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Chinese Gu Shi Ci art songs are a genre that combines ancient Chinese poetry with music, reflecting profound emotional depth and cultural ethos. The primary objective is to investigate the integration of vocal techniques and musical literacy in the performance of Chinese Gu Shi Ci art songs. The study conducted at Nanchang University and the China Conservatory of Music involved interviews and observations with five key informants: professors, vocal coaches, professional singers, music educators, and opera performers. Data analysis included transcribing interviews, coding for recurring themes, and cross-referencing observational data. The findings reveal that precise vocal techniques, such as breath control and tone modulation, and a deep understanding of the poems' contexts significantly enhance performance authenticity and emotional resonance. The study underscores the need for an integrated curriculum in music education that combines technical skills with cultural and literary education. It suggests incorporating historical context modules, technical workshops, interdisciplinary approaches, performance analysis, and practical opportunities to foster a comprehensive understanding of Gu Shi Ci art songs. This approach can deepen students' appreciation and ensure the rich cultural heritage of these songs continues to resonate with contemporary audiences.

Using multimedia elements to present poetry can help make it more accessible and understandable to a broader audience. In the context of China, where poetry is important in culture and art, interpreting the poems of Chinese poets in contemporary music can help popularize their work among young audiences. The study aimed to explore the possibilities of using various multimedia tools to promote poetry in online educational blogs and to study the effectiveness of various multimedia tools in attracting audience attention to poetry. The survey results reveal the popularity of contemporary songs in China among the youth, who draw inspiration from poetry. "Green Light" ([foreign characters omitted]) received the highest percentage of votes, at 38%. This song centres on the theme of love and expresses the desire to be reunited with a loved one. "Raindrops on Banana Leaves" ([foreign characters omitted]) garnered 26% of the votes and conveys the beauty of nature after rain, emphasizing the appreciation of the world's beauty. "Nebula" ([foreign characters omitted]) was mentioned by 9% of the students, and this song includes lines from the poem "Love in the Sky" by Jiang Zhiqun. It explores themes of love and self-reflection, reflecting the desire to be with a loved one. "Crazy Heartbeats" ([foreign characters omitted]) received 18% of the votes, and the song uses phrases from the poem "Strong Feelings" by Junjian Lu. It portrays intense emotions, highlighting love and passion. "I Am by Your Side" ([foreign characters omitted]), a song containing lines from the eponymous poem by Zhongsan Lu, was chosen by 9% of the students. It revolves around the theme of love and the longing to be with someone special. These findings illustrate how contemporary music in China often intertwines with classical poetry, bridging the gap between traditional literary heritage and modern forms of cultural self-expression. The results of the statistical analysis indicate a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups regarding the impact of multimedia technologies on learning outcomes. The experiment has shown that these technologies contribute to better comprehension of the material and the attainment of higher scores compared to students who employed traditional teaching methods. Based on the study, conclusions can be drawn about the prospects of other processes related to this topic, namely the importance of using multimedia technologies to present poetry in online educational blogs, especially for interpreting poems by Chinese poets in modern Chinese music, such technologies will help to attract a wider audience and develop a person's creativity, linguistic culture, and sensual and aesthetic spheres. For further research, it will be essential to study the impact of multimedia technologies on the understanding and appreciation of Chinese poetry by students of different age groups and cultural backgrounds and to conduct a comparative analysis of various methods of interpreting Chinese poetry in multimedia format. The present findings can also be used to develop recommendations and practices for using multimedia technologies in education and cultural activities related to Chinese poetry and methods for applying multimedia technologies as the presentation of poetry in online blogs.

