Blog Archives

17 Nov: Looking for a place to bathe: lecture & museum visit

LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO BATHE: missed opportunities of anchoring Manchu origins in Kangxi’s Overview Maps of the Imperial Territories.

Throughout history, governments have (mis)used maps to build identity among their subjects. For Manchu khans, anchoring Manchu identity has been a struggle from the beginning. In fact, ‘being Manchu’ was a construct that only started to appear in written sources since the 1620s. The fourth khan of the Manchus, Kangxi (r.1661-1722), started to map his empire, resulting in 41 individual sheets. These Overview Maps of the Imperial Territories (Huangyu quanlan tu) presented a good opportunity of showing his people how far they had come since his great grandfather Nurhaci had attacked the Ming in 1618. Not unimportant, this project gave him the canvas to map the narrative surrounding the origin the Manchu royal lineage and its subjects, which started with three maidens wanting to bathe. The question whether the Overview maps succeeded in anchoring Manchu origins is at the centre of this lecture.

Speaker: Fresco Sam-Sin (Leiden University / Research Center for Material Culture)
followed by visit to the Mapping Asia gallery at Volkenkunde.

Timing:

14:00: Lecture in Arsenaal, room 001
15:00: Walk to Mapping Asia gallery
16:36: end, followed by drinks?

https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tickets-lecture-and-museum-visit-looking-for-a-place-to-bathe-39722003582

 

 

Chinese films at the Leiden International Film Festival

Film Program:

Monday 30th October 16:30, Our Time Will Come

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/our-time-will-come/2899

 

Tuesday 31st October 14:00, Our Time Will Come

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/our-time-will-come/2900

 

Tuesday 31st October 16:45 Big Fish & Begonia

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/big-fishbegonia/2577

 

Wednesday 1st November 13:45, Operation Mekong

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/operation-mekong/2897

 

Wednesday 1st November 18:45, Duckweed

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/duckweed/2869

 

Thursday 2nd  November 13:45, Duckweed

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/duckweed/2870

 

Saturday 4th November  16:15, Operation Mekong

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/operation-mekong/2898

 

Sunday 5th November 12:00, Big Fish & Begonia

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/big-fishbegonia/2578

 

Sunday 5th November 21:30, Our Time Will Come

https://www.liff.nl/Programma/Movie/our-time-will-come/2901

 

 

15 Nov China Seminar: Daniel Stumm

Lecture

Philologists, forgers and disciples: The complexities of authorship in 18th-century China

Date
15 November 2017
Time
15:15 – 17:00  hrs.
Series
China Seminar
Address
Van Wijkplaats 4
2311 BX Leiden
Room
005

In the 18th century, the topic of authorship began to dominate scholarly discussions in China. Every text had to be assigned to one author; any other mode of textual production was regarded as problematic. Especially early Chinese texts, however, did not fit into this model, as it was unclear who had written them. This talk addresses the manifold consequences that this incongruity generated in the late 18th century. Philologists saw the received text as unreliable, which threatened the authority of many works. Most scholars countered this tendency to doubt by dissecting received texts in order to separate authentic passages from later additions. A close reading of the arguments employed shows that a strong moralist bias influenced such research, leading Qing scholars to especially doubt the authenticity of passages they deemed morally dubious. Claims of inauthenticity thus functioned as a particularly effective way to imprint 18th-century values into the classics.

1 Nov China Seminar: Ching-Ling Wang on the Haiyu tu (1736)

Lecture

On a Newly Discovered See Fish Album (Haiyu tu, 1736) and the Formation of Knowledge in the 18th Century China

  • Dr. Ching-Ling Wang
Date
1 November 2017
Time
15:15 – 17:00  hrs.
Series
China Seminar
Address
Van Wijkplaats 2
2311 BX Leiden
Room
006

This lecture introduces a special newly discovered See Fish Album (Haiyu tu, 1736), composed by a local officer in Guandong in the collection of Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Illustrated books or albums of animals, birds, plants, fish, foreigners and aboriginals have emerged in the 18th century China. Such albums or books were commissioned to be made in the court and as well in local by the educated elites. The speaker will survey this album by putting into its pictorial context and historical context, through a detailed exam of the making of the See Fish Album to discuss issues of the formation and transmission of knowledge in the 18th century China.

1 Nov CHILL! (Chinese linguistics in Leiden): Joren Pronk

CHILL!

Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

1 November 2017, 15:15-16:30, Wijkplaats 4/005

Joren Pronk (Leiden):

A corpus-based description of kong2 in Taiwanese Southern Mǐn

The morpheme kong2 is widely used in Taiwanese Southern Mǐn, a Sinitic language spoken on the island of Taiwan. In this talk I will present the different functions of the use of kong2 that were found in my corpus, a discussion between four speakers aired on the radio by GreenPeace Broadcasting Station on August 13, 2016.

