China Heritage Quarterly

Focus - West Lake 西湖

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:48 +1100

One of the first rhyming Chinoiserie sayings students learn is: 'Above there is Heaven, on earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou' (Shang you tiantang, Xia you Su Hang 上有天堂，下有蘇杭). These cities with their attendant 'famous sites'—Tiger Hill (Huqiu 虎丘) in the case of Suzhou and West Lake (Xihu 西湖) in Hangzhou—were and are noted not only for their scenery but also because of the skein of historical and literary meaning that embraces, sometimes entangles, them. The art historian Jonathan Hay called Hangzhou and Suzhou two of the 'leisure zones', that is city-scenic areas, in the Lower Yangtze Valley (Jiangnan 江南) where a particular culture of refined indulgence developed around temples, pleasure boats, tea houses, eating places, courtesan's quarters and wine shops...

Editorial - The Tides of West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:01:36 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

When China Heritage Quarterly first appeared under the name China Heritage Newsletter in March 2005, we signaled that this publication would advocate a 'New Sinology'. As I have written elsewhere, New Sinology is an academic disposition that

commemorates the past endeavors of individuals and broader communities of scholars to understand the complex living heritage of China's past and how it relates to a broader humanity. Located in the present, it is also an attempt to articulate a generous academic approach to China that is ever mindful of the importance of the conditions of historical conciliation (that new-found rapprochement between the dynastic, the Republican, and the People's Republic eras of China), such that from a Western perspective 'China' becomes understood, studied, and appreciated. In brief, New Sinology locates itself inside the Chinese world and seeks to find ways of communicating what makes sense and animates and inspires this world. For this reason, this broad approach is one that emphasizes an attention to detail that will enable the shadows, legacies, ligatures, burdens, possibilities, and constants of China's contending pasts to come to light…

Features - The Ten Scenes of West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:02:13 +1100

Duncan Campbell

In the Thirty-eighth Year of the reign of the Kangxi emperor of the present dynasty [1699], during his Southern Tour of that year, the Emperor declared that henceforth 'A spring's dawn breaking upon Su Embankment' [Su di chun xiao 蘇堤春曉] was to be listed first amongst the Ten Vistas of West Lake.

—Liang Shizheng 梁詩正 and Shen Deqian 沈德潛,
West Lake Gazetteer (Xihu zhizuan 西湖志纂, ed.1755)

Over the course of more than a millennium, quite apart from the wealth of historical and geographical treatments of the Lake and its history that have been written, dense layers of cultural sedimentation have settled on West Lake in Hangzhou 杭州西湖. Poetic works, essays, paintings, folk stories have all accumulated around the Lake making it one of the most iconic physical and metaphorical landscapes of China...

Features - The Ten Scenes of West Lake: Poems

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:03:12 +1100

Zhang Dai

Twin Peaks Piercing Clouds

Each peak resembles a superior man,
Come together they now converse.
Here in this place is to be found West Lake,
And West Lake it is that holds me here.
兩峰插雲

一峰一高人
兩人相與語
此地有西湖
勾留不肯去

...

Features - West Lake and Hangzhou: A Chronology (200BCE-2011)

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:04:23 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

200BCE First mention of the city that was to become Hangzhou

326CE, Temple of the Soul's Retreat (Lingyin Si 靈隱寺) established

Southern Qi 南齊 dynasty (479-502)

Su Xiaoxiao 蘇小小, a courtesan from the area of Qiantang 錢唐, is celebrated for her talent. Following her death she is buried on the northern shore of West Lake next to what becomes known as the West Cooling Bridge (Xiling Qiao 西泠橋) that connects to the island of Solitary Hill (Gu Shan 孤山). Some accounts hold that she was frustrated in love and died of a broken heart. It is also said that a young scholar who she had helped by the name of Bao Ren 鮑仁 builds a pavilion over her grave. It is know as the Pavilion of Admired Talent (Mucai Ting 慕才亭). The simple legend on the tomb reads 'The Tomb of Su Xiaoxiao of Qiantang' (Qiantang Su Xiaoxiao zhi mu 錢塘蘇小小之墓). The tomb and the pavilion are said to still be extant in the Southern Song...

Features - Sights and Scenes (Jing 景): Introducing the China Heritage Glossary

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:06:45 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

This Glossary has its origins in adolescent readings of Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895-1976), the not uncontroversial essayist, editor and translator. In his 1938 book The Importance of Living, Lin included a critical vocabulary of key Chinese terms which he hoped would help elucidate certain aesthetic concepts discussed in that book. As a bilingual writer of great talent, Lin knew all too well the fraught nature of translating ideas, words and sentiments across cultures…

Features - Searching for the Ming

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:07:17 +1100

Zhang Dai
Introduced and translated by Duncan Campbell

How can the grace and beauty of the mountains and rivers found throughout the empire ever surpass those of West Lake?
—Huhaishi 湖海士 (pseud.), Preface, West Lake: Second
Collection (Xihu erji xu 西湖二集序), (1628-44)

The following translations are made from what is arguably the most famous literary account of Hangzhou's West Lake. Search for West Lake in My Dreams (Xihu mengxun 西湖夢尋) was compiled by the late-Ming loyalist historian and essayist Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597-?1689). Although the author's preface is dated 1671 (the Tenth Year of the Kangxi reign period) the book did not appear until 1717 (the Fifty-sixth Year of the Kangxi reign), almost half a century from its completion and long after Zhang's death...