In conventional ancient Chinese poetry learning, students tend to be under-motivated and fail to understand many aspects of poetry. As generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has been applied to education, image-GAI (iGAI) provides great opportunities for students to generate visualized images based on their descriptions of poems, and to situate students in a context similar to what a poem describes. In addition, the progressive prompt is a strategy that can progressively provide students with clues and guidance in technology-enhanced learning environments. Hence, this study proposed a progressive prompts-based image-GAI (PP-iGAI) approach to support students' ancient Chinese poetry learning. To evaluate its effectiveness, the present study employed a quasi-experiment design and recruited 80 fifth-grade elementary school students to engage in one of two conditions: one class was assigned as the experimental group and adopted the PP-iGAI approach, while the other class was assigned as the control group and used the conventional prompt-based iGAI (C-iGAI) approach. The results revealed that the PP-iGAI approach could better promote students' learning achievement, extrinsic motivation, problem-solving awareness, critical thinking, and learning performance. In addition, no significant differences were found in the two groups' cognitive load. Moreover, the results of the interview disclosed the learning perceptions and experiences of both groups. Accordingly, the present study can provide a reference not only for ancient Chinese poetry learning but also for the application of GAI in educational fields for future research.

In view of the complicated translation cognitive process, the study investigated and compared students' translation process of Chinese Classics through translation thinking path schema. Seventy-six participants learning translation courses based on parallel level in two classes of one Chinese university, some of them trained for four months intentionally, were involved into some translation experiments with selected ancient Chinese classic poems. By the form of discussions, cooperation, or individual written translation, data were gathered from manuscripts, answer sheets, video recordings, think-aloud questionnaires, reflection papers, and interviews, which were integrated and categorized into the process classification evaluation tables in qualitative and quantitative analysis for the empirical study. Through some visible comparing and contrasted data elucidation, results indicated the obvious advantages of making use of the thinking path schema in Chinese Classics translation among trained students, who have presented more diversified translation thinking courses and superior evaluation scores in general. What's more, author could be regarded as an element considered into the angle of translator, but not an independent angle as other non-Chinese-classic-text translation process, amending the former thinking path schema. Furthermore, the conclusions and amendments after translation experiments could be considered into the dynamic translation process for Chinese classics.

Xinjiang has witnessed constant state attempts to reinforce the status of Mandarin Chinese as 'the Common Language' and to make local Turkic languages -- mainly Uyghur and Kazak -- more 'suitable' to the modern world. Official efforts to transform the linguistic landscape of Xinjiang have engaged in a complex interplay with Turkic speakers' own understandings of speaking, writing, and modernity across China and Central Asia. While tacitly subscribing to the dominant language ideology that Chinese is more useful, practical, and suitable for the modern world, Turkic speakers in Xinjiang also take pride in their languages. Especially since the government-initiated script reform in the early 1980s, the Arabic scripts' indexical association with literacy and Islamic identity has become stronger than ever for people in Xinjiang. Today, the Arabic script is not only an index of ethno-religious identity, but also an artistic expression. Thus, to many Turkic speakers in Xinjiang, Chinese is "merely" a language of mundane concern, whereas Turkic languages are the medium of aesthetic elaboration such as oral poetry and epic stories. This paper demonstrates that attention to such historical particularities helps us better understand how certain language ideologies can remain unchallenged while others are easily contested.

Different cultural aspects are always involved in tourism interpretation, and the process of tourism interpretation is also cross-cultural communication. If the cultural factors can be interpreted for the foreign visitors in a better way, it's beneficial to convey the cultural connotation of the scenic spot and it can be the communication more effective. There are many scenic spots in China, to show the beautiful scenery and traditional Chinese culture to the world. Leshan Giant Buddha is one of national 5A tourist attractions in Leshan, Sichuan Province, China, and there are a lot of tourists coming here every year, especially foreign tourists. Therefore, its tourism interpretation shall be better and better. The tourism interpretation of Leshan Giant Buddha concerns many cultural factors. Based on Skopostheorie, this paper discusses how to deal with the cultural factors in guide interpretation of Leshan Grand Buddha from the following three aspects: names of scenic spots, four-character phrases and classical Chinese poetry.

Gender, formed in men and women's growth which is constrained by social context, is tightly tied to the distinction which is presented in the process of men and women's language use. Hence, it's a new breakthrough for studies on gender and difference by analyzing gender-related speech communication on the background of ancient Chinese culture.

