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The place and placeness are believed to be a crucial perspective for comprehending the transformative dynamics of tourist destinations in the context of globalization and the rapid development of the tourism industry. As the material carrier of language, linguistic landscape is an intermediary for people to endow emotions and personalities into the place, becoming an effective path for exploring the place-making in a certain area. Mogan Mountain is a famous national tourist resort, which is located in Mogan Mountain Town, Deqing County, Huzhou City, China. This is a good case area for studying the relationship between linguistic landscape and place-making in tourist destinations. There are two theories that form the theoretical foundation of the study, namely the place and the geosemiotics. Firstly, the results showed the overall style of the linguistic landscape. Multilingual labelling (52.7%), official signs (55.3%), and standardized Chinese characters predominantly shaped the linguistic landscape, with English and other languages being complementary. Secondly, from the perspective of three dimensions of the geosemiotics framework, such as inscription, language preference, and placement position, we conduct a comprehensive semiotic analysis of the linguistic landscape, which encompasses diverse facets such as fonts, materials, shifts in state, text vectors, and symmetrical arrangements. Finally, we explore the influence of linguistic landscapes on the place-making of Mogan Mountain through the dimensions of location, locale, and sense of place. The information on linguistic landscapes indicates the geographical location. These linguistic landscapes play an important role in constructing the language order, nostalgic atmosphere, exotic atmosphere, and elegant and tasteful lifestyle of the public space in Mogan Mountain. Readers of linguistic landscapes, including tourists and residents, generate and identify with the unique sense of place in Mogan Mountain. These linguistic landscapes construct the destination placeness of Mogan Mountain that combines both foreign and nostalgic styles, and the integration of Chinese and Western cultures. It will help promote the image positioning of tourism destinations and have practical guiding significance for the tourism planning, landscape-making, language management, and other aspects of tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tackles the question of whether financialisation is present in the Chinese economy by analysing two key transformations of the country's financial system. The first was a state-led reform process through which the Chinese financial system introduced market practices, similarly to the rest of the economy. The second was a market-led process, reflected in the emergence and rise of shadow banking, which originates from within financial markets with the aim of bypassing loan restrictions. The article shows that despite the two transformations and the enormous growth of finance during the past four decades, the underlying character of the Chinese financial system exhibits remarkable continuity. Namely, it remains bank based – albeit partially liberalised – with a predominant role for bank credit and a strong presence for the state. The relational and government-controlled structures of Chinese finance have not been replaced by arm's length and private mechanisms. On these grounds, it is premature to consider the Chinese economy to be financialised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Araucaria is the property of Araucaria-Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article selects the Chinese and English logos and visual symbols of the publicity documentary ZHE JIANG CHINA, and examines its intersemiosis in cultural symbols from the perspective of multimodal transaltion. It has found that English logos effectively integrate audiovisual verbal symbols such as Chinese character radicals and pinyin, as well as English written visual symbols, to form a multimodal ensemble that embodies multimodal meaning aggregation and enhances the efficacy of meaning transmission. In addition, it has been found that there is a trans-modal and tans-medial mutual referential relationship between visual symbols, especially through the use of iconicity and metonymy to realize trans-modal and tans-medial intersemiosis. Based on the above analysis, the article finally proposes countermeasures and suggestions for the international communication of Chinese culture with Zhejiang provincial features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space is constructed as a particular place by various agents and in a variety of ways, and languages play an important role in the semiotic construction of a space. This study adopts a linguistic landscape approach to explore how languages are commodified for consumption in sites of luxury, i.e., four cafés in Quanzhou, a southeastern city of China. The findings show some similarities and differences in terms of language choice for the four cafés. Despite the similarities and differences, the four shops' landscapes feature atmospheric multilingualism, where multiple languages and scripts move into a luxury register of late-modern consumption and create the affective regime of luxury and exclusivity. Atmospheric multilingualism is driven by commercial interests and characterized by the commodification of multilingualism and a division of labor among languages in four cafés. In this division, English, other foreign languages, and traditional Chinese characters are employed for their symbolic functions, indexing cosmopolitanism, distinction, luxury, and modernity. Simplified Chinese characters are linked to the interaction order and used in daily business as the main instrument of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feudal Japan was one of the countries within the cultural space of Chinese characters and maintained a "tributary diplomacy" relationship with China. However, although it was part of the Chinese tribute