422 posts categorized "History"
08/18/2012
Lu Xun - May 4th Movement
Lu Xun (simplified Chinese: 鲁迅; traditional Chinese: 魯迅; pinyin: Lǔ Xùn) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (simplified Chinese: 周树人; traditional Chinese: 周樹人; pinyin: Zhōu Shùrén; Wade–Giles: Chou Shu-jen) (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua (白話) (the vernacular) as well as classical Chinese. Lu Xun was a short story writer, editor, translator, critic, essayist and poet. In the 1930s he became the titular head of the Chinese League of the Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.
Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was highly acclaimed by the Communist regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though sympathetic to the ideals of the Left, Lu Xun never actually joined the Chinese Communist Party. Like many leaders of the May Fourth Movement, he was primarily a liberal.
Lu Xun's works became known to English readers through numerous translations, beginning in 1960 with Selected Stories of Lu Hsun translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. More recently, in 2009, Penguin Classics published a complete anthology of his fiction titled The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun which the scholar Jeffrey Wasserstrom[2] said "could be considered the most significant Penguin Classic ever published."[3Wikipedia
Translation Needed
This is the cover page for the Lu Xun photographs, I am illiterate in Chinese and need help in the translation of this page.
Cultural Revolution Post Cards?
I don't know the origin of these cards Might be or might not be post office issue. Still a mystery to me. If you know something-please contact me
08/17/2012
China-Japan Island Dispute Has Long History
The string of islands known as Senkaku islands in Japanese, and Diaoyu in Chinese (2010 file photo)The chain of uninhabited islands at the center of a territorial dispute between China and Japan sits on top of what are thought to be vast oil deposits, and are surrounded by rich fishing grounds.
But the islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, have a long history of straining relations and inspiring nationalist resentment between the two Asian neighbors, long before the issue of oil resources in the area came up.
China says the islands have been considered part of its territory since the 14th century, when it says they first appeared on Chinese maps during the Ming Dynasty. Beijing says Chinese fishermen have used the islands since ancient times.
But Japan disputes that claim, saying it discovered the islands in 1884. After determining the islands were uninhabited, Japan annexed them in 1895 after winning the First Sino-Japanese War. China objects, saying it was forced to sign the post-war treaty that effectively handed the islands over to Japan.Read more VOA
08/15/2012
08/13/2012
Chinese historian battling prejudice to honor Japanese settlers who perished in war
Guo Xiangsheng is seeking to have the bank of the
Daluomi River in Fangzheng county, where many Japanese settlers were washed
away, designated a historical site. (Koichiro Ishida)
By KOICHIRO ISHIDA/ Correspondent
FANGZHENG COUNTY, China--Amid all the rancor in China over Japan's war
responsibility, local historian Guo Xiangsheng comes across as a lone voice in
the wilderness.
He is campaigning to preserve the memory of thousands of Japanese settlers
who died in China after the Imperial Japanese Army abandoned them in the chaotic
close of World War II.
The seeds of his quest lie in Japan's military occupation of northeastern
China. Many Japanese were sent there as farmers to raise productivity after
Tokyo established its Manchukuo puppet state in 1932.
Later, the settlers were dragooned to defend its northern borders against the
Soviet Red Army, which overran the region in August 1945.
The settlers were left to fend for themselves after the Japanese army
fled.
It is estimated that 5,000 Japanese settlers perished in Fangzheng county
alone in the immediate aftermath of Japan's surrender
From the Chinese perspective, the Japanese settlers were "invaders," says the
62-year-old Guo. On the other hand, they were left behind by the army that was
supposed to protect them.
For this reason, Guo wants Chinese to view the Japanese settlers in
Heilongjiang province, which includes Fangzheng county, as victims of the war
rather than as aggressors.
Read more at Asahi Simbun
Ancient villages welcome investors
An ancient village in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Qi Zhenlin / for China Daily
New regulations on the protection of ancient villages will allow more private capital to be invested in historically important sites in Suzhou, Jiangsu province which is home to the largest number of century-old villages in China.
According to the regulations, historical houses in these villages can be acquired from the original inhabitants by the government or State-owned enterprises and then turned over to private investors for either renovation or repurchase.
The regulations state that this system will better protect the houses and allow them to be turned into small enterprises, such as tourist attractions, to raise money for their continual upkeep.
With more than 17 nationally and provincially authorized "ancient villages", Suzhou was, in 2005, one of the first cities in China to open the door to private capital to protect its historical sites. The city government said private investment can make up any financial shortfall to help preserve the ancient villages.