Using games to teach is an interesting and worthwhile practice; however, the couplet game has not been described before. In this study, first-year students played a couplet game with their teacher at the end of the course. Each student was asked to summarize and write individual opinions on human geography in one keyword; then, the teacher wrote the corresponding or matching keywords. Analyzing the correspondences and the contrasts between couples of words, the students showed an improved understanding of human geography. The results suggested that the couplet game elicited students' creative and independent thinking. This method can also be applied to other fields.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, new global challenges have been presented to all affected countries, underlining the importance of international communication and co-operation. This study examines a particular linguistic means, classical Chinese poetry, used successfully by China, Japan and South Korea to facilitate their intercultural relationships. Specifically, poetic texts were pasted onto boxes of COVID-19 prevention supplies. An analysis of these texts in the context of the pandemic points to their role in establishing an 'expressive tie' between the countries (Hwang, Kwang-kuo. 1987. Face and favor: the Chinese power game. "American Journal of Sociology." University of Chicago Press 92(4). 944-974) and demonstrating emotional resonance in the midst of mixed-tied intercultural relationships. The texts also helped to conceal the requirement of reciprocity, while highlighting morality of a country for its favour-giving behaviour. Through practicing reciprocity in a culturally appropriate way, the three countries were able to promote their national image (i.e. national face). The findings provide insights into East Asian ways of managing intercultural relationships, that can be applied to navigate international co-operation for future challenges.

Research on second-language (L2) speech acquisition suggests that audio-visual aids could be effective in helping learners acquire difficult L2 speech sounds (Li, 2016a). However, most previous studies have been restricted to laboratory settings rather than the classroom environment. The present study, therefore, was designed to fill this knowledge gap by analysing the effectiveness of audio-visual aids, particularly articulatory gestures, in teaching L2 speech sounds in actual classrooms. The participants were students from two classes of non-English majors who had severe difficulties with the differentiation of /[theta]/--/s/ and /[voiced dental fricative]/--/z/. 'Read-aloud' tasks were employed for pronunciation tests. The baseline data of the students' pronunciation of the two contrasts was collected with a pre-test, and the intuitive--imitative approach was adopted for teaching. Specifically, the students were exposed to seven audio- or audio-visually recorded poems (one poem per week over the course of seven weeks) containing the target contrasts. The students in Class 1 were taught with the audio-recordings without images of the speaker's face being displayed; in contrast, students in Class 2 were taught using audio-visual recordings, which allowed them to observe the speakers' articulatory gestures of /[theta]/--/s/ and /[voiced dental fricative]/--/z/. To detect the teaching effect, a post-test was carried out after the teaching programme was completed. A delayed post-test was conducted one month after the post-test. Comparisons with the respective pre-test results indicated that students in Class 2 had a significant improvement in the pronunciation of the target contrasts in the post-test, whereas those in Class 1 did not. In the delayed post-test, neither class showed any significant difference in the pronunciation performance in comparison with the post-test. The findings, therefore, confirmed the effectiveness of exposure to audio-visual aids in teaching L2 pronunciation.

Literacy education is the most important part in school education and its efficiency determines the students' achievements in their future education and career. In 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were released, which aimed to provide common standards for K-12 public school students in the whole country to improve the educational quality in the U. S. The goals of language literacy in CCSS were illustrated from four dimensions: standards for reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language, which was from the micro-perspective of language learning. In CCSS, English Language Arts Reading is emphasized and the teaching aims, teaching contents, language skills, and the function of new technology was proposed to guarantee the quality of the literacy education. In 2011, Chinese National Curriculum Standards (NCS) was released. The goal of NCS for language learning was designed based on three dimensions: knowledge and ability, process and methods, and emotion, attitude, and values, which was from the macro-perspective of language learning. This paper introduced the background of the implementation of the two curriculums, compared the components and goals between the American CCSS and Chinese NCS, as well as the characteristics of each curriculum to try to find out the implications for each other.

