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This research aimed to (1) study the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (2) develop a curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory, and (3) compare undergraduate students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage before and after teaching. The sample group was 50 students who were selected to attend the Intangible Cultural Heritage curriculum in the spring semester of 2023. The research tools were (1) Lesson plans (2) a Questionnaire on the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (3) an Interview form on the current situation and existing problems regarding students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (4) understanding intangible cultural heritage test, (5) Observation of Students' Behavior form, and (6) Interview form on opinions about teaching. This study was conducted in three steps: (1.) The study on the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (2.) The development of a curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory, and (3.) The experimental and improvement of curriculum. The results of the study showed that: 1) The current situation and existing problems of the intangible cultural heritage of college students have three aspects: students, teachers, and the school environment. The most important current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage was the school environment aspects. 2) The Curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory includes 6 elements: Principle, Goal Contents, Learning process, Learning resource, and Evaluation. The learning process consisted of 4 steps: (1) Concrete Experience, (2) Reflective Observation, (3) Abstract Conceptualization, (4) Active Experimentation 3) The curriculum based on experiential learning theory can improve undergraduate students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage.

Chinese Tujia folk songs, deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the Tujia ethnic group, serve as a living repository of history, values, and traditions. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the historical development of education and cultural literacy in Chinese Tujia working songs in Chongqing. The comprehensive literature review provides insights into the history of the Tujia ethnic group, their musical heritage, and contemporary challenges to preserving their cultural traditions. The research site includes Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Shizhu Tujia Autonomous County, Pengshui Tujia, and Miao Autonomous County, and Qianjiang District. Key informants, including accomplished artists, academic researchers, and local experts, share their invaluable insights related to the preservation and performance of Tujia folk songs. By using the principles of music aesthetics, music ethnology, and ancient Chinese music history. The result of this study underscores the critical importance of preserving intangible cultural heritage, especially in the context of today's rapid modernization and globalization. They highlight those traditional folk songs, like Chinese Tujia working songs, hold immense cultural and historical value. The study also provides actionable recommendations for ensuring the continued vitality of these culturally rich songs. These suggestions can guide efforts to integrate Tujia folk songs into educational curricula, support local musicians and artists, and promote cultural events.

Polyphony, often used to describe a type of composition in early European music, is also practiced in other parts of the world, not only for aesthetic enjoyment but also to strengthen a society's cohesiveness. Examples of such musical traditions are found in sub-Saharan Africa and many mountainous regions of Europe, where group singing or music-making is part of the communal lifestyle. However, polyphony in Asian music, especially in East Asia, is rarely discussed. This article introduces two polyphonic singing traditions in East Asia: in the Wa people of southwest China and the Thao people of Taiwan. Members of these groups frequently use polyphonic techniques such as canonic imitation, antiphonal singing, melodic ostinato, or drone to accompany many sociocultural events. This article provides guidelines and teaching strategies for music educators to implement the interdisciplinary lessons in their classroom.

While official rhetoric of multiculturalism claims to value cultural diversity, everyday multiculturalism focuses on how people of diverse cultural backgrounds live together in their everyday lives. Research on everyday multiculturalism has documented ways through which people negotiate senses, sensibilities, emotionality, and relationality across intercultural contact zones. While recognizing the importance of human intentionality and community in conditioning coexistence, this article also points to the constitutive power of practice-based learning that emerges through the coming together of human and nonhuman beings. Drawing on a qualitative study of the learning experiences of six Chinese immigrants in community gardens on a university campus in Canada, this article shows three ways of learning that foster knowing, connecting, and hybrid knowledge production across cultures: (a) learning through communities of conviviality; (b) learning mediated through nonhuman things such as land, waste, and free-floating seeds; and (c) learning through assemblages that fold in culture, place, and space.

This study examines language attitudes among Mongols in Inner Mongolia, using an extensive questionnaire. Forty Mongolian students who are studying at Inner Mongolia Normal University participated in this study. The results show that Mongols hold more positive attitudes toward putonghua and English than toward the Mongolian language in many respects, such as for gathering information, gaining respect, succeeding in their studies, making friends, participating in social and school activities, and bonding in the community. Moreover, Mongols hold more positive attitudes toward learning and speaking their ethnic language than to English and putonghua at home and in school. (Contains 2 figures.)

Instrumental to the successful running of the Xinjiang Classes are its teachers, many of whom are Han Chinese. This article explores the important roles teachers of the Xinjiang Class play in the lives of Xinjiang Class students inside and outside of the classroom. From homesickness, to hygiene, to scholastic endeavors, Han teacher-mothers ("laoshi mama") help Xinjiang Class students overcome the hardships encountered studying in China interior, and in the process these teachers also gain the love and admiration of their students. (Contains 1 footnote.)

