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In recent years, Sinologists have been arguing about the terms “Sinology,” “China Studies,” “guoxue,” “Area Studies,” “New Sinology” and other new terms with which scholars could better define this...

Jianning Zheng:Professor Minford, you are a famous sinologist and literary translator, and you are known primarily for your translations of Chinese classics such as The Story of the Stone, The Art ...

This article reflects methodologically on the studies of the so-called “missionary Sinology,” which scholars in the past decades have classified as a distinct Sinological category. The author revis...

The book under view is the second, revised edition of von Senger’s book on moulue 謀略 (supraplanning). The author, a retired Swiss professor of Sinology at the University of Freiburg in Germany and ...

Chengping Sun is associate professor of Hainan University at the College of Foreign Languages. His research field covers translation studies and international literature. In 2017, he was elected an...

In this article, we delve into the characterisation of international students as “Confucian Heritage” learners. To appreciate the implications of such iterative interpellation, we develop a genealo...

In bringing together the lives of European translators of Chinese this fascinating volume highlights the challenges faced by European Sinology. While the most prominent translators had institutiona...

This article starts with a question on the nature and function of Sinological studies and casts doubts on the legitimacy of Sinology as a pure and objective branch of learning. After briefly review...

This articles expresses a strong discontent with Sinologism and argues that its rise is the result of an uncritical application of Said’s Orientalism and postcolonial theory to Sinology, and that i...

The notion of post-Chineseness is enlisted to analyze Vietnamese Sinology as a comparative agenda. Post-Chineseness refers to the cultural preparation and the political process of mutual acknowledg...

In this interview conducted by the China-based scholar Ji Jin, Carlos Rojas talks about a wide array of topics, including his academic pedigree, his cross-cultural approach, his opinion on current Sinology, the relationship between Chinese literature and world literature, and his current and future projects. The interview also contains extensive discussions on translation and some key themes in Rojas’s scholarship.

Sinologism 汉学主义is a recent cultural theory that focuses on Sinology, China–West studies, and cross-cultural knowledge production. Since its proposition at the turn of the 21st century, it has arous...

The second part of this “Special Section” presents four more contributions to the international workshop held by the Monumenta Serica Institute (Sankt Augustin, Germany) and the Monumenta Serica Si...

Contemporary China Studies in Japan owes its origin to two different sources. One is the prewar Japanese sinology (Toyogaku), at that time the main source of scientific knowledge on China. Although...

This paper explores the role of the nineteenth-century sinologist-cum-diplomat, John Francis Davis, in Sino-British relations after the ratification of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1843. It examines his time as governor of Hong Kong and as Britain's effective minister to China from 1844 until 1848, in which he attempted to have the city of Canton opened to foreign trade. Arguing that Davis's view of Sino-British relations was as cultural in character as it was political, this paper suggests that Davis fundamentally sought to establish strict equality between the two empires. He attempted to use his knowledge of Chinese civilization to build an equal international relationship between two sovereign nations rather than an imperial relationship between a conqueror and the conquered people. While this conviction laid the groundwork for Hong Kong to become a bilingual Anglo-Chinese colony, it fractured diplomacy with Qing officials. Davis's insistence on political equality would amount to an aggressive imp...

Anthropologists of Chinese societies have long struggled with the problem of variation. We revel in visiting each other’s field sites where differences appear strikingly large, while realising that...

Contemporary Chinese poetry writing has acquired new values since the 1990s: the richness of the language, the inclusiveness of the text, and the complicated patterns of the poetic texture not only...

This is one of Mizoguchi Yūzō’s famous polemical essays in which he rethinks the problems of Japanese sinology. He contends that China has been essential to constructing Japanese identity and conse...

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yūzō describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China’s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China’s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.

This issue contains essays by the important Japanese sinologist and intellectual historian, Mizoguchi Yūzō (1932–2010). Born in Nagoya, he studied in the literature department in Tokyo Univ...

As a contribution to comparative East-West poetics, this essay descries a common resource of Western and classical Chinese literatures in certain “apophatic” modes of thought and discourse that are oriented to what cannot be said, to what is manifest only in and through a certain evasion and defiance of all efforts to verbalize and conceptualize it. This argument is developed in critical counterpoint with the work of interpreting Chinese classical poetry and thought by the French philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien. Jullien acutely apprehends and elegantly expounds the deeply apophatic bent of Chinese poetics. However, he sets Chinese thought and poetry categorically apart from Western approaches, whereas my analysis brings them together under the aegis of their common inspiration from the experience of the limits of language vis-a-vis an unspeakable origin of thinking and its source in reality.

