China Imagined

If 'China', as Lee argues, is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China. How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name 'China' was first used by 16th-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. 'China Imagined' is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state.

How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name 'China' was first used by sixteenth-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. China Imagined is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state. China's early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with its own minority culture--a far cry from Maoism's national mass culture, or Xi Jinping's state-controlled digital society today. Gregory Lee traces this complex, diverse entity's evolution since the Opium Wars into a China made in 'our' image. Today, it is a great power integral to the global system, whether it comes to climate change, security or inequality. Given this rapid convergence with the West, Xi's China holds up a mirror to our own nations. Trump's America, Putin's Russia and post-Brexit Europe all betray echoes of 'the Chinese Dream'. If China is a product of Westernization, is it now the West's turn to become China?

Roger Hart debunks the long-held belief that linear algebra developed independently in the West. Accounts of the seventeenth-century Jesuit Mission to China have often celebrated it as the great encounter of two civilizations. The Jesuits portrayed themselves as wise men from the West who used mathematics and science in service of their mission. Chinese literati-official Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), who collaborated with the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) to translate Euclid’s Elements into Chinese, reportedly recognized the superiority of Western mathematics and science and converted to Christianity. Most narratives relegate Xu and the Chinese to subsidiary roles as the Jesuits' translators, followers, and converts. Imagined Civilizations tells the story from the Chinese point of view. Using Chinese primary sources, Roger Hart focuses in particular on Xu, who was in a position of considerable power over Ricci. The result is a perspective startlingly different from that found in previous studies. Hart analyzes Chinese mathematical treatises of the period, revealing that Xu and his collaborators could not have believed their declaration of the superiority of Western mathematics. Imagined Civilizations explains how Xu’s West served as a crucial resource. While the Jesuits claimed Xu as a convert, he presented the Jesuits as men from afar who had traveled from the West to China to serve the emperor.

"Until 300 years ago, the Chinese considered Taiwan a “land beyond the seas,” a “ball of mud” inhabited by “naked and tattooed savages.” The incorporation of this island into the Qing empire in the seventeenth century and its evolution into a province by the late nineteenth century involved not only a reconsideration of imperial geography but also a reconceptualization of the Chinese domain. The annexation of Taiwan was only one incident in the much larger phenomenon of Qing expansionism into frontier areas that resulted in a doubling of the area controlled from Beijing and the creation of a multi-ethnic polity. The author argues that travelers’ accounts and pictures of frontiers such as Taiwan led to a change in the imagined geography of the empire. In representing distant lands and ethnically diverse peoples of the frontiers to audiences in China proper, these works transformed places once considered non-Chinese into familiar parts of the empire and thereby helped to naturalize Qing expansionism. By viewing Taiwan–China relations as a product of the history of Qing expansionism, the author contributes to our understanding of current political events in the region."

This book provides a comprehensive account of Chinese historiography on modern China. It examines the major master narratives and modes of narration in representing the events and overarching themes in modern Chinese history.

This book explores how Chinese films constructed an image of China in the 1980s through analyzing the characters, composition of space, and conflict patterns of the films. It also examines the relationship between the representations in Chinese cinema and the realities of Chinese society. The study analyzes the imagery, metaphors, and cultural values of Chinese films in the 1980s to discover the common creative focus of Chinese film directors at the time. It also examines the specific creative elements and cultural significance of Chinese cinema in the 1980s. This book is neither a “period history” of Chinese cinema in the 80s, nor a thematic study of the “fifth generation”. Rather, it is an analysis of films as narrative texts that reflected on history. It uses the perspectives revealed by characters, narrative patterns, and conflicts in films of the 1980s to examine how the era was perceived at that time as well as how China’s national future and individuals’ personal futures were being conceptualized. This title will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of Chinese Studies, Contemporary China Studies, Film Studies, and those who are interested in Chinese culture and society in general.

China’s century of revolutionary change has been heard as much as seen, and nowhere is this more evident than in an auditory history of the modern Chinese poem. From Lu Xun’s seminal writings on literature to a recitation renaissance in urban centers today, poetics meets politics in the sounding voice of poetry. Supported throughout by vivid narration and accessible analysis, Voices in Revolution offers a literary history of modern China that makes the case for the importance of the auditory dimension of poetry in national, revolutionary, and postsocialist culture. Crespi brings the past to life by first examining the ideological changes to poetic voice during China’s early twentieth-century transition from empire to nation. He then traces the emergence of the spoken poem from the May Fourth period to the present, including its mobilization during the Anti-Japanese War, its incorporation into the student protest repertoire during China’s civil war, its role as a conflicted voice of Mao-era revolutionary passion, and finally its current adaptation to the cultural life of China’s party-guided market economy. Voices in Revolution alters the way we read by moving poems off the page and into the real time and space of literary activity. To all readers it offers an accessible yet conceptually fresh and often dramatic narration of China’s modern literary experience. Specialists will appreciate the book’s inclusion of noncanonical texts as well as its innovative interdisciplinary approach.

The Western imagination of China has been defined throughout history by 13th-century explorers such as Marco Polo and modern politicians such as Henry Kissinger. But also through stories that arose from the imaginations of writers who had never set foot in China themselves, but whose work nevertheless strongly influenced the Western view of China.00With China?s increasing visibility on the world stage, a wave of discussions and misunderstandings has arisen about its politics, economy, technology and culture. With the exhibition China Imagined, the two China-based curators He Yining and Ruben Lundgren have brought together a relevant selection of contemporary photographers who have been active in China over the past ten years. In doing so, they show the ambivalence, complexity and diversity of Chinese society.00China Imagined tries to understand the current construction of Chinese imagination and to investigate the problem of photographic representation in intercultural contexts. In times of uncertain international relations amid a global pandemic, the exhibition seeks to help bridge the undeniable gap of misunderstanding between the Western and Chinese audiences.00Exhibition: Grote Kerk, Breda, The Netherlands (during BredaPhoto, 09.09.-25.10.2020).