Project MUSE®: Chinese Studies International - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Chinese Studies International.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1994) through current issueLatest Articles: Chinese Studies InternationalTWOProject MUSE®Chinese Studies International2996-8593Latest articles in Chinese Studies International. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Chiang Kai-shek's Critical Years, 1935–50 ed. by Emily M. Hill (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986788
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Chiang Kai-shek is, undeniably, one of the most important figures in modern Chinese history. However, due to his exile from mainland China and the longstanding political division across the Taiwan Strait, Chiang Kai-shek's public image is often reduced to some imagined characters, detached from his actual personality. As Emily M. Hill notes in the introduction, he is often portrayed as either "an oppressive and stubborn villain" or "a stoic and paternal president" (p. 4). Besides this, conventional knowledge also tends to blame Chiang for what seem to be ill-considered decisions that led to his failure—such as starting a full-scale civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1946—without paying enough
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallChiang Kai-shek's Critical Years, 1935–50 ed. by Emily M. Hill (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USChiang Kai-shek's Critical Years, 1935–50 ed. by Emily M. Hill (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®182292026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Portraits in White by Kaori Lai (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986789
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Kaori Lai's Portraits in White offers a new and thought-provoking understanding of Cold War Taiwan's White Terror suppression under the Nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) martial law (1949–1987). The book contains three novellas centering on biographical self-reflections of three fictional characters (Ch'ing-chih, Wen-hui, and Casey). Unlike most fictional accounts or oral history testimonies that have been published on Taiwan's White Terror, Lai did not set out to reveal untold stories of human suffering experienced by political prisoners or their families. The book is not about promoting democracy and human rights or about the unbreakable human spirit of resilience in the face of tyranny, brutality, and injustice. It
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallPortraits in White by Kaori Lai (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USPortraits in White by Kaori Lai (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®158722026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Cultural Transplantation: The Writing of Classical Chinese Poetry in Colonial Singapore (1887‒1945) by Lap Lam (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986790
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As a scholar of classical Chinese literature with an interest in its modern afterlives, as well as in Sinophone literatures worldwide, I have learned a great deal from reading Prof. Lap Lam's book. Centering on the pivotal figure of Qiu Shuyuan 邱 菽園, this study weaves together the literary and cultural histories of classical-style Chinese poetry in Singapore from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It is a groundbreaking contribution to the studies of both Chinese literature and Singaporean literature, especially in that it corrects a longstanding misconception—namely, that Singaporean Chinese literature was rooted predominantly in vernacular writing. As this study demonstrates, classical-style poetry
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallCultural Transplantation: The Writing of Classical Chinese Poetry in Colonial Singapore (1887‒1945) by Lap Lam (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USCultural Transplantation: The Writing of Classical Chinese Poetry in Colonial Singapore (1887‒1945) by Lap Lam (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®109162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Cross-Generic Perspectives on Traditional Chinese Literature ed. by Manling Luo (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986791
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The fruit of a conference on Chinese literature and culture held at Indiana University in 2019, Cross-Generic Perspectives on Traditional Chinese Literature consists of nine essays organized roughly by the chronological order of their primary texts, ranging from the ninth to the early twentieth century. In her informative introduction, the volume editor, Manling Luo, offers a concise and useful state of the field for the study of genres in traditional Chinese literature. As Luo points out, ever since the Book of Songs, the classification of texts has played a pivotal role in shaping Chinese literary history; meanwhile, modern scholars of traditional Chinese literature have dedicated considerable attention to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallCross-Generic Perspectives on Traditional Chinese Literature ed. by Manling Luo (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USCross-Generic Perspectives on Traditional Chinese Literature ed. by Manling Luo (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®101342026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31China Pop!: Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups by Shen-mei Ma (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986792