Often referred to as a Victorian sinologist, James Legge has received much critical discussion in the discipline of Chinese studies. Yet few scholars have probed his role as a translator and the transmission of his theological ideas by examining his oeuvre. This article adopts the theoretical concepts of intertextuality and intertextual coherence to investigate Legge’s translation of Tian 天, Di 帝 and Shangdi 上帝, the three key terms that, in his view, convey the ancient Chinese notions of a supreme God. Drawing on Legge’s annotated Chinese Classics and various other works on religious issues in ancient and dynastic China, the article looks at how he establishes an intertextual theology through a coherent synthesis of Ruist (Confucian) hermeneutics and Christian (Congregational Protestant) argumentation. Ultimately, Legge’s vision of a universal God as known in the histories of China and the West reveals his work’s far-reaching implications for contemporary cross-cultural communication.

This article is an endeavour to give a portrait of the outstanding Russian emigrant scholar Sergei Shirokogoroff (1887–1939) as an anthropologist on the basis of his letters to the well-known Soviet sinologist V. M. Alekseev (1881–1951). The letters relate to the period 1926–1932 and were written in the Chinese towns of Amoy (now Xiamen), Canton (Guangzhou), Yunnanfu (now Kunming), and Peking. Today, they are kept in the V. M. Alekseev archive in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The letters touch on themes that the scholars had considered and worked on: general, special, and applied questions of linguistics (the Ural–Altaic language family; Chinese phonetics and hieroglyphics, and the languages of the people of China; and Latinisation of the Chinese script); the anthropology of science, mainly ethnology and sinology; Tungus-Manchurian ethnography; and general theoretical speculation including thoughts on ethnos. This unique source permits one to get acquainted with scientific ...

When scholars of Chinese literature, whether in sinology or “sinography,” pay attention to translation, we tend to treat it as something done to the Chinese text, rather than through it. But this o...

Christian Theology has always existed or developed in different cultural settings. This article is a personal reflection by a Western theologian on his experience of teaching in a Chinese university and his thoughts on the development of Sino-Christian theology since the beginning of the European Protestant China mission in the early nineteenth century. Theology begins in different ways of reading the Bible: this is perceived in China in the context of the Chinese Confucian Classics. Sino-Christian theology has largely (though not exclusively) developed in China’s universities rather than in its many churches: this is in contrast to the West where theology has always been part of the life of the Church and its intellectual and social identity. As this paper indicates, this key difference raises important questions about the nature of theology per se.

One of the most impressive landmarks in Western Sinology must be the Cursus litteraturae sinicae by Italian Jesuit Angelo Zottoli (1826–1902). This four-thousand page work, presented as a Latin introduction to the written Chinese language, is actually a synoptic guide to the Chinese tradition, encompassing a vast range of texts from the Shijing 詩經 (Book of Songs) to Qing-era examination essays, poetry, and letters. The Cursus was regarded even in its own time as an overly demanding text for beginners, but it remains a useful model for thinking about how scholars of premodern China should approach the linguistic and rhetorical features of texts. Though specialized study is essential, an appreciation of premodern China also demands comprehensive perspective. Conscious reflection on the Cursus and its potential may thus help to clarify some of the challenges faced by Sinology in the 21st century.

The special nature of Sino-Japanese translation, with a history as long as that of vernacular translations of Greek and Latin, is worth exploring because it can throw new light on Eurocentric and universalist approaches to translation theorizing. The tradition of translating between China and Japan, disrupted and then reinvigorated by the “invasion of Europe” in the nineteenth century, is the subject of ruminations by Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910–77), a prominent twentieth-century Sinologist. Takeuchi triangulates the relationship between Japan, China and the West in a way that forces a deeper reconsideration of the notion of the “translational”. The West (the Other) is a means through which identity can be constructed by Japan (the Self), but given Japan's long history of being shaped by/shaping the China imaginary, China is also Japan's Other. Takeuchi's prime interest is in Japan projecting its own identity onto China (via Lu Xun). In the present article, Takeuchi's two translations of Lu Xun's “The ...