system, Japan was not a typical tributary state like Korea or Vietnam at that time. Therefore, Japan's tribute activities with China, in addition to the similarities inherent in this activity, also had many unique characteristics. This article places Japan's tribute activities in the context of the region and compares them with China's tribute activities of Korea and Vietnam at the time to draw out similarities and differences. At the same time, the article derives the characteristics and essence of Japan's tribute activities at that time, contributing to an understanding of the nature of Japan–China relations in the past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rat tapeworm Hymenolepis diminuta is a parasite that usually uses rats as a definitive host. It also infects humans and non-human primates. Human infections have been reported in 80 countries worldwide, including China. Nevertheless, nearly all the literature on human infections in China by the rat tapeworm is in Chinese journals, which are very difficult to access by readers outside China. The main aim of the current manuscript was to systematically review human infections by the rat tapeworm in China for readers inside and outside the country. Chinese characters for H. diminuta were used to search several databases, including Google Scholar. In total, 511 infections were reported in 24 Chinese provinces/autonomous regions, which surpassed 320 in Costa Rica as the country with the highest number of infections. Furthermore, three nationwide surveys on parasitic infections in the past 3 decades revealed detailed prevalence of this parasite along with that of roundworm, whipworm, hookworm and pinworm in Chinese populations. These data contribute to better understanding of this greatly neglected zoonosis in the world's most populated country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2010s, "we, the rabbit" has gained currency as an internet slang term referring to China, Chinese ethnicity, and the Chinese Communist Party. The recent popularity of the rabbit as a metonym for the nation is boosted by the varied multimedia forms of bunny characters appearing in historical narratives, web comics, games, and most important, the patriotic animated series Year Hare Affair. Juxtaposing commercial ambitions with a nationalist agenda, Year Hare Affair narrates historical events by personifying countries as anthropomorphic animals. Taking the viral rise of Year Hare Affair as a case study, this article delineates a genealogy of the bunny characters in Chinese popular culture. The transmedia forms of bunny characters, including those appearing in texts, comics, animated programs, and games, provide room for the construction of unstable meanings revolving around the bunny. Consequently, while such animated series align with official narratives of history, they also tone down the weight of those narratives by employing a variety of narrative devices, including parody, game-related motifs, and space-time manipulation. Through these diverse representations, the political message is sometimes enhanced and sometimes playfully challenged. Read in this light, the bunny's evolving trajectory in contemporary popular culture speaks volumes about the dynamics between digital aesthetics and politics, as well as the multiplicity of discourses generated as they meet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most American students of Chinese in the late 1960s to early 1980s used a system not mentioned in Tsu's book: the Yale romanization scheme of Fred Fangyu Wang (1913-1997). Tsu takes us through a number of the romanization schemes concocted over the middle decades of the twentieth century - all very interesting - but the main story being told reaches a crescendo when Wade-Giles must give way to I pinyin i . Those of us who have spent the lion's share of our lives working with the Chinese language have long ago overcome this infatuation, but for those who see Chinese as infinitely complicated and a wonder to behold, a book like Tsu's poses as simultaneously authoritative and explanatory. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: Restaurants' outdoor signage plays an irreplaceable role in attracting potential diners, as it conveys important functional and symbolic meanings of the businesses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of typographic design elements of outdoor signage on consumers' perceptions of authenticity. This study also tests the linkage between authenticity and willingness to dine, as well as the moderating effect of frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants on the relationship. Design/methodology/approach: Using a 2 (simplified vs traditional Chinese characters) × 2 (calligraphy vs computer font) × 2 (vertical vs horizontal text flow) between-subject design, the authors did two experiments with 786 Chinese diners. Restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine are dependent variables, and openness to ethnic cuisine is the control variable. Findings: Display characters and text flow significantly affect restaurant authenticity. Furthermore, the results of this study demonstrate that display characters interact with typeface to influence restaurant authenticity. Consumers' perceived authenticity significantly increases their willingness to dine. The frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants moderates the relationship between restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine. Practical implications: Ethnic restaurateurs should pay attention to the outdoor signage design, as it affects potential consumers' authenticity perceptions. Specifically, in Mainland China, traditional Chinese characters and vertical text direction increase potential consumers' authenticity perceptions. Originality/value: This study extends the semiotic theory and applies the cue–judgment–behavior model in the hospitality literature. This study also provides new understanding of authenticity by identifying the influence of typographic design on authenticity, which confirms the