Effect of Chinese characters on machine learning for Chinese author name disambiguation: A counterfactual evaluation

Chinese author names are known to be more difficult to disambiguate than other ethnic names because they tend to share surnames and forenames, thus creating many homonyms. In this study, we demonstrate how using Chinese characters can affect machine learning for author name disambiguation. For analysis, 15K author names recorded in Chinese are transliterated into English and simplified by initialising their forenames to create counterfactual scenarios, reflecting real-world indexing practices in which Chinese characters are usually unavailable. The results show that Chinese author names that are highly ambiguous in English or with initialised forenames tend to become less confusing if their Chinese characters are included in the processing. Our findings indicate that recording Chinese author names in native script can help researchers and digital libraries enhance authority control of Chinese author names that continue to increase in size in bibliographic data.

RURAL POVERTY AND ITS IMPACT IN SHEN CONGWEN’S SHORT STORY THE HUSBAND

Shen Congwen (1902-1988) is a modern Chinese author and poet who is known for his native-soil literature (xiangtu wenxue). The short story The Husband (Zhangfu, 1930) is one of his works in native-soil literature. It tells a story about the character “Husband” who lived as a peasant in the barren and poor Huang Village. Like other husbands in the village, he sent his wife to work in the city to improve the family finances. At the end of the story, the character “Husband” decided to take his wife home to the village after he witnessed firsthand the life in the city and how his wife worked. This study examines how Shen Congwen discussed rural poverty and its impact on Huang Village. This study uses an intrinsic approach that focuses on the description of the social situation and the characterization presented by Shen in the short story. It is then strengthened with the description of the social condition happening in China outside of the literary works. The study finds that the main problem that caused the husbands to send their wives to work in the city is poverty and their desire to improve family finances. The root cause of the poverty is the barren village land and the tax to be paid by the villagers for the upper class. Shen sympathized with the villagers by telling the story of “Husband” and the events happening in the short story to reveal the disarray in 1930’s China.

A Surplus of Fish: Language, Literature, and Cultural Ecologies in Ng Kim Chew’s Fiction

This essay uses an examination of intertwined thematics of fish and text in the fiction of the ethnically Malaysian Chinese author Ng Kim Chew in order to reflect on a broader set of ecological concerns, including issues relating to the natural ecology of the Southeast Asian regions depicted in Ng’s works, together with the overlapping literary ecosystems within which his works are embedded. In particular, the essay is concerned with the ways in which Ng’s fiction reflects on the relationship between the field of Southeast Asian Sinophone literature and the partially overlapping ecosystem of world literature.

The Great City Is Fragile

This article explores issues covered in Wuhan Diary, a day-by-day account by the Chinese author Fang Fang of her experiences during the height of the pandemic crisis in the city of Wuhan during the early months of 2020. It seeks to bring out what is distinctive and innovative about the text. Most notably, this concerns the mobilization of social media, such as Weibo and WeChat, as a basis for social communication and the dissemination of information within and beyond the city. The resultant text is not a diary in the conventional sense but, rather, a vast montage of diverse kinds of material that have been electronically cut up and pasted together. A particular focus of the discussion concerns ethical support and solidarity among citizens of Wuhan at this time of acute disruption. In this context, the article suggests a significant, and maybe surprising, affinity between Fang Fang's immediate concerns and issues raised in the ethical philosophies of Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel.

The motive of overcoming history and fate and the Buddhist worldview in A. L. Ivanchenko’s novel “Monogram” and Mo Yan’s “Tired of being Born and Dying”

The article analyzes the motives of overcoming history and fate in the novels by A. L. Ivanchenko “Monogram” and Mo Yan “Tired of Being Born and Dying” in the context of the Buddhist worldview of both authors. The images of the main characters, the chronotope, the themes and problems of the works are examined through the prism of the Buddhist attitudes presented in the books; and life strategies and escape strategies of the Russian and Chinese characters are compared. The reborn Ivanchenko and Mo Yan's characters overcome their karma and their family's karma by conquering affective conditions and coming to the end of the life cycle. They discover the conventional nature of a human's existence through the motif of mirroring (the Russian author) and proximity to the wildlife (the Chinese author). The protagonists in the Russian and Chinese novels are characterized by a complex structure of consciousness, which tends to multiply and reveal its illusory nature. Time in both novels is cyclical and virtually devoid of movement, despite the presence of the characters in the actual political history. The space of both books tends to turn into a myth, revealing images of eternity through the earthly specifics of the place: the heroine of “Monogram” is in the Buddhist “looking glass”, while the hero in “Tired of being born and dying” is in the manor, which is a model of mythological cosmos. The controversial history of China and Russia of the previous century, A. L. Ivanchenko and Mo Yan's political extremes become a starting point for unfolding the internal plot, the plot of the heroes' Buddhist transformation and finding their Buddhist peace.

