Newsletter No. 21 (Jan 2000)

European Association of Chinese Studies

Association européenne d’études chinoises

 

EACS Newsletter

 

No. 21

 

January 2000

 

 

 

Contents

 

Editor’s note

In Memoriam: Professor Helmut Martin

Workshops, Seminars, Conferences, Events

Publications

Membership Application Form

An Important Note from the Treasurer

A Message from Professor Vladimir Portyakov

The EACS Website Moves

Where to Send Your EACS correspondence

The Newsletter

EACS Addresses

 

 

 

THE XIIIth EACS CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD IN TURIN, 30 AUGUST TO 2 SEPTEMBER THIS YEAR. PLEASE NOTICE THAT THE DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF PAPER PROPOSALS IS 1 FEBRUARY AND THAT 20 MARCH IS THE REGISTRATION DEADLINE.

 

 

 

EACS Homepage: http://www.soas.ac.uk/eacs

The EACS Homepage welcomes news that need to be published before the next Newsletter comes out. Particularly welcome is information about vacancies, grants, scholarships, conferences and workshops in Chinese studies. Please send your information to the President.

 

 

 

Editor’s note

 

This newsletter should have appeared several months ago, and as editor I owe all members of our association my sincere apologies for this delay. For me it seems very difficult to devote the time needed to editing the newsletter, and I am therefore very grateful to Dr. Mette Thunö in Copenhagen that she has agreed to take over this important task. From now on contributions to the newsletter should thus be addressed to

 

Dr. Mette Thunö

Department of Asian Studies,

University of Copenhagen,

Leifsgade 33,

DK-2300 Copenhagen S.

email: mette@hum.ku.dk

 

All of you have probably received the information leaflet about the XIIIth EACS Conference to be held in Turin, 30 August to 2 September this year. May I remind you that 1 February is the deadline for receipt of paper proposals and that 20 March is the registration deadline. More information about the conference can be found on the conference’s website http://hal9000.cisi.unito.it/eacs.con or on the EACS website http://www.soas.ac.uk/eacs. The organizers may be conta
cted by email: eacs.con@cisi.unito.it. See also below, pp. 5 ff.

 

Much looking forward to meeting you all in Turin in August and with best wishes for a continued good year of the dragon.

 

Torbjörn Lodén

 

In Memoriam: Professor Helmut Martin (Ma Hanmao 1940-1999)

With the untimely passing of Helmut Martin on June 8, 1999, German sinology has lost one of its most dedicated and internationally respected authorities, an outstandingly productive scholar who had the rare ability to acknowledge the qualities of his colleagues without envy. Always deeply committed to nurturing the younger generation of sinologists, he was also an innovative and inspiring teacher who was revered by his students.

Helmut Martin had held the chair of Chinese Language and Literature at Ruhr University Bochum since 1979 when he succeeded Alfred Hoffmann. He became known not only to the scholarly readership but also to a wider section of the non-academic public both through his diverse editorial and translation activities, which spanned a vast range of subjects – from the works of the late-Ming theatre critic and playwright Li Yu to the writings of Mao Zedong and contemporary literature from the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan -, and through his regular contributions in the media as reviewer, commentator and much sought-after analyst of socio-political and cultural developments in the Chinese-speaking area.

Born in Kassel on March 5, 1940, Helmut Martin studied Sinology and Slavistics in Munich, Belgrade, Paris and Heidelberg and gained his PhD under Wolfgang Bauer with a thesis on Li Yu’s poetics (Li Li-weng über das Theater, 1966). With a post-doctoral grant he continued his education at the National Taiwan University in Taipei where he edited, among other books, the complete works of Li Yu (Li Yu quanji, 1970, 15 vols.). Following a subsequent research sojourn in Kyoto, his growing interest in contemporary China took him in the early 1970s to the Institut für Asienkunde (IfA) in Hamburg to work on the journal China aktuell. It was while in Hamburg that Helmut Martin compiled the Langenscheidt dictionary Chinesisch-deutscher Wortschatz. Politik und Wirtschaft der VR China (1977, in collaboration with Tienchi Martin-Liao) and gained his „venia legendi“ under Wolfgang Franke with a thesis on language reform in the People’s Republic of China (Chinesische Sprachplanung, 1977, publ. 1982). After several publications on state Maoism, he edited and co-translated a German-Chinese bilingual edition of Mao Zedong’s so-called wansui texts (Mao Zedong Texte, 1979-82, 7 vols., funded by the Volkswagen Foundation), which has proven to be the standard collection of Mao’s works in the German language.

In 1980 Professor Martin was the founder and first director of the Landesspracheninstitut Nordrhein-Westfalen LSI (Language Institute of the State of North Rhine Westphalia) in Bochum with the three departments for Chinese („Sinicum“), Japanese and Arabic. In 1993 he established the Richard Wilhelm Translation Centre at Ruhr University Bochum, one of only three translation centres for Chinese literature worldwide. The translations produced on a scholarly basis by the Centre since then (14 volumes in the series Arcus Chinatexte) have helped to bring classical and modern literature and philosophy from China and Taiwan to a German-speaking readership. Helmut Martin was also the editor of two other series of publications for theses and China-related studies, Chinathemen (1980-1997, 101 volumes) and edition cathay (1993-, 45 volumes).

Numerous research sojourns in Asia and visiting professorships at universities in the PRC, the U.S.A. (Carl-Schurz Memorial Professor in 1985), Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and Taiwan followed during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as many further book publications, most recently Chinabilder. Gesammelte Schriften (1996, 6 volumes) and Hongkong. Strategien des Übergangs (1997). Elected in 1995 as president of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Chinastudien (DVCS) (German Association for Chinese Studies), which had been founded five years previously in East Berlin, Helmut Martin sparked off the publication of the Association’s annual conference papers. Of the three volumes hitherto published, the most recent and most significant is an abundant collection of articles on the history of German sinology (Chinawissenschaften – Deutschsprachige Entwicklungen: Geschichte, Personen, Perspektiven, 1999, in collaboration with Christiane Hammer).

After the Tiananmen events in 1989 Helmut Martin initiated a long-term interdisciplinary study of the economic and cultural transformation processes in Chinese society. This European Project on China’s Modernization was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and resulted in a great many publications in German, English and Chinese (articles and monographs, overview in Vernetzungen. Wirtschaftlicher und kultureller Wandel in China, 1998). In recent years Helmut Martin had increasingly focused his attention on socio-political and cultural developments in Taiwan on its transition to democracy, thus becoming one of only very few German-speaking China scholars to specialize in this marginalized research area. A number of contributions for conferences and lengthy essays as well as an unfinished History of Taiwan Literature attest to his dedication in this field. Being regarded as not politically correct, these activities provoked harrassment time and again from the PRC authorities over the last decade, most overtly in their refusal to grant Professor Martin entry visas in 1999. However, among his colleagues and friends in the Chinese-speaking world and among the advocates of the democracy movement on both sides of the Taiwan Strait which he actively supported, Helmut Martin was widely known as Ma Hanmao.

Professor Martin will be remembered as a remarkable China scholar and a unique and charismatic personality.

 

Christiane Hammer, Karen Finney-Kell
erhoff

Ruhr University Bochum

 

 

Workshops, Seminars, Conferences, Events

 

XIIIth EACS Conference “The Spirit of the Metropolis”, Turin,

30 August to 2 September 2000.

Urban life has enjoyed increasing attention also in Chinese studies over the recent years. This is why “The spirit of the Metropolis” has been chosen as the general theme for the EACS Conference to be held in Turin in 2000. It is particularly suitable to the place where the Conference will take place, as the Chinese characters for Turin are those for “capital city” and “spirit”. There will be a number of panels exclusively devoted to the topic in its various implications, together with some interdisciplinary panels. Within the Conference films shot in Chinese cities from the beginning of the century up to the 1930s will be screened. A workshop by scholars working on the research project “Europe in China” will also be hosted as a particular section within the Conference.

An Information Leaflet, including registration forms for attendance and accommodation, and detailed description of procedures to be followed for submission of paper proposals (abstracts) has been sent out to all EACS members. Authors will be strongly encouraged to submit their abstracts by Internet. More information about the conference can be found on the conference’s website http://hal9000.cisi.unito.it/eacs.con or on the EACS website http://www.soas.ac.uk/eacs The organizers may be contacted through email: eacs.con@cisi.unito.it.

Please observe the following important dates and note that deadlines will be strictly observed: 1 February 2000: Deadline for receipt of paper proposals (abstracts); 10 March 2000: Latest date for notification of acceptance of paper proposals; 20 March 2000: Registration deadline.

Since in August and September of the Jubilee Year of 2000 the Holy Shroud will be on display in Torino and attract a great number of pilgrims, organizers are unable to guarantee accommodation after the registration deadline.