semiotic theory that certain semiotic cues affect consumers' judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay takes Marguerite Duras's presentation of Sino-French relations as a case study to re-examine and call into question postcolonial theorizations of China's shifting position vis-à-vis the West. I use two understudied essays by Duras, which describe her childhood travels to Yunnan, a Chinese province that borders Indochina, and her views on the Tiananmen Square protests. In each iteration of Duras's Cycle indochinois, spanning almost four decades, she significantly alters her depictions of Chinese characters and settings – namely that of the Chinese lover and Cholon. I explore how Duras utilizes her memories of China as a thread to connect and re-interpret different parts of her personal life while also reflecting the regional interplay between China and France in continental Southeast Asia, as well as China's growing power within the world economic system. I contend that the personal anxiety Duras projects towards China's so-called 'rise' in her late-career signals a contemporary re-balancing of Franco-Chinese cross-cultural representations as the author's engagement with the country shifts from that of a mythical, timeless civilization to a geopolitical and historical reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of the Sociology of Language is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates whether the Chinese public possesses structured political preferences or ideology. We show that ideology in China is organized around a statemarket economic dimension and an authoritarian-democratic political dimension. The most politically informed individuals are the least likely to constrain their ideological preferences to one dimension, which we argue is a product of the Party’s propaganda efforts. We find that younger and better-educated individuals are the most likely to favor free markets and that while members of the Communist Party no longer possess any sort of distinct economic preferences, they are markedly more authoritarian. We conclude that the diffuse character of the Chinese public’s preferences provides the Party with an opportunity to divide and rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the material culture in China, cultural beliefs play a vital role in explaining artefacts, and different values can be revealed by linking Chinese characters and artefacts. Using morphemic analysis, we propose a method for deriving a comprehensive understanding of the hidden interconnections between Chinese characters and artefacts. With the help of blending theory, a cognitive semantic model is proposed. Further, a mapping process is conducted in three phases: sensorial composition between the corporeal layer and the 'visceral level', behavioural completion between the behaviour layer and the 'behavioural level', and intellectual elaboration between the conceptual layer and the 'reflective level'. Utilising case studies from traditional and modern times, two types of relationships between Chinese ideographs and artefacts are suggested: denotative and connotative. These relations and the 'cooperative effect' show the mutual connections between different forms of material culture in China and demonstrate the cultural beliefs embedded in artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a theoretical logic and character of a Chinese model of international order. We begin by considering general problems of power transition and hegemonic order-building, with reference to the American experience with liberal hegemony. China will, like all powerful states, seek an order that protects its interests. But unlike its predecessors, China faces an existing order containing elements that threaten its domestic political and economic model. We describe this domestic model and consider how it might be defended at the international level—embedded in the logic and organizational principles of hegemonic order. Our contribution is to theorize the consequences of China's hegemonic interests, including domestic preservation, and its order-building practices, for the operation and underlying character of a China-led hegemonic order. Though not inherently illiberal in form, we outline how the emergent order could generate illiberal outcomes. This article therefore theorizes the concept of illiberal hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board secretaries' characteristics on annual report readability using an original method that evaluates the readability of Chinese characters. Design/methodology/approach: The authors manually collect board secretaries' characteristics from the China Securities Market and Accounting Research database and obtain annual reports from the China Information website. Ordinary least square regression is applied to evaluate the impact, and then robustness tests and additional regression analyses are conducted. Findings: Board secretaries' legal-professional expertise, international expertise and role duality improve annual report readability. However, their political connections are negatively associated with it. The effect of expertise (role duality) is more pronounced for firms with lower ex ante litigation risk (board secretaries with equity holdings). Furthermore, higher readability increases the compensation of board secretaries, whereas lower readability increases their turnover. Finally, annual report readability is positively related to firm performance. Research limitations/implications: The authors only investigate listed firms in China from 2007 to 2017 because of the difficulties of obtaining data and text mining. Practical implications: The authors provide managerial insights for regulators aiming to establish an effective governance mechanism with Chinese characteristics. First, certain requirements for board secretaries' expertise can improve annual report readability. Further, firms can consider appointing board members or senior executives as board secretaries to enhance disclosure quality. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to verify the effect of board secretaries' characteristics on disclosure quality, especially annual report readability. Moreover, this study proposes a novel measure of annual report readability for Chinese texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Online Journal Mundo Asia Pacífico is the property of Universidad EAFIT and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Following the Opium Wars, traditional notions of China as encompassing "all under heaven" (tianxia 天下) and the "Sino-barbarian dichotomy" (huayi 華夷) could no longer be sustained. Under the pressure and intimidation of the Great Powers' advanced warships and fire power, the Qing government signed the unequal treaties and China was forced to adopt Western conceptual reasoning, discursive language, and rules of conduct. Western knowledge and lexicon was successively translated into Chinese, affecting transformations in local discourse and society. As part of this process, Japanese texts, which contained a great volume of Chinese characters, became an important medium for the transmission of Western epistemology. During the first Opium War between China and England, the cultural and political hegemony of the Great Powers were demonstrated through debates over interpretations of the Chinese character yi 夷. During the Late Qing, Chinese intellectuals drew on their foundations in traditional Chinese lexicon to understand and adopt the foreign-derived words zhongzu 種族 (race) and minzu 民族 (nation). This process reflects both shifts in how Chinese people regarded collective identity and the various presumptions underlying state-building visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oracle bone inscriptions (OBIs) are ancient Chinese scripts originated in the Shang Dynasty of China, and now less than half of the existing OBIs are well deciphered. To date, interpreting OBIs mainly relies on professional historians using the rules of OBIs evolution, and the remaining part of the oracle's deciphering work is stuck in a bottleneck period. Here, we systematically analyze the evolution process of oracle characters by using the Siamese network in Few-shot learning (FSL). We first establish a dataset containing Chinese characters which have finished a relatively complete evolution, including images in five periods: oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal inscriptions, official script, and regular script. Then, we compare the performance of three typical algorithms, VGG16, ResNet, and AlexNet respectively, as the backbone feature extraction network of the Siamese network. The results show that the highest F1 value of 83.3% and the highest recognition accuracy of 82.67% are obtained by the combination of VGG16 and Siamese network. Based on the analysis, the typical structural performance of each period is evaluated and we identified that the optimized Siamese network is feasible to study the evolution of the OBIs. Our findings provide a new approach for oracle's deciphering further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditionals have always been hot topics in linguistics. Biber (1995) analyzes the logical cohesion of 22 Korean registers, Yao (2017) analyzes the differences in the use of 22 conditional markers in Chinese from 8 registers, and they find that legal texts use the least connectives. However, their researches only focus on the comparison of registers from the same language, and do not carry out the comparison of the same register from different languages. From a cross-linguistic perspective, taking Civil Code of the People's Republic of China ('CC') and its English version ('ECC') as an example, this paper makes study of the conditional markers of legal texts, and finds that: First, the preconditions in CC are always expressed by de constructions, and the Chinese character de is the conditional marker. Second, the postconditions in CC are always expressed by danshu, and the words danshi (but/however) are the conditional markers. Third, the conditions in ECC are expressed by conditional clauses (i.e. initiated by where/if), relative clauses (initiated by who, that, whose, etc.) and other phrases etc., and they function as the conditional markers thereof. Fourth, the provisos in ECC are always introduced by unless, provided that, except, etc., which are the conditional markers thereof. Fifth, as for the use of conditional markers in legislative texts, Chinese is more stylized and rigid compared to those of English, which may have been influenced by the Plain English Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus, rather than citing the visual argumentation theory as the theoretical departing point of the essay, which posits both the independent propositional nature and the demonstrative power of visuals, the author could have used his case study to revisit certain assumptions of visual argumentation theory. Chapters Eight and Nine are both concerned with the Qing practice of the civil service examinations. For example, Chapter Four is concerned with the complex multi-layered role that visual devices play in argumentation. [Extracted from the article]

In the domain of anatomy, some Chinese characters in anatomical terms possess distinctive morphological significance. Chinese characters evolved from pictographic characters, with some of these pictographs being created by ancient people based on their own body structure. This implies that the comprehension and depiction of the human body structure have been integral since the inception of Chinese characters, and this knowledge has been passed down and developed through the continued inheritance of Chinese characters. Even today, certain characters retain the appearance to reflect the shape of the human body structure. By examining the characters related to vertebrae, cranial fontanel and heart, we can find the unique and enduring link between Chinese characters and the fields of anatomy as well as Chinese traditional medicine., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Japanese Association of Anatomists.)