Periphrases as a form of thinking

We attempt to consider the reproduction of the meaning of the word HOME in the periphrastic constructions used in the Russian translations of the poem by the Chinese poet Li Bai. Based on analysis of six translations of the poem “Quiet Night Thought” we prove that periphrastic unit is not only used instead of the name of the object, but with the name of the object. We establish that in the translations of the poem by the Chinese author, the periphrastic names representing the concept of HOME reflect the form of thinking due to the semantics read at the nonverbal level. The periphrastic unit HOME is an analogue of the microcosm and macrocosm, transmitting neutral interpretations, which allows the periphrase to convey a relatively complete descriptive meaning, since by its semantics it strives to form a single semantic concept of the concept of “home”. We substantiate that cultural information is not included in the semantic minimum of the sign and may be irrelevant in practice, but the periphrase, as a secondary sign, always has connotations that are especially important in the reflective flow of speech, when the factor of un-derstanding a written translated text is not only decoding of the written text, but also the interpretation of the communicative settings of information of the original text creator.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ЛЕКСИКО-ГРАММАТИЧЕСКОГО СТРОЯ ЯЗЫКА СПЕЦИАЛЬНОСТИ И ЕГО ОСВОЕНИЕ КИТАЙСКИМИ УЧАЩИМИСЯ

The study was aimed to consider the features of the lexical and grammatical structure of the scientific style of the Russian language and learning difficulties for the Chinese students at the early academic study. Drawing parallels between grammar categories of Russian and Chinese Author clarifies all the reasons for the emergence of the students' difficulties, analyses their mistakes and offers different types of exercises, aimed at eliminating all the mistakes of students. Author dwells on the major grammar categories of the Russian language and explains how difficult it is for foreigners to accept them. She provides examples of grammar categories which are difficult to study, such as, Participle I, II; Adverbial Participle; Active/Passive Constructions and etc. Author pays attention to the issues of word formation, word order in the Russian sentences. She offers different kind of tasks which are intended for the development of communication skills of the Chinese.

The Fragility of Identity and the Imagination of Otherness in Bai Hua’s novel The Remote Country of Women

Drawing on The Remote Kingdom of Women (1988), the novel written by Chinese author Bai Hua (1930-2019), this essay examines how post-Mao China articulated the notions of memory and identity, as well as of belonging and othering, as an attempt to overcome the state of fragility caused by the trauma of the Cultural Revolution and the post-revolutionary growing influence of Western culture. It proposes to explore the way some of the literary works produced during this period were to promote an encounter between a fragmented yet hegemonic culture and the cultures of the internal ethnic Other, and how this encounter between majority and minority subjects was to highlight precisely the condition of fragility that underlies the very concept of identity. Keywords: China; Literature; Bai Hua; Identity; Majority; Minorities.

ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHINESE EMPEROR KANGXI AND THE DZUNGAR KHAN GALDAN DURING THE DZUNGAR-CHINESE WAR OF 1690-1697

The study of the history of the Dzungar khanate is of particular interest to world and national Orientalism. Problems of formation, activity and decline of this state in the XVII-XVIII centuries were studied at different times by Orientalists from Russia, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and other countries. And now the history of the Dzungar khanate is an important aspect of Oriental studies, especially in studies on the history of Central Asia. The relevance of the article is due to the extreme interest in Oriental studies in modern science, namely in Central Asia. For centuries, the Kalmyk khanate had relations with China, Dzungaria, Kazakh zhuzes. The khanate established friendly relations with some states, and with others, despite the zeal to find a mutually beneficial solution, contact could not be established. Almost all of this was influenced not by the Kalmyk khanate itself, but by the relations of other states together, for example, China and Dzungaria. The subject of study in this article is the Dzungar-Chinese relations at the end of the XVII century. These relations are described in the book of the Chinese author of Mongolian origin Altan-Ochir “A brief history of Oirat-Mongols”. The authors of the article tried to reconstruct the picture of the events of that time with the help of translation and make short conclusions.