Event-Review: Chinese Church Music since the Tang Dynasty

This short review is dedicated to the long-awaited event ‘Beijing Symposium of Sinicised Catholic Theology – The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ’ and deals with the historical background of some its events. It is also a personal document filled with statements derived from the given observations.

The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ has been the subject of manifold and intensive reflection in the Chinese context and has shown various faces. The essay surveys the innumerable works of biblical, apologetical, catechetical, liturgical, general theological, literary, and art-historical nature on Jesus Christ covering the periods from Tang and Yuan dynasties (seventh–ninth centuries and twelfth–fourteenth centuries) to the “Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). The essay observes how various Chinese portraits of Jesus Christ engage with Chinese religions, and how the Chinese context limited the possibilities for the unfolding of a specific face and image of Jesus much more than other Asian and Western contexts. It raises the question of the future: Which faces and images of Jesus Christ will the Chinese context still generate? In this vast part of Asia, will he remain a vox clamantis in deserto?

Twarz konfucjańska "lian" i "mian" w perspektywie chińskiego "self" relacyjnego

The reconstruction of the organisational model of Chinese society, with particular reference to the models of forming social relations. The books explores the most important notions of Confucian ethics, the rules of social exchange as well as other terms which influence behavioural norms, perception of the world and basic communication strategies. A Chinese face lian 臉 (moral face) and mian 面 (social face) is described on this cultural matrix. It is a central notion from the perspective of internalised social control, the most important symbolic protected value, built by people in the space of social roles and bonds.

Face-work on Social Media: The Presentation of Self on Renren and Facebook

This paper examines how the characteristics of interactional venues of social media and the Chinese “face” culture influence self-presentation on different types of social media. In-depth interviews have been conducted with 45 mainland Chinese students who are studying in Hong Kong and online observations are carried out. The findings reveal that while the students use both Renren and Facebook, they are much more frequently and intensely engaged with the former. Although Renren and Facebook are similar in terms of technical settings, the students present themselves in very different ways. The strategies of self-presentation are based on the careful determination of perceived relative status, both that of themselves and the other parties involved. Many have found that the best way to claim face on Renren is to maintain a low profile and align their emotions and actions with those of Hong Kong and mainland China students, while on Facebook, they maintain a relatively high profile to compete with international students. This study contributes to the literature by showing that self-presentation on social media is shaped by both the technical affordance and local culture of interpersonal relations (in this case, the Chinese “face” culture).

Metonymic and metaphoric meaning extensions of Chinese FACE and its collocations

This paper studies the extension of conventional meanings of Chinese FACE expressions in their collocations as well as the collocations themselves through metonymy and metaphor. The data with five FACE expressions included are sampled from the corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics at Peking University. The conventional meaning of these five FACE expressions is ‘the surface of the front of the head from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear’. The conventional meaning of FACE in its collocations is metonymically extended to ‘facial expression, emotion, attitude, person, health state, affection, sense of honor, etc.’, and metaphorically to ‘the front space or part of something, a part, a side or an aspect of something, the surface or the exposed layer of something, the geometric plane in math or scope/range of something, etc.’. When Chinese FACE is collocated with other words, its meanings are also extended through metonymy-metonymy chains, metonymy-metaphor continuums and metonymy-metaphor combinations. The meanings of Chinese FACE collocations (phrases) are mainly metonymically extended when used in certain contexts.