Features - West Lake in the Song Dynasty

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:08:13 +1100

Stephen McDowall

Gaozong's 高宗 [r.1127-1162] selection of Hangzhou over Jiankang [Nanjing] as the [Southern Song] capital was a great error. While scholar-officials were consumed by the excesses of singing and dancing on the lake and in the hills, the affairs of state were beyond their consideration, and in the end armies were lost, rulers were poorly advised, territory was ceded and the dynasty betrayed. These matters can only make one sigh with regret.
高宗不都建康而都於杭大為失策士大夫湖山歌舞之餘視天下事於度外卒至喪師誤主納土賣國可為長嘆息也

—Liu Yiqing 劉一清 (early Yuan), Qiantang yishi 錢塘遺事

Ambivalence surrounding the status of Hangzhou (Lin'an 臨安) as a capital city had been expressed long before the final collapse of the Southern Song in 1279. Many officials had, from the very beginning, felt that the city's geometric imperfections rendered it unsuitable as an imperial capital. As Nancy Steinhardt has shown, illustrations produced during the thirteenth century ignored as far as possible the city's asymmetrical reality, seeking instead to fulfil expectations of Hangzhou as being a geometrically faultless imperial space 'so that the capital [would] appear perfect for posterity.'

...

Features - Emperor Kangxi's Southern Tours and the Qing Restoration of West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:09:38 +1100

Liping Wang 汪利平

In the autumn of 1649, You Tong 尤侗 (1618-1704) traveled from his hometown Suzhou to eastern Zhejiang. You had planned to bypass Hangzhou and go directly to the Qiantang River crossing to the south of the city. But while waiting for a ferry, he decided to backtrack several miles to Hangzhou. It was the great fame of West Lake that changed his mind. Growing up in the last decades of the Ming dynasty, You had heard much about the lake's beauty and promised himself to visit it one day. He imagined that seeing the landscape would be like encountering a seductive woman, but this fantasy was shattered as soon as he got to the Lake, for he and his small party—the only visitors that day—came upon a miserable scene…

Features - The Sea of Plenitude 福海

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:10:09 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé with Lois Conner

The Ten Scenes of West Lake were identified and codified over the centuries. As a result of the Qing emperor Kangxi's Tours of the South the ten scenes were finally fixed, their poetic titles—the 'four character scenic descriptors' (sizi jingmu 四字景目) as they are now called—written in the imperial hand were carved on stelae protected by small pavilions at each of the approved sites. Kangxi's travels, and latterly those of his grandson, the Qianlong emperor, led them to recreate favourite poetic and culturally rich spots and scenes that they encountered in their travels in the Lower Yangtze Valley (Jiangnan 江南) first at the imperial hunting lodge at Jehol (the Chengde 'Mountain Villa for Escaping the Heat', Bishu Shanzhuang 避暑山莊) and then at the imperial garden palaces to the northwest of Beijing…

Features - Tope and topos: The Leifeng Pagoda and the Discourse of the Demonic

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:11:11 +1100

Eugene Y. Wang 汪悅進

A site is often a topos in that it both marks a locus and serves as a topic. It is a common place that can be traversed or inhabited by a public and a rhetorical commonplace familiar to both its author and his audience. Although there is no exact equivalent in Chinese to the Greek word topos that conveniently collapses the dual senses of locus and topic, the notion of ji 蹟 (site, trace, vestige) comes close. A ji is a site that emphasizes 'vestiges' and 'traces'. It is a peculiar spatial-temporal construct. Spatially, a landmark, such as a tower, a terrace, a pavilion, or simply a stele, serves as its territorial signpost or perceptual cue, and it is perceived to be a terrain distinct from the humdrum environment. Temporally, this plot of ground resonates with the plot of some vanished cause or deed. A landmark alone, however, does not make a site. No site in China is without an overlay of writing. To make a site is to cite texts. Listed in local gazetteers and literary anthologies, each site (ji) gathers under its heading a body of writing by a succession of authors of the past. It is therefore as much a literary topic, as it is a physical locus; it comes laden with a host of eulogies and contemplations. A site is therefore textualized Once a locus congeals into a topic, its associated body of writing imbues it with a conceptual contour and an aura of distinction. A site is thereby perpetuated in the textual universe or by word of mouth, and consequently its topographic features and its landmarks become a secondary and tangential matter. Cycles of decay and repair may render the landmark into something widely different from the original. That matters little. The only function of the landmark, after all, is to stand as a perceptual cue or synecdoche for the proverbial construct called a 'site', a somewhat deceptive notion premised on the primacy of physical place, topographic features, and prominence of landmarks. In reality, a site is a topos etched in collective memory by its capacity to inspire writings on it and the topical thinking it provokes. To visit a site is to take up that topos. In China, few literarily inclined visitors can resist that urge. All they need is a prompt from a stele or a pavilion, landmarks that purport or pretend to have links to the vanished past that the site once witnessed…