The learning community plays an important role in expanding lifelong learning ideas in social units such as cities, towns, and communities. Some European countries, Australia, Japan, Korea, and China are employing the idea of learning community to promote lifelong learning in local communities. In an effort to address recent social problems, China is engaged in building a harmonious society through many strategies, one of which is to develop a lifelong learning society composed of sub-social units such as learning cities, learning communities, learning towns, learning streets, and learning organizations and institutions. This case study describes how a local administrative district, the Zhabei Learning Community, serves as lifelong learning community in China. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The crux of this study lies in the consideration of the manner in which rights to citizenship are granted or denied, and in which the ensuing educational policy toward an ethnic minority influences identity formation. In this article the author first introduces a brief background of the two ethnic groups, ethnic Chinese in Korea and ethnic Koreans in China, and second, presents and discusses an informal survey on their perception of who they are and why. Finally, the author hopes to shed some light upon the ways in which citizenship and the nation-building process influence the identity formation of ethnic minority groups, by comparing and contrasting the cases of the Republic of Korea (henceforth called Korea or South Korea) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). (Contains 2 tables and 13 notes.)

This cross-cultural ethnography explored the global student mobility patterns of international students from English-speaking countries in China and asked research questions about (a) their motivational factors and acculturation expectations before arrival; (b) linguistic factors influencing their acculturative stressors in the host group community's culture and its academic, social, and public systems after arrival; and (c) their reflections on intergroup ideologies with the host community after graduation, based on looking ahead. This study collected data through fieldwork by observing and interacting with approximately 80 individuals from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in university towns in East China during the academic years from 2012 to 2023. In turn, 17 individuals who graduated before 2021 were selected as the final sample to conduct in-depth interviews. The study placed the concepts of acculturation expectations and intergroup ideologies at the nexus of linguistic hegemony, symbolic power, and social space. The overarching findings showed that despite positive motivations to visit China, language barriers led participants to express confusion, culture shock, anxiety, and perceived discrimination in their academic, social, and public domains. However, some participants who remained in China after graduation expressed their authentic voices regarding changes in attitude toward the host community culture and their heritage language. Therefore, this study focused on a different dimension of acculturation and linguistic ideology by examining how a linguistically and culturally dominant cohort faced acculturative challenges and negotiated to cope with their stressors in power dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the promise of English language teaching and the use of English as a medium of instruction, concerns have been growing about the decline in the number of English majors as well as structural problems in elite language education reflected in the rural-urban divide and resulting educational gaps in China. The English education major at a top language-intensive university could serve as a key site for this investigation. However, existing literature has significantly overlooked this important area. This study explored the life course stages of Chinese students who were originally from rural areas or socioeconomically underrepresented regions/districts and majoring in English education at a top language-intensive university located in Shanghai. By adopting a critical narrative ethnographic approach, the authors wrote field notes and conducted in-depth interviews with 18 study participants. The findings showed that mothers' involvement significantly influenced students' motivation to learn English, college admission, and academic major choice. However, students also developed personal perceptions about career prospects while in college. By applying the Bourdieusian approach to language and symbolic power, this study interpreted participants' developmental process of linguistic habitus and capital, regardless of their socioeconomic status. This study further interpreted their management of accumulated linguistic capital, while critiquing existing structural problems of the elite language education system, along with the English major crisis in the Chinese higher education system. As critical narrative ethnographers, the authors presented their reflexive turns on symbolic power and the future of English education in a Sino-Anglo context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the compatibility of authoritarianism and accountability through groundbreaking research on citizen supervision of local state agents, a novel form of accountability politics that has been underway in China for a decade. Based on an in-depth political ethnography of the Citizen Monitoring Organization in Wenzhou, this article examines how the authoritarian instrument that produces relations of domination can be turned into a bonanza for public accountability. The article demonstrates that local leaders may encourage citizens to help restrain the exercise of power in the lower state echelons when agent malfeasance is considered a threat to local leaders' career advancement. This opportunity structure leads to the mechanism of "state-backed supervision": enlisted citizen participants draw on the delegated and entitled authority of the state to demand accountability from local state agents. Examining the logic, dynamics, limitations, and outcomes of state-backed supervision, this article identifies a novel pathway to accountability in authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings the study of China's environment and society down to earth, through a micro-sociological inquiry into everyday environmental sensibilities under the Chinese state's ecological civilization framework. We empirically investigate the impact of ecological civilization on everyday life from the vantage point of China's zero-Covid period (2020-2022). During this period, the state's top-down approach to managing the environment and society was implemented in an airtight fashion, resulting in outcomes that illustrate both the promises and perils of ecological civilization. We organize ethnographic evidence into three clusters: human-to-non-human interactions, human-to-object relations, and human-to-human sociality. Our findings portray a touchless, ultrasanitized, tech-ubiquitous, and ecologically monotonous urban experience. The