Newsletter No. 18 (Aug 1998)

Newsletter #18

NEWSLETTER #18

AUGUST 1998

COPY DEADLINE for the next issue is 15 October

CONTENTS

British Association of Chinese Studies – An Introduction

Announcement: EACS Board Meeting in Edinburgh

Workshops, Seminars, Conferences

Exhibitions

Obituary

EACS Conference Preliminary Program

Reports from Workshops, Conferences, etc.

Members’ Publications

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EACS 1998 EDINBURGH CONFERENCE

Enquiries and Registration, CONTACT:

Conference Secretary

Scottish Centre of Chinese Studies, University of Edinburgh,

8 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, Scotland, UK.

Fax: + 44 – 131 – 65 112 58. Tel.: +44 – 131 – 65 04 227.

E-mail: “EACS Conference” <EASEACS@srv0.arts.ed.ac.uk>

Conference Web Site: http://www.ed.ac.uk/~etev09/eacs.html

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BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF CHINESE STUDIES – AN INTRODUCTION

By Frank Dikötter, President of the BACS

The British Association of Chinese Studies is a non-political organisation which has a membership of well over 200 individuals whose interests relate to greater China, drawn mainly from the academic community but also from industry, the media and government. It plays an important role in liaising and consulting with other Area Studies organisations, with funding bodies, with China-related representative offices and with government departments. Its School Liaison Officer seeks to encourage and promote the study of China in schools and colleges in Britain below the university level. A member of the Chinese Language Teachers Seminar represents the interests of teachers of Chinese at university level. BACS has played a vital role in promoting the interests and priorities of the China-field in such recent government initiatives as the Research Assessment Exercise, the Teaching Quality Assessment and the HEFCE China Studies Review. BACS also administers scholarships for students to spend a summer in Taiwan provided by the British-Taiwan Representative Office. BACS organises an annual conference or event which coincides with the Annual General Meeting (AGM), and past topics have included the Macartney Mission to China, Local Identities and Local Culture and the Arts and Sciences of China. In recent years, BACS has also sought greater integration and cooperation with the British Association of Japanese Studies (BAJS) and Korean Studies (BAKS) by participating in a joint conference which takes place every two to three years: the last two events took place in Leeds and Durham. BACS, moreover, encompasses the China Postgraduate Network (CPN), which provides an organisational framework for all postgraduates whose research concerns China, and aims principally to disseminate information, offer advice, maintain a database of postgraduates in Britain, and pursue links with similar organisations in other countries. The CPN produces an annual Newsletter, which complements the yearly Bulletin published by BACS. BACS looks forward to greater cooperation with other European Area Studies organisations, and hopes that by holding its AGM in Edinburgh in conjunction with the EACS conference it will facilitate much needed opportunities for friendship and scholarly exchange between members of both associations.

Jenny Putin, the Honorary Secretary, can be reached by E-mail on 100726.2405@compuserve.com until September 1998; Frank Dikötter can be reached by E-mail on fd3@soas.ac.uk; his address is History Department, SOAS Russell Square, London WC1H OXG.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The outgoing Board of the EACS will convene its last meeting in Edinburgh on 9 September, 1998. Any member of the EACS who has any matter she/he would like to present to the Board is welcome to do so by communication to the Secretary-General. (Invitation to and agenda for the General Assembly of the EACS, which will take place during the Edinburgh conference, is enclosed as a separate invitation in this consignment of the Newsletter).

Oslo, 21 July, 1998

Harald Bøckman

Secretary-General

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WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS, CONFERENCES

Workshop on Women Organizing in China. Oxford 12-16 July 1999, Institute for Chinese Studies and Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, The University of Oxford.

PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT & CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Background:

Historically in China, as elsewhere, there have always been women who have acted on an individual basis or organized collectively in opposition to gender and other inequalities. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China, women were collectively organized from a diverse group of women’s organizations into one officially sanctioned organization known as the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF). This organizing of women from above by the Communist Party took place as part of the Party’s commitment to gender equality. The aim was also to ensure women’s support of Party policy.

As contradictory effects of the economic reforms initiated in 1978 began to be felt with women shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden of economic transition and due to simultaneous political relaxation, women have organized from below in women’s studies groups, social welfare organizations, professional organizations, informal groups and within the framework of their religion. During the past fifteen years the context of women organizing in China has begun to change from a state-centred, hegemonic to a multi-centred, heterogeneous framework.

Aims: The aim of the workshop is to engage in an empirical inquiry and theoretical analysis of women organizing in the People’s Republic of China. The term women organizing has been chosen to include, first, organizing of women by others as well as women organizing on their own initiative and, second, different types of organizing both within and outside formal organizations as well as the networks that cut across organizations. The scope of women as organizers addressed by the workshop includes the All-China Women’s Federation and other party/state institutions, the many new forms of collective action that have emerged in recent years going beyond institutional organization to include any form of collective action by women. The workshop inquires into the issues women address as urgent and the discourses these engender. While the main focus is on the People’s Republic of China, women organizing in Taiwan and international links between women organizing in China and other countries will be included in the workshop.

Due to the very recent emergence of new forms of organizing in China not much research has yet focused on this area. We want to start addressing this problem by bringing together activists from China and scholars (Chinese and international) for a workshop that will give both sides an opportunity for close interaction, leading to increased empirically based understanding and theoretical contextualization of women’s organizing.

The aim is to facilitate current attempts already initiated among scholars to arrive at more cultural specific understanding of women organizing in China. The workshop will address economic, political, social and cultural aspects
of women organizing and will also critically assess the role of international funding agencies in influencing the nature and scope of women’s projects.

The workshop aims to:

1) situate Chinese women organizing in the context of China’s current reforms

2) analyze opportunities and structural obstacles faced by women organizing

3) analyze values, beliefs and practices of women organizing

4) challenge stereotypical images of Chinese women as blind, passive victims of the CCP state and patriarchal tradition and question the usefulness of the application of dominant western civil society approaches with their focus on an oppositional relationship to the party/state to understanding the cultural context of women organizing in China.

Themes/Working Format:

Six workshop sessions will address the following issues:

1) The ACWF in the era of reform – re-inventing the Federation

2) The ACWF and new types of organizing since the 1980s – challenges and co-existence

3) New types of organizing / changing culture of women’s organization – hierarchical impasses and democratic impulses

4) Women’s studies – within and outside the ACWF

5) Religious organizing – the secular paradigm questioned

6) Methodological and theoretical approaches to research on women organizing – contextualizing scholarship

Outcome: The aim is to publish a selection of workshop papers. The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women has its own series of books with Berg Publishers. An edited volume of workshop papers will be submitted as part of this series.