Features - The Tide of Revolution

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:12:37 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

The Tidal Bore or 'tide' (chao 潮) of the Qiantang River just north of the city of Hangzhou has been celebrated in stories, prose, poetry and painting for over a millennium. The bore, also called a 'tide-head' (chaotou 潮頭), is created by sea waves rushing inland and clashing with the out-flowing tide of the river. It is particularly celebrated and crowds gather to observe it every year at the autumn equinox, between the fifteenth to the eighteenth of the eighth lunar month. The particular shape of the river—the course of the river is likened to the Chinese character 'zhi' 之 and one of the names of this particular stretch of water is the 'Zhe [or bent] River' (Zhe Jiang 折江)—creates a larger sea wave in the estuary at this time of year, as well as during the spring equinox. It is the 'bent river' that gives the province of Zhejiang its name…

Features - In the Wake of the 1911 Revolution

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:13:16 +1100

Eugene Y. Wang 汪悅進

Landslide, avalanche, and earthquake are among the metaphors often used to characterize a historical change, particularly a revolution. In the 1911 Republican Revolution, for instance, one sees 'tokens of the elements of volcanic eruption and confidently looks for seismic manifestations 10,000 miles away' (Dillon 1911: 874). The relevance of such rhetorical flights may in tact extend beyond mere figures of speech. Replacing imperial rule with a republican government, the 1911 Revolution not only dramatically changed the Chinese political landscape (Price 1990: 223-260; Schrecker 1991: 128-135), it also drastically transformed the physical landscape and people's perceptions of it. Two historical photo albums on the landscape of West Lake at Hangzhou 杭州, both published by the Shanghai Commercial Press, bear some eloquent testimony to this fact. One album, Views of West Lake, appeared in 1910, one year before the overthrow of the Qing regime. The second album, West Lake, Hangchow, as part of a series titled Scenic China, first came out in 1915 (ZGMS). They were separated by the historical watershed year of 1911 in whose wake, it seems, nothing remained quite the same. It comes as no surprise that within such a short span, the Commercial Press was pressured by the changed political ethos not just to publish a new edition o n the same subject, but to come up with an entirely different album. As a result, the two albums embody two historical epochs: the pre-Revolution and the post-Revolution, the imperial past and Republican present. Although we do not know who took the photographs that make up the 1910 album, we are certain that Huang Yanpei 黃炎培 (1878-1965), a famous revolutionary activist, was the creator of the 1915 album...

Features - Tourism and Spatial Change in Hangzhou, 1911-1927

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:14:13 +1100

Liping Wang 汪利平

For most visitors today, Hangzhou evokes sentimental feelings of a romantic past, where elegant temples, fine pagodas, and carved bridges frame the delicate landscape of rolling hills and are mirrored in the placid water of West Lake. Benefiting from this abundance of classic beauty, Hangzhou enjoys a status that many other cities are trying to establish for themselves—an ideal place for tourism. Like so many other popular tourist destinations in the world, Hangzhou's attraction rests upon a combination of the seeming purity of its natural beauty and its presumed timelessness. It seems natural to speak about Hangzhou in terms of its historicity, since records about the city begin from about 200 B.C., and it served as the capital of the Southern Song (1127-1279). In the tourist guidebooks of the republican period, every 'must see' site in Hangzhou was said to have a history of at least one millennium. Books that were published after 1949 understandably eulogized the People's Republic of China's effort to preserve the antiquities of Hangzhou. Crossing these recent political eras, the basic message remains consistent: Hangzhou's identity lies in the city's supposedly unaltered spatial arrangement, in which the city seems always to have turned its face in the direction of West Lake...

Features - A View of the Hero Yue Fei and the Traitor Qin Gui 岳飛與秦檜

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:15:00 +1100

Zhou Zuoren 周作人
Introduced and translated by Tim Cronin

The Yue Fei Temple (Yue miao 岳廟) is located in the southern foothills of Dawn's Perch Peak (Qixia Ling 棲霞嶺) on the north-western shore of West Lake, only a short walk from the famous embankment, or causeway, named after Su Dongpo (Su di 蘇堤).[Fig.2] The main temple building was reconstructed in 1979, but there has been a memorial commemorating Yue Fei of one sort or another on this spot since the reign of the Song emperor Ningzong 宋寧宗 (Zhao Kuo 趙擴, r.1195-1224), the great grandson of Gaozong 宋高宗 (Zhao Gou 趙構, r.1127-62), the ruler complicit in Yue's tragic denouement. The mausoleum—with its formal temple, tombs and display of Yue's enemies in effigy (see Eugene Wang's essay 'In Wake of the 1911 Revolution' in this issue)—does not merely commemorate a man regarded as a tragic hero. Even if the facts of his life could be satisfactorily untangled from the thicket of fiction that has grown up around them, Yue Fei 岳飛 (1103-42) has long since come to represent much more than an historical figure and his actual deeds; his name has long been conflated with complex notions of late-dynastic and modern Chinese selfhood, ethnicity and fidelity…

Features - The Sights of West Lake: a Kind of Neurosis

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:16:23 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