"Negotiating the Christian Past in China: Memory and Missions in Contemporary Xiamen" by Jifeng Liu explores the history of Xiamen and the complex relationship between Christianity and imperialism in China. The book examines how Christianity has become deeply embedded in society and its influence on the region's social and cultural development. Liu's research is based on extensive primary and secondary sources, including fieldwork in Xiamen between 2011 and 2015. The book analyzes various events and actors involved in shaping Christian history in China, highlighting the complexities of memory and missions in the city's cultural landscape. [Extracted from the article]

With the promotion of China's international status, the study of Chinese characters has become the trend of scholars all over the world. Nowadays, the international promotion of Chinese has become an important part of the national diplomatic strategy. With the rapid development of big data visualization technology, Chinese culture can be spread quickly, and it is easy to achieve the above requirements to achieve visual accessibility. In view of the problems existing in the current dissemination of Chinese culture, such as too scattered dissemination content, unsystematic dissemination channels, and poor dissemination effect, this paper puts forward a method of Chinese character culture dissemination based on big data visualization. Firstly, the visual features of Chinese characters are recognized, and the rules of Chinese characters are detected; secondly, the large data visualization analysis of Chinese character imaging is carried out, and the performance comparison under different iterations is compared. Chinese visual technology has obvious advantages in the effect and performance of Chinese character transmission. Finally, the development trend of Chinese communication is analyzed, and the acceptance, speed, coverage, understanding, learning degree, and practical degree of Chinese communication abroad are compared. The big data visualization model has certain advantages in functional comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is interesting to explore the effects of second language (L2) acquisition on anatomical change in brain at different stages for the neural structural adaptations are dynamic. Short-term Chinese training effects on brain anatomical structures in alphabetic language speakers have been already studied. However, little is known about the adaptations of the gray matter induced by acquiring Chinese language for a relatively long learning period in adult alphabetic language speakers. To explore this issue, we recruited 38 Indian overseas students in China as our subjects. The learned group included 17 participants who had learned Mandarin Chinese for an average of 3.24 years and achieved intermediate Chinese language proficiency. The control group included 21 subjects who had no knowledge about Chinese. None of the participants had any experience in learning logographic and tonal language before Chinese learning. We found that (1) the learned group had significantly greater gray matter volume (GMV) in the left lingual gyrus (LG) compared with the control group; (2) the Chinese characters' reading accuracy was significantly and positively correlated to the GMV in the left LG and fusiform gyrus (FG) across the two groups; and (3) in the learned group, the duration of Chinese learning was significantly and positively correlated with the GMV in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) after correction for multiple comparisons with small volume corrections. Our structural imaging findings are in line with the functional imaging studies reporting increased brain activation induced by Chinese acquisition in alphabetic language speakers. The regional gray matter changes reflected the additional requirements imposed by the more difficult processing of Chinese characters and tones. The present study also show that the biological bases of the adaptations induced by a relatively long period of Chinese learning were limited in the common areas for first and foreign language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the beginning of the 1990s witnessed one of the few instances in modern Chinese history of the silenced making their voices heard - through printed messages on T-shirts. Phrases and sentences in large Chinese characters were printed on the front or back of plain white short-sleeve T-shirts with statements originating from a variety of sources, including literature, rock music, pop songs, movies, cartoons, old sayings and political slogans - or sometimes only an apparently meaningless assemblage of words. These phrases distanced the wearers from the earnest attitude that was promoted by the state, affording the wearer a sense of individual empowerment. This paper focuses on this cultural T-shirt fad of the 1990s in China and traces its rebellious origins, along with the multiple interpretations of its significance. This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry relies on Chinese newspapers published at the time, as well as the researcher's own observations as a participant of this shared cultural experience. As a unisex sartorial symbol, the "cultural T-shirt" presented an open arena for both males and females, as well as a battleground over "spiritual pollution". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Best behaviour " picturebooks, also known as "making good habits " or "teaching good manners" picturebooks, have explicit educational intentions that imply a culturally hegemonic voice. Despite this problematic characteristic, these picturebooks are welcomed by both parents and the market in China. Using extant picturebook theory of picture-text relationships, narratological, paratextual analyses and translation theory, this article seeks a better understanding of how this hegemonic voice is formed, resolved or consolidated via a critical reading of three best-selling "best behaviour" picturebook series available in the Chinese market. One is the original Chinese-language WaiWaiTu-ZiKongLi series (Little Bunny series). The second series is the translated United States series, Hands Are Not For Hitting, now a Chinese best behaviour publication. The third series is a translated rendition of Pete the Cat series, which did not serve any evident educational purpose in its original English-market form but has been identified to cultivate good character on the Chinese covers. These publications commonly present straightforward picture-text relationships of two-dimensional stories and characters. Most importantly, adults hold power in these best behaviour children's books. We argue that both the construction and