The aim is also to set up a network of Chinese and international scholars engaged in research on women organizing in China as a basis for facilitating future collaborative research and to plan a second workshop.

Participants:

The workshop is targeted at scholars and PhD students (Chinese and international) in human and social science disciplines as well as representatives from international donor agencies. Depending on available funding a number of activists from China will be invited to take part in the workshop.

In addition to twenty-thirty participants presenting papers the workshop will include twenty designated observer participants.

Date: Three day workshop 13-15 July 1999 with overseas and non-Oxford participants arriving 12 July and departing 16 July.

Abstracts:

Send abstract of 250 words approximately to the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women. Please include the following information: Name. Position. Institution. Address. Phone. Fax. Email. ABSTRACT DEADLINE 1 September 1998.

Organizers:

Ping-Chun Hsiung, Associate Professor, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.

Maria Jaschok, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, Oxford University.

Cecilia Milwertz, Research Fellow, Institute for Chinese Studies, Oxford University.

Preliminary dates subject to provision of funding currently under application.

CONTACT: Joanna Child, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, University of Oxford, Queen Elizabeth House, 21 St.Giles, Oxford OX1 3LA, England.

Tel.: + 44 – 18 65 273 644. Fax: + 44 – 18 65 273 607. Email: cccrw@qeh.ox.ac.uk

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EXHIBITIONS

Treasures for King Zhao Mo. The Nan Yue Tomb, China, 122 B.C. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 5 December 1998 – 22 January 1999.

In the turbulence occuring toward the end of the reign of Qin Shihuang, China’s First Emperor (r. 221-210 B.C.), one of his generals for the South made himself independent. This general, Zhao Tuo, founded, far beyond the mountain passes, the southern kingdom of Nan Yue. Its capital, Panyu, was situated in the vicinity of the present city of Canton. He ruled over a territory covering what today are the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as part of the present North Vietnam. After Zhao Tuo’s death his grandson, Zhao Mo (r. 137-122 B.C.), ascended the throne as self-declared emperor. This exhibition presents eminent treasures from Zhao Mo’s tomb, which was sealed in the year 122 B.C.

Already in the early 3rd century A.D. grave robbers tried to locate the Nan Yue tombs, which were famous for their riches. But not until 1983 did construction workers accidentally find the large stone chamber tomb of king Zhao Mo, on the Elephant Hill in Guangzhou. After a careful excavation a class pyramid has been built above the tomb and a wonderful museum now houses the artifacts, including gold, silver, hundreds of well preserved jades, bronzes, iron objects, silk and lacquer fragments.

The tomb itself consists of seven chambers, reflecting not only wealth and power over precious goods, but also over human life. A total number of 15 concubines, guards, servants and musicians followed Zhao Mo to his death.

The tomb is centered around the lavishly furnished coffin chamber in which Zhao Mo was buried wearing a jade suit. To the right was the room of the concubines. Another chamber housed the servants. The storeroom was filled to the ceiling with carefully packed food vessels. Separated by a massive stone door was an antechamber and two narrow rooms with musical instruments, ritual vessels, tools and weapons.

The Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt in cooperation with the Museum for Applied Art, Frankfurt and the Institute of Far Eastern Art History, University of Heidelberg, is planning an exhibition with eminent treasures of the tomb. For the first time in the West – and only at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt – a selection of over one hundred precious tomb artifacts will be on display. Through their rich variety and uniqueness they express the special status of the Nan Yue king. Officially named a vassal of the Western Han Dynasty (206B.C. – 6 A.D.), Zhao Mo was nonetheless able to build up a large and powerful empire in the protection of the South which survived an entire decade.

The project is co-organized by the Museum of Kunsthandwerk, Schaumainkai 17, Frankfurt am Main. An exhibition with early Vietnamese ceramics and bronzes, now in private collections, parallels the Schirn exhibition.

A series of lectures concerning the Schirn exhibition will be held in the Museum für Kunsthandwerk. Expected speakers: Dr. Jessica Rawson (Dec. 9th), Dr. Hermann-Josef Röllicke (Dec. 16th), Dr. Margarete Prüch (Jan. 13th), Dr. Magdalene von Dewall (Jan. 20th). For further information, call + 49 – 69 – 212 340 37.

The exhibition will be shown in the Schirn Kunsthalle on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the city partnership Guangzhou-Frankfurt from 5 December 1998 through 22 January 1999.

Opening hours: Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays closed.

Guided tours: Tuesday 11 a.m., Wednesday 7 p.m. Midday tours: Tuesday and Thursday 12.30 p.m. Requested tours or for further information, call + 49 – 69 – 299 882-12 or -11.

Umschau/Braus Publishing House, Heidelberg, will produce the catalogue with coloured reproductions of all exposures.

Entrance fee: Tuesday to Saturday DM 9.-, reduced DM 6.-. Sunday DM 6.-. Season ticket DM 15.-, reduced DM 10.-.

Schirn Kunsthalle

Römerberg, D-60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Tel. +49 – 69 – 299 882-0. Fax: +49 – 69 – 299 882 – 40. E-mail: schirn@schirn.de

http://schirn.de/china

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CHINA INFORMATION. A QUARTERLY JOURNAL ON CONTEMPORARY CHINA STUDIES. ISSN 0920-203X.

The Documentation and Research Center for Contemporary China, Sinological Institute, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA LEIDEN, The Netherlands.

Fax: + 31 – 71 – 5272526. E-mail: docchin@rullet.leidenuniv.nl

China
Information
is an English-language, refereed academic quarterly with an international readership, going into its thirteeth year of publication, which focuses on recent developments in China and Greater China in the field of economics, politics, law, education and health, environment, literature and the arts. It is not available on the Internet.

The recent Spring 1998 issue (XII:4) contains the following articles:

Malcolm Warner and Ng Sek Hong, “The Ongoing Evolution of Chinese Industrial Relations: The Negotiation of ‘Collective Contracts’ in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone”.

David Schak, “Bilaterality in Chinese Kinship”.

Yijiang Ding, “Corporatism and Civil Society in China: An Overview of the Debate in Recent Years”.

Lan Yang, “The Depiction of the Hero in the Cultural Revolution Novel”.

Woei Lien Chong with Anne Sytske Keyser, “Chinese Cinema at the 1998 International Rotterdam Film Festival”.

Plus: A total of 44 pages with reviews of 26 new books on contemporary China.

Please note: payment in US dollars for single issues and subscriptions is accepted. We regret that payment per credit card is not yet possible at the moment.