eco-civilized configuration of contemporary China negates some of the most basic human instincts about the environment. Ecological civilization therefore is a denaturalizing and dehumanizing project that self-aggrandizes as being both ecologically sound and civilizationally advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the vernacular system of racial designations and perceptions deployed by Chinese migrants in Italy for making sense of the pluralistic and hierarchical racial reality in which they live. Data primarily came from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bologna from 2014 to 2015 and the subsequent annual visits until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Focusing on three major racial labels, it sheds light on the ways in which Chinese diasporic subjects produce a racialized vocabulary related to racism and practice racial formations in transnational contexts. Their localised racial ideology reflects their predicament of being simultaneously both socially vulnerable and economically privileged. It paradoxically both reproduces and negotiates the preexisting Italian racial hierarchy that also reflects globally circulating racial hierarchies, while intersecting with their own understandings of civility and modernity. The perspectives of Chinese migrants who, themselves subject to racialisation, also racialise others reveal a contested bottom-up narrative of racial formation in a European society experiencing rapid demographic change. This ethnographic study thus challenges the existing narratives of racialisation and immigration beyond Eurocentric frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research note, I outline an approach to embodied experiences of care and caregiving in ethnographic scholarship on care. I describe how ethnographers of care and caregiving can use embodied methodologies, particularly through attending also to the cross‐cultural differences in embodied experiences. In this research note, I bring together care research and cross‐cultural embodied ethnography with my own work in Asia Pacific to outline an approach to researching care in the pluriverse – the multiple, overlapping realities of ontology, culture and experience that underpin all our lives. I draw on Annemarie Mol's conceptualisation of the body multiple (2002), Anna Tsing's understanding of awkward engagement (2005), Gibson‐Graham's reading for difference (2020) and Sean Hsiang‐lin Lei's research on hygiene (2014) to consider how researcher bodies might be useful in detecting pluriversal encounters in caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the interplays between media organisations, platform affordances and governance logic on Douyin, one of the most popular short video platforms in China, and how these forces work together to construct the narratives of frontline care workers during the Xi'an lockdown. A digital ethnography was conducted on Douyin through the first two months in 2022. After sorting the videos based on their popularity, the first 100 'most liked' videos were documented and coded thematically. The results show that official media accounts were the main providers of the 'most liked' videos during the lockdown. Frontline workers were seen in over half of the videos (n = 58). Nearly a quarter of the 100 'most liked' videos (n = 22) featured frontline workers as the focus. The prevailing sentiments manifested by the videos when focusing on frontline workers include uplifting, endearing, touching, grateful and empathetic. Only four videos took on a critical tone. This study contributes a Chinese perspective to the current knowledge of Internet celebrity culture by expanding the discussions on the nexus between political and commercial forces during a pandemic lockdown and the implications on China's celebrity culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A complex interaction and mutual influence exists among landscapes, cultures, and landraces, with rice culture being a typical embodiment of this relationship. The conservation of landraces operates alongside preserving traditional practices. The Xishuangbanna region stands out as a hub for the genetic diversity of landraces, boasting rich genetic resources. Despite the diverse rice resources in this region, a comprehensive and systematic study has not been undertaken. Methods: From October to November 2023, we collected rice landraces under the on-farm conservation in 18 townships including Menghai, Mengla and Jinghong in Xishuangbanna. Employing semi-structured interviews and various methods, we investigated factors influencing the preservation and loss of rice landraces in the region. Statistical analysis was applied to the agronomic traits of collected local rice, encompassing indica or japonica, glutinous or non-glutinous, grain shape, and hull color as second category traits. The second category included quantitative traits like thousand grain weight and grain length. Rice diversity among different regions, traits, and ethnic groups was assessed using the Shannon–Wiener index. Additionally, clustering analysis via the UPGMA method depicted the distribution characteristics of the resources. Results: A total of 70 rice landraces were collected in the Xishuangbanna region, each exhibiting distinct characteristics. Differences were observed across regions, trait, naming, and ethnic groups. Diversity analysis revealed that Mengla had the highest diversity, followed by Menghai, while Jinghong exhibited the lowest diversity. The second category of traits displayed broader diversity than the first, with the Dai people's glutinous rice showcasing greater diversity than other ethnic groups. Cluster analysis categorized the 70 samples into seven groups at a genetic distance of 1.15. Ethnobotanical interviews emphasized the rapid loss of rice landraces resources in Xishuangbanna, with indigenous ethnic cultures playing a vital role in the conservation of rice landraces. Dai traditions, in particular, played a crucial role in protecting glutinous rice resources, showcasing a mutual dependence between Dai culture and glutinous rice. Conclusions: The rich natural environment and diverse ethnic cultures in Xishuangbanna have given rise to various rice landraces. The Dai, primary cultivators of glutinous rice with higher diversity, intertwine their traditional ethnic culture with the conservation of glutinous rice resources. At the same time, the preserving glutinous rice resources promotes the inheritance of Dai ethnic culture. However, rice landraces are facing the risk of loss. Hence, collecting and documenting rice landraces is crucial. Encourage local communities to sustain and expand their cultivation, promoting on-farm conservation. These measures contribute valuable germplasm and genes for rice breeding and serve as a means of cultural preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What remains of a national day after it has passed? Weeks after it has ended banners celebrating China's 'birthday' on October first can still be seen all over Hong Kong. As government and pro‐China organizations hang up banners and flags