept of "Pure Knowing." However, his philosophy is often regarded as intuitionism and anti-intellectualism, neglecting its characteristics of deliberation and practical reasoning. The skill model, exemplified by Dreyfus and Annas, offers a new perspective on understanding the intuitive and rational aspects of practical wisdom. Meanwhile, the theory of moral sensibility, represented by McDowell and Wiggins, understands practical wisdom as a mature state of moral sensibility. Sensibility can be reasonably viewed as a kind of besire—a rationalized perception capable of directly capturing reasons and generating action. As Huang Yong and Ivanhoe reveal, this interpretation of practical wisdom, which transcends traditional rationalism, has more room for communication with the genuine compassion and the unity of reason and emotion in Wang Yangming's philosophy of knowing right from wrong. However, Wang Yangming's moral metaphysics differs significantly from naturalism; his practical wisdom ultimately manifests as metaphysical wisdom rather than simply empirical ethical wisdom.

Abstract. Seneca believes that people should not be angry at feeling trivial disdain; Nussbaum agrees with this view, but she also thinks Seneca’s argument is incomplete. Because besides contempt, people also suffer real harm. However, Nussbaum, based on the utility theory, argued that anger does not have a constructive effect in building the future, but rather replaces anger’s function with law. Nussbaum’s shift has completely transformed the understanding of anger, which originally centered on the relationship between emotion and reason, into a social welfare issue, partially obscuring classical philosophers’ exploration. Early research based on the opposition between emotion and reason, proposed two different arguments: completely eliminating anger and restraining anger. However, if we consider that emotion is essentially opposed to reason, then on one hand, rational restraint of passion becomes impossible, and passion is always possible to be impulsive; on the other hand, completely eliminating passion prevents reason from being expressed emotionally, leaving reason with no place to settle. The Confucian perspective on the difference between renxin(human heart) and daoxin (moral heart) clears obstacles to understanding the relationship between anger and morality. Renxin refers to the functions of the heart, including cognition, emotion, and thought. Renxin is a neutral term, and when its function is guided by reason, it is called daoxin, which possesses moral attributes.

Abstract. This paper addresses a central interpretive puzzle in Wang Yangming’s philosophy: how can washi 瓦石 (tiles and stones)—paradigmatically inanimate and insensate objects—be said to possess liangzhi 良知 (innate knowing)? Three prevailing approaches—the ontological, the cosmological, and the embodied—each illuminate an important dimension of human–thing communion, but none sufficiently isolates its normative ground. I argue that innate knowing is better understood as what makes the relationship between humans and things possible. Through a close reading of the fourfold progression (child–bird/beast–grass/tree–tile/stone) in Yangming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning (大学问), I defend a relational interpretation: innate knowing is neither the ontological ground of existence, nor the cosmic medium through which qi 气 circulates, nor a bodily capacity for sensory communion, but the ground that makes responsive communion (gantong 感通) between humans and all things possible. The appearance of tiles and stones marks the extension of benevolence beyond the community of life into what I term, as an analytical device, the ‘community of existence’—revealing Yangming’s distinctive contribution to the Neo-Confucian project of "forming one body with all things": a shift from generative, intuitive, or rational unity to relational unity.

Abstract. This article analyzes the theory of Qi on the construction of the isomorphic relationship between heaven and man in Zhu Xi's朱熹 philosophy, namely yuan heng li zhen（元亨利贞origin, prosperity, advantage and uprightness）and ren yi li zhi（仁义礼智benevolence, justice, courtesy and wisdom）. When Zhu Xi constructed the relationship between the four virtues四德of heaven and man, the way of heaven, human affairs, mind-nature and human emotions were all based on the fours.The Heavenly Virtue yuan heng li zhen achieves the purpose of "creating all things" through the pervading qi（气material force） of heaven and earth, while the Human Virtue ren yi li zhi achieves the purpose of "accomplishing all things" through the participation of specific individuals and their emotions. The virtues of heaven and man each have specific temperament aspects, and correspond one by one in the atmosphere of activity. In the process of accomplishing all things in human nature, the virtue of the original heart is manifested as the four beginnings of feelings四端之情, presenting as the loving kindness of "righteous emotions" that are moved, right and wrong, restrained, and decisive, becoming a stable driving force rooted in the nature of the Tao and achieving human success. The seven emotions beyond the four feelings also belong to the common human emotions, becoming naturally accompanying, accommodating, and settled emotions that vary from person to person, matter to individual intelligence and thoughts. They will naturally disappear and transform into the four feelings due to the subject's understanding and perception of li（理principle）, and participate in human affairs. Finally, the two kinds of isomorphic and identical four virtues realize the consistent value meaning of sheng（生production）between heaven and man from the perspective of qi, both externally in parallel and internally.

Abstract. Although Wang Yangming’s philosophy does not centre on metaphysics, its ethical theory are inextricably linked to its underlying metaphysical views, making his metaphysical stance a hotly debated topic: is Wang Yangming a realist or an idealist? This paper revisits Wang’s metaphysics from an ethical perspective, offering a new entry point to this issue. First, scholars like David Tien and JeeLoo Liu argue for realism, noting that Wang’s “Li-Qi” framework allows li (principle) and qi (vital energy) to exist independently of the mind. Wang states “no things outside the mind,” but Tien sees this as rhetorical exaggeration for teaching; Liu uses Locke’s primary-secondary qualities distinction to interpret the “flowering tree on the cliff” example as denying only secondary qualities (e.g., color) depend on the mind, not the object’s existence itself. These views emphasize Wang Yangming's ambiguity in denying independent existence. However, this paper counters from the ethical foundation, arguing for idealism. In ethics, Wang Yangming posits liangzhi (innate knowledge/conscience) as the moral foundation, where liangzhi is mind and principle. If principle exists outside the mind (realism), morality lacks internal basis. This contradicts Wang Yangming's unity of “heavenly principle as human mind,” leading to moral heteronomy. Therefore, liangzhi as moral ontology must be intrinsic to the mind. The conclusion asserts: Wang Yangming's metaphysics, though ambiguous, leans idealistic from ethical needs, better supporting an internal moral system. This perspective clarifies debates and enriches Yangming studies, providing insights for contemporary Chinese philosophical methodology.

Abstract. With the rise of the New Cultural History and feminist geography, the spatial practices of women in traditional societies have become an important topic in academic research. Constrained by the Confucian ethic of "men governing external affairs and women managing internal household matters," ancient women were mostly confined to the domestic sphere. However, Buddhist nuns in the Tang Dynasty, relying on their religious identity, were able to break through gender shackles, move independently in public spaces, and become a special female group crossing the public and private domains. The travels of Buddhist nuns in the Tang Dynasty were both passive and active: they migrated passively to escape wars and avoid policies of suppressing Buddhism, and also traveled actively for religious practice and study, promoting Buddhism, and handling family affairs. Their main mode of travel was walking, supplemented by riding in carriages and boats, which was doubly restricted by religious precepts and gender characteristics. For accommodation, monasteries were their first choice, with private residences and the outdoors as supplements. During their journeys, they faced multiple risks such as epidemics, beast attacks, and gender-based violence. Restoring the travel landscape of Tang Buddhist nuns provides a new perspective for examining their religious practice and living space, and also helps deepen the understanding of social customs, gender order, and the development of Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty.

Abstract. This article examines how the Qing poet and compiler Sun Sunyi’s 孫蓀意 Xianchan xiaolu 銜蟬小錄 (compiled in 1799 and published posthumously in 1819), an eight-juan compendium devoted to cats, transforms domestic attachment into a mode of scholarly knowledge. Scholarship on late-imperial women’s writing has focused chiefly on poetry and anthologies, leaving women’s participation in bibliographic and classificatory genres such as pulu 譜錄 comparatively understudied. Through close readings of the work’s paratexts, citation practices, authorial notes, and classificatory structure, together with comparison to Wang Chutong’s Mao sheng 貓乘 and Huang Han’s Mao yuan 貓苑, this article reconstructs the gendered conditions under which feline knowledge was assembled. The male-compiled works establish legitimacy through bibliographic range, textual erudition, and claims of practical utility. Sun, by contrast, constructs a “deep” domestic archive from household books, intimate observation, family verse, and the visual-literary culture of cat painting. Her first-person annotations move between inherited textual authority and encounters with living cats, treating bodily features and temperament as evidence while incorporating companionship and loss into the compendium’s classificatory field. I call this practice an “affective taxonomy”: attachment does not displace classification but guides the selection, comparison, and preservation of knowledge, even as Sun negotiates inherited anxieties about pleasure in “minor” subjects. The book’s posthumous family edition further shows that kinship and mourning were material conditions of its preservation and transmission. Xianchan xiaolu thus relocates scholarly authority to the household, demonstrating how care, observation, and editorial labor enabled women to participate in Qing knowledge production beyond lyric genres.

Abstract. Anchored in the Biographies of Buddhist Nuns (Biqiuni Zhuan) and corroborated by epitaphs, official histories, legal codes, and anecdotal literature, this study examines how Buddhism offered women an alternative life path beyond traditional domestic roles during the Wei-Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties (ca. 3rd–6th centuries). Focusing on the dynamic trajectory of nuns who navigated the porous boundaries between the household and the monastery, this research argues that monastic renunciation was not a mere withdrawal from the world, but a continuous process of negotiation with secular society. By analyzing the motivations for renunciation—ranging from widowhood and political turmoil to spiritual aspiration—the study illuminates the constrained agency women exercised within structural limitations. It further investigates the enduring economic and kinship ties nuns maintained with their natal families post-ordination, demonstrating how the convent functioned as an “alternative kinship structure.” Finally, the study explores how eminent nuns leveraged their religious authority to engage in public endeavors such as preaching, temple patronage, and writing, thereby accumulating social capital and historical visibility. Ultimately, this research contends that the monastery, serving as a “third space” between the family and the state, fundamentally reconfigured the life courses and social networks of medieval women, offering a crucial gendered perspective on the interplay between religious life and the secular order.

Abstract. Following Willhelm Grube’s and Eduard Erkes’s History of Chinese Literature, the German Protestant missionary Richard Wilhelm’s Die Chinesische Literatur (1926) was the third history of Chinese literature produced within German Sinology. In Die Chinesische Literatur , Wilhelm extensively selects and translates canonical Confucian classics such as the Lun yü(The Analects), Shang Shu(The Book of Documents), and Shi Jing(The Book of Poetry), and offers creative transformations and interpretive reframings of these texts through a Western cultural lens. This is reflected in several dimensions: highlighting the ultimate values of Confucian and Daoist foundational texts; expounding the metaphysical aspirations embedded in theLun yü; interpreting the mysterious qualities of the Shang Shu; and rendering the theistic and mandate-centered worldview of the Shi Jing. As a translator and cultural ferryman between China and Germany, Wilhelm’s cultural outlook—aimed at “östlichen und westlichen Denkens vereinigt werden können”—profoundly shaped his approach to translation and interpretation. He conducts intertextual translation of ancient Chinese literary allusions and adopts a generally domesticating strategy when dealing with Confucian and Daoist classics, favoring overall paraphrase and expansive, interpretive translation. From the perspective of cultural translation studies, Wilhelm was not merely a linguistic converter; rather, he was a mediator and negotiator of cultural exchange between China and Germany—and indeed between China and the West more broadly. His classical interpretations in Die Chinesische Literatur continue the tradition of missionary translations of Chinese canonical texts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, while also reflecting the new developments in missionary Sinology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Examining Wilhelm’s translational practices and cultural interpretations within the context of Sino-German cultural exchange thus helps illuminate the intellectual significance of civilizational mutual learning in cross-cultural settings.

Abstract. In the latter half of the 20th century, the intellectual achievements of modern Chinese aesthetics entered the research purview of Euro-American sinologists. Among these scholars, Peter Button stands out as one of the few who turned his attention to Cai Yi's aesthetics, particularly focusing on Cai Yi's concepts of "image" and "typicality," which became central to Button's interpretive work. In the early 20th century, the concept of "typicality" was introduced and developed in China against the backdrop of Western learning spreading eastward. Grounded in the idea of global aesthetic modernity, Button conducted comparative analyses, juxtaposing Heidegger's and Cai Yi's treatments of "typicality," as well as contrasting Whitman's notion of "archetype" with Cai Yi's concept of "typicality." His work offers alternative theoretical perspectives and research directions for re-evaluating the historical significance and value of Cai Yi's aesthetic thought.

Abstract. Reinhard Emmerich's History of Chinese Literature, published in 2004, is a German-language history of Chinese literature jointly authored by five German scholars. Centered on Emmerich's editorial principles of the "separation of literary history from general history" and of presenting Chinese literature to a general readership, the volume assigns each of the five contributors responsibility for one historical period of Chinese literary development. Shaped both by these overarching editorial guidelines and by the individual scholarly interests of the contributors, the work brings together multiple perspectives on literary history. At the same time, this plurality of approaches also results in a certain lack of methodological and perspectival consistency.

Abstract. A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Luo-yang is an important classic written by Yang Xuanzhi, a Northerner, against the backdrop of the North-South confrontation. In this work, the author frequently employs derogatory terms when recording matters related to the Southern Dynasties, such as “吴儿 (Wú’ér),” “鱼鳖之徒 (yú biē zhī tú),” “伪齐 (Wěi Qí),” and “夷 (Yí)”. When such historical texts, embedded with political stances and cultural biases, enter the English-speaking world, how the translator handles these political derogations becomes a crucial issue in cross-cultural translation. This paper adopts a translation criticism perspective, taking Wang Yitong’s English translation of A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Luo-yang as the primary analytical object. It focuses on how the translation deals with the political derogatory terms directed at the Southern Dynasties and neighboring ethnic groups, examining the translator’s treatment of these sensitive lexical items, which serve as linguistic carriers of Hua-Yi华夷 (Civilization and Barbarism) and Zheng-Run正闰 (legitimate succession and illegitimate succession) conceptions. The findings reveal a significant conceptual deformation in Wang’s translation: renderings of the same type of derogatory term are inconsistent across contexts, with the pejorative force sometimes preserved, sometimes weakened, and at other times completely erased. This deformation is not an isolated linguistic oversight but stems from the translator’s systematic neglect of the Hua-Yi and Zheng-Run conceptions. When the translator fails to recognize the politically derogatory import of specific terms, the original historical judgments grounded in these two conceptions undergo a discursive shift in the process of translation, and even dissolution. This paper aims to shed light on the distinctive challenges of translating historical texts and to offer a typical case study for understanding the transformation of meaning in cross-cultural communication.

Abstract. The disruptive entry of generative artificial intelligence into language education has posed a pressing paradox: pedagogical practices are being rapidly reshaped by technology, while educators and learners are ill-prepared to critically evaluate or ethically employ these technologies. This shift is acutely felt within increasingly multimodal language learning environments, where AI tools integrate text, voice, and visual modalities. Despite current debates advocating for change (Wang et al., 2024), the foundational competency of “AI literacy”—defined here as the combined ability to understand, operate, critique, and responsibly interact with AI systems (Almatrafi et al., 2024)—remains severely under-institutionalized. Against the backdrop of a burgeoning body of empirical research (Tacelosky et al., 2025), this review aims to untangle this fragmented field, distinguishing hard evidence from mere enthusiasm, and uncovering gaps that threaten sustainable integration. It pays particular attention to evidence concerning the adoption and impact of AI within multimodal pedagogical settings. To address this urgent need, we conducted a scoping review of research from 2020 to 2025, following the PRISMA-SCR framework. Our search strategy encompassed Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, ProQuest, and CNKI, covering a broad spectrum of the field. The subsequent critical screening process focused not only on procedures but also on concepts; we prioritized studies that went beyond reporting cognition to demonstrate tangible pedagogical frameworks or outcomes, thereby building a corpus that aims to answer not only “what is being studied” but also “what is actually feasible.” Our synthesis categorizes scholarship into four areas of contention: (1) conceptual debates over defining AI literacy beyond tool-centric skills; (2) pedagogical experiments seeking to integrate these competencies into the curriculum; (3) the psychological reconciliation of learner autonomy and identity with AI tools; and (4) the often-overlooked ethical and practical costs of implementation. Taken together, the field may face structural challenges, though larger‑scale empirical research is needed to confirm this. There appears to be a fundamental disconnect between calls for integration and the support provided to teachers, who remain fragmented and lack adequate professional development. Furthermore, many implemented models are decontextualized and one‑size‑fits‑all, ignoring diverse cultural and institutional realities. Most critically, this review suggests a lack of effective evaluation frameworks, which undermines claims of effectiveness and equity. These potential issues, if confirmed, could impede the effective and ethical design of multimodal, AI‑enhanced learning ecologies in language education. Thus, this review provides not only a map but also a critical diagnosis, offering researchers an agenda for foundational research, designers evidence for context-sensitive models, and policymakers the hard truths necessary for responsible investment.

Abstract. The paper draws the consequences from the insight that generative AI systems based on large language models can best be described as simulative syntax machines. With this approach many peculiarities of gen. AI become easily understandable. Examples from various fields of gen. AI productions are discussed.

Abstract. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has brought a fundamental philosophical question into sharp relief: Can machines possess self-awareness? This paper contends that the key to addressing this question lies in clarifying the generative mechanism of self-awareness. I will propose and argue for a core thesis: Self-awareness can only dynamically emerge within a temporal mechanism of memory. This paper will strictly adhere to the logical chain of "objectification of consciousness — language — memory — self-awareness" in its argumentation, and will ultimately use this framework to examine current artificial intelligence, revealing why it has not yet, and finds it difficult to spontaneously develop, true self-awareness. First, the objectification of consciousness is the starting point of self-awareness, and language is the key medium for achieving this objectification. Consciousness must utilize language—a dual-natured medium—to transform inner experience into a reflectable object, thereby establishing itself. Second, memory is the dynamic collection and continuous reconstruction of objectified conscious activities. Its core function is for the subject to actively construct meaning and causal relationships; each act of recollection is a process of reshaping the self within the flow of time and orienting towards the future. Finally, self-awareness emerges within the "temporal mechanism" of memory. The human sense of time stems from the narrative organization of memory, which renders memory a generative state of being, with self-awareness being its product. Based on the above theoretical framework, this paper examines artificial intelligence layer by layer: 1. Linguistic Level: Although AI processes linguistic symbols, its operations are based on probabilistic statistics and empirical associations, not on understanding meaning. It abstracts language into intrinsically empty "tokens," engaging in a probabilistic encoding of a static world. It cannot achieve the process of "objectification of consciousness," which involves reflecting on its own consciousness as an object. 2. Memory Level: AI's data memory is non-temporal. It stores static associations, lacking the dynamic future orientation of human memory, which is based on understanding meaning, actively constructing causal links, and thereby reshaping the self. Its memory is a "retrospective" extraction of data, not a "generative" reconstruction of experience. 3. Level of Self-Awareness Generation: Due to the lack of the aforementioned temporal memory mechanism centered on meaning comprehension and causal construction, the current architecture of AI fundamentally blocks the possible pathway for the generation of self-awareness.

Abstract. This paper uses Chinese Generation Z fiction as an entry point for exploring the database and gamified narratives in contemporary Chinese literature, particularly in the genre of Chinese online fantasy novels. Drawing on Lev Manovich’s concept of “database narrative”, Marie-Laure Ryan’s perspective of “interactive narratology”, and using Japanese otaku culture studies, represented by Hiroki Azuma’s theories of “database consumption” and “gamelike realism,” as a frame of reference, it analyzes The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (2014, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu) and The Guide to Capturing a Black Lotus (2018, Bai Yu Zhai Diao Gong), along with their transmedia adaptations. The paper identifies three manifestations of these narratives: the emergence of story forms influenced by role-playing games and text adventure games, including “Chuan Shu” (transmigrating into a book), “Gong Lüe” (strategy guide), and “Xi Tong” (system); the reorganization of narrative codes such as plot, character, and cultural codes into tag-based databases through platform taxonomies; and the prevalence of non-linear, reversible, and branching temporalities, as well as parallel universes, loops, and multiple playthroughs. The article argues that since the 1990s, the transplantation of diverse foreign media forms and the shift from mechanical to digital reproduction have fundamentally reshaped narrative modes in Chinese fiction. Database and gamified narration not only structure literary production and consumption but also function as socially generative forces. By linking, transforming, and presenting information across media, they profoundly participate in the production of cultural narratives and public meaning within Chinese society.

Abstract. Contemporary studies of the Book of Poetry in American sinology have been situated within the broader context of Western sinological research on early Chinese texts. Centering on the early textual and dissemination history of the Book of Poetry, a debate has emerged concerning the issues of its oral transmission and textual recording. In this debate, Martin Kern from Princeton University and Edward L. Shaughnessy from the University of Chicago represent two diametrically opposed academic paradigms: the former argues that early Chinese texts possessed a strong degree of orality and performativity, while the latter insists that a mature manuscript culture had already taken shape in China during the Warring States Period. The divergent views of these two scholars on the Book of Poetry—particularly Kern’s theory of oral literature—have elicited intense responses from Chinese scholars. Drawing on the Character-centered Theory in Chinese linguistics, this paper intends to re-examine this debate and explore the theoretical validity and limitations of the two scholars’ propositions.

Abstract. The paper reviews the past century of Hungarian sinology and modern China studies from a global, structural, and historical perspective. It examines the development from the Hungarian origins of Orientalism—of which sinology formed a part and which took Eurocentrism as a self-evident premise—to the present state of modern China studies in Hungary. The lecture seeks to address the following questions: What do the following terms mean, and should they be understood as opposites, synonyms, or perhaps as subsets of one another: Orientalist and Asia scholar; Sinologist and China expert? Can we speak of a specifically Hungarian variant of these categories? Finally, can the traditional Orientalist approach—grounded in "race" cognition and claims to global privileges—be transcended in the Hungarian context?

Abstract. West China Union University (WCUU), the only missionary-founded university in Sichuan Province, received funding from the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) in 1928 and, as required, began to promote research and activities related to Chinese culture. The results, however, were unsatisfactory; HYI director Serge Elisseeff even rated WCUU’s performance as“D.”After the July 7th Incident of 1937, WCUU took advantage of its geographical position to recruit scholars who had taken refuge in Southwest China, restructured its academic programs, and prioritized the development of its museum, library, and Department of Chinese. In this context, it established an Institute for Chinese Cultural Studies. However, the institute was founded without the approval of the HYI Board of Trustees or Director Serge Elisseeff.After its establishment,it used the restricted funds allocated by the Harvard-Yenching Institute without obtaining HYI’s authorization，which led to financial conflicts with WCUU’s Chinese Department, museum, and library. Zheng Dekun, the museum director,repeatedly wrote to HYI to express his dissatisfaction, prompting HYI to intervene and mediate.According to WCUU’s annual report submitted to HYI in 1943, the Institute for Chinese Cultural Studies had been closed; in practice, however, it continued to operate. This study examines the establishment process, research focus, and reasons for the "dissolution" of the Chinese Cultural Research Institute at WCUU, explores the interactions between WCUU and HYI, and explores how Chinese scholars working within this institutional framework sought to maintain research autonomy. In doing so, it aims to illuminate the texture of modern Sino-Western knowledge networks surrounding the study of Chinese culture.