For more information please contact the chief editor, Ms. Woei Lien Chong at: docchin@rullet.leidenuniv.nl

OBITUARY:

GORDON WHITE 1942 – 1998

– EASY RIDER IN SINOLOGY

To those of us who were fortunate to know Gordon White, it came as a sad surprise that he passed away earlier this spring. A man who displayed such an undaunted spirit and who was blessed with such exuberant humour could be expected to live long, but he fooled us on April 1 and died in Oxford from a stroke after earlier complications. He had to vie with Tammy Wynette for space in The Guardian’s obituary column, something I am sure he would not have minded at all, if he had to go.

Gordon was a rigid scholar who rode easily in sinology. He combined political radicalism with first-rate scholarship in a way that gained him respect in wide circles. He started out in classical studies at Oxford and continued studying archaeology at Cornell, but switched to political science and Chinese studies at Stanford, no doubt as a result of his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement. His CV reflects a committed and extremely productive mind, with fourteen books, nine monographs and nearly a hundred articles. China remained his main field, with the study on the political economy of the reform period, Riding the Tiger (1993), and a co-edited volume entitled In Search of Civil Society: Market Reforms and Social Change in Contemporary China (1995) as the main contributions. But he also rode elsewhere, and did research on Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea, and last, but not least, development theory. His two last co-edited books, published this year, deal with East Asian welfare models and the democratic developmental state.

He worked four years as a Lecturer of the Department of Political Science at the Australian National University (1973-77), and since 1978 he worked at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University, first as a Fellow and then as a Professorial Fellow. Already in his Cornell days, Gordon had problems with spinal tumours, and after an operation in 1989, he became a paraplegic. However, he proved that wheelchairs can also go in the fast lane. He went to China as late as last autumn, planning research projects on poverty alleviation, rural social welfare reforms, and the role of industrial labour in the transition. He complained that he got doubly stuffed by eating too much on Holiday Inn in Beijing and was eager to find accessible alternative eateries around town and also to seek out interesting new modern art places. His appetite for what life had to offer was great and multifarious. One could however sense that he felt that life had become a rat race, with so many things awaiting to be done. But it had become a rat race in a different sense as well, because the legacy of Thatcherism was still exerting its pressure for the commodisation of research. Gordon would complain about how “you sinologists” were living a leisured life in our traditional shelters, but that was more a reaction to the incessant race for funding than a precise description of contemporary European sinology.

The picture accompanying his obituary in The Guardian shows a buoyant young Gordon jumping from a stone somewhere in the Norwegian mountains in 1961. It struck me that such a personality could easily have gone with Merseymania and been lost to sinology. Fortunately, he localised his devotion to rock music, forming a number of illustrious bands. The highlight of this side of his career must have been when he, according to reliable sources, performed The East is Red Boogie to a stunned audience of People’s Liberation Army soldiers. This is perhaps no big thing in our age of karaoke and disco, but his performance took place twenty-five years ago, in 1973! Please feel free to remember Gordon White with a song, a glass, or a dance, or whatever you feel appropriate to pay tribute to this warm personality and to his contributions to Chinese studies.

Harald Bøckman

EACS CONFERENCE 1998

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME per 15th July 1998

1 Modern Chinese Literature and Film

1.1 Folklore and roots Chair: Michel Hockx

Thursday 10 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room South

1.1.1 Traditional Nursery Rhymes of Beijing or “The Humoresques of Lao She”.

Nikolai A. Speshnev

1.1.2 Festivals for Lu Xun: National identity construction and the “Lesser Tradition”.

Jon Kowallis

1.1.3 Contemporary zhiguai?: Modern stories of the strange and the abnormal.

Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg

1.1.4 Han Shaogong: From a “manifesto of roots literature‚ to A Dictionary of Horsebridge”.

Mark Leenhouts

1.2 Entertainment and travel Chair: Michel Hockx

Thursday 10 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room South

1.2.1 May Fourth Views of Traditional Novels.

Wong Wang-chi

1.2.2 From Popular Novel to Mass Media: The narrative convention and politics of Eileen Chang’s Eighteen Springs.

Deborah Tze-lan Sang

1.2.3 Science, Adventure and Detection: New stories for the creation of the new citizen?

Denise Gimpel

1.2.4 The Chinese Away: Chinese women travel in Africa.

Carol Rennie

1.3 Sex and other pleasures Chair: Michel Hockx

Friday 11 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room South

1.3.1 Never So Wild: Sexing the Cultural Revolution for America.

Wendy Larson

1.3.2 Forbidden Fun: Sex in contemporary popular literature.

Marja Kaikkonen

1.3.3 Nature vs. Castration: Shen Congwen’s point of view.

Fang Weigui

1.3.4 Liu Na’ou: The neo-perceptionist dandy.

Peng Hsiao-yen

1 Modern Chinese Literature and Film cont’d

1.4 Editing, publishing and acting Chair: Michel Hockx

Friday 11 September, 11.30-13.30, Faculty Room South

1.4.1 Entertainment and Education: “Idle Chat” in the Anhui suhuabao (Vernacular

Magazine of Anhui Province) (1904-1905).

Nadja Rackwitz-Ziegler

1.4.2 “12,324 Characters”: Printing workers in 1920s Shanghai.

Raoul David Findeisen

1.4.3 What Books Young People Loved Best in 1925 Beijing: A survey held by Jingbao

Fukan.

Shimizu Kenichiro

1.4.4 The Filmic World (Re)created by Xia Yan: An approach to a Chinese biography of

our century.

Peggy Kames

2 Traditional Literature

2.1 Chair: Glen Dudbridge

Friday 11 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room South

2.1.1 Playing Life’s Game: the “Stage on the stage” in Wu Wei’s drama series Si sheng yuan.

Marion Eggert

2.1.2 The
Lantern Festival in The Dream of the Red Chamber.

Chang Ching-erh

2.1.3 Plays and Music in Scholarly Society: The case of Li Dou.

Lucie Borotova

2.1.4 Love and Death in the Yuan Theatre.

Vladislav F. Sorokin

2.2 Chair: Glen Dudbridge

Saturday 12 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room South

2.2.1 Foretelling the Future by the Shijing and Zuo zhuan: The Han oracular book Yi Lin and the transformation of poems and legends to prognostications.

Dennis Schilling

2.2.2 Another Look at the fu of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju: On the meaning of the “blended sauce” in ancient poetry.

Hans van Ess

2.2.3 When the Poet Waves his Brush: Wang Wei’s poems written in jest.

Olga Lomova

2.2.4 Work and Play in Chinese Court Poetry.

Maria Rohrer

3 Premodern History

3.1 Chair: D. L. McMullen

Saturday 12 September, 11.30-13.30, Faculty Room South

3.1.1 Political Cosmography of the Warring States Period: The Wuzi (4th-3rd centuries BC).

Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann

3.1.2 Criminal Procedure in the Early Han Period as Reflected in the Recently Discovered Inscriptions of Zhangjiashan.

Ulrich Lau

3.1.3 Xu Xiake and the Art of Leisure.

Julian Ward

3.1.4 Dangerous Innuendoes or Hostile Interpretation: Some remarks on the varying conceptions of the characters “Ming” and “Qing” during the Qianlong reign.