Here follows a list of panels and conveners:

 

PANEL 1 – Modern Literature

Prof. Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg,

Östasiatisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet,

Nörrebrogade Bygn. 322, DK-8000 Aarhus C

email: ostaw@hum.aau.dk

 

Prof. Raoul David Findeisen

Sprache und Literatur Chinas, Geb. FNO 1/118, D – 44780 Bochum

email: raoul.findeisen@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

PANEL 2 – Traditional Literature

Prof. David McMullen

St. John’s College, UK-Cambridge CB2 1TP

email: dlm25@cam.ac.uk

 

Prof. Paolo Santangelo

viale Gaurico 283, 00143 Roma

email: p.santangelo@iol.it

 

PANEL 3 Pre-modern History

Prof. Nicolas Standaert

Windmolenveldstraat 34, B-3000 Leuven

email: nicolas.standaert@arts.kuleuven.ac.be

PANEL 4 – Religion and Philosophy

Please, submit directly to the Organizing Committee

 

PANEL 5 – Modern History

Dr Frank Dikötter

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,

Thornhaugh Street/Russell Square

UK-London WC1H 0XG

email: fd3@soas.ac.uk

 

Prof. Marianne Bastid-Bruguière

92, boulevard de Port Royal, F-75005 Paris

email: bastid@canoe.ens.fr

 

PANEL 6 – Modern Politics and Economics

Prof. Eduard B. Vermeer

Sinologisch Instituut, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden

Postbus 9515, NL-2300 RA Leiden

email: ebvermeer@rullet.leidenuniv.nl

 

Prof. Vladimir Portyakov (please submit your abstract to prof. Vermeer)

 

PANEL 7 – Social Anthropology and Sociology

Prof. Frank Pieke

Flat C, 20 Bradmore Road, UK-Oxford OX2 6QP

email: pieke@server.orient.ox.ac.uk

Professor Stig Thögersen

Östasiatisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet

Nörrebrogade Bygn. 322, DK-8000 Aarhus C

email: OSTST@hum.aa
u.dk

 

PANEL 8 – Performing Arts

Professor Frank Kouwenhoven

Gerecht 1, NL-2311 TC Leiden

email: chime@wxs.nl

 

PANEL 9 – Art History and Archaeology

Professor Roderick Whitfield

Department of Art and Archaeology

7 St. Paul’s Crescent, UK-London NW1 9XN

email: rw5@soas.ac.uk

 

PANEL 10 – Language and Linguistics

Prof. Redouane Djamouri

39, rue de la Glacière

F-75013 Paris

email: djamouri@ehess.fr

 

PANEL 11 -Information Technology

Professor Martin Hala

Department of East Asian Studies, Charles University

Celetn 20, CR-11642 Praha 1

email: martin.hala@ff.cuni.cz

 

 

Audiences, Patrons and Performers in the Performing Arts of Asia International Conference, IIAS/CHIME/CSS, Leiden, 23-27 August, 2000. Call for Papers.

From 23 to 27 August 2000, Leiden University (The Netherlands) hosts the conference “Audiences, Patrons and Performers in the Performing Arts of Asia”, a joint initiative of the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), CHIME (the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research) and the Department of Cultural and Social Studies of Leiden University. In this conference we look beyond performance as a ‘self-contained act’ towards what performance essentially constitutes: an on-going and dynamic interaction with the environment. We emphasize the role of the environment: the audiences who attend, the patrons who protect, and the people who organize and support, politically or otherwise, the arts. The theme at the heart of this conference is how they influence performances and performers, and are in turn influenced by them. Whatever singers, story-tellers, puppeteers, actors, ritual specialists or musicians in Asia have on offer for their audiences – in terms of entertainment, ritual, or re-enactment of social relationships and dilemmas – for the viability of their art they depend on more than just one-way communication. How do they cope with the many different – often contradictory – voices and expectations that emerge from different groups in society, each with their own norms and values? This theme will be tackled from a number of angles. Sub-themes include: “Hybrid theatres”, “Art criticism”, “Creativity”, “Asian diaspora” and “Liveness”. For more information about the themes, accommodation, registration etc. you can write to one of the addresses below or consult the agenda of the IIAS site: http://iias.leidenuniv.nl/oideion/general/audiences.html or at http: //iias.leidenuniv.nl/iias/agenda.html.

Deadline for sending abstracts: 1 March 2000. Contact persons: Dr. Wim van Zanten and Frank Kouwenhoven. Abstracts can be sent to Dr. Wim van Zanten, Inst. of Cultural and Social Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands, Tel. +31-(0)71/ 527 34.65, or +/ .74, +/.69, Fax +31-(0)71/ 527 3619, e-mail: Zanten@fsw.LeidenUniv.NL or IIAS@rullet.LeidenUniv.NL, or to Frank Kouwenhoven at the CHIME Foundation, P.O.Box 11092, 2301 EB Leiden, the Netherlands, tel: +31-71-5133.974, fax: +31-71-5123.183, e-mail: chime@wxs.nl.

 

“Text and Commentary in Imperial China.” Workshop in Heidelberg 14-17 June 2000

A workshop “Text and Commentary in Imperial China” which was applied for by the EACS and funded by the Chiang Ching Kuo foundation is organized and will be hosted by the Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg. It will be held in Heidelberg from 14-17 June 2000 and will be organized in double sessions: the first parts will consist of presentations by invited scholars; the second of joint reading of Chinese source material related to the topic presented by the speaker.

About 12 Young scholars (pre- and postdoc, junior faculty) from across Europe who have a strong interest to learn about this field of inquiry are invited to take part in the workshop. They should prepare with the help of the papers and materials and join in the discussions of the arguments and the sources. All the costs and expenses will be covered by the organizer. Those interested are invited to apply with a short statement of their education and particular interest as well as a recommendation from their supervisor.

Please send your applications and any requests for further information to Joachim Gentz, email: jonas@gw.sino.uni-heidelberg.de, Sinologisches Seminar, Universität Heidelberg, Akademiestrasse 4-8, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany, Fax: +49-6221-547639, Tel.: (Wed-Fr 9-23 h): +49-6221-547762.

 

Outline

A very large part of Chinese speculative thinking has taken the form of commentaries to works deemed classical. This is true for all – including the Buddhist and Daoist – strands of tradition. It reflects a shared cultural orientation that sees in the hallowed books of the sages rather than in experience the only real source of truth. This tradition has continued well into our days.

Given the high cultural status of the commentary and the often fierce competition for the interpretive control of the heritage, the commentators rarely could afford the luxury of random or associative commenting but as a rule went by the rules of rationality and argumentative acceptability prevailing among their peers and in their line of tradition. Still, the prevailing consensus that these “classical” texts were authored or edited by sages such as Confucius, Laozi or the Buddha, and the equally prevailing assumption that these sages were well aware of the inequity of language in expressing the ultimate things, led to a third consensus, namely that these texts contained much more than their surface seemed to indicate.
It was therefore the duty of the commentator not just to bridge the often long time, space, culture, and language distance between the "classical" text and the "modern" reader of his time through learned notes and "translations" into the contemporary written language, but also to rediscover to the reader the depths hidden in these texts. The archaic grammar especially of the Chinese classics such as the Chunqiu or the Laozi left much to a contextual understanding which the later born in fact did not have anymore. The texts thus acquired a certain openness not only of content but even of grammar that the commentators closed with their comments, but these closures were often quite different from each other. To understand the way how a given commentator read a certain passage, the passage has to be translated “through” the grammatical, terminological and analytical comments given by the commentator. A check on comments on the same passage by different commentators quickly reveals that the result of such “extrapolative translations” are texts which for an outsider certainly would not seem to be related at all – although we are dealing with the very same passage. The importance of such an extrapolative translation dramatically increases with the establishment of certain commentaries as the “official” commentaries to be used for the preparation of state examinations. The reading suggested by a given commentator in this case assumes the status of orthodox reading. A scholar finding a quotation for example of the Chunqiu in a Ming memorial and translating it (as is usually done) of the basis of what he thinks the “Urtext” means, would most definitely commit a grave error and be likely to miss the purpose of that quotation altogether with the result of a high degree of fogginess in the understanding.

Very little research has been done on the craft of the Chinese commentator, the development of the Chinese commentary, its relative status among the cultural goods, and the very complex relationship between the presumably stable meaning of an “Urtext” and the constantly shifting meaning of this text in the course of historical development. The skill needed for extrapolative translating is exceedingly difficult to acquire because it often means reinventing the entire text with a brain that has been conditioned for decades in one particular reading conveyed by current analysis of interpretation of the “Urtext”.

 

The Project

The workshop is to serve three purposes that are closely connected:

1. To invite a number of scholars who have worked in this field and have them present their methodology in dealing with the text/commentary relationship with very specific examples, and have them present those generalized arguments on the topic which they already feel confident enough in presenting, dealing, for example, with the rise of the commentary genre, the cultural status of commentary during a given period, the relationship of commentarial form and content, different exegetical methods, or the mentalité of a readership reading innovative proposals that come in the guise of comments on the classics. Both types of contributions would be distributed well in advance to allow for careful and critical preparation.

2. To jointly read, translate, and discuss the core pieces in the Chinese sources with which the methodology is illustrated. For this purpose the selected Chinese sources would also be sent around beforehand for preparation. This proceeding has been tested in a conference on late Qing Chinese newspapers in October 1997. All participants agreed that this combination of critical debate of the argument, and joint reading and analysis of the textual evidence was very contributive towards spotting weaknesses in the argument and alternative strategies of analysis.

3. To invite young scholars (pre- and postdoc, junior faculty) from across Europe who have a strong interest to learn about this field of inquiry and who have the level to meaningfully participate in such a workshop. They should prepare with the help of the papers and materials and join in the discussions of the arguments and the sources. The participation of these younger scholars should help in connecting and confronting not just their generation with older scholars, but also in forming lively links among each other accross Europe as a good precondition for future cooperation and interaction. This would be especially important for young scholars from Central and Eastern Europe as well as from Southern Europe who often have little exposure to Chinese Studies outside their country’s borders. The number of the younger scholars invited to participate will be limited to 12.

The papers and annotated materials are planned to be made into a workbook

 

ICANAS XXXVI International Congress of Asian and North African Studies (Montreal, Canada), 27 August to 1 September 2000

Further details of the conference are given at: http://www.gbcc.org.uk/conferen.htm#CONF.

 

Exhibition of Tang art at the British Museum: “Gilded Dragons: buried treasures from China’s golden ages”, 23 October 1999 to 20 February 2000.

More information about this exhibition can be found on the following website: http://www.british-museum.ac.uk/exhibitions/gilded_dragons/index.html_

 

Report on the International Conference “The Role of the Republican Period in Twentieth Century China: Reflections and Reconsiderations” held in Venice, June 30 – July 3, 1999.

