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Women’s shifting positions in common public space have contributed significantly to the historical ebb and flow of Taiwan’s cosmopolitanism. The importance of Austronesian and Bendi 本地 contributions to Taiwan’s history are widely accepted, but women’s roles in these contributions are still largely overlooked. Austronesian women facilitated the sociality across diversity that made Taiwan cosmopolitan under seventeenth-century Dutch colonialism. But cosmopolitanism is a fragile social niche, and it waned under Qing settler colonialism. Taiwan’s post-1860 forced reentry into global trade—with a woman-processed product, tea, as its top export—again expanded cosmopolitanism under late Qing and early Japanese rule, also expanding Bendi women’s quotidian public engagements. Recovery from a long, war-related, mid-twentieth-century nadir occurred via economic development that was driven by global trade and relied particularly on Bendi women’s labor. Historical intersectionality has repeatedly enabled social linkages for burgeoning cosmopolitanism in Taiwan. Keywords: Taiwan, cosmopolitanism, gender, indigeneity, public sphere, Austronesian, Bendi, ethnic intermarriage, global trade, historical contingency

The role of local governments in the determination and manipulation of ethnic identity in China is examined. In the 1980s in the Enshi region, people who had previously thought of themselves as belonging to the Han majority were reclassified as Tujia in response to central government directives. The local government serves as a mediating force between the local population and central government in this issue.

Previous studies indicate that rifle shooting performance while standing is compromised when fatigued. Apprehension of suspects by police officers may involve foot pursuit and firing a weapon from a standing position. The purpose of the current study was to investigate pistol shooting performance in police officers under similar conditions of physical fatigue. Participants (mean age: 30.1 years; 4.4 years of experience as police officer) completed two shooting trials separated by an acute bout of exercise on a cycle ergometer to voluntary exhaustion. Each trial consisted of three rounds of five rapid-fire shots at a target, each round separated by a 15-s rest. Participants' backs were turned to the target between rounds. Despite physical exertion, with an average heart rate of 164 bpm, shooting accuracy (mean distance of the closest 4 shots from the center of the target) and precision (diameter of the tightest 4-shot grouping) remained unchanged on postexercise trials relative to preexercise trials. This suggests that automatic shooting reactions override the adverse consequences of fatiguing exercise on shooting performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications of orthopraxy on identity of ethnic groups during the late imperial period of China, are discussed.

Adoption is sometimes considered paradoxical from an evolutionary perspective because the costs spent supporting an adopted child would be better spent on rearing one's own. Kin selection theory is commonly used to solve this paradox, because the adoption of closely related kin contributes to the inclusive fitness of the adoptive parent. In this paper, we perform a novel test of kin selection theory in the context of adoption by asking whether adopted daughters-in-law, who contribute directly (i.e. genealogically) to the perpetuation of their adoptive families' lineages, experience lower mortality than daughters adopted for other purposes in historical Taiwan. We show that both classes of adopted daughter suffer lower mortality than biological daughters, but that the protective effect of adoption is stronger among daughters who were not adopted with the intention of perpetuating the family lineage. We speculate as to the possible benefits of such a pattern and emphasize the need to move beyond typological definitions of adoption to understand the specific costs and benefits involved in different forms of caring for others' children.

Since the 1990s, inter-provincial female migration for marriage has become important in central and eastern rural China. Using survey data from X County in rural Anhui Province, we explore the arrangement of inter-provincial marriages, as well as the characteristics of husbands and wives, marital satisfaction and marital stability for these marriages. We find that inter-provincial marriage is an important option for local men to respond to the marriage squeeze and the increasing expense of marriage. It helps to relieve the shortage of marriageable women in the local marriage market. Because this kind of marriage is based on economic exchange, but not affection, it is often subject to a higher risk of marriage instability, and can lead to such illegal behaviors as marriage fraud and mercenary marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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In China, the imbalanced sex ratio at birth is compounded by problems of surplus males at adult ages in certain regions of the country. Remote and less-developed rural areas are affected by mass outmigration of young people, women especially. In a society where social pressure to marry is very strong, the shortage of young single women is creating a serious male marriage squeeze, and men must apply a wide range of strategies to find themselves a wife. Using a matchmaking network to find a spouse before it is too late is one such strategy. Lige Liu, Xiaoyi Jin, Melissa Brown and Marcus Feldman examine access to marriage in a rural county of Anhui province using data from a quantitative survey of married and never-married men. While showing that the probability of marriage varies according to certain individual socioeconomic characteristics, they demonstrate that matchmaking networks play an essential role. The men who use such networks, based on kin or non-kin ties, are twice as likely to marry as the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women’s work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women’s status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in footbinding in two counties in Shaanxi province. Drawing on historical sources and their own interview data from rural women who grew up in this period, the authors find evidence that transformations in textile production undercut the custom of footbinding and contributed to its rapid demise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to reviews of the book "Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities," which concludes that an actual Taiwan identity exists which is distinct from Chinese identity, based on the argument that actual identities are based on social experience and not on culture or ancestry as ideologies claim. The author asserts that most of the reviewers' analyses often did not recognize the importance of separating political motivations and rhetoric of ideologies from actual identities. One of the reviewers has suggested identity as a kind of psychological coping mechanism or an unfolding of cultural beliefs acquired early.

Lists the contributors for the March 2001 issue of the Asian Ethnicity periodical. Educational background of Bamo Qubumo, writer of the Nusou folklore; Career of Melissa J. Brown aside from writing; Ethnic background of Ma Erzi.