all around Hong Kong, celebrating the birthday of the nation. These flags remind the people in Hong Kong that they are part of China, despite some thinking otherwise. I argue that these banners serve to 1. Remind people of Hong Kong's subordinate position within the nation state of China, 2. Show how the nation is performed, and 3. force the nation onto people as a forceful rather than a banal gesture. Drawing on theories of affect and space, ethnography, and photos taken by the author, this study adds to the theory and process of everyday nation‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious education is crucial for the transmission and development of Catholicism. China does not have an organized and institutionalized system for religious education as do Western countries. However, a unique folk religious education system named shanghui (上会) emerged in the localization of Chinese Catholicism. This study explores the development of shanghui through a combination of archival research and fieldwork, using the example of a rural Catholic community in southwest Hubei. Shanghui is a strategic localization practice adopted by the Catholic Church in response to social development and cultural changes. The study contributes to the exploration of the religious education model of the grassroots Catholic Church in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ti Qin Opera, a popular local performing art in Chongyang County, Hubei Province, China, was mainly performed during the birthday celebrations of the local people and the Chinese Spring Festival to enliven the atmosphere. However, in the last two decades, Ti Qin Opera has been frequently performed at funerals, forming a new practice--the mourning ritual--which has been widely accepted by the locals and has become a tradition. In this regard, two questions arise: Why does Ti Qin Opera appear at local funerals? How did the mourning ritual become a tradition? This study applies an ethnographic approach to investigate the performance of Ti Qin Opera at funerals. The emergence of the mourning ritual in funerals is attributed to the emotional need for filial piety and the local people's competitive mentality. The family of the deceased believes that if other families hire a Ti Qin Opera troupe to perform the mourning ritual, their family should not miss out on holding this last event for the deceased. Ti Qin Opera performers rely on their reputation and prestige accumulated over the centuries, and acceptance by the locals is a key factor in making the mourning ritual a tradition. Increased economic status among the Chongyang people and, subsequently, better financial capacity to hire Ti Qin Opera troupes further contribute to the development of the mourning ritual tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Most fisher-gatherer communities we know of utilized a limited number of natural resources for their livelihood. The Turkic-speaking Loptuq (exonym Loplik, Loplyk) in the Lower Tarim River basin, Taklamakan desert, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), were no exception. Their habitat, the Lop Nor marsh and lake area, was surrounded by desert and very poor in plant species; the Loptuq had to make the most of a handful of available biological resources for housing, furniture, clothing and fabric, fishnets and traps, tools and other equipment. The taxa used by the Loptuq were documented by foreign explorers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, prior to the forced resettlement of the group in the 1950s and subsequent destruction of their language, lifestyle and culture. Methods and sources: Ethnobiology explores the relationship between humans and their environment, including the use of biological resources for different purposes. In several aspects, historical ethnobiology is more challenging; it studies this relationship in the past and therefore cannot verify results with informants. As the present study discusses an extinct culture on the basis of literary and material sources, we apply a method called source pluralism. This approach allows the inclusion and combination of a wide range of data and materials, even scraps of information from various sources, with the aim to understand phenomena which are sparsely mentioned in historical records. Travel reports by Swedish, British, German, American and Russian explorers together with linguistic data provide the most important sources for understanding Loptuq interaction with the environment and its biota. Especially the large number of toponyms and phytonyms recorded by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin and materials from his expeditions, including voucher specimens kept in Stockholm in the herbarium of the Swedish Natural History Museum, and objects of material culture in the collections of the Ethnographical Museum, are crucial for our analysis about local knowledge among the Loptuq. Illustrations and photographs provide us with additional information. Results: The question of how the Loptuq managed to survive at the fringe of a desert, a marsh and a lake which changed its location, intrigued all foreign visitors to the Lop Nor. The Loptuq's main livelihood was fishing, hunting and gathering, and their material culture provided by plants and other organic materials included their usage, consumption and trade. Only a handful of species formed the basis of the Loptuq material culture, but they had learned to use these specific plants for a variety of purposes. The most important of these were Lop hemp, Poacynum pictum (Schrenk) Baill., the riparian tree Euphrates poplar, Populus euphratica Olivier, and the aquatic common reed, Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. Several species of tamarisk were used for fuel and building fences. A few plants were also harvested for making foodstuffs such as snacks and potherbs. In addition, the Loptuq also used fur, bird skins, down, feathers, mammal bones and fish bones for their material needs. The habitat provided cultural ecological services such as motifs for their folklore, linguistic expressions and songs, and the Loptuq engaged in small-scale bartering of plant products and furs with itinerant traders, which ensured them with a supply of metal for making tools. Conclusion: This article discusses the now extinct Loptuq material culture as it existed more than a hundred years ago, and how the scarce biological resources of their desert and marsh habitat were utilized. Loptuq adaptation strategies to the environment and local knowledge, transmitted over generations, which contributed to their survival and subsistence, were closely connected with the use of biological resources. For this study, a comprehensive approach has been adopted for the complex relationships between human, biota and landscape. The Loptuq are today largely ignored or deleted from history for political reasons and are seldom, if at all, mentioned in modern sources about the Lop Nor area. Their experience and knowledge, however, could be useful today, in a period of rapid climate change, for others living in or at the fringe of expanding