The Chinese Renaissance: A Transcultural Reading

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 783-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gang Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Hu Shi ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
European Renaissance

This paper examines the ways in which the idea of renaissance was understood and appropriated by Chinese intellectuals in the early twentieth century. My discussion foregrounds Hu Shi, one of the most important intellectual leaders in modern China and the main architect of the Chinese vernacular movement. I analyze his rewriting and reinvention of the European Renaissance as well as his declaration and presentation of the Chinese Renaissance in various contexts. Hu's creative uses of the Italian Renaissance and passionate claims for a Chinese Renaissance reveal the performative magic of the word renaissance and prompt us to ask what a renaissance is. The Chinese Renaissance and the fact that various non-European countries have declared and promoted their own renaissances invite a scholarly reconsideration of “renaissance” as a trans-cultural phenomenon rather than as a critical category originated and therefore owned by a certain culture.

scholarly journals The Nation and Its Logic in Early Twentieth-Century China*

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo K. Shin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract Of the radical transformations that have been associated with modern China, one of the most significant, historians would agree, is the permeation of the convictions — often with the aid of concepts borrowed from Europe via Japan — that Chinese people are inherently a nation (min zu) and that China is, by extension, a nation-state (guo jia). But as many have noted, the process of adopting and internalizing such convictions was far from linear. Taking as its point of departure the contested nature of the nationalist discourse and drawing particular attention to the border province of Guangxi, this paper seeks not only to identify the logic and fundamental tensions inherent in the construction of the nation (especially from the perspective of a border region) but also to explain why such tensions have continued to plague present-day China.

scholarly journals V.M. SHUKSHIN AND “NEW PEASANT POETS”: SURVIVED CHILDREN OF NOT SURVIVED FATHERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
A.A. Shorokhov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The article combines two significant historical and literary phenomena. The first is a group of Russian poets and prose writers of the early twentieth century, known under the general name “new peasant poets”. The second is a group of Russian writers of the late twentieth century, whose work has received a steady definition of “village prose”. V.M. Shukshin’s works are also referred to this cultural phenomenon. The article attempts to get away from simplifying definitions of “urban romance”, “village prose”, and to establish the civilizational continuity of Shukshin’s work with “new peasant poets” of the early twentieth century. The author also tries to consider the phenomenon of the group of “new peasant poets” from the cultural, philosophical and historical-biographical points of view – In the unity of their work, fate and dramatic changes in the history of Russia. The article uses theoretical works on Russian and world literature and history by M.M. Bakhtin, V.V. Kozhinova, I.R. Shafarevich, G.I. Shmeleva, P.F. Alyoshkina, S.Yu. and S.S. Kunyaevs, recent publications on Shukshin’s works by V.I. Belov, A.D. Zabolotsky, and A.N. Varlamov.

Swan Song, or a Phoenix Rising

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 147-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
YI Ping
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Basic Ideas

It is well-known that the basic ideas and principles of modern international law originated in Europe. In a period during the early twentieth century, however, a number of Chinese intellectuals examined and demonstrated that international law had already existed during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods in China. They committed themselves to exploring and carrying forward ancient Chinese international law as a way to maintain China’s rich cultural tradition in a global order governed by the West. This may be a swan song of the Chinese intellectuals who rose up against the oppression of imperialist powers and sought a more balanced order in the then-contemporary world. Were their efforts to be revived in another way, however, the swan song could be akin to a phoenix rising, initiating a time of renewal, bringing such ideas back into consideration.

Writing Women in Modern China: An Anthology of Women's Literature from the Early Twentieth Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Richard King ◽  
Amy D. Dooling ◽  
Kristina M. Torgeson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Writing Women in Modern China: An Anthology of Women's Literature from the Early Twentieth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 683
Author(s):  
Bettina L. Knapp ◽  
Amy D. Dooling ◽  
Kristina M. Torgeson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Blues and our mind-body problem

Popular Music ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Blues Music ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
External Reasons

Blues music is relatively well recognised as a cultural phenomenon. In tracing its history, both as a reflection of one people's particular circumstances of oppression and as an ingredient taken into mainstream popular art, we accumulate reasons for thinking of it as important. But these are external reasons. It is possible to know that one's everyday milieu is heavily indebted to blues (in manners as well as in music), even to feel blues quality strongly, and yet not be able to articulate an understanding of the import of blues. In that case one is kept from thinking well about how the meaning of blues in, say, the life of an early twentieth-century black Mississippian relates to the meaning of blues in other sorts of life, including yours and mine today – which is precisely the inside of the cultural phenomenon of blues. To get over this hump we need to pay a kind of attention that blues rarely receives.

Frugal Modernity: Livelihood and Consumption in Republican China

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margherita Zanasi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Economic Modernization ◽  
China’S Economy ◽  
Life Movement

This article examines the development of the Chinese discourse on consumption and standards of living from the early twentieth century to the implementation of the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s. During this period, the idea that China's economy was characterized by scarcity rather than growth—and thus was experiencing a different level of development from the industrialized West—caused Chinese intellectuals and officials to question the wisdom of adopting Western-style consumerist habits and “extravagant” standard of living. In this context, they struggled to find a balance between a supposedly universal model of economic modernization and China's particular nation-building and developmental needs. This early twentieth-century debate illustrates how nationalist and developmental perspectives hindered the adoption of liberal models of consumerist economy, marking the beginning of China's uneasy relationship with a free-market economy as well as a growing tension between urban consumerist trends and central planning. It also helped bring about new forms of frugal modernity that were to culminate in the New Life Movement.

scholarly journals The late ascent of Darwin's Descent: exploring human evolution and women's role for a new China, 1927–1965

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Lijing Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract Darwin's ideas held sway among Chinese intellectuals by the early twentieth century. Yet the usual emphasis was a Spencerism instead of Darwin's original ideas. As a result, translations of The Descent of Man in the early twentieth century quickly fell into oblivion. When the embryologist Zhu Xi (1900–62) eventually decided to give all evolutionary theories a comprehensive examination, he nevertheless found the idea of sexual evolution inadequate, as expressed in his volume Biological Evolution (1958). Only in the 1950s did serious efforts to translate Descent gather momentum, thanks to eugenicist and sociologist Pan Guangdan (1899–1967). Such efforts were not only responses to a renewed interest in Darwinism under the socialist regime, but also expressions that synthesized both scholars’ earlier paths in wrestling with schemes of human evolution and the roles of women in China's survival and renewal. Trained in different scientific and cultural milieus and holding almost oppositional views, the two scholars nevertheless converged in finding new meanings in Darwin's Descent.

scholarly journals European trends in the development of physical education and sports and their impact on the inhabitants of Bukovina (second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth century.)

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-45
Author(s):  
S. Dariichuk
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Organizational Forms ◽  
Sports Clubs ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Olympic Movement ◽  
Methodological Principles

Highlighted and analyzed European trends in physical education and sports and their impact on the inhabitants of Bukovina. It is considered and proved that the theoretical and practical achievements of scientists and specialists-practitioners of Western European countries, the presence of separate gymnastic systems influenced the development of physical education and sports throughout Europe and, accordingly, in Bukovina. The intensification of activities in the direction of organizing physical culture and health activities and competitions and the development of organizational forms of modern sports life - sports clubs, sections and sports associations (federations, associations, unions) as another trend that influenced the development of physical education of children and youth. Bukovina of the early twentieth century. It is proved that the presence of theoretical and methodological principles of physical education, the formation of national gymnastic systems, including school, their spread in different European countries; restoration and genesis of the Olympic movement, the formation of sport as a social phenomenon and the development of organizational forms of modern sports life - federations, associations, unions; the emergence of professional sports publications are distinguished by European trends that influenced the development of physical education of the population of the region.

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