A total of 150 million yuan ($23.5 million) has been spent by the local government on renovation and infrastructure works to preserve the ancient villages over the past seven years.
Read more at China Daily
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08/03/2012
12/01/2011
Herbert and Lou Hoover's Excellent Adventure
Tianjin History Tianjin People
Written by Drew Pearson
In October of 1891 Herbert Clark Hoover entered Stanford. During his senior year at Stanford, Herbert Hoover met his future wife, Lou Henry. She was also a geology student whose love of fishing and the outdoors paralleled that of Herbert Hoover's enthusiasm for these outdoor activities.
May of 1895 Hoover graduated with a degree in geology. May of 1897 he arrived in Australia. 1898, Miss Lou Henry, who was Stanford’s first-ever female geology graduate, graduates.
Herbert had gone to work in Australia as an administrative engineer and had been promoted to a junior partnership in a British firm. He was successful. Charles Moreing thought Herbert Hoover could help with the firm's fortunes in China, and so he offered Herbert a chance to go to China with a better salary. The aggregate salaries would be about $20,000 per annum and expenses.
This in turn caused Herbert to consider his personal life. 1898 on packing up at the Sons of Gwalia and traveling to Perth in preparation for his journey to China via London and the US, Hoover cables Lou with four words: “Will you marry me?” She replies with one: “Yes.” The uncertain and turbulent life of an engineer offered no obstacles to Lou Henry.
Hoover arrives in London for a briefing on the China job, then proceeds to New York and across the continent to Monterey, Lou's hometown, in California. There they were wed in the bride’s family parlor on February 10th. Less than a fortnight later, outfitted with dozens of books on China, they embarked from San Francisco for Beijing and then Tianjin (Tientsin). Hoover had circumnavigated the globe, a transit he would make—by sea and by land—four more times in the next decade.
In Tianjin, his non-Chinese staff of perhaps a dozen was greatly overshadowed in number by his Chinese staff, composed chiefly of semi-technical assistants, draftsmen, surveyors' assistants, interpreters, etc. A few of the Chinese helpers had had foreign training; there was one from Yale, for example, and another from Rose Polytechnic. The latter so devoted to American baseball that he was greatly disappointed when he found that Hoover was not a baseball player. But he thought better of him when he learned that Hoover had at least managed his college team. The staff had its headquarters in Tianjin (Tientsin), where were also the principal laboratories for the mineralogists, assayers, and chemists. Some of the men gave their time to the technical work, and others were engaged in collecting and correlating everything that had been published in the foreign languages about the geology and mines' of China. Chinese scholars hunted down and translated into English all that had been printed in Chinese literature.
Hoover and most of his immediate experienced assistants were chiefly occupied with the exploring expeditions into the interior and the examination of the old mines and new prospects. Especially did some immediate attention have to be given to the mines already being actually worked, for the Minister let it be known that he expected Hoover to pay the way of the Department as soon as possible from the increased proceeds of the mines which were to arise from the magic touch of the foreign experts.
In Tientsin, he rented a commodious house on the outskirts of the foreign settlement that removed him from the local populace, save for his fifteen Chinese servants. The house was a large, four-square, wide-veranda affair. The servants, carefully distinguished as "No. 1 Boy," "No. 2 Boy" and so on down the line, waited, according to their own immemorial traditions, on the Mr and Mrs Hoover. These servants had curious ways, and a curious language in the odd pidgin English that enabled the door boy to announce that "the number one topside foreign devil joss man have makee come," when the English Bishop called, and the table boy to announce a dish of duckling as "one piecee duck pups," or of chicken as "one piecee looster."
As most of Mr. Hoover's journeys into the interior were under circumstances where reasonable comfort or privacy was impossible for any woman, Mrs. Hoover determined to fill her time learning to speak Chinese. For this, she engaged a Chinese teacher and never failed in her daily stint whenever she was at home. With a natural gift for languages she made great progress in the most difficult tongue in the world.
Mr. Hoover never absorbed more than a hundred words. But all their life afterwards she kept that hundred words in use between them by speaking Chinese to Mr. Hoover on sotto voce occasions.
In the winter and spring of 1900 the Hoovers began to hear of the new secret society directed against foreigners. It was named the I Ho Tuan—the mailed fist. The foreigners called it "The Boxers." Their avowed purpose was to expel all foreigners from China, to root out every foreign thing—houses, railways, telegraphs, mines—and they included all Christian Chinese and all Chinese who had been associated with foreign things. They believed they had supernatural protection from foreign bullets and other great powers.