deserts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic article focuses on the performance of Alce Lhamo (Sister Goddess) in Lithang, a Tibetan town on the western tip of Sichuan Province in China. It explores the linkages between local ways of residing in the world, the cosmological universe, and cosmopolitan centers. With an analysis of the two local Sister Goddess troupes and their competing claims to authority and authenticity, interactions with the local government, manipulation of state policies, and engagement with the global world, it sheds light on how people incorporate merit, karma, profit, power, the state, and the market in their vision of the good life, and how aspirations to the good life extend beyond the local and the social to include the cosmopolitan and cosmological scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mine parks and industrial heritage are relatively recent tourism phenomena, emerging in Europe and North America during the mid-twentieth century. In the People's Republic of China, government officials undertook large-scale promotion of mining heritage between 2005 and 2021, when 88 former state-sector mines were designated national parks. From an official vantage point, transforming former extractive industries into heritage sites helped communities negatively affected by the social and environmental legacies of mining and mine closure to pursue a future in China's lucrative tourism sector. To date, this endeavour has been little studied, with research on visitors' experiences particularly limited. In this article, we interrogate Chinese tourists' responses to national mining heritage by analysing online user-generated content (tourist reviews) from three coal-mines-turned-heritage parks. We ask how visitors made meaning at these sites, and whether and how the mining tourism imaginaries they co-constructed in online reviews resembled visitor experiences of mining heritage elsewhere. How Chinese tourists respond to the parks not only affects the state's ability to achieve its development goals, but also informs perceptions of mining, energy production, and tourism more broadly. Such perceptions have implications for sustainable resource and energy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has gained popularity in China's tertiary education as a result of globalization. International students in Chinese universities are celebrated as part of soft power projection to extend China's global impact. Informed by Piller and Cho's concept of "Neoliberalism as language policy" (2013) and Collins' "social reproduction theory" (2009, 2012), this study attempts to explore the EMI learning experiences of a cohort of international students at a border university in China. The policy documents, in-depth interviews, classroom observation, reflective journals and online interactions converge to reveal that, international students in EMI programmes experience exclusion and inequality despite the welcoming discourses of diversity. The paper highlights the necessity to pay attention to the ways in which higher education institutions reproduce inequalities of social stratification of international students through explicit and implicit institutional practices. It is argued that EMI policy in China's peripheral regions targeting international students from less-developed countries tends to perpetuate and accentuate educational inequalities. The study sheds light on a more inclusive pedagogical approach to alleviating international students' marginalisation and educating students of diverse linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic backgrounds for global citizenship in the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the impacts of mobility on individuals and their family ties in tourist destination communities, paying attention to the individualization process among the rural, ethnic minority population in contemporary China. Based on my decade-long ethnography in Fenghuang county, Hunan province, I explore how the rapid rise of tourism-induced mobility has brought individual autonomy and collective morality under constant negotiation among previously clan-based people, and what the course and consequences of ongoing individualization are for the non-Han population in China. I argue that individuals' greater mobility may enhance, rather than diminish, the importance of family, and that this is especially true for the rural, ethnic minority population in China. Their experience of dealing with individualization also reveals that the effect of social structure is to some extent unchanged, representing a case of "embedded individualization." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how student motivations to study abroad are shaped by what might be called the 'rationality–emotion nexus'. Drawing from 15 months of ethnographic engagement at a Chinese university, we show how rational factors (e.g., pursuit of financial resources) interact with emotional forces (e.g., love for family members) in dynamic and diverse ways to shape the pathways of African student migrants to higher education overseas. More specifically, we identify three distinct dynamics in the nexus: (i) rationality is entangled with emotions; (ii) rationality parallels emotions; and (iii) rationality and emotions transform each other. By foregrounding this nexus, the present study offers a critical intervention into international student mobility/migration studies as it develops 'an integrative approach' that transcends either a widely established rational framework of capital conversion or the emerging emotional geographies of transnational education migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After its global popularity and commercial success, Genshin Impact, a Chinese-developed, Japanese anime-style mobile game, provokes online discussions on whether such a game of cultural hybridity exemplifies "authentic Chineseness." Based on online ethnography in the fan communities, this article investigates a two-year debate on whether GI should be considered a symbol of China's "cultural export" to other countries. It reveals that players construct multiple meanings of authentic Chineseness, including GI's integration of Chinese cultural elements, telling "the China story," and its patriotism and "political correctness" in China. This article contributes to the project of de-westernizing cultural studies by revealing how the meanings of cultural authenticity are constructed in a Global South context. Moreover, players situate "Chineseness" in the power relations among China, Japan, and the West, and associate cultural appropriation in the increasing hybridization process with global soft power competition. It reveals that the construction of cultural authenticity as a relational concept is shaped by others defined in a contingent, contextual, and multilateral way, and that the construction process is conditioned by domestic and international power relations, thus contributing to the project of going beyond dichotomous thinking in cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The rise of vlogging (video blogging) culture in China