Sinicizing Islam: Translating the Gulistan of Saʿdi in Modern China

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-26
Author(s):  
Alexander Jabbari ◽  
Tiffany Yun-Chu Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Modern China ◽  
Didactic Literature ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Sufi Order

Abstract This article examines the translation and domestication of an important piece of Persian didactic literature, the Gulistan of Saʿdi, into modern Chinese. We address all of the Chinese translations of this text, focusing on Yang Wanbao’s translation published in 2000. Yang transforms the text according to the imperatives of the Chinese state, altering the homoerotic scenes of the original and rendering Sufi Islamic concepts into a Confucian or Buddhist idiom. The result is a translation that serves as a significant text for the Jahriyya Sufi order in China, but also an articulation of Chinese Islam countenanced by the People’s Republic.

Tibet and Modern China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuyu Wang
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
International Discourse ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
State Pressure

Modern relations between Tibet and the Chinese state retained many previous patterns of connection and contestation in trade, diplomacy, and religion, but also exhibited new and heightened conflicts over strategic, political, and economic control. From the 7th to the late 19th century, the Tibetan regions went through successive periods of imperial expansion, political division, Mongol rule, indigenous dynasties, and Qing rule, in close chronological correspondence with China’s political formations. However, since the late 19th century, the degree to which Tibet was integrated into the modern Chinese state became progressively greater. Unprecedented levels of direct, secular, and extractive control were imposed through military and economic policies inspired by a Han-centered nationalism that rejected traditions of ecclesiastical legitimation, flexible administration, and local autonomy practiced during the Yuan and the Qing periods. As modern Chinese politics has been convulsed by the forces of antiforeignism, antitraditionalism, socialism, industrialization, and state capitalism, the Tibetan populations in China have been subject to intense state pressure and social upheaval. From a historical perspective, the direct Chinese rule since the mid-20th century was a departure from past Tibetan religious, political, and environmental trajectories. At the same time, the present international discourse surrounding the Tibet issue represents the latest phase in Tibet’s historical entanglements with great power competition in Asia.

‘Chinese’ hegemony from a Korean shi perspective: aretocracy in the early modern East Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inho Choi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

Abstract The study of pre-modern Chinese hegemony is crucial for both theorizing hegemony and envisioning a new global order. I argue the pre-modern Chinese hegemony was a reciprocal rule of virtue, or aretocracy, driven by the transnational sociocultural elites shi. In contrast to the prevailing models of Chinese hegemony, the Early Modern East Asia was not dominated by the unilateral normative influence of the Chinese state. The Chinese and non-Chinese shi as non-statist sociocultural elites co-produced, through their shared civilizational heritage, a hegemonic order in which they had to show excellence in civil virtues to wield legitimate authority. In particular, the Ming and Chosŏn shi developed a tradition of envoy poetry exchanges as a medium for co-constructing Chinese hegemony as aretocracy. The remarkable role of excellent ethos for world order making in Early Modern East Asia compels us to re-imagine how we conduct our global governance.

scholarly journals Between Texts, Beyond Words

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Pesaro
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Modern Japan

This volume offers an overview on a variety of intertextual, interdiscursive and cross-cultural practices in the field of translation between Asian and European languages. From a twelth-century Persian poet to a Chinese female novelist of the last century, from the ‘cultural translation’ of Christian texts carried out in pre-modern Japan and modern China, up to the making of the modern Chinese theory of translation based on its encounter with Western literature, the articles collected provide many valuable insights, ensuring a deeper comprehension of the evolving relations between cultures and of the tools adopted by both Asian and European translators on each particular occasion.

Origins of the Modern Chinese State (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-202
Author(s):  
Susan Mann
Keyword(s):  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-192
Author(s):  
Niccolò Pianciola
Keyword(s):  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

The Principle of Human Rights in Nationalist China: John C. H. Wu and the Ideological Origins of the 1946 Constitution

1985 ◽  
Vol 103 ◽  
pp. 441-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Greift
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
The Republic Of China ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Individual

The 1946 Constitution of the Republic of China was a product of 13 years' effort by the most liberal elements of the Kuomintang to create a permanent constitution for modern China. The Constitutionalists' goal was to synthesize “autochthonous” norms from the Chinese tradition and modern western liberal values, in accordance with the pre-existing syncretism that Sun Yat-sen had created a generation before. They hoped, thereby, to reach a just balance between the claims of the individual and the claims of the collective in the modern Chinese polity.

The Reconstruction of Imperial Mathematics in China During the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Catherine Jami
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Lecture Notes ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
And Algebra

AbstractContrary to astronomy, the early modern Chinese State did not systematically sponsor mathematics. However, early in his reign, the Kangxi Emperor studied this subject with the Jesuit missionaries in charge of the calendar. His first teacher, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688) relied on textbooks based on Christoph Clavius' (1538-1612). Those who succeeded Verbiest as imperial tutors in the 1690s produced lecture notes in Manchu and Chinese. Newly discovered manuscripts show Antoine Thomas (1644-1709) wrote substantial treatises on arithmetic and algebra while teaching those subjects. In 1713, the emperor commissioned a group of scholars and officials to compile a standard survey of mathematics (Shuli jingyun, "Essential principles of mathematics"). This work opened with the claim that mathematics had its roots in Chinese Antiquity. However, it can be shown that the Jesuits' lecture notes were the main source of the Shuli jingyun. The reconstruction of mathematics under Kangxi's patronage is thus best characterised as the imperial appropriation of Western learning.

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