Abstract. "What Is China" remains the fundamental question underlying Western Sinology and essential for comprehending the nation. This paper examines the construction of China's image in Western scholarship across different historical periods, analyzing its function in bridging traditional and contemporary China. Employing perspectives from the sociology of knowledge and cross-cultural interpretation, this analysis reveals how Sinological paradigms have undergone significant transformations—from "exotic wonder" to "model civilization," and from "stagnant empire" to "dynamic society"—each shift reflecting the distinct concerns of its era. Methodologically, Sinology constructs a coherent understanding of China through three primary mechanisms: translation and interpretation of classical texts, which reveals the evolutionary trajectory of Chinese civilization and dissolves perceived discontinuities between classical and modern China; decoding deep cultural structures such as Confucian tradition and scholar-official ethos, which provides historical foundations for interpreting contemporary social behavior; and extracting concepts like personalism and scholar-official spirit, enabling classical Chinese thought to engage meaningfully in contemporary civilizational dialogue. However, this intellectual construction remains fundamentally shaped by Western academic preoccupations. The resulting image emerges as a complex product interweaving Chinese reality, the scholar's interpretive lens, and Western expectations—essentially employing Chinese history as a reflective surface for Western concerns. This mirror-for-dialogue characteristic underscores the mediated nature of cross-cultural understanding. Critically examining the evolution of China's image within Western intellectual history thus illuminates both the mechanisms of cross-cultural knowledge production and the significance of civilizational continuity for comprehending contemporary China.

Abstract. American Chinese Studies differs from traditional Sinology in its emphasis on China regional studies, interdisciplinary approaches, and a strong problem-oriented focus. Since the mid-twentieth century, Chinese Studies have undergone a transformation from the “Impact-Response” model to the rise of global history, China-centered approaches, and the emergence of New Cultural History. In this process, Studies on modern Chinese intellectuals serve as a significant clue. Scholars have regarded intellectuals as both generators of ideas and agents of actions, analyzing their roles in political participation, social reform, and cultural debates, thereby dealing with the tension between thought and reality. Under the framework of “China in the World,” Chinese intellectuals are no longer seen merely as bearers of nation-state narratives; rather, they have become points linking China with East Asia and even a broader global intellectual networks. In this light, Chinese modernity is understood as the outcome of multiple converging currents: it involves both the importation of western techniques and the reinterpretation of indigenous resources. This suggests that modernity has never followed a linear path. This trajectory of American studies on modern intellectuals itself constitutes a strand of intellectual history, reminding us that studying Chinese intellectuals is about studying how the modern world understands China, and the world itself as well. Consequently, by adopting a “Past Continuous” perspective, this study explores how historical narratives of Chinese intellectual engagement persist from ancient, modern, and contemporary eras, tracing the evolving historiography that writes the dynamic interplay between indigenous traditions and external influences.

Abstract. In 1875, the British sinologist Samuel Beal published an English translation of the Chinese Buddhist scripture 《佛本行集經》 (Fobenxing ji jing) under the title The Romantic Legend of Sâkya Buddha. Beal used the label “romantic legend” because the Fobenxing ji jing is a sacred Buddhist narrative composed in verse and, in his view, its narrative mode approaches the storytelling tradition of medieval romance. He attached particular importance to translating jātaka materials such as “bartering flesh for the hawk” (割肉貿鷹, the Śibi Jātaka) and “Shanzi” (睒子, the Sāma/Śyāma Jātaka), arguing that these Buddhist narratives resonate with the Gospel ideal of compassionate self-sacrifice. Shaped by Orientalist traditions that both advanced a “Mahāyāna-as-Gospel” interpretation and promoted the thesis that Mahāyāna was “non-Buddhist” (that is, not the Buddha’s teaching), Beal nevertheless offered a partial affirmation of Mahāyāna doctrine. His work of translation and introduction was driven by colonial demands and by the practical needs of missionary work in China, while also revealing a deep interest in Buddhism and an internally conflicted attitude toward it. Although Beal regarded the Pāli canon as more valuable than Chinese Buddhist translations, his translational scholarship in effect argues that these Northern (Chinese-transmitted) scriptures remain continuous with early Buddhism rather than representing a deviation from the Buddha’s teaching. Beal’s translation and introduction not only satisfied European Orientalist imaginings of Buddhism but also furnished British literature with new materials: The Romantic Legend of Sâkya Buddha directly inspired Sir Edwin Arnold’s long poem The Light of Asia, helping to shape a romanticized Anglophone imagination of the Buddha’s life.

Abstract. This paper presents a quantitative and structural analysis of historical research on China within Russian sinology based on a large-scale bibliographic database covering publications from 1906 to 2024. The study draws on data from the Scientific Sinological Database, an ongoing research infrastructure project aimed at systematizing Russian-language scholarship on China across all major disciplinary fields. As of January 2025, the database contains records of over 33,000 scholarly publications, including journal articles, reviews, and monographs published in Russia and abroad by Russian and foreign authors writing in Russian or in co-authorship. Each record is annotated with multiple metadata parameters—such as field of knowledge, research area, year of publication, publication type, keywords, place of publication, and journal—as well as multilingual abstracts. At the time of analysis, more than 16,000 publications had been processed, with over 7,000 made openly accessible. Focusing on historical studies, the paper analyzes a corpus of 1,749 publications classified within historical disciplines. These materials were categorized into 26 fields of knowledge and more than 260 research areas, enabling a detailed examination of thematic trends, institutional centers, publication venues, and chronological dynamics. The results demonstrate a significant growth in historical sinological research from the mid-2000s, with a publication peak around 2019, followed by a noticeable decline in the period 2020–2024. The most prominent research areas include archaeology, legal history, history of education, biographies of sinologists, the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing, history of medicine, Manchu studies, and studies of major historical events such as the Boxer Uprising and the Cultural Revolution. The analysis also identifies major academic centers and key journals shaping the field, with Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, and Kazan emerging as leading hubs of historical sinology. Beyond quantitative indicators, the database allows for the identification of under-researched areas, repetitive publication patterns, and potential cases of textual overlap. The paper discusses methodological limitations related to access restrictions, publication delays, and uneven digitization, while arguing that database-based meta-analysis offers a productive tool for assessing the state of sinological research. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of the development, structure, and current challenges of historical studies of China in Russian academia.

Abstract. The divination methods of the Yijing have long remained obscure, which renders them impractical for popular use. In the Qing Dynasty, followers of Wong Tai Sin created the Wong Tai Sin Oracle on the basis of the divination rituals of the Yijing. Essentially, the Wong Tai Sin Oracle constitutes an inheritance of the Yijing, manifested in the continuation of narrative stories, the bi and xing(比兴) poetic techniques of oracle verses, divination rituals, and moral edification. As a folk cultural text, the Wong Tai Sin Oracle inherently carries superstitious elements. The fatalism and predetermined karma embodied in its verses call for critical reflection. Nevertheless, it carries forward the poetic tradition of Tang poetry, disseminates well-known ancient Chinese tales, and reflects the circumstances of supplicants through these stories, while offering potential solutions to their predicaments to a certain extent. In this sense, the Wong Tai Sin Oracle possesses considerable research value.

Abstract. This article re-examines ni 膩, a recurrent but rarely theorised term for Liu Yong’s (987? - 1058? , 柳永) lyric style, through the colour rhetoric of the Yuezhang ji 樂章集. A poem-by-poem count shows that Liu Yong’s literal colour use is narrow rather than abundant: twenty graphs occur across 228 instances, with the red and green families accounting for 171 occurrences, roughly three quarters of the total. I argue that this narrow palette becomes aesthetically significant through recurrence. Red and green repeatedly appear in four-character formulae and neighbouring lines, producing ni across three related registers: sensory adhesion, formal repetition, and affective lingering. Comparisons with Yan Shu (991 - 1055 , 晏殊) and Wu Wenying (1200? - 1260? , 吳文英) are illustrative rather than statistical, but they indicate that what marks Liu Yong is neither the invention of red and green pairing nor an especially broad palette. It is the regularity with which a narrow chromatic relation returns and settles into a formulaic pattern. The article thus connects a traditional critical label to observable textual patterns within Liu Yong’s Yuezhang ji.

Abstract. This paper begins with a simple but rarely asked question: whose “new residence” is referred to in the opening line of “Mengcheng’ ao” 孟城坳, which is the first poem of Wang Wei’s Wangchuan ji 輞川集? The absence of a subject in “the new residence in Mengchengkou”新家孟城口 exposes a fundamental ambiguity that the Chinese commentarial tradition has never directly confronted. Instead, later commentators resolve it through philosophical interpretation, while chronological biographers stabilize such readings into seemingly factual elements of Wang Wei’s biography. By tracing this process, this paper argues that the problem is not merely methodological but structural: Wang Wei’s poetry is not inherently suited to function as historical evidence, yet it is persistently treated as such. What emerges, therefore, is not the recovery of a historical life, but the production of a coherent narrative through the retrospective organization of poetic ambiguity. This case invites broader reflection on the process of Wang Wei’s “construction” and invites reflection on the shared narrative mechanisms of historiography and literature in shaping cultural identity.

Abstract. The authenticity of the poetess Shuangqing and her ci-poetry in Random Notes of the West Green (Xiqing Sanji) has long been a subject of heated debate. This paper sets aside the debate over authenticity and fictionality, adopting methods of close reading and paratextual analysis, with a focus on several of Shuangqing’s object-chanting ci-poems and the widespread self-writing technique within her works. The study aims to demonstrate that the object-chanting ci-poetry attributed to Shuangqing and Shi Zhenlin’s narrative together construct a dual sense of reflexive metaphor. Within the poems, the poet projects her marginalized existence onto lonely, suffering, and broken objects. Outside the poems, her writing interacts and negotiates with the narratives of literati like Shi Zhenlin: Shuangqing consciously responds to the scholar’s ideal of the “beauty,” allowing her work to be transmitted and preserved; the scholar, in turn, uses the “chanting of beauty” as an indirect, subtle means to express his own frustrations and reflect on his circumstances. Through the shared strategy of object-chanting, the beauty’s and the scholar’s discourses intertwine and mirror each other, creating the dual-voiced, intertextual quality of the composite text Random Notes of the West Green.

Abstract. Mencius’s doctrine that human nature is good (xingshan 性善) has provided a normative foundation to various justifications for Confucian virtue ethics. However, not all interpretations of this doctrine are equally compatible with the framework of virtue ethics. Central to this tension is the distinction between two paradigms of human nature: the “development model” and the “discovery model.” The development model, supported by contemporary scholars such as Lee H. Yearley, Bryan W. Van Norden, and Jiyuan Yu, interprets the “four sprouts (siduan 四端)” as incipient moral predispositions that require nourishment to develop into perfect virtues. In contrast, the discovery model—predominantly in Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism—posits a fully-formed original nature that is merely obscured by selfish desires. While some scholars, such as Huang Yong, suggest that the discovery model can ground a “Neo-Confucian ontological virtue ethics,” this essay argues that Confucian virtue ethics in a strict sense entails the development model of human nature. By analyzing the conceptual distinctions between these two models, I contend that even though the discovery model may support a Confucian theory of virtue, it fails to ascribe a rigorous legitimacy to Confucian virtue ethics. This analysis also invites us to reflect on broader distinctions between models of human nature and those of moral self-cultivation, and between a Confucian virtue ethics developed by a single thinker and one attributed to the entire tradition.

Abstract. Mencius’s doctrine of sheji congren (relinquishing one’s own self to follow others) profoundly reveals the fundamental mechanism through which the Confucian moral subject is generated within human relations. Sheji does not mean canceling the self; rather, it advocates overcoming one’s fixation on “what belongs to the self” (ji zhi suo you), and, through the positive practice of “following others” (congren), achieving mutual access between self and others by recognizing the good that is common to all, thereby establishing the moral subject in this dynamic interaction. Mencius’s praise of Shun’s filial piety and fraternal respect is precisely the full manifestation of the principle of sheji congren within the sphere of familial love (qinqin), revealing that qinqin is not merely a natural emotion but also constitutes the primordial field where ren (benevolence) emerges. On this basis, a reexamination of the meanings of “seeking within oneself” (fanqiu zhuji) and “extending oneself to others” (tuiji jiren) shows that the significance of subjectivity lies not in dominating others or the world, but in the heart-mind’s ability to uphold and expand the innate goodness that connects one person to another. The Confucian ethical approach centered on sheji congren not only illuminates the generative structure through which moral practice is internal to human relations but also opens a practical path deeply imbued with Chinese philosophical characteristics in response to the predicament of modern individualism.

Abstract. The relationship between knowing and acting constitutes a fundamental issue in both Chinese and Western philosophy. Wang Yangming’s doctrine of the “unity of knowing and acting” (zhi xing he yi) and Timothy Williamson’s theory about knowledge and action represent two distinct and significant approaches within, respectively, the Chinese Heart-Mind school (xin xue) of Neo-Confucian philosophy and contemporary Western analytic philosophy. This paper aims to establish a rigorous cross-cultural philosophical dialogue between these two frameworks. The paper begins by articulating Williamson’s structural-functional account of the relation between knowledge and action, which is grounded in his “knowledge-first” epistemology and the formal architecture of practical reasoning. It then explicates Wang Yangming's doctrine of the unity of knowing and acting, interpreted here as an “ontology-gongfu” account derived from the axiom of “the mind as principle” (xin ji li) and cultivated through the discipline of “extending of innate knowing” (zhi liang zhi). Building on these analyses, the paper proceeds to a systematic comparison and mutual interpretation of the two theories across three pivotal dimensions: ontological grounding, connective mechanisms, and normative force. The study demonstrates that Williamson’s analytic framework furnishes a clear set of conceptual tools and a coherent pathway for understanding the “unity of knowing and acting”, while also offering a viable means of linking this classical doctrine to contemporary philosophical debates. Conversely, Wang’s “ontological insights” provides critical impetus for reflecting on the presuppositional limits of Williamson’s theory and for probing the deeper grounds of the knowing-acting nexus. This dialogue not only deepens the comprehension of both intellectual systems but also opens new avenues for constructing a more integrated and inclusive contemporary theory of knowledge and action. Moreover, it attests to the continuing relevance of Chinese philosophical wisdom in engaging with and advancing global philosophical discourse.

Abstract. This article reexamines the Tian clan’s usurpation of Jiang Qi (Tianshi dai Qi田氏代齊) as a pivotal event in the evolution of Confucian political thought. While Mencius’s long service under the Tian rulers has led some to suspect tacit justification of their legitimacy, a close textual analysis of Mencius, Xunzi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi reveals a more complex stance. The essay reconstructs Tian Qi’s legitimacy crisis and then explores the “dilemma of excellent candidates”: whether subordinates or candidates should fully demonstrate excellence even at the risk of undermining the authority of the established ruler or leader. It argues that Mencius implicitly criticized Tian’s seizure of power, contributing two innovations to Confucian political theory—an extra authority entity to regulate leadership transition and a preset framework for evaluating and designating leadership candidates. Later, Xunzi advanced Mencius’ orientation by embedding authority within institutions rather than divine sanctions. Ultimately, the discussion of Tian’s case deepens the reflections on the Confucian ruler-ruled relationship (jun-chen guanxi 君臣關係), highlighting sophisticated tensions among ethics, legitimacy, and political continuity within the ideal of leadership excellence.

Abstract. Thought experiments are the frontispiece for normative theory. Many ‘introduction to philosophy’ classes begin with a discussion of this or that thought experiment. Some thought experiments are highly influential, even famous. The Trolley Problem, Rawls’s Original Position, the Experience Machine, and many other ‘wacky’ scenarios have captured the public’s imagination, undoubtedly enriching many a table-side conversation. Their broad appeal does not condemn them to the intellectual dustbin; a dilettante’s brain teaser to impress, nothing more. On the contrary, thought experiments remain potent tools for the philosopher, enabling them to mentally visualise abstract or formal operations of thought to answer mental-state-independent questions about reality. They invoke particulars that may be broadly irrelevant to the generality of the conclusion to be drawn from their use, so as to instantiate abstract principles of reason. Thought experiments are distinct from what Kimberley Brownlee and Zofia Stemplowska call, introspective psychological experiments. While thought experiments address a partly mental-state-independent question about reality, psychological experiments are mental procedures that aim to predict or reveal an individual’s psychological states. Simply put, thought experiments require us to reach a judgment about a moral requirement which, ultimately, is not concerned with one’s affective state. The subordination of emotion does, however, predispose such experiments to a theory-praxis dichotomy that treats the interrogative ‘why’ and the applicative ‘how’ as discrete. In so doing, it divorces moral thinking from the quotidian decisions people have to make. Running a thought experiment has little to no impact on how one lives their ordinary life. Indeed, thought experiments cannot reflect reality in its totality. Were they to do so, the burden of establishing the ceteris paribus condition across all operative variables would be overbearing. In the real world, phenomena and decision-making are multi-causal; while it is possible to construct a hierarchy of causes, to hold many vital causes as constant would be deleterious to testing the cogency of a normative claim. Consequently, thought experiments must be narratively and imaginatively framed. Thought experiments test normative theories, not a person’s morality. The problem of the separation between theory and practice in Western tradition, and attempts to address it, have been discussed elsewhere, to varying degrees of success. Notably, Roger T. Ames advances the claim that, to square this circle, it requires a complete reevaluation of the transcendental foundation that has underlain Western thought for the past two millennia; a new worldview not crippled under the same conceptual yoke. Such a system could, for Ames, only be found by looking beyond the West, to the East, to Confucius or, most germane to the present study, Mencius. A word on the object of this article is in order. By drawing on the model of thought experiments in Western normative theory, this paper seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the method of argumentation in the Mencian tradition. Specifically, it compares the Mencian use of what this article refers to as the ‘anecdote’ with that of thought experiments to elucidate how, while deployed in a similar manner, anecdotes do not make assumptions regarding intellectual consistency, replicability, and the bifurcation between theory and praxis. Instead, this essay finds that anecdotes serve as a means to prompt inward reflection toward a better understanding of one’s innate potentiality for moral goodness. This is often achieved through references to imaginative scenarios and/or to the works of the great sages in the Classics. This essay concludes with a discussion of how an ‘anecdotal’ approach to normative theory may be beneficial.

Abstract. Confucius’s making of the Six Classics established the fundamental normative standard for Chinese civilization. Taking Confucius’s two self-descriptions—“transmitting but not creating, venturing to compare myself to Old Peng” (Analects) and “as for its meaning, I have privately appropriated it” (Mencius)—as the point of departure, this paper explores the internal mechanism and ethical implications of the formation of the Classics. The paper first elucidates the intertextuality and tension between the virtue of “trusting in and loving the ancients” indicated by “venturing to compare” (qie bi) and the “principles of the Kings” indicated by “privately appropriating” (qie qu). It points out that the character Qie (窃, privately/humbly) embodies multiple layers of meaning: the Sage’s “modesty,” as well as his “self-blame” and “assumption of responsibility” amidst the predicament of possessing virtue without an official station. Facing the era where “the traces of the Kings were extinguished” and “rites were lost and music ruined,” Confucius transcended the limitation of the “Sage of Purity” (Bo Yi and Shu Qi) and demonstrated the ethical commitment of the “Sage of Timeliness.” He made a choice between the risk of “illegitimate” transgression and the “necessity” of preserving civilization, thereby taking the action of “appropriating” the meaning. This action detached the “meaning of the Kings” (Yi) from the vanished “traces of the Kings” (Ji), endowing it with independence and universality that transcend history and time. By means of this “meaning,” Confucius established a new “Master” and value standard for the world, decoupling the realization of the Dao from the reliance on the throne. This made it possible to “flourish even without King Wen,” thereby legislating for all ages.

Abstract. Academic circles commonly hold that the doctrine of "Heaven’s intention" is absent from the Mohist Canons, or that even if it might exist there, it no longer serves as the source of moral and ethical norms. This paper proposes a different perspective. An analysis of the doctrine of "Heaven’s intention" in the core chapters of the Mozi reveals that it can be understood as a unity of "Righteousness" (yi义) and "Standard" (fa法), representing respectively its primary content and mode of operation, which collectively embody its humanistic dimension. However, due to concerns that the inherent religious aspect of "Heaven’s in" in these core chapters might be misinterpreted and exploited by tyrants, later Mohists in the Mohist Canons undertook a rational reconstruction of the doctrine. This is manifested through two approaches: First, they continued to reconstruct the doctrine centered on the concepts of "righteousness" and "standard", allowing "Heaven’s intention" to be implicitly preserved within the Canons. Second, building on the first approach and from the perspective of human agents enacting "Heaven’s intention", they developed a philosophical construction of "weighing" (quan权). This enables people to better navigate complex situations while practicing "Heaven’s intention" to achieve the Mohist "righteousness" aimed at the greater benefit of all under heaven. Furthermore, through "weighing", "Heaven’s intention" can be continuously and rationally refined, transforming it into an ever-rational "standard". Ultimately, "Heaven’s intention" is firmly established as the foundational metaphysical construct of Mohist thought.

Abstract. The Confucian doctrine of "love with gradations" encompasses three meanings: distinction, order, and foundation-establishment. The chapter on "The Mohist Yizhi" in the Mencius discusses "one root" (yiben) and "two roots" (erben), with the meaning of foundation-establishment being particularly significant yet most difficult to elucidate. Mencius's debate with Yizhi did not attack the self-contradiction between his statements "love without gradations" and "[love] begins with one's parents in its implementation," but rather directly targeted the root of his illness: "two roots." "One root" means that every person originates from parents as the natural principle of Heaven; thus love is established from this source, and when extended to others, it naturally manifests gradations. "Two roots" means regarding parents as no different from strangers; although Yizhi spoke of "beginning with one's parents in its implementation," this merely implements love without gradations, treating affection for parents only as a means to achieve universal love, ultimately failing to understand where love is founded. "Beginning with one's parents in its implementation" superficially resembles the Confucian position but actually represents an unsuccessful attempt to conform to Confucianism, differing fundamentally from "establishing love starting from one's parents" (li'ai ziqin). "Establishing love starting from one's parents" corresponds to the Analects teaching that "filial piety and brotherly respect are the root of practicing humanity" (ren), and the Mencius teaching that "the substance of humanity is serving one's parents." Affection for parents is not merely primary in the order of gradations; more importantly, it represents the most immediate manifestation of the heart-mind's goodness and the most essential realization of human nature. Only by establishing oneself firmly in this "substantive matter" can humanity, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom truly take root in the heart-mind, allowing the life-giving Way of humanity to naturally flourish. When extended to others, this enables affection for parents to extend to the people, and affection for the people to extend to all things, enabling graded love to attain its proper expression in each case. This constitutes "one-root love."

