This unique survey of the evolution of the modern Chinese national character incorporates a rich blend of history and theory as well as nation, gender, and film studies. It begins with the dawn of the concept of "nation" in China at the end of the Imperial period, and follows its development from early Republican China to the present People's Republic, drawing on themes of national identity, "Orientalness," racial evolution and purity, cultural and gender roles, regional animosities, historical impediments, and more. The book also takes up the changing American perceptions of Chinese personality development and gender, using materials from American popular culture.
This unique survey of the evolution of the modern Chinese national character incorporates a rich blend of history and theory as well as nation, gender, and film studies. It begins with the dawn of the concept of "nation" in China at the end of the Imperial period, and follows its development from early Republican China to the present People's Republic, drawing on themes of national identity, "Orientalness," racial evolution and purity, cultural and gender roles, regional animosities, historical impediments, and more. The book also takes up the changing American perceptions of Chinese personality development and gender, using materials from American popular culture.
How does culture shape history, and history shape culture? This book answers this question by bringing readers on a fascinating journey through the evolution of Chinese culture, political and legal institutions, and "national character" of historical and contemporary China. It illustrates how "national character" evolves endogenously along with an institutional environment through the use of economic theories. Recognizing the unique role of "personality" in violence and social order – important variables that contribute to successful economies, the book provides a meaningful take on "personality" from the "average personality" of a country’s people. It analyses the relationship between culture, institution and "national character", providing gainful, interesting insights into the monumental transformation of China.
Although Lu Xun was a leading intellectual and writer in twentieth century China, and his representative character Ah Q, hero of "The True Story of Ah Q," is considered an iconic repository of progressive Chinese thinking about the national character, few works examine the major discourses in his thought and writing relative to broader historical and intellectual currents outside the context of his politicization. Ah Q Archaeology, however, concretely situates Lu Xun's critique of national character vis-a-vis metanarratives of nationalism and modernity through a close examination of his works in their historical context. Paul B. Foster uses a discursive approach to tie together Lu Xun's major theme of national character critique and its fate in China's tumultuous twentieth century. This book is an important and unique contribution to modern Chinese intellectual history and modern Chinese literature.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.
The pioneering memory technique taught in this book removes the major obstacle to learning modern Mandarin Chinese: how to remember the meanings of more than 2,000 of the most common of traditional Chinese characters--enough to read more than 96 percent of the characters in almost any Chinese text. The lessons included here will help to learn new definitions at a breakneck pace, build up new characters using characters already learned, develop memory tricks to associate meanings with these characters, and fix meanings and characters forever in the mind. This unique manual provides a sure-fire way to master the most challenging and intimidating aspect of learning Chinese, vital for any student of the Chinese language.
Two leading experts on China evaluate its rise throughout the past one hundred fifty years, sharing portraits of key intellectual and political leaders to explain how China transformed from a country under foreign assault to a world giant.
First published in 1919 by Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa’s essay on the Chinese written language has become one of the most often quoted statements in the history of American poetics. As edited by Pound, it presents a powerful conception of language that continues to shape our poetic and stylistic preferences: the idea that poems consist primarily of images; the idea that the sentence form with active verb mirrors relations of natural force. But previous editions of the essay represent Pound’s understanding—it is fair to say, his appropriation—of the text. Fenollosa’s manuscripts, in the Beinecke Library of Yale University, allow us to see this essay in a different light, as a document of early, sustained cultural interchange between North America and East Asia. Pound’s editing of the essay obscured two important features, here restored to view: Fenollosa’s encounter with Tendai Buddhism and Buddhist ontology, and his concern with the dimension of sound in Chinese poetry. This book is the definitive critical edition of Fenollosa’s important work. After a substantial Introduction, the text as edited by Pound is presented, together with his notes and plates. At the heart of the edition is the first full publication of the essay as Fenollosa wrote it, accompanied by the many diagrams, characters, and notes Fenollosa (and Pound) scrawled on the verso pages. Pound’s deletions, insertions, and alterations to Fenollosa’s sometimes ornate prose are meticulously captured, enabling readers to follow the quasi-dialogue between Fenollosa and his posthumous editor. Earlier drafts and related talks reveal the developmentof Fenollosa’s ideas about culture, poetry, and translation. Copious multilingual annotation is an important feature of the edition. This masterfully edited book will be an essential resource for scholars and poets and a starting point for a renewed discussion of the multiple sources of American modernist poetry.