Lu Xun's 'Ten Sight Disease' 十景病

On 1:00pm, 25 September 1924, Thunder Peak Pagoda collapsed, taking with it one of the Ten Scenes of West Lake. Shortly thereafter the writer Lu Xun (鲁迅, penname of Zhou Shuren 周樹人, 1881-1936) published two highly influential essays on the subject. In the second of these, dated 6 February 1925, he lambasted what he calls the 'ten-sight disease' (shi jing bing 十景病), an expression he uses to characterize a particularly sclerotic Chinese approach to the world

Many of us in China—here I want to make it quite clear that I don not include all our four hundred million compatriots—have a sort of 'ten-sight disease' or at least an 'eight-sight disease', which reached epidemic proportions in the Qing dynasty, I should say. Look through any county annals, and you will find the district has ten sights, if not eight, such as 'Moonlight on a Distant Village', 'Quiet Monastery and Clear Bell', 'Ancient Pool and Crystal Water'. And this '十' shaped germ seems to have got into the blood and spread throughout the body, no less virulent than the '!' shaped germs which herald a country's decline. There are ten sorts of sweatmeats, ten different dishes, ten movements in music, ten courts for the king of hell, ten cures in medicine, ten guesses for the drinking game; even announcements of guilty deeds or crimes usually list ten item, as if no one would stop at nine. Now one of the ten sights of the West Lake is missing. 'All rulers have nine rules of government.' There have been nine rules since ancient times, but there have seldom been nine sights; so this should cause the sufferers from this disease a salutary pang, and at least make them feel times have changed, since one-tenth of their cherished malady has suddenly disappeared…

Features - Me Myself Studio (Erwo Xuan 二我軒)

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:17:39 +1100

Claire Roberts

Since the late 1800s, portraiture has been the most popular use for photography in China and performing for the camera has taken on many forms. Double exposure portraits, known as 'images of me and myself' (erwo tu 二我圖), explore the idea of the 'me' in the photograph and the 'me' in the real world, playfully suggesting representations of spirit and body, or the generation of another self. This genre of portraiture has its origins in Chinese painting. Photographic versions have persisted into the present making a modern, technologically inflected contribution to the scholarly tradition of self-reflexivity and highlighting the enduring fascination of photographic portraits of ourselves…

Features - Drinking by West Lake: Feng Zikai and Zheng Zhenduo

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:18:34 +1100

Chen Xing 陳星

丰子恺的漫画成名作《人散后，一钩新月天如水》在朱自清、俞平伯等合办的《我们的七月》上发表后，立即引起了郑振铎的注意。郑振铎其实一向很少关心中国现代画家的作品，但在读了丰子恺的这幅漫画后，却以为："虽然是疏朗的几笔墨痕，画着一道卷上的芦帘，一个放在廊边的小桌，桌上是一把壶，几个杯，天上是一钩新月，我的情思却被他带到一个诗的境界，我的心上感到一种说不出的美感，这时所得的印象，较之我读那首《千秋岁》（谢无逸作，咏夏景）为尤深。实在的，子恺不惟复写那首古诗的情调而已，直已把它化成一幅更足迷人的仙境图了。"（《子恺漫画》郑振铎序）自此，郑振铎便记下了丰子恺的名字，并将丰氏的漫画陆续刊发在《文学周报》上，最后还帮助他出版了第一部漫画集《子恺漫画》（1925年12月文学周报社）。

Features - Yu Dafu's Wind and Rain Studio 郁達夫的風雨茅廬

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:19:59 +1100

Chen Xing 陈星

1935年春，郁达夫写了一篇《住所的话》，叙写他自己亟盼有一个属于他自己的住所的心情。文章劈头盖脑就曰：“自以为青山到处埋骨的飘泊惯的流人，一到中年，也颇以没有一个归宿为可虑；近来常常有求田问舍之心，在看书倦了之后，或夜半醒来，第二次再睡不着的枕上。”

Features - West Lake Liberated: Vignettes from the Early 1950s

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:24:41 +1100

Edited and translated by Geremie R. Barmé

The Lake Liberated

Soldiers under the command of the Chinese Communist Party entered Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang, on 3 May 1949. They were greeted outside City Hall by the president of the local congress, Zhang Heng 張衡. The citizenry came out into the streets to greet the triumphant People's Liberation Army forces, although they were probably more enthusiastic about peace and a return to normality after years of civil conflict than interested in welcoming what would be called 'liberation' (jiefang 解放)...

Features - The Geneva of the East

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:20:19 +1100

James Z. Gao

It was comparatively quiet in the city in late 1953 and 1954. The CCP's original plan was to spend five years restoring the economy and then ten years developing it. Now the task of economic restoration was completed, and China's First Five-Year Plan for the country's industrialization was on track. In the suburbs of Hangzhou and in nearby counties, collectivization unfolded in keeping with the strategy of advancing steadily and progressing slowly rather than rashly, while in the city the government made plans to nationalize all private industry. However, the high tide of socialist transformation was yet to come in both urban and suburban areas...

Features - Mao Zedong and West Lake: A Chronology (Part I)

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:21:54 +1100

1921

August: Mao Zedong passes through Hangzhou on his way from Jiaxing to Hunan province following the reconvening of the first Congress of the Communist Party of China (having initially gathered in Shanghai the delegates to the congress were forced to relocate to Jiaxing, Zhejiang province).