Read more at Tianjin Past and Present
11/25/2011
228 Massacre was covered up during decades of ROC martial law in Taiwan
228 Massacre rioting in 1947 Taipei Wiki Commons photo
Tensions around the '228 Massacre' show how deeply the tragic events of 1947 continue to haunt political life in Taiwan today.
On February 28, 1947, the KMT troops of the Republic of China began a repressive crackdown of a popular uprising on Formosa against the Chinese-imposed local government, which the United States permitted to rule following Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
Four decades of martial law following the massacre kept the truth of the war crimes from being known. Now the anniversary of the start of the massacre is a solemn national holiday.
The actual number of victims will never be known as bodies were buried in mass graves and thrown out to sea but numbered, by almost all reports, in the tens of thousands. Because strong feelings on the island over the still painful trauma dominate discussion of the killings, it is helpful to look outside Taiwan for independent information.
Canadian scholar Craig Smith of the University of British Columbia has studied the 228 Massacre.
"The importance of the 228 Incident cannot be underestimated by politicians in Taiwan. In the divisive politics of the island, the symbolism of a massacre perpetrated by mainlanders against Taiwanese is of crucial importance. And the use of this massacre in Taiwanese politics and nationalism is a sacred and sensitive event that binds Taiwanese together and divides them from the mainlanders makes the incident an important topic for historians. It is strange then to see that it has been ignored by many."
"Violence against mainlanders spread across the island. As demonstrated in Hou Hsiao-hsien's iconic film (City of Sadness 1989) , Taiwanese would speak to strangers in Japanese, Taiwanese or Hakka to determine whether or not they were mainlanders. If they could not respond, the victims were beaten, often fatally. Many mainlanders were caught unaware and had no idea why they were being attacked, while others quickly fled the cities. In total, more than one thousand mainlanders were killed in violent attacks."
Chiang Kai-shek ordered KMT troops to the island to quell the uprising. By the time the soldiers arrived the violence had subsided but that didn't matter.
"Even before the troops reached the shore they began shooting. Once in the cities, the soldiers shot indiscriminately at anyone on the street. This was especially true in Keelung, Taipei, Chiayi, and Kaohsiung, where fighting was at its worst. This terrifying method of controlling rebellions was standard for the Kuomintang, who had been desperate in their fights on the mainland for many years. However, the policy went to new extremes in Taiwan as the battle-hardened troops were facing the frustration of a language barrier in their attempts to control the Taiwanese."
"When the Kuomintang forces arrived in Taiwan in 1945, they had been fighting against the Japanese for eight years. This war had drained their resources and their spirits. However, Taiwan had been under Japanese colonial rule since 1895 and great efforts had been made to assimilate the Taiwanese into Japanese culture. Therefore, in the eyes of the Kuomintang forces, the Taiwanese had been collaborating with the enemy, were tainted not to be trusted."
"The Kuomintang army then attacked with swift ferocity in order to secure the island quickly and enable the troops to continue the war on the mainland."
"Kuomintang official policy on the incident has since been that the uprising was a result of corruption among officials, and unruly soldiers and local officials were to blame for the ensuing violence."
11/14/2011
Misty Poets
Road to East Asia
A journal on contemporary East Asian literature in English
Written by students of FC1750.06
at Founders College, York University
Vol.2, no. 3, June-August, 1997
Voices from Today's China
One thing China has not known is light . . . Soon the bright day will dawn . . .
--by Xiang Yang, from Trees on the Mountain
There is an extraordinary group of young poets and writers from China who have carved a respected space for themselves in the literary world. Ironically, whatever they have written on paper is subject to government scrutiny and is often grounds for criminal prosecution. Most of them have left the country, opting to pursue their careers in lands more receptive to their work while a few remain behind to struggle against the hostile barrier the government presents when a poet tries to get published. As is evident in the short excerpt from Xiang Yang's poem, there is determined spirit amongst these literary revolutionaries, one that does not let oppression stop their work.
The group responsible for inciting this spirit of rebellion founded and contributed to the Today magazine during its short period of publication from 1978 to 1980. Three of the most famous writers of that period were Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, and Shu Ting, best known for their so-called "misty" poetry. In the broad sense of the word, it means "vague," "indirect," and "elusive." Despite the diverse stylistic approaches, three common themes recur--individualism and self expression, human relationship with the natural worlds, and the struggle against oppression.