Abstract. Recent “revaluations” of Chinese philosophy often secure legibility by staging high-contrast oppositions. A particularly influential strand characterizes the metaphysical profile of Chinese philosophy as process, while framing Western philosophy in terms of substance. Such strategies once responded to an urgent demand for philosophical legitimacy, yet they also incur methodological costs: they pre-install conceptual labels and risk turning Chinese philosophy into a self-heterogenizing intellectual resource. Reflecting on this limitation, this paper shifts the unit of comparison from labels to problem-structures articulated through metaphysical objectivation, subjectivation, and integrative reconfiguration, and argues for a macro-level convergence between the two traditions. Using Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge as a methodological horizon, the paper analyzes a Song–Ming Confucian sequence (Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, and Wang Fuzhi) to substantiate this claim. The result is a comparative method that enables macro-structural analysis while disentangling explanatory payoff from conceptual labeling.

Abstract. In the Analects (Wei Ling Gong), the line "The gentleman regrets departing this world without his name being properly recognized" has long been subject to two mainstream interpretive approaches regarding the pronunciation and meaning of the character 称: one, represented by Han and Song Confucians, interprets it as "commendation" (chēng), emphasizing the social and historical evaluation of moral practice; the other, represented by Wang Yangming, interprets it as "conformity" (chèn), focusing on the alignment between inner virtue and external reputation. Although Han and Song Confucians share a similar interpretive direction, there are nuanced differences: Han scholars stress that the value of moral conduct must be manifested through social and historical recognition, whereas Song Confucians implicitly incorporate the notion of correspondence between name and reality into the idea of reputation. The divergence in interpreting 称 stems from differing understandings of the term 名 in the passage. Under the "commendation" interpretation, 名 carries a social dimension; under the "conformity" interpretation, its meaning turns inward. Yet, in the Confucian pursuit of the ideal personality that integrates inner sageliness and outer kingliness, the two interpretations of "commendation" and "conformity" possess the potential for reconciliation.

Abstract. Within the framework of European Sinology, the understanding of classical Chinese civilization has not been achieved through direct experiential contact, but rather through translation as an interpretive and mediating cultural practice. The translation of classical texts such as Hongloumeng (The Story of the Stone), the Analects, and the Book of Songs entails more than lexical substitution; it performs a process of conceptual re-encoding and epistemic reframing that reorganizes Chinese categories into forms legible to European intellectual traditions. Through this process, translation functions as a window through which the West apprehends “China,” not simply as a literary repertoire, but as a coherent civilizational system. Terms central to Chinese ethical, institutional, and affective orders, such as ming (命), li (理), li (礼), and jia (家)—are frequently rendered as “destiny,” “principle,” “ritual,” and “family institution,” and subsequently enter the discursive registers of sociology, anthropology, comparative religion, and philosophy. Likewise, prophetic narrative devices in Hongloumeng, including the panci 判词, marginal commentary, and fatalistic narrative structuring—have been reframed as tragic narration, foreshadowing, or narratological markers of predestination, thereby enabling Chinese notions of affect, causality, and fate to be relocated into European literary theory and religious comparison. These translational operations demonstrate that classical texts are not merely consumed as aesthetic artifacts but apprehended as civilizational structures embedded with ethical, cosmological, and institutional knowledge. Such an observation suggests a new analytical approach to European Sinology. Although Sinology has long presented itself as a mode of “direct” knowledge grounded in philology and historical reconstruction, its knowledge of China has in practice been mediated by translation-driven processes of conceptualization that reconfigure classical materials into disciplinary objects. It is precisely under these epistemic conditions that the Weberian question—whether Confucianism hindered modernization—became thinkable, for the very category of “Confucianism” had already been rendered into a theoretical object suitable for integration into the social sciences through translation. Classical translation should therefore be understood not merely as the transmission of texts but as an epistemic mechanism through which “China” is constituted as an object of Western knowledge. If European Sinology is to be reexamined, attention must be directed toward translation as a site of knowledge production, where interpretive decisions shape the ontology and legibility of China in the modern humanities and social sciences.

Abstract. Although Literary Criticism History has evolved into a mature discipline, rigidified research paradigms have led to prominent difficulties in reconciling theoretical interpretation with historical textual research.Facing this paradigm bottleneck, both categorical-formal criticism and the History of Literary Thought have offered tentative solutions, yet failed to achieve fundamental breakthroughs.A comparison of Chinese and Western theories indicates that the concept of knowledge can facilitates cross-cultural communication across four dimensions: social environment, physical texts, cognitive state and linguistic symbols.With its conceptual attribute of cross-cultural interpretation and its critical orientation grounded in indigenous literary creation theory, knowledge enables the integration of Knowledge History with Literary Criticism History and the further construction of Literary Knowledge History.Current Knowledge History studies focus primarily on knowledge categories, emphasizing social environment and physical texts while neglecting the vital role of cognitive state and linguistic symbols in literary creation. This inherent research orientation precisely lays the theoretical groundwork for the disciplinary construction of Chinese Literary Knowledge History.Literary Knowledge History connects macro social analysis, meso individual cognition and micro linguistic representation of knowledge, aiming to reveal how knowledge is transformed into poetic creation via linguistic elements.It not only absorbs the methodological strengths of theoretical interpretation and historical textual research in traditional criticism studies, but also opens up new interpretive dimensions for classical literary criticism.

Abstract. After the Coup of 1898, the debate between reform and revolution gave rise to a Chinese intellectual tradition of understanding the French Revolution. Liang Qichao initiated a shift in the interpretation of the French Revolution from a violent political revolution to a great transformation of civilization. This great transformation of civilization was reflected at the cognitive level in the overall transformation of human material and spiritual creation, and manifested in action as a movement of civilizational transformation widely participated by the people. Chen Duxiu, who founded the Youth Magazine, continued Liang Qichao's path of thinking about the transformation of civilization. Through the translation and introduction of Schneuber's Modern History of Civilization, Chen Duxiu clearly advocated the introduction of modern civilization, which began with the French Revolution and took democracy and science as its core values, to achieve a thorough and overall transformation of traditional Chinese civilization. Chen Duxiu's profound grasp of the materialist and secular spirit of the French Revolution, along with his passion and vision for the creation of an order in the present world by human effort, promoted the formation of a movement of civilizational reconstruction widely participated by the people. It can be said that the New Culture Movement in China from the very beginning internalized the tradition of the French Revolution as interpreted by Chen Duxiu.

Abstract. In a period when global knowledge exchange and interreligious dialogue are increasingly strained, Sinological research faces a methodological challenge in approaching classics and interpretation: when a canonical text enters a cross-cultural setting, how does it become intelligible and legitimate within a new interpretive community? Taking the late-Qing German sinologist Ernst Faber (1839-1899) as a historical case, this paper argues that Faber’s cross-cultural interpretation of the Bible was not a one-way act of dissemination. Rather, it was a form of cross-classical interpretation that drew on resources from Chinese classical exegetics (jingxue hermeneutics) as an interpretive pivot. Building on this case, the paper develops a transferable, dialogical hermeneutical framework that links traditional Sinological practices of interpreting classics with contemporary approaches to cross-textual and cross-scriptural study, thereby speaking to the conference theme of “crossing worlds.” The paper begins by mapping, in a dialogical manner, major approaches to interreligious and cross-classical interpretation developed over the past three decades, including interreligious hermeneutics, Scriptural Reasoning, and cross-textual reading, which involves sustained movement between two textual worlds. It also situates these approaches alongside Chinese-language scholarship on Sino-Western textual interaction and intertextual interpretation. Adopting cross-textual reading as the primary method and drawing on biblical hermeneutics, Chinese classical exegetics, and comparative theology, the paper proposes three methodological moves for cross-classical interpretation: (1) appropriation of interpretive principles—selecting and reconstructing interpretive rules that can be recognized in an unfamiliar cultural context; (2) renewal of classical interpretation—reconfigurations generated through the mutual shaping of the source canon, the local canon, and the interpreter; and (3) augmentation of meaning-making—repeated crossings that produce insights unavailable within a single text alone and foster reciprocal enrichment of both readers and traditions. The paper contributes, first, a dialogical framework for integrating biblical hermeneutics and Chinese classical exegetics, moving toward a “third hermeneutics” not confined to any single tradition. Second, it offers methodological reference points for cross-textual reading at the intersection of Chinese biblical studies and Chinese classical studies. Third, it highlights late-Qing cross-cultural interpretive practice as a pioneering resource for contemporary global dialogue. The argument is advanced through analyses of a small set of representative textual samples to demonstrate the framework’s practical applicability; the conclusion delineates its scope and methodological limits.

Abstract. Robert Morrison’s (1782–1834) A Grammar of the Chinese Language (1815, hereafter Grammar) is historically the earliest textbook for teaching Cantonese as a foreign language. However, some scholars have mistakenly regarded his later work, Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828), as his pioneering contribution to Cantonese vocabulary instruction (Chen, 2021). Others, though aware of Grammar, have not examined its pedagogical methods for teaching Cantonese vocabulary (Coblin, 2003; Cheung, 2016). To address this research gap, this study analyzes the Cantonese vocabulary teaching content in Grammar and investigates its instructional approach. The findings reveal that this book employs a morpheme-based teaching method by breaking down Cantonese words into morphemes, the smallest meaningful units. This method cultivates learners’ Cantonese morphological awareness, that is, the ability to recognize and use Cantonese morphemes and internal word structures, thereby enhancing their vocabulary comprehension, facilitating the construction of lexical networks, and expanding their vocabulary. While existing empirical studies have demonstrated the positive effect of morphological awareness in enhancing L2 Chinese vocabulary knowledge and overall reading proficiency (Ke, 2025), and several studies on teaching Chinese as a foreign language have proposed practical applications of morpheme-based instruction (Ke, 2017; Tang, 2022), the role of morphological awareness in acquiring Cantonese as a foreign language and the actual implementation of morpheme-based teaching in Cantonese vocabulary instruction remain underexplored. The morpheme-based methodology employed in Grammar precisely charts a course for future research in this direction.

Abstract. Since the 1980s, proficiency in the English language has been regarded as a crucial tool for China’s modernization and economic development and has been actively promoted within the educational system. Although in recent years the status of English has become a debated issue within Chinese society, the study of foreign languages (which in most cases means English) still constitutes one of the “three main subjects” (san zhuke 三主课) of the gaokao 高考, namely China’s National College Entrance Examination (NCEE). In light of the central role of English in preparing students for the gaokao, this study focuses on Chinese general senior high schools and uses currently adopted English textbooks as its primary object of analysis. More specifically, it aims to highlight an inherent inconsistency between the guidelines provided by the national curriculum for general senior high schools—namely the Curriculum Standards (kecheng biaozhun 课程标准)—and the nature of the tasks that make up the English component of the gaokao, which ultimately shapes classroom teaching practices. Consequently, the English textbooks currently used in China are the result of a compromise between two main influences: on the one hand, the traditional Chinese teaching method, which is consistent with the structure of the gaokao; on the other hand, the Communicative Approach, particularly in the form of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), which represents the most globally influential methodology. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with Chinese general senior high school teachers will explore their attitudes, beliefs, and preferences regarding the teaching of English in China. In this way, the study seeks to contribute to and enrich the academic discussion on foreign language education in China from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Abstract. In the context of the intensification of the strategic partnership between the Republic of Uzbekistan and the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese language in Uzbekistan has acquired not only applied but also significant socio-cultural importance. At the present stage, Chinese language teaching in Uzbekistan is characterized by a gradual shift from a traditional linguocentric model toward an integrative paradigm aimed at developing learners’ intercultural communicative competence. Over the past two decades, there has been a steady increase in interest in learning Chinese within Uzbekistan’s secondary and higher education systems. Chinese is taught at specialized universities, secondary schools, and within joint educational programs, including Confucius Institutes. However, an analysis of curricula and teaching practices indicates that, despite this quantitative growth, the qualitative dimension of intercultural training remains insufficiently systematized. Traditionally, Chinese language instruction in Uzbekistan has focused primarily on the development of linguistic skills, including phonetic, lexical-grammatical, and translation competence. The intercultural component has often been limited to fragmented exposure to cultural facts, country studies, and elements of speech etiquette. Such an approach does not fully account for the specificity of the Chinese linguistic worldview, cognitive patterns, and discursive strategies, which frequently results in communicative breakdowns and persistent interference-related errors at advanced stages of learning. Contemporary research in foreign language pedagogy and intercultural communication emphasizes the necessity of adopting a cognitive-discursive approach, in which language is viewed as a tool for representing cultural meanings and social norms. In this respect, Chinese requires particular methodological attention due to its close connection with Confucian value systems, hierarchical communication patterns, high-context discourse, and a high degree of pragmatic implicitness. Teaching experience in Uzbekistan demonstrates that the effective development of intercultural competence is possible only through the purposeful integration of linguocultural, pragmatic, and translation-oriented components. Special emphasis is placed on the use of authentic texts, the analysis of communicative scenarios, the comparative examination of Chinese and Uzbek communicative norms, and the modeling of typical intercultural situations in educational, business, and diplomatic contexts. Particular attention should be paid to the phenomenon of intercultural interference, which arises from differences in cognitive styles, communicative strategies, and sociocultural expectations. In a predominantly Uzbek-speaking learning environment, intercultural interference manifests itself not only at the level of linguistic form but also in the interpretation of meaning and communicative intention. This underscores the need for the systematic incorporation of intercultural analysis into Chinese language instruction at all stages of training. Thus, the current state of Chinese language teaching in Uzbekistan can be characterized as a transitional phase from formal language acquisition toward meaningful intercultural interaction. Further methodological development requires a scientifically grounded instructional model focused on fostering cognitive-discursive and intercultural competence, in line with global trends in language education and the practical demands of Uzbek–Chinese intercultural dialogue.

Abstract. In January 2025, a temporary TikTok ban drove American users to RedNote (Xiaohongshu), a Chinese social media platform. Americans suddenly became linguistic minorities in a Chinese-dominated digital space, while Chinese users encountered Americans on their home platform. This paper examines how both groups negotiated national identity, political subjectivity, and belonging through platform features such as translation tools and censorship mechanisms. Drawing on analysis of 200+ RedNote posts/comments from January 2025 to February 2026, and interviews with both American and Chinese users, I examine how Americans perform and negotiate their national identity when positioned as newcomers within a Chinese-dominated digital space. I also examine how Chinese users responded to Americans’ entry into this digital environment, despite different political contexts. Both groups engage in active identity negotiation and cultural exchange within a Chinese-dominant space mediated by platform and infrastructural affordances, including language translation functions and Chinese censorship. Preliminary findings indicate that Americans gained disproportionate visibility through “Ask Me Anything” posts and by self-identifying as “TikTok refugees.” Chinese users expressed surprise at the high cost of living in the United States and at the gap between their expectations and Americans’ lived realities. While many Chinese users welcomed the newcomers, some also voiced concerns that English-language TikTok refugee content was receiving disproportionate attention, overshadowing typical Chinese-language posts on the platform. This study contributes to research on transnational digital communication by examining a rare case: Americans entering a Chinese-dominated platform as newcomers. Unlike most studies of Chinese users adapting to Western platforms, RedNote reveals what happens when the power dynamic is reversed. Preliminary findings indicate that platform infrastructure, such as translation tools, censorship, and recommendation algorithms, actively shapes cross-cultural encounters. Even during a time of US-China political tensions, individuals use digital platforms to share lived experiences, though not on equal terms. But at least they are in communication with each other.

Abstract. This study explores the role of sensory representation in the travelogues by Dutch Sinologist Henri Borel (1869–1933). This analysis reveals how Borel's portrayal of funerals serves as a mechanism for capturing, managing, and distributing the readers' attention within an emergent global economy of cultural curiosity. It discusses how Borel's strategic engagement with the senses constructs and commodifies Chinese funeral rites as a multi-sensory spectacle. Central to this investigation is the perceptual politics embodied in Borel's account of the Empress Dowager Cixi's funeral in 1909.

Abstract. This paper examines sartorial practices among Finnish missionaries active in Jiangxi and Hunan Provinces in the early twentieth century, focusing on the strategic alternation between Qing-style dress and Western clothing as a form of cultural performance. Drawing on historical photographs, missionary writings, and exhibition materials, the study argues that clothing functioned as a flexible visual and material language through which Finnish missionaries negotiated belonging, authority, and difference within overlapping Chinese and Western social worlds. Foregrounding Lushan (Mount Lu) as a key geographical and cultural site, the paper situates Finnish missionary activity within the international hill-station enclave of Guling (est. 1895). Originally planned by British missionaries and colonial officials as a summer retreat, Guling developed into a transnational highland settlement where foreign religious actors, diplomats, and Chinese elites interacted within a landscape shaped simultaneously by colonial governance, missionary networks, leisure culture, and Lushan’s long-standing religious, literary, and artistic traditions. As a layered contact zone between Chinese local society and global colonial modernity, Guling constituted a space in which identities were not fixed but actively produced and managed across shifting professional, social, and visual contexts. Within this environment, Finnish missionaries—including Erland Sihvonen (1873–1967), Toivo Koskikallio, and other Finnish visitors to Lushan—adopted Qing-style garments such as long robes, jackets, and skullcaps when engaging Chinese interlocutors and institutions. These sartorial practices inserted European bodies into the visual and political order of late Qing China, producing a deliberate form of productive self-alienation that facilitated cultural translation while maintaining structural difference. At the same time, missionaries also appeared in white Western clothing, particularly in leisure and domestic settings on Lushan. The paper argues that these sartorial choices functioned not only to distinguish Europeans from Chinese society but also as a form of intra-Western alignment. For Finnish missionaries—who came from a nation situated on the margins of imperial sovereignty rather than from a formal colonial power—such dress enabled their visual incorporation into a moral and racial regime of Western respectability that structured transnational missionary communities dominated by British and American actors. Through sartorial practice, Finnish missionaries participated in global colonial modernity despite Finland’s ambiguous historical position as a nation conventionally regarded as lacking overseas colonies and itself subject to Russian imperial rule until 1917. The paper further traces how these sartorial performances extended beyond China itself. After returning to Finland, Sihvonen re-performed Qing official dress at the China and Africa Exhibition (1911–1912), transforming missionary experience into embodied Sinological authority. Clothing thus operated as a portable archive of transcultural encounter, mediating the circulation of knowledge about China through visual, material, and exhibitionary practices. By foregrounding dress as a mode of cultural and epistemic mediation, this study demonstrates how Finnish missionary activities contributed to the formation and dissemination of Sinological knowledge in Finland. It challenges rigid East–West binaries and highlights the role of actors from Europe’s imperial periphery in negotiating belonging within colonial modernity through visual performance rather than political sovereignty.

Abstract. This paper examines the Chinese Village at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition as a transnational contact zone—a contested site where cultures met and negotiated under asymmetrical power. Amid rising anti-Chinese sentiment and exclusionary U.S. immigration policies, the Qing court declined official participation. In its absence, three overseas Chinese merchants independently financed and managed the Village, acting as cultural brokers across imperial exhibitionary regimes and diasporic networks. Extending “contact zone” from a bounded venue to the visual-textual traces it generated, the paper analyzes photographs, brochures, press reports, and archival records to show how the Village assembled a multisensory display of “China” through architecture, performances, and commercial venues, placing Chinese performers and workers at the center of observation. These bodies and scenes were choreographed and circulated via ethnographic photography and print, producing racialized—yet unstable—figures of cultural identity. The paper argues that diasporic actors, operating within dominant consumer discourses and American modernity, commodified Chinese culture and reframed their public image, shifting perceptions from “Yellow Peril” toward a consumable, modern presence. This strategy sought visibility and negotiated belonging while revealing anxieties over cultural legitimacy and national modernity. Situated within the transnational circuits of late nineteenth-century world’s fairs, the study shows how these organizers mobilized sensory and material scripts circulating across borders to intervene in representation, complicating Orientalist narratives and the making of “Chineseness” in global contexts.

Abstract. During the Late Qing Dynasty, overseas photographers from at least eight countries and twenty-one production institutions produced and disseminated a large number of "Actuality" of Chinese Themes. These films exhibited threefold orientations of "coming to China", "being in China", and "engaging with China" in terms of their shooting purposes, processes, and methods. They presented different aspects of Late Qing China from four perspectives and collectively constituted a complex and dynamic early image system. These films not only provided the initial context for the development of "Actuality" and the emergence of early Chinese film industry in terms of technology, concepts, and industry, but also offered important historical materials and theoretical paths for re-examining visual narration, cross-cultural power relations, and the presence of Chinese images in early film history writing.

Abstract. The legendary " Emerald Garden " written by Zhu Suchen, a playwright of Suzhou School in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, has unique investigation value in the historical context of the evolution of classical opera from the whole to the fold. There are two full versions of the play, and the comparison shows that the two versions have the same plot. According to ' Quhai General Catalogue Summary ', the section of ' Pirate Order ' in the play was originally for Zhao Cuil 's advice and Ma Feiying 's submarine theft order ; however, all the existing editions have been changed to Cui 'er 's theft order. This plot change suggests that there are still earlier manuscripts, but unfortunately not seen. However, the spread of the opera from the whole book is much wider than that of the whole story, which is mainly due to the successful adaptation of ' Zhui Bai Qiu '. This article takes the ' Emerald Garden ' twelve operas collected by ' Zhui Baiqiu ', especially the ' pirate ' kill boat ' as the core, and systematically sorts out the selection strategies and adaptation techniques of ' Zhui Baiqiu ' by carefully comparing it with the original drama texts contained in the ' Ancient Drama Series '. The study found that the adaptation of ' Zhui Bai Qiu ' is not a simple deletion, but a reconstruction of the narrative around the stage performance : first, the linear narration of the original work is replaced by the series of ' drama points ' to form an independent and complete performance unit ; secondly, in the core events such as ' stealing cards ' and ' killing boats ', the literary narration is transformed into visual media movements ; third, Zhao Cui 'er, who originally belonged to Tiedan, was shaped as the protagonist who was deeply in line with the norms of Kun Opera 's six-dan profession. His voice, reading and body became the concentrated carrier of profession skills. The spread of the story of Cui 'er robbing the order not only benefited from the frequent performance of the Qing Dynasty stage, but also through the cross-genre adaptation of the Peking Opera ' Cui Niang robbing the order ' and the children 's book ' robbing the order ', breaking through the boundary of Kunqu Opera and obtaining continuous artistic vitality. The adaptation of " Emerald Garden " to " Emerald Garden " by " Zhui Bai Qiu " reflects the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties from " literature standard " to " performance standard " ; the modelization of Zhao Cui 'er 's image is a typical case of the construction of independent stage aesthetics through text extraction, performance recreation and cross-drama communication.

