Jing Tsu

Perversions of Masculinity: The Masochistic Male Subject in Yu Dafu, Guo Moruo, and Freud

The celebrated Chinese poet Xu Zhimo once compared the writings of his contemporary Yu Dafu to the sores on a leper who talks about them incessantly in order to draw attention to himself. Although physical degeneration and fascination with ailments are by no means the obsessions of Yu Dafu alone, this is one of the few instances in which one gets a glimpse into the narcissism of a shameless exhibitionist who does not mind being a nuisance, for even loathing would be a most welcomed form of attention—as Yu has just successfully solicited from his peer. On the other hand, what can be easily overlooked in moments in which such behavior is singled out is how central this obsessionwith exposing one’s ills is to the larger discursive frameworkof national survival, a preoccupation unparalleled in the 1920s and 1930s. After all, Lu Xun, the most important figure in the genesis of modern Chinese literature, frequently speaks of the rotten Chinese national character as correctable only through the cutting

Extinction and Adventures on the Chinese Diasporic Frontier

This article examines the discovery and appropriation of the Chinese diaspora in nationalistic and literary discourse in early 20th-century China. The overseas Chinese experience entered into the main field of vision of the Chinese intellectuals at a strategic moment at the turn of the century, when the diasporic frontier was uncovered only to be re-incorporated into the nationalistic imagination. This analysis begins with a look at Liang Qichaos ambivalent attitude toward the overseas Chinese whom he praised as national colonial heroes on the one hand, and denigrated for tarnishing Chinas image abroad on the other. In the context of national survival and the theory of evolution, Chinese laborers were hailed by some writers as the exception to the rule of extinction of the unfit. This representation was in no small part reinforced by literary and fictional writings about post-apocalyptic societies where the Chinese once again found their proper role of leadership and dominance over other races. After examining the hitherto largely unknown novels and stories on the subject, the discussion ends with an analysis of the 1906 novel, Icy Mountains and Snowy Seas, set in the 24th century in a brave new world near the South Pole.

Sounds, Scripts, and Linking Language to Power

On his 109th birthday, linguist Zhou Youguang (周有光 1906–) gave the same remark he had been giving every year since he passed the centennial mark in 2006: “God is too busy—he has forgotten about me.” A veteran of China’s modern language reforms and the main engineer behind the national romanization system, Hanyu pinyin, Zhou is the oldest surviving witness to the longest revolution in twentieth-century China: a quest for linguistic modernity that has taken more than 400 years to unfold. Since the first Jesuits arrived in China in the sixteenth century, the Chinese language has been transcribed, romanized, phoneticized, shortened, relengthened, and—most recently—digitized in its long road to modernization into a global language. Yet, as with Zhou, a large part of this history has been forgotten. Partly due to the political and social tumult of the twentieth century, the story of the Chinese script revolution has been cut up and relegated to different domains of study. Language reform is mostly treated as a subsidiary or supporting event, pulled along by the larger currents of history. Whether it is state building or nationalism, the most familiar lens is the Communist takeover or the Nationalists’ Mandarin language campaign in Taiwan. Our awareness of this history has been deeply colored by the post-1949 divide, even though the Chinese language revolution predates that and is still ongoing in modern times. This disjointed view is even more striking in the larger landscape of how and when the Chinese language has been studied. There are pieces of this modernization story in the increasingly ignored field of what we think of as sinology proper, where the historical changes in rhyme tables and phonological schemes are discussed in the utmost technical detail but in terms that few any longer have the training to appreciate. Other parts can be found in the studies of missionary linguistics or regional sinicization, in which the Westerners’ fascination with the Chinese language, or

Chinese Scripts, Codes, and Typewriting Machines

This chapter discusses the various proposals that were put forth and their technological consequences, including a landmark invention of a Chinese-language typewriter in the 1940s. The focus of the chapter on script systems differs from an emphasis on translation in studies of European and non-European encounters. While it is easier to discredit, as many have, how Marshall McLuhan deployed the ideograph in his popular theory of the medium and the message, it is harder to dismiss the pleas voiced by the Chinese themselves. From 1930 onward, Lin Yutang authored numerous nonfiction and fiction works and introduced Chinese culture and civilization to the Anglophone audience. All this was indebted to Lins early interest in linguistics and phonology, which later took a back seat to his literary career. In retrospect, the impact of Lins typewriter on the era of machine translation gave an unexpected twist to the original intent of machine translation. Keywords: Chinese culture; Chinese scripts; Chinese-language typewriting machines; Lin Yutangs linguistics; Lin Yutangs phonology; Marshall McLuhan

Female assassins, civilization, and technology in Late Qing literature and culture

This chapter analyzes the transposed knowledge of Western science, technology, and political nihilism, and their cultural relays through discussions of radicalism, female assassins, and heroism in early twentieth-century Chinese fiction. By looking at the different cultural and cross-cultural preoccupations that converged on sensationalizing the image of the female assassin, the chapter shows how the different conceptions of radical political heroism, women as agents of violence and diplomacy, the possibilities of science, and the technologization of civilization gave new intelligibility to late Qing modernity. The complex production of late Qing culture, further- more, mobilized a variety of sources. The abundance of biographies, journal articles, translated and untranslated Western fiction, Japanese science fiction, and political treatises on reform testified to the efforts of a diverse community of cultural agents working for profit, novelty, and ideology. Keywords: assassins; Chinese fiction; civilization; Late Qing culture; Late Qing literature; technology