Peter Sivam

3.2 Chair: Anders Hansson

Saturday 12 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room South

3.2.1 Plays and Games in the 16th Century Spanish Chronicles on China.

Dolors Folch

3.2.2 Chinese Leisure as Seen in the Spanish Documents of the 17th Century.

Anna Busquets

3.2.3 Chinese Festivals in the Eyes of Russian Diplomats (17th -19th Centuries).

Vladimir Stepanovich Myasnikov

3.2.4 The Return of the Yellow Emperor: Political mythmaking in contemporary China.

Harald Bøckman

4 Religion and Philosophy

4.1 Chair: Rudolf Wagner

Thursday 10 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room North

4.1.1 Buddhist Sectarianism in Transition: Field research experience in Henan.

4.1.2 New Results of Current Shenxian zhuan Research.

Stephan Peter Bumbacher

4.1.3 Literati representative of Work versus Labour in Ancient China.

Anne Cheng

4.1.4 Taoist Influence on the Neijiaquan (Internal Martial Arts).

Dan K. J. Vercammen

4 Religion and Philosophy cont’d

4.2 Chair: Rudolf Wagner

Thursday 10 September, 17.00-19.00, Faculty Room North

4.2.1 The Chinese Not at Work Nor at Play: Notions of sleep in pre-Buddhist China.

Antje Richter

4.2.2 Correctly Naming Cases of Regicide in the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Carine Defoort

4.2.3 Playing with Sophisms or Communicativeness Beyond the Limits of Formal Logics: Intercultural hermeneutics in the light of traditional and modern Chinese cognition theories.

Jana Rosker

4.2.4 The Resonance of Ghosaka.

Bart Dessein

4.3 Chair: Rudolf Wagner

Friday 11 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room North

4.3.1 The Meaning of shengshan (sacred mountain) in Chinese Culture.

Daniel Ibañez Gomez

4.3.2 The Ceremony of Entering the Sangha in the Past and at Present.

Svetlana Gorbunova

4.3.3 Parajika in Chinese Buddhist Monastic Discipline.

Ann Heirman

4.3.4 Yu Zhi Le — The Joy of the Fishes, or The Play of Words: Towards a literary interpretation of Zhuangzi.

Peter Hoffmann

5 Modern History, Politics and Economics

5.1 Economics (1) Chair: Christian Henriot

Friday 11 September, 12.30-13.30, Faculty Room North

5.1.1 New Trends in Contemporary Chinese Economic Thought.

Olga N. Borokh

5.1.2 The Phenomenon of Feifa laowu shichang (Illegal Labour Markets) in the People’s Republic of China: Specific cases in Beijing and Shanghai.

Leila Fernandez-Stembridge

5.2 Economics (2) Chair:

Friday 11 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room North

5.2.1 States of growth and sizes of Gross Domestic Product in the People’s Republic of China.

Vilya Gelbras

5.2.2 External and internal debt in the People’s Republic of China.

Yekaterina Litvinenko

5.2.3 Economic Cooperation between China and International Financial Institutions.

Lyubov Novoselova

5.2.4 The Stockmarket in China: Current trends and future prospects.

Vladimir Portiakov

5 Modern History, Politics and Economics cont’d

5.3 Modern History Chair: Frank Dikötter

Saturday 12 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room North

5.3.1 Translators at Work: The first Chinese translations on international law.

Rune Svarverud

5.3.2 Depolitization and the Consciousness of Crisis: Reflections on the debate on democracy and dictatorship in Republican China.

Thomas Fröhlich

5.3.3 Zhang Yuanji and Wang Yunwu in the Republican Publishing Business and their Ranking in the Community of Memory in the 1980s.

Erich Pilz

5.3.4 Organized Spontaneity: Worker and peasant correspondents in the early People’s Republic of China.

Lorenz Bichler

5.4 Politics (1) Chair: Flemming Christiansen

Saturday 12 September, 11.30-13.30, Faculty Room North

5.4.1 Hard Times for Macao during the Cultural Revolution.

Antonio Graca de Abreu

5.4.2 The Legal Framework for Eugenic Measures in the People‚s Republic of China.

Dagmar Borchard

5.4.3 Chinese Schoolchildren at Study : New perspectives for all-round education.

Nina Y. Borevskaya

5.4.4 The People’s Republic of China and the Issue of Korean Unification.

Andrea Campana

5.5 Politics (2) Chair: Flemming Christiansen

Saturday 12 September, 14.30-16.30, Faculty Room North

5.5.1 The Workstyle of Political Science in the People‚s Republic of China.

G.H. Hintzen

5.5.2 On the Restructuring of the Class Structure in China.

Torstein Hjellum

5.5.3 China’s Underground Railways and Foreign Policy.

Thomas Kampen

5.5.4 The Management of Memory: the People’s Republic of China archival system in the service of state politics.

Vivian Wagner

6 Anthropology and Sociology

6.1 The issues: colonisation, integration, struggle Chair: David Faure

Friday 11 September, 17.00-19.00, Lecture Theatre C

6.1.1 Han colonization of Miao areas during the Qing period.

E. B. Vermeer

6.1.2 From migrant to native: second generation Han in the border region of Sipsong Panna.

Mette Halskov Hansen

6.1.3 Contending Cultures: Taiwan’s Aborigines and the Struggle for Cultural Survival in the Times of Multiculturalism.

Michael Rudolph

6 Anthropology and Sociology cont’d

6.2 The process (1): power, space, record and gender Chair: E. B. Vermeer

Saturday 12 September, 9.00-11.00, Lecture Theatre C

6.2.1 The Immortal and the General: Changing face in Mountainstreet.

Stephan Feuchtwang

6.2.2 Ambiguities of Identity and the Appropriation of Temple Space: The dai hua festival in West Hunan.

Mary Rack

6.2.3 Fengsu sections in Local Gazetteers from Northeast China.

Mareile Flitsch

6.2.4 Celebrating Women? Official Organization of Festivities for Females in Post-1978 Rural China.

Astrid Lipinsky

6.3 The process (2): religion, trees, new year pictures, love songs

Chair: S. Feuchtwang

Saturday 12 September, 11.30-13.30, Lecture Theatre C

6.3.1 Unconsciousness Unknown: Or
igin, development and common practice of “calling back the soul”.

Michael Schimmelpfennig

6.3.2 Chinese Forestry in Ambivalence.

Silvia Freiin Ebner von Eschenbach

6.3.3 Chinese New Year Pictures of the Twentieth Century.

Maria Ferenczy

6.3.4 Love Songs and Temple Festivals in Northwest China.

Frank Kouwenhoven

6.4 The process being transformed: famous people, trees, wedding, follow-up, values

Chair:

Saturday 12 September, 14.30-16.30, Lecture Theatre C

6.4.1 The Meat and Soul of Su Dongpo: famous people and local culture.

Stig Thøgersen

6.4.2 Traditions and Innovations in Chinese Weddings.

Olga Pochagina

6.4.3 Celebrating the One-year Anniversary of a Women’s Organization in Beijing 1997.

Cecilia Milwertz

6.4.4 Values Among University Students in China Today.

Marie Konge Nielsen

6.5 The process abroad: recreating China Chair:

Sunday 13 September, 9.00-10.30, Lecture Theatre C

6.5.1 Will Chinatown Appear in Moscow?

Andrew Dikariov

6.5.2 The Chinese Diaspora in Chinese Law.

Dmitri Jogolev

6.5.3 Overseas Chinese Associations in Spain: Festivals as spaces for building social prestige.

Gladys Nieto

7 Visual Arts and Archaeology

7.1 Chair:

Thursday 10 September, 14.30-16.30, Lecture Theatre C

7.1.1 The Siling (the Four Guardian Animals of the Four Quarters) in Art Representation.

Marianne Pui Yin Wong

7.1.2 Auspicious Imagery in Chinese Art and Thought: The evolution and structure of a major cultural phenomenon.

Martin Hala

7.1.3 Some Buddhist stone pillars found in Gansu and Xinjiang.

Susanne Juhl

7.1.4 The Hephthalite Influence on the Diadems of Maitreya in Gansu and Xinjiang.

Wei Chen-hsuan

7.2 Chair:

Thursday 12 September, 17.00-19.00, Lecture Theatre C

7.2.1 The Joy of Drinking: Aspects of depicting drunken figures in Chinese art.

Gyorgyi Fajcsak

7.2.2 Chinese Ancestral Portraits: Some late Ming ancestral portraits in Scandinavian Museums.

Joan Hornby

7.2.3 Games and Plays in Popular Prints (nianhua).

Tatiana I. Vinogradova

7.2.4 Festivals and Photography in Late Imperial China.

Regine Thiriez

8 Language and Linguistics

8.1 Contemporary language (1) Chair: Redouane Djamouri

Friday 11 September, 9.00-11.00, Lecture Theatre C

8.1.1 Dummy Verbs and Verb Phrases.

Horst-Dieter Gasde

8.1.2 The Interpretations of Indirect Object in the Ditransitive Construction.

Niina Ning Zhang

8.1.3 A New Interpretation of the Status of Serial Verb Constructions in Chinese.

Florentina Visan

8.1.4 On the location of (new) information in Modern Standard Chinese.

Marie-Claude Paris

8.2 Contemporary language (2) Chair: Marie-Claude Paris

Friday 11 September, 11.30-13.30, Lecture Theatre C

8.2.1 The Syntax and Semantics of Numeral Classifiers in Mandarin Chinese.

Robin Sackmann

8.2.2 Numeral Classifiers and Mental Categorization: Some remarks on semantic aspects of shape-based classifiers in Modern Chinese.

Elna Andersson

8.2.3 From gaoxing to kuaile: Two kinds of states of happiness.

Tsai Mei-chih

8.2.4 The Concept of Person and the Paradigmatic Relations of the Lexeme shen.

Ksenia Vladislavovna Antonian

8 Language and Linguistics cont’d

8.3 Historical Studies Chair:

Friday 11 September, 14.30-16.30, Lecture Theatre C

8.3.1 Use of zhi as a Third Person Pronoun in Archaic Chinese.

Redouane Djamouri

8.3.2 Paronomastic Puns: Just playing on words?

Marc Winter

8.3.3 A Dragon at Work and at Play: the origin of the words for deaf and blind in Chinese.

Yau Shun-chiu

8.3.4 Trois sources culturelles chinoises décelées dans l’écriture antique.

Chrystelle Maréchal

8.4 Language and society Chair: T. M. McClellan

Sunday 13 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room North

8.4.1 Grammar in Chinese and Indo-European Languages: A cultural-linguistic look at differences.

Brigitte Hoehenrieder

8.4.2 The Genesis of Baihua: A production by Lu Xun.

Boris P. Morosoli

8.4.3 The Baijiaxing Characters As a Basis of a Phonetic Alphabet Formation.

Roman Bakaldin

8.4.4 The Characteristic Use of Address Terms in Present Beijing in the Process of Social Transformation.

Fang Jing

Interdisciplinary Panels

ID 1 Something More than Simply Winning or Losing: Games and Play in premodern China Chair:

Thursday 10 September, 11.30-13.30, Lecture Theatre C

ID 1.1 Transcendent, transgressive, expressive: A short survey of games and playing in premodern Chinese culture.

Marion Eggert

ID 1.2 Ming-Ch’ing Children at Work and at Play.

Ping-chen Hsiung

ID 1.3 Chinese at Play: Football in ancient China.

Hans Ulrich Vogel and Roger Greatrex

ID 2 Early China: Music and text Chair:

Friday 11 September, 17.00-19.00, Faculty Room North

ID 2.1 The traditional Far Eastern wind instrument sheng: Its early appearance and its ritual performance within and without Classical China.

Magdalene v. Dewall

ID 2.2 The Guodian No. 1 Chu Tomb, Jingmen, Hubei, 1993.

Paulos Huang

Interdisciplinary Panels cont’d

ID 3 Traditional opera in its social context Chair: Carol Rennie

Sunday 13 September, 9.00-11.00, Faculty Room South

ID 3.1 Entertainments of the Chinese in Singapore (1890-1965): A photo-essay.

Chan Kwok Bun

ID 3.2 Anders Hansson

ID 3.3

Round Table Discussions

Round Table 1: Modern Literature Chair: Michel Hockx

Friday 11 September, 17.00-19.00, Faculty Room South

Rewriting Modern Chinese Literary History.

Discussion leaders: Wang Xiaoming, Peng Hsiao-yen, Wong Wang-chi

Round Table 2: History Chair:

Friday 11 September, 11.30-12.30, Faculty Room South

From Tang to Song: Changes in China’s Civilization Process.