Abstract. Abstract: Before the Opium War, the missionary Karl Gutzlaff sailed along the coast of China in 1831, 1832, and 1833 aboard the ships Success, Lord Amherst, and Sylph, respectively. During these voyages, he conducted surveys of cities such as Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai, gathering information on their geography, local customs, regional economies, and military facilities. Gutzlaff’s work, Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, and 1833, with Notices of Siam, Corea, and the Loo-Choo Islands, provided British forces with intelligence before the Opium War. His series of navigational and investigative activities directly challenged the Qing Dynasty’s maritime prohibition system, which restricted foreign trade to the port of Guangzhou. His persistent cross-border actions defied Qing coastal defence and trade restrictions. Through intelligence gathering and public reporting, Gutzlaff exposed to the Western world the weak coastal defences, latent commercial demands among the local populace, and the corrupt and inefficient bureaucratic system in China. This helped catalyse a consensus within Western public opinion, particularly among the British, that military force should be used to compel China to open its doors. Thus, his actions served as a crucial prelude to breaking the Qing maritime prohibition policy and reshaping the dynamics of Sino-Western relations.

Abstract. Regardless of the significance of military conflict throughout Chinese history, the current literature has systemically minimized the role of war and military philosophy. This paper examines the nature, background and viability of the Chinese way of warfare stereotypes during the First Opium War through the lens of thematic analysis. Contrary to ascribing military tactics to Confucianist influences, this paper argued that the internal pragmatic stimuli that threatened internal and external stability played a larger role in China’s defeat in the war. Confucian philosophical influence, which is often used as panacea for any research gap. Therefore, it is established that the stereotyped Chinese way of war more often than not is precisely that – an oversimplification and generalization of an ever-so-complex societal fabric.

Abstract. Current research on water conservancy history during the Ming and Qing dynasties has delved deeply into institutional and technological aspects, yet it has generally overlooked the complex and diverse social mentalities embedded in water management activities and their dynamic agency. The perspective of mentality history, however, offers a new opportunity for understanding the internal logic of traditional water conservancy societies.Taking Ming–Qing Jiangnan water conservancy projects as its field of study and using textual analysis,this paper focuses on mental phenomena such as reverence for antiquity, regional prejudice, class barriers, and institutional anxiety. The findings reveal that mentalities in water conservancy practice not only reflect social structures but also profoundly influence resource allocation and policy formulation through the unity of opposites between “ancient” and “modern,” and between “us” and “others.”This study highlights the key role of mentality, provides a new analytical framework for research on water conservancy societies, and carries historical implications for contemporary water governance.

Abstract. In 1949, numerous intellectuals to depart from the Chinese mainland and took shelter in Hong Kong. They stayed in the city for a while and continued their journeys overseas. Hong Kong served as a transit point between the mainland and their destination. Yu Ying-shih was one of them. He arrived in Hong Kong and spent five years studying and researching in the city. In 1955, he travelled to the United States for his graduate studies. Having obtained a doctorate, he settled down in the country and became a prominent historian. This paper places Yu in the intellectual diaspora during the Cold War and traces his experience in Hong Kong. It explores Yu’s activities and evaluates how far the city served as a turning point to his life. It argues that Yu was a representative figure who travelled through the Hong Kong-North American corridor in the 1950s.

Abstract. In 1898, Britain began its colonial administration of the New Territories. The lineages of this region have become an unavoidable subject for understanding Hong Kong identity. Yet existing scholarship has largely understood their position under British colonial rule through the binary framework of "resistance versus collaboration," paying little attention to how the lineage actively constructed and sustained its own Chinese identity. This article focuses on two key episodes across nearly half a century of colonial rule: the Six-Day War of 1899, in which the Tang lineage led armed resistance against Britain's annexation of the New Territories; and the Ping Shan airport land dispute of 1945–46, in which the Tang lineage drew on the power of the press and the Nationalist government to resist colonial land requisition. Drawing on Tang lineage inscriptions, commemorative texts, genealogies, contemporary press reports, and Republican-era government archives, this article traces how the Tang lineage's Chinese identity was expressed, contested, and reaffirmed in the course of these two confrontations with colonial power. Through close reading and discourse analysis, the article argues that the Tang lineage's resistance was neither simple anti-colonial confrontation nor mere strategic compliance, but a practice that fused land interest, lineage cohesion, and national identity into a claim continually renegotiated. In doing so, this paper shows how a rural lineage actively constructed and sustained its Chinese identity through sustained confrontation with, and accommodation to, British colonial power.

Abstract. This paper presents an interdisciplinary study on how traditional Chinese ‘Correlative Thinking’ functions as a unique cognitive framework through which to visualise the principal Taoist concept—the ‘Spirit of the Cosmo’ (Dao) through the ink painting technique. This research is grounded in the work of the leading sinologist Joseph Needham's theories of the ‘Symbolic Correlation System’ in his discussion of early Chinese technology (Needham, 1956), in which he investigated how ancient Chinese artists expressed this Correlative Thinking—a system of analogies and resonance between macrocosm and microcosm—to transform abstract philosophical concepts in Taoism into concrete Ink painting techniques. Artists who used these ideas include Wu Daozi, Shih Tao, Fan Kuan, and Guo Xi. By analysing the brushwork, composition, and ‘Qi’ dynamics in classical Ink painting (especially in landscape painting), the study reveals that traditional Chinese painting is not merely a representation of nature but a ‘visual algorithm’ for simulating cosmic order. The practice of Ink-Water and Brush-Stroke is reinterpreted as a technological process where the artist's body, tools, and the cosmic spirit interact through resonance. This research argues that Correlative Thinking represents a distinct form of ‘Human Intelligence’ as a holistic resonance. The paper also discusses the author's contemporary artistic practice, demonstrating how this ancient cognitive technology can be turned into modern visual expression. By bridging historical theory with current art practice, this work offers an alternative perspective on how human intelligence uses visual methods to ‘translate’ cognition.

Abstract. This article examines how visual scenography in Mu Feng’s XR Macbeth (2024), a screen-based XR digital theatre work, produces both atmospheric intensity and poetic-aesthetic realm. Research on digital and XR performance has largely focused on technological mediation, immersion, presence, agency and liveness, while paying less sustained attention to how visual indeterminacy structures relations between what appears and what remains absent or open to imaginative continuation. Placing Gernot Böhme’s atmosphere aesthetics in dialogue with Chinese yìjìng (ideorealm) aesthetics, the article undertakes a close visual analysis of the production’s pervasive black field, scenographic images, and the emergence, transformation and recession of digital images. It argues that atmosphere aesthetics illuminates how digital light, darkness, and scale, framing, movement and duration organise spatially felt and affectively charged visual environments. Yìjìng aesthetics, particularly the concepts of xū and liúbái, further clarifies how determinate images remain generatively related to indeterminate openness and affective, imaginative and trans-empirical resonance. The black field is therefore understood not as a direct embodiment of Daoist wú, but as a technologically produced visual condition that withholds stable spatial determination while enabling images to emerge and recede. The article proposes that the same visual configurations may operate atmospherically by producing dread, oppression and uncertainty, while also functioning through organised incompleteness, suggestion and imaginative continuation. These overlapping but non-equivalent frameworks offer a complementary vocabulary for analysing how screen-based XR scenography coordinates sensory-affective presence with the formation of a poetic-aesthetic realm.

Abstract. In the thesis, the author proposed a new concept—‘Line Image’,It is the visual art image that contains the Chinese cultural connotation expressed by the Chinese brush. It is a new research perspective on painting theory and a expression method in painting, arising from the incorporation of the line and image.  The article "The Origin of 'Line Image' in Chinese Painting" adopts a research method that combines theory with history, verifies theory through history, and integrates historical and theoretical perspectives. Through the examination of Yinshan rock paintings, Helan Mountain rock paintings, Juzi Mountain rock paintings from the Paleolithic Age in China, and the Yangshao painted pottery patterns from the Neolithic Age, it clearly outlines the origin and development of the "line image" in Chinese painting. Especially through a comparative analysis of Yangshao painted pottery patterns and later literati ink and wash paintings, the author asserts that Yangshao culture marks the formal origin of the "line image" in Chinese painting. While clarifying the historical context, the author also conducts an in-depth exploration of the early Chinese ideological concepts that led to the emergence of the "line image," pointing out that the linear thinking mode in early Chinese people's epistemology and kinship view had a decisive influence on the origin of the "line image," thereby elevating the study of the origin of the "line image" to a philosophical level. There is no doubt that the worldview and way of thinking of the Chinese people are the true starting point of the "line image" in Chinese painting, and only from the level of epistemology and way of life can we comprehend the essence and quintessence of the "line image" in Chinese painting.

Abstract. This paper follows the logical framework of "artistic characteristics—public demand—social feedback" to systematically explore the interactive relationship between Chen Hongshou's illustration art and the urbanization of Ming Dynasty society. The study focuses on the adaptability of his lines and compositions to public aesthetics, the role of thematic dissemination in shaping public cultural memory, and the influence of book media in promoting artistic styles, thereby revealing the dynamic process of mutual influence and synergistic development between the two. Chen Hongshou responded to the aesthetic demands of the urban class through innovations in artistic language. His works, in the process of dissemination, contributed to the construction of cultural identity among the urban population of the Ming Dynasty. Conversely, the rise of urban society also facilitated the maturation of his artistic style and expanded the reach of its dissemination.

Abstract. Scholars have long disagreed on how to interpret changshen (畅神) in Zong Bing’s Hua Shanshui Xu (Preface on Painting Landscape). Existing studies either explain the term by appealing to Buddhist and Daoist intellectual contexts, treat changshen as the text’s culminating point—the ultimate end toward which landscape contemplation is directed—or emphasize its didactic orientation and its significance for “spiritual liberation.” This paper argues, first, that changshen as articulated in Hua Shanshui Xu is not the final goal of landscape contemplation; rather, it should be understood as a means and a process of approaching and realizing the Dao, a mode of self-cultivational practice on the way toward the Dao. Second, while changshen may indeed be seen as a method proposed by Zong Bing for pursuing the Dao, it is closely connected to the notion of “refining the spirit” (lianshen, 练神) in his Ming Fo Lun. In this sense, changshen is better grasped not as an external didactic strategy, but as an inward, gongfu-like form of cultivation—an inner discipline and spiritual work achieved through landscape contemplation and the viewing of images.

Abstract. This presentation frames the historiography of modern Chinese art comparatively between Chinese and Western traditions, tracing asynchronous developments and methodological divergence through shifting notions of modernity. The research scope ranges from early twentieth-century critique to mid-century isolation, 1990s reconnection, and 2000s rethinking. The historicization of modern Chinese art began in the 1930s, when Western scholars framed ink painting exhibited in Europe as a spiritual counterpart to Cartesian modernity amid global crisis. Meanwhile, Chinese scholars used this category to transition from literary-style writing to discipline-based art history, reflecting the rise of institutionalized knowledge. After the academic rupture of the early 1950s, two divergent frameworks took shape In China, Hu Sheng’s 1954 essay “On the Periodization of Modern Chinese History” introduced a class-struggle model that, grounded in Marxist reductionism, over-politicized artistic transformation by casting modernity as ideological rupture.  In contrast, Western scholars, who were lacking access to Chinese archives and influenced by French theory, adopted modernist formalism, over-autonomizing Chinese art through symbolic revolutions and capitalist-modernity frameworks like “Shanghai modern” and “technologized visuality.” With the resumption of scholarly exchange in the 1990s, comparative approaches and meta-reflections on the ethics of comparison emerged. In Western academia, new discourses reframed modernity as temporally fractured and shaped by discrepant regimes of historicity. This postcolonial critique remained less present in China, where revolutionary modernity was increasingly seen as enabling artists and institutions to act as historical agents. Recent transnational collaborations (on students abroad and exhibition histories) move beyond binary models, emphasizing entangled experiences and plural epistemologies.

Abstract. This contribution offers a transcultural and transcorporeal reading of motherhood in the Anthropocene through a comparative analysis of Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014), The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017), 好东西 / Herstory (Shao Yihui, 2024), and 女兒的女兒 / Daughter’s Daughter (Huang Xi, 2024). Focusing primarily on the two recent Sinophone films while drawing parallels with Dolan’s and Baker’s works, it examines how cinematic representations of mothers, daughters, and caregivers reconfigure ethics, relationality, and human-environment entanglements beyond patriarchal and anthropocentric frames. The theoretical framework combines François Jullien’s notions of de-coincidence and the inaudible, Adriana Cavarero’s reflections on contemporary feminisms, and Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality. Motherhood is approached as a site of rupture from the self and an opening toward the inaudible dimension of otherness. Across these films, maternal figures appear fragmented and socially embedded; maternal care emerges as collective and contingent, shared among precarious communities of neighbors, friends, and strangers. In Daughter’s Daughter, even surrogate motherhood, often framed as inherently exploitative, is reimagined as a transcorporeal opportunity for connection among women across generations and geographies. Ultimately, this contribution argues that maternal experience enacts an ethics of access (Jullien): an ongoing movement toward alterity that resists closure, redemption, and moral normalization. Indeed, these films envision a matricentric ecology grounded in vulnerability and reciprocity, where mothers and daughters learn to relate otherwise, occasionally reversing their expected roles to enact intergenerational forms of care, that are deeply telling of and responsive to contemporary social realities.

Abstract. Deeply influenced by Daoist thought, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that one of the essential characteristics of modernity is the world being grasped as an image. During the formalist shift in literary criticism in the first half of the 20th century, a conceptual focus on pictoriality also emerged, which may have been partially influenced by Chinese painting theory and Chinese characters. Studies of Chinese painting theory by scholars such as Ernest Fenollosa and Laurence Binyon provided aesthetic guidance for Anglo-American New Criticism, drawing critics' attention to the aesthetics of pictoriality. Ezra Pound compiled Fenollosa’s manuscripts and applied them to the practice of Imagism, further highlighting the significant value of the pictorial nature of Chinese characters in literary criticism. Amy Lowell promoted the "ideogrammic method" of translation, emphasizing the practical value of pictorial aesthetics. Scholars of the New Criticism school, including I. A. Richards, William Empson, and W. K. Wimsatt, further developed the aesthetics of pictoriality in their works, contributing to the shift in literary criticism. Pictorial aesthetics not only helped expand the dimensions of poetic appreciation and counter the limitations of Western linguistics but also prompted Western scholars to reevaluate logocentrism.

Abstract. In early modern Japanese society, Confucianism not only survived in textual form but also deeply permeated everyday life through artistic media, manifesting in the dual processes of “painting Confucians as portraits” (畫儒為像) and “integrating Confucianism into painting” (融儒入畫). In power centers such as the Kyoto Imperial Palace, Edo Castle, and Nagoya Castle, portraits of sages on sliding screens (賢聖障子) and barrier paintings based on the Dijian Tushuo (帝鑑圖說, Illustrated Mirror of the Emperor) adorned key spaces including the Shishinden (紫宸殿), Tsune Goten (常御殿), Go-Gakumonjo (御学问所), Ko-Gosho (小御所), Honmaru Goten (本丸殿), and Nishi-no-maru Goten (西丸殿)—the daily administrative and residential quarters of rulers. These artworks functioned as historical mirrors, admonishing sovereigns to govern diligently and aspire to become enlightened monarchs. For example, the sage portraits in the Kyoto Imperial Palace’s Shishinden depicted exemplary ministers from ancient China, while Nagoya Castle’s Honmaru Goten featured Dijian Tushuo-themed paintings emphasizing moral governance and historical reflection. In ritual spaces such as the Hayashi family’s Ninooka Confucian Shrine in Edo Castle, the Go-Gakumonjo in the Kyoto Imperial Palace, and corresponding areas in Nagoya Castle, portraits of Confucian sages—including Confucius, Zengzi, Yan Hui, and Zhu Xi—constituted an essential element of Confucian ceremonial practices. These images served not only as ritual objects but also as a vital bridge connecting contemporary scholars with the ancient sages, fostering emotional resonance and empathy toward Confucian teachings, thereby reinforcing the centrality of Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism in shogunal education and official rites. Furthermore, Confucianism intersected with broader commoner society through more accessible and popularly appreciated forms such as book illustrations and ukiyo-e prints. During everyday reading and viewing, these visual media deepened ordinary people’s understanding of core Confucian principles—such as filial piety, loyalty, benevolence, and righteous rule—and significantly facilitated the wider dissemination and cultural infiltration of Confucianism across Japanese society. In conclusion, the artistic visualization of Confucianism in early modern Japan not only supported the self-discipline and political legitimacy of the ruling elite but also penetrated the daily lives of commoners through accessible visual forms, serving as a key vehicle for the Japanization and localization of Confucian thought in Japanese society.

Abstract. How is Asian art perceived in Europe and in other parts of the world? What meanings do viewers derive from an artistic tradition characterized by a reduced visual language—often perceived as restrained or austere—rooted in brushwork and ink? Only a small number of artists outside the Asian cultural sphere possess a profound understanding of pictographic characters, their historical development, and their aesthetic and philosophical dimensions. Against this backdrop, Berlin-based artist Ben Kamili seeks to build an intercultural bridge. In his work, he combines painterly imagery with spatial depth, thereby opening up new approaches to interpreting Asian art within the context of contemporary, transcultural encounters.

Abstract. This paper examines contemporary calligraphy in Hong Kong as a practice situated at a cultural and geopolitical crossroads, where Chinese script traditions intersect with global contemporary art, urban spatial politics, and digital mediation. Through practice-based case studies of Chris Cheung (h0nh1m), Daniel Lâu, Fung Ming Chip, Eric Fung, Kwok Mang Ho (Frog King), and Tsang Tsou-choi (the “King of Kowloon”), the study investigates how calligraphy is expanded, contested, and rearticulated in one of East Asia’s most linguistically and historically layered environments. Rather than approaching calligraphy as a stable bearer of cultural continuity, the paper conceptualizes it as a mutable system shaped by embodied gesture, material process, technological translation, and institutional framing. Cheung transforms brush rhythm into immersive audiovisual installations; Lâu reactivates classical scripts through performance; Fung Ming Chip foregrounds material experimentation and partial illegibility; Tsang relocates inscription into urban space, challenging literati and institutional hierarchies; and Eric Fung analytically deconstructs stroke, structure, and tool to interrogate the conceptual foundations of the medium. Grounded in practice-based research and phenomenological analysis, the paper argues that contemporary Hong Kong calligraphy functions as a transmedial and reflexive practice that renegotiates the meaning of “Chinese script” under conditions of transregional circulation and political complexity. By situating calligraphy at this crossroads, the study contributes to China Studies discussions on how cultural forms transform across institutional, technological, and geopolitical boundaries.

Abstract. This paper compares “abiding” (zhu 住) in Seng Zhao’s Wu buqian lun 物不遷論 (The Immutability of Things) and the doctrine of “non-abiding” (wuzhu 無住) in the Dunhuang version of the Platform Sutra (Tanjing 壇經). Although Seng Zhao’s claim that “the nature [of each thing] abides within a single temporal period” (xingzhu yu yishi 性住於一世) and the Platform Sutra’s teaching that “non-abiding is the basis” (wuzhu wei ben 無住為本) appear to stand in opposition, this paper argues that they are not contradictory doctrines but context-specific responses to different forms of attachment. Seng Zhao addresses the common assumption that things flow through time; his appeal to “abiding” dismantles the imagined movement of a self-identical thing across temporal moments. The Platform Sutra, by contrast, addresses practitioners whose obstacle lies in mental fixation; its teaching of “non-abiding” prevents the mind from turning signs, thoughts, purity, cultivation, or awakening into objects of attachment. Read through Madhyamaka-inflected therapeutic negation, both zhu and wuzhu function as provisional designations rather than final doctrinal positions: each releases a fixed view without establishing its opposite as a new thesis. This comparison shows that zhu can function as medicine in one context and as disease in another. The paper further clarifies this therapeutic reversibility through the late Ming debate initiated by Zhencheng. Zhencheng read Seng Zhao’s xingzhu as an ontological claim about an abiding nature, while Huanyou restored its diagnostic scope by interpreting buqian as concerned with “not leaving or coming,” rather than with metaphysical permanence. The case thus reveals how Buddhist language may shift between remedy and reified doctrine according to the attachment it is made to address.

Abstract. This presentation will examine Liu Yiming’s xi you yuan zhi (西遊原旨) and it’s unique conceptualisation of fa shen (法身) and dao xin (道心) as being correlated but unique realisations of transcendents (仙) and virtuous beings (聖人). Liu Yiming is a truly grounded neidan daoist, but there is a significant undercurrent of Buddhist themes, primarily visible in his mighty and stunning literary and philosophical commentary on the novel The Journey to the West (西遊記). In this novel, both Buddhism and Daoism are present, although the latter is often treated in a satirical manner. Nonetheless, many of its literary themes and scenarios are reminiscent of Daoist philosophy and narratives. Its way of looking at nature is deeply Daoist. These two religious strands come together in full focus in the commentary by Liu Yiming, without whose analysis the aesthetic complexity of The Journey to the West would have been vastly misunderstood and under-appreciated. Liu Yiming combines fa shen and dao xin in many different ways throughout his commentary, at times seeing them as a duality and often as a single homogenous whole. Because fa shen is used in a metaphorical sense in his commentary, but dao xin becomes the focus of many of his descriptive ideas, the particular question of this paper will be: how does the correlation of dao xin with fa shen redefine the latter?