English-Chinese (E-C) translation is part of tertiary curriculum and is generally text- or reading-based, and any course in relation to it is meant to develop the competence of reading, on a higher level, from a language comparative perspective. Chinese-English (C-E) translation is deemed by many as a productive skill, possible when the overall language competence is achieved, but little is accomplished to be developed on its own. In the classroom C-E translation is conducted to consolidate the lexical or grammatical items learned from reading texts. This study focuses on C-E translation of poetic discourse, drawing classical Chinese poetry as the research material. It underlines this literary genre as prompt to promote language learning, through detailed language comparison and analysis. The learning activities are based on discussion of poetic features and fulfilling tasks of poetic components. The process indicates a keener sense of literary works and growing awareness of poetic features which work positively toward language production and appreciation.

Bereavement has been extensively studied over the years, yet scholarly work depicting, with the first-person perspective, the experience of childhood bereavement is severely lacking. The research question I set out to answer here is: What is it like as an Asian child to experience bereavement following grandparental death? As such, self-introspection was exercised, and this, together with the diaries and free writings generated at the time of my grandma's death, was used as the basis for autoethnographic reflections. It is hoped that my story presented here can offer a psychological portrayal of an Asian child enduring grandparental death, and illuminate the grandmother-grandson relationship in a Chinese society. (Contains 3 notes.)

Since the introduction of the Chinese colonial education system into Tibet in the 1960s, the Tibetan language has been caught in the crossfire. Because of Tibetan language's perceived strong relationship with national identity and its alleged separatist implications, the Chinese leadership has always maintained an uneasy and sceptical outlook on it. Textbooks in Lhasa and other urban areas are exceedingly written in Chinese. The invalidation of mother tongue in the schooling process causes serious emotional trauma resulting in low academic achievement and low proficiency in the native language. The People's Republic of China's constitution guarantees the freedom of all nationalities 'to use and develop their own spoken and written languages'. The trajectory of Tibetan language has, however, reflected the political winds sweeping across the plateau rather than educational imperatives. Therefore, this conceptual paper uses language-as-problem, language-as-right and language-as-resource framework for the critical analysis of language policy in occupied Tibet. Additionally, the role of social media is explored in language revitalisation despite PRC's draconian language policing political agenda. A strong additive bilingual education with the sustained use of Tibetan language of instruction is advanced for enhancing both Tibetan and Chinese proficiency and academic achievements of indigenous children.

Subject ontology can help implement the structured organization of knowledge for online learners and thus plays an important role in the learning process. However, building ontologies by experts is time-consuming, and the adaptation of such ontologies to different contexts might be a problem. Crowdsourcing, which allows users to build and refine ontologies during their learning process, has exhibited potential for solving this problem. In this study, a crowdsourcing mode-based learning activity flow approach is proposed to guide the learning of online learners while promoting the generation and evolution of subject ontologies using the learners' contributions to the learning content. This flow makes full use of the learners' wisdom during the learning process to promote self-regulated learning as well as the generation and evolution of the ontology. Based on the proposed approach, a learning support system was developed and an experiment conducted involving a Chinese lesson on "The Liangzhou Poem". In the experiment, student participants built 722 triples, of which 584 evolved as formal items in the subject ontology. Moreover, all learners were able to construct a well-organized knowledge graph. Students in both high- and low-scoring groups contributed valuably to the knowledge generation and evolution of the subject ontology. Furthermore, while the widths of the knowledge constructed by students in high- and low-scoring groups were similar, their depths were substantially different. During this process, the crowdsourcing-based activity flow system achieved satisfactory technique acceptance, which means that the proposed approach and system are useful for the effective generation of subject ontologies while helping learners acquire knowledge.