1953

27 December: Mao takes up residence at Building No. One at Liu Zhuang villa, with an office a 84 Beishan Road. He climbs Beigao Mountain for the first time. Hereafter, unless otherwise stated, Mao stays at Liu Villa when living on West Lake.

Features - The Revolutionary Retreats Liu Villa 劉莊 and Wang Villa 汪莊

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:22:45 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

For a time, it seemed as though the city of Hangzhou and West Lake were to become the 'Geneva of the East'. It was during those early years, when West Lake was protected because of its cultural, rather than merely its productive value, that the Lake also became a prominent backdrop to the political enterprise of the new People's Republic of China. From 1953, its lakeshore villas, hotels and offices were used by party leaders—and not just provincial or regional worthies—as location not only for recreation but also for some of the key political developments in the socialist politics of New China. Although the idea of a 'Geneva of the East' was gradually overshadowed by the radicalization of life in the People's Republic, the reality of West Lake as a scenic retreat for party-state leaders increasingly took hold...

Features - The Cultural Revolution in Hangzhou and Zhejiang province

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:23:02 +1100

It has not been possible to cover in detail events related to the political ructions at West Lake, Hangzhou and Zhejiang province more broadly during the Cultural Revolution era (c. 1964-78). The Australian scholar Keith Forster is noted for his important work in this area and we recommend the following books, articles and chapters.—The Editor

Keith Forster, Rebellion and Factionalism in a Chinese Province: Zhejiang, 1966-76, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1990;

Keith Forster, 'Factional Politics in Zhejiang, 1973-1976', in William Joseph, Christine Wong and David Zweig, eds, New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp.105-30...

Features - The Pond Society (Chi She 池社): the '85 Art Movement on West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:25:40 +1100

The following interview with artist Zhang Peili 张培力 was conducted by Lü Yintong 吕吟童 on 22 March 2007 at the Beinini Café 贝尼尼咖啡馆 on Nanshan Road on West Lake.

吕：85年在杭州浙江美院(今中国美术学院)举办的新空间画展在全国引起很大反响，紧接着86年你们就成立了池社，这两者之间是不是有比较大的关系呢?能回忆下当时的情况吗?

张：对，要说池社，不得不提85新空间。那个时候，我已经工作了。当时从美院毕业后，我们都是靠分配工作的。我是被分配到一个中专，杭州工艺美校，现在这个学校已经没有了。这个学校以前在文革时期就有，文革期间被中断，但刚好在我毕业那一年又恢复了。那个时期，前前后后有一些美院毕业的学生：77届的查力、包剑斐，85届的耿建翌，国画系宋陵，等等还有很多版画系、雕塑系的学生。我后来离开了那个学校，被浙江省美协“借用”了一年。他们那个时候就让我来组织一些青年艺术家的创作展览。后来因为我们这一些从美院毕业学生经常聚在一起，然后就有一个叫做“浙江青年创作组”的。其实这个创作组是一个比较松散的组织。大家在一起时就在聊，打算准备策划一个展览。基本上，这个准备时间有半年多吧。到了85年年底，一起做了一个叫“85新空间”的展览。这个展览的地点是在美院南山路当时的陈列馆。

Features - No Snow on the Broken Bridge 断桥无雪: an interview with Yang Fudong 杨福东

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:26:40 +1100

Claire Roberts

Yang Fudong: Beauty and Cruelty

There is just one image of Yang Fudong in the 'personal photo album' on his website, a colour photograph taken in Tian'anmen Square. His bespectacled eyes meet those of the viewer with a degree of reserve, his long hair tousled by the wind. Behind him, gazing out over his left shoulder, is Mao Zedong, whose omnipresent painted portrait has hung over Tian'anmen Gate since 1949. The photograph was taken some years ago by a photojournalist for a Shanghai magazine profile. Yang's wife, a novelist, liked the image because the eyeglasses, which he does not normally wear, 'made him look cultivated'. The dual portrait suggests a multiplicity of complex narratives that inform contemporary Chinese culture, including the relationship between the past and the present; the state and the individual; art and propaganda; painting and photography; myth and reality; beauty and cruelty.[1]

Features - Aesthetic Education 《美育学刊》: A Publication Announcement

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:27:34 +1100

《美育》发刊辞

1919年11月，我校之前身浙江省立第一师范学校（1908年创办）毕业生吴梦非、刘质平、丰子恺、李鸿梁等联合其他美育界同仁在上海成立了中国第一个美育团体"中华美育会"，艺术教师姜丹书亦曾任驻会干事。1920年4月20日，中华美育会创刊出版了中国第一本美育学术杂志《美育》，旨在联合全国艺术工作者和大中小学校教师，共同推进艺术教育，并提出开展以"艺术教育"和"社会教育"为基础的"艺术教育的运动"。他们呼唤"美的思想"，以期用艺术教育来建立新人生观，培养国民健全的人格。围绕这一理念，《美育》杂志既重视美育的一般理论原理与规律的研究和宣传，又注重美育实践的交流。

当年创办《美育》杂志的主将，大多出自于浙江省立第一师范学校，显非偶然，此与曾执教我校的鲁迅、李叔同、姜丹书等名师对美育的积极倡导和践行直接相关，而《美育》杂志创刊号的刊名，即由当时已出家的弘一大师（李叔同）亲笔书写。

Features - Introducing Ten New Scenes of West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:28:21 +1100

Following an involved process of popular nomination and expert consultation, Ten New Scenes of West Lake (Xihu Xin Shijing 西湖新十景) were announced on 27 August 2007. The scenes had been the result of a planning and building process that had begun in 2002.