has been entangled with the wanghong culture and platform economy, which creates tension between individual empowerment and structural power for vloggers. How do young Chinese vloggers construct online identities tactically to cope with the structural pressures? This dissertation explores young Chinese vloggers' practices, identities, and tactics in interaction with the social media platform Bilibili. By conducting a digital ethnography between 2018 and 2022, I argue that young Chinese vloggers tactically construct and perform their online identities to negotiate with norms, aesthetics, and regulations in the wanghong culture and platform economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic note-taking in the field is often imbued with emotions, shaped by power relations and influenced by participants' voice and agency. Though enough has been written about ethnography, discussions on the specific challenges of taking notes, particularly in research with children are limited. Drawing on three ethnographic field studies with children in schools in the UK, India and China, this article discusses fieldwork experiences to understand the challenges, dilemmas and complexities around note-taking in the field. Using a reflexive and intersectional lens, this article discusses the role of agency, power and emotions in the experiences of taking notes in child-centred research with children. It conceptualizes the need to understand the complexities when theories are operationalized in real-life research contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopted a social network perspective to explore the academic discourse socialization experiences of eight degree-seeking multilingual international students at a university in eastern China. Based on a triangulation of ethnographic interviews, social network questionnaires, and supplementary sources (e.g., voluntarily submitted recordings, texts about academic exchanges), the study revealed five patterns of students' social networks, including heterogeneous-sparse network, heterogeneous-dense network, homogeneous-sparse network, homogeneous-dense network, and balanced network. This resulting network typology was utilized to interpret the role of social networks in individuals' socialization trajectories, which were observed to include affecting capacities to negotiate academic norms, structuring channels to build and transform expertise, and shaping space for multicompetence development. While different network connections demonstrated different roles, networks with similar characteristics could exert divergent impacts, highlighting the mediation of a range of individual and sociocultural dynamics. Based on the findings, the study contributes to critical multilingual studies by offering theoretical implications for socialization research on community and competence, and providing practical suggestions for research, education, and program administration in international education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the first generation of Chinese Ethnologists, Yang Kun witnessed the development of Chinese ethnology in the twentieth century. Since his return from France in 1931, he had devoted almost 70 years before his death in 1998 to the teaching and research of Chinese Ethnology. The inheritor of the ethnology of the French Annales School in China, he was committed to promoting the School in China and applying its methodologies in the Chinese context. But after the 1950s, he shifted his academic focus to Marxist ethnology and became one of the founders of Chinese Marxist ethnology. The academic legacy left by Yang Kun has since emerged as a crucial academic foundation for Chinese Ethnology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of work that has examined Chinese immigration to the US has coined the term "culture of remittances": money that is sent home not only provides economically but also elevates the "face" of the family. However, using qualitative data from a multiyear ethnographic study of three undocumented and mixed-status Chinese families in the US and their families in China, we find that garnering face for the family is less of a motivator than the fear of losing it. This dynamic plays a role at all stages of immigration and amplifies existing norms in a way that perpetuates disadvantage experienced by Chinese immigrants. As these undocumented Chinese immigrants craft an idealized narrative of their lives in the US, more members from their sending communities are motivated to immigrate, leading to precarious consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon the tripartite model of translation policy, this study examines not only how China's legal rules on court interpreting for ethnic minorities are interpreted and implemented by local actors, but also how court interpreting for ethnic minorities is valued. By integrating ethnographic fieldwork and complexity theory, this article illuminates why local actors (inter)act in certain ways and how their interactions contribute to specific translation policies. The concept of 'constraints' alerts us to the causal influence of both realised and unrealised possibilities on a translation policy. The study shows that official regulations, the observed translation practices, and participants' views on the provision and use of translation constrain but do not determine each other. Meanwhile, unrealised possibilities in the social context have reinforced certain translation practices, such as the appointment of court interpreters for criminal trials and the tendency of interpreters to alter information. This study also reveals how the translation policies under scrutiny are related to individual actions. These findings shed light on why a translation policy exhibits uncertain behaviour and cannot be controlled by a certain individual or structure, while simultaneously showing specific patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic research conducted in two nursing homes in China, this article examines how institutional eldercare reshapes the expectations and practices of filial piety. It finds that families accept institutional care as a solution to the elderly care deficit. They expect a new division of care between labor and love, assigned to paid care workers and family members, respectively. This ideal of care division is rooted in the "intimate turn" in Chinese family life. Nevertheless, many family members go beyond this care division and remain deeply involved in nursing homes. On the one hand, adult children take on the responsibility to manage surrogate caretakers to improve the quality of care. On the other hand, they continue to provide personal care and companionship. Sharing family time is made the highest priority, especially in the face of impending death. This study goes beyond the binary division between commercial care and family care and sheds light on the transformation of filial piety in the commodification of eldercare in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many migrant workers in China are widely reported to experience difficulty in finding a conjugal partner or