A Cultural History of the Chinese Character “Ta (她, She)”

A Cultural History of the Chinese Character “Ta (她, She)” PDF

Author: Huang Xingtao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-26

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1000825868

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This book offers a thorough examination of the history of a Chinese female pronoun – the Chinese character "Ta (她, She)" and demonstrates how the invention and identification of this new word is inextricably intertwined with matters of sociocultural politics. The Chinese character Ta for the third-person feminine singular pronoun was introduced in the late 1910s when the voices of women’s liberation rang out in China. The invention and dissemination of this word not only reflected an ideological gendering of the Chinese script but also provoked heated academic and popular debate well into the 1930s. Thus, the history of Ta provides a prism through which to explore modern Chinese history. The author provides an ambitious and informed examination of how Ta was invented and promoted in relation to the gender equality movement, the politics of neologism, and other domestic elements and international catalysts. This book is the first major work to survey Ta’s creation. It draws on diverse sources, including interviews with eight historians who experienced the popularisation of Ta as youths in the 1930s and 40s. This book will be an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian Studies, Chinese Cultural History, and those who are interested in the history of China.

A Cultural History of the Chinese Character "ta (ta, She)"

A Cultural History of the Chinese Character

Author: Xingtao Huang

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781032417257

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"This book offers a thorough examination of the history of a Chinese female pronoun-the Chinese character "Ta (ta, She)" and demonstrates how the invention and identification of this new word is inextricably intertwined with matters of socio-cultural politics. The Chinese character Ta, for the third-person feminine singular pronoun was introduced in the late 1910s when the voices of women's liberation rang out in China. The invention and dissemination of this word not only reflected an ideological gendering of the Chinese script but also provoked heated academic and popular debate well into the 1930s. Thus, the history of Ta provides a prism through which to explore modern Chinese history. The author provides an ambitious and informed examination of how Ta was invented and promoted in relation to the gender equality movement, the politics of neologism, and other domestic elements and international catalysts. This book is the first major work to survey Ta's creation. It draws on diverse sources, including interviews with eight historians who experienced the popularization of Ta as youths in the 1930s and 40s. This book will be an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian Studies, Chinese Cultural History and those who are interested in the history of China"--

A Study of Chinese Characters

A Study of Chinese Characters PDF

Author: Wang Guiyuan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1003816231

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As the first volume of a two-volume set on Chinese ancient characters and newly unearthed literature, this book brings together the author’s research articles that discuss the development of Chinese characters and the tradition of Chinese palaeography. The 23 chapters in this book focus on two aspects of Chinese characters. The first 13 chapters centre on the evolution of Chinese characters, analysing the composition system and its transformation, the motivation, and mechanisms behind its evolution, as well as the methodology of the study of ancient characters. The subsequent 10 chapters mainly revolve around Shuowen Jiezi, one of the oldest character dictionaries in China. The author offers a novel understanding of the core issues related to this most important philological work, such as the version of the dictionary, misunderstandings in previous scholarship, and its relations with other palaeographical materials. The title will appeal to students and scholars of Sinology, Chinese philology, and palaeography, as well as Chinese characters.

Cultural China 2020

Cultural China 2020 PDF

Author: Séagh Kehoe

Publisher: University of Westminster Press

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1914386221

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Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context.

Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education

Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education PDF

Author: Derek Hird

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-07-13

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350298786

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In the context of Black Lives Matter, decolonizing initiatives, #MeToo, climate emergency protests and other movements for social and environmental justice, this volume posits a simple question: how can modern languages be taught so that they challenge rather than reinforce social inequalities? Informed by interdisciplinary theories, Critical Pedagogies for Modern Language Education focuses on practical discussions of case studies in areas directly relevant to the classroom contexts of modern languages educators. The volume transforms modern language educators and the modern language profession by putting the politics of language teaching at the centre of its analysis. With case studies covering 11 languages (Modern Standard Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Levantine, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamazight) across 13 countries and regions (Austria, Brazil, China, France, Italy, the Levant, Morocco, the Netherlands, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA), the contributors cover a wide range of theories, including critical discourse analysis, activist pedagogies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, linguistic justice and translanguaging. With student-teacher collaboration at its heart, critical modern languages pedagogy unmasks the ideologies and hegemonies that lie behind mainstream language use and affirms the value of minority linguistic and cultural practices. The volume thus provides transformative approaches to modern languages teaching and learning that respond to the key social concerns of the 21st century.

Sino-Foreign Cultural Exchange

Sino-Foreign Cultural Exchange PDF

Author: Cai Hongsheng

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-24

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1003804918

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Understanding culture as a whole way of life, this book touches on various aspects of Sino-foreign interactions, tracing cultural exchanges depicted in Chinese and foreign sources, with particular attention to events or anecdotes in the Tang and Qing periods. In addition to a discussion of the Sogdians and Turks in medieval China, an investigation of the localization process of pugs and lions through different Chinese dynasties, an analysis of the incorporation of Manichaeism into Chinese culture, and the depiction of the "Kunlun slaves" in Chinese Buddhist texts, this book also examines the "caravan tea" trade between Russia and China, the Russian-American company's attempt to do business in Canton, the translation of the Three Character Classic in Russia, the "Russian case" in the Tianjin missionary incident, as well as the Dutch factory in Canton and the Dutch mission in Beijing. This book concludes with a discussion of Chinese workers in Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From Central Asia to the South China Sea to the northern border with Russia, this book reveals its great diversity, yet with an intense focus on China's interactions with the outside world. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Chinese studies, medieval Central Asian studies, and those interested in world history.

A Study of Excavated Documents in China

A Study of Excavated Documents in China PDF

Author: Wang Guiyuan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1003807054

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As the second volume of a two-volume set on Chinese ancient characters and unearthed literature, this book brings together the author’s scholarly works on Chinese scripts studies and unearthed materials. In this volume, the author scrutinizes manuscripts unearthed from archaeological findings, including silk books and bamboo slips discovered in ancient tombs that date back to the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties, as well as Turfan manuscripts. These materials serve as supplements of Shuowen Jiezi and other historical documents, which complement our understanding of ancient characters. Through textual analysis of these newly excavated documents, the author reinterprets the texts and resolves some knotty problems in Chinese palaeography. The title will appeal to students and scholars of Sinology, Chinese philology, and palaeography, as well as Chinese characters and unearthed manuscripts.

A Concise History of China’s Population

A Concise History of China’s Population PDF

Author: Jianxiong Ge

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-24

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 100380229X

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This book provides a comprehensive overview and explanation of China’s population, analyzing its special characteristics and patterns of growth over the past 2,000 years. Topics include its composition, distribution, migration, and deep analysis into China’s historical population. The author aims to answer complicated questions such as how China’s population was formed, when China started its earliest population surveys, how China’s population migrated and was distributed historically, and how existing population data should be evaluated and used now? In addition, the author explores the influence of natural and human-caused disasters, censuses, tax policies, and economic development on China’s population changes. The work also offers a span of rich historical detail related to population control. The book will be a great read to students and scholars of population studies, Chinese studies, ethnology, and those who are interested in Chinese history, archaeology, geography, and sociology.

Kingdom of Characters

Kingdom of Characters PDF

Author: Jing Tsu

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0735214727

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What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.