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When the craze for PopMart's Labubu figurines reached fever pitch in the spring of 2025, global news outlets eagerly picked up on the rare occurrence of Chinese pop culture finally overcoming its unattractive national stigma. Observers have noted for years that although China's economic status in the world has long overtaken Japan's, its pop culture influence lags far behind its Japanese and Korean counterparts due to the widespread perception that China's state policies are too undemocratic and controlling to cultivate any truly free creativity (Ching 2019, p. 6; Kim 2021, pp. 30–31). The lens of pop culture is the clearest way to make sense of Sheng-mei Ma's China Pop!: Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallChina Pop!: Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups by Shen-mei Ma (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USChina Pop!: Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups by Shen-mei Ma (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®117202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Eyes of the Ocean (Mata nu wawa) by Syaman Rapongan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986793
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Euro-American scholars and Asian states have long viewed "Asia" as a postcolonial space where either Western notions of "indigeneity" are problematic or all citizens were (and are) united in their movements for independence from foreign aggressors, especially Euro-Americans. Euro-American scholarship on indigeneity has been further constrained by its geographical anchoring or centering in the Americas, where it is presumed to apply unproblematically to certain groups of people and in relation to which scholars have developed and critiqued dominant conceptions of indigeneity. In writing this review, I feel this constraint and am tempted to put Syaman Rapongan's work in conversation with recent Indigenous Studies
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallEyes of the Ocean (Mata nu wawa) by Syaman Rapongan (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USEyes of the Ocean (Mata nu wawa) by Syaman Rapongan (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®189472026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Unlocking the Red Closet: Gay Male Sex Workers in China by Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986794
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Professor Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang (曾玉霞), a sociologist based at City University of Hong Kong, has authored a sympathetic and often moving ethnography of the lives of male sex workers in Tianjin, for whom she uses the acronym "MSW." Her book contains much interesting and valuable information, and the extended quotations from her fieldwork interviews are very rich. Tsang engaged in participant observation by working as an unpaid bartender at a high-end gay bar in Tianjin (referred to in the book by the pseudonym "Pistachio"), where she befriended and interviewed the MSW who worked there. She found the bar through personal contacts in China and used the "snowball" sampling method to find her interview subjects. The author
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallUnlocking the Red Closet: Gay Male Sex Workers in China by Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USUnlocking the Red Closet: Gay Male Sex Workers in China by Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®142932026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987547
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As a native speaker of Chinese and a longtime instructor of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL), I approached this book both as a language professional and as an engaged language learner. I found myself repeatedly wishing that it had been available when I first studied Japanese in college, as many of the questions I struggled with at the time—particularly those concerning morphology, phonology, and script—are addressed here with remarkable clarity. The book's insights are especially valuable for learners navigating multiple East Asian languages, as well as for students encountering one language through the lens of another.The reading experience is both intellectually satisfying and pedagogically humbling.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallChinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USChinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®188972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14The Fear of Witchcraft and Witches in Imperial China: Figurines, Familiars, and Demons by Barend J. ter Haar (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987548
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In Zhang Yimou's film Raise the Red Lantern (1991), set within the claustrophobic confines of a wealthy household in 1920s China, a pivotal scene distills centuries of witchcraft fear into a moment of domestic confrontation. Yan'er, a maidservant consumed by jealousy and by her unattainable dream to become a concubine herself, secretly fashions a small cloth effigy and pierces it with needles to curse Songlian, her mistress and the Fourth Concubine (fig. 1). When Songlian discovers the figurine, she beats Yan'er violently while shouting, "You want me to die!" The film further intensifies this conflict by revealing that the figurine has been "activated" through the collusion of the Second Concubine, who, while
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallThe Fear of Witchcraft and Witches in Imperial China: Figurines, Familiars, and Demons by Barend J. ter Haar (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThe Fear of Witchcraft and Witches in Imperial China: Figurines, Familiars, and Demons by Barend J. ter Haar (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®306162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Social Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China by Cara Wallis (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987549