Modern children's literature in China has largely been dominated by narratives of the nation and nationalism. The present article sets out to question the dominance of that nationalist stance as the country transitioned into the modern era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining poetic children's literature, the author unravels distinct non-nationalist intellectual sentiments in competition with the mainstream nationalist discourse that point to an imaginative envisioning of modernity. The article starts with a discussion of children's poems and school songs imbued with a strong patriotic zeal in the late Qing and early Republican periods, and then moves on to the May Fourth period when lyricism and romanticism drew the attention of children's literature advocates. Romantic-minded translators and writers, such as Bing Xin, embraced love as a humanist cosmopolitan vision while others, such as Zhou Zuoren and Liu Bannong, turned to local literary heritage, giving rise to a form of children's songs with strong local consciousness. The article concludes by addressing the relevance of the insights derived from the historical case studies for contemporary children's literature in China and beyond. It highlights the possibilities of envisaging modernity in non-nationalist terms and stresses the importance of cultivating in children alternative sentiments in the age of rising nationalism, both past and present.

This paper introduces a new teaching method, poetry, into the geography classroom, accompanied by an out-of-class discussion on a blog, and finds that its effects are rather different from those of traditional teaching methods, as it allows new perspectives on instructional content related to migrant workers' lives and identities in China. The method enables students to analyse content from the perspective of cultural geography, in which poetry acts as an art form that connects people's identities and social spaces. On the basis of this, we also provide some suggestions to engage students in critical analysis of poetry, from the perspective of cultural geography, through interactive online platforms such as blogs.

Shakespeare was not known to the Chinese until Lin Zexu's (1785-1850) translation of Hugh Murray's (1789-1845) "Cyclopedia of Geography" (1836). Afterwards Shakespeare in China saw many complicated changes, from being regarded as a story-teller to being fully received as a seasoned playwright and poet, and his plays were rendered into the Chinese language and performed on the Chinese stage. But first and foremost is the question of how to translate Shakespeare well, for translation is primarily important for those readers who have no knowledge at all of the English language.

This paper surveys examples of dialogic pedagogy in creative practices in the areas of Visual Studies and Creative Writing at universities in Hong Kong and Macao. The authors describe their own participant-observer experience of evolving pedagogy for creative practice through on-site and remote interaction, with colleagues and with and between students. The creative writing practices discussed refer to extra-institutional translation and publishing activities of a Macao non-governmental organisation--the Association of Stories in Macao. Samples of published output are positioned within its history of poetry translation/publication activities. The practice of workshop translation is situated as an apprenticeship for bilingual poets, to explain how dialogic activities (face-to-face and virtual) catalyse the co-evolution of collaborative learning and publishing strategies. The visual arts practices refer to a series of collaborative drawing projects that use conventional mail for the transmission of works-in-progress between collaborators. We describe the history and rules of one of these collaborations, provide examples of its output and consider feedback from participants. We draw on the literatures of play, dialogue, pedagogy, community and gift economies (Huizinga, Freire, Bakhtin, Mauss) to theorise a common framework for understanding the role of purposive dialogue in collaborative and cross-cultural arts apprenticeships.

This article describes a pedagogical project designed to optimize opportunities for individual, creative expression in L2 academic writing. Conducted in four EFL Composition classes in a university in mainland China, a writing project using poetry as a research methodology, first introduced by Hanauer (2010), was implemented and assessed for effectiveness. The writing activities for this project were designed to empower individual voices, advance L2 research writing skills, and provide "opportunities to construct deeply 'local' meanings" (Blommaert, 2005, p. 390). Following a genre-based approach to classic English poetry, students researched personal memory of Chinese history and culture through poetry writing. The second language writers/poets created a body of over 200 poems that both informed and individualized personal understandings and cultural identity. In this paper, I argue that the use of poetry as a research methodology is an effective tool for exploring personal memories and knowledge of national history and culture. I further argue that creative writing in L2 academic contexts equalizes linguistic inequities, establishes a unique space for personal identity negotiation, and promotes second language development.

