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Studies on care in Chinese transnational families often rely on bi-generational exchanges, failing to capture how care circulates within the families from a fully-generational perspective. The so-called 'elderly' is a key group for understanding care and mobility in these families; nevertheless, the existing research focuses either on their role as children caregivers or sees them as dependent people, resulting in a polarized perspective which also fails to understand the fluidity of care roles along the life course. Moreover, the generic term 'the elderly' may refer to one of several generations (grandparents/ great-grandparents). Based on qualitative data from a multi-sited ethnography (in China and Spain), this paper explores the circulation of care within four-generation transnational Zhejianese families. In these, the gendered construction of care work is the norm, despite the fact that new spaces for challenging specific gendered roles and practices are being created. In contrast, a high level of plurality and fluidity in care exchanges and care roles across generations, time and space has been observed. These factors are shaped, to different degrees, by local and transnational contexts, with the Chinese culture-system playing a key role. Finally, the paper highlights the contributions of the grandparents' generation to families and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic paper documents the gendered spaces created by China's returned dagongmei (factory girls) in the context of industrial relocation from coastal regions to neoliberalizing hinterlands. It finds that these rural women's locality selection decisions for industrial work, either in the new local industrial park, or in their own upstart living-room factories, help them bargain with patriarchy upon their return. By utilizing market forces and entrepreneurial mindsets in the relocated industrial sectors prioritized by local governments, they eventually shift the familial patriarchy. They also penetrate the hegemony of neoliberalism, and strategically align with patriarchal resources when disadvantaged in the capital chain. This study uncovers the simultaneous presence and dynamic interactions of intersectional structural power systems and the women's multiple forms of practices. In doing so, it also documents the Chinese versions of 'bargaining with patriarchy' and neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do university students participate in extra-curricular activities in China? What do they seek in a meaningful education? This paper explains the rising interest in extra-curricular activities by looking into students’ frustration about classroom-bounded education in China’s universities. A transforming socio-economic landscape and increasing imagination about global modernity have inspired new neoliberal demands for practical knowledge and personal meaning. And yet, China’s universities have failed to keep up with students’ changing visions of education, success, and productive personhood. This paper explores students’ agentive pursuit of sociability and emotional sensitivity through extra-curricular activities as a lens to examine the fluidity of meaning-making in contemporary China. In the process, I discuss why self-reported aspirations in skill cultivation cannot encompass the range of motivations that have driven students to extra-curricular participation, and explain how the ethnographic method can help to address gaps of knowledge in inquiries about youthful aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the linguistic landscape (LL) signs of an "urban village" inhabited by rural–urban migrant workers in suburban Beijing. Migrant workers have moved to urban centers for low-skill low-income jobs on a massive scale over past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Some of them start to invest their time and energy in building a new workers' community and in constructing urban workers' identities through linguistic and semiotic practices. Producing and displaying LL signage is part of this identity construction process. In this study, I present three examples to analyze the relationship between space, LL signs and identity construction. Ethnography allows me not only to observe the LL signs as semiotic resources but also to approach the authors and the audience and to find out their uptake of the signs. The results show that the LL signs shape social meanings of the space and the space in turn is agentive in constructing its inhabitants' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a sensory ethnography of an ethnic Hakka specialty known as 'Luodai Bean Jelly' (or the Sad Bean Jelly) in Luodai Ancient Town in the suburban area to the east of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. From the perspectives of objectivity, historicity, modernity and sociality, the metaphorical meanings of the Sad Bean Jelly as an ethnic food used for the transformation of a place through tourism are explored. Individual feelings and collective memories of the ethnic food are constructed in the context of tourism-driven commercialization, which is felt to have transformed the ancient town into a place for out-of-town visitors. The research sheds light on, and hence has implications for managing change of a place associated with ethnic culture, food and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African economies are currently characterised by the increasing penetration of made-in-China products, resulting in a resurgence of academic interest in the 'country of origin' (COO) studies. The existing literature has described Chinese products as 'inferior' and patronised by the poor who cannot afford 'superior' brands from elsewhere. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with 65 consumers and 15 suppliers of made-in-China products in Ghana, this paper unpacks the notion of 'inferiority' of 'made-in-China' and the process of uptake in Ghana. The findings indicate that increasingly, Ghanaians of different socioeconomic statuses patronise made-in-China and employ various approaches including foot-in-the-door technique, the demand for product warranty and reliance on product reviews to guarantee their purchases. The findings, therefore, challenge the constraining effect of COO as a determinant of purchasing behaviour and reiterate the creativity and innovativeness of consumers to safeguard their private interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Open-Door Policy has brought significant changes in terms of economic, education and cultural development both inside and outside China, creating valuable opportunities for understanding the cultural stereotypes Asians and Westerners have about each other. In this paper, I interrogate my experiences as an English as a foreign language (EFL) learner and then as a lecturer in multilingual and multicultural environments from the early 1990s until a lecturer in a Chinese university in the twenty-first century. My series of auto-ethnographic dialogues between a cast of characters, recalling experiences, perceptions and emotions provides readers with opportunities to actively respond to the text. Through this auto-ethnographic memoir and performance, I hope to contribute to new directions for narrative research in intercultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of an eight-month ethnographic study of a small group of at-risk youths in a school of a southern coastal city in China. The process leading to the young students being marginalised by the school system and how they developed a ‘muddling through’ subculture to counteract this marginalisation is revealed. It is argued that this small group of at-risk youths has capitalised on their subculture and used it to resist authorities, to acquire social skills and to safeguard their psychological well-being. The present study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, the in-depth description of the subculture of a group of at-risk youths in a Chinese school provides a Chinese angle for youth (post-) subculture studies. Second, the critical discussion about the ‘empowerment’ role that the ‘deviant’ subculture plays enriches the literature about the functions of youth culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper opens with a critical analysis of a paradox in contemporary educational research in and about Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC): the assumption that national boundaries coincide with those of a distinct and homogeneous culture, which consistently renders a rather homogenous set of educational phenomena, and collides against a more widely accepted discourse – culture transcends geographical frontiers and is ever evolving in character. It is claimed that this paradox is due to the fact that a thin conception of CHC competes neck-and-neck with a thick conception of it. This paper also addresses the possibility of an ad hoc education research methodology in and about CHC and its compliance issues regarding the mainstream Western research dynamics and philosophy of science. Confucian elements relevant to CHC research rationale are discussed to argue that: first, research is inextricably a moral act insofar as free actors are involved in it; second, most sui generis methodological problems attached to CHC occur in the sphere of ethics; and, third, a research methodology that takes into account phenomenographic variation could be the best suited to ease emic–etic tensions inherent to CHC-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates web users, their sexual behaviours and self-representations as observed on a sex and dating site. The website concerned is a massive social network for sexual self-display and encourages members to find real-life partners for sex - whether this be casual sex affairs between singles, swinging couples or extra-marital affairs between 'aba' (attached but available) individuals and their lovers. The paper analyses the imaging strategies of Chinese and non-Chinese web users in reference to the playful adoption of commonplace notions of sexiness as 'cybertypes'. The aim is to reflect on these online behaviours as changing sexual culture while also debating the use of libidinal online personalities as a cognitive apparatus within sex research. The paper thus explores sexual identity within social networks as auto-ethnography and the dual identities and boundary-crossing agencies of web-based researchers and their subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has instigated language policies in education ostensibly designed to foster trilingualism in ethnic minority groups. The policies, which, as this paper shows, vary from region to region, encompass the minority group's home language, Chinese, and English. Based on data arising from interviews, documentary analysis and secondary sources, this paper examines the tensions behind these trilingual education policies by comparing the implementation of policies for three minority groups: the Zhuang, the Uyghur and the Yi people. It identifies some of the facilitators and barriers that affect the achievement of trilingualism, and finds that ethnic minority languages are at a disadvantage compared with Chinese and English. The paper concludes by making some suggestions for enhancing the effectiveness of the trilingualism policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs ethnographic method to theorise about the ethnic contribution networks enabled by major Australian political parties, with specific regard to Chinese Australian formations, and in the context of globalisation's impact upon 'de-nationalising' political institutions. The paper expands upon the notion of the contribution network by situating