The International Conference “The Role of the Republican Period in Twentieth Century China: Reflections and Reconsiderations” was held from June 30 to July 3 1999 in Venice. The sponsors of the conference were: the Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia Orientale (Department of East Asian Studies) of “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice, the Centro di Studi sull’Asia “Marco Polo” (“Marco Polo” Center for Asian Studies) of “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice and the Historical Society for 20^th Century China. The organization of the Conference had taken advantage of the cooperation of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini – Istituto “Venezia e l’Oriente”.

The Conference was the most important one held on the whole history of Republican China in Europe in the last twenty years, both for the high number of speakers coming from universities and research centers of many countries and regions (Australia, Canada, Franc
e, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, U.S.A., and Italy) and for the variety of topics discussed and high academic level of papers presented.

The aim of the Conference was to offer a chance of confrontation at international level for scholars engaged in historical research on the period, providing them with an occasion for a general assessment of the current research results and for discussion of the future perspectives of cooperation and exchange in the field and of the new paths of development.

The Conference registration was held in the afternoon on June 30 at the secretary desk in the hall of the Fondazione “Giorgio Cini” on the island S. Giorgio. After registration, at 6.00 p.m. all participants were invited to attend a XVIII – XIX classical music concert of the Academia Musicale S. Giorgio, held in the Sala degli Arazzi of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The event was greatly appreciated by all participants.

Conference sessions started on July 1 in the Sala dei Cipressi of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. At the opening of the Conference official addresses were made by Professor Guido Samarani, Program Chair of the Conference, member of the Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia Orientale of “Ca’ Foscari” University and member of the Board of the Marco Polo Centre for Asian Studies; Professor Alfredo Cadonna for the Fondazione Giorgio Cini- Istituto “Venezia e l’Oriente” and professor Ka-che Yip, President of the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China. Dr. Chun-tu Hsueh, President of the Huang Hsing Foundation (USA), also gave a short address.

Professor William C. Kirby, Head of the History Department of Harvard University, delivered the keynote lecture “China’s Republican Century”. In his lecture, Professor Kirby pointed out the significance of institutional, social and cultural changes that occurred in China in the Republican period and their inner role in China modernization process.

The first Session of the Conference was devoted to “Historiographical Issues”, subdivided into two parts. The papers presented have had for main concern the analysis and discussion of general trends of development in 20^th century China, the reassessment of historiographical issues or the investigation of continuities and discontinuities in political and social development in China during this century. Professor Zhang Xianwen from Nanjing University discussed the development and future perspective of historical sciences in the People’s Republic of China; Professor Yamada Tatsuo from Keio University looked for the patterns of continuity in Chinese politics in 20^th century China; Professor Axel Schneider from the University of Heidelberg presented a discussion of Chinese conservatism in a broad perspective of the philosophical discussion on the meaning of culture and historical change in 20^th century China; Dr. Hsueh Chun-tu, from the Huang Hsing Foundation (USA), illustrated the too often neglected role of Huang Hsing in the 1911 Revolution; Professor Suzanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, from the University of Heidelberg proposed an analysis of the construction of the meaning of the “revolution” in the 1911 Chinese press editorials; Professor Stephen Averill from Michigan State University presented a new approach in the shift from urban to rural setting for the Communist revolution stressing the weight of social background of intellectuals and cadres; Dr. Antonia Finnane from the University of Melbourne analyzed the rupture between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic in the symbolic realm of clothing culture.

Session 2, also divided into two parts, was dedicated to “The Political and Military Dimension”. Papers weremainly concerned with the political life and the political and military power issues during the Republic.

Dr. Vitaly Kozyrev from Moscow State University proposed an analysis of the GMD efforts to build new relations of power confronting itself both with the provincial military power at regional level and local traditional centers of power at county level; Professor John Fitzgerald from La Trobe University presented a study of the attempts of civil authorities to regain control of local militia in Guangdong, aiming at revising the theory of “militarization of society” in Republican China; Professor Chen Hongmin from Nanjing University illustrated the different elements of political conflict between Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and Hu Hanmin as they are put in evidence in Hu Hanmin’s correspondance newly found by the author at the J.K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University; Professor Margherita Zanasi from Texas University at Austin proposed a re-assessment of the role of the GMD left wing in political life during the Nanking decade; Professor Roger Jeans from Washington and Lee University analyzed the destiny of Third Force Movement and especially Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang) after 1949.

In the second part of the session, Dr. Thomas Kampen from the University of Leeds presented his research on the origins and development of PCC secret services in the 1930s; Professor Zeng Yeying from the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing) discussed the relevance of the military strategy of Jiang Jieshi in the fight against the Gui Clique as it could be outlined from the personal papers of Jiang Jieshi’s archives in Taiwan; Professor Diana Lary from the University of British Columbia put in light the military abilities and skills of two republican generals, Bai Chongxi and Cai Tingkai, and the reasons of the difficulties on the side of Nationalists to make full employ of their resources both in the war against Japan and to resist the PLA; Professor Yu Shen from the Indiana University Southeast aimed to catch the change of mood in Beijing in the years of transition from the Nationalist to the Communist rule, as it could be seen from the perspective of the contemporary Chinese press.

During the first day of the Conference, after the lunch buffet offered by the organization, participants were invited to make a tour of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini historical buildings in order for them to see the works of art and the library resources owned by the institution.

On the second day, July 2^nd, Conference sessions were also held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The morning works started with Session 3 “Citizenship and Identity”.

In the first panel of the session four papers were presented on this topic. Professor Peter Zarrow from the University of New South Wales touched upon the important theme of the formation of citizenship consciousness during the first years of the Republic, outlining how conflicting definitions of
“citizenship” were at work under the Yuan Shikai regime; Professor Marylin Levine from Lewis-Clarke State College presented a paper in which, centering on the biography of Wang Guangqi, she discussed theoretical issues concerning the role of biography in history and proposed a new approach to historical biography as a narrative discourse; Professor R. Keith Schoppa from Loyola College analyzed the role of memories and commemoration of historical figures as “markers” of identity among Shaoxing élites, illustrating how the Republican period played a central role in the evolution of local cultural identities in China; Professor James Gao from the University of Maryland at College Park reconstructed Mao Zedong’s policy of de-urbanization of urban intellectuals, starting from a case study of Lunan, in Southern Shandong.

The second panel of the session included the papers of Professor Chiara Betta from the Indianapolis University (Athens’Campus) who presented the life of a Jewish businessman in Republican Shanghai; Silas Aaron Hardoon and his attempt to construct a new identity close to the Chinese traditional elite member; Dr. Marcia Ristaino, Chinese specialist of the Library of Congress, who offered a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of Russian prostitution in Shanghai during the Republic; Professor Kam Louie from the University of Queensland who proposed a subtle analysis of the wen Chinese male identity as confronted with the different European values through the perspective of Lao She’s novel, “The Two Mas”; Professor Louise Edwards from the Australian Catholic University who reconstructed the relevance of the women’s suffrage movement in Republican history, trying to outline the reasons for the lack of scholarly attention to its importance.

After the lunch-buffet in the halls of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, in the afternoon of July 2^nd two more sessions were held. The first was dedicated to “Culture, Media and Propaganda” and included four papers. In this session, Professor Marianne Bastid-Bruguière from the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique of Paris discussed the meaning and the role of propaganda activities in the 1920s China and their relation to the nature of political power and to the search for citizenship definition in Republican China; Professor Stefania Stafutti from the University of Turin proposed an analysis of graphic layout and contents of so-called “butterfly and mandarin duck” literatary magazines in early Republican Shanghai, challenging the common labels attributed to these journals; Dr. Laura De Giorgi from “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice presented a preliminary assessment of radio broadcasting development and use under GMD rule; Professor Kan Liang from Seattle University discussed the activities of writers and intellectuals in wartime Chongqing in taking the literature to the people and the opposition encountered by these activities from the Leftist writers at that time.

The second session of the afternoon was dedicated to “The Sino-Japanese War: Resistance, Collaboration and Economic Impact” and included two panels.

In the first panel, Professor Huang Meizhen from Shanghai’s Fudan University discussed changes that occurred in relations between China and Japan from 1931 to 1937, especially from the Chinese perspectives, outlying both the internal and external factors that determined the changes in these relations; Dr. Brian G. Martin from the Australian National University presented his current researches on the formation and the activities of the security service of Wang Jingwei’s regime, on its relations with the Japanese intelligence agencies and of its role in the factional politics of the Wang regime; Professor David Barrett from McMaster University investigated the degree of authoritarianism of the Wang Jingwei Regime from the perspective of propaganda and censorship, putting in light the inner reasons of the weakness of the regime; Professor Wang Ke-wen from St. Micheal’s College discussed the collaborationist choice of Wang Jingwei from the perspective of the main character, Wang himself, showing how he cherished to the end the hope to have made the right choice and how he tried to live his destiny not as a “puppet” of the Japanese but as a “martyr”, symbol of the tragedy of China.

The second panel was concerned mainly with the economic impact of the war, seen from the perspective of resistance and collaboration of the war against Japan. Professor Parks Coble from the University of Nebraska tried to overcome the political reconstruction of the historical memory of Chinese capitalists in the occupied areas, in order to explore the reality of their activities during the war, making the case of the rubber and chemical industries; Professor Christian Henriot from the University Lumière – Lyon 2 addressed the rarely explored theme of the economy in wartime China, with special reference to the attempts of the Japanese, of the collaborationist governments and of their different agencies to gain control of economic resources and activities in the lower Yangzi and Shanghai areas and to the reasons of their failure; Professor Richard Chu from the Rochester Institute of Technology offered a preliminary analysis of the forced Chinese labor during the Japanese occupation, with special reference to the Hanaoka mines, in order to outline the origins of the Chinese laborers, how they were utilized by the Japanese and in which conditions they were compelled to work; Professor Toshiro Matsumoto from Okayama University offered an explanation and analysis of the reasons why the Anshan Iron & Steel Company in Manchuria recovered so quickly from the damages of the war, putting attention also to the role of the inheritance from the colonial period, in terms of equipment and technical skills.