 

forthcoming:

23 November 2017 [Thursday!! Location: to be announced]

Rint Sybesma (Leiden): “VO-OV and Voice and little v

 

29 November 2017

Liu Min (Leiden): “Processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin”

 

6 December 2017

Hu Han (Leiden) (title to be announced)

 

If you have questions, comments, suggestions: write to r.p.e.sybesma@hum.leidenuniv.nl

 

18 Oct China Seminar: Christopher Rea

China Seminar: Of Spongers, Sharpers, and Cannibal Eunuchs:  The Swindle Story around the World

Speaker: University of British Columbia    Christopher Rea

Venue: VRIESH2 – 004      (all are welcome)

Time: 18 October 2017, 15:15-17:00

Abstract: Why do collections of swindle stories appear at certain times and places? In China, for example, the swindle story has experienced bursts of popularity during the late Ming, the early Republican era, the early Mao era, and during the last 20 years. And comparable works exist around the world. What, for example, do Zhang Yingyu’s Book of Swindles(Ming China, 1617),Richard King’s The New Cheats of London Exposed (Georgian England, 1792), and P.T. Barnum’s The Humbugs of the World (Reconstruction-era United States, 1867) have in common—and how do they differ? Swindle stories, clearly, serve a double purpose: they teach techniques for navigating perilous social environments, and they entertain. But theirs authors tend to frame these narratives within a questionable claim: that ours is an age of unprecedented peril. Focusing on the example of China, this talk will highlight one thread running through literary history: connoisseurship of the swindler’s ingenuity.

 

11 October CHILL (Chinese Linguistics in Leiden): Lin Jing

CHILL!

Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

 

11 October 2017 15:15-16:30, Wijkplaats 4/005

 

Lin Jing (Leiden):

Do speakers really benefit from linguistic markedness in hypothetical reasoning?

 

Abstract Many languages make use of conditional connectives in hypothetical sentences, like if in English. But if can also be used temporally, in which case it is interchangeable with temporal connectives like when. Such semantic ambiguity of conditional connectives is not found in Mandarin. Rúguǒ, for instance, only expresses hypotheticality. However, as I will show in this talk, speakers do not appear to benefit from the unique markedness of hypotheticality in Mandarin, as the presence of rúguǒ does not seem to help them reach a hypothetical reasoning pattern. I will present both accuracy and reaction time data, and discuss possible explanations for the results.

 

forthcoming:

1 November 2017

Joren Pronk (Leiden): “A corpus-based description of kong2 in Taiwanese Southern Mǐn”

 

23 November 2017 [Thursday!! Location: to be announced]

Rint Sybesma (Leiden): “VO-OV and Voice and little v

 

29 November 2017

Liu Min (Leiden): “Processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin”

 

6 December 2017

Hu Han (Leiden) (title to be announced)

 

If you have questions, comments, suggestions: write to r.p.e.sybesma@hum.leidenuniv.nl

 

27 September CHILL! Chinese Linguistics in Leiden: Liu Zenghui

CHILL!

Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

 

Program for Fall 2017

 

All welcome!

 

All lectures Wednesdays 15:15-16:30, Wijkplaats 4 /005, unless indicated otherwise

All lectures in English, unless indicated otherwise

 

27 September 2017

Liu Zenghui (Utrecht): “The development of prosodic focus-marking in early bilinguals’ L2: A study of the Mandarin of Bai-Mandarin bilingual children”

 

abstract This presentation reports about investigations into the developmental trajectory of prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin produced by Bai-Mandarin bilingual children (age 6-13 yoa), in comparison with that of monolingual Mandarin speaking peers. The research concerns Subject-Verb-Object sentences, which were elicited with varied focus conditions in a semi-spontaneous setting. The results show similarities and differences in the acquisition rate and route in Bai-Mandarin early bilingual children’s L2 and that in monolingual Mandarin-speaking peers’ L1.

 

28 September 2017

Two PhD defenses in Chinese linguistics (Senaatskamer, Academy building):

10:00  Zou Ting will be defending her dissertation, entitled: “Production and perception of tones by Dutch learners of Mandarin”

13:45  lu Man will be defending her dissertation, entitled: “The morpho-syntax of aspect in Xiāng Chinese”

 

11 October 2017

Lin Jing (Leiden): “Do speakers really benefit from linguistic markedness in hypothetical reasoning?”

