Columbia University Press

As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, the Italian-born Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, who died in 1610 is once again back in the news.

The New York Times article reviews the current exhibition at the Library of Congress of Matteo Ricci’s map of the world commissioned in 1602 by the court of Emperor Wanli. Ricci, who was the first Westerner admitted to Peking, created a map which was, according to the Times, “the first to have combined information from both eastern and western cartography. It is also the oldest surviving map to have given the Chinese a larger vision of the earth.”

In addition to the display of this historic map, Ricci’s resurgence continues with the recent publication of On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, translated by Timothy Billings. The book, which was a late Ming best seller and is now translated into English for the first time, distills the best ideas on friendship from Renaissance Latin texts into one hundred pure and provocative Chinese maxims.

You can browse the book but here is just a small sampling of maxims from On Friendship:

“Before making friends, we should scrutinize. After making friends, we should trust.”

“The value of a friendship lies in the intentions of those who make it. In this day and age, how many have befriended one another strictly for their virtue?”

“If we tolerate the vices of a friend, then those vices become our own vices.”

“If one has many intimate friends, then one has no intimate friends.”

“The honorable man makes friends with difficulty; the petty man makes friends with ease. What comes together with difficulty comes apart with difficulty; what comes together with ease comes apart with ease.”

At the end of the year, Jonathan Holslag, author of China and India: Prospects for Peace, was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between the two nations that many feel will be increasingly prominent in the coming decade.

Unlike those who see India and China as forming an interdependent relationship (Chindia), Holslag sees various factors that might cause friction between the nations. From the article:

[Holslag] doubts that the two countries are developing “a division of labor” – India as service provider and China as manufacturer – that might make their respective economic expansion paths “more competitive than cooperative.” He sees India and China as rising military rivals not only with entrenched border disputes but also as the major powers in a “belt of insecurity” stretching from Pakistan to Myanmar, each nation jostling for the upper hand in weak capitals around Asia and prone to proliferation as they eye the other’s diplomacy with suspicion.

And how does the United States figure into the idea of Chindia?:

Holslag is already on record as describing the U.S. as a “declining” power globally, and says Washington is on balance a factor that pushes India and China further apart. He argues that a financially weaker India, for instance, doesn’t have the mindset to respond to “growing pragmatism” in the Sino-U.S. relationship by cozying up to Washington, and instead will see more reason to build its power from within.

For more on the book, you can read an excerpt from the book.

One of the more interesting year-end lists comes from Bill Marx at PRI’s The World. Marx, a champion of books in translation and works published by university and independent presses, chooses a list of titles that raise the thorny issue of the relationship between literature new and the old.

Among his choices and the one he refers to as “the nerdiest pick on my list” is Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings by Natsume Sōseki (see picture).

Here’s what Marx has to say about the book:

The nerdiest pick on my list, but for fans of one of Japan’s greatest novelists (“Kokoro,” “Kusamakura”) this volume of his literary criticism offers insights into his fiction as well as some prescient ideas about realism and multiculturalism. Much of the volume is made up of excerpts from Sōseki’s science-minded “Theory of Literature” – some of which are dated and dense. I suggest reading the informative introduction and skipping around until you hit pay dirt. For example, this interesting passage on the value of individuality from Sōseki’s essay “Philosophical Foundations of the Literary Arts”:

It is only when one has an ideal that is new, profound, or broad, only when one tries to realize that ideal in the world but finds the world foolishly prevents this – only then does technique become truly useful to the person in question. When the world prevents us from developing our ideal in real life, then the only avenue remaining is to use technique to realize that ideal in the form of a literary work.

Check out Bill Marx’s full list here and for more on The Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, you can browse and preview the book.

In yesterday’s New York Times, A. O. Scott reviewed Li Ying’s controversial documentary, Yasukuni, which recently opened in New York City. The film “explores [Japan's] legacy of militaristic nationalism, illuminating both the noble customs and the brutality entwined at its heart.” Yasukuni is a shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead and holds the remains of war criminals. In recent years visits to the shrine by Japanese politicians has sparked protest in Japan as well as in China, Korea, and Taiwan.

The controversy surrounding the shrine is also the subject of Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, edited by John Breen. The book presents authoritative yet divergent views on the shrine and its place in postwar Japanese diplomacy, ideology, and history. Critical contributions are written by leading Yasukuni and anti-Yasukuni Japanese intellectuals, as well as Chinese and Western commentators.

For more you can browse and search the book’s content.