disruption of hegemonic thinking co-exist in these picturebooks, reflecting the nature of adult power plays. At the same time, these best behaviour picturebooks serve as a good example of how hegemonic notions work within specific cultural and pedagogical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Language: Meaning & Form / Valoda: Nozime un Forma is the property of University of Latvia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Industria Textila is the property of Institutul National de Cercetare-Dezvoltare pentru Textile si Pielarie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The arrangement of Chinese characters has a significant impact on the visual effect and information dissemination in graphic design. In traditional Chinese layout, vertical arrangement of characters is predominant, but in recent times, there has been a gradual transition towards horizontal arrangement. To compare the influence of different character arrangement forms on visual meaning generation and information dissemination, This study employed an eye-tracking experiment to investigate two common Chinese character layouts in posters-horizontal and vertical, and collected data such as eye-tracking heatmap, pupil diameter and eye-tracking trajectory map. Based on objective eye-tracking data, combined with post-test interviews and questionnaire surveys, it was found that vertical character arrangement in Chinese typography is more effective in attracting visual attention and facilitating the expression and stimulating interest in viewing/reading under the premise of meeting formal requirements, which may provide guidance and inspiration for the practical application of Chinese characters in layout design, advertising design, packaging design, exhibition design, UI design, and other related fields., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This study examines the script crisis that emerged in China during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the old ideology of state phonocentrism and the new wave of computer science demanded the abandoning of Chinese characters altogether. Under the project of establishing new human-machine interfaces, national debates over such technical issues as the statistical properties of Chinese according to Claude Shannon's information theory took place in various venues, challenging the conventional language ideologies. As linguists and engineers rallied to collaborate on the scriptal modernization project on the basis of the discursive space opened up by critiques of the 1977 Simplification Scheme, efforts to integrate Chinese script into computer data-storage formats ended up destabilizing the understanding of Chinese writing that conventionally takes "zi" as opposed to "ci" as its basic unit. The shifting foci of script reform discourses during the period demonstrate that the rise of information technology and resumed debates over script reform jointly instigated a retheorization of written Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not a custom in Chinese cinema to use marginalized characters and disadvantaged groups as protagonists and to pay close attention to their personal sentiments. In the last decade, however, this subject has gradually become important. Sentiment is the immediate expression of individual emotion and the focus of natural, social, and psychological ecology. This article will explore the social and economic mechanisms that underlie the sentiments of four categories of marginalized characters in Chinese films—rural women, people with serious illnesses, criminals, and daydreamers—and will shed light on a little‐known side of a rapidly developing China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between handwriting and instant message (IM) frequency has not been studied in English and the reason may be related to the similar cognitive process of typing IM and handwriting words. The mental processes of producing both handwriting and typing English words are from semantics to phonology and orthography. However, the cognitive process of Chinese Pinyin typing used in IM activity is very different from traditional handwriting, which changes the production of handwritten glyph into the phonetic production and orthography recognition. While the IM activity itself is not conducive to literacy skill, the Pinyin input experience may be helpful for that. If we could separate the independent effects of IM and Pinyin input on handwriting, it would help us to clarify the complexity of the impact of informational and communicational technology (ICT) on literacy skills. This study investigated 449 junior school students aged 12–15 in China and found that IM directly predicts the performance of handwriting characters negatively, meanwhile, it indirectly predicts handwriting performance positively through the mediator of Pinyin input experience. Pinyin input experience compensates the negative effects of IM on handwriting. The implications of this study are that we should look at the individual effects of different types of online activity on children's literacy, and guide Chinese children to appropriately engage in useful ICT for traditional literacy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new deformable convolutional network with attention mechanism to deal with the Chinese character of various dynasties. These ancient Chinese characters are hieroglyph with special spatial structure and gradually evolving into modern Chinese characters. However, because of the intrinsic limitations of traditional convolutional networks in the model, the geometric structure of the convolutional module is fixed. Therefore, we build a new architecture called attention-based deformable networks for this task. Besides, we construct a new dataset called the Chinese characters from Various Dynasties Dataset (CCDD), which includes the evolution of Chinese characters between major dynasties. Deformable convolution based on attention mechanism can obtain those more important offsets, resulting in better performance than the original deformable convolution. In the experimental stage, extensive experiments validate the performance of our approach. Firstly, the effectiveness of this network was verified on two text datasets, Mnist(99.38%) and notMnist(98.22%) both comparing with several modules. Finally, the best performance was achieved on the CCDD dataset(91.50%) compared to other classical deep learning networks. This is the first paper to apply deep learning methods to recognize and classify the characters of major dynasties in China. And archaeological workers need to be able to recognize Chinese characters from various periods in China, and our algorithm can assist them in completing this