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"Drawing on recent developments in sensory studies, Xuelei Huang presents a pioneering cultural history of smell in China from the High Qing to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses"--
Realism has been endowed with a certain orthodox status as the aesthetic counterpart of China’s modernization, and studies of Chinese film history have largely accepted a master narrative of realism as the guiding aesthetic of mainland Chinese cinema. This book argues, however, that alternative aesthetics to realism have always existed in Chinese cinema throughout its history, from the early silent era to the new century. The alternative aesthetics are closely linked to the indigenous Chinese ontology of cinema, namely, shadowplay (yingxi 影戲). The author presents an alternative account through a close examination of four distinct visual, narrative, and stylistic devices or themes that ...
Unearths the forgotten history of a catastrophic flood, examining its profound impact upon the environment and society of modern China.
In Transcultural Lyricism: Translation, Intertextuality, and the Rise of Emotion in Modern Chinese Love Fiction, 1899–1925, Jane Qian Liu examines the profound transformation of emotional expression in Chinese fiction between the years 1899 and 1925. While modern Chinese literature is known to have absorbed narrative modes of Western literatures, it also learned radically new ways to convey emotions. Drawn from an interdisciplinary mixture of literary, cultural and translation studies, Jane Qian Liu brings fresh insights into the study of intercultural literary interpretation and influence. She convincingly proves that Chinese writer-translators in early twentieth century were able to find new channels and modes to express emotional content through new combinations of traditional Chinese and Western techniques.
The Age of Irreverence tells the story of why China’s entry into the modern age was not just traumatic, but uproarious. As the Qing dynasty slumped toward extinction, prominent writers compiled jokes into collections they called “histories of laughter.” In the first years of the Republic, novelists, essayists and illustrators alike used humorous allegories to make veiled critiques of the new government. But, again and again, political and cultural discussion erupted into invective, as critics gleefully jeered and derided rivals in public. Farceurs drew followings in the popular press, promoting a culture of practical joking and buffoonery. Eventually, these various expressions of hilar...
Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern Chinese city of Qingdao, the book tells the story of the slow, fragmented, and contentious transformation of Dabaodao—an area in the city’s former colonial center—from a place of common homes occupied by the urban poor into a showcase of architectural heritage and site for tourism and consumption. The ethnography provides a nuanced account of the diverse experiences and views of a range of groups involved in shaping, and being shaped, by the ur...
A pathbreaking collection of essays on early Chinese-language cinema
In Shanghai Filmmaking, Huang Xuelei invites readers to go on an intimate, detailed, behind-the-scenes tour of the world of early Chinese cinema. She paints a nuanced picture of the Mingxing Motion Picture Company, the leading Chinese film studio in the 1920s and 1930s, and argues that Shanghai filmmaking involved a series of border-crossing practices. Shanghai filmmaking developed in a matrix of global cultural production and distribution, and interacted closely with print culture and theatre. People from allegedly antagonistic political groupings worked closely with each other to bring a new form of visual culture and a new body of knowledge to an audience in and outside China. By exploring various border crossings, this book sheds new light on the power of popular cultural production during China’s modern transformation.
As the second volume of a two-volume set that presents a comprehensive syntactical picture of Singapore Mandarin, this title analyses various expressions relating to number, quantity, time and place, composite sentences and the characteristics and standardisation of Singapore Mandarin. The first two chapters discuss expressions of number, quantity, time and place in Singapore Mandarin and touch upon the differences in these expressions between Singapore and Chinese Mandarin (Putonghua). Composite sentences are then analysed, covering seven types of compound sentences and eight types of complex sentences, as well as connective words with a focus on conjunctions. The final part of the volume a...
What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any single approach to a vast field like "Chinese cinema" difficult at best. Accordingly, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas situates the term more broadly among various different phases, genres, and distinct national configurations, while taking care to address the consequences of grouping together so many disparate histories under a single banner. Offering both a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue and a mapping of Chinese cinema as an expanded fiel...