On July 3^rd, the last day of the Conference, sessions were held in the recently restored Auditorium S. Margherita owned by the “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice.

The first session was dedicated to “State and Nation Building” and included five papers. Professor Piero Corradini from “La Sapienza” University in Rome presented a paper on the connection between fiscal policies and foreign loans during the Republic; Professor Alexander Pisarev from Moscow State University and Tamkang University in Taiwan discussed the agrarian politics of the Nationalists and the different conceptions of rural organization embodied in often competing opinions in the Party about this problem; Professor Ka-Che Yip from the University of Maryland Baltimore County offered a thorough analysis of the significance of the building of a modern health system in the Republican period, both for the Guomindang and for Chinese society; Professor Larry Shyu from the University of New Brunswick explored the case of Han-Hui relations in the Republican years in order to elucidate the basic assumptions and problems of Nationalist minority policy; Dr. Michael Meyer from the University of Heidelberg proposed a reassessment of Chen Yi’s economic policy seen through a broad perspective of the economic thinking prevalent in Nationalist China and of its long-term influence in the Taiwanese economy.

The last session of the Conference was dedicated to the “International Relations of Republican China”. Professor Tom Grunfeld from State University of New York presented a paper on Rayna Prohme, an American woman who got involved in the Chinese revolution in the 1920s, investigating her activities and her role; Professor Ch’i Hsi-sheng from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology discussed the Sino-American relations during the war, investigating their development and problems; Professor Lo Jiu-jung from the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica explored the role of the renowned and highly respected American legal specialist and academician Roscoe Pound in the Chinese judicial reforms in the 1940s and the reason of the attractiveness of Pound’s interpretation of law for the Chinese; Professor Guido Samarani from “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice discussed the relations between China and Italy from 1943-1947, investigating the difficulties and the misunderstandings due to the profound changes which occurred in the period, both in the internal situation of the two countries and in the international context. The fifth speaker of this panel, Professor Florentino Rodao from Complutense University in Madrid, regrettably couldn’t attend the Conference and present his paper on Spain’s relations towards China and Japan.

Professor Larry Shyu, Honorary Chair of the Conference, delivered the concluding speech, pointing out among other things how all the contributions had been of high academic level and often innovative and suggesting how this is the best evidence of the interest among scholars for the Republican period and its significance in 20^th century China.

The success of the conference was also made possible thanks to the generous grants offered by: the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; the Pacific Cultural Foundation; the Department of East Asian Studies, the Marco Polo Centre of Asian Studies and the Office of the Dean of “Ca’ Foscari” University; the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China; the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and the Huang Hsing Foundation (USA).

 

Laura De Giorgi, Department of East Asian Studies,

“Ca’Foscari” University of Venice, Italy

 

 

Report from the Conference “Translating Western Knowledge into Late Imperial China”, East Asian Department, University of Göttingen,

6-9 December, 1999

The conference jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Michael Lackner, Dr. Natascha Vittinghoff and the research project “Studies in the Formation of Modern Chinese Scientific Terminologies (MCST)” (which is a joint project of the East Asian Department of the University of Göttingen and the “Study Group for the History and Philosophy of Chinese Science and Technology” at the Technical University Berlin) followed up an earlier conference on “Modern Chinese Technical Terminologies” (cf. the report by Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz in the EACS Newsletter #16) and a series of workshops initiated by MCST. This was a conference of impressive scope, both in terms of the sheer number of talks presented and the broad range of issues addressed, as well as in terms of the intellectual caliber of its participants and the analytical depth and originality of the contributions. It was an undertaking entirely apt to “integrate preliminary results of the ongoing project into the broader context of historical and linguistic research on Late Imperial China” and to “stimulate further discussion among scholars working in the field”, as the organizers had defined the intention of the conference. The overwhelmingly positive response to the conference provided testimony to the extended network of scholars working on the development of new terminologies and related fields.

Altogether 42 papers were presented. Except for the keynote speech by Benjamin A. Elman (UCLA) and the concluding plenary lecture by Viviane Alleton (EHESS) all the talks were organized in parallel morning and afternoon panels. Thus there was ample time for further informal discussion and intellectual exchange, and the deepening of personal contacts. In most of the cases a panel consisted of three papers and a final comment by a discussant (this meant that it was practically not feasible to switch between simultaneous panels; one had to make a decision between the one or the other, which was not always easy).

The panels covered a broad range of topics, and nearly every single paper could have found its place within more than one panel – it is the challenge of a multidisciplinary approach, which makes research in the field as rewarding as difficult. Thus there were studies more closely following up the terminology issue, studies addressing the intricacies of the translation process, and studies illuminating the social, political, religious, scientific, legal and intrinsically international environment, in which the translation process was going on and new terminologies were developed. This general environment and its historical conditions were aptly outlined in Benjamin Elman’s keynote speech on the formation of the concept of modern science “From pre-modern Chinese Natural Studies (gezhixue) to Modern Science (kexue)”. Reconsidering the influential notion of a Chinese “failure” in mastering Western sciences (in contrast to a conceived Western “success” as it was perceived by student iconoclasm in the first years of the 20th century) by tracing Chinese interest in and practice of natural studies since the Ming dynasty, he stated that since the 16th century until 1900 the Chinese had found their own way to master and control Western views of scientific knowledge. Early modern Western achievements were translated into the terms of a nativist Chinese traditional scholarship. It was only by “first decanonizing the classical canon” that literati began to distance themselves from traditional views of natural sciences and the relation of gezhixue and modern science took on a new character, which was then ascertained by the emerging new intellectuals by using the new term kexue. Viviane Alleton in her final plenary lecture on “The Migrations of Grammars Through Languages: The Chinese Case” asked the question, whether the limited reception of grammatical science in China was an historical accident or a necessity. While other fields of modern sciences (e. g. chemistry) have become well assimilated in China, grammar has been neglected until our times. It did not enjoy a high status, and moreover, the didactic aspect of grammar was stressed extensively (as the importance of grammar for foreigners learning Chinese, or for Chinese learning foreig
n languages), resulting in a sterility which did not appeal to the intellectuals. This situation was accidental. The failure of grammatical study in China cannot be explained by the peculiarity of the Chinese language, which deserves serious study as it presents some very important features for a general theory of language.

The panels “Translation and its History” (discussant: Viviane Alleton) and “Historical Linguistics I” (discussant: Benjamin T’sou, City University of Hong Kong) illuminated aspects of linguistics and translation science. Christoph Harbsmeier (University of Oslo) in “The Historical Background of the Modernisation of Chinese Terminology” introduced a terminological project carried out at the University of Oslo in cooperation with other institutions which aims at compiling a comprehensive dictionary of pre-Buddhist classical Chinese under the name "Synonyma Serica Comparata". The dictionary will give the meaning of a classical Chinese word in the form of a semantic field, i. e. with all its different synonyms and antonyms. It will contain extensive semantic, grammatical, and stylistic analysis of the terms, and will surely be a useful tool for sinologists. He reminded the researchers on terminology to take into account the semantic fields of terms in order to get an all-embracing picture of their meaning. The paper of Wolfgang Behr (Ruhr-University Bochum) “To Translate Means to Change: A bird’s-eye-view of the Terms for Translation Throughout Chinese History” did also not confine itself to Late Imperial China but gave with phonological accuracy a review of the terms used for translation as well as the history of foreign language contacts, translation and translators throughout Chinese history. Lawrence Wang-chi Wong (Chinese University of Hong Kong) in his paper “Beyond Xin Da Ya: Problems of Translating Western Knowledge in the Late Qing” stressed the fact that translations cannot be evaluated by simply comparing source-language texts with their respective target language texts. Translations are not done in a vacuum, but within a particular social, political and literary system. Yan Fu established the well known notions of xin (faithfulness), da (comprehensibility) and ya (elegance) for his translations. But even Yan Fu was not always faithful. To change the meaning of the original was allowed if it served to convey a certain meaning to the reader. Yan Fu’s translations served a political agenda. He was under the patronage of the leaders of the self-strengthening movement and served as a translator for the educated people of his time, both of which had their own peculiar expectations. This context, in which the translations were produced has to be considered.

It was not only scientific knowledge that Westerners in the 19th century did translate into Chinese. Uchida Keiichi (Kansai University, Osaka) gave a very notable example of a literary translation in his paper “Western Studies of the Chinese Language – as Seen Through Robert Thom’s Esop’s Fables”. The exploration of the language of this translation work sheds some light on the nature of the Chinese language learned by Westerners in China. To know the language situation of the 19th century is an important aspect of the understanding of translation processes in these times. Elisabeth Kaske (Humboldt University Berlin) showed in her paper “Mandarin, Vernacular and National Language – China’s Emerging Concept of a National Language in the Early 20th Century”, how in the beginning of the 20th century, old terms referring to language changed their meaning and new terms were coined when ideas about the role of language in society changed. Mandarin, which already had played an important role in Chinese traditional society as a kind of a lingua franca, rose in its status to play the role of a national language. But then the old name guanhua did no longer fit its new meaning. The term was gradually replaced by the Japanese coined neologism guoyu (National Language). By the same time (the first decade of the 20th century), the term baihua – meaning the opposite of the classical Chinese language – started its carrier to become the name for a new written language. Su Xiaoqin’s (Technical University Berlin) paper “Differences in Counting Physical Entities in Chinese Texts from the Early and Late Twentieth Century” put Chinese texts on physics under scrutiny. Comparing the forms of counting physical entities in these texts she stated that in early twentieth century texts as a common convention “two-member” numeral expressions are used (like “er wuti”). She then made the hypothesis that the “two-member” construction had resulted from a short period of influence of the syntax and semantics of European languages during a period in which the Chinese language was formed.