A previous set of Ten New Scenes had been selected under the auspices of Hangzhou Daily, the West Lake parks and gardens bureau and a number of local companies in 1984-85. They were duly signposted and celebrated in 1986 (for a list of these, see below). The latest list consists of the following sites: 灵隐禅踪、六和听涛、岳墓栖霞、湖滨晴雨、钱祠表忠，万松书缘、杨堤景行、三台云水、梅坞春早、北街梦寻. Over the centuries other lists of West Lake sites have been compiled, but at present the most commonly recognized are the Kangxi-era Ten Scenes, to which this latest list of Ten New Scenes has been added...

Features - The UNESCO Listing of West Lake

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:29:58 +1100

The West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou

Position: N30 14 15 E120 8 27
Date of Inscription: 2011
Criteria: (ii)(iii)(vi)
Property: 3,323 ha
Buffer zone: 7,270 ha
Ref: 1334

Outstanding Universal Value

Brief synthesis

West Lake is surrounded on three sides by 'cloud-capped hills' and on the fourth by the city of Hangzhou. Its beauty has been celebrated by writers and artists since the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). In order to make it more beautiful, its islands, causeways and the lower slopes of its hills have been 'improved' by the addition of numerous temples, pagodas, pavilions, gardens and ornamental trees which merge with farmed landscape. The main artificial elements of the lake, two causeways and three islands, were created from repeated dredgings between the 9th and 12th centuries. Since the Southern Song Dynasty (thirteenth century) ten poetically names scenic places have been identified as embodying idealised, classic landscapes - that manifest the perfect fusion between man and nature. West Lake is an outstanding example of a cultural landscape that display with great clarity the ideals of Chinese landscape aesthetics, as expounded by writers and scholars in Tang and Song Dynasties. The landscape of West Lake had a profound impact on the design of gardens not only in China but further afield, where lakes and causeways imitated the harmony and beauty of West Lake. The key components of West Lake still allow it to inspire people to 'project feelings onto the landscape'. The visual parameters of this vast landscape garden are clearly defined, rising to the ridges of the surrounding hills as viewed from Hangzhou...

Features - West Lake: A Photographic Essay

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:30:39 +1100

One of my early destinations in the fall of 1984 was Hangzhou. I immediately fell in love with West Lake, the lotus, and the couples being photographed in their wedding dresses regardless of the weather. Returning nearly every year, throughout the seasons, seemingly most often in the heat of summer and it's terrible storms, I often wait for the sun to appear. Lotus stems and leaves permeate the perimeter of the lake, even obscuring the water. Without bright sun, the stem and its reflections merge, creating mysteriously ambiguous lines, that don't seem to begin or end with any visual logic. Lotus eventually became an obsession. Other transformations also held my interest: the urban deconstruction and construction occurring throughout the city; the subtle, then dramatic sprucing up of the areas around the Lake, the creation of the new West Lake and Ten New Scenes that go with it. When you look north over the landscape from high up in the rebuilt Leifeng Pagoda, the Lake takes on the appearance of the paintings and woodblock prints that I studied long before I came to Hangzhou. At another glance, catching sight of the long row of skyscrapers to the east, the vision dissipates. The modern façade promises another kind of beauty…

T'ien Hsia - Cage the Monster 怪物关进笼子里

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:31:08 +1100

Murong Xuecun 慕容雪村

Translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz

I am a Chinese writer. Allow me to say a few words about my country. Everyone knows that in the past thirty years China has built countless skyscrapers, commissioned countless airports, and paved countless freeways. My country’s GDP is the world’s second largest and her products are sold in every corner of the planet. My compatriots can be seen on tour in London, New York and Tokyo wearing expensive clothes, chattering raucously. My compatriots also fill up casinos and line up to buy LV bags. People exclaim in amazement: China is rising, the Chinese are rich! But behind this facade of power and prosperity there are details of which many people are unaware, and it is precisely these details that make my country a very strange place...

T'ien Hsia - The View from the Bridge: Reading

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:32:03 +1100

Pierre Ryckmans

In the memoirs of a contemporary Chinese writer, I found an intriguing anecdote. During the war, the author had fled the Japanese invasion and taken refuge in the countryside. For a man who only knew modern city life, the sudden discovery of a traditional peasant world that had hardly changed in two thousand years proved full of surprises. One day, as he had to write an article for a magazine, he went out in the fields, in search of inspiration. He sat under a tree, scribbled a couple of pages, but, feeling dissatisfied with his work, threw the draft away and pursued his walk. An old peasant who had been watching him for some time, ran after him with the discarded manuscript, and, invoking all the authority of age, gave the young man a stern dressing down: 'Shame on you! You are an educated man, you ought to know better! One does not treat writing like garbage!' Taken aback at first, the writer finally understood—and was moved: in this remote corner, the illiterate villagers still respected writing as something sacred—for it was a rule in traditional China that no writing of any sort should ever be randomly discarded; manuscripts and papers bearing inscriptions, if no longer needed, had to be carefully stored while waiting to be incinerated on a certain day of every year, all at once, in the local temple of Confucius...