Discussion leaders: Jan De Meyer, Achim Mittag, Angela Schottenhammer

Keynote Paper

Thursday 10 September, 9.00-11.00, Lecture Theatre C

Guest Speaker: Wang Mingming

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Scottish Centre of Chinese Studies

University of Edinburgh

8 Buccleuch Place

Edinburgh EH8 9LW

SCOTLAND U.K.

FAX: 44 131 651 1258

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

REPORTS from WORKSHOPS, CONFERENCES, etc.

Religion and Economy in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea).

16-19 March 1998, Blaubeuren, Germany.

The three-days international workshop “Religion and Economy in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea)”, mainly sponsored by the Asia Committee of the European Science Foundation (ESF) with an additional contribution of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) took place at the Heinrich-Fabri-Institut at Blaubeuren (Germany) from March 16-19, 1998.

A welcome address was presented by Professor Knut Wolfgang Nˆrr, Chairman of the Deutsch-osta
siatisches Wissenschaftsforum, Tübingen. Of the twenty-one scholars from eight countries originally invited three were unable to participate (due to ill health). Some nine more professors and research students were allowed to attend (at their own costs). The presentation of each of the seventeen papers was followed by a discussant’s assessment and a general discussion of the plenum.

The following papers were presented:

Part 1

According to the initial objectives, namely to approach the vast subject in an interdisciplinary way from a number of different angles, the conference was divided into five parts. In the theoretical part, Günter Kehrer (University of Tübingen) offered a model for a microeconomic analysis of religious actions. Basing himself on the thesis that religious promises are comparable with economic goods he discussed a matrix of religious/non-religious means leading towards religious/non-religious ends and applied it to a variety of examples of religious behaviour.

Burkard Gladigow (University of Tübingen) investigated religious investments in a long term perspective, discussing long-range strategies in religions. His main topics, after a general survey of the state of the field, were the systematics of exchange relations, dealing with religious goods interpreted as business, religion seen as a system of gratification, and the limits of an economic interpretation of religions.

Part 2

The second part, devoted to religious aspects of modern economic organizations in East Asia, opened with John Tang’s (Asia Institute of Technology, Bangkok) study of the success of the overseas Chinese in South East Asia and the role of religion, especially Confucianism by way of ancestor worship and its relation to filial piety, as a success factor.

The enormous commercialization of the shinto wedding rituals (shinzen shiki) in Japan was interpreted by Klaus Antoni (University of Trier). As an “invented tradition” the ceremony was introduced in 1900 in accordance with the shintoization of Imperial Japan and thus did not belong to the realm of authentic Japanese religions. Its commercialization after the end of state shinto in 1945, therefore, did not disturb religious feelings.

Gerhard Leinss (University of Tübingen) traced the tradition of chronomancy (the system prognosticating each day of the month as auspicious or inauspicious) as still found in the world’s largest financial newspaper, the Nihon keizai shinbun, and tried to assess its contemporary influence on economy-related decision making in Japan today.

Hirochika Nakamaki (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka) presented a paper on company memorial monuments on Mt. Koya, where since the 1920s more than 100 tombs were erected by various companies which originally wanted to honour the memory of employees who died before retirement. Yearly memorial services are conducted at the various company tombs with the ‘hidden intent’ of praying for the prosperity of the company. He also pointed out that the companies thus emulate models of the past feudal Japan.

Seong Nae Kim (Sogang University, Korea) explored the economic thought of Korean folk religion by examining the concept of chesu, or good luck, and pok, or good fortune, as it is constituted in the shamanic rituals and everyday context of social interactions in Korean society.

Part 3

In the third section – on premodern economic aspects of religious organizations in East Asia – Roger Greatrex (University of Lund) analyzed the economic organization of the Taoist institutions on the famous Mt. Mao (near Nanjing) during the Tang and Song dynasties and concluded that, while the Maoshan profited greatly from imperial patronage – particularly during the reigns of Tang Xuanzong and Song Huizong -, it was mainly the literati interest and involvement with this spot that set it apart from other Taoist centres.

Examples of three types of financing local cults in Ancient China (from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD) were presented in Stephan Peter Bumbacher’s (University of Tübingen) contribution. Priests with or without the help of local officials could levy taxes of some sorts, or particular (well-endowed) segments of the population financed cults from their own pockets, or pilgrims and believers worshipping at a local shrine would be requested, on an individual base, to contribute objects from their possession.

Hans Ulrich Vogel (University of Tübingen) concentrated on the saints and gods that were involved in all aspects of salt production and the religio-economic landscape they belonged to. He gave a comprehensive survey of the close links between religious beliefs and rituals and salt production in premodern China. He concluded that religious worshipping was particularly intensive at those salines where production conditions were risky.

In his contribution “What are Korean village deities good for?” Dieter Eikemeier (University of Tübingen) questioned the possibility to correlate the communal rituals with anything in the field of economy which would be as communal in nature as the village rituals are, as none of the rituals under review are organized as straightforward reaction upon incidents of an economic nature.

Part 4

Structures of longue duree in economic-religious thought and actions in East Asia from the 8th century AD on were the subject of the fourth part. Although an integral part of Chinese popular religion at least since the Song, spirit money tended to be only briefly mentioned or not mentioned at all in accounts of the general principles of Chinese religion. John McCreery (Yokohama) argued that – in contrast to offerings of food, which are used to attract spirits and draw them into social relationships – offerings of spirit money are used to send them away, restoring a comfortable social distance, which shows a fundamental ambivalence toward both gods and ancestors.

Olof Lidin (University of Copenhagen) claimed that discontinuities are rare events in Japanese religion and culture. Rather, continuous developments seem to be the rule. This holds true for shinto as well as for Buddhism. The shinto we meet today has not changed much since the 8th century AD, Buddhism – in its earliest form – is still cultivated in Japan’s oldest temples, all later schools and sects showing a continuous tradition.

Sungjong Paik’s (University of Tübingen) paper investigated continuity and change of Korean Maitreyanism throughout history, examining the religious phenomenon from an economic perspective thus paving a new way in Koreanistics. Although the Korean belief in Maitreya who guarantees welfare can be traced back to at least the 6th century AD, in some areas the Maitreya belief has undergone interesting changes.

Part 5

The final section of the conference concentrated on sacrifice and its economic-religious meaning. Noreya Sumihara (Tenri University) closely looked into one of the so called Japanese New Religions, the Tenri sect which emerged in the middle of the 19th century and today counts almost two million followers. These followers practice a kind of “self-sacrifice”, the hi no hishin, a “daily dedication or contribution of labour (usually unpaid) towards the happiness of others”. Two examples of companies were presented that – dedicated to this practice – act partly contrary to economic laws since they being not interested in the maximization of profits try to buy at high and sell at low prices. This works due to the self-sacrificial attitude of management and workforce.