And here’s a trailer for the documentary:

In an essay for the Web site China Beat, James Millward, author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, examines the recent violence earlier this month in the western Chinese city of Urumchi and the disputed claims about what caused it.

Millward explains what happened, why it happened, and the role that radical Islam may or may not have played. He argues that ultimately the violence that erupted between the minority Muslim Uyghur population and the Han majority and Chinese security forces was not caused by outside forces or governments as the Chinese government claims but was a result of increasing ethnic and racial tensions in the region.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay in which Millward addresses the challenges China faces as it grapples with minority ethnic populations in a rapidly developing economy:

What Urumchi experienced was what Americans, recalling our own troubled history, might call a race riot. The reasons underlying it were likewise familiar: mundane prejudice including easy use of racial slurs by both Han and Uyghur about the other; a widespread perception by the minority Uyghurs, with some justification, that the political, legal and economic system, especially job opportunities, are stacked in favor of the majority Hans; and a simple lack of understanding or empathy for the different cultures of fellow citizens….

The proximate cause of the Urumchi troubles was labor migration, both of Uyghurs from Xinjiang to Guangdong, and of Han from other parts of China to Xinjiang, all associated with China’s super-charged market economy and state program to develop western parts of the country. But the deeper problem is essentially the same as that in any large, modern state: how to incorporate ethno-cultural diversity into the national vision. Chinese official rhetoric and policies in the past—especially in the early 1950s and late 1980s—were directed at this goal, but more recent approaches have too often depicted Uyghurs and Tibetans as ungrateful “others,” and even as threats to security. Both Uyghurs and Han have absorbed this message from state media. It has fueled Uyghur frustration and violence, and instilled in Hans a sense of grievance against minorities, their fellow Chinese.

China faces problems of interethnic tension and civil rights all too familiar to other countries in the world. Chinese leaders could enjoy international sympathy and support should they address these issues directly. But claiming that all ethnic problems at home arise from the conspiracies of exiles or machinations of foreigners will only elicit more international sympathy for Chinese minorities and criticism of China’s human rights record.

The current legal proceedings against Khmer Rouge leaders is once again bringing to light the regime’s horrible atrocities. One of the most powerful archives from the Cambodian genocide are the photographs from the Tuol Sleng Prison. In an essay on American Suburb X, Peter Maguire, author of Facing Death in Cambodia, discusses the portraits of inmates at S-21 torture, interrogation, and execution center.

Maguire writes, “Each of the almost 6,000 S-21 portraits that have been recovered tells a story shock, resignation, confusion, defiance and horror. Although the most gruesome images to come out of Cambodia were those of the mass graves, the most haunting were the portraits taken by the Khmer Rouge at S-21.”

In addition to discussing the history of S-21 and the photographs, Maguire also talked to Nhem En, who took many of the photographs at S-21. Maguire asked En about what was the most difficult part of taking pictures of people who would be killed. Here’s En’s response:

“It was difficult to take pictures of the newcomers who were blindfolded and tied up when they were leaving the truck. Sometimes they arrived in chains. Sometimes we got reprimanded; for example, if we took a picture of A and the photo was not good and A was already killed, then we were charged as the enemy. In here, if we did not carefully do our jobs we could not escape from being jailed or stopped from working.”

Here are some of the photos and you can see more here:

Needless to say, it’s not every day that one of our books gets mentioned in The People’s Daily, published by the government of China, so we thought their article Social stability spells well-being for commonality, was worth mentioning.

The article cites the book How East Asians View Democracy and its examination of how Asians view their governments and their roles as citizens. Not surprisingly, the article points to the book’s findings reflecting the relatively high level of support that the Chinese express for the government particularly when compared to that of the Japanese or the South Koreans.

The article ends with some subtle or perhaps not-so-subtle propaganda aimed at those who might criticize China’s rulers (the United States?). The concluding paragraphs are also interesting in light of recent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang:

“Indeed, the understanding of democracy may be different from people to people, and nation to nation. But the findings also ring an alarm to those who like to impose upon others their accepted values and ideas, or force others to believe what they believe is right or wrong.

Like any other people, the Chinese remain their uniqueness in culture and traditional values and also have their own understanding of freedom and democracy, ‘If you feel happy, you are happy,’ as a popular saying goes. The Chinese people of all ethnicities are savoring the most satisfactory moment in decades as a result of a booming economy and a stable political environment. They are bent on creating more wealth and happiness at the time and, therefore, will value more than ever a prosperous and harmonious society, with nary others’ meddling.”

Kim Yong, author of the just published, Long Road Home, was recently interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Company about his time spent as a prisoner at the infamous North Korean labor camp 14 and the atrocities he witnessed there.