 

1 November 2017

Joren Pronk (Leiden): “A corpus-based description of kong2 in Taiwanese Southern Mǐn”

 

23 November 2017 [Thursday!! Location: to be announced]

Rint Sybesma (Leiden): “VO-OV and Voice and little v

 

29 November 2017

Liu Min (Leiden): “Processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin”

 

6 December 2017

Hu Han (Leiden) (title to be announced)

 

If you have questions, comments, suggestions: write to r.p.e.sybesma@hum.leidenuniv.nl

 

4 October China seminar Jeroen de Kloet: You Must Create! Rethinking the Creativity Discourse in China

Jeroen de Kloet: You Must Create! Rethinking the Creativity Discourse in China

Date
4 October 2017
Time
15:15 – 17:00  hrs.
Series
China Seminar
Address
Lipsius Building
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden

The demand to be or become creative is currently haunting urban youth worldwide. In China’s wish to become a creator, rather than manufacturer, this demand is turned into government documents, policy plans and urban regeneration projects. The overcoded language of creativity, innovation and sustainability are part of a governmental logic in which not only the Chinese state but also the local, regional and global cultural industries are complicit. But what does it mean to be creative? And is being creative different in China than elsewhere? Are there possible line of flight to escape from creativity? While quite a large body of work analyses creativity as a governmental tool, producing a new class called the precariat, consisting of subjectivities that are used as a flexible labor force that is deeply implicated in neoliberalism, the question of what we consider to be creative is by and large ignored. In my talk, drawing from examples from calligraphy, cinema, art, television and shanzhai culture, I aim to sidetrack current debates on creativity as a governmental tool, and instead zoom in on this rather empirical question: what does it mean to be creative in China in 2017? I hope to show that in particular in the art of copying, an art that resonates uncomfortably with global stereotypes about China, one can glimpse traces of creativity that are all too often discredited and ignored.

Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalisation Studies and Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) at the University of Amsterdam and PI of the project ChinaCreative funded by the European Research Council (ERC). His work focuses on cultural globalisation, in particular in the context of East Asia. In 2010 he published China with a Cut – Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music (Amsterdam UP). He wrote, together with Yiu Fai Chow, Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image (Intellect, 2013), he edited together with Lena Scheen Spectacle and the City – Chinese Urbanities in Art and Popular Culture (Amsterdam UP, 2013) and with Robin Celikates, Esther Peeren and Thomas Poell Global Cultures of Contestation (Palgrave, 2018). He wrote, together with Anthony Fung, Youth Cultures in China (Polity, 2017).

See also www.jeroendekloet.nl and www.chinacreative.humanities.uva.nl

26 September: Prof. Ge Jianxiong: Re-discover China: The People, the Land, Agriculture, and Traditional Wisdom

Re-discover China: The People, the Land, Agriculture, and Traditional Wisdom

 

Speaker: Prof. Ge Jianxiong 葛劍雄  Fudan University (China)

 

Time: September 26, 2017   3:15-5:00 PM          Venue: WIJKPL2 001

 

Abstract: Most Chinese regard themselves as descendants of Emperors Huangdi and Yandi. It is not a unified bloodline-based identity, but a cultural concept. Actually, China is always a nation made of multiethnic groups, and the term Huaxia (Han) is also a product of ethnic amalgamation. By the end of the Western Han, nearly all arable land had been cultivated and administered under the government registration. As the foundation, agriculture provided China with enough food to deal with its tremendous population growth. A lunisolar calendar also ritualized the daily life of this agrarian society. History, ethnic diversity and cultural traditions formed the fountainhead of contemporary China’s reforms and openness. (Talk will be in Chinese)

 

 

 

 

Upcoming Talks of Fall Semester

 

Dates Room Presenter Affiliation
4 October 2017 LIPSIUS 001 Jeroen de Kloet University of Amsterdam
18 October 2017 VRIESH2 – 004 Christopher Rea The University of British Columbia
25 October 2017 LIPSIUS 001 Ching-Ling Wang Rijksmuseum
15 November 2017 WIJKPL4 – 005 Daniel Stumm Leiden University
7 December 2017 EYCKH2 – 005 James Benn McMaster University
13 December 2017 REUVENS 201a Rongdao Lai University of Southern California
7 February 2018 LIPSIUS 235 Jonathan Silk Leiden University
28 February 2018 LIPSIUS 235 Maghiel van Crevel Leiden University
21 March 2018 LIPSIUS 235 Carolien Rieffe/Monica Klasing Chen Leiden University
11 April 2018 LIPSIUS 235 Carolien Rieffe/Monica Klasing Chen Leiden University
2 May 2018 LIPSIUS 235 Lin Fan Leiden University
23 May 2018 LIPSIUS 235 tbd tbd