In March 1984, Il-yong Park (Catholic University of Korea) undertook field work on the shamanic ritual for good look or chaesu kut. Based on his results, he showed in his contribution the meaning of sacrificial offerings, particularly from a phenomenological point of view.

Kenneth Dean (McGill University), finally, discussing the economics of ritual in Southeast China, examined the interplay o
f religion and economy in the Xinghua region of Fujian province over time, arguing that there was a shift in control of assets from Buddhist monasteries in the Song, to lineages in the Ming, to popular cult temples and sectarian movements in the Qing.

To sum up, the concept of this conference – an interdisciplinary endeavour bringing together scholars from different disciplines such as economics, anthropology, comparative religion, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taoist studies – proved to be very fruitful indeed and it is but fair to say that the conference was a full success.

It could be shown that no doubt mutual relations between economy and religion exist. Although this close relationship became evident and light was shed from various angles on the complex connections between religions and economy, it became clear that an economic approach – important as it is – is by no means sufficient to understand all aspects of religions, one reason being that economy itself has to be seen as part of a culture, civilization or society at large.

It was also pointed out that problems of economic interpretation particularly arise when religious ideas become the end of economic or otherwise non-religious investments. The issue “money” in general and questions like “what are the costs of religion?” or “who profits economically from religion?” in particular showed themselves to be delicate ones.

At the same time the relationhips between economy and religion – in our view – are to be seen within the spatial and temporal dimensions and limitations of relevant cultural contexts. In analyzing phenomena of earlier periods, for example, patterns of economic organization, action and thought are to be taken into account that not only may differ in quantity but also in quality when compared with modern times. That we tend today to see religious life in terms of modern market conditions is, of course, a phenomenon of our own time and culture. We may deplore it, yet it is a consequence of the economization of many aspects of human life.

As a by-product, as it were, of some informal brainstorming, ideas for future interdisciplinary workshops on Asian religions were agreed on.

After a final revision by the respective authors, the papers will be edited for publication in a conference volume to present the results to the scientific community.

Dr. Stephan Peter Bumbacher

Dr. Gerhard Leinss

Dr. Sungjong Paik

Second International Conference on Yi-Studies.

Trier University, Trier/Germany, 19-23 June 1998.

“Processes of Social Change, Rising Ethnic Identity, and Ethnicity among the Yi Nationality in China” was the topic of the conference, bringing together more than 40 scholars from China, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Taiwan and the US. The majority were scholars from among the Yi themselves. Altogether 29 papers were presented. Conference language was Chinese. Parallel to the conference an exhibition on culture and society of the Yi was shown in the library of Trier university. The conference was sponsered by the German Research Association (DFG).

Three topics were on the agenda of the conference: (1) Processes of changes of various aspects of Yi culture; (2) Effects of economic and social change on Yi society and identity; (3) Mechanisms of protecting identity developed among the Yi people themselves.

Part 1 of the conference addressed the issue of ethnic identification and definition. Stevan Harrell (University of Washington) illustrated with the example of the Yala, a group of people in Miyi county (Sichuan), the complexity of the term minzu (nationality) in China. The Yala are classified as a component of the Yi nationality, even though they do not recognize any kinship between themselves and the local Nuosu branch of the Yi, and neither group will marry the other, though they live side by side. They are components of the same minzu, but they are two different ethnic groups. Therefore there is a difference between the objective characteristics of a group set by the state (nationality or minzu) and the subjective consciousness of that group (ethnic group).

Pan Jiao (Central University of Nationalities, Beijing) argued that the ethnoscape in China seems to have confirmed the thesis that ethnicity is created by the nation-state. Although the diversity within the Yi is tremendous, so-called similarities are arbitrary and the tremendous diversity between the Yi groups are ignored, the designation of Yi nationality seems to have been accepted by the Yi population. This is not only because they have no choice but also because they are aware of the advantages to form a larger nationality in political and economic bargaining with the state. Wugashinuimo Louwu (University of Michigan) compared narratives from the classics of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi and concluded therefrom that even though “Yi” is a constructed official term, the majority of the “Yi” population share many cultural elements and a common consciousness.

Charles F. McKhann (Whitman College, USA) criticized the concept that ethnicity in China is fundamentally a bipolar structure, in which all minorities are opposed to the majority Han. Suprisingly little, so McKhann, has addressed to the issue of relations between minorities in the peripheral areas. If one takes Han cultural practices as the gauge of civilization, then there is much to be said for this model, for the model does accurately reflect a certain kind of historical change – Sinicization. But the model breaks down, if one considers other external sources of culture change, namely the influence of neighboring minority ethnic groups.

Part 2 discussed issues of social change. Martin Schoenhals (Dowling College, USA) showed how education does, or does not, impact upon Yi culture and society. He argued that, e. g., arranged marriage may probably decline, but marriage will continue within the confines of caste. Bajie Rihuo (Institute of Ethnic Studies of Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan) demonstrated that despite three “marriage reforms” there was no considerable change in the caste-oriented marriage system.

Part 3 considered changes within the religious systems of various Yi groups. The revival of traditional local practices was demonstrated by the papers of Magret Byrne Swain (University of California, Davis) on the revival of women shamans among the Sani, of Ang Zhiling (Office of Historical Chorography of Lunan County, Yunnan) on the revival of wizards among the Yi in Lunan, of Wang Lizhu (Office of Chorography of Dali Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan) on the revival of ancestor worship and Tu-Zhu temples, of Fan Xiuli (Hiroshima University) on the function of funeral ceremonies for human-building in Liangshan prefecture, and of Shaha Gatse (Cultural Centre for Bimo Studies at Meigu County, Sichuan). The latter argued that bimo (traditional priests and healers) were the core of Yi identity, as the Yi as a nationality possess no common language, customs or blood relations. Bamo Ayi (Central University of Nationalities, Beijing) pointed to the phenomenon of the growing number of bimos not only in rural areas but in urban ones as well. Bimo are not only priests and healers and not only intermediaries between men, ghosts and ancestors, but intermediaries between men and men, between clans, and between men and nature as well. The ethics of the bimo is by no means only a traditional one, but bimo are also models for a modern system of ethics and education.

Benoit Vermander (Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, Taipei) presented eight theses on Nosu (Liangshan Yi) religion, arguing that their religion is not a “primitive” one, but the result of a deep and continuous historical evolution that is still evolving. There exists no homogeneous religion, but rather many local variations. Although there are differences in rituals and beliefs we can identify a “world vision” that is proper to Nosu religion.