Listen to the interview with Mark Willacy on PM.

You can also read an excerpt from the book where Kim Yong details the everyday humiliations and inhuman treatment he received at the hands of Camp 14’s prison guards.

Recently BBC Radio interviewed James Millward, author of Eurasian Crossroads, on the ongoing situation in Xinjiang, China. Xinjiang province in China is home to a large Uighur minority population – ethnic Turkic Muslims – who the government says are radical Islamic terrorists. The Uighurs say that Chinese security forces killed peaceful demonstrators.

Listen to the BBC interview on The World Tonight as Millward explains the history behind these accusations and counter-accusations and tells us how both sides are spinning a story to make themselves look good.

The following is a post by Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online.

According to a directive first issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19, 2009, July 1 was to be the first day that computers in China would be required to be sold with a pre-installed filtering software called Green Dam-Youth Escort. However, the announcement of the policy drew such opposition both at home and abroad that in a welcome move, the Ministry announced yesterday its decision to hold off this policy indefinitely. This decision appears to be a positive response to the popular opposition that Chinese netizens have expressed.

The incident demonstrates yet again the power of the Internet in China. Both Chinese bloggers and Western media have hailed this new brand of online activism. I myself have commented on this display of Web power here. With the “Green Dam” controversy quieting down for now, it is helpful to step back and reflect a bit on some more enduring issues about Internet control and online activism in China.

The Green Dam policy indicates that there is still a surprising degree of bluntness in the exercise of state control over the Internet. In recent years, the Chinese government has demonstrated new levels of sophistication in affairs of Internet governance. One sign is the adoption since 2004 of a soft-management approach, which emphasizes self-discipline, civic responsibility, and the use of legal rather than administrative power to contain harmful contents. Part of the reason why the Green Dam policy met with such strong resistance is that it represented an unbearably heavy-handed approach to Internet control.

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In his new book Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange, Alexander Huang examines “the transnational imaginary of China in Shakespearean performance and Shakespeare’s place in Chinese cultural history from the first Opium War in 1839 to our times.”

Huang describes a variety of dramatic and cinematic productions in China to reveal the various political and cultural meanings that Shakespeare has yielded in an Asian context, including issues of colonialism, Asian identity, nationalism, and communism. Thus, a 1942 production of Hamlet set in a Confucian temple was an allegory for China’s war with Japan while a 1997 production of King Lear “used allegory to reconfigure Shakespeare and Asian identity multinationally.”

So how does Shakespeare sound in Mandarin? The Web site Shakespeare Performance in Asia includes clips from a variety of Mandarin productions of Shakespeare including Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest.

As the New York Times and others have reported, North Korea sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor. While little is known about them, the North Korean labor camps are notorious for their brutal conditions.

One of the few first-hand accounts of the North Korean camps is Kim Yong’s recently published Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor.

Kim Yong is one of the few people to have ever escaped from the North Korean gulag. In addition to recounting his incredible escape to the United States via China, Mongolia, and South Korea, Kim also describes his life before he was sent to the camps when he was a lieutenant colonel in the Army and enjoyed unprecedented privileges as a member of North Korea’s elite.

However, at the heart of his book are his detailed descriptions of life in North Korea’s labor camps. Kim recounts his six-year ordeal of living in the labor camps, the inhumane working conditions, the subhuman prison guards, and a famine which killed millions.

The quote of this post (see above) comes from an excerpt that we’ve posted on our site, in which Kim describes Camp No. 14, possibly the worst of all camps. Here are the opening paragraphs to the excerpt:

In North Korea, everyone knows that a labor camp is a place where life is suspended. One does not live there, one slowly dies there. I was simply another dead soul in Camp No. 14.

At 5:00 a.m. everyone was awakened. By 6:00 a.m. the prisoners had finished their meager breakfast and marched toward the workplace. Since the mine shafts were hidden in deep valleys, nobody could see the sun light. At 7:00 we were already busy at work. Between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m., we had a quick lunch underground in the mine shaft. In order to go to the toilet, the prisoners had to wait to form groups because there was little light and they had to share one bulb to move around. One person had to carry the lamp and lead the way. Then we came out of the shaft around 11:30 p.m. and ate supper outside in darkness. According to the rules, the work was supposed to end by 8:00 p.m., or by 9:00 p.m. at the latest. However, no guard bothered to enforce this. The only real rules in Camp No. 14 were the guards’ decisions. After work, we marched back to our barracks and stayed up another hour for political struggle consisting of mutual and self criticism. At 1:00 a.m., three hours later than the camp regulations, everyone went to sleep. Before my arrest, I used to sleep eight hours a night, on the average. At the camp, that was cut in half.