T'ien Hsia - The Cloak of Invisibility

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:33:47 +1100

Yang Jiang 楊絳

Mocun and I have jokingly discussed what type of magical powers we'd like to have if we had a choice. We both decided on the cloak of invisibility. With it we could go travelling together and do as we wished, free from all restrictions. Not that we'd want to do any evil or harm. But quite possibly we'd get carried away and upset some innocent person with our mischievousness. And finally our presence would be detected and we'd have to flee in panic.

'Heavens, in that case we'd also need the power to travel long distances instantaneously.'

'And talismans for self-protection.'

The more we thought about it the more we knew we'd need. In the end we decided to forget about the cloak of invisibility altogether...

Articles - Stark Contrast: Kim Jong-il and Václav Havel

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:34:50 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

As we have noted in previous issues of China Heritage Quarterly, 2011 was a year that marked the formal end to Chinese dynastic autocracy. Our September edition, Issue 27, focused on the Xinhai Year of 1911. In this issue focused on West Lake we have also noted the impact on revolutionary change over the twentieth centry brought to China. At times that change was short lived, or rather autocratic practice found renewed expression...

Articles - Lo Chen-yü 羅振玉 Visits the Waste of Yin 殷墟

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:35:35 +1100

Richard C. Rudolph

Lo Chen-yü 羅振玉 (1866-1940), one of the greatest scholars of early twentieth century China, made many important contributions to Chinese archaeology and was a pioneer in several aspects of this discipline. He was, for example, among the first to collect and to make studies of China's earliest writing found on the oracle bones at Yin-hsü 殷虛, the 'Waste of Yin', the site of the last Shang capital at present day Hsiao-t'un 小屯 near Anyang. He was the first to have material of all types collected from this region for study, and he was apparently the first Chinese to recognize the archaeological and historical importance of tomb figurines. Of the 155 published items in his bibliography, over half are concerned with archaeology…

Articles - Preface to Nothing Concealed 無隱錄

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:36:54 +1100

Frederic Wakeman Jr.

I first met Mr. Liu—the 'Manchu'* or 'Prince' as he was then called—on one of those stifling humid days so characteristic of Taipei in the late summer. Moss Roberts, a good friend, had momentarily drawn me away from the daily tedium of Mandarin conversation class (which I will forever associate with chalky rooms and buzzing flies) so that cycling across town to meet Liu was a bit like playing hooky—out of school to meet the scholar Moss had praised so many times. I knew the man as well by other reputation: eccentric, vieux jeu, temperamental, an i-min 遺民 or 'left-over' Manchu noble who had served Emperor P'u-yi in the Manchukuo regime, and now condescended to teach foreigners classical Chinese. If I'd wanted colorfulness that day, I wasn't disappointed. Sitting at Moss' study desk, puffing on a long bamboo pipe with jade mouthpiece, Liu did indeed make me feel a bit like Macartney before Ch'ien-lung. Illusions of my interviewing a prospective tutor were quickly dispelled. This gentleman was no utensil, no simple pay-as-you-go language instructor looking for pupils. Instead, he seemed to be interviewing me, and even then I sensed that I was men-hsia shou-yeh 門下受業, that the Manchu was looking me over as he would a prospective disciple; and that once the relationship was fixed, neither of us could easily disengage. That there would be no hooky-playing here alarmed me. What would I have to give in return? And how could I afford to read Mencius slowly through when nineteenth-century dissertation problems occupied my time?

Articles - Liu Yü-yün 劉毓鋆: An Autobiographical Sketch

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:37:32 +1100

My patronymic is Aisin Gioro, my ming Yü-yün, and my hao An-jen the [Buddhist] layman. I am the grandson of Prince Li (Shih-to) who served on the Grand Council during the Kuang-hsü period (1875-1907). As a youth I received a court education, and as I grew older, became the pupil of Ch'en Pao-ch'en (Tutor to the Heir Apparent], Cheng Hsiao-hsü [first Prime Minister of Manchukuo], Lo Chen-yü, K'o Shao-min [scholar of Mongol history], Wang Kuo-wei [the philologist], K'ang Nan-hai (Yu-wei), Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and Yeh Yü-lin. All of these great teachers instructed me in the classics, the histories, works of philosophy, and literature. The Englishman [Reginald] Johnson taught me western studies. After that I studied by myself for thirty-odd years, taking the greater meaning of the Kung Yang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals as yung (function), and the Book of Changes as t'i (essence)...