Abstract. Chinese philosophical terminologies tend to be highly contextual, as Chinese may not be a language characterised by precision. Throughout Chinese history, a significant aspect of the mutual attacks among various ideological camps has been their divergent interpretations of specific notions. Different thinkers may provide varying interpretations of a single concept, influenced by their own understandings and stances. The study of Chinese philosophy in overseas academia, therefore, faces significant challenges, particularly due to the additional barriers between languages. The translation of Wu 無, one of the core notions in Taoism, serves as a good case in point. Translating Wu 無 as Nothingness in a conventional way could be problematic, as it fails to capture the genuine dimensions of Wu 無 in early Chinese philosophy, particularly in Taoism. One possible reason is that the Neo-Confucian thinkers in Song and Ming dynasties critiqued Taoism through the lens of Nothingness, necessitating the establishment of Taoism as an adversary similar to Buddhism to effectively challenge their theories, which likely led to the notion of Wu 無 being distorted in the original context of Chinese philosophy. It is possible to argue that Nothingness closely aligns with the fundamental belief in Emptiness (xu 虛) in Buddhism. Adopting a translation strategy requires a comprehensive consideration of the orientation and original meaning of the terminology. Therefore, considering the substantial influence of historical academic or ideological disputes on the interpretation of terminology and translation strategies in international Chinese philosophy research could be crucial. This study examines the terminology of Wu 無 in early Taoism and the interpretations by later thinkers, alongside translations by overseas scholars, including Roger T. Ames and Jana Rošker, to develop a more plausible version of the concept of Wu 無 in both Chinese and English.

Abstract. Yan Cheng, the founder of the Yushan School of Qin music during the Wanli period of the late Ming Dynasty, has long been recognized for his contributions to the art of guqin. In the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Wang Tan, in his article "Qin Zhi: Zhi Pai Bian Yi" (The Essence of Qin Music: Differentiation of Branches), proposed that understanding Yan Cheng's music requires grasping the four characters "qing wei dan yuan" (清、微、淡、遠), which translate to "pure, subtle, tranquil, and distant." This phrase has since become a key evaluation of Yan Cheng’s aesthetic approach to guqin music. However, a closer examination of Yan Cheng’s works, such as Song Xian Guan Qin Pu (《松絃館琴譜》The Qin Score of Song Xian Guan) and Yun Song Chao Ji (《雲松巢集》Collection of Cloud Pine Nests), reveals that he did not explicitly endorse the "qing wei dan yuan" ideal. Instead, Yan Cheng advocated for an aesthetic of "broad and peaceful, possessing a balance of lightness and heaviness." This article argues that while Yan Cheng did not directly articulate a specific aesthetic theory for guqin music, his Daoist and Zen influences, along with his unique approach to fingering techniques and musical passages, provide significant insight into his aesthetic philosophy. By re-examining Yan Cheng’s relevant works, this study aims to delineate his aesthetic views on guqin music and explore the reasons behind Wang Tan’s promotion of "qing wei dan yuan" as a reflection of the Qing dynasty's evolving perspective on the inheritance of guqin aesthetics.

Abstract. The friendship between Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi stands among the most enduring narratives in the Chinese literary imagination. From the concise anecdotal references in early philosophical texts such as Liezi and Lüshi Chunqiu to the fully developed Ming-dynasty vernacular tale “Yu Boya Smashes His Zither in Gratitude to His Soulmate” in Feng Menglong’s Jingshi Tongyan, the story crystallizes the cultural ideal of zhiyin—the one who truly understands. In its Chinese contexts, the narrative functions primarily as an ethical and aesthetic exemplar, illustrating shared values of moral resonance, cultivated perception, and the rarity of genuine understanding. Approaching the material from the combined perspectives of Sinology and comparative literature, this paper explores how the Bo Ya–Ziqi story is transformed as it moves across languages and literary forms. Focusing on the nineteenth-century English lyrical narrative poem Yu-Pe-Ya’s Lute, and taking the Ming vernacular tale together with its French translation Le Luth brisé as key intermediaries, the study traces a process of genre shift and functional reconfiguration rather than linear transmission. The analysis identifies four interrelated transformations. First, narrative emphasis shifts from plot-based moral demonstration to the inward articulation of emotion. Whereas Chinese versions foreground causal structure and ethical closure—culminating in Bo Ya’s destruction of the zither as a definitive judgment,the English poem suspends moral instruction in favor of sustained affective experience and emotional aftermath. Second, character construction moves from typological roles to lyrical subjectivity. In Chinese narrative tradition, Bo Ya and Ziqi function as complementary figures who together embody the zhiyin paradigm. In the English poem, however, Bo Ya emerges as an introspective consciousness, while Ziqi persists primarily as an echo,defined by memory, absence, and response rather than action. Third, the function of music undergoes a decisive shift. In narrative texts, the qin serves as a symbolic catalyst that advances the plot. In the lyrical poem, music itself becomes the central expressive medium, generating landscapes of feeling and articulating what language cannot directly state. Finally, the conclusion evolves from ethical finality to tragic openness. The shattered lute no longer seals meaning but leaves it suspended, allowing silence and resonance to replace closure. Taken together, these shifts suggest that Yu-Pe-Ya’s Lute does not merely retell a Chinese story. Through generic transformation, it reconfigures an ethically grounded narrative motif into a lyrical tragedy centered on loss, perception, and emotional residue, revealing how classical themes acquire new poetic life in cross-cultural circulation.

Abstract. In recent years, the study of Guanyin has flourished in global Sinology. Scholars have predominantly approached the worship of Guanyin in late imperial China via pictorial arts, material culture, and life histories. Yet within this body of scholarship, literary writings centered on Guanyin are treated solely as supplementary sources. Systematic analysis of these texts remaining insufficient. Indeed, writing about Guanyin is not merely literary discourse, but a critical arena where cultural identity and gender politics intersected during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Within these writing practices, social order and individual experience interpenetrated and intertwined, producing a substantial corpus of Guanyin texts. Diverse groups inscribed their desires and experiences into these works, rendering the image of Guanyin a multifaceted and fluid cultural mirror. In late imperial literature, Guanyin was constructed as a dual figure embodying both sanctity and eroticism. Female writers used her to negotiate moral qualities, and seek agency beyond Confucian constrains. Male literati, by contrast, projected aesthetic gaze and erotic fantasy on Guanyin, asserting cultural taste and gender privilege. Guanyin thus reflects both devotional piety, and the life circumstances and identity politics of her creators. This study employs close reading and situates literary writing within its socio-historical context. The analysis reveals how diverse individuals appropriated and transformed Guanyin in their life narratives, through which Guanyin was rendered as a symbol imbued with multiple cultural meanings. Moreover, this paper analyzes the divergent discourses articulated by different groups toward the same figure. It further interrogates how individuals, along the continuum from the sacred to the secular, expressed desire and practiced restraint within ethical and normative frameworks. At the same time, the study examines how Guanyin was used to articulate the tension between fate and vitality. This study demonstrates that it was precisely through such sustained literary practice that Guanyin truly became the “the deity who hears the voices of the world” (Guanshiyin 觀世音) in the Ming-Qing literary sphere. She was continuously observed, narrated, and contested in texts, embodying the sentiments and aspirations of writers. In the dialogue between the sacred and the secular, and the coexistence of faith and consumption, writing Guanyin transcended mere material representation or spiritual allegory. It evolved into a cultural landscape in which gender roles were performed, cultural identities negotiated, and biopolitics refracted.

Abstract. Shisi jia shichao (Anthology of Fourteen Poets) is a diachronic poetry anthology compiled by Zhu Ziqing during his tenure at Tsinghua University and National Southwestern Associated University (Xinan lianda). This anthology outlines the poetry history between the Wei dynasty and the Late Tang period. Shisi jia shichao follows the features of Zeng Guofan’ s Shiba jia Shichao (Anthology of Eighteen Poets) in the selection of poets but incorporates innovations when it comes to the selection of poems, such as focusing on poems from particular stages of the poets’ lives and highlighting the non-five-characters’ poetry in Wei, Jin and Southern dynasties as well as the five-characters’ quatrains in the Tang dynasty. Shisi jia shichao also functioned as a textbook of higher education.The annotations and comments within are arranged to benefit the learning of poetry history, such as quoting from the official history records and quoting from the latest research outcomes of Zhu Ziqing’s contemporaneity to be conducive for teaching and learning in higher education.

Abstract. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), governed by the Han Chinese, was a distinctive era in ancient China, following the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) under Mongol rule and preceding the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) under Manchu rule. The Han Chinese had endured an unusual period of governance by non-Han rulers, prompting the Ming imperial court to make concerted efforts to restore the status of the “Celestial Empire,” reminiscent of the Tang (618-907) and Northern Song Dynasties (960-1127). This paper focuses on how Song history was rewritten in court dramas of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Its primary objectives include: (i) Investigating how these court dramas articulate the Ming Dynasty’s claim to inherit the status of the ‘Celestial Empire’ from the Tang and Northern Song dynasties; (ii) Examining how Neifuben (or Inner Palace Editions) texts of Ming court drama portray the self-image of Ming rulers as legitimate sovereigns of the ‘central nation’; (iii) Cataloguing the strategies employed in these operas to reinterpret the history of the Song dynasties in alignment with Ming ideological goals; and (iv) Conducting a preliminary comparative analysis of how the rewriting of Song history in Ming court drama was adapted or subverted in Qing court drama, with a focus on shifts in the conceptualisation of the ‘central nation’ and Hua-Yi relations. This paper aims to address a significant gap in Ming theatre scholarship and provide new insights into the ruling ideologies of both the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Abstract. Lushan Yuan Gong Hua, as the only extant Dunhuang manuscript originally titled with the character hua (話) and the earliest extant Chinese text bearing this designation, exhibits a typical textual duality. Reflecting on existing research paradigms, this paper proposes to move beyond the qualitative debate between "narrative-dominated" and "sutra-expounding-dominated" interpretations, and instead focus on the respective developmental potentials of the two coexisting textual forms—narrative and sutra-expounding. Through close reading and formal analysis, this paper points out that while the sutra-expounding sections inherit the procedures and discursive patterns of jiangjingwen (lecture texts), they nonetheless manifest novel features in the interpretation of specific scriptures. The narrative sections, on the other hand, integrate traditional narrative resources such as historiographical writing, zhiguai (tales of the strange), and oral storytelling, and further expand upon these resources, demonstrating an open stance and a high capacity for integration. This paper advocates for adopting "developmental potential" as a key analytical entry point, thereby establishing a research approach more suited to polymorphic texts in their formative stages, and providing historical grounding for understanding the multiple possibilities of generic evolution.

Abstract. Hsieh Pingying’s (Xie Bingying) Autobiography of a Girl Soldier (Nubing Zizhuan 1936) is a key text in modern Chinese autobiographical writing. Existing scholarship focuses on the genre’s enabling power for female writers, such as Hsieh, to articulate new forms of gender relations regarding family, sex, and domesticity and how it contributes gender perspectives to the imagination of nation and modernity. Hsieh’s autobiography is exceptionally international in its circulation and reception, as it experienced translation and reverse translation between Chinese and English languages. This essay focuses on the transnational and translingual aspect of this text as world literature through translation. Adet Lin and Anor Lin (daughters of the Chinese bilingual writer Lin Yutang, who had earlier translated sections of Hsieh into English) translated it as Girl Rebel: The Autobiography of Hsieh Pingying, which was published by America’s John Day Company in 1940. This edition was soon introduced back to China and a bilingual version got published in 1941. In 1943, London’s George Allen & Unwin published another English translation, Autobiography of a Chinese Girl, by the Chinese writer Tsui Chi, who is author of A Short History of Chinese Civilization (1942). This essay engages with a comparative analysis of these Chinese and English editions. Seeing translator as non-transparent cultural intermediary, it looks at how gender (male and female translators) and location (Britain and the U.S.) intervene in the different choices of specific translation strategies as well as paratextual construct, and how these interventions function as mediation between original textual representation of Chinese female subjectivity and Anglo-American expectations of China and the Chinese. The essay also highlights the specific Anglo-American context of the early 1940s (particularly John Day and George Allen & Unwin as important publishers of writings about China in the U.S. and Britain respectively) and examines how the two English editions translate the relationship between female subjectivity, nation and war (Chinese civil war of the 1920s) into a renewed imagination of transnational connection during the World War.

Abstract. Liang Baibo (梁白波) is recognized as one of the earliest female cartoonists in Republican China. Yet, reactions to her brief but prolific career in the 1930s ranged from praise to media reports that sensationalized her private life: mainstream magazines and tabloids fixated on her romantic entanglement with the famous cartoonist Ye Qianyu (叶浅予 1907-1995), mocking her sociability and sexual autonomy. While existing scholarship on Liang remains limited and primarily situated her within the domain of art history, this paper shifts the focus to her tactical deployment of fumerist laughter, examining how she weaponized her cartoons to resist the stigmatization and scandals surrounding her and to articulate both her feminist and political views. The notion of “fumerism,” developed by feminists such as Regina Barreca, foregrounds the subversive power of women’s laughter in both celebrating female difference and articulating feminist anger. Through this lens, the paper investigates two strands of Liang’s work: the urban “Miss Bee” series (1935-1936) which features a modern girl who ridicules patriarchal hypocrisy and enacts everyday micro-rebellions; and wartime propaganda cartoons (1937-1938) that explore the intersection of national resistance and gendered responsibility. This essay examines how Liang’s work brings feminist humour into dialogue with both patriotic discourse and urban modernity. It argues that her fumerist cartoons translate women’s issues into comic, affectively legible, and socially shareable narratives. Through playing with recurring gendered icons and symbols, Liang satirically bites back at the male gaze, destabilizes normative gender and class hierarchies, and sketches alternative imaginaries of female subjectivity.

Abstract. The Dream of the Red Chamber integrates solar-term culture into its full narrative scope, which is deeply reflected in daily life scenarios including diet, folk customs, daily routines and emotional experiences. As a latent narrative thread for plot development and characterization, the 24 Solar Terms in the novel also serve as an essential carrier of the core connotations of traditional Chinese culture. Setting the depiction of solar-term culture in the novel as the research object, this paper focuses on solar term-associated floral imageries, folk rituals and dietary practices. It explores how the classic novel elucidates the ecological outlook of the Unity of Humanity and Nature and the seasonal health-preserving philosophy of Man-Nature Correspondence, and further excavates the embedded traditional wellness wisdom and multi-dimensional cultural meanings. This study reveals that solar terms in the novel are more than simple time indicators. They combine natural phenology, social etiquette, health-preserving ideas and cultural connotations into a unified entirety. This unique writing style vividly presents the traditional lifestyle and social norms represented by the Jia family, and upgrades solar-term culture from practical daily life to spiritually profound connotations via literary expression. In the context of the Healthy China Strategy and the global spread of Chinese culture, intensive research on this theme can enrich Redology research achievements and provide a special literary carrier for the international communication of traditional Chinese culture.

Abstract. Since the New Culture Movement of the early twentieth century, there has been a trend among Chinese intellectuals to write autobiographies in modern Chinese, but very few women’s voices are represented among the works that were eventually published. In the preface to the most influential classic of this genre, Autobiography at Forty, Hu Shih cordially invited his male peers to write down their life experiences while at the same time sorrowfully recounting the tragic story of a female friend who wrote a book-length autobiography and then burned it in a fit of “insanity”. For a long time, the lament from this famous preface marked the failure of the perhaps first modern autobiography written by a Chinese woman, and no one knew her name. However, with the emergence of relevant manuscripts, letters, and diaries, I can not only confirm her name as Zhu Yinong, but also conclude that she destroyed the draft of her autobiography with a lucidity of mind regarding both herself and her circumstances. Meanwhile, in the 1920s, Zheng Yuxiu (Soumay Tcheng) successfully published her English autobiography A Girl from China, from which selected chapters were promptly translated and serialised in a Chinese magazine. These two contrasting cases raise a question: why did the self-narrative of growing up as the second sex have to be written in a second language before it could be published? It follows that Chinese women’s autobiographical writings in the 1920s not only engaged with issues of gender and genre, but also were intertwined with matters of language, class, and self-awareness at both individual and national levels.

Abstract. This paper examines the “New Novel of Manners” (xin shiqing xiaoshuo), a narrative mode that foregrounds affective and corporeal experiences within the textures of everyday life. Focusing on the sub-genre of middle- and late-life female romance, I employ an intergenerational framework to juxtapose works by post-50s female writers (e.g., Wang Anyi) with narratives by the post-80s and post-90s generation (e.g., Wen Zhen, Sun Pin). I argue that while the former’s depictions of female affection are often constrained by historical trauma and moral judgment, the younger cohort utilizes a “corporeal” aesthetic to challenge the structural system of chrononormativity. Drawing on Haiyan Lee’s genealogy of love, this study demonstrates how the later contemporary female writers dismantle traditional romantic paradigms organized around youth(age), marriage, and reproductive utility. By centering desire and corporeal experiences in the middle and later stages of women's lives, these narratives articulate a “belated” yet resilient female subjectivity. Ultimately, this "somatic turn" transforms the female body from a site of historical absence into a “lived presence.” This shift, I argue, offers a radical reimagining of agency, seeking to deconstruct the patriarchal and ideological "clocks" governing female romantic experiences in contemporary China.

Abstract. Dreams in premodern Chinese texts functioned as omens,philosophical allegories,and divinatory practices.Yet the textual mechanisms by which dream discourse shifted from functional record to narrativized literary use remain underexplored.Focusing on Li Gongzuo’s The Governor of Nanke and Shen Jiji’s Zhenzhongji,this study argues that Tang chuanqi instantiate a structural reformulation of dream function:dreams move from prognostic record to plot-constitutive elements that articulate subjective experience. Using comparative sampling and close readings of key passages,the analysis works along three axes—genre orientation,narrativization,and intra-elite circulation—and,in dialogue with scholarship on literary self-consciousness,investigates the institutional and cultural conditions enabling this transformation and its continuities in later dream narratives.The paper offers an operational framework for the diachronic study of dream narratives in pre-modern Chinese literature,with particular attention to Tang chuanqi and their later reception.

Abstract. During the Ming–Qing period, vernacular fiction was also referred to as unofficial history (yeshi). It was positioned as an extension of history records, and was expected to assume or share the responsibilities of historical writing: narrating real events and, on that basis, disseminating historical knowledge and providing moral instruction. This function constituted an important ground for the legitimate existence of vernacular fiction. In critical evaluations of vernacular fiction, the question of truthfulness is therefore unavoidable. Being “true” or grounded in evidence was regarded as a virtue, considered superior to fiction. Authors and commentators alike repeatedly sought to demonstrate the authenticity of their works or their proximity to historical truth. This desire for truth stemmed not only from the evaluative genealogy in which vernacular fiction was situated, but also from a nearly instinctive inclination to grant narrative acts a “presumption of truth.” Yet vernacular fiction was fundamentally incapable of fulfilling this loudly proclaimed task. Its core function lay precisely at the opposite end of truth and moral instruction: the provision of emotional immersion through fiction. Novelistic authentication of truth consists in an author’s need for a particular episode to be taken as real, upon which it is simply designated as “true.” Readers’ judgments of truth derive partly from authorial authority and partly from personal preference. Such arbitrary acts of attribution undermine both critics’ commitments to truth and the very concept of truth itself. At the levels of circulation and reading, vernacular fiction’s dependence on history records thus turns into confrontation with it, and even into an expulsion of history records from its privileged position. For a long period following the emergence of vernacular fiction, no consensus among intellectuals arose regarding a mode of reading that corresponded to the “essence” of this genre. Consequently, in premodern China, the mode of survival for vernacular fiction lay in lying and in denouncing others for lying. Those loudly proclaimed functions—truthfulness and moral instruction—were, in fact, merely emotional experience in disguise.

Abstract. A place name is not merely a label; it is a cultural and political device that organizes power relations and memory in space. This article traces the toponymic history of a central Beijing street, today’s Dongjiaomin Lane (東交民巷), formally Dongjiangmi Lane (東江米巷), and widely known as Legation Street (使館街) as foreign legations were established there. During the Cultural Revolution, it was renamed Anti-Imperialism Road (反帝路). The article asks how naming practices stabilise jurisdiction and memory politics at the same site. The study asks how multilingual treaty toponyms stabilize (1) jurisdiction, by making a boundary intelligible within administrative coordinates and thus actionable as an allocation of authority, and (2) memory politics, by embedding narratives of responsibility and legitimacy into routine spatial reference. Focusing on the 1901 Boxer Protocol (Final Protocol of 7 September 1901), the article argues that the Protocol’s perimeter clauses did more than record geography. By naming and delimiting the boundary, they constituted the Legation Quarter as a bounded exception zone in which ordinary urban sovereignty was suspended and redistributed through boundary description. The materials examined are the French, Chinese, and English versions of Article VII and its referenced annex. Methodologically, the study conducts a comparative textual analysis of these versions, treating the French text as the authoritative version for resolving divergences specified by Article XII (“均係以法文為憑”), which grants French interpretive priority when the versions diverge. This rule provides an authoritative basis for determining meaning without implying uniformity in administrative usage. The analysis therefore also examines how each language version frames the same boundary line through different spatial reference conventions. Whereas existing research on the Legation Quarter and extraterritoriality tends to treat perimeter clauses as either descriptive geography or a site of translation noise, this paper foregrounds multilingual treaty toponymy itself as a boundary-making device that co-produces jurisdiction and memory politics. The main finding is a systematic discrepancy at the eastern boundary of the Legation Quarter. While the Chinese text specifies Chongwenmen Street (崇文門大街), the English text gives Ketteler Street, and the French text likewise names Rue Ketteler. Interpreted in light of the French text’s priority, this asymmetry is not considered a translation error, but rather evidence that the boundary is being stabilised through different dominant framing modes. The Chinese text turns the exception zone into a governable urban administrative order by aligning it with Beijing’s administrative street system. In contrast, the English and French versions anchor the same line to commemorative diplomacy associated with Baron von Ketteler and the Protocol’s injury-and-redress narrative (a connection that echoes the phrasing of Article I, “克大臣被戕害”). 'Urban-administrative' and 'imperial commemorative' are not absolute opposites, but are analytically distinguished as predominant modes through which the same exceptional space is stabilised. These modes are sometimes in tension and sometimes in overlap through routine toponymic practice. Future research will extend this framework to the 1966 renaming and to contemporary narratives that amplify or silence competing memories differently, contributing to studies of late Qing sovereignty, urban governance in Beijing, treaty interpretation in Sino-foreign relations, and the politics of historical memory.