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Though written after North Korea’s failed missile launch earlier this Spring, Victor Cha’s article on the Foreign Affairs Web site speaks to this weekend’s events.

Victor Cha, co-author of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies , argues, “So while Obama should continue to extend the hand of negotiation to Pyongyang, his administration should also embark on two other tracks: in the short-term, calculated pressure to punish Pyongyang’s missile launch, and in the longer-term, preparing for a united peninsula, free and democratic.”

Cha then lays out steps the United States should take in response to North Korea:

First, the United States should enforce Resolution 1718 and reimpose economic sanctions, including financial sanctions to target entities that finance ballistic missile development. These types of sanctions, similar to ones used in 2005 and 2006, hit at the personal riches of the North Korean leadership that are stashed away in accounts in Europe and Asia and can be very effective. They were lifted in 2007 in light of North Korea’s agreement to allow international inspection and disablement of its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, but it is time for similar instruments to be put to use again.

Second, Obama should consider restoring North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, using the revelations of Pyongyang’s help to Damascus’s nuclear program as justification.

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15.8 million people in America now practice yoga according to a recent survey done by Yoga Journal. Most of us are familiar with the mats, the apparel, and basic asanas (such as Downward Facing Dog or the Corpse Pose) but yoga has a rich heritage beyond classes at the gym.

The newly published Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy by Stephen Phillips presents the philosophy of yoga for modern audiences. In the interview below Stephen Phillips shares the philosophy behind the practice and explains his knowledge of yoga.

For those in and around Austin, Texas there will be a special event held to celebrate the book this Friday, May 22nd at Breath & Body Yoga from 4-8 PM. The evening’s activities will include a mantra lesson with the author, an all levels vinyasa yoga lesson, as well as a book signing and reception.

Question: How does traditional yoga philosophy relate to current yoga practice?

Stephen Phillips: Traditional Yoga Shastra is not just a collection of “how-to” books about Downward Dog, Pranayama, meditation, and other practices but also provides a framework for understanding the practices and the experiences to which they lead. Yoga philosophy helps us have confidence in our own capabilities and defends the testimony of our expert teachers. Also, the teachers who have given us the practices—Patanjali, for example—have in many cases explained their importance in philosophic terms and provided psychological ideas to guide advanced practices in particular. All yoga teachers in fact comprehend important theses of Yoga philosophy and psychology, which help them understand the practices holistically and to talk about them in their classes.

Q: What do you have to say about the peculiar psychological concepts found in traditional yoga teachings? Do you think there are such things as “sheaths” or koshas and chakras?

SP: Yoga is a kind a training, of the body, life, and mind, and like being trained in gardening, you need first of all to find a good teacher (who herself had a good teacher and so on) and try to understand, usually by doing. So for example, when your teacher tells you to watch your energy flow in Corpse Pose, shavasana, you don’t sit up and ask for an explanation of “energy flow” but rather without thought, in your own self-monitoring consciousness, pay attention to a kind of disembodied current, traditionally called prana, flowing from your head to your toes. This only happens, we are told by yogic authorities, when you are thoroughly relaxed. So it won’t help to try too hard or even think about what is supposed to happen. It’s a matter of internal perception when certain conditions are met.

Lots of yogic phenomena involve becoming aware of things, indeed parts of ourselves, about which formerly we were unaware. The traditional psychological concepts that are used to talk about these things are terms of art. Gardening has its own, as do wine-tasting and music. In the course of training and practice, our attitude should be trust, so far as any beliefs are concerned. Of course, when we sit down to do philosophy, some very interesting questions arise about these terms, the experiences that motivate them, and the theories that interpret them. There is a rich inheritance of Yoga philosophy on this that the book explores. But I have some things of my own to say too, particularly concerning science and the somewhat different frameworks of different yoga lineages.

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Surviving North Korea’s House of the Dead, from today’s Asia Times Online, discusses the forthcoming Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor by Kim Yong and Kim Suk-Young.

The article discusses Kim Yong’s extraordinary account of being a prisoner in North Korea’s most notorious labor camp. Kim Yong, who was once lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army and enjoyed many privileges before being sent to prison after being accused of treason, witnessed unimaginable suffering inside the camp and survived brutal camp guards, famine, torture, and more before his remarkable escape in 1999 which led him eventually to the United States.