Turning to the socio-political environment of these terminological developments the papers brought together in the panels “Health and Nation” (discussant: Catherine Yeh, University of Heidelberg) and “Literature, Ethics, Arts” (discussant: Barbara Mittler, University of Heidelberg) addressed issues as different as hygiene, ethnic identity and psychiatry, moral textbooks and music, which nevertheless had their common concern in the question of the formation of a modern nation. Sarah Stevens (Indiana University) in her paper “Writing Hygiene in Early Republican China: Texts and Terms” depicted the instrumentalization of the discourse on hygiene (weisheng) by progressive journals as the Funü Zazhi, Dongfang Zazhi, and Dazhong Weisheng as a means to strengthen the nation, thereby integrating women, the family and children into a nationalistic rhetoric. Fetal education and child-rearing were viewed in terms of the accumulation of national resources. Thus, she argued, hygienic texts appropriated formerly private spaces like the home and the womb and turned them into public spaces, strongly dominated by the interests of the (male) nation-state. Chow Kai-wing (University of Illinois) showed a similar connection between the political process of reform and revolution and Chinese conceptualizations of kinship in his study on the translation of the Western notions of “race” – Hanzu or Han-lineage/race – and “nation” – Zhonghua minzu or Chinese race/nation: “Translating Race and Nation: Indigenous Practice and Politics in the Invention of the Hanzu Identity in the Late Qing Period”. Chow’s rich discussion was based on an analysis of the different translations of these terms in late Qing journals and an inquiry in the origins of the terms used. Zhang Binglin played a crucial role in the construction of a new Hanzu identity that was used by the revolutionaries against the Manchu government, making use of lineage terminology to exclude the Manchus from the Chinese. Thus it was in the political debates between the reformist and the revolutionaries in the first decade of the 20th century that the concept of a distinctive Han Chinese race was formed. It is in this historical context that the choices for the translations are to be understood. Another example for
the conflicts between different cultural conceptions that had to be faced in the process of translation was introduced by Angelika C. Messner (University of Kiel): “On Translating Western Psychiatry into the Chinese Context in Republican China”. The concept of a “mental illness” located in a single organ, the brain, as it was perceived in Western psychiatry in the 19th century, was alien to the Chinese “medicine of systemic correspondences”, which caused heated debates in early Republican China and instigated the search for a “new language” challenging the traditional view of the Chinese body.

Ivonne Schulz-Zinda‘s (University of Göttingen) paper “Moral Education in Late Qing Textbooks” surveyed moral education textbooks published in 1906 by the Commercial Press to gain an understanding of moral values taught in the newly established educational system of the Late Qing. These books were compiled and written by Chinese compilers with only a few Japanese advisers working in the publishing house. Owing to the fact that these books were school books officially promoted by the government, they prove, in a time when modern nationalism was already a common good among many intellectuals, to be rather traditional in the examples selected (from Chinese history) and in the values conveyed. Gerlinde Gild‘s (University of Göttingen) paper “The Interpretation of Comparative Musicology in China by Wang Guangqi (1892-1936)” showed, how Wang Guangqi (1892-1936), who had been a student of music in Berlin, adopted the conceptions of Kulturkreislehre into China by transplanting the monogenetic centre of culture assumed by this theory from Europe onto Chinese soil. But in doing so he came into a conflict of identity: on the one hand he criticised the whole tone system of traditional Chinese music as a symbol of its stagnation, but on the other hand he wanted to construct a national identity and demanded for instance a national anthem in the Chinese tonal system. This kind of contradiction between tradition and Westernization pervades Chinese music in its entirety until our days.

The panel “Newspapers and Networks” (discusssant: Wolfgang Kubin, University of Bonn) centered on the diffusion of knowledge through missionary and journalist circles since the early 19th century. The establishment of the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China” in 1834 was the first systematic attempt by prominent missionaries and merchants to break open the cultural barriers and get into more constructive communications with the Chinese. Michael C. Lazich (Buffalo State College) showed in his paper “The Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China: The Canton Era Information Strategy” how periodical publications were used to live up to this goal by transmitting basic information about the Western world to Chinese readers. Although nothing definitive can be said about the extent of circulation, there are some scattered pieces of evidence that show the influence of these publications on a select Chinese readership: people like Wei Yuan and Xu Jiyu, who themselves served as multiplicators. Natascha Vittinghoff (University of Göttingen) in her paper “Features of an Early Scientific Community: a Prosopographic Study of Translators, Journalists and Scientists in 19th Century China” focused on the agents of this process of transmission. In an impressive reconstruction out of tids and pieces of biographical information gathered from all kinds of sources (collected in a database hitherto comprising information on 210 people) she showed the intellectual profile of these people and integrated them in close knit social networks, arguing that these people enjoyed a much higher social status (at least in their immediate intellectual environment) than “later traditions would make us believe”. Andrea Janku (University of Heidelberg) in her paper “Translating Genre. How the leading article became the shelun” tried to show how the (unconscious) choice of the term – and thereby the genre – lun to designate what in the English-language papers would have been the leading article contributed to an increasing acceptability of the newspaper as a legitimate medium of expression in public to the Chinese literati. By linking up with statecraft writing as it was popular in the collections of jingshiwen since the early 19th century, editorial writing in the newspapers quickly rose to a status that was able to attract leading literati (and later intellectuals) and wield an enormous influence on later political developments.

Very different aspects of the translation of knowledge were discussed in the panel “China and the World” (discussant: Rudolf Wagner, University of Heidelberg), namely the introduction of international law and the constitutional system of Western countries. In a startling putting-in-relation of “sovereign-thinking” in the British empire and in China, symbolized by the display of the thrones of the Qianlong emperor in British museums, with the eccentric scholar’s Gu Hongming’s defence of the Empress Dowager during the Boxer uprising, and issues of international law that were raised by the looting and theft of Chinese artifacts by the Western powers, Lydia Liu (University of California, Berkeley) exemplified what she perceived as the reciprocity in the development of international law. In her paper “The Desire for the Sovereign and the Logic of Reciprocity in the Family of Nations” she discusses the place of international law within the context of the European conquest of America, showing that the rise of international law has to be “placed squarely in the early moment of colonial encounter." She unfolds a unique panorama of the evolution of international law in the 19th century and then evaluates Gu Hongming’s defense of the Empress Dowager in the context of the 19th century positivistic European understanding of international law (that had replaced the earlier universal law of nations). In this understanding non-European states had still to be admitted to the family of nations and thus translations like “jun” for “sovereign” and “quanli” for “rights” could only be highly hypothetical equivalents, challenging the then prevalent particularistic European international (!) law. Rune Svarverud (University of Oslo) in his paper “Some Preliminary Considerations on the Formation of a Vocabulary on International Law in Late Imperial China” centered on the more technical aspects of the translation of international law. He pointed to the importance of the Japanese language in the formation of a modern lexicon of international law, despite the fact, that Chinese translations already looked back on a history of more than 40 years when the influence of Japanese was first felt in China. After thoroughly examining the history of translations and the vocabulary of international law before 1900 (introducing to us the wonderful “translation” found in Guo Songtao’s diary for the “Conference for the Reform and Codification of International Law” – Brussels, 1878 – which reads in pinyin-romanization: “keng-fu-lin-si fa-er qi li-fa-er-mu an-de ke-di-fei-ge-lin-sheng a-fu ying-de-na-sheng-er na”) he concludes that it was the existence of two contending traditions of translations of international law texts. A
t the moment the different traditions began to merge, an established Japanese terminology poured in together with the first students returning from Japan in 1902/3 and quickly monopolized the Chinese vocabulary. In his paper “China’s First Scientific Expedition to the West: The Lieguo zhengyao” Michael Lackner (University of Göttingen) dealt with the first systematic effort by the throne to inquire into the political systems of Western countries. This unique and extremely successful publication was the enlarged version of a previous report on the expedition led by Duan Fang to the throne. This report revealed rather astonishing aspects concerning the predilections of the compilers, as, on the one hand, the emphasis on the example of Italy for a once flourishing empire now in decline, and, on the other hand, the detail in which Western institutions as the constitution, political and military organization and education, which could inform the Chinese reform efforts, show. Accuracy and stability of the terminology seemed to increase with the degree of interest in a subject matter.

The panel “Economics and Society” (discussant: Chow Kai-wing) consisted of Wolfgang Lipperts study on the term “political economy” that will be discussed further below and two more examinations into the intricate histories of single terms, that somehow deviate from the hitherto established model of the formation of modern terminologies. Lai Chi-Kong (University of Queensland) in his paper “Beyond Lineage Trusts and Partnership: Translating the Concept of Kung-ssu in Late Nineteenth Century China” examines the choice of the term gongsi, meaning literally “public management”, designating a variety of things ranging “from business partnerships to clan and regional organizations to secret societies”, as a translation for the Western joint-stock company that emerged in the 1870s. Used since the 1820s as a reference to Western business firms, it soon became the gongsi, namely the British East India Company, and as such formed the base for discussions of state support for new built Chinese business enterprises! This was a feature, that in the end made the Chinese concept of gongsi “which was to exist under the state’s umbrella” very different from its Western model. Following an archeological approach, Rudolf G. Wagner (University of Heidelberg) explored “The Concept of Work/Labor/Arbeit in the Chinese World”. Wagner traced the origins of the modern Chinese term laodong to the Japanese rôdô, which was the translation for the Dutch local dialect term slooven, and as such a creation of the Rangaku movement in the late 18th century, and analysized the performance of the term in four different and disconnected discourses.The exploration begins with the Marxist concept of labor and its translation into the Chinese political discourse, then proceeds to the notion of movement inherent in the term laodong, that unfolded enormous power since the first decades of the 20th century, goes further back to the first open conflict between Chinese and Western concepts of work and leisure in the International Settlement of Shanghai, and ends with an examination of the revision of the Sacred Edict by the Kangxi emperor, that gave directions for the work of the common folk, esp. peasants, whose character should be transformed by toiling in the fields, thus achieving the status of the peasant-shi, which would be their contribution to the task of ordering the world. This is an amazing example for the shifting conceptual background and ever new ideological instrumentalization of a concept that found its modern Chinese term, coming from Japan, only in the 2nd decade of the last, i.e. the 20th century.