Abstract. The Dingchou Yubao Diary (Dingchou yubao riji), authored by the late Qing female poet Zong Wan(1810-after1883), has long been identified by scholarship as a work composed in 1877 (Dingchou year). This study identifies profound “folds in time” (temporal folds), where private experience was compressed and reshaped by institutional power, revealing a significant disjunction between the diary’s labeled year and its authentic composition. By prioritizing internal evidence from the biography of Zong Wan written by her brother-in-law Lu Qingtai in 1877, I demonstrate that the diary reflects the reality of 1871. A pivotal anchor for this emotional restitution is Lu’s record of the death of his daughter Peichang in 1870, which aligns perfectly with the first-anniversary sacrifice recorded in the diary. The textual evidences in Zong’s biography and diary also reconstruct the military career of Zong’s son, Xiao Zan, from 1869 to 1877, which is further corroborated by Grand Council archives from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, official directories (Jinshenlu), and the Diaries of Weng Tonghe. The study argues that the label “Dingchou” represents a “sacralized folding of memory,” marking Zong Wan’s transition from a displaced commoner to an official titled lady. The transcription by her second son, Xiao Jinzhao, functioned as a deliberate act to align traumatic memories with the family’s moment of political glory. By contrasting the diary with familial anthologies such as Xiangjian hegao (1880) and Mengxianglou gao (1883), this research finally illustrates how the state’s Imperial Honors System (fengdian) intervened to smooth over the “folds” of traumatic displacement with a celebratory bureaucratic timeline, providing a new interdisciplinary paradigm for late Qing female life-writing.

Abstract. This article investigates the role of Tian in early imperial China. Drawing on the Nvwa creation myth and the institutionalized Fengshan, it argues that imperial governance emerged through a deliberate cosmological separation: Heaven and Earth were rendered distinct natural forces, objectified, and the mediation between them monopolized by the state. This process enabled the appropriation of mountains, rivers, and celestial phenomena toward imperial objectives while maintaining their efficacy within a hierarchical order. Because empire is inherently unstable, the historical configuration of Tian in ancient China as a continuously generative ontological process: neither a uniform imperial ideology nor a modern conception of nature, Tian functions as a dynamic structure reconfiguring the boundaries between humans and more-than-humans in concrete mythological narratives, political rituals, and practices of governance. This perspective, in turn, suggests that the condition of being “never modern” should not be understood as a static diagnosis, but rather as a historically contingent state that is repeatedly constructed and recalibrated over time. Drawing on cosmological narratives from the Nvwa (creation goddess in Chinese mythology 女娲) creation myth and historical accounts in the Records of the Grand Historian (《史记》), this article examines how imperial rulers strategically mobilized Fengshan to reconfigure human–nature relations. It argues that Fengshan functioned as a technology through which the productive forces of mountains and rivers were symbolically alienated from local communities and re-appropriated by the imperial center. Challenging the prevailing assumption that the human-nature divide is a product of modernity, this article contends that such a division emerged much earlier as a foundational discourse of state formation. While pre-imperial cosmologies did not presuppose a rigid subject-object distinction between humans and their natural environment, imperial practice marked a decisive moment in which mountains and rivers were progressively subordinated to sovereign control. In this respect, the imperial reconfiguration of Tian anticipates later forms of ontological a symmetrization that contemporary symmetrical anthropology seeks to unsettle. It is in this sense that this article proposes to understand the historical configuration of Tian in ancient China as a continuously generative ontological process: neither a uniform imperial ideology nor a modern conception of nature, Tian functioned as a dynamic structure through which the boundaries between humans and non-humans were repeatedly reconfigured in concrete mythological narratives, political rituals, and practices of governance. This perspective, in turn, suggests that the condition of being “never modern” should not be understood as a static diagnosis, but rather as a historically contingent state that is repeatedly constructed and recalibrated over time.

Abstract. Scholars have recognized Dong Zhongshu as a turning point in Confucian interpersonal ethics. Traditional research has focused on how he transformed the Five Relationships into the Three Bonds. However, this paper argues that Han Confucianism, especially the Chunqiu Fanlu and Baihu Tong, actually developed a more nuanced third paradigm of filial piety centered on the concept of succession (chengji), reconfiguring hierarchical relationships within a cosmological framework emphasizing continuity and ritual obligations binding generations together.

Abstract. In Chinese history, the absence of legitimate heirs within marriage constituted a core institutional risk in the patrilineal succession system. To address this, various lineage continuation mechanisms have emerged, including intra-lineage adoption (guoji), wife leasing (dianqi), concubinage, statutory adoption, and, in modern times, assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and surrogacy. This paper adopts a law-and-economics approach based on institutional cost analysis to examine their historical evolution. The choice of lineage continuation mechanisms was shaped by three institutional cost dimensions: (1) heir definition costs—how to establish legitimate successor identity; (2) kinship verification costs—through clan rituals, household registration, or DNA testing; and (3) enforcement and exclusivity costs—how to assert and protect succession claims against competitors. As these costs shifted, lineage continuation mechanisms evolved along three major trends: a shift in responsibility from clan-based collective arrangements to family- and individual-based obligations embedded in state governance; an expansion of available mechanisms driven by changes in family structure and technological capacity; and a transformation of legitimacy standards from clan-based ritual consensus to formal statutory recognition. State recognition, adjustment, or prohibition of specific mechanisms reflected assessments of institutional controllability, incentive alignment, and governance risk. This cost-centered perspective situates the evolution of Chinese succession institutions within a longer arc of structural transformation and offers historical and normative insight for understanding contemporary inheritance and family institution reform.

Abstract. Modern scholarship on Confucian–Christian comparison repeatedly confronts a methodological problem: the category of “religion” itself. Shaped by Western Christian institutional and theological assumptions—such as belief in a personal deity, formal dogma, and clerical structures—this category often renders Confucianism marginal, incomplete, or merely “ethical” rather than properly religious. This paper argues that such judgments reveal less about Confucianism than about the conceptual limits of the Western framework used to evaluate it. Rather than asking whether Confucianism fits inherited definitions of religion, I contend that Confucian–Christian comparison exposes the inadequacy of those definitions and compels their revision. The paper develops this argument through two related inquiries. First, it reassesses the religious dimensions of Confucianism through comparison with Catholic Christianity. Although Confucianism lacks features commonly associated with Western religion—such as a personal creator deity or an institutional priesthood—it nevertheless sustains a rich ritual life, sacrificial practices, moral cultivation, and orientation toward an ultimate order (tian 天 and tiandao 天道). Drawing on scholars such as Frederick Streng and Tu Weiming, I suggest that if religion is understood in terms of transformative practice, communal ritual, and ultimate concern, Confucianism clearly exhibits religious qualities. The question, therefore, is not whether Confucianism is religious, but whether institutional and belief-centered models of religion are sufficiently capacious to account for non-Western traditions. Second, the paper reconsiders the oft-invoked binary between transcendence and immanence that structures many Christian–Confucian comparisons. Confucian thought is frequently characterized as exclusively immanent and humanistic, while Christianity is portrayed as emphasizing divine transcendence. I argue that this contrast is overstated. New Confucian accounts of “immanent transcendence,” in which Heaven is disclosed through human moral self-cultivation and co-creativity, complicate the assumption that Confucianism lacks a transcendent dimension. At the same time, Christian theological resources—particularly doctrines of incarnation, imago Dei, and process-oriented conceptions of God such as Charles Hartshorne’s “dual transcendence”—undermine models of a wholly detached and unaffected deity. Both traditions thus articulate relational and participatory understandings of the divine–human relationship that blur the very categories used to distinguish them. Taken together, these two lines of analysis demonstrate that comparative dialogue functions not merely as description but as critique. Confucian–Christian engagement reveals how inherited Western categories—religion, transcendence, immanence—shape scholarly perception and limit theoretical possibilities. By placing these traditions in sustained conversation, we are prompted to reconstruct the conceptual vocabulary of religious studies itself. This paper therefore contributes to Chinese studies and comparative theology by reframing Confucianism not as a problem case for the definition of religion, but as a resource for redefining religion more broadly. Confucian religious life challenges institution-centered and metaphysically rigid models and instead foregrounds ethical transformation, ritual practice, and relational ontology. Through this reframing, Confucian–Christian dialogue becomes a methodological tool for rethinking what counts as religion and how transcendence is lived within the human world.

Abstract. In contemporary Chinese family law, filial maintenance obligation (shanyang) is regarded as the formal expression of filial piety (xiao), inherently retaining a strong moral dimension. Recent judicial practices reveal a profound tension beneath this classical moral discourse: whether this moral attribute is strictly unidirectional. Specifically, when a parent has committed faults ranging from severe childhood neglect, defamatory accusations alleging incest against the child’s spouse (bahui), to attempted infanticide of the child, can the child be exempted from their maintenance duties? Despite the absence of statutory provisions for such exemptions, most judges continue to reject them. The historical trajectories and systemic motivations behind this phenomenon warrant investigation. Historically, traditional Chinese law remained silent on exemptions for filial maintenance. On one hand, filial maintenance was not structured as civil debts, but only enforced through criminal penalties contingent on parental complaint. On the other hand, under the ideology that “parents can never be wrong” (tianxia wu bushi de fumu), children, who were rarely sued, had no institutional mechanism to assert parental misconduct. In modern Chinese law, filial maintenance is recognized as a civil debt, providing a framework for children as debtors to raise parental misconduct as a defense. Judicial reasoning reveals an entanglement of jurisdictional, moral, and financial considerations to reject such defense. Exercising their power prudentially, most judges view such exemptions without statutory basis as contra legem. Morally, filial maintenance remains widely regarded as “unconditional,” echoing the traditional notion that “parents can never be wrong.” Moreover, the Supreme People’s Court and some judges invoke the “financial realism” as foundation, given that China’s social security system remains insufficient to cover elderly care, requiring the family as the principal unit for maintenance. Conversely, minority dissenting opinions and an exceptional doctrinal position from the Supreme People’s Court emphasize reciprocity in kinship obligations and empathy for children harmed by parental fault. While these views try to mitigate conflicts with traditional filial piety and financial constraints by conditioning the exemption on the gravity of parental fault, they remain marginal. Ultimately, this legal controversy illustrates that contemporary Chinese family law continues to oscillate historically between parental moral authority and individual dignity, while also being shaped by the judicial system and socio-economic realities.

Abstract. This paper presents a comparative study of the Imperial Civil Examination (keju 科举) system in medieval China and the modern Capitalistic meritocracy which ideal reflected as the “American Dream”.. Rather than approaching the keju system solely from the perspective of cultural or intellectual history, this study reexamines it as a social structure that organized social mobility and political order. In doing so, it challenges a dominant linear historical narrative that views the keju system as an archaic obstacle for China’s science advancement and is antithetical to modernity. This definition of modernity is predominately prescribed by the post-industrial American Revolution, while treating the “American Dream” as either self-evident of freedom, equality, and merit-based mobility. The paper intends to argue that imperial China already revealed institutional features of modernity, by proposing a theoretical model to capture a similar pattern of social mobility for individuals but opposite “entry ways” in both meritocratic systems: “literacy professionality → political power → economic wealth” in imperial China vs. “economic accumulation → political power → reshaping culture” in modern US society. The comparative framework through parallel dimensions of the two systems includes circulation mechanisms (examination vs. free market); credentialization (literacy vs. capital), elite formation (degree holder vs. industrial share). Both trajectories illustrate how meritocratic systems institutionalize specific forms of “merit” and translate them into durable social hierarchy. In medieval China, the keju system emerged as a political response to curtail the entrenched power of hereditary aristocracy following the Wei–Jin to Sui period. It functioned as a centralized instrument of talent recruitment to format the bureaucratic system. As demonstrated by Ping-ti Ho (1964)’ s notion of the “ladder of success,” the examination system enabled non-elite families to access political office and elite social status through mastery of Confucian classical literacy and moral knowledge. This produced what may be termed an “Ancient Chinese Dream,” encapsulated in the cultural ideal of the rise of elites from impoverished families (寒门出贵子). Becoming a literati official signified not only symbolic status elevation but also access to legal privileges and tax exemptions, directly linking cultural competence to socio-economic position. Over time, the keju system fostered a literati-centered social culture and functioned as a key bureaucratic mechanism through which the central state integrated local administration. By contrast, the meritocratic social structure is also grounded in capitalist markets in the Modern US context. Upward mobility is theoretically achieved through entrepreneurship, innovation, and capital accumulation. Economic indicators—such as capital ownership, rates of return, market share, and credit scores operate as social credentials that enable individuals to translate economic success into cultural authority and political influence. This historical comparison adopts a cross-temporal and structural perspective to re-examine meritocracy either examination regimes or capital markets—a system that organizes as means of organizing social mobility, legitimizing hierarchy, and sustaining large-scale governance. At the same time, the keju system also generated social contradictions comparable to those found in contemporary capitalist meritocracy, such as the privatization of education and the persistence of political cronyism. Moreover, the paper argues that both systems exhibit a shared structural paradox: mechanisms designed to promote mobility gradually solidify into gatekeeping machines that reproduce inequality. It offers critical insights for rethinking dominant discourses surrounding the “Chinese Dream” and the “American Dream,” and invites reflection on the possibilities and limits of individual potential and social mobility in the twenty-first century.

Abstract. Su Shi's philosophy of human nature and destiny doesn’t aim to construct a metaphysical system of morality and human nature. Instead, it emerges as a critical response to the intellectual trends of his time, forming a unique thought system centered on "natural disposition and practical verification." This paper seeks to systematically elucidate three core dimensions of Su Shi's theory of human nature and destiny. First, the critical nature of its theoretical premise—rejecting the a priori moralization of "human nature" and advocating for "nature being neither good nor evil," thereby returning to the universally shared natural disposition. Second, the generative quality of practical cultivation—achieving "oneness of human nature and destiny" through the practice of "attaining oneness through the absence of deliberate mind" and the refinement of literary and artistic endeavors such as "exploring principles and fully realizing one's nature." Third, the aesthetic dimension of the realm of life—symbolized by metaphors such as "the noble man resembles water" and "joyfully navigating life like a boat on water," ultimately pointing to a state of spiritual freedom, transcendence over gain and loss, and the harmonious reconciliation with reality, embodied in an artistic mode of living. Su Shi's theory of human nature and destiny, with its profound focus on individual practice, emotional life, and the aesthetics of existence, carves out a distinctive path toward "self-realization in human nature and destiny" contrary to the rationalist mainstream of the Song Dynasty.

Abstract. The shape of line as a meaningful form has played an important role in Chinese art history. In Yangshao Culture (5000-3000 B.C.), they mostly presented as black swirl emblazonry on the carroty-haematite-based pottery in Miaodigou and Majiayao remains. The next Longshan Culture (2500-2000 B.C.) was also embellished with monochromatic tone of black and white. In the Bronze Age (3300-1200 B.C.), the emblazonry on bronze wares carved like a bas-relief, Taotie were prominent for a monster-like grimace of smile yet tinged with primordial innocence. All have embodied their unique perspectives on the shape of line and its rhythm of movement in Chinese art history. With the development of Chinese art history, the structure of line and its rhythm of movement in time and space have presented different aesthetic characters. On the one hand, it because Chinese language in Chinese collective mind have occupied a significant position, the shape and rhythm of movement of line in traditional Chinese art have played more decisive role than color. On the other hand, the erotic art forms mixed with Greek style and Indian Buddhism had been widely imported through silk road from India and Central Asia to China. When these beautiful color patches met the shape and rhythm movement of line, they forged a new style of Chinese Buddhism art and had great influence on the branch of Blue-Green landscape painting. Victor Choi, antique collector of Hong Kong, suggests these curvilinear patterns on prehistoric pottery and bronze ware had the indiscernible connection with Joan Miró’s artworks. Inspired by Choi’s viewpoint, this paper proposes the late works of Miró - The Worrior King, Head and Night, Figure and Bird, Personnage Series, and the Figure succeed his favorite element of nature; besides the continuous style of simplicity and innocence through the shape of line, the late artworks delicately embodied the unique relation to the color lineage of Chinese Blue-Green landscape painting and the application of splash-ink style and rendering technique to his painted bronze which were real gems of art collection. This paper concerns why those artworks always bring a knowing smile to us and the philosophical content hidden behind the the interwoven of line and color. By observing Miró’s late bronze sculpture, comparing to his earlier paintings from a macro-perspective of Chinese art history and Zhuangzi’s philosophy, this paper proposes Miró’s use of mixed forms in his mature period embodied the content condensed the elements in the development of Chinese art history and the critical implication in Chinese philosophy. This paper aims at explaining how these artworks can be seen as a visual illustration and annotation for Chinese philosophy from the perspective of Zhuangzi philosophy.

Abstract. Traditional scholarship on Ci poetry of the Tang and Five Dynasties often focuses on stylistic interpretation, largely overlooking the hidden linguistic dynamic behind stylistic evolution: syntactic structure. As the core unit of the text, the sentence's internal structure and inter-sentential relations are not merely vehicles for artistic effect, but the generative mechanisms of metaphysical style. Drawing on structuralist analysis, this paper identifies a double suspension of temporal logic and the lyrical subject in the works of Late Tang and Western Shu poets, represented by Wen Tingyun. This is manifested linguistically through the avoidance of dynamic verbs and the post-positioning of agentive subjects. Such syntax constructs a fragmented, spatialized aesthetic—an impressionism characterized by looping timelines and collage-like imagery, devoid of specific narrative references. In contrast, the Southern Tang poets, represented by Feng Yansi, strove to break this temporal stagnation. Their works introduce complex temporal sequences and logical causality. By restraining the use of double-subject-predicate sentences and strictly distinguishing between rhymed and unrhymed segments, they organized Ci into coherent, long-form structures. This syntactic shift enhanced the narrative capacity of the genre, creating a polyphonic and rationalized style. Ultimately, this paper argues that this syntactic turn represents a self-redemption of the Ci genre from its origins in erotic entertainment—Yanke—structurally liberating it to accommodate greater emotional depth and lyrical possibility.

Abstract. The proposal of a global history perspective, the rejuvenation of traditional Chinese culture, and the in-depth advancement of domestic calligraphic research have jointly urged Chinese calligraphy to step onto the world stage. Focusing on three overseas regions—Japan, Western Europe and North America—this paper explores the main development course of overseas calligraphic studies. By deeply analyzing the dissemination and development context of calligraphic art overseas, it extracts diverse perspectives and orientations of overseas calligraphic research, and conducts a comparative reflection with domestic calligraphic academic studies, thereby providing referable approaches for the introspection of calligraphic historiography as well as the development and orientation of future theoretical research.

Abstract. This research aims to break the traditional style and emotional analysis of Yan Jidao's words, and focus on exploring the traumatic memory of the images in Yan Jidao's words. Try to apply the theories of traumatic memory, mourning past and psychological defense mechanism in modern psychology to conduct interdisciplinary analysis and research on several major images in Yan's words. This study believes that the transformation of Yan Jidao's life situation is an important spiritual driving force for his creation. From the aristocratic son of Zhong Mingdingshi to the poor and lonely son, Yan Jidao's life can be said to be very wonderful. The infatuation and disillusionment embodied in his works are not only sentimentality at the literary and artistic level, but also an important part of the self-psychological defense mechanism. This article will start from life, take the text as a bridge, and finally land as the psychological mechanism. First of all, by studying his life, find the source of his psychological defense mechanism. Focus on analyzing the three major images in his works with text as a bridge, such as how dreams become a bridge between the present and the past, and provide imaginary space to escape from the pain of reality. The research not only provides a deep analysis of personality causes based on modern psychology for the interpretation of Yan's "love idiot" image, but also opens up a feasible method of combining text analysis with psychological theory for the study of Chinese classical poetry, so that the discussion of the inner world of ancient Chinese writers can break through traditional literary criticism and move towards more challenging development research.

Abstract. As the core carrier of traditional Chinese culture's enlightenment and inheritance, children's primers have played an irreplaceable role in the enlightenment education and cultural transmission. Their content is easy to understand, harmonious in rhyme and easy to memorize. They have not only been widely circulated in China but also become an important medium for the dissemination of Chinese characters, Chinese language and Chinese culture throughout the East Asian Sinographic cultural sphere. Since writing has always been closely associated with characters, calligraphy art, taking children's primers as its carrier, has achieved the education and improvement from reading training to writing techniques and artistic aesthetic cultivation. This article takes the "Table of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches" of the Shang Dynasty, the "Cangjie's Treatise" of the Qin Dynasty, the "Jiuju Pu" of the Han Dynasty and the "Thousand Character Text" of the Southern Dynasties as representatives, to sort out the historical evolution and functional expansion of children's primers in Chinese calligraphy education, and further summarizes the dissemination and acceptance of classic primers represented by the "Thousand Character Text" in East Asian regions such as Korea and Japan. All of the above provide a unique perspective for understanding the unity and diversity of East Asian culture.

Abstract. Drawing upon the reception history of Han Wo's late-Tang collection Xianglian Ji, this paper examines how literati in late imperial China reconfigured the boundaries of "qing" through literary interpretation and creation. By interrogating the long-standing perception of Xianglian Ji as a quintessential text of private emotion, this paper argues that the collection and the resultant "Xianglian Style" poetry possessed significance far beyond this singular dimension during the Ming-Qing transition. Ming loyalist-literati redefined the boundaries of amorous poetry, anchoring their discourse in the shifting terrain of both internal ideological perspectives and external geographical spaces. The research indicates that, on the ideological level, loyalists traced the allegorical tradition of amorous poetry back to The Songs of Chu (楚辞). They thus shifted the hermeneutics of "qing" from "the expression of emotion" to "the articulation of intent", reconstructing the legitimacy of amorous poetic writing within the Confucian moral framework. On the geographical level, the Southern Ming’s dynamic southward migration transformed the South into a vibrant cultural field countering the North's rigid order in the eyes of loyalists. Consequently, amorous poetry shifted from the private to the public sphere, serving as a collective marker of identity in exile. In this respect, Xianglian Ji, alongside other works of the period, not only prompted authors to reintegrate the late-Ming trend of individual emotional liberation into the public discourse of poetic orthodoxy, but also revealed the inherent difficulties of maintaining a singular mode of expressing "qing" as people faced dynastic transitions.

Abstract. Hewen Zhuyin Qinpu, a guqin tablature transmitted by Chinese Chan monk Donggao in early Edo-period Japan, is a rare source featuring numerous pieces set to Song ci, offering valuable material for examining its music-text relations. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining linguistics, musicology, and cross-cultural analysis, this studyreveals a dual mechanism in how Song ci integrates with guqin music: both music-led text setting and text-led melodic shaping coexist. The tablature also demonstrates Donggao’s innovative treatment of such relations and embodies a synthesis of Jiangnan musical idioms with elements of Japanese waka, reflecting a unique instance of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. Additionally, by analyzing the kana-based phonetic annotations, fingerings, and position markers, this study preliminarily reconstructs Donggao’s phonological features across initials, finals, and tones, thereby offering a key case for the empirical study of Ming-Qing Nanjing Mandarin. Overall, this research extends the perspective on Song ci as musical literature into the realm of guqin songs and offers new insights into cross-cultural interpretations of music-textrelationships in the East Asian context. 