In the late 1970s, Zhao Zhenkai (Bei Dao), then an aspiring poet, got together frequently with friends and colleagues and talked about starting a literary magazine that would give voice to the emerging authors. The future of China's cultural tradition would rest in their hands. At that time, the Cultural Revolution was just ending and the situation was volatile, with various politicians hoping to be Mao Tsetung's successor. Deng Xiaoping was poised to receive this honor, and in order to gain the support of the people, Deng fully endorsed the Democracy Wall Movement in 1978. This movement allowed the people to express their grievances with the government and their discontent with the outcome of the Cultural Revolution.
Under such circumstances, Zhao Zhenkai's plan for a literary journal flourished. The pages of the first issue of Today (Jiantian) were among the initial writings on the Wall, and from 1978 to 1980, the magazine continued publishing, giving new talents a voice to be heard. Publishing under the pseudonym Bei Dao, Zhao Zhenkai's literary career took off.
In 1980 Deng Xiaoping came into power, and he put a stop to the "spiritual pollution" caused by this magazine. The writers then had to take their work underground. In an interview with Siobhan La Pianan (1994, online), Bei Dao noted that there were periods during the next eight or nine years when his poetry was published in official journals as a source for discussion and debate but the attitude of the government towards his work was so unpredictable that it was hard to know how it would be taken. Finally, in 1989 the magazine resumed publication, this time out of Stockholm. Bei Dao and Gu Cheng were banished from China, giving them the unfortunate position of being writers in exile. Shu Ting still lives incognito in southern China. (See "Writers-in-exile after Tiananmen," Road to East Asia.)
All these poets have a strong sense of self and repeatedly focus on this aspect in their work. It transmits spontaneously personal feelings and a desire for free expressions as an individual rather than as a group or a nation. In this way, their work appears to be far less politically motivated since they do not focus on class struggle or class character.
The desire for self-expression is obvious in Shu Ting's poem "Gifts," anthologized in Trees on the Mountain:
Through the tree roots I'll enter the veins of their leaves
Yet when they wither I'll not be sad
For I shall have expressed myself
And gained life.
Read more at York University
Chinese Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion
Chinese Martyrs is a name given to a number of members of the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches who were killed in China during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They are celebrated as martyrs by their respective churches. Most were Chinese laity, but others were missionaries from various other countries; many of them died during the Boxer Rebellion.
The Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes 222 Albazinians (Chinese of Russian descent) who died during the Boxer Rebellion as "Holy Martyrs of China." They were mostly members of the Chinese Orthodox Church, which had been founded by Russian Orthodox missionaries in the 17th century and maintained close relations with them, especially in the large Russian community in Harbin. They are called new-martyrs, as they died under a modern regime. The first of these martyrs was Metrophanes, Chi Sung.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 120 Catholics who died between 1648 and 1930 as its "Martyr Saints of China". They were canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000. Of the group, 87 were Chinese laypeople and 33 were missionaries; 86 died during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church in Toronto, Ontario is named for them. Many Protestant Christians also died during the Uprising, including the "China Martyrs of 1900", but there is no formal veneration or a universally recognized list.
Metrophanes
Metrophanes, Chi Sung (his Chinese name is also sometimes translated as Tsi Chung) or Mitrophan (December 10, 1855 – June 11, 1900) was the first Chinese Eastern Orthodox priest to be martyred. He was killed with his family members and church followers in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. He is the best known of some 222 Holy Chinese Martyrs glorified in August 2000 by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Metrophanes was stabbed in the chest by a crowd of rebels. Also considered martyrs are his wife Tatiana, whose Chinese name was Li, his sons, twenty-three year-old Isaiah and eight-year-old John, and Isaiah's nineteen-year-old fiancee Maria, who were all killed with him.
Metrophanes was raised by his mother, Marina, and grandmother, Ekaterina, after his father died when he was a child. He was a shy, unassuming man who was educated for the priesthood at a Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China. Church authorities urged him to become a priest, but they persuaded him to do so with difficulty because he didn't believe he had the talents necessary. "A man of poor talent and little virtue, how dare I accept this great rank?" he said. Metrophanes was ordained by Nikolai, Bishop of Japan in 1880. He helped with translation of liturgical books into Chinese from Russian and proofreading. Eventually he suffered a breakdown and settled outside the mission, receiving half of his salary. Many people took advantage of his goodwill or mocked him.
During the Boxer Rebellion, the Boxers burned down his print shop and church site. He tried to encourage fellow members of the church during the rebellion. On the night of June 10, rebels surrounded his house and killed Metrophanes along with many of the 70 people inside. Metrophanes was stabbed to death under a date tree.
Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrophanes,_Chi_Sung
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