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"China Civilization Textbooks."
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Re-Writing Mythology in Xinjiang: The Case of the Queen Mother of the West, King Mu and the Kunlun
The Chinese Communist Party has often used history as a tool to serve its political purposes. This article analyzes the ways in which mythological accounts have been manipulated in order to strengthen Beijing’s control over the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang. Relying on an analysis of various materials (including museum exhibitions, textbooks and travel guides), I explore how the figures of the Queen Mother of the West and King Mu of the Zhou have been used to assert that Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of China since prehistoric times. The materials analyzed treat mythological texts as valid sources of geographical and historical data, whereas Western scholars largely agree that these cannot provide any reliable information of this kind. In accordance with the tradition of early commentators, I define this approach as euhemeristic, in that it treats mythological accounts as a reflection of historical events.
Journal Article
Shanghai’s History Curriculum Reforms and Shifting Textbook Portrayals of Japan
This article examines the coverage of Japan in Shanghai’s senior high history textbooks since the early 1990s – a period when the city’s status as China’s “showpiece for the global era” has been widely touted. Uniquely among cities on the Chinese mainland, Shanghai has throughout this period enjoyed the right to publish and prescribe its own textbooks for use in local schools (a right extended to most other regions only since the early 2000s). The portrayal of Japan in local texts thus offers a window onto the way in which a self-avowedly “global” Chinese metropolis has balanced an outward-looking and internationalist vision with the requirement for history to serve patriotic education. It also sheds light on the meaning and extent of local curricular “autonomy” in contemporary China.
Journal Article
The Buildup to the 'Greater East Asian War' from the Japanese Perspective
With the present situation in the Far East the reverse of what it was in the first part of the last century it is interesting to note that many Japanese have a very different memory of the circumstances that preceded their entry into World War II than prevails in the West. The official Western narrative of Japan's pre-war history echoes that enunciated by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the \"Tokyo trial\"), which stated that a Japanese \"criminal, militarist clique\" launched a \"war of aggression\" for the \"domination\" of East Asia and \"the rest of the world.\" Since then the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan's well-armed, though key trading partner, has taken every opportunity to lecture Japan on its past \"aggressive imperialism\" when criticizing what the Japanese view as domestic matters, such as visits by government officials to commemorative shrines, and corrections to post-war history textbooks. Although the \"politically correct\" strata in Japan accepts the Tribunal's condemnation, the view taken by many Japanese of the era before what they call the \"Greater East Asian War\" remains markedly contrasted from that dictated by the Tokyo trial, and an elaboration of this Japanese view will facilitate a better understanding of post-war Japanese actions. In the first half of the last century, core Japanese interests included raising the people's standard of living and more equal relations with the West, and to these ends, Japanese policy was molded around that of the United States, a wealthy and powerful state, rather than that of its culturally and racially related neighbor China, which was at that time completely dominated by foreign interests. The more favorable view of Japan's role sees the country's pre-war policy with respect to China as having responded intermittently to fluctuating circumstances, through accommodation and appeasement, rather than the attempt to fully subjugate China. In fact, the Japanese today still tend to react in a similar way towards the PRC and believe that a more aggressive reaction could lead to an unfavorable outcome for Japan, as it did in the past.
Journal Article
Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary Chinese social and cultural issues in the twenty-first century.
Bringing together experts in their respective fields, this cutting-edge survey of the significant phenomena and directions in China today covers a range of issues including the following:
State, privatisation and civil society
Family and education
Urban and rural life
Gender, and sexuality and reproduction
Popular culture and the media
Religion and ethnicity
Forming an accessible and fascinating insight into Chinese culture and society, this handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, area studies, history, politics and cultural and media studies.
eBook
History education and national identity in East Asia
Visions of the past are crucual to the way that any community imagines itself and constructs its identity. This edited volume contains the first significant studies of the politics of history education in East Asian societies.
eBook
1919 - The Year That Changed China
The year 1919 changed Chinese culture radically, but in a way that completely took contemporaries by surprise. At the beginning of the year, even well-informed intellectuals did not anticipate that, for instance, baihua (aprecursor of the modern Chinese language), communism, Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu would become important and famous – all of which was very obvious to them at the end of the year. Elisabeth Forster traces the precise mechanisms behind this transformation on the basis of a rich variety of sources, including newspapers, personal letters, student essays, advertisements, textbooks and diaries. She proposes a new model for cultural change, which puts intellectual marketing at its core. This book retells the story of the New Culture Movement in light of the diversifi ed and decentered picture of Republican China developed in recent scholarship. It is a lively and ironic narrative about cultural change through academic infi ghting, rumors and conspiracy theories, newspaper stories and intellectuals (hell-)bent on selling agendas through powerful buzzwords.
eBook
\Music Speaks to the Hearts of All Men:\ The International Movement in American Music Education: 1930-1954
From 1930 to 1954, internationalism in music education helped the American music curriculum break from the insularity of a Western European tradition. This growing internationalism, which finally flowered in ISME, found its expression in an increased number of Eastern European and Latin American folksongs in American music textbooks. Paralleling this, teacher training texts began to recommend a balanced curriculum containing carefully selected folksongs. In addition, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) program, \"American Unity Through Music, \"played a major role in emphasizing the musics of Latin America in the schools. Throughout the entire period, the articles and materials published in the Music Educators Journal (MEJ) kept the topic of \"international relations\" to the forefront of American music education. As a result, the American music curriculum had begun to be international in scope. These changes eventually led to the inclusion of musics from all parts of the world in the music curriculum. Today, teaching world musics is an important component of American music education, and these three areas—school music texts, teacher training, and MENC publications—remain primary sources for information and help in implementing these musics.
Journal Article