Abstract. In scholarship on medieval Chinese Buddhism, Erik Zürcher suggested that some apocryphal scriptures were allowed to "find their way into the Buddhist canon" because they were regarded as "harmless." This paper argues that harmlessness is not a neutral description of content, but a verdict produced within struggles over canon-making and ritual governance. The Blood Bowl Sutra (Xuepen jing 血盆經) provides an ideal test case: composed in China, it was repeatedly classified as weijing ("spurious scripture") by Buddhist cataloguers; at the same time, related versions were incorporated into the Daoist Canon and circulated widely in local ritual guidebooks. The sutra claims that women's menstrual and childbirth blood condemn them to the "Blood Basin Hell," and that release is possible only through specific rites—often performed by sons in the name of filial piety. Methodologically, the paper offers a critical synthesis of modern interpretations rather than a new philological reconstruction. I first situate the sutra within scholarship on Chinese Buddhist apocrypha and canon formation (Zürcher, Makita, Buswell, Zhu), highlighting how the label "harmless" functions as gatekeeping: it stabilizes elite scriptural authority while rendering the submerged "little traditions" of everyday religiosity socially invisible. I then review a second strand of scholarship that foregrounds gender, embodiment, and ritual efficacy, focusing on Zhu Nian-ci's reconstruction of the sutra's development and its integration into ritual assemblies (Blood Lake rites and Blood Bowl fasts), and Lori Meeks's analysis of the wider "blood hell" complex. Read together, these studies show how blood-basin rites both encoded misogynist notions of pollution and provided families with powerful means to acknowledge women's suffering and secure their post-mortem welfare. To frame these debates comparatively, I place this scholarship in dialogue with Talal Asad's notion of discursive tradition (authorization and discipline), Catherine Bell's practice theory (ritualization and boundary-making), Pierre Bourdieu's religious field (competition over ritual capital), and Robert Ford Campany's critique of reified "isms." I conclude that the Blood Bowl Sutra is best understood not as superstition or mere forgery, but as a node where canonical boundary-work, gendered karma, and cross-tradition ritual practice intersect—clarifying how "popular Buddhism" is historically made rather than simply found.

Abstract. As one of the Six Arts of Confucianism, archery was not only valued as a specific technique in the history of weaponry and ritual, but also extensively appropriated as a metaphor in contexts beyond technology, such as statecraft. This latter use of experiential metaphorization has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine, using texts from the pre-Qin period as examples, how the bow and arrow, as historically significant artifacts, influenced people's modes of reasoning. Following the sequence of archery steps, the pre-shot, shot, and post-shot phases all serve as metaphors in intellectual history. In the preparatory phase, the manual action of “adjusting the bow” is employed in Xunzi to emphasize the importance of acquired learning, while Han Feizi uses it to symbolize standardized, stable governance. Emphasis on the bow itself is applied to underscore the significance of the populace or virtuous individuals. During the act of shooting, the state of drawing the bow is likened in the Laozi to the mechanism governing the Way of Heaven, while the continuous adjustments made while aiming represent the pursuit of the central “Way.” After the shot, the Mencius equates archery with practicing benevolence, stressing the need to adopt an attitude of “reflecting inward” when facing the possibility of “missing the mark.” Employing the same imagery of randomness in hitting the target, The Huai Nanzi likens the quantity of prey captured through archery versus net hunting to the scope of governance encompassed by different administrative approaches, seeking a more universal method of governance. By examining how different pre-Qin thinkers used the archery metaphor, we see that intellectual history is not merely a clash of abstract concepts but also a contest over the meaning of core experiences and imagery.

Abstract. In the Daoist Neidan (Internal Alchemy) tradition, the human body is conceptualized as a "crucible" for refining cosmic forces. This paper re-examines the Eight Trigrams on Tang and Song bronze mirrors, arguing that they functioned not as passive decorative motifs, but as vital instruments in this transformative alchemical process. Moving beyond a conventional archaeological typology of 180 mirrors, I focus on the iconographic logic of their programs—specifically the transition from the Shangqing celestial symbols of the Tang to the Xiantian Bagua (Primordial Eight Trigrams) of the Song. This shift profoundly reflects a paradigm turn in medieval Daoist practice. During the Tang, these mirrors served as visual aids for "Holding the One" (shouyi) and celestial visualization; however, by the Southern Song, they began to internalize the textual logic of the Cantongqi, evolving into "materialized talismans" for circulating qi and congealing the Golden Elixir. By analyzing the structural correspondence between mirror layouts and Neidan "body maps," this study demonstrates how these objects synchronized the practitioner’s internal micro-cosmos with the external macro-cosmos. Ultimately, the commercialization of mirror production in the Song did not result in the secularization of these symbols; rather, through media such as the Xuanwu cult, it facilitated the penetration of complex alchemical doctrines into the broader religious landscape.

Abstract. During the late Qing period (1840-1912), Nanyang (Southeast Asia) emerged not only as a primary destination for Chinese migrants but also as a marginal, exotic space in the literary imagination. While existing scholarship has largely focused on male colonizers or the spectacle of exotic landscapes in Nanyang, the representation of Chinese women, particularly aging women with a yimin (remnant-loyalist) consciousness, remains underexplored. Focusing on Wang Tao's classical fiction, this paper examines the depiction of Chinese women in Nanyang to reveal folk voices and collective memories that challenge official historiography. I argue that the portrayal of aging yimin women in the novel transcends mere gender performance. On one hand, situated in a marginal land far from Confucian orthodoxy, these women exhibit a fluidity of gender roles and demonstrate agency in constructing community order. On the other hand, as "survivors" of history, their weathered life stories and oral recollections constitute an unofficial "folk historiography," preserving diasporic experiences and cultural identities absent from state-sanctioned narratives. This study believes that Wang Tao's depiction of Nanyang women is a strategic narrative choice that extends beyond a literary fantasy of the periphery. Through the perspectives of these "marginal people," late Qing writers could explore the reconstruction and continuity of nation, gender, and cultural identity within diasporic communities. This paper thus uncovers rich meanings hidden beneath mainstream history, contributing not only to a deeper understanding of gender in late Qing fiction but also offering a new literary perspective to the study of Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Abstract. This paper examines the early European reception of Journey to the West through Arthur Waley’s Monkey (1942) and Adriana Motti’s Italian Lo Scimmiotto (1960). Rather than treating these works as transparent vehicles of transmission, the study analyses them as successive acts of rewriting and mediation. Waley’s abridged English version, based on a selection of thirty chapters from the Chinese novel, foregrounded narrative continuity, humour, and the figure of Sun Wukong, while reducing the poetic and doctrinal density of the source text. Motti’s Italian translation, produced from Waley’s English rather than from the Chinese original, represents a further stage of indirect translation. Through lexical choices involving the title Lo Scimmiotto, the rendering of Sun Wukong’s names and titles, and character names such as Porcellino and Sabbioso, the Italian version reinforces the accessibility and familiarisation of the narrative for an Italian readership. The paper argues that these translations actively shaped the European image of Sun Wukong as a comic, mischievous, and memorable protagonist, partially detached from the full religious, poetic, and allegorical architecture of Xiyou ji.

Abstract. This paper examines highly popular rebirth (chóngshēng) historical romance novels in Chinese female-oriented online literature, situating them within the socio-cultural context of made-in-China feminism (C-fem). It explores how “strong female” narratives articulate new forms of female subjectivity through shifts in narrative mechanisms across works published at different time. As a highly formulaic subgenre of time-travel fiction, rebirth narratives are particularly suited to tracing changes in narrative orientation. Moreover, the immediacy and interactivity of online literature make it an ideal site for observing how narrative strategies respond to changing social environments. This study focuses on three representative novels by the same author, QianShan ChaKe: The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage (2015), Legend of the Female General (2019), and Denghua Xiao (2023, the author’s most recent completed work). Through a diachronic comparison, the paper analyzes how key narrative elements—revenge, success, affect, and power—are reconfigured over time. The analysis reveals a clear narrative trajectory. In earlier works, the rebirth mechanism functions as a form of destiny-based authorization, embedding female revenge within a framework of karmic justice and providing structural protection for heroine’s actions. In contrast, the later work gradually abandons this narrative “cheat,” instead emphasizing the heroine’s agency within a single timeline, where revenge is achieved through personal action, professional competence. Correspondingly, romantic relationships(especially marriage) shift from being survival strategies or buffers within power structures to outcomes chosen after the completion of the heroine’s primary actions. Power resources are likewise transformed from being outsourced to male figures or institutions into capacities internalized by the female subject herself. Importantly, all three novels are set not in “female-friendly” or matriarchal fantasy worlds, but within imagined ancient settings deeply embedded in Confucian ethics, patriarchal kinship systems, and imperial authority. Within this context, the narratives also progressively loosen the moral expectation that female protagonists must remain “good” or morally unblemished. Based on these findings, this paper proposes the concept of “negotiated strong-female narratives.” Rather than directly overturning patriarchal structures, such narratives create limited yet crucial spaces for heroine’s action through negotiated responses to existing power orders. By reconfiguring revenge, success, and affect within a highly patriarchal narrative framework, these texts explore the evolving possibilities of female agency in contemporary Chinese popular culture.

Abstract. Studies on the transformation of temple-based religion into scenic areas have mainly focused on devotees, “religious providers” (e.g., monks, Daoist priests, ritual specialists, scenic-area staff, etc.), and sometimes local officials. However, villagers who earn a living by selling religious products around temple sites have received insufficient attention. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at Mount Jingzhong, a sacred mountain in North China, this paper argues that although such grassroots actors lack formal religious identities, they actively shape and reshape local religious-economic practices. In this sense, these villagers function as a key motor in sustaining local religious vitality. This paper examines how villagers choose religious products, persuade pilgrims to buy them, and compete over prices. When Mount Jingzhong was temporarily closed in 2024 due to management conflicts, villagers responded by introducing oversized incense sticks over 1.5 meters tall (gaoxiang), paper gold ingots (yuanbao), and treasure boxes (jinku). In selling these religious products, villagers borrowed fragments of religious discourse and ritual instructions learned online, including the steps of kowtowing and what to say when offering incense. Notably, fierce price competition emerged among villagers, driving the price of oversized incense sticks down from 666 yuan on the mountain to around 70 yuan or even less. This made them much more affordable for pilgrims. Over time, oversized incense sticks entirely replaced ordinary ones and became a new form of worship. Villagers also sold previously banned ingots and treasure boxes at very low prices, making the mountain increasingly associated with efficacy in the accumulation of wealth. When Mount Jingzhong faced a crisis of sacredness due to its closure, these grassroots actors constructed a new religious sphere at the mountain gate through religious-economic practices. This paper questions the Judeo-Christian template that has influenced Chinese religious studies. In this tradition, religion is commonly understood as textual and spiritual, and defined by clerical authority. The Mount Jingzhong case shows that religious economy is deeply embedded in the making of religious culture and religiosity, rather than remaining at the margins. Moreover, analyzing religious economy requires moving beyond institutional religious figures to include grassroots actors whose agency contributes to shaping religious-economic practices.

Abstract. Recent discussions on labor market dynamics in China have increasingly highlighted phenomena such as labor shortages, rising job turnover, and changing worker expectations. While these trends are often explained through demographic change, wage adjustments, or sectoral transformation, this paper suggests that they can also be better understood by examining the relationship between work, institutional contexts, and subjective well-being. Drawing on empirical evidence from my doctoral research on internal migration in China, this paper explores how life satisfaction among internal migrants reflects broader features of China’s urban labor market and welfare arrangements. The analysis is based on original survey data collected in Beijing in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and focuses on the role of job characteristics, contractual arrangements, working conditions, health, and expectations in shaping migrants’ evaluations of their quality of life. The findings indicate that income alone plays a limited role in explaining variations in life satisfaction. Instead, employment stability, type of contract, access to social protection, and health emerge as more influential factors. Education is associated with both improved employment opportunities and higher expectations, producing mixed effects on subjective well-being. The results also point to adaptive processes, as migrants adjust their aspirations over time in response to institutional constraints and limited prospects for long-term settlement. Reconsidered in light of current labor market trends, these findings suggest that patterns often described as labor shortages may partly reflect changing evaluations of work quality and well-being rather than a simple decline in labor supply. From this perspective, life satisfaction provides a useful lens for understanding how economic participation, institutional arrangements, and individual expectations interact within China’s ongoing process of modernization. Methodologically, the paper adopts an interpretative approach that re-reads empirical evidence on life satisfaction through an institutional and governance-oriented lens, using subjective well-being as an indicator of the sustainability and acceptability of prevailing labor arrangements. By doing so, it contributes to broader debates on migration, work, and development, and highlights the value of well-being indicators for analyzing social and economic transformation in contemporary China.

Abstract. Since the 21st century, urban philosophy has emerged as a new theoretical field in China. Its development draws upon both Chinese and Western civilizational resources while being grounded in local experiences. The theoretical progress of Chinese urban philosophy can be divided into key five-year cycles, evolving through stages of introduction and tracing of origins, critical inheritance, reflective deepening, and subjective construction. This trajectory reflects an internal logic shifting from learning Western discourse toward seeking independent theoretical innovation. By comparing Western theoretical traditions such as "urban justice" and "production of space" with indigenous Chinese concepts like the "order of rites," "following nature," and the "rural-urban continuum," this paper clarifies why contemporary Chinese urban philosophy has chosen a creative path integrating Chinese, Western, and Marxist thought. The city is a complex system, and the People's City concept represents the latest achievement and guiding ideology of Chinese urban philosophy. It proposes a new directional framework across six dimensions for future urban development, advancing urban studies toward the construction of an autonomous knowledge system that is both for China and of China.

Abstract. Shenzhen, a city built by internal migrants since the Reform and Opening-up, is widely seen as a site where migration enables economic improvement and educational mobility for the next generation. For many migrant families, relocating to Shenzhen is closely tied to the hope that their children will access better schooling and secure a better future. Yet for those without local household registration (hukou), this expectation is continually shaped and constrained by institutional arrangements that differentiate access to public education. This paper examines why non-hukou migrant students engage in intensive studying from an early age, focusing on the junior high school stage. Based on life-course interviews and participant observation, it explores how educational hope is experienced, negotiated, and reconfigured under conditions in which outcomes remain uncertain and unstable. The paper argues that intensive studying is not simply goal-oriented or directed toward stable outcomes. Rather, it is embedded in an ongoing process in which hope is continuously produced and recalibrated. As students move through different stages of schooling, hope is transformed through institutional arrangements and everyday practices, becoming at once quantifiable through examination systems and persistently uncertain in its outcome. The study suggests that internalization under conditions of uncertainty does not lead to stable reproduction, but to ongoing recalibration, showing how educational inequality is actively mediated through the production of hope.

Abstract. Africa is currently the world’s fastest-growing continent in terms of economic growth. China increasingly needs Africa for its long-term prosperity. The relationship between China and Africa will shape the future direction of China and the world. Understandably, the China-Africa relationship after 1949 attracts the most scholarly attention. However, through a case study, this paper argues that Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing and Republican periods laid a crucial foundation for the development of the modern China-Africa relationship. During these periods, although some Chinese intellectuals influenced by colonial discourses and the traditional Sinocentric worldview regarded Africa as a backward place with no significance, many other intellectuals perceived Africa to be a place China could not afford to ignore, and a partner to build a better world order. Chinese intellectuals’ study and analysis of the Second Boer War exemplified the early development of the modern China-Africa relationship. News about the war arrived in China largely through foreign-language newspapers in China. Chinese-language newspapers then reprinted the news for Chinese audiences. In this process, key background information was lost. Many Chinese intellectuals mistook the Boer War as a struggle between Black Africans and White colonizers. At some point, those intellectuals believed that Black Africans were winning the war, and they began to envision a new world order where every country, weak or strong, was respected. Later, the Chinese intellectuals learned more about the Boer War, but, for them, the event was still an inspiring case that a weak country also had dignity.

Abstract. The Wang lineage of Fushan rose to prominence in the late Qing dynasty and came to be regarded as a symbol of local gentry status. Known for producing multiple descendants who excelled in the imperial examinations, the family became closely associated with the Confucian ideal of a cultivated elite grounded in learning and farming. However, the Wangs’ earlier history tells a different story. Tracing back to the early seventeenth century, the family’s rise was deeply tied to maritime trade across the Bohai Sea during the Ming-Qing wars. Their involvement in seaborne commerce brought them significant wealth, laying the foundation for their later success. Yet as the family established itself within the Qing gentry class, these maritime origins were gradually downplayed or erased. Several factors contributed to this historical reshaping: the social prestige conferred by producing a jinshi degree holder, the impact of the Qing dynasty’s maritime prohibitions, and the family’s efforts to gain recognition in local ancestral shrines. These shifts were not accidental but formed part of a conscious effort to align the family’s identity with elite norms that emphasized agrarian virtue and scholarly achievement. This paper examines how the Wangs selectively remembered—and deliberately forgot—elements of their past in order to construct a lineage history that reflected their later social aspirations. Their story sheds light on the broader processes by which local elites in early modern China navigated shifting political, cultural, and economic landscapes through strategic memory and reinvention.

Abstract. The Thai-Chinese community faces the compression of dual cosmologies: the Theravada Buddhist world of "Karma" on one side, and the Confucian lineage world of "Ethics" on the other. As traditional institutionalized edification dissolves, how do diasporic individuals navigate the conflict between these heterogeneous orders? Drawing on Yuk Hui's concept of "Cosmotechnics," this paper proposes that family biographies (Life Writing) are not merely historical records, but a set of coded "Survival Algorithms" designed to guide descendants in maintaining a balance of morality and existence within the fissures of civilizations. This study conducts a dual philosophical and anthropological decoding of seven in-depth family biographies collected from Bangkok and its vicinities. These texts document how generations "program" their destiny through ritual and ethical practices in a foreign land. The paper identifies three key mechanisms: 1. Algorithm of Moral Arbitrage: The biographies reveal a complex conversion mechanism. Families accumulate Thai "Merit" (Bun) by donating to Buddhist temples, yet immediately translate it into Confucian "Hidden Virtue" (Yinde) within the text. This achieves a cross-cosmological "moral arbitrage," establishing legitimacy in both worlds simultaneously. 2. Negentropic Information Technology: Facing the cultural thermodynamic "entropy" (i.e., forgetting and assimilation) brought by diaspora, Life Writing acts as a "Negentropic" device. By solidifying narratives of ancestral suffering and miraculous experiences, it forcibly inscribes the order of Chinese ontology into the memory of descendants. 3. Technical Symbiosis: This "Cosmotechnics" allows the Chinese to avoid an either-or choice in identity. Instead, operating like a "dual-boot" program, they dynamically invoke different ethical modules within Thai society. This research indicates that Thai-Chinese Life Writing is essentially a techno-philosophy of survival, constructing a unique ethical dwelling through algorithmic rituals and narratives.

Abstract. Prior to the outbreak of the Pacific War, few groups rivaled the Nanyang Chinese in their financial support for China. Within China, Tan Kah Kee and Aw Boon Haw were among the most recognizable representatives of this community, both prominent capitalists who maintained close ties with the Kuomintang Government and made significant contributions to the cause of “resisting Japan and saving the nation.” Despite their shared patriotic commitments, Tan and Aw did not collaborate after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War; instead, each organized independent fundraising campaigns. Their antagonism is commonly traced to a March 1928 lawsuit over the usage rights to the “Tiger Brand.” More strikingly, even amid national crisis, the two continued their rivalry, creating a situation that posed challenges for the Kuomintang Government. Although this antagonism has been noted in existing scholarship, it is often treated merely as a historical anecdote or as evidence of the internal complexity of overseas Chinese nationalism and thus has not received sustained analytical attention. Studies that focus more directly on their relationship tend to emphasize economic competition, struggles for leadership within the overseas Chinese community, and differences in personality. Notably, Lee Pui-Tak analyzes their rivalry primarily in the prewar context of Chinese commercial networks. While he devotes less attention to the wartime period, he proposes an important interpretive perspective: that the persistence of their antagonism may have been acceptable—or even advantageous—to both the Singapore colonial government and the Kuomintang Government, suggesting the involvement of a “third political actor.” However, following the establishment of the Wang Ching-wei regime in March 1940, the Kuomintang Government appears to have made efforts to ease tensions between Tan and Aw, indicating that Lee’s interpretation leaves room for further reassessment. A closer examination of their rivalry therefore offers an opportunity to illuminate the strategic interactions among multiple political forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Drawing primarily on the Nanyang Siang Pau, the Sin Chew Jit Poh, and archival materials housed at the Academia Historica, this article investigates the wartime rivalry between Tan Kah Kee and Aw Boon Haw. It argues that their antagonism was not merely a personal dispute, but a politically embedded relationship shaped by competing state actors. By analyzing its implications for the Kuomintang Government, the Straits Settlements administration, and the Wang Ching-wei regime, this study illuminates the wartime politicization of overseas Chinese long-distance nationalism and its internal fragility, showing how competing political forces sought to exploit this internal fissure.

Abstract. This paper will discuss the history of Chinese Studies in Australia from its beginnings to the present. It will focus on the study of China that emphasizes the country and culture, but also to some extent include the rise of disciplinary studies, like economics, demography and international relations, that includes China among a range of countries. It will present several major initiatives that tried to promote Chinese studies as important to Australia, the problems these faced and the successes they achieved. The paper will discuss how Chinese studies have declined over the last few years and note the persistence of Sinophobia in Australia. It will conclude that, while Chinese studies are far ahead of what they were when Australia and China established diplomatic relations in 1972, they are still disappointing compared with China's importance in the world and to Australia.

Abstract. This paper contributes new empirical and conceptual insights into China’s innovation system by analysing the structural role of overseas Chinese (huaqiao–huaren) entrepreneurs in the development of high-tech industries. Although returnee entrepreneurship is recognised as a driver of technological dynamism, its scale and long-term impact remain insufficiently quantified. This study addresses this gap through a methodological framework and a longitudinal dataset tracing the evolution of diaspora-linked high-tech enterprises in the PRC. The analysis draws on primary data collected in 2023–2024 on 290 companies founded by winners of the “Key Business Teams of Overseas Chinese (2009–2017)” competition, together with the author’s earlier 2010–2011 research on innovative returnee enterprises. The methodology reveals a major expansion of overseas Chinese high-tech firms—from 1.9 thousand in 2000 to 201.5 thousand in 2023—and an increase in their share among all Chinese high-tech enterprises from 8% to 63.5%. This growth contributes to structural upgrading, greater competitiveness, and technological advancement within China’s high-tech sectors. Evidence from 181 high-tech firms (including 130 innovative companies) shows that founders’ transnational education and work experience—particularly in the United States, Canada, EU countries, and Japan—serve as key drivers of technological capability and knowledge transfer. These firms hold strong or leading positions across major manufacturing and service industries and are concentrated in coastal innovation clusters. The paper argues that overseas Chinese entrepreneurs have emerged as a key structural force in China’s high-tech transformation and offers a new empirical basis for understanding diaspora-linked actors in the PRC’s innovation system.