The panel “Religion and Metaphysics” (discussant: Michael Lackner) addressed very different questions. Wolfgang Kubin (University of Bonn) problematized the process of translation as a sine qua non of culture in his thorough study of a cycle of poems on Macau by the painter, poet, and catholic priest Wu Li (1632-1718). “To Translate is to Ferry Across” – “from the known to the unknown”. He showed how Wu Li in these poems developed a new model for encountering the West, in this case in the shape of catholicism. Passing the border to Macau for Wu Li signifies the assumption of a new identity, with its own meanings and language, that he translates into his mother language. This is what seems to be an early precedent of later literati passing the border to foreign Shanghai, thereby undergoing similar experiences of switching languages and ambivalent identities, and characterized by the same joyful encounter with the new and the conspicuous absence of xenophobia. Timothy Man-kong Wong (Hong Kong Baptist University) in his paper “The Rendering of ‘God’ in Chinese by the Chinese: A preliminary study of the Chinese Responses to the Term Question as seen in the Wanguo Gongbao” outlined a debate on the proper rendering of the Christian concept of “God” going on in the late 1870s between the missionary editors of the journal and its Chinese readers. For the protestant missionaries, one of whose central issues was Bible translation, it was an important matter to achieve uniformity in the terms used for God. In their consideration of the three possibilities to resolve the Term Question: the use of an old term, transliteration, or the invention of a new term, the missionaries overlooked the views of their Chinese receptors – a neglect they tried to redeem by inquiring into their readers’ opinions. The ensuing vivid debate which brought forth innovative ideas “could certainly be helpful in developing Chinese interpretations of Christianity”. Whereas in general the Chinese input in theological debates and questions of translation was not really taken serious, these debates carried on on the pages of the Wanguo Gongbao “represented at least some earlier attempts for doing so”. With his paper “19th Century Ruist Metaphysical Terminology and the Sino-Scottish Connection: Evaluating the Hermeneutic Relevance of this Connection in James Legge’s Chinese Classics” Lauren Pfister (Hong Kong Baptist University) offered a glimpse into what resulted from his “living together with the spirit of James Legge for a decade”. In his fine study Pfister revealed the philosophical underpinning of Legge’s translations of the Classics, which was what he called a “Scottish Commonsense Realism” and its readaptation and interpretation of Neo-Aristotelian vocabulary. Concerning the issue of translation, Legge tried to overcome one of the most basic problems of any kind of translation, namely its “absolute incommensurability”, by making extense use of commentarial notes as a method of varying – and highlighting – different angles of interpretation.

The Panel “Historical Linguistics (II) ” (discussant: Federico Masini) was completely devoted to theoretical problems of the terminology issue. Arakawa Kiyohide (Aichi University, Tokyo) in his report on “The Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Terms in
Japan and China – Focussing on Geographical Terms” took geographical terms as an example to explore the origins and the rules of dissemination of modern technical terms which are used in both the Chinese and the Japanese linguistic contexts. He reminded us that terminological developments have to be seen not as a single stream of translation from Western languages into Chinese (or from Western languages through Japanese into Chinese) but as a complex process of intercultural contacts through which ideas and concepts from different European languages (Latin, English, German, Dutch etc.) were transported back and forth to the Japanese and Chinese languages. Zhou Zhenhe (Fudan University, Shanghai) in “Definite and Transitional Terms in Modern Chinese Scientific Vocabulary” concentrated on the inner-Chinese process of creating new terms for new ideas. Due to different cultural traditions, patterns of thinking and linguistic systems, the way from the first appearance of a new concept in China to the point of its broad acceptance by Chinese society reveals to be a time consuming and laborious process of cultural assimilation and rethinking. Different phonetical loans (depending on the language of origin, the dialect of the translator, or the choice of characters), and competing versions of semantic loans (depending on the translator’s understanding of the original concept) form a body of transitional terms from which a choice is finally made to be the definite term used today in scientific discourse. Zhou Zhenhe reminded us that scholars should pay more attention to this body of transitional terms in their study of cultural differences between China and the West. Benjamin Tsou‘s synchronic view on very recent linguistic developments presented in “Towards a Comparative Study of Diachronic and Synchronic Lexical Variation in Chinese” added very important aspects to the diachronic approach which was implied in the topic of the conference and followed by most speakers. Based on a huge corpus of written material from different Chinese speech communities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapoore, Taiwan etc.) and tested on living people by sociolinguistic methods, conditions not available to historians, such a study can shed light on the rules of lexical use and lexical acceptance which can also be useful for historical studies. For instance, historical terminological studies have difficulties to make clear why a certain term out of a variety of possibilities would have been chosen for a certain concept. Benjamin Tsou showed that different (all Chinese-language based) speech communities prefer different choices – phonetic or semantic loans – according to their degree of cultural openness (exocentrism) and language control by government agencies. On the other hand different speech communities influence each other depending on their degree of development and cultural attractiveness. Shanghai language, for example, is seen as more endocentric and government controlled than Hong Kong language, but as Hong Kong is culturally attractive, Hong Kong terms are understood and accepted to a higher degree in Shanghai than vice versa.

Different aspects and examples of terminological development were explored in the papers presented in the panels “New Disciplines (I, II)” (discussants: Benjamin Elman and Lydia Liu), “Terms and Terminologies” (discussant: Alain Peyraube), “Law and Order” (discussant: Han Qi), and, partially, in “Economics and Society” (discussant: Chow Kai-wing) and “Literature, Ethics, Arts” (discussant: Barbara Mittler, University of Heidelberg). A very intriguing example for the easy acceptance of a Japanese coined modern term was given by Iwo Amelung (Technical University Berlin) in his paper “Naming Physics: The Strife to Delineate a Field of Modern Science in Late Imperial China”. When wulixue as a name for “physics” was introduced into China in the beginning of the 20th century the term easily replaced the few other possible candidates and rapidly made its way into school-regulations, textbooks etc. The reason for this easy acceptance is seen in the failure of the earlier missionaries and translators to introduce a universally accepted term for physics while at the same time establishing the branches of physics as quasi-independent branches of science. The possibility offered by Young Allen in 1880 to use the term gewu remained unused, because the distinctions between gezhi (natural sciences) and gewu tended to vanish. Other terms were ambiguous, as tixue (meaning also anatomy) or zhixue (sometimes used for chemistry). Thus only a completely new term from Japan could solve the confusion and create the basis for establishing physics as a modern academic disciplin. But we also have the counter-example of complicated processes of terminological migration between the West, Japan and China depicted by Shen Guowei (Kansai University, Osaka) in “The Emergence of Medical Terminology in Ming and Qing China”. Shen surveyed several medical works on anatomy in China and Japan between the 17th and 19th century. From Terrenz Schreck’s Taixi Renshen Shuogai (1623) many terms found their way to Japan. They are reflected there in the Jieti Xinshu published in 1774. Later, they came back to China when Benjamin Hobson used this book (among others) for writing his Quanti Xinlun in 1851. Han Qi (CAS, Beijing) was exploring “Understanding and Misunderstanding: Some Reflections on the Translation of Scientific Terms and their Transmission of Western Science in Late Imperial China”. Taking the translation work of the 17th century Jesuit missionaries in China as example, Han Qi concentrated on the analysis of several scientific terms (mostly in mathematics) to explore the problems and difficulties of the translation process. The translation of scientific terms into a very different culture is influenced by a whole range of factors: the traditional cultural background of the translator, the background of the translator in Western sciences and the intellectual currents of its time. Differences in the understanding of the terminology by the translators are seen as important reasons for the great variety of translated terms.

Su Rongyu (CAS, Beijing) in “The Spread of ‘Archeology’ and ‘Pre-history’ into China and the Establishment of Archeology in China” traced the formation of the modern scientific disciplines archeology and pre-history in China. Whereas China has a long history of the study of antiques, there never developed any equivalent to the new modern Western disciplines. While the concept of Western archeological studies has not been introduced to China before the turn of the century, Western and Japanese adventurers and archeologists undertook expeditions in China since the 1860s (like John Anderson, Sven Hedin and M.A. Stein). It was only at the beginning of the 20th century, with the increased influx of Japanese translations, that these disciplines were introduced to China. First traces of an encounter with Western archeology are found in the writings by Zhang Taiyan, Liang Qichao, and others. Soon the relationship between archeological findings and historical studies were fathomed and the differences between the Chinese tradition of the study of antiques and modern Western
archeology perceived. Thus archeology was established in China through the joint effort of Western archeologists and Chinese receiving archeological training in Western countries in the 1920s. Joachim Kurtz (University of Göttingen) with his “Names and Actualities: Translation and Invention in the Discovery of Chinese Logic” gives still another variant of terminological history. This time, although the Western science of logic was first introduced in the 17th century and then again in the late 19th century, only in the beginning of the 20th century did this field of Western study begin to take root in a Chinese learned discourse. It then enjoyed tremendous popularity and soon became a standard subject of higher education. Kurtz showed how Chinese scholars simultaneously “sought to apply these new notions to their own intellectual traditions, thus initiating another, intracultural process of translation that was to result in the ‘histories of logical thinking in China’ (in particular the ‘study of names’) with which we are familiar today.” It was the challenge of the new discipline that instigated the discovery of China’s own “logical past”, the complex process of translation and invention of which is reconstructed in this study.