task to a certain extent. It can also help cultural relic enthusiasts roughly determine the age of cultural relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting an appropriate brand transposition strategy across different language systems is crucial to a brand's success in the multi-cultural global marketplace. Drawing upon appraisal theory and using a large data set of 3,100 real cosmetic brands and their consumer ratings in China, we analyze the effectiveness of three common brand transposition strategies across three types of firms. The results show that the brand transposition strategies differ in their effects on consumer ratings of brand, and the effects depend on the firm type (foreign, joint venture, and domestic firms). Specifically, a semantic brand transposition strategy exerts positive effects on consumer ratings of foreign brands and joint venture brands but not of domestic brands. The phonetic transposition strategy and the phonosemantic transposition strategy benefit only foreign brands, and not joint venture brands or domestic brands. To better understand brand transposition between two language systems, we also provide descriptive analyses of the transposing patterns of Chinese character usage across firm types as well as the most frequently used Chinese characters in cosmetic brand names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkic conquest and rule of China since 386 CE for nearly two hundred years had exerted its profound and long-lasting influence on many levels of Chinese society. Turkic sinification policy had induced the Xianbei National Language (XNL), which was Turkic language with selected set of Chinese characters for phonetic spelling. XNL, being spelt in Chinese characters, managed to function in Turkic-Chinese code-mixing in the bilingual communities as evidenced in bianwen 變文. Because of the Turkic politico-socio-economical dominance, some the Turkic elements in the code-mixing eventually gained prominance and have become permanent part of the northern vernacular, predecessor of modern Mandarin. This paper discusses twelve such Turkic-rooted verbal functional expressions: (1). The causative-passive qu 取 ; (2). Transitive passive sha 殺 , sha 煞 , si 死 ; (3). Causative dou 鬥 , dou 逗 ; (4). Continuative hai 還 , que 卻 ; (5). Resultative que 卻 ; (6). Reflexive nə 呢 (7). Positive indirective mo shi 莫是 ; (8). Negative indirective bu dao 不道 ; (9). Future participle cai 才 , cai 纔 ; (10). Conditional yao shi 要是 , yao 要 , yao bu shi 要不是 ; (11). INDUCE-base nong 弄 ; (12). The speech quote verb dao 道. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elisabeth Kaske, whose I Politics of Language in Chinese Education i (2008) arguably sparked the current wave of scholarship on language in China, graciously accepted my apologies and awkward admiration. [Extracted from the article]

I Shijing i ( ), or the Book of Odes, is China's earliest collection of poems. As a result, an English translation of the Odes, along with the original Chinese texts and more importantly the pronunciation from some 3,000 years ago, must have long been yearned for. [Extracted from the article]

The Chinese in Malaysia constitute an ethnic minority of diasporic origin formed by several waves of migrants and their descendants; therefore, they are often confronted with the issue of identity and the notion of home. While Chinese Malaysian identity is shaped through interethnic and intraethnic interaction, the idea of home can be connected to the place of origin (China) and/or the place of residence (Malaysia). By employing the concepts of sojourner (Siu), middleman (Bonacich) and settler (Uriely), this paper examines how ethnic Chinese characters in two Sinophone Malaysian short stories frame their identity and construct their conception of home. Through close readings of “Jun zi guxiang lai” (君自故鄉來), by Shang Wanyun (商晚筠), and “Dage kuankuan zoulai” (大哥款款走來), by Li Kaixuan (李開璇), three interconnected issues are explored: the relation of the Chinese Malaysian subject to China, the representation of China, and how these two authors approach the construction of the Self when the Other is constituted by the mainland Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Financial loss and health risk caused by the substitution of rainbow trout for other salmonid species have become a common issue around the world. The situation could be further exacerbated in China by the 'abused' common name of San Wen Yu (the corresponding Chinese ideogram 三文鱼) for salmonids, considering the absence of a standardized naming system for seafood species. To prevent such episodes, the present study aimed to develop novel loop‐mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays targeting the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene for rapid identification of rainbow trout in processed fish products. RESULTS: Rainbow trout‐specific primers (LAMP and PCR) were designed, and the specificity against 23 different fish species was confirmed. The minimum amount of detectable DNA for LAMP assay reached 500 pg, up to 10‐fold less than for PCR assay. In addition to agarose gel electrophoresis, naked‐eye inspection of the LAMP‐positive samples using SYBR Green I under daylight or ultraviolet light was also validated. Finally, commercial San Wen Yu products made from rainbow trout could be accurately identified using the newly developed LAMP and PCR assays, further cross‐confirmed by mini DNA barcoding and neighbor‐joining dendrograms. CONCLUSIONS: The LAMP and PCR assays established in the study allow a fast and accurate identification of rainbow trout in processed fish products. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithobius (Ezembius) brachyspinipes sp. n. (Lithobiomorpha: Lithobiidae), recently discovered in Yiyang County, Luoyang City, Henan Province, China, is described, is morphologically similar to Lithobius (Ezembius) multispinipesPei et al, 2016 from Xinjiang Autonomous Region, but is distinguishable by having a different size of the posterior two ocelli, a different morphology of the second article of the female gonopod, and apical claw third article of female gonopods, and legs 14 plectrotaxy. A table of the main morphological characters of Chinese Lithobius (Ezembius) species is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines that China has made historic achievements and developed a distinctive model with Chinese characteristics in the pursuit of socialist modernization. Topics include reports that Chinese model consists of the basic socialist economic system, the socialist market economy system, the socialist distribution system that features shared benefits, the green development system and the open economy system.