maintaining conjugal intimacy. Despite this widely shared perception, firsthand data about the love lives of migrant workers are hard to access. Yet, to have such knowledge is important, since these domains, though intimate and private, are crucial sites of socioeconomic exchange. In light of such challenges, how can ethnographers "get at" the emotional experiences of rural migrants outside standard frameworks? This article engages with this question through the intimate lives of one hundred women factory workers in China's Pearl River delta. Their experiences are documented—in poetic form—in Stories of Migrant Women written by China's best known rural migrant poet Zhang Xiaoqiong. The article approaches Zheng the poet as a de facto social science researcher, whose accounts of migrant women present myriad counter points to the government, media and cultural elites, and scholars. It also reads her poems about as ethnographic material, which, the article demonstrates, enriches, expands, and in some cases challenges scholarly research. Situated in a China-specific social and political context, the article's discussion goes beyond the call for a "literary turn" in anthropology. Instead, it argues that for scholars who are serious about understanding the emotional cost of social inequality in China, seeking partnership with China's subaltern writers is not just desirable; it is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parallel to the postsocialist transformations and growing geopolitical significance of the Russia-China relationship, recent years have seen a surge of interest among Anglophone scholars in the Sino-Russian border and the borderland region around it. Working against a perspective focused on the language and decision-making of the political center, the books under review train their ethnographic and historical focus on specific local case studies to illuminate the Russia-China border as a site that produces, reveals, and sustains difference. At the same time, the border region emerges as a zone where the agency of the particular, the local, and the exceptional can assert itself against dominant, normative, or centralizing forces. Read together, these studies present the Sino-Russian border as both the key to the relationship and the space of its exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-sedentary cultures have existed on the scholarly fringes and historiographical outskirts of the art-historical canon: there they remain to this day, buried between dated opposites like "east" and "west," "high" and "minor" arts, torn by interdisciplinary tensions in art history, archaeology and ethnography. Nomadic societies are usually considered in cross-cultural studies only insofar as they can act as sufficiently expedient intermediaries linking settled empires in the designated "East" and "West," hence the recent fascination with the Pontic Scythians who bordered, traded and fought with ancient Greece, or the Xiongnu whose nomadic confederation became a geopolitical threat to early imperial China. Yet, early pastoral nomads bordering China and Greece left behind a rich corpus of gold adornment which points to an elaborate system of image-making and highly conceptual designs rooted in zoomorphism. The following article focuses on the strategies of self-fashioning and funerary decor employed in the entombment of the elite in the early nomadic societies of Central Eurasia. Golden suits, composed of metonymically conveyed animal images, along with foreign exotica, were the normative elements of a noble's funeral. Adornment had to showcase the elite's life on earth as that of a daring, globally recognized politician and a proud steppe resident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a call to decolonize affect theory through deepening its engagement with fieldwork conducted in the global South. It examines the native Chinese concept of ganying, or resonance, as an ethnographic technique by engaging with the author's fieldwork experiences among Body Mind Spirit practitioners in China. Participating in ganying captures the formation of affective atmospheres through the ethnographer's involvement in their co‐creation. Where attunement functions as a normative ideal, resonance becomes a technique of embodying responsiveness and cultivating intimacy that supports efforts to narrativize affect. Examining the genealogy of ganying and its ethnographic applications reveals this concept's alignment with influential theorizations that in recent decades have been constructed as "new" and "paradigm shifting" contributions to the affective turn. It cautions against the risks of erasure resulting from such Eurocentric negligence of kindred notions circulated in scholarly and vernacular contexts outside of the global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores critical ways that migrant groups engage in diverse forms of resistance. In this comparative case study, we draw on our longitudinal ethnographic research on migrant groups, particularly those that are characterized as undocumented, with a focus on the ways in which they engage in activism and resistance in China and the United States, respectively. We aim to expand the literature about comparison by asking: how is comparison understood differently through the lens of crisscrossing, and what productive insights can be uncovered through this theoretically informed approach? What implications might crisscrossing have for studying grassroots level resistance from migrants across borders? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, Burma/Myanmar one-sidedly halted the billions-worth construction of Myitsone Dam, derailing China's then-largest-ever hydroelectric project abroad and creating a lasting controversy in China–Burma relations. This decision followed an unprecedented public outcry in Burma and a decade of inter-ethnic resistance against this mega-project. This article explores how, throughout the Myitsone Dam controversy, actors at different scales and in three national societies speculated about hidden hostile inter-national plots behind the project or the resistance. Drawing on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in 2010–2019, interviews, and media analysis, this article takes seriously many Chinese, Burmese, and Kachin voices – from ambassadors and journalists, to activists and village elders – who claim or dispute various hidden hostile inter-national strategies. The Myitsone case shows how deeply inter-national speculating shapes Burma, often in ways that erase ethnic-minority actors, popular movements, or dispossession. More broadly, it shows how nationalist thinking and competing nationalisms can shape ideas about a frontier of resource extraction. Finally, ethnographic research has often revealed how marginalised people's conspiratorial narratives can reflect realities, but this study suggests using ethnography to let people challenge dominant conspiracy theories about themselves. Researchers across ethnographic disciplines, International Relations, and critical geopolitics face the analytical and ethical challenge of both contextualising