Articles - Yiyuan 藝緣: An Exhibition of Paintings and Calligraphy by Huang Miaozi and Yu Feng

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:38:05 +1100

Linda Jaivin

One day, some twenty years ago, I was visiting the artists and bon vivants Huang Miaozi 黄苗子 and Yu Feng 郁風 in their modest apartment in Beijing's Tuanjiehu. Miaozi told me he'd had some amazing news: 'I have gout!' he exclaimed in his excitable, Cantonese-inflected Mandarin. His tone was so gleeful, I feared I'd misunderstood. But no. He had lived through wartime. He'd been imprisoned for seven out of the ten years of Cultural Revolution. 'And still,' he declared proudly, 'I managed to get the disease of emperors!'

New Scholarship - East Asian History, the online edition

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:39:55 +1100

In December 2011, the journal East Asian History, which like this publication is also produced under the aegis of the Australian Centre on China in the World, was re-launched, but in an online electronic form. It can be found at: www.eastasianhistory.org

East Asian History was published in print from 1991 to 2008 (issues 1-36), and was edited by Geremie R. Barmé (to 2007), and Benjamin Penny (from 2007). The journal's predecessor, Papers on Far Eastern History, was published by The Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies from 1970 to 1990. When Papers on Far Eastern History became East Asian History the new journal employed an original and striking format that the new online version of the journal has adapted and developed in the new medium...

New Scholarship - Slow Reading and Fast Reference

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:40:56 +1100

Geremie R. Barmé

The launch of the digital East Asian History offers an occasion for reflection on the nature of academic work, scholastic publications and writing in the online era.

Some years ago Lindsay Waters of Harvard University Press was one of a number of writers and publishers concerned to bring concepts originating with the 'slow movement' into the realm of the written word with added immediacy. Many people have become familiar with the ramifications of this movement in its gustatory dimension: 'slow food'. 'Slow food' was a revivalist challenge to the world of 'fast food', a movement that emphasizes traditional foodstuffs and cuisines that relate to local ecosystems and sustainability. An extension of this ethos into the realm of book culture celebrates a different type of tradition, one that is concerned with a feast for the eyes. It is called 'slow reading'. It is a movement whose disparate participants can find 'time for reading'. This is a kind of reading that, once common fare, has in the age of cultural and intellectual instant gratification and information supersizing become an arcane and easily derided pursuit...

New Scholarship - Dissertation Reviews: An Introduction

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:41:18 +1100

Thomas S. Mullaney

Dissertation Reviews is a new website and scholarship community that features non-critical, friendly overviews of recently defended dissertations in a small but growing number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. At the invitation of China Heritage Quarterly, it is my pleasure to provide a brief introduction to the past, present, and future of the project, and to encourage readers of this journal to become involved. Dissertation Reviews can be found online at: www.dissertationreviews.org To contact the editor, please write to: tsmullaney/at/stanford.edu

New Scholarship - SinoTurcica: a new website

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:42:17 +1100

David Brophy

The last decade has seen a lot of new anniversaries cropping up in Central Asia. Newly independent republics such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have swapped old Soviet holidays for new, nationally specific events, often dedicated to demonstrating the antiquity of the nations concerned. In 2007 Samarkand celebrated its 2750th birthday, and in 2009 Tashkent turned 2200. This year, along with the centennial of the Mongolian declaration of independence, Mongolians will mark the 2220th anniversary of the founding of the Xiongnu 匈奴 empire...

New Scholarship - Chinese Values and Universal Norms

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:43:58 +1100

A conference report by Timothy Cheek

The internationalization of scholarship and of public debates in recent decades has occasioned the rise a significant new round of inter-cultural discussions related to universal norms and values. Yet there are clear differences in how these norms are understood and treated across nations/cultures and in different academic environments...

New Scholarship - Scholarly Perspectives on China: The View from Japan

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:44:52 +1100

A conference report by David Brophy & Nathan Woolley

One of the goals that the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) sets for itself is to engage with Sinology as an international and multilingual discipline, both as a means to broaden Australia's inherited Anglophone perspective on China, and as a way to better grasp the peculiarities of that Anglophone approach. Outside China, Japan is an important centre for the production of research and ideas on the Chinese world. In recognition of this, a workshop was held in Kyoto on November 12–13 on the theme of 'Scholarly Perspectives on China: The View from Japan'. The meeting was held at Kyoto University's Institute for Research on the Humanities (Jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo 人文科学研究所), and was co-convened by that institution, represented by Professor Tanaka Masakazu, and CIW, by the Deputy Director Dr Benjamin Penny, as well as the Italian School for East Asian Studies and the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, represented by directors Silvio Vita and Benoît Jaquet respectively. A reception held on Saturday evening was attended by a representative of the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, along with the Director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Iwai Shigeki, and Kyoto University's Executive Vice-President for Student Affairs, Akamatsu Akihiko. Over the two days a group of young Japanese and Chinese scholars working in Japan were invited to present research in English, and participants explored the possibility for future collaborations on individual and institutional levels...

New Scholarship - Xinjiang, 'Beyond the Problem'

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:45:00 +1100

A workshop report by Sandrine Catris

This two-day interdisciplinary workshop brought together scholars from Australia, Asia, Europe and North America whose work attempts to go beyond ethnic conflicts and Realpolitik approaches to thinking about Xinjiang's past, present and future. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the Australian Center on China in the World (CIW), the ANU Department of Political and Social Change, the ANU-IU Pan-Asia Institute, the Monash Asia Institute and the University of Tasmania...