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Background: Cardiogenic stroke has increasing morbidity in China and brought economic burden to patient families. In cardiogenic stroke diagnosis, echocardiograph examination is one of the most important examinations. Sonographers will investigate patients' heart via echocardiograph, and describe them in the echocardiograph reports. In this study, we developed a machine learning model to automatically identify diagnosis evidences of cardiogenic stroke providing to neurologist for clinical decision making.Methods: We collected 4188 Chinese echocardiograph reports of 4018 patients, with average length 177 Chinese characters in free-text style. Collaborating with neurologists and sonographers, we summarized 149 phrases on diagnosis evidence of cardiogenic stroke such as "" (severe mitral stenosis), "" (aortic valve degeneration) and so on. Furthermore, we developed an annotated corpus via mapping 149 phrases to the 4188 reports. We selected 11 most frequent diagnosis evidence types such as "" (mitral stenosis) for further identifying. The generated corpus is divided into training set and testing set in the ratio of 8:2, which is used to train and validate a machine learning model to identify the evidence of cardiogenic stroke using BiLSTM-CRF algorithm.Results: Our machine learning method achieved the average performance on the diagnosis evidence identification is 98.03, 90.17 and 93.94% respectively. In addition, our method is capable to identify the novel diagnosis evidence of cardiogenic stroke description such as "-" (mitral stenosis), "" (aortic valve calcification) et al. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we analyze the structure of the echocardiograph reports and summarized 149 phrases on diagnosis evidence of cardiogenic stroke. We use the phrases to generate an annotated corpus automatically, which greatly reduces the cost of manual annotation. The model trained based on the corpus also has a good performance on the testing set. The method of automatically identifying diagnosis evidence of cardiogenic stroke proposed in this study will be further refined in the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how the act of witnessing takes distinctive discursive shape in social media in the context of large-scale disasters or crisis events. Drawing upon a set of microblogs posted on China's most widely used social media platform, Weibo, immediately after one of China's most serious industrial accidents, this study shows how witnessing manifests itself through individual eyewitness accounts foregrounding personal experience but constrained within Weibo's standard protocol of 140 Chinese characters. Often blending word and image, these accounts are examined using methodologies drawn from discourse analysis. On this basis, we argue that witnessing in social media in China not only demonstrates strong participatory, connective, and self-reflexive characteristics. It also opens up new possibilities for various patterns of meaning, which, when appropriated by other social media users, constitute a public testimony that can challenge official discourses of crisis in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines environmental public service announcements, or eco-PSAs, as increasingly crucial yet under-investigated tools for environmental communication in mainland China. Following an overview of existing gaps in the literature on both visual and localized forms of environmental communication, it evaluates the birth, development and new trends of Chinese eco-PSAs. It then explains the process of data collection and the methodology employed, which is visual semiotic analysis. The corpus consists of seven print eco-PSAs, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), that employ "Chinese elements" as the main creative strategy. Findings show that these eco-PSAs use a range of culturally loaded elements (from folk art and idioms to inanimate objects, from Chinese characters to animal symbols) as intertextual references or visual metaphors to promote awareness of animal protection, ecological protection and resource saving, as well as reinforcing national culture. This contribution opens up new directions in researching visual environmental communication in a global context and presents new empirical findings demonstrating that, in Chinese eco-PSAs, local culture still matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kunqu is a comprehensive art which is considered to be an epitome of the achievements of Chinese Xiqu. It was unanimously selected by UNESCO from the first round of entrants for the category of "Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity", with emphasis on its heritage value as embodied in language, literature, music, singing technique, dance, performance, set design, makeup, and more, and has been given the status of living fossil by artists both in China and abroad. Based on the relationship between the intonation of Chinese characters and singing techniques, especially the criterion in Kunqu that the "singing technique follows the intonation of a Chinese character", we attempt to deduce the intonation of Chinese characters in the Suzhou-Zhongzhou dialect based on its singing technique. Specifically, we deduce the archaic intonations of Chinese characters by the exclusive singing techniques in Kunqu for the purpose of exploring a new approach to Chinese phonology of the Ming and Qing dynasties from an interdisciplinary perspective of artistic criterion and linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithobius (Ezembius) varioporus sp. nov. (Lithobiomorpha, Lithobiidae), recently discovered from Longquanguan Town, Fuping County, Baoding City, Hebei Province, China, is described. Morphologically it resembles to Lithobius (Ezembius) laevidentata Pei, Ma, Hou, Zhu & Gai, 2015 from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, but can be easily distinguished from the latter by the Tömösváry's organ, slightly smaller than the adjoining ocelli, no secondary sexual modifications on male tibia 14 and 15, posterior accessory spine of legs 14 and 15 present and the number of coxal pores varying considerably from three to eight. The main morphological characters of the known Chinese species of the subgenus Ezembius Chamberlin, 1919 based on adult specimens are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]