and evaluating any people's claim that someone plots against them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contemporary popularization of Tarot reading on China's prominent online video platform Bilibili. It tries to make sense of the cultural and political import of the phenomenon through the conceptual lens of techno-cultural domestication, defined as a process in which a non-native cultural artifact or practice becomes embedded in and tamed by a techno-cultural arena in a receiver country. Based on digital ethnography and textual analysis, the article presents how Chinese online Tarot diviners constructed their participatory ritual by drawing upon the symbols of Western occultism and the technological affordances of Bilibili, especially the function of danmu. However, Tarot divination was also brought in line with dominant social values and state ideologies. It ultimately became a form of 'sheer entertainment' promoting common sense ideas, an image of a good Chinese citizen, private solutions to life's challenges, and a positive social atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Metaverse" is not a Silicon Valley utopianism. It is a meaningful descriptor for an increasingly embodied and more deeply integrated internet. Nowhere is it more profound than in China, whose first forays into metaverse have sent ripples the world over. This ethnography of China-based Hoyoverse, and a subsequent discussion, suggest the meaningful contributions ethnography can make to understanding metaverse. And how metaverse will in turn transform the discipline. All of which is articulated through the example of a cyborg catgirl, who may or may not be a mirage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese moral education is a much broader concept and is heavily criticized for being overly politicized and indoctrinated. The Greater Bay Area (GBA) initiative upholds the people-centered development philosophy in education. This study aims to investigate the schoollevel implementation in Shenzhen, one of the GBA cities, and teachers' perspectives to determine the facilitating and inhibiting factors across different layers in the student-centered ecological systems of students' moral development. A two-year-long ethnographic case study was conducted in the case school based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. The study participants consisted of 18 teachers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the participants' perceptions. The study findings revealed that the facilitating factors include clear guidelines on the national level, cooperative teachers, and ambitious principals with a consciousness of visions and responsibilities for moral education. Meanwhile, Shenzhen has the potential to be the pioneer of moral education reformation. However, the rigid content in the textbooks and the stuffy school culture hinder the success of moral education at the school level. The lack of communication and mutual understanding contributes to the splintered and emotionally exhaustive experience of moral education teachers. More efficient and measurable strategies should be used to uphold a tight alliance across different layers. Future research should examine alternative moral education models, decision-making processes, Chinese school management style, and the specific appliance of the ecological systems theory in the unique Chinese educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do state authorities cope with popular contention under authoritarian legality? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and legal repression cases in China, this article highlights that conflicting rules and signals regarding contention management can impose considerable pressure on governments and motivate them to respond cautiously, even though the prevailing rhetoric of law-based governance provides a convenient basis on which authorities can legitimize their coercive actions. This study further theorizes a discreet pattern of government reaction under authoritarian legality – progressive legal repression – that rests on bureaucratic processing to overcome political uncertainty and lower potential risks before formally employing criminal sanctions to achieve domination. Instead of directly using criminal penalties to deter unruly protesters and potential dissenters, the preferred state action is to induce them to engage in available legal-bureaucratic procedures. By reconceptualizing protesters' claims and behaviour as unreasonable and signalling fulfilment of responsibilities, bureaucratic practices help officials to reduce the risks of damaging their political image and receiving disciplinary action, encouraging them to deploy legal repression. This study reveals more complicated dynamics of state repression under authoritarian legality and emphasizes the important effects of procedural practices on governmental responses and the regime's stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic data gathered in Beijing during 2017 and 2018, this article examines numerous urban population displacement events using the concept of spatial governance in order to understand the spatialization of governance in urban China. A particular focus of this article are the Beijing-wide displacements of the so-called "low-end population" that followed a fire in Xinjian Village in 2017. The analysis in this article uses geographic understandings of spatial informality to interrogate how space is made informal and subsequently illegal as a means of population control. The article puts forward the idea that spatial governance is one of the key forms, if not the key form, of governance in urban China. It highlights changes in governance that have resulted in space becoming not just a site for control, but the medium for techniques of control over China's urban population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle-class parents in China are increasingly torn between the need to secure their child's future in an environment where competition starts in kindergarten and parenting ideologies focusing on the child's individuality, creativity and freedom. Our study, based on ethnographic fieldwork among middle-class Chinese migrants in Budapest, shows that one result of this tension is a new wave of emigration that is justified in terms of securing a relaxed, healthy and free environment for the child. These migrants consciously reject what they see as a materialistic and dehumanizing social environment in China and pursue a "European" lifestyle that they imagine as wholesome and human-centred; yet while they rejoice in the "happiness" of their children, they retain a deep-seated anxiety about their children's future. Thus, the search for a mentally and physically wholesome environment consonant with China's discourse of national revitalization becomes decoupled from its original agenda and triggers a new trend in international mobility. This study illustrates how the broader tensions in the relationship between China's middle class and the state are externalized to the global stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]