it within network theory literature, asserting the need for stability in the diffuse forms of resource exchange indicates that it is sustained by mixed and weak network ties. The character of the contribution network as a significant mode of political engagement by ethnic Chinese network actors, moulds participation in the political process that is both party ambivalent and politically apathetic. Its impact upon Chinese Australian political incorporation raises important questions about the role of progressive political theory, which through the politics of recognition has sought to legitimate modes of group representation, including clientelistic formations, as a means to enhancing the political inclusion of marginalised Australian migrant and ethnic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic Koreans in China have been widely recognized as a 'model minority' primarily for academic success. Using the data collected as part of a larger ethnographic research on Korean elementary school students, this paper examines how 27 Korean families construct meaning out of the model minority stereotype in the context of their lived experience in Northeast China. Research results indicate that Koreans constructed the multi-faceted nature of 'model minority' as a matter of cultural superiority and dual economic marginalization in the Chinese and South Korean mainstream societies, and valued education as a practical means to achieve economic upward mobility into the Chinese mainstream. This paper argues that the model minority stereotype with the cultural explanations for Korean success may reinforce the cultural deficiency argument about the academic failure of 'backward' minorities, silence the disadvantages suffered by Koreans in China's reform period and lead to no active intervention to remedy them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected in Lanzhou, this paper examines the effect of minority ethnicity on neighbourly relations in China. It shows that the Hui as a whole express a higher level of satisfaction at relations with neighbours than the Han do. It also shows that the Hui advantage is removed with key background characteristics controlled. Finally, this paper shows intra-group variation among the Hui. These findings suggest that social status is a better predictor of neighbourly relations than the focus on inter-group contrast in traditionality in the existing scholarship of the Hui. Both inter- and intra-group variation in urban life must be examined to attain a more balanced picture of Hui Muslims in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Chinese genealogical records, also called pu die , zong pu , zu pu , jia pu , zi pu , or jia cheng , have been used for thousands of years to record the genealogical history of a family, including a family''s origin, its collateral lines, names and ages of the members, records of marriages, births and deaths, merits and deeds, and brief biographical information of the male family members. This paper examines the current documentation status of Chinese genealogical records. It begins with the historical background of genealogical records and describes the existing sources, including primary sources for researching Chinese surnames and secondary sources for reading on immigration history, the Chinese diaspora, foreign settlements, and ethnic identity. The paper proceeds to investigate the nature of extant genealogical records and provide author''s own genealogy of He shi zu pu as an example to analyze the contents of a typical genealogical record. The importance and value for the study of names and genealogical records are emphasized. The paper concludes with comments on how to make the best use of genealogical records to enhance the research on Chinese overseas studies through resource-sharing and collaboration with libraries, museums, and institutions, locally, regionally, and internationally. Display Omitted Display Omitted Display Omitted Display Omitted Display Omitted Display Omitted Display Omitted [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A major goal of education for Tibetans, as for all China's ‘minority nationalities’, has been to encourage patriotism towards China and to foster a sense of nationhood. This paper considers the ways in which this priority has conditioned the schooling of Tibetans since 1950. Although this priority is unchanging, the paper looks at how it varies in degree and content as political leaders or policies change. An analysis of the primary curriculum reveals the process whereby Tibetan ethnicity is recreated through selective rendering of elements of Tibetan culture, history and religion to reposition it in the Chinese national context. It argues that while in central China the ideological content of the curriculum may have diminished with economic development, in Tibet, as in other border regions, the particular blend of patriotic and moral education is likely to continue as long as the Chinese state feels threatened by outside cultural and political influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how an incorporated ethnic community has gradually lost its agency for change or subjectivity to face the state. Contrary to what a postcolonial writer wants to see, in the diasporic Shui community of Yizhou (a city in China's Guangxi Autonomous District) there is a lack of agency for change or self-empowerment. The paper reports how the Shui identity is reduced to a by-product of ancestor worship within each family. The loss of agency for change and willing acculturation do not necessarily confirm the state-promoted modernization theory's linear historiography. What the Shui example proves is that the agency for change cannot be taken for granted. Although the hybrid component in the Shui ethnicity is not felt today, the chances that some revived ethnic consciousness can reinvent cultural