The Long Road Home is one of the only first-hand accounts of North Korea’s prisons and reads like “a cross between Dante’s Inferno and the Great Escape with tragic and triumphal overtones.” In fact, Kim Yong is one of the only people to have survived North Korea’s gulag system and escaped the countyr.

The article also details the writing process between Kim Yong and Kim Suk-Young, who interviewed the frequently reluctant Kim Yong. The article describes Kim Suk-Young’s reaction to hearing descriptions of the labor camps:

During the project the discovery she made that surprised her most was just how drastically that North Korea had regressed—to the point that unimaginable acts such as cannibalism and torture have become part of everyday life. “I was also surprised by how resilient human life can be in the case of Kim Yong,” she said.

Kim Yong authored the book because he is determined that the nation’s devastating realities become globally known. “He thinks that it’s deplorable that the world knows so little about North Korea.”

Earlier this week on Book Bench, the New Yorker’s blog on books, Evan Osnos recommended some books that might serve as an introduction to filmmaking in China.

We were pleased to see that he mentioned Michael Berry’s Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers. The book includes discussions with such directors as Ang Lee (read an excerpt from the interview), Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Stanley Kwan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Edward Yang, and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Osnos offers a lot of other excellent suggestions but we thought we’d take the opportunity to mention some of the other books from Columbia and Wallflower press on Chinese cinema, including the forthcoming The Cinema of China and South East Asia, edited by Ian Haydn Smith, which provides an excellent overview of the region’s cinematic output by looking at twenty-four films.

Also forthcoming but due out very soon is Alexander Huang’s Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange, which, in addition to dramatic performances of Shakespeare in China, also looks at film adaptations.

Other staples in our list of books on Chinese cinema include China on Screen: Cinema and Nation, by Christopher Berry and Mary Ann Farquhar and Michael Berry’s A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film.

Yesterday, The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) interviewed Peter Maguire, author of Facing Death in Cambodia, about the opening of the Cambodian genocide tribunal.

The long-delayed tribunal began with the testimony of the man known as Brother Duch. As Maguire states in the interview, the case against Duch is fairly solid since he has confessed to his crimes and there is strong evidence pointing to his role in the genocide. It is however an important test to see if the United Nations and the Cambodians can function as a court. Many questions remain regarding whether the Cambodian government has the will to see this process through and to bring more former leaders to trial.

In commemoration of the events of 1959, the Chinese government recently announced the creation of “Serf Liberation Day” to celebrates China’s “liberation” of Tibet from the evils of the oppressive Tibet’s former rulers.

In an article published yesterday in Open Democracy, Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947, argues that the proposed festival underscores China’s failure to understand the attitudes and resiliency of the Tibetan people. The festival, which is bound to be dismissed or re-interpreted by Tibetans, also highlights the failure of the local Tibetan officials, supported by Beijing, to be viewed as legitimate rulers. The show that will be put on to “commemorate” the “liberation” of Tibet will be just that—a show:

For local Tibetan officials, the intended message of Serf Liberation Day will be the delivery of public mass compliance to the leadership in Beijing. A choreographed spectacle – in which former “serfs” will tearfully recount the evils of the past while locals in their hundreds march past the leaders’ podium, dressed in colourful costumes and dancing in unison – will both reinforce the party’s narrative of 1959 and convey the contentment of Tibetans today. This will allow the Tibetan officials to produce the performances required to retain their posts, and the local people to fulfill the needs of the local leaders so that they can be allowed to maintain their livelihoods.

Of course events like “Serf Liberation Day” also fail to obscure the outbreaks of popular protest against Chinese rule in Tibet. Tsering Shakya concludes the article by writing:

The Chinese government response to protest favoured by party hardliners is to combine nationalist fervour, colonial attitudes and brute force in shifting increasingly towards an agenda of control and rushed development. This approach, far from eliminating Tibetan opposition, will further alienate the Tibetan population.

The commemoration of “Serf Liberation Day” is a classic illustration of the nature of Chinese power over Tibetans. Until local voices are listened to and local memories understood, until issues of perception and language that surround the Tibetan situation are addressed, until a political settlement based on the devolution of power is considered, it is unlikely that any progress will be possible.

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s forced exile to India and to discuss the event, NPR interviewed Robert Barnett, director modern Tibetian studies at Columbia University and author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories.

Barnett, who was in touch with Tibetians until the government shut down text messaging for “maintenance,” argues that China has never managed to win the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people, and committed a rather egregious mistake by banning the worship of the Dalai Lama fifty years ago. Though Chinese government officials have in principle agreed to meet with the Dalai Lama, they don’