One of the reasons often advanced for the study of Western civilization is its history of scientific and technical prowess. Advances in science and technology have resulted in the many conveniences of modern life: air travel, automobiles, and smart phones, to name just a few. These are fruits of the Baconian project, which emphasized observation and measurement in the study of nature as part of an endeavor to "establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the whole universe." Bacon identified three inventions that separated the ancients from the moderns: (1) the magnetic compass; (2) gunpowder; and (3) printing. Of interest is the last, which has been the object of considerable scholarly attention during the past few decades. The advent of printing has been credited with initiating a revolution that resulted in increased literacy, an enlarged market for books and other publications, and an increased flow of news, information, and knowledge. In short, printing helped to lay the foundations for the development of modern democratic polities, so much so that freedom of the press is held to be fundamental to democracy. It so happens that printing appeared first in China, as well as the other two inventions Bacon cites. China has its own heritage of technical prowess. Paper, which was crucial for the development of printing in the West, was also invented in China. Without paper, the print revolution would have at least been delayed. The author's interest initially lies in the response in China to the advent of printing. A print revolution in the Western mode did not occur. Consideration of this nonevent will lead to what lies near the heart of Chinese civilization and to what the author thinks people gain from the study of China. In this article, the author looks at writing as literature and as linguistic medium, and at the interaction of at least two of the three perfections (calligraphy, poetry, and painting). (Contains 2 exhibits, 2 figures and 7 footnotes.)

Many earthshaking events took place in China in 2008: the ice and snow in South China, the Lhasa riots, the hindrances to the Olympic torch relay, the Wenchuan earthquake, anticorruption in Taiwan, the Beijing Olympics, and many more. Many of these incidents triggered acute Internet altercations. In conformity with the pattern of Internet bickering everyone has become accustomed to in recent years, the loudest voices were always those that issued from two opposing extremes. This article contrasts two extreme positions representing the "left" ("extreme nationalism") and the "right" ("national nihilism"). The importance of the Internet in allowing these positions to be widely disseminated is noted.

"Culture Currents" presents the books, essays, poetry, performances, music, websites, and other cultural media influencing educational leaders. "Culture Currents" is a snapshot, a peek behind the scenes. It reveals what people are reading or seeing that may not be normally mentioned or cited in their academic work. Two leaders in education were contacted and asked to answer questions about books, essays or poetry as well as performances, music, websites or other media they have read and encountered that have inspired them, influenced their thinking or impacted them. This article presents Connelly's response to the "Culture Currents" invitation. He states that the request by "Culture Currents" led to a cycle of reading and reflection that brought him back to well-trodden ground in a new comparative context and reminded him that there is even more reading, thinking, and writing to do than people had imagined when undertaking the cross-cultural work. He expects that if one were to do a study of what was in the minds of the "Culture Currents" editors and, hence, in the minds of their authors, it would be that the personal and the professional are mostly separate domains. The author presents an account of his own landscape of the personal and the professional and its relationship to reading.

The author responds to the essays in this special issue by noting that they emphasize the importance of careful, complex comparisons between Western and Chinese rhetorical traditions.

Discusses fu, a flowery form of rhetorical writing developed in China during the Han Dynasty. Provides historical background and criticisms of the genre. Emphasizes the feminine principle of fu rhetoric with its resort to pleasure, ornamentation, and flattery. Argues that what is considered love poetry was actually political allegory. (DK)

Discusses the relationship between the prominence of themes of the literate gentry woman in Chinese fiction and the rise of women poets. Examines later Japanese fiction to find influences of the woman reader and of earlier Chinese works. Explores the scholar-beauty novels, women as warriors, female martyrdom, and the equating of virtue with brilliance. (DK)