customs should not be ruled out, as long as the Shui communities continue to carry the name of Shui. The invention of ‘The Shui people grabbing the flower lamp’, and the interpretation of keeping old trunks in the ancestors’ place are two such possible starting points. However, hybridity of this sort is reinvented from, and not embedded in, their identity. Nevertheless, the quest for being different from the larger community is both a matter of internal need and an external construction. This is why the simple name of Shui cannot guarantee itself as a basis for revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is not only the most populous country in the world, but also a multinational country with 56 ethnic groups. Tibetans (4.6 million in 1990) ranked in number as the ninth largest minority group. The Tibet question has attracted wide publicity in the Western media in recent years. The Chinese government is frequently criticised for political oppression and human rights violation in Tibet, particularly in three population-related areas: genocide, forced birth control programmes and population transfer. Surprisingly, international demographic circles show little interest in these controversies. This paper aims to re-examine the myths and facts about the Tibetan population in China, in an attempt to achieve a better understanding of the Tibet question as a whole. This paper is organised roughly into four parts: introduction, including the definition of Tibet, total Tibetan population in China, an examination of the 'genocide' myth, and a review of family planning programmes and population transfer in Tibetan inhabited areas. Government data used in this paper come primarily from various publications of the 1990 National Census results. Information compiled by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGIE), is used as a comparison, in addition to some other Western sources. Analyses show that the 'genocide' myth is not supported by indirect estimates on Tibetan mortality, and the 'forced birth control' allegation lacks solid demographic foundation. On the contrary, Tibetan population has experienced an unprecedented growth since the early 1960s. Still dominant in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Tibetans were only slightly outnumbered by non-Tibetans in other Tibetan prefectures in neighbouring provinces. However, the number of non-Tibetans transferring into ethnographic Tibet is on the rise. Instead of explicit resettlement programmes, the migration flow is triggered primarily by structural transformation and the Government's modernisation policy. It is historic coincidence if the current policies run counter to the interest of Tibetan nationalists. However, under no circumstances should one believe that time is running out for a political solution of the Tibet question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of statistical properties of phonemes in Standard Chinese in terms of frequency of occurrences, statistical models for frequency distribution and synergetic relations. The results indicate that vowels and nasals are used most frequently but un-aspirated consonants and sounds articulated at the back of the mouth are pervasive in Standard Chinese. The vowels with the falling pitch are significantly more frequent than those with the other tones and the phonemes /i4/, /a4/ and /ə2/ are the top three vowels in the speeches. The usages of phonemes are relatively stable across 20 years. The Cocho/Beta function has a best fit to the ranked frequency distribution of phonemes. The synergetic analysis reveals a strong dependence of phoneme frequency on phoneme complexity and word frequency. The more complex a phoneme is, the less frequently it is used, but the more frequently a word is used, the more it is composed of frequent phonemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core mode of governance in the era of neoliberalism is through the production of ‘entrepreneurial self’. This paper explores how the ‘entrepreneurial self’ is produced for 21 Chinese immigrant women in Canada. The women displayed extraordinary entrepreneurialism by investing in Canadian education. Becoming entrepreneurial, however, is more than an individualised ‘choice’. It is imbricated with the ideology of meritocracy cultivated in China, the ‘credential and certificate regime’ in Canada, and the gendered expectations in the host labour market and at home. Given the ideological confluence, and the material conditions the women lived, a feminized and racialized labour is reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What Western academic literature described as ethnic or cultural Tibet in fact implies something composite and processually constructed: Tibet then often appears as a typical example for explanations of collective identity (and ethnicity). Such approaches increasingly are applied in present-day anthropology and historical studies, highlighting the historical conditions and the politically, socially and ideationally constructed features of identity. In Tibet, identity-building was strongly related to the spread of Buddhism. The new religion was introduced in the time of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth century), but it was only its later spread (from the eleventh century) that led to the effective, all-embracing establishment of Buddhism in the Highlands. It was interlinked with regionally different forms of political manifestations—the founding of Buddhist kingdoms at the periphery and the emergence of monastic hegemonies in the central regions. These developments correlated with processes of conversion, which in its narrative model is described as an act of conquest, taming and civilizing the physical universe and which in theory actually never ends. Apart from considering current anthropological discussions of the phenomenon of religious conversion, this paper will include a comparative view of the history of Christianization in early medieval Europe (especially in Western Europe—the Frankish kingdom and the barbarian zones North of the Rhine and the Danube, fifth to tenth century). Inter alia this also raises questions about the initial social forces and interests promoting the new religion's adoption, and to what extent formal similarities with the Tibetan case are ascertainable in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection of essays opens a critical examination of compassionate acts responding to social suffering in the intensely complex moral context of a rapidly changing and globalizing China. Jeanne Shea describes self-compassion among older women in China as a post-revolutionary response to changing opportunities and resistance to consumerism. Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce's essay frames the Buddhist organizations as NGOs and shows compassion being mobilized and its acts being spiritual-philanthropic, not political. The next three papers illuminate the complexity of mobility in a moral sea of changing values. Even as modernity facilitates movement of people away from suffering, the grinding of entangled moral experiences within the mobile group can be the cause of suffering. Shu-Min Huang critiques ‘cultural petrification’ as the diasporic Yunnan Chinese community in Thailand attempt to preserve the cultural forms and procedures of the world they left behind. Likewise, Richard Madsen shows that the idea of a universalized cultural heritage fails in the face of the ‘micro-ecologies’. And yet the modern impulse to universalize beyond China has important implications for transnational compassion and cooperation. The work of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières in China, discussed by Kuah-Pearce and Guiheux, challenges the universality of global humanitarian actions. Following the series of essays threaded across intersections of compassion, suffering, and a morally-divided China, the collection closes by looking at the West. Iain Wilkinson discusses the origins of social suffering as a focus of the social sciences, as well as the difficulties of making engaged compassion its task in a morally-divided world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with reading, writing and listening, there has been a paucity of empirical data documenting learners' experiences of speaking English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) in different learning contexts in spite of the fact that developing the ability to speak in a second or foreign language is widely considered a daunting task for most language learners. This paper reports on the findings of a questionnaire survey of the English speaking difficulties experienced by two Chinese populations: one group of university students from mainland China and one group of university students from Hong Kong. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, the students' perceived difficulties are analysed in relation to linguistic deficiency, oral language processes, conversational skills and academic speaking conventions, affective influence as well as affordance of opportunities to use English for spoken communication in the students' learning contexts. Important implications of the results for pedagogical practices that foster development of ESL or EFL speaking skills are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2000, the Chinese Communist Party established the Xinjiang Class (Xinjiang neidi gaozhong ban), a program that funds middle school-aged students from Xinjiang, mostly ethnic Uyghur, to attend school in predominately Han populated cities located throughout eastern China. This paper examines the efficacy of the Xinjiang Class in promoting ethnic unity and Chinese nationalism. By examining the extent to which Uyghur students participating in the Xinjiang Class interact with Han students; speak Chinese outside of the classroom; and by considering if these Uyghur students are returning to Xinjiang, I argue that many Uyghurs are resisting integration, and the Xinjiang Class is largely failing to promote ethnic unity between Han and Uyghurs. Conversely, this program has even strengthened some Uyghur students' sense of ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of Lik Lu Pu Khwan Khao, a chant used in the worship ceremony to the god of rice Pu Khwan Khao of Dehong Tai in Yunnan. The ceremony is performed after the harvest to express gratitude to Pu Khwan Khao. Related ceremonies are found among other groups of Tai peoples. The ceremony is related to the rice myth of Dehong Tai in which Pu Khwan Khao claimed that his merit was comparable with that of the Buddha since nobody could stay alive without him, including the Buddha who could attain awakening only after consuming rice. The Buddha accepted this claim and told people not forget to worship Pu Khwan Khao. The myth reflects a compromise between ancient Tai belief and Buddhism. However, the compromise between and combining of these two sets of belief are also expressed in the Lik Lu Pu Khwan Khao chant. People express their gratitude to Pu Khwan Khao for providing them with rice, not only for nourishment but also for giving alm to monks, one of the most significant practices in Buddhism. Moreover, when people present offerings to Pu Khwan Khao, they form the aspiration to be reborn in the time of the future Buddha, Maitreya, and to attain Nirvana after listening to him preach. This traditional aspiration shows how the ancient ritual of Pu Khwan Khao worship is now intrinsically associated with the Buddhist practice of generosity as a kind of gift giving. From this we may conclude that, for the Dehong Tai in Yunnan, the aim of Pu Khwan Khao worship is not only fertility but also the ultimate Buddhist felicity, Nirvana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]