Part 4 addressed the historiograph
y of the Yi: Is there one history of the Yi people or several histories (as He Yaohua, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences claimed), do the Yi as a nationality exist since the Zhou dynasty or are they the descendants of various people in history. And what is the difference between the Yi history imagined by the Chinese state and the historical perception of various Yi groups and social strata within the Yi? Ann Maxwell Hill (Dickinson College, USA) argued that the Yi in Xiao Liangshan were not a slave society, if we mean by that term a society where the mode of production was based on the slave-master relationship. Nuosu society in the old days bears little resemblance to economies that relied significantly on slave labor. Slavery was rather the main institution through which outsiders became Nuosu. Nuosu consciousness of slavery was also a window on social stratification. Based on this paper and that of Ma Erzi (Institute of Ethnic Studies of Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan), who claimed that there was no term for “slave” in the Yi language but that rather there existed different words for specific situations and that therefore the English and Chinese terms for ‘slave’ would not correspond to the Yi terms and thus would present a wrong imagination of traditional Yi society, araised a lively discussion on class, caste and slavery definitions.

Part 5 addressed issues of language and bilingual education. Huang Jianmin (Central University of Nationalities, Beijing) considered Yi scripts and literature to be important factors of the identification and identity of the Yi. Zhang Heping (Office of Minority Languages, Guizhou) spoke on the application of Yi language in Guizhou education, Zeng Guopin (Lunan Autonomous County, Yunnan) on bilingual education in Lunan, Qumu Tiexi (Central University of Nationalities, Beijing) on bilingual education in Liangshan prefecture and Halina Wasilewska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Polen) on the Yi writing system and its multiple presentation. There are different local developments, e.g. in Lunan county only very few people want their children to learn the Yi language, as most of the Yi have already turned to the Han language, while in Liangshan only a few people understand Han-Chinese and therefore are strongly interested in their children receiving a bilingual education. As a tendency, fewer and fewer Yi are interested in bilingual education, but prefer education in Han-Chinese.

As Thomas Heberer (University of Duisburg, Germany) pointed out, there still exists a considerable inequality in terms of minority languages, as access to higher education, employment and professional career depends on mastering the Han language and not on mastering minorities’ languages. This has also a material foundation and could change under specific conditions, as e.g. with the development of an economy in the non-state sector based on ethnic group, with the emergence of a system of higher learning for non-Han nationalities or even with modernization processes that may lead to the revival of minorities’ languages (as examples all over the world demonstrate quite clearly).

After the 1st International Yi Conference in Seattle 1995 (organized by Stevan Harrell) and the 2nd one in Trier (organized by Thomas Heberer) the 3rd one will be held in September 2000 in Lunan Yi Autonomous County in China.

For more information please contact:

Prof. Dr. Thomas Heberer, Institute of East Asian Studies/Political Science,

Gerhard-Mercator University, D – 47048 Duisburg, Germany.

Tel.: + 49 – 20 337 937 28. Fax: + 49 – 20 33 79 37 29.

E-mail: heberer@uni-duisburg.de

Thomas Heberer

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6th International Symposium on Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language



(First announcement)


In accordance with the stipulation in the “Statutes of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching” stating that “this Society hold a major academic symposium once every three years” and following the decision of the Second Meeting of the Standing Executive Committee of the Fourth Executive Committee of this Society held on February 2, 1998 in Paris, the 6th International Symposium of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language will take place in 1999. Details are as follows:

1. Time and place

  • Time: August 8-12, 1999 (Registration: August 7, 1999, Members of the Standing Executive Committee: August 6, 1999; Third Meeting of the Standing Executive Committee on August 7, 1999)
    • Place: Hannover Congress Centrum in Hannover, Germany

2. Keynote theme and topics

The 6th International Symposium on Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language to be held in 1999 will take place at the turn of the century; therefore it seemed appropriate to choose “Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century” as the symposium theme. The topics are as follows:

  • Chinese linguistics, including phonetics, grammar, lexicology, discourse and text linguistics, characters, typology, and contrastive studies.
  • Cultural studies related to Chinese language teaching.
  • Learning Chinese and the theory of language acquisition.
  • The theory of Chinese language teaching, methods and means of teaching.
  • Specialized Chinese language teaching (business, technical, medical, and legal Chinese).
    • Chinese language teaching in secondary schools.

3. Submission of papers

Scholars from Mainland China planning to present a paper during the symposium should submit three copies of the complete paper and of its abstract (including two anonymous copies) to the secretary’s office of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching before October 31, 1998. The office will arrange for an expert evaluation and send out the second announcement (letter of invitation) by January 1999 to the authors whose papers have been chosen.

Scholars from outside Mainland China planning to present a paper during the symposium should send an abstract of their paper to the secretary’s office of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching before October 31, 1998. The office will arrange for an expert evaluation of the abstracts and send out the second announcement (letter of invitation) to the authors by December 1998.

Abstracts should not exceed one thousand characters, i.e. computer printouts (Font: Songti, Font size: 10 pt) should not be longer than one page. Handwritten papers and abstracts cannot be accepted.

4. Conference language: Chinese (papers and presentations)

5. Fees and expenses

  • Travel expenses have to be borne by the participants themselves.
  • Food and accommodation: Single room DEM 100 per night (economy); DEM 130 per night (comfort); double room DEM 190 per night. Prices include breakfast but not lunch or dinner, which are calculated separately (approximately DEM 40 to 60 per day). Participants leaving the symposium before the end will not receive a refund.
    • Registration fee before March 1, 1999: DEM 220 per person; after March 1, 1999: DEM 300 per person.

6. Other: When submitting papers or abstracts, please provide the following information: Full name, sex, age, work unit, title, profession, contact address, telephone, and fax number.

International Society for Chinese Language Teaching

Association of Chinese Language Teaching in German-speaking countries

March 1998


  Prof. Zhang Dexin                 International Society for Chinese Language                                          Teaching                                            Tel.: +86-10-62329585             15 Xueyuan Road, Beijing, 100083                    Fax: +86-10-62311093              People's Republic of China                          <
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MEMBERS' PUBLICATIONS

LIPINSKY, Astrid.

Wir leben noch. Frauen und Frauenpolitik in Hongkong nach dem 01.07.1997. No 9 of the Yellow Series on Women in China (Gelbe Reihe zu Frauen in China). Terre des Femmes, Bonn 1998. 48 pp. ISSN 1433-8904. DM 10,00.

Please send your order to: Terre des Femmes e. V. Städtegruppe Bonn, c/o Effertzstr. 13, D-53121 Bonn, F. R. Germany. Fax: + 49 - 228 - 616 322.

The paper includes a series of interviews conducted in Hong Kong throughout December, 1997. It deals with strategies and activities on women's issues within the government's Equal Opportunity Commission and non-government women's concern groups. With an English summary.

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