Zou Zhenhuan‘s (Fudan University, Shanghai) study on “New Terms of Physical Geography in Geographical Documents from Late Qing” is based partially on earlier studies of Arakawa, Zhou Zhenhe and Masini. He systematically surveyed the terms used for entities of Physical Geography in late Qing textbooks and traced their origins back to late Ming/early Qing Jesuit and early 19th century missionary works on geography. He found that 16% resp. 25% of all the terms were from missionary sources. Only from 1887 onward Japanese stopped to import Western knowledge from China and started to translate large amounts of texts directly from the West. In the beginning of the 20th century Western knowledge came to China mainly through Japanese mediation. Zhang Baichun‘s (CAS, Beijing) terminological explorations into “The Translation of Some Terms for Astronomical Instruments in 17th Century China” lead back to the pioneering work of the Jesuit missionaries in the 16th and 17th century. When they introduced astronomical instruments hitherto unknown in China they had to invent a whole set of new technical terms. These missionaries could not make use of any previous European experiences with the Chinese language or with the methods of translations into Chinese, thus there were no standardized translations. Mostly they preferred terms which contained functional descriptions of the instrument. Interestingly they did not use phonetical loans at all (except for the purpose of transcribing the names of European scientists).

Fang Weigui (University of Göttingen) in his paper on “The Translation, Evolution, and Usage of Some Western Political Terms in 19th Century China” also stressed the fact that translation of terms always involves interpretation of ideas. This is even more the case with political terminology than with scientific terminology. This interpretation process is by no means a one-sided effort undertaken by the translators on the Chinese side. Rather their understanding or misunderstanding is, to a high degree, determined by the interpretation given by the Western author of the original. When, for instance, the term “democracy” came to China in the 19th century, it was the institutional aspect which was stressed in Western literature, its meaning being not too far away from “republic”. Therefore in the Chinese context “republic" could well be translated as minzhu zhi guo. Terminological studies thus will not be able to make a correct assessment of neologisms without a clear understanding of the original concepts. Li Guilian (Beijing University) in “The Three Chinese Versions of the Code Civil des Français” focused in his study on the works of translation rather than on terminologies. Comparing two late Qing versions of the Code Civil des Français of 1789 with a translation published in 1979, he showed that modern concepts of law as well as modern legal terminology were basically already established in the late Qing version Falanxi minfa zhengwen by Chen Lu. The earlier translation (Faguo Lüli, 1880) of the French Tongwenguan teacher Billequin, on the other hand, proved to be a failure. The translation method established at the Foreign controlled institution of learning failed as neither the Western oral translator nor the Chinese who put the translation into the written form, had a background in law, and both did not seem to have had a very high command of Chinese. Ma Jun‘s (SASS, Shanghai) “A Brief Study on the Translation of Western Military Ranks in Late Qing” gave another specific example of an evolving of modern terminology in China. In his case there existed already a whole set of terms in a system of concepts — that of military ranks — well comparable to the Western case. Consequently, in the beginning it was rather the ranks of Western officers appearing in the literature which had to be translated into a Chinese intelligible to a Chinese reader. To achieve this aim, the easiest way was to look for comparable positions in the Chinese rank system. This changed only with the second army reform in 1912 when the young Republic established a completely new system of military ranks according to the Japanese system and using Japanese names. Here, neologisms were coined not to name new entities or concepts, but to state a symbolic break with the past.

Wolfgang Lippert (University of Erlangen) in his paper “The Formation and Development of the Term ‘Political Economy’ in Japanese and Chinese” traced the development of the term keizai gaku resp. jingji xue in the Japanese and Chinese contexts. This term which came to render the concept of "political economy” is a very typical example of Japanese coined Chinese character neologisms coming to China in the late 19th century to replace earlier translations of the Western term (the history of this term was also mentioned by Zhou Zhenhe). After jingji xue appeared for the first time in the writings of Liang Qichao, it had to compete with a wide variety of terms. Different form the term wuli for physics the Chinese public was long reluctant to accept the term jingji for economics, because in the traditional context, as a contraction of jing shi ji min (to govern the world and relieve the people), it rather meant “statesmanship” than “economy”. Only in the 1920s the term became the generally accepted translation of “political economy”. Helena Heraldová‘s (University of Prague) paper “Scientific and Technical Terminology in Chinese Science Fiction” added a very interesting aspect to the study of scientific terminology in China, namely the use of scientific and technological terms in fiction. It was the only paper presented at the conference which could give a small glimpse into the question o
f the dissemination of scientific terminology into the common language. The years between 1905 and 1912 proved to be a very fruitful time for the creation of science fiction literature in China. To construct an imaginative reality for the reader, the authors had to use vocabulary which was familiar to the readers. It is very interesting to see that there were all kinds of vehicles (especially flying and submarine ones). Electricity and telescopes seem to have been most present in the fantasy of the readers.

In a separate session two terminological research projects directly co-operating with the MCST project in Göttingen were introduced to the conference participants. Federico Masini (University of Rome I) introduced his new research project which aims at tracing the origins of lexical innovations introduced into the Chinese language by the Jesuit missionaries and subsequently preserved in that language (“Using the works of Jesuit missionaries to study the Chinese language”). The compilation of an index of scientific terms coined by the Jesuits is planned which will show for every term, whether it became obsolete immediately, whether it was used for some time, or whether it still exists in the modern Chinese lexicon. Through such a study not only the impact of the Jesuits on the Modern Chinese language can be elucidated, but it can also help to fill the gap between the Modern Chinese lexicon and the existing diachronic lexicographic tools (like the Zhongwen Dacidian of 1973 or the Hanyu Dacidian of 1986-1994). The second project, the compilation of an Etymological Dictionary of Neologisms in Modern China (Jin Xiandai Hanyu xinci ciyuan cidian) by the Chinese Culture University, Hong Kong, and the Hanyu Dacidian Publishing House, Shanghai, was introduced by Xu Wenkan (“The Compilation of an Etymological Dictionary in Modern Chinese”). The new dictionary will be an important supplement to the Hanyu Dacidian (Shanghai 1986-1994) which, in many cases, cannot give a detailed strictly historical outline of a term, especially of the modern terms. The dictionary will be confined to neologisms which have become part of everyday speech. It is to be published in 2001 as a “preliminary version” and revised regularly. It will be a very useful tool for scholars of the history of terminology and of the history of thought.

In the concluding discussion basically two dimensions of the problem of “translating Western knowledge” were revealed. The first was that China was just one example of a more or less global development. The second was the interdisciplinary focus of the whole project, which makes it challenging, fascinating, but also hard to tackle. This becomes particularly obvious in the study of language (and for this: any one-dimensionally pursued discipline), that remains colourless in wide parts if it is not integrated in the rich context of social, religious, literary, historical, legal, cultural etc. discourses, in the same way as these remain unintelligible without a deeper understanding of the most important medium of communication and transmission of knowledge, which is the human language. The problem of translation that should be reflected more consciously somehow represents the core issue in our approach to the questions dealt with in this conference.

 

Andrea Janku and Elisabeth Kaske

 

Publications

 

Alleton, Viviane & Lackner, Michael, eds., De l’un au multiple. Traductions du chinois dans les langues européennes. Translations from Chinese into European Languages. Sous direction de Viviane Alleton and Michael Lackner. Paris . Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. 1999. ISBN 2 7351 0768 X. 195 F; 29,73 Euros.

 

Ceresa, Marco, Die Entdeckung des heißen Wassers, translated from Italian by Simone He, Bochum: 1999. – 89 pp. ISBN: 3-89733-027-X. (Orig. title: La scoperta dell’acqua calda).

 

Chinese Business History. The Chinese Business History Research Group would like to announce the new organizational structure for its publication Chinese Business History. In order to better accommodate this growing field, we have added three associate editors who will be responsible for identifying and reviewing material in specific world regions for publication.

 

Chinese Business History is issued twice yearly and welcomes the submission of short articles, research notes, conference reports, and other information related to the field of Chinese business history. For more information, please contact the appropriate editor. The new associate editors and their regions of responsibility are as follows: Asia Pacific: Chi-kong Lai, History Department, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia, email: c.lai@mailbox.uq.oz.au; Europé: Elisabeth Koll, History Department, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7101, USA, email: exk21@po.cwru.edu; North America: Brett Sheehan,History Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI 53705, USA, email: bsheehan@facstaff.wisc.edu; At Large: Robert Gardella, Humanities Department, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY 11024-1699, USA, email: gardella@usmma.edu; General Editor: Andrea McElderry, History Department, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA, email: andrea.mcelderry@louisville.edu.

 

Eifring, Halvor, ed., Minds and Mentalities in Traditional Chinese Literature, Studies of Chinese Literature and Psychology no. 1, Beijing: Culture and Art Publishing Co., 1999, ISBN 7-5039-1873-X/I·788. Contents: David Hawkes, “Preface”; David T Roy, “Songs of the Self: Self-expression through Song Lyrics in Jin Ping Mei”; Andrew Plaks, “Self-enclosure and Self-absorption in the Classic Chinese Novel”; Halvor Eifring, “Chinese Faces: The Sociopsychology of Facial Features as Described in The Story of the Stone”; Rune Svarverud, “Body and Character: Physiognomical Description in Han Dynasty Literature”; Heng-syung Jeng, “The Mentalit
y of Monkey in the Journey to the West: A Semiotic Interpretation”; André Lévy, “Indirect Expression of Mental States: Ramblings into Chinese Traditional Fiction”; Paulo Santangelo, “Emotions and the Origin of Evil in Neo-Confucian Thought”; Christoph Harbsmeier, “Weeping and Wailing in Ancient China”.