Abstract. Since China’s higher-education expansion beginning in the late 1990s, tertiary schooling has supplied the human capital behind rapid industrial upgrading and progress in frontier sectors. At the same time, graduate underemployment, youth unemployment, weak consumption, and pervasive credential competition or involution (“内卷”) suggest that schooling can outpace highskill job creation. This paper asks two related questions: at the micro level, why do cohorts continue to choose more schooling when the observable education premium is limited or unstable; and at the macro level, what education rate and policy mix best balance short-run labor-market performance with long-run growth? I develop a dynamic general-equilibrium model in an overlapping-generations (OLG) economy in which young agents choose school versus work using current labor-market signals, while education affects labor supply with a time-to-build lag. High-skill employment is constrained by an endogenous job-capacity stock that evolves with technology upgrading, and human-capital accumulation generates an externality by raising future capacity. These features create a wedge between the decentralized allocation and the social planner outcome through (i) dynamic inefficiency in OLG, (ii) information and timing frictions that generate overshooting, and (iii) non-internalized human-capital externalities. The model implies an interior efficient region for education investment: outside this region, additional schooling mainly increases mismatch and unemployment rather than productive capacity. The main contribution is a policy implication: a government can implement a Pareto-improving reallocation—reducing excessive reliance on enrollment expansion while strengthening capacity formation and supporting consumption—so that employment outcomes improve without sacrificing long-run growth. I outline empirical tests using regional and city-level variation to assess whether education choices overreact to contemporaneous labor-market conditions and whether education expansions translate into subsequent high-skill job creation versus persistent mismatch.

Abstract. Chinese overseas investments are often analysed through funding volumes, geopolitical intent, or formal bilateral frameworks. This paper shifts attention to the implementation, understood as the stage at which broad investment and sustainability narratives are turned into project categories, regulatory decisions, land arrangements, environmental assessment, financing mechanisms, and responsibility claims. Focusing on the Rempang Eco-City project in Batam, Indonesia, the article asks how “green development” is translated through documents into an implementable project, and what this reveals about environmental governance and responsibility in China-linked development. Drawing on political ecology and qualitative document analysis, it analyses policy documents, academic literature, NGO and media sources, Chinese industry responsibility documents, and a focused corpus of Rempang and Batam documents. The article argues that Rempang’s tensions are not produced by Chinese investment alone, but through the interaction between Chinese-linked investment, strategic project designation, Batam’s implementation role, land governance, environmental assessment procedures, and community opposition and civil society critique. By foregrounding implementation, the article contributes to debates on China-linked development, environmental governance, and political ecology by showing how global green investment narratives become material, contested, and unevenly accountable in host-country settings.

Abstract. This paper examines urban social innovation in Taiwan through a comparative research design focused on three cities: Taipei, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. Rather than presenting the final results of a completed empirical study, the paper sets out the central questions, analytical framework, and methodological strategy of an ongoing project. It argues that urban social innovation should be understood at the level of the ecosystem, formed through the interaction of historical urban conditions, local actors, and long-term institutional development. The paper pays particular attention to the relationship among urban regeneration, the social economy, and community building, and proposes a three-layered analytical framework consisting of field, actor, and network. It also highlights youth not simply as an age-based demographic category, but as a positional group of actors who connect local communities, cultural practice, and public institutions. In this sense, the paper explores the heuristic value of “youth as method” for understanding the role of younger generations in urban social innovation. By comparing Taipei as a capital-metropolitan type, Tainan as a historical-cultural type, and Kaohsiung as an industrial-port type, the paper aims to clarify how different urban contexts shape distinct pathways of social innovation in Taiwan. It further suggests that the Taiwanese case offers useful comparative implications for broader East Asian discussions of local revitalization, community reconstruction, and youth-led social change.

Abstract. Against the backdrop of the rise of “new popular literature” and the widespread adoption of digital reading, the dissemination of classical literature faces a dual challenge of aesthetic gaps and audience discontinuity. The Youth Edition of A Dream of Red Mansions in Singapore preserves the polyphonic structure of the original text, introduces an innovative dual ending, and incorporates social media–style interactive paratexts, thereby enabling an interactive reading experience for adolescent readers. These adaptation strategies reshape the openness and narrative multidimensionality of the text, allowing readers to actively engage with its emotional and ethical dimensions, reconstruct the empathetic mechanisms of the classic, and transform its reception from unidirectional aesthetic appreciation to intersubjective dialogue. This practice not only expands methods for adapting classical literature but also offers innovative pathways and theoretical references for the dissemination of Chinese classics abroad in a contemporary context.

Abstract. Abstract This paper presents a fundamental academic thesis: the reason why two thousand years of Confucian Yi studies and Chinese philology have failed to reach the original meaning of the Zhouyiand Chinese characters lies in the complete absence of ontological understanding. Traditional scholars lack cognition of the "God's absolutely self-interested nature as substance" (i.e., the "Taiji"), resulting in successive deviations in their ontology, epistemology, and praxeology. This paper re-reveals the "丨-卜-攴" chain of thought as the underlying logic of Chinese character creation, and takes the first lines of the Qian and Kun hexagrams as examples to demonstrate that only under the light of ontology can hexagram images and line statements be correctly interpreted. This paper aims to overturn the old Confucian cultural narrative and reconstruct a paradigm for classical Chinese thought research based on ontology.

Abstract. Traditional scholarship predominantly categorizes Wang Bi's thought within the frameworks of philosophy of language or hermeneutics, while overlooking its logical value and cognitive mechanisms. This paper undertakes a systematic analysis of Wang Bi's "language-meaning debate" from the dual perspectives of logic and phenomenological intentionality theory. First, it traces the logical transformation from the Pre-Qin Mohist reasoning patterns to the Wei-Jin "language-meaning debate," revealing that Wang Bi established a novel hermeneutical-inferential model through the triadic structure of "language-image-meaning," whose validity rests upon a threefold guarantee: ontological, normative, and methodological. Second, employing Husserl's intentionality theory to analyze the process of "grasping meaning" (deyi), the paper demonstrates that "seeking meaning through language to contemplate images" and "seeking meaning through images to contemplate meaning" essentially constitute a two-stage process of intentional fulfillment from emptiness to fullness, while "forgetting language upon grasping meaning" and "forgetting images upon grasping meaning" embody the mechanism of intentional focus-shifting. Furthermore, it explores the paradoxical nature of the "Dao" as a special intentional object, as well as the particularity of "tiwu" (embodying nothingness) as a non-objectifying intentional act, revealing the bidirectional hermeneutical circle from "tiwu" to "linguistic transmission" and from "language" to "grasping meaning." Wang Bi's "language-meaning debate" functions both as a logical-inferential structure and as a cognitive process through which consciousness apprehends objects, thereby providing a dual theoretical interpretation—logical and phenomenological—for ancient Chinese hermeneutical thought.

Abstract. Taking the French translations of The Story of the Western Wing by Julien (1872-1880) and Lanselle (2015) as case studies, this paper examines the practical translation strategies adopted by sinologists of different eras in translating Chinese drama. It investigates how translation practices participate in and shape the canonization process of this work in the French-speaking world, and reflects on the cultural mediation role of drama translation in cross-cultural literary exchange.

Abstract. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, theatrical activities had permeated every aspect of people's lives. Novels of manners such as Jin Ping Mei and Dream of the Red Chamber repeatedly depicted theatrical performances, cited operatic arias, and borrowed theatrical materials to enrich their narrative techniques. Drawing on Qing dynasty novels of manners, particularly Xu Jin Ping Mei (Sequel to Jin Ping Mei), this study examines how fiction and drama interacted, revealing the cultural ecology of performance and literature in late imperial China.

Abstract. This paper analyzes the 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala sketch 《借伞》 (“Borrowing/Lending an Umbrella”) as a contemporary adaptation of The Legend of the White Snake that reworks previous retellings of the legend and domesticates their themes of gender transgression, queerness, and supernatural disruption. Drawing on Liang Luo’s account of White Snake as Chinese “national IP,” Haiyan Lee’s theory of theatrical sincerity, and Paolo Santangelo’s analysis of the late-imperial “cult of qing,” I argue that the sketch mobilizes love, predestination, and emotional identification to neutralize political tension and social dissatisfaction, transforming a historically subversive narrative into an harmonious vision of personal agency. Through an unfolding series of opera scenes combining Peking, Cantonese, yueju, and Sichuan opera styles with contemporary Mandarin-language comedy alongside the Taiwanese television classic New Legend of the White Snake, the sketch comments on regional styles and identity. This layering produces what Luo terms “affective identification,” encouraging viewers to experience Taiwanese and Hong Kong cultural memory as continuous with PRC national culture. Linguistic difference is similarly absorbed, where Sinitic topolects (fangyan) are absorbed and subordinated into Mandarin, reaffirming a linguistic hierarchy and domesticating potential subversion. At the narrative level, the sketch eliminates Bai Suzhen’s identity as a demon-snake and removes Fahai entirely, replacing him with a benign, childlike ferryman who orchestrates romantic reunions through umbrellas and 缘分 (destiny). These shifts evacuate the story’s historical tensions across species and between desire and social control, sacralizing love and emphasizing social harmony. Drawing on Santangelo, I show how this structure closely mirrors "cult of qing" values focused on subordinating emotions to social unity. The sketch also exemplifies Haiyan Lee’s account of modern theatrical sincerity; contemporary comedians appear under their real names, roles are matched to performers’ perceived personalities, and operatic ritual is repeatedly rendered unintelligible until translated into the language of everyday realism. Even Cecilia Yip’s cross-gender reprise of her role as Xu Xian, potentially opening queer readings, is contained through assumptions of actorly “insincerity” and resolved within a heterosexual framework of destined pairing. Ultimately, 《借伞》 reframes White Snake from a tale of gender rebellion and uncanny desire into a romance governed by fate. By sacralizing love, smoothing linguistic and regional difference, and staging a world where destiny resolves questions of intimacy, the sketch offers an enchanted social imaginary that diverts attention from gendered oppression, queerness, and contemporary political strain. This move ultimately encourages viewers instead to locate meaning and stability in marriage, nostalgia, and the beauty of the human world.

Abstract. Elena Voytishek, Yao Song, Novosibirsk State University (Russia) Art Detox: Chinese Art as a Path to Health. Presentation of the new textbook "Health Aspects of Traditional Chinese Culture", published by Novosibirsk State University In this textbook, through the analysis of various forms of traditional culture and art in China (primarily music, calligraphy, the art of managing qi energy, certain types of decorative and applied arts, tea ceremonies, and incense burning), the mechanisms by which artistic, mental, and religious practices influence human health are identified. By analyzing theoretical postulates and specific artistic practices, this work demonstrates that many forms of traditional Chinese culture can serve as fundamental regulators of the psychophysical state of individuals and society. Here, the crucial factor is not so much the deep therapeutic impact of each cultural form in isolation but rather the synergistic effect they generate collectively. For analysis in this manual, a range of significant forms of traditional Chinese culture has been selected, which can be regarded as system-forming regulators within society. By examining their significance for the development of the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the individual, one can identify common principles and trends in the understanding of the role and place of art in Chinese society—both in ancient times and today. The discussion revolves around the close interrelationship between music, calligraphy, and the art of qigong as "bodily calligraphy," the shared aesthetic principles of tea ceremonies and incense burning, and the emotional impact of various forms of artistic craftsmanship (such as metalwork, ceramics, porcelain, bone, jade, and semiprecious stones), all of which exhibit immense health-promoting potential and an inexhaustible array of healing psychophysical techniques. A comprehensive analysis demonstrates that many forms of traditional Chinese culture can serve as fundamental regulators of the state of individuals and society. These phenomena began with a therapeutic function (music as an acoustic manifestation of cosmic order, calligraphy as a visualized mental code, tea and incense as medicinal tools) and subsequently transformed into independent aesthetic systems. The close connection between different aspects of Chinese art, bound by the ideological concepts of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, highlights the unique philosophical and worldview potential of Chinese culture, expressed in the unity of spirit and form, naturalness and simplicity, and the interrelation of content and symbolism. This constitutes the main principle of the "usefulness" of engaging in procedural arts—through the cleansing of consciousness and meditative practices, they positively influence an individual's psychophysical state, releasing resources for addressing other life challenges. Consequently, each chapter of this manual contains relevant material related to the meditative aspects of various art forms. It can be said that the therapeutic effect of any given form of culture and art depends on the degree of meditativeness inherent in its artistic practices. With this approach, many aspects of traditional Chinese culture can be viewed as a subtle instrument for harmonizing body and spirit, enabling individuals to live in accordance with natural cycles and with themselves. In this sense, each form of traditional Chinese art can be viewed as an element of the fundamental philosophical and medical concept of yangsheng (养生), understood as a comprehensive complex of health practices and "nurturing life". The study was carried out within the framework of the implementation of the State assignment of the Ministry of Education and Science No. FSUS-2024-0028 “Axiological potential of Buddhism in the context of international relations of Russia with the parties to East Asia: history and modernity.”

Abstract. This paper presents an ongoing Ph.D. research project on Chinese reverse glass painting, highlighting how its subject matter, analytical framework, and methodological approach bridge Chinese and Western scholarship. Each aspect is addressed in a dedicated section of the paper, beginning with a brief introduction to the research topic. Emerging in the 18th century from Sino-Western exchanges and broader transcultural dynamics, Chinese reverse glass painting circulated widely across the globe and generated multiple artistic entanglements. In the late 19th century declining Western demand led production to undergo significant changes and turn to a growing local audience. Although these shifts have long been interpreted as evidence of decline, the presence of 20th century and even contemporary Chinese glass paintings in local and foreign collections tells a different story. The limited scholarship on these later developments, together with the long-standing marginalization of the medium within both Chinese and Western art-historical debates, reveal deeply rooted aesthetic and cultural prejudices, as well as a tendency to overstate the West-ern contribution to this artistic production. Seeking to produce a more balanced and comprehensive historical account, my research focuses precisely on what has thus far been neglected, integrates Chinese and Western expertise, and adopts a methodology that is multidisciplinary, multi-sited, and collaborative. This project draws theoretical inspiration from both Global Art History and Transcultural Art History, combines periods of field research in China and the West, and engages with both Chinese and Western stakeholders. It thus not only traces the global history of Chinese reverse glass painting but also support the need for, and viability of, decentered, more inclusive, and plural art-historical narratives.

Abstract. This paper examines Yuefu Buti as a late Song lyrical practice in which poets responded to the collapse of cultural order by reconstructing stable poetic sites, and shows how its so-called remnant voice was later produced within early Qing reception history. Compiled by fourteen late Song poets and consisting of thirty-seven descriptive lyrics, Yuefu Buti frequently looks back to past sites such as West Lake. Reintroduced to the public in 1678 through Zhu Yizun, a late Ming remnant who served the Qing court, the collection was framed as an echo of the fallen Song, prompting sustained collective lyric responses among early Qing remnant literati in dialogue with their late Song predecessors. Through close reading, transmission study, and reception-history analysis, this paper argues that many retrospective elements in Yuefu Buti actually derived from conventional allusive systems attached to specific objects, and that its strong remnant voice was not original but historically produced in the late Ming and early Qing. This reveals a double-layered reconstruction across time and space. First, in the late Song, the literati continued to rely on established literary habits and aesthetic preferences. In a literati-centered society where moral authority outweighed official power, through poetic societies and the rewriting of elegant objects, they rebuilt a cultural landscape structured around fixed sites and allusions, thereby repairing a spiritual homeland. Second, Zhu Yizun reinforced the remnant image of late Song poets to negotiate his own historical position, thereby reshaping later understandings of Yuefu Buti as a key medium for remnant-literati sentiment in the early Qing.

Abstract. Throughout much of the Ming dynasty, relations with the Mongols remained tense, verging on war. Even after the Longqing Peace Accord, competition persisted in the Amdo region during the Wanli era. In this context, the Ming consistently maintained a substantial cavalry force. However, due to the scarcity of suitable horse-rearing areas within Ming territory, sources of warhorses were limited. The tea-horse trade with Tibetan tribes in Amdo thus became a crucial channel for securing supply. Contrary to the assumption that the peace with Mongolia reduced the need for warhorses, the Ming continued to prioritize their acquisition. Following military successes in the northwest in the early Wanli period, the Ming repelled Mongol influence in eastern Amdo, reasserted control over local tribes, and revitalized the tea-horse trade. By the 1590s, the volume of horses obtained through this trade peaked and remained high until the end of the dynasty. Existing scholarship has often underestimated both the quality of Ming warhorses and the effectiveness of their administration, with detailed studies on the sources and management of cavalry horses remaining scarce. Through careful analysis of newly uncovered documents, this study examines the scale and distribution mechanisms of the tea-horse trade in the late Ming, particularly during the Wanli reign. The findings provide a solid foundation for a more nuanced assessment of the Ming military’s operational capacity in this period.

Abstract. Abstract: The paper examines how the 1942 Henan Famine has been represented and circulated across multiple media: the witnessing framework in wartime reportage by Theodore H. White; the cross-contextual reconstruction in Liu Zhenyun’s Remembering 1942 (Wengu Yijiu si’er) and Howard Goldblatt’s English translation; the affective mobilization through spectacle in Feng Xiaogang’s film Back to 1942 (Yijiu si’er); the production of bodily presence and local memory in the immersive theatre project Only Henan: Drama Fantasy City; and the game 1942: The Henan Famine, which generates experiential memory through rules and player choices. The study addresses three questions: (1) How is the narrator’s position configured? (2) How is evidence organized into a credible narrative? (3) How are emotions mobilized? Methodologically, combining transmedia narration with multimodal analysis, the paper traces a chain of memory migration from factual reportage to ethical storytelling, cinematic spectacle, immersive experience, and gamified decision-making. It argues that transmedia bridging enhances the visibility and transmissibility of disaster memory, yet the turn toward experience may also blur structural causes and historical accountability, posing new challenges for the global circulation of disaster memory in contemporary China.

Abstract. When modern states attempt identity integration on multi-ethnic frontiers, they often encounter a sharp collision between "state will" and "local resilience." Grounded in the "center-periphery" interactive logic of global history, this study examines the Nanjing Nationalist Government’s use of the National Language (Guoyu) policy for nation-building and the governance limits it faced in the Mongolian borderlands. The core inquiry addresses how textbook texts became sites of sovereign negotiation when the ideal of linguistic unity confronted the infrastructural power limits of grassroots governance and the political mobilization of a competing regime. Departing from traditional macro-policy studies, this research employs a micro-historical approach based on extensive archival materials and a unique comparative analysis of the 1947 Han-Mongolian Bilingual Textbooks against their complete set of eight Chinese pedagogical prototypes (blueprints). By aligning the five extant bilingual editions with their original blueprints, this study captures the subtle discursive shifts that occurred during translation and implementation. The findings reveal that the 1947 editions exhibited a distinct "tactical softening": compared to the Chinese blueprints, which emphasized a centralized "Great Unification" narrative, the bilingual editions made significant concessions in ethnic symbolism, historical narrative, and linguistic weight. This textual evolution was not a mere pedagogical progression but a forced adaptation by the Nationalist government to maintain crumbling territorial sovereignty under the political pressure of the 1947 Inner Mongolian Autonomous Movement and the Chinese Communist Party’s competing ethnic rhetoric. In a dual crisis of military and political authority, the textbook evolved into a medium of "sovereign negotiation," utilizing cultural "softening" to counteract the impact of the CCP’s "ethnic self-determination" slogans. This case illustrates the inherent limits of state-led linguistic nationalism on the periphery. To preserve territorial integrity amidst global political contestation, the state paradoxically reinforced the very ethnic distinctiveness it originally sought to assimilate. This discovery provides a significant academic case for understanding "competing state-building" and the mechanisms of identity recalibration in multi-ethnic states during times of crisis.

Abstract. This paper examines how linguistic landscapes—the visible display of languages and other semiotic resources in public space—mediate historical crisis through the public representation of Japanese language and culture in Mainland China. Focusing on four so-called “Japanese streets”, the study analyzes how Japaneseness is semiotically constructed within a national context shaped by enduring memories of war, occupation, and national humiliation stemming from past Sino-Japanese conflicts (Wang, 2012). These historical events continue to function as what may be understood as crisis as a mnemonic regime: a socially maintained framework through which past crises are repeatedly activated and mobilized to interpret contemporary cultural phenomena. Drawing on data from four cities, this multi-site study compares storefronts, signage, and other public-facing semiotic resources across sites with differing development trajectories and intended functions. While linguistic landscape research has often emphasized the empowering effects of minority language visibility, this study instead examines a language that, in the Chinese context, remains closely associated with historical aggression and collective trauma. In some locations, Japanese language indexes the local presence of Japanese communities; in others, it is commodified within purpose-built, tourism-oriented environments for domestic consumption (Zhou et al., 2022). The analysis shows that these landscapes negotiate crisis memory through selective framing, dilution, and recontextualization of historically charged signs. By treating crisis as an ongoing mnemonic regime rather than a closed historical episode, the paper demonstrates how urban space becomes a key site for the mediation, contestation, and temporary suspension of national memory in post-conflict societies.

Abstract. This paper examines the life and self-representation of Oei Hui-lan, Madame Wellington Koo, as a lens for understanding globalisation as a lived experience. Moving between colonial Southeast Asia, Republican China, Europe, and the United States, Hui-lan Koo inhabited the transnational world of early twentieth-century diplomacy from a position that was both privileged and precarious. Rather than treating globalisation only as a process of institutions, treaties, and state formation, this paper asks what it felt like from the inside: how it was experienced through movement, performance, social labour, emotional discipline, and the everyday management of identity across racialised and imperial worlds. Through memoirs, diplomatic archives, press coverage, and visual representations, the paper argues that Hui-lan Koo’s life reveals the intimate and gendered dimensions of global connection. Her story shows that globalisation was not only made in official negotiations, but also in drawing rooms, bodies, relationships, and acts of self-fashioning that sustained global networks while remaining largely invisible in the formal historical record.