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In the rapidly changing mediascape of contemporary China, Cara Wallis' new book offers a much-needed study of how ordinary individuals, families, communities, and networks engage with social media. Through an examination of marginalized young creatives, rural micro-entrepreneurs, domestic workers, and young feminists, Wallis demonstrates how passion, struggle, and ethical choices shape people's everyday digital use. Sophisticated in theoretical framework, extensive in ethnographic fieldwork, and rigorous in case analysis, the book explores affect in social media use from the perspective of "small," that is, ordinary people, amid the daunting reign of big data.Wallis situates her discussion in what she defines as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallSocial Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China by Cara Wallis (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USSocial Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China by Cara Wallis (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®111272026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province. Volume 6 ed. by Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987550
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Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province. Volume 6 concludes the magnificent series of volumes that cover the Wofoyuan (Grove of the Reclining Buddha) site in Ziyang City, Anyue County, in the eastern part of Sichuan Province. After the first volume (2014) discussed the northern edge of the valley with a special focus on the "Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law" (Miaofa lianhua jing), the second volume (2014) discussed a part of the southwestern section of the valley with a special focus on the "Great Parinirvāṇa Sutra" (Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra) as a textual homologue to the sculpture of the reclining Buddha that has given its name to the site. The third (2016), fourth (2018), and fifth (2022) volumes all dealt
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallBuddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province. Volume 6 ed. by Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USBuddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province. Volume 6 ed. by Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®123432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947–1986 by Kristof Van den Troost (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987551
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This book proposes the concept of 'criminal realism' to describe this [realist] aesthetic, treating it as an enduring mode of the crime film from its earliest years up to the present, not just in Hong Kong but around the world. What, then, is 'criminal realism'? Most simply, the term describes the type of—often sensationalist—realism one finds in crime films, a genre often seen as particularly close to 'real' (urban) life.The main contribution of Kristof Van den Troost's study on Hong Kong crime films is the above concept of "criminal realism," which emphasizes the feature of reflecting the reality of Hong Kong society in the breadth between the 1940s and the mid-1980s in local crime films. To an average audience
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallHong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947–1986 by Kristof Van den Troost (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USHong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947–1986 by Kristof Van den Troost (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®108722026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14A Prince of Martial Splendour in the Sixteen Kingdoms: Li Hao (351–417), Ruler of Western Liang by Dominik Declercq (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987552
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With his study of "a prince of martial splendour," Dominick Declercq has made an important contribution to the field of early medieval Chinese history and a contribution to the field of early medieval literature as well. Being a case study of the emergence of a state out of the disintegration of a classical empire (the Han, 202 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), it also adds to the comparative study of broader historical issues.This case study examines Li Hao (351–417), a leader of the Chinese community that had, during the period of Han expansion, colonized the Hexi Corridor (roughly the modern People's Republic of China [PRC] province of Gansu). There they lived interspersed among many other peoples, with a mix of cooperation and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallA Prince of Martial Splendour in the Sixteen Kingdoms: Li Hao (351–417), Ruler of Western Liang by Dominik Declercq (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USA Prince of Martial Splendour in the Sixteen Kingdoms: Li Hao (351–417), Ruler of Western Liang by Dominik Declercq (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®431642026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Through the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas by Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987553
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In the grand theater of Asian geopolitics, the Himalayan frontier is frequently reduced to a static barrier—a formidable wall separating the civilizational giants of India and China. Traditional scholarship in area studies and international relations has long treated these two nations as monolithic, state-centric entities, analyzing their mid-twentieth-century conflict primarily through the distant, high-altitude lens of diplomatic cables exchanged between New Delhi and Beijing. This macro-level obsession, however, fundamentally obscures the vibrant, volatile, and deeply human "interfaces" where these tectonic plates actually meet. Within the fields of political sociology, critical geopolitics, and borderland
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/39/image/coversmallThrough the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas by Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThrough the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas by Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®154202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14