The imagery of wine and tea is important in classical and modern Chinese poetry, with an intricate relationship between the two especially evident in the work of Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), a prominent poet–monk in 20th-century China. Taixu's attitude toward wine—a drink that is deeply rooted in Chinese culture—evolves significantly over time, from initial approval to eventual condemnation due to its detrimental effects on both personal health and society. Nevertheless, it continues to feature prominently in his poetry. The same is true of tea, which Taixu often uses to evoke either Buddhist study or his own healthy lifestyle. This article explores this and other complex meanings in Taixu's poems, such as his association of wine with knights and tea with hermits. It also discusses how he achieves a delicate balance between the two beverages, sometimes employing both types of imagery in a single poem—a literary innovation that helped to establish his reputation as a central figure in modern Chinese poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is wide consensus that Islam is an important rallying point for the Uyghurs and an essential component of their national identity. Yet despite its centrality in Uyghur culture, there is only marginal reference to religion in modern Uyghur poetry. In this article, I argue that poets such as Adil Tuniyaz, Tahir Hamut Izgil, and others, most of whom are secular and urban, choose to relate to religion through mysticism and nostalgia in reaction to the Chinese state's characterization of Islam as identified with violent fundamentalism and terrorism. By avoiding the use of separatist symbols, these poets contribute to a broad national ethos that strengthens contemporary Uyghur identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay theorizes the potential uses and limitations of describing a text as "viral." Literary texts are often described as viral when they serve as tools of self-expression for those who reproduce them: viral texts must therefore delete or suppress qualities that mark them as alien, and emphasize qualities that identify them with those who might repeat them. As they circulate, viruses span and connect social and intellectual lineages through rhizomatic motion, as described by Deleuze and Guattari. These concepts provide an occasion for a rereading of the contemporary circulation of the poetry of Gu Cheng 顾城, whose verse and biography have circulated widely and been intensively transformed in the past thirty years. The partial and mutated versions of his life and verse that circulate via film, television, print, calligraphy, and especially the Internet produce a shared fantasy of a "free" poet whose genius excludes him from social constraint, and who deserves and enjoys the limitless adoration of women. This fantasy is made circulable in part by suppressing the experience of his wife, Xie Ye 谢烨, whom he killed in 1993, a deletion whose marks are clearly visible in a historicized analysis of popular treatments of their story. On the strength of Deleuze and Guattari's argument that the rhizome cannot be encompassed but instead only extended through rupture, the essay then reads Xie Ye's prose compositions "Games" and "Your Name Is Little Mu'er," finding them to contain stories that can travel and concepts whose circulation may contribute to antipatriarchal goals. The piece concludes by arguing that the metaphor of the virus reveals the position of the scholar who reproduces texts for study, and that thinking through the virus implicates scholars in the ethics and pragmatics of spreading texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ʿAli Akbar Khatāyi’s Khatāynāmeh (Book of China), a detailed description of state and society in Ming China written in 922/1516, includes citations from the Kanz al-Haqāyeq (attributed to Mahmud Shabestari) and ʿAttār’s Elāhināmeh. By citing these two texts at key points in his description of the Chinese government, Khatāyi articulates a radical political vision in which the civil officials, rather than the emperor, are the true rulers. Furthermore, by using the Kanz al-Haqāyeq as a portal text, and through frequent citations of other gnostic poetry, he crafts his own authorial presence by identifying his own text with fotovvat and gnosticism, and invokes a conceptual framework based on the thought of Ibn ʿArabi epitomized in his intertexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Ming emperors composed poetry, but their poetic interests and degrees of understanding differed. This article analyzes the poetry of Ming emperors, as well as related historical source materials, in an effort to uncover its various applications regarding the expression of emotions, palace festivals, imperial activities, and foreign affairs. Ming emperors wrote poetry to display their virtue and great achievements. They composed four-character and Yuefu poetry in an effort to imitate both the Shijing and the literary tradition established by earlier emperors. They also penned old-style poems and quatrains to express their emotions and aspirations. However, not only did their residence at court limit the range of topics found in their poetry, they moreover deliberately used poetry to glorify the nation and the imperial image, which resulted in a poetic output that was fixed in form and monotonous in content. During the Ming, imperial poetry was disseminated to the public via handwritten copies, stone inscriptions, descriptive notes, anthology extracts, and novels written by officials. Despite such diverse means of dissemination, a large amount of imperial poetry has been lost or adulterated. Yet, regardless of its authenticity or literary quality, officials and the people nonetheless read the emperor's poetry not only for interesting anecdotes, but also to attain a glimpse into the emperor's character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]