 

Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, Volume 21, 176 p., 90 FF. “Divination et rationalité en Chine ancienne”, edited by Karine Chemla, Marc Kalinowski and Donald Harper. Table of contents: Karine Chemla and Marc Kalinowski, “Présentation: Divination et rationalité en Chine ancienne”; I. Pratiques discursives: Redouane Djamouri, “Écriture et divination sous les Shang”; Marc Kalinowski, “La rhétorique oraculaire dans les chroniques anciennes de la Chine. Une étude des discours prédictifs dans le Zuozhuan”; Jean Levi, “Pratiques divinatoires, conjectures et critique rationaliste à l’époque des Royaumes Combattants; John Henderson, “Divination and Confucian Exegesis”. II. Techniques symboliques: Donald Harper, “Physicians and Diviners : The Relation of Divination to the Medicine of the Huangdi neijing (Inner canon of the Yellow Thearch)”; Mark Csikszentmihalyi, “Severity and lenience : Divination and law in early imperial China”; Jérôme Bourgon, “Le rôle des schémas divinatoires dans la codification du droit chinois. À propos du Commentaire du code des Jin par Zhang Fei”. III. Regards extérieurs: Jean-Jacques Glassner, “Questions mésopotamiennes sur la divination”; Geoffrey Lloyd, “Divination : traditions and controversies, Chinese and Greek”. Résumés en français & English Summaries. This issue is published with a list of all tables of contents of the former issues of the journal and with a table of authors. For further information and subscription details, please contact: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, Université de Paris VIII, 2 rue de la Liberté, 93526 Saint Denis Cedex 02, France. Tel.: +33-149406788 ; FAX.: +33-149406753. E-mail address: Presses-Universitaires.Vincennes@univ-paris8.fr.

 

Halskov Hansen, Mette, Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1999.

 

Hebel, Jutta & Günter Schucher, eds., Der chinesische Arbeitsmarkt: Strukturen, Probleme, Perspektiven, Hamburg: DATPUBL, 1999, 292 pp. graph. Darst., zahlr. Tab., Lit., zahlr. Lit.Hinw. Enthält 12 Beitr. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde Hamburg, No. 306.

 

Kampen, Thomas, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the Evolution of the Chinese Communist Leadership, ISBN: 87-87062-76-3, £15.99, E19, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies; Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark, Fax: (+45) 3296 2530, email: books@nias.ku.dk.

 

Liew, Foon Ming, The Treatises on Military Affairs of the Ming Dynastic History (1368-1644): An Annotated Translation of the Treatises on Military Affairs Chapter 89 and Chapter 90. 2 vols, Gesellschaft Für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens e. V. Hamburg (MOAG 129).

 

Mamaeva, Nataliya, The Comintern and the the Kuomintang. 1919 -1929. In Russian. Moscow, 1999. – 376 pp. ISBN 5-8243-0058-5. The research for this book is based on the most extensive sources found in the archives at the Russian Center for Study of Documents of Contemporary History of China, Russian State Military Archives, the collected documents "VCP(b), Comintern and the National-Revolutionary Movement in China", a number of documentary collections on the history of Kuomintang, published in China in the second half of 1980s. With an English summary.

 

Mirovitskaya, Raisa, Chinese Statehood and Soviet Policy in China. The Period of Pacific War: 1941- 1945. In Russian. Moscow, 1999. – 312 pp. ISBN 5-88451-078-0. With an English summary.

 

NAN NUE: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China. The first issue of this journal appeared in March 1999 including the following articles: David Keightley: "At the Beginning: The Status of Women in Neolithic and Shang China"; Maram Epstein: "Reflections of Desire: The Poetics of Gender in DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER"; Paola Zamperini: "But I Never Learned to Waltz: The ‘Real’ and Imagined Education of a Courtesan in the Late Qing". There are book reviews of both Chinese and Western language publications by Allan Barr, Paola Paderni, Eduard Vermeer, John Dardess, Dorothy Ko, Li Yuning, Joan Judge, and Chia-lin Pao Tao. For further information concerning submission and author queries, please contact: Harriet Zurndorfer, Managing Editor NAN NUU, Sinologisch Instituut, Faculteit der Letteren, P.B. 9515, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. email: ZURNDORF@rullet.LeidenUniv.nl.

 

Niederer, Barbara, Les langues Hmong-Mjen (Miao-Yao). Phonologie historique, München/Newcastle : Lincom Europa, 1998 – ISBN : 3-89586-211-8.

 

Pettersson, Bengt, Cannibalism in the Dynastic Histories, doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University: Department of Chinese Studies, 1999. ISBN 91-7153-971-9.

Portyakov, Vladimir, The People’s Republic of China: Economic Policy of the 1990’s. In English. Moscow, 1999. 182 pp. (These papers by Dr. V. Portyakov were first published in the journal Far Eastern Affairs or presented at various international conferences on China issues. The contents of the papers encompass different aspects of China’s economic policy of the nineties.)

 

Schucher, Günter, “Die neuen Mitglieder der ASEAN (3): Kambodscha”, Südostasien aktuell, Hamburg 18 (Mai 1999) 3, pp. 254-259.

 

Schucher, Günter, “Die asiatische Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise: Ursachen, Verlauf, Implikationen”, in Wemer Draguhn, ed., Asienkrise: Politik und Wirtschaft unter Reformdruck, Hamburg, 1999. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde, Hamburg, No. 308, pp. 135-152.

 

Schucher, Günter, “Chinas Beschäftigungsstrukturen im Wandel”, in Jutta Hebel & Günter Schucher, eds., Der chinesische Arbeitsmark,Institut für Asienkunde, Hamburg, 1999. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde Hamburg Nr. 306, pp. 23-44.

 

Schucher, Günter, “Die VR China und ihre Nachbarn (10): Südostasien (2)”, China aktuell, Hamburg, 28 (Januar 1999) 1, pp. 55-

 

Schucher, Günter, “Chinas Beschäftigungsstrukturen im Wandel?”, China aktuell, Hamburg, 28 (January 1999) 1, pp. 45-54.

 

Schucher, Günter, “Chinawissenschaft an deutschsprachigen Hochschulen: Ein institutioneller Überblick”, in Helmut Martin und Christiane Hammer eds., Chinawissenschaften – deutschsprachige Entwicklungen. Geschichte, Personen, Perspektiven. Hamburg, 1999. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde Hamburg, Nr. 303, pp. 314-331.

 

Schucher, Günter & Espenhain Nielsen, Eva, “ASEM und die Beziehungen zwischen der EU und der ASEAN”, Südostasien aktuell. Pretzell, Klaus Albrecht: Europa und Asien. Eine Sonderveröffentlichung aus Anlaß des 2. ASEM-Außemninistertreffens am 29. März 1999 in Berlin. – Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, 1999. (Südostasien aktuell ; Sonderausg. 1999), pp. 69-76.

 

Stepanova, Galina, Sistema mnogopartiynogo sotrudnichestva v Kitaiskoy Narodnoy Respublike (The System of Multi-Party Cooperation in the People’s Republic of China ). In Russian. Moscow, 1999. 212 pp. ISBN 5-8381-0002-8.

Suärez, Anne-Hélène: "Libro del curso y de la virtud" de Lao zi. Madrid:

Siruela, 1998. 194 p. ISBN 84-7844-427-0. Spanish translation of the Lao zi Dao de jing, with preliminaries, notes and bibliography. Introduction by François Jullien.

 

The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 9, 1998, ed. Torbjörn Lodén. Contents: Jin Guantao, “’On Practice’ and the Confucianization of Marxism-Leninism”; Li Zehou, “The State, the Society and the Individual”; Chen Ping Yuan, “The Fate and Choices of Modern Chinese Intellectuals”; Sharif M. Shuja, “Russia’s Foreign Policy in East Asia”; Jakob Klein, “Commemoration in Contemporary Sanyuanli, Guangzhou”. The journal can be ordered from The Center for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, email: CPAS@orient.su.se.

 

VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai . Documenty. 1927-1931 ( The Soviet Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comintern and China. Documents.1927-1931). Vol. III (part 1, part 2). In Russian. Moscow, 1999. 1598 pp. ISBN 5-85603-075-3.

 

Zurndorfer, Harriet T., China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and Present. Paperback edition by the University of Hawaii Press (1999).

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EACS ADDRESSES

 

President

Glen Dudbridge, Institute for Chinese Studies, Oxford University, Walton Street, Oxford OX1 2HG, U.K. Tel. +44 1865-280389 (office); +44 1865-280387 (secretary); +44 1865-862816 (home). Email: glen_dudbridge@yahoo.com

 

Secretary-General

Christian Henriot, Institut d’Asie Orientale – MRASH – 14, avenue Berthelot, F-69363 Lyon cedex 07, France. Tel. +33 4 72 65 40; fax +33 4 72 72 64 90. Email: chenriot@mrash.fr. Home page: http://web.mrash.fr./labo/iao/iao.htm

 

Treasurer

Hans van Ess, Ostasiatisches Seminar, Universität München, Kaulbachstraße 51a, D-80539 München, Germany. Tel. +49 89 2180 2349; fax +49 89 342666; Email: vanEss@ostasien.fak12.uni-muenchen.de

 

Newsletter Editor

Dr. Mette Thunö, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen, Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S. Email: mette@hum.ku.dk