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The paper discusses the etymological connection between Amuric * alr 'berry' and Mongolic * alïr-su/n 'lingonberry'. The two items represent the common root * alïr and must reflect a trace of language contact. However, unlike several other lexical items shared by Amuric and Mongolic, this word is not attested in Tungusic, except as a very late and localized secondary borrowing from Mongolic. This means that the connection may be due to a relatively old direct contact between Pre-Proto-Amuric and Pre-Proto-Mongolic. This, in turn, has implications to the question concerning the prehistorical locations of the Amuric, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families in southern and central Manchuria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possibility that the earlier homeland of the Ghilyak language(s), collectively identified as the Amuric language family and today spoken in the Lower Amur basin and on the island of Sakhalin, was located further south in Central Manchuria. It may be assumed that the Amuric linguistic lineage moved northwards along the Sungari-Amur basin under the pressure of the Tungusic languages spreading from the south along the same route. It is possible that traces of the former presence of Amuric in Central Manchuria are preserved in the names of the large rivers of the region, notably the Sungari and Ussuri. It is also possible to postulate a political context for the linguistic expansions of both Amuric and Tungusic in the framework of protohistorical Manchuria. In this framework, the origins of the Amuric language family may with some likelihood be linked to Puyŏ, the first historically known political state in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of Qing domination over China, the Manchu rulers strictly controlled or even prohibited migration of Chinese people to the dynasty's Motherland (long xing zhi di 龍興之地). Only two brief phases are an exception, namely the mid Shunzhi to early Kangxi and Yongzheng periods. During the former, in 1653, a "Regulation for the repopulation and land reclamation of Liaodong" was promulgated, establishing alluring incentives for whoever managed to move a hundred or more people to the region east of the Liao river. Only fifteen years later, when the maneuver had just started to produce some results, the Qing court abolished it. In the long term, such a change of direction appears perfectly normal, considering that later on most of the lands would be assigned to the Eight Banners and the state would have striven to keep the Chinese out. Nevertheless, in the short term, the decision seemed to come out of the blue. An interesting debate on what might have determined the turnabout began in the early twentieth century, and some most recent contributions have been published in the 2000s; yet none of the thesis proposed so far is fully convincing. On the basis of sources that have not yet been taken into account, this paper further investigates into the matter and aims at demonstrating that the concerns which compelled the rulers to officially oppose immigration in the following decades already existed in the very first years of Kangxi reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the dynamic changes in ethnic relations that have taken place in the Joseonjok (Chaoxianju) community comprising minority Koreans residing in and around Yanbian, an autonomous prefecture in northeastern China, and discusses the implications of those changes for the region. The main focus is on how the tension between China's fluctuating ethnicity-related politics and this diaspora group's continual struggle for a collective identity has been managed and internalised. Contrary to existing studies on the Joseonjok, the paper argues that the group has experienced de-ethnicisation, both as a top-down (government policy) and bottom-up (diaspora's reaction) process, rather than ethnic revival. The puzzling question is how and why de-ethnicisation occurs despite the commonly accepted conditions of ethnonationalism and, more recently, with trans-nationalism, heavily influenced by their Korean motherlands. Based primarily on ethnographical research and using a multiculturalism approach, this paper argues that the recent policy failure in dealing with multiculturality in China, together with the changing geopolitics of the region, has accelerated the process of de-ethnicisation. Joseonjok society's particular way of resisting political pressures and coping with ethnic tension in fact reflects a diaspora's common struggle to achieve integration with mainstream society while ensuring recognition of its own distinctive characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complexity of translation of borderland literature through a case study of the Japanese and Chinese translations of the Korean short story "The Red Hill." Written by the renowned Korean writer Kim Tong-in (김동인, 1900–1951) in 1932, this story features the Korean agrarian community in the Northeast Asian borderland of Manchuria and is conventionally considered a masterpiece of Korean national literature. When it was translated into Japanese and Chinese and anthologized in inland Japan and the Japanese Manchukuo respectively, the three texts of the same story in three languages conveyed different and contradictory national/imperial claims over Manchuria, a Northeast Asian frontier. This case study demonstrates how the very act of translating and anthologizing, as a process of linguistic transposition across cultural and national constituencies, may crystallize the sense of territorial competition through revealing, reshuffling, and redefining the covert intricacy of national relations in the original text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents accounts of seven travelogues, written by Hungarian travellers and professionals who visited or worked in Manchuria between the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. So far these texts have not received wide scholarly attention because they are accessible only in Hungarian, although they contain unique first-hand observations of the construction of the Eastern Chinese Railway and many ethnographic notes. The author suggests that some narratives, especially those written by Hungarians who worked as engineering specialists, present very balanced analysis of the situation, because they belonged neither to the colonising project in China, nor to the colonised side, but rather were enthusiasts of technological modernisation. As a theoretical frame, the author attempts to apply notions and concepts developed by infrastructural and cybernetic anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northernmost border of Japan's informal empire were the Mongol lands and Manchuria. For nearly a century this region lay on the borders between an expanding Russia and a retreating China and was a major area for Japanese ambitions on the Asian mainland. Japan's interest in the Mongol lands (including Manchuria) was spurred by general strategic, economic and ideological factors, and was justified by an academic discourse on geopolitics. Geo-political socialisation was carried out in respective areas and Mongol nationalism was drawn into these affairs. This paper examines the reasons for Japan's interest in these areas, and the arguments used to justify this expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of my presentation is to give an overview of the Shinehen Buryat people, their language and its present linguistic situation. Šenexēnei buryād , i.e. 'the Buryats of Shinehen Region' live in the northeastern part of the Inner Mongolia, China, in the Hulun Buir Province in Manchuria. In 2019, I had a great opportunity to visit them and collect some linguistic material. Today the Shinekhen Buryats are the strongest and most vigorous community in Hulun Buir. The Shinekhen Buryat people were able to preserve not only their culture, religion and a traditional way of life, but also their language, even more so than the Buryat people in Buryatia, Russia. Linguistically, the Shinekhen Buryat variety belongs to the Aga sub-dialect of Khori Buryat dialect, which can be proved by the almost identical phonetic, morphological and syntactic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower Cretaceous beedes belonging to the extant tribe Ommatini (Coleoptera: Cupedidae: Ommatinae) are revised and six new species proposed in the extinct Eurasian genus Cionocokus: Cionocoleus tanae sp. n., Cionocoleus olympicus sp. n. (Yixian Formation, China); Cionocoleus elizabethae sp. n., Cionocoleus watsoni sp. n., Cionocokus minimus sp. n. (Weald Clay Group, UK); and Cionocokusjepsoni sp. n. (Purbeck Limestone Group, UK). New morphological data is provided for Cionocoleus magicus and Cionocokus cervicalis stat. n. ofwhich Cionocoleusplaniusculus is considered a synonym (Yixian Formation). Cionocoleus punctatus comb. n. is considered the oldest record (Upper Jurassic; Kazakhstan) of this presumably xylophagous, warm climate genus. A simple key is provided to all known species of Cionocokus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]