Episode 30 of the podcast is now available on the Sinobabble website, as well as anywhere you get your regular podcasts.
This week’s episode is about China's post-1949 literary world up until around 1960. We discuss how writers were organised by the party-state, what kind of works they produced, and what was considered acceptable and unacceptable. How good were Chinese writers at producing socialist realist works? Turns out the answer changed on a daily basis.
Also for some reason I sound really bored in this episode, when I wasn't when I was recording! I guess I need to work on my energy levels...
Some featured reading for this week
‘The atmosphere has become abnormal’: Han Chinese views from Xinjiang: More updates on Xinjiang, this time featuring interviews with a couple of Han Chinese who live in the region. Quite unique and insightful perspectives that you don't get to read about every day.
How One Obscure Word Captures Urban China’s Unhappiness: Interview with a professor of Anthropology on the use of the word 'involution' on Chinese social media to encapsulate a feeling of homogeneity and competition in modern society, which in turn is making people unhappy. Is it possible for Chinese people to quit the competitive rat race and find their own path in life?
The Hidden Language Policy of China’s Research Evaluation Reform: An interesting blog post by Westminster University about changes to the academic environment of 'publish or perish' in China. They highlight the fact that the government want people to focus on quality over quantity, as well as publishing in domestic, Chinese language journals. This goes someway to boosting my argument that China is becoming more inward looking, focusing less on trying to impress the rest of the world, and more on trying to improve their own science and research. One thing I don't agree with is the post's assertion that Mandarin might become a lingua franca:
"For most of modern history, there was no single scientific lingua franca. Until the Second World War, English, French, and German all held substantial shares of global research activity, and a reading knowledge of two, if not all three, of those languages was a common expectation of professional researchers... Unleashing China’s full potential would not require replacing English as the hegemonic standard for scientific communication, but only establishing Mandarin alongside it in a bilingual research ecosystem, effectively claiming for the 2020s the role that German and French held in the 1920s."
Either this person has never tried to learn Chinese, or they never stopped to wonder why some people choose to study biochemistry instead of linguistics.
Pro-democracy legislators threaten mass walkout in latest HK-China clash
Taiwan locked out of key WHO Covid talks
As China’s Propaganda Push Continues, Wuhan Emerges as a Star: Resisting the strong urge to quote a saying about bodies not even being cold, here's an article about a spate of Covid-themed documentaries and shows that have sprung up in China. Propaganda works usually portray Wuhan as a city of heroes as China pushes the idea that China is a model of governance, ignoring the grief and anguish suffered by many during the height of the pandemic.