Wolfgang Kubin talks to CLT Deputy Editor in Chief, Jonathan Stalling, about his life as a sinologist, poet, and literary translator. After reflecting on his scholarly and poetic background, Kubin ...

Interviewer’s Note: Among Western scholars, Gail Hershatter is one of the very few who conducted extended research in China right after such fieldwork became possible when the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) ended. Dr. Hershatter spent two years at Nankai University (1979–1981), collecting sources for her dissertation on Tianjin workers of the first half of the twentieth century. Her liuxuesheng (study abroad) life left undeletable marks in her academic career. Her solid scholarship benefited from her ability to dive into archives and to interview locals; her research projects and interests reflected her acute concern for the changes in Chinese society. Dr. Hershatter also exemplifies the new generation of China scholars’ departure from traditional sinology, in their effort to incorporate theories and approaches from the social sciences. Gail Hershatter received her PhD in history from Stanford University and has taught at University of California Santa Cruz for twenty-three years, four of them as Disting...

Although Frank Pieke is a Western sinologist and not a Chinese scholar, this book serves both as a valuable reference and an inspiration to non-Chinese and Chinese readers alike. In general, his de...

This article analyses the international thought of the US sinologist and political advisor Owen Lattimore (1900-89). A well-known expert on China and the Far East, Lattimore was a public intellectual and advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1950, after Senator Joseph McCarthy accused him of Soviet espionage, Lattimore's reputation was irrevocably damaged and his political thought forgotten. By assessing his visions of global democracy and geopolitics, this article claims Lattimore made insightful contributions to international thought. On the eve of the cold war, Lattimore's ideas of pluralistic democracy and tripolar world order offered an alternative vision of the post-war era, focusing on political participation and diversity. This article focuses on Lattimore's published writings in the 1940s, when, as political advisor and director of the Johns Hopkins Page School of International Relations, he sought to shift international attention from Europe to the Far East as the potential birthplace of a new version of post-colonial democracy. A fervent anti-imperialist, Lattimore crafted new political space for global democracy in a post-imperial age. His thoughtful discussion of participation, co-operation, democracy, knowledge, and pluralism make his vision of world order an interesting contribution to international thought in the twentieth century.

In 1766, the world’s first freedom of information act: His Majesty’s Gracious Ordinance Relating to Freedom of Writing and of the Press was passed in the Swedish Diet, largely through the work of Anders Chydenius. Few people today realise that this had something to do with China. The image of China as a distant utopia, a prosperous and politically stable country, had been created through accounts such as Jean Baptiste Du Halde’s four volume Description geographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise. In Sweden, politicians Anders Nordencrantz and Anders Chydenius, basing their arguments on Du Halde’s descriptions, claimed that the freedom of writing, of the press and of information had been in existence in China since ancient times, and had largely contributed to the wealth and stability of China. In this paper I examine the political pamphlets written by these two Swedish politicians to show how they used China as an example to st...

In literary translation, scholar translators distinguish themselves by resorting to discernibly different translation strategies. This paper is a case study of the English translation of Shen Congwen's novella ‘Biancheng’ (Border Town) by a scholar translator – Jeffrey C. Kinkley, a renowned American scholar of history and sinology. Compared with the previous translators of ‘Biancheng’, Kinkley demonstrates obvious differences in his choices, which can be analyzed through his two conspicuous translation strategies: the in-text explications and the out-text endnotes. He tries to re-present as much as possible the unique Chinese expressions in the source text (ST) by inserting extra explanations to what is implied in those expressions. He also provides dozens of endnotes to supply background information of historical, cultural, and local significance, and of ST editions and further readings. Drawing on Casanova's framework (Casanova, 2010), this paper discusses the significance of the translation by probing...

In this essay, Darryl Sterk, a sinologist based in Taiwan, traces the shifts in the representation of the specters that have always haunted Deer Town, Li Ang's literary home. He argues that over th...

Howard Goldblatt has translated over fifty volumes of Chinese fiction, memoirs, and poetry, including many of the most celebrated modern Chinese authors: Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, Chen Rong, and so many more. Most readers and scholars would agree that no other modern figure has done more to introduce Chinese literature to English readers than Howard Goldblatt. In this article, sinologist Christopher Lupke dives into the full depth and range of Goldblatt's contributions to Chinese literature in the Anglophone world, offering close readings of his earliest academic work and translations as well as of his most recent work.

While the era of Opening Up and Reform released poets from the ideological restraints of earlier periods to pursue “art for art's sake,” the growing gap between the rich and poor and the mass human migrations to crowded urban centers from still-impoverished rural provinces have forced poets to again reflect on the relationship between poetry and society. According to sinologist Heather Inwood, this dichotomy can be traced to the inception of modern Chinese poetry—poets struggled with the simultaneous need to invent new forms of vernacular poetry while placing poetry in the service of the nation and revolutionary politics. If poetry written in the late-1970s through the '90s is known for its cosmopolitan, formally experimental poetics, many poets writing in the new millennium reveal a new leftism that stresses populist, straightforward vernacular poetry that seeks to serve China's working classes, migrant laborers, and the disenfranchised.

The last winter issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought(vol. 41, no. 2) about Li Ling's controversial understanding of Confucius as a "homeless dog" ended with a remark that he himself is in many ways homeless in the academic world. Not only does his own love for Chinese culture clash with the pious proponents of the traditional cultural heritage, but in many other ways, he also lingers in the unhomely gray zones of academia. Simultaneously very much at home—but always on the frontier—in a variety of different disciplines such as archeology, paleography, history of thought, philology, philosophy, religion, medicine, and anthropology, he also moves between various niches of learning such as sinology (hanxue, predominantly European), China studies (Zhongguo xue, predominantly American), and national studies (guoxue, predominantly Chinese). The articles translated in this double issue highlight Li Ling's view of how the realities of China fit (and often misfit) into these academic niches.

The article deals with the development of minority policies in Mongolia since independence from China, and focuses on the effects that these policies have had on inter-ethnic relations. The main groups studied are the Khalkha Mongols, the Kazakhs, the Tuvans and the Han Chinese. The definitions of these groups as either undesten or yastan have also varied over time, which has created theoretically interesting complexities. The article contains a sociolinguistic study of the inter-ethnic relations, with particular emphasis on education, culture, media and publishing. Furthermore, the tendency of the Tuvans to identify ethnically with the Mongols rather than with the Kazakhs is analyzed from the point of view of a sub-minority–majority identification theory. In Inner Mongolia, the inter-ethnic relations are problematic, and there are also severe tensions between the Mongols of Inner Mongolia and those of Mongolia. These ethnic policies have also played an important role in the development of the inter-state...

Patricia Buckley Ebrey is currently a professor of history at the University of Washington. A leading scholar in the history of Song China, family, gender, and religion, her career mirrors the transformation of the field of Chinese history in many ways. Trained as a sinologist, she was among the first who employed the social sciences to study Chinese history; she not only represents the first generation of women historians in the field of Chinese history, but also was among the first generation of historians to study women in Chinese history. She is an extraordinarily productive scholar, whose interest extends well beyond her primary fields. In addition to a large number of monographs, edited books, and articles covering Chinese history from the Han to late imperial times, she authored and coauthored multiple textbooks in Chinese, East Asian, and world history. In the last three decades, her Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, China: A Cultural, Social, ...

Contemporary theoretical streams in sinology and modern Chinese philosophy have devoted increasing attention to investigating and comparing the substantial and methodological assumptions of the so-called ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ traditions. In spite of the complexity of these problems, the most important methodological condition for arriving at some reasonably valid conclusions will undoubtedly be satisfied if we consciously endeavor to preserve the characteristic structural blocks and observe the specific categorical laws of the cultural contexts being discussed. Whenever sinologists speak of Chinese philosophy, they must inevitably consider the appropriateness of this term. Due to the fact, that the general theory and genuine philosophical aspects of Chinese thought have only rarely been treated by Western scholars, they namely continue to remain quite obscure for the majority of them. Therefore, we must examine the fundamental question (or dilemma) of whether it is possible to speak of traditional Chine...

In the United States the study of modern Chinese history is a relatively young academic field. Prior to World War II, China studies or Sinology was for the most part centered in Europe and focused on the pre-Qing period, with emphasis on dynasty history, classic literature, linguistics, and philosophy. Modern China as a field of historical study mainly developed after World War II. The American involvement in the Pacific War, the emergence of postwar China as a nominal world power, America's “loss of China” to communism, the Korean War, and the mystery of Mao's China all contributed to increasing American interest in China, particularly in recent Chinese history. Such interest arose not just out of curiosity, but was also derived from the practical need to understand China and comprehend the essence of the “who lost China” debate in the early 1950s. Thus despite the attack on America's “China hands” in the McCarthy era, modern China as a field in history was established in the immediate postwar er...

Wolfgang Franke (Fu Wukang 1.f:g.*), late Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Hamburg, passed away unexpectedly of heart failure, on September 6, 2007. A few months earlier he had celebrated his 95th birthday in a small circle of family and friends, and in spite of his advanced age, he proved to be on top of things even if he had become a bit hard of hearing lately. Wolfgang Franke was born on July 24, 1912, in Hamburg where his father, the sinologist Otto Franke (1863-1946),1 held a chair of Chinese Studies at the newly established Colonial Institute (later merged with the University of Hamburg); it was the first such chair in Germany. As his father accepted the sinological professorship at the University of Berlin in 1923, Wolfgang Franke went to school and university both in Hamburg and Berlin. As the family had many Chinese friends Otto Franke had not only spent thirteen years in China, for several years he was also councilor in the Chinese legation in Berlin -Wolfgang became intrigued by China and decided to study Chinese. His main teacher was Fritz Jager (1886-1957),2 himself a disciple of Otto Franke, and his successor at the University of Hamburg. Wolfgang Franke's doctoral thesis (1935) dealt with Kang Youwei's political reform plans,3 a subject suggested to him by his father. He went to China afterwards and became a staff member of the Deutschland-Institut (German Institute) which had been established by Cheng Shoulin (Zheng Shoulin J~~ M) in 1931 as a forum f~r cultural relations and interaction

(2007). Deng Siyu (Teng Ssu-yu) and the Development of American Sinology After World War II. Chinese Studies in History: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 3-40.

(2007). Xiao Gongquan (Hsiao Kung-chuan) and American Sinology. Chinese Studies in History: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 41-94.

A senior American Sinologist and noted specialist on the geography of China outlines a series of most significant challenges facing that country as it continues its spectacular economic rise in the early 21st century. The main theme of his observations is China's ability to cope with internal challenges viewed as the key to likely success in the future. In addition to a number of demographic, environmental, and economic issues, the author discusses the possibility of change in the political system dominated by the Chinese Communist Party, which plays a distinct role in the relationship between economic reform and political emancipation. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, I31, J10, O15, P20. 3 figures, 1 table, 28 references.

It was John K. Fairbank who, in his preface to the pioneer collection of articles on Chinese military history, edited by Frank A. Kierman (1974), called attention to military historiography as a discipline so far largely ignored by Western Sinology. To this day nothing much has changed, as David A. Graff and Robin Higham noted lately: "The English-language literature on Chinese military history, ancient and modern, is extremely limited; for premodern China in particular, there is only a handful of books, several of which are now out of print" (2002, pp. 1-2). l The state of research on Chinese military history in other Western languages unfortunately is in no better shape. The current level of research in English is outlined by the authors of the anthology edited by Graff and Higham (2002). The historic significance (Geschichtsmachtigkeit) of military activities in China is reflected in an enormous and many-faceted corpus of sources in context with nomadic and sedentary tribes beyond the borders, ethnic minorities within these borders, rebellions of millenarian and social provenance, military revolts, "civil" wars, campaigns against bandits and pirates as well as conflicts with other states. The importance of the armed forces in China is exemplified by two quantifications: for the period from 210 B.C. to 1900 a total of 222,887 uprisings, about 105 per year, among them 1,440 greater peasant uprisings, and between 215 B.C. and 1684 at least 1,109 military conflicts with nomads of Central Asia of greater or lesser significance (Deng 2000, p. 7). Hans van de Ven cautions against a blanket condemnation of the military and militarization and the assumption that they play a purely destructive role. Redistribution of resources on a large scale, management of large economic entities, indus

(2006). FATHER KAREL (CAROLUS) SLAVICEK, S.J. (1678–1735) THE FIRST BOHEMIAN SINOLOGIST. Monumenta Serica: Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 243-251.