Is Difficulty Mostly About Impossibility?: What Difficulty Implies May Be Culturally Variant

Difficulty can signal low odds (impossibility) and high value (importance). We build on culture-as-situated cognition theory’s description of culture-based fluency and disfluency to predict that the culturally fluent meaning of difficulty is culture-bound. For Americans, the culturally fluent understanding of ability is success-with-ease-not-effort, hence difficulty implies low odds of ability. This may disadvantage American institutions and practices—learning requires gaining competence and proficiency through effortful engagement. Indeed, Americans (Studies 1, 3–8; N = 4,141; Study 2, the corpus of English language) associate difficulty with impossibility more than importance. This tendency is not universal. Indian and Chinese cultures imply that difficulty can equally signal low odds and value. Indeed, people from India and China (Studies 9–11, N = 762) are as likely to understand difficulty as being about both. Effects are culture-based; how much people endorse difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-impossibility in their own lives did not affect results.

Is difficulty mostly about impossibility? What difficulty implies may be culturally variant

Difficulty can signal low odds (impossibility) and high value (importance). We build on culture-as-situated cognition theory’s description of culture-based fluency and disfluency to predict that the culturally fluent meaning of difficulty is culture-bound. For Americans, the culturally fluent understanding of ability is success-with-ease-not-effort, hence difficulty implies low odds of ability. This may disadvantage American institutions and practices --learning requires gaining competence and proficiency through effortful engagement. Indeed, Americans (Studies 1, 3 to 8; N=4,141; Study 2, the corpus of English language) associate difficulty with impossibility more than importance. This tendency is not universal. Indian and Chinese cultures imply that difficulty can equally signal low odds and value. Indeed, people from India and China (Studies 9 to 11, N=762) are as likely to understand difficulty as being about both. Effects are culture-based; how much people endorse difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-impossibility in their own lives did not affect results.

RECENTLY EXCAVATED INSCRIPTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS (2008–2018)

Between 2008 and 2018 a significant number of inscriptions and manuscripts from early China were discovered or published. These sources include hundreds of new oracle bone and bronze inscriptions; more than thirty scientifically excavated literary manuscripts; thousands of private and official scientifically excavated documents; and more than seventy literary texts acquired from the antiquities market. This review article, focusing mainly on artifacts with archaeological provenance, offers a global overview of these new materials that have already renewed, or will certainly soon renew, the field of early China studies.

The historical development of sinology in two Canadian universities: York University and the University of Guelph

PurposeThis paper gives a comparative analysis of the foundation of sinology in two Canadian universities. Despite not having diplomatic exchanges, Canada's new relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC) ignited a China interest in the Canadian academe. Through York University and the University of Guelph (U of G)'s experiences, readers will learn the rewards and challenges that sinology brings to Canadian higher education.Design/methodology/approachThis paper offers an overview of the historical foundation of sinology in the Canadian academe. Who pushes through this process? What geopolitical developments triggered young and educated Canadians to learn about China? This paper assesses York and Guelph's process in introducing sinology by relying on university archival resources and personal interviews. Why was York University successful in its mission, which, in turn, made into a comprehensive East Asian Studies degree option in 1971? What obstacles did the U of G face that prohibited it from implementing China Studies successfully?FindingsAfter 1949, Canada took a friendlier relationship with the PRC than its neighbor in the south. As China–Canada relations unfolded, Canadian witnessed a dramatic state investment in higher education. The 1960s was a decade of unprecedented university expansion. In the process, sinology enjoyed its significant growth, and both York University and the U of G made their full use of this right timing. However, China Studies at the U of G did not take off. Besides its geolocation disadvantage, Guelph's top-down managerial style in the 1960s, which resulted in collegial disillusionment, was also a significant barrier to this program's success.Originality/valueBefore the Internet age, universities were the first venues for most Canadians to acquire their initial academic knowledge of China. After the Second World War, sinology became popular among students as China became one of the world's “Big Fives”. More Canadians became romanticized with Maoism while opposing America's containment policy. York and Guelph exemplified this trend in Canadian history. Contrary to popular belief, historian Jerome Chen did not establish York's China Studies. Likewise, an ex-US diplomat John Melby did not bring China into Guelph, sinology arrived due to individual scholastic initiatives. Visionaries saw envisioned China's importance in the future world community.

THE CONCEPT OF THE “COMMUNITY OF COMMON DESTINY FOR MANKIND” AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY

The "community of common destiny for mankind" is a new concept in Chinese diplomacy, which has been increasingly used in the reports of the Chairman of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping in the past five years. Given the small number of domestic academic studies dedicated to this concept, the relevance of considering its meaning, motives and implications is increased. Although the fundamental goal and task of the «community of common destiny for mankind» is not clear, and in the system of China's international relations it is considered as an important part of the long-term plan for reforming the global governance system, establishing China as a responsible power and using the period of "strategic opportunities" in the second and third decades of the XXI century. During the escalation of international conflicts, and ongoing financial and economic crisis, the proposed concept has attracted the interest of an international audience, but there are contradictions in its perception among developing countries, also the world’s leading actors. After examining the materials of researchers in the field of China studies and international relations, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the connection of the «community of common destiny for mankind» with other concepts under the foreign policy paradigm of China, also in the context of the transformation of China’s foreign affairs.

THE PERFORMANCE OF SILENCE IN EARLY CHINA: THE YANZI CHUNQIU AND BEYOND

This article looks beyond the dichotomy between silence (mo 默) and speech (yan 言) and discusses the functions of and attitudes toward silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 as a case representing the variety of ideas of silence in early China. In the West, silence has been widely explored in fields such as religion and theology, linguistic studies, and communication and literary studies. The consensus has moved away from viewing silence as abstaining from speech and utterance—and therefore absence of meaning and intention, toward seeing it as a culturally dependent and significant aspect of communication. However, beyond a number of studies discussing unspoken teachings in relation to early Daoism, silence has received little attention in early China studies. This article approaches the functions of silence by pursuing questions regarding its rhetorical, emotive, political, and ethical aspects. Instead of searching for the nature of silence and asking what silence is, this article poses alternative questions: How do ancient Chinese thinkers understand the act of silence? What are the attitudes toward silence in early China? How does silence foster morality? How does silence function as performative remonstrance? How is it used for political persuasion? How does silence draw the attention of and communicate with readers and audiences? How does silence allow time for contemplation, reflection, and agreement among participants? How is silence related to various intense emotional states? These questions lead us to reflect on previous scholarship which regarded silence in early China as the most spontaneous and natural way to grasp the highest truth, which is unpresentable and inexpressible through articulated speech and artificial language. In this sense, the notion of the unspoken teaching is not only understood in opposition to speech, but also as a means to reveal the deficiency of language and the limits of speech. However, through a survey of dialogues, stories, and arguments in Yanzi chunqiu, I show that silence is explicitly marked and explained within the text, and is used actively, purposefully, and meaningfully, to persuade, inform, and motivate audiences. In other words, silence is anything but natural and spontaneous. Rather, it is intentionally adopted, carefully crafted, and publicly performed to communicate, remonstrate, criticize, reveal, and target certain ideas. That is to say, silence is as argumentative as speech and as arbitrary as language. Finally, an awareness of and sensitivity to silence provides a new perspective to engage with other early Chinese texts.

Estudio sobre los términos de la cónyuge femenina en la dinastía Shang (ca. 1600 a.C. – 1046 a.C.)

[Sinologia Hispanica, China Studies Review, 11, 2 (2020), pp. 79-100] Kinship is one of the most basic principles of society, based on marriage and blood, and as we all know, the kinship system in Chinese is the most complicated of the known languages, but the Shang Dynasty system (ca 1600 BC - 1046 BC) was very different from those of later generations and today. The Inscriptions on Shell and Bones is an important first-hand corpus to get closer to the Shang dynasty. Among the plates recovered, on the terms related to the meaning of “spouse”, find: 𥇛 (jū), 妻 (qī), 妾 (qiè), 妃 (fēi), 匕 (妣) (bǐ), 母 (mǔ), 帚 (妇) (fù), etc., most of which are still used during later generations, but it seems that their meaning is not exactly the same as later generations, even the meaning of some words is very different. Through the study of these terms of female spouses, in addition to being able to better understand the kinship system during that period of the shangs, we can also better understand the family and social status of women in that dynasty.

商武丁时期的“示屯”关系（约前1250—前1222） The Relations of “shi tun” (示屯) during the Reign of Wu-Ding of Shang (≈1250 B.C. - 1222 B.C.)

[Sinologia Hispanica, China Studies Review,8, 1 (2019), pp. 39-62] In Annals of Spring and Autumn it is stated that: “State affairs are worship and military affairs.” The inscriptions on turtle shells and bones are records of the escapulimancia during the Shang dynasty (≈1600 BC - 1046 BC), and that covers all aspects of life and society. The “tun” (屯) is a unit of measurement used for the turtle shells and bones of the oracle during the Shang dynasty. A shell or a bone is “a pian (丿)”, and a pair is “a tun (屯)”. “Shi tun” (示屯) refers to the “offering of shells and prepared bones”, is one of the important sources of oracular bones. The organization and analysis of reception records in those bones allow us to get to know this dynasty of more than 3,000 years ago from a new perspective. In addition, we can also understand the social status of taxpayers and signatories, through comparisons with the content of otheroracular bones.

人称代词“朕”源头考察 Probe into the Origin of Personal Pronoun “朕” (zhèn)

[Sinologia Hispanica, China Studies Review,5, 2 (2017), pp. 87-100] In Chinese, “朕” (zhèn) is a very special personal pronoun. Since the First Emperor of Qín, in the long history of two thousand years in China, it has always existed as the privilege pronoun of the emperor. So, why two thousand years ago, before the emperor to set the word, but not other words? The word “朕” has any special meaning and role? This article attempts to analyze the use of the Chinese characters in Oracle and concludes the results of the reconstructions of Old Chinese in recent years. This article attempts to analyze the use of the Chinese characters in Oracle and concludes the results of the reconstructions of Old Chinese in recent years. It is preliminarily thought that the character “朕” represented by the Chinese characters are not just the forms of first-person pronouns, but two: one for the firstperson pronouns are qualified, the other for the first-person pronouns contrastive form. At the same time, we try to propose two suffixes */ɯ/ and */m/.

A New Sphere of Influence: Table Tennis Diplomacy and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

Prominent China studies academics who, with the assistance of members of the business and religious communities, founded the National Committee on United States-China Relations (ncuscr) in 1966 did not build it to last. Its leaders foresaw the organization’s work as “catalytic” and envisioned that it would be “going out of business as soon as possible.” By March 1971, with a new era of U.S. relations with China on the horizon, its leaders saw little reason to continue operations, and seriously contemplated closing up shop. Yet that April, the government of the People’s Republic of China hosted the U.S. Table Tennis team, and pledged to have its team make a reciprocal visit to the United States the following year, which the ncuscr funded and organized. This visit’s controversies mirrored the previous ideological divides the group had weathered. Conservative anti-Communist protesters and pro-Taiwan activists disrupted the earliest public events, but antiwar demonstrators, who appeared at later exhibition matches to protest President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Haiphong in North Vietnam, soon superseded them. Despite these pitfalls, the visit proved to be a great success for the nsuscr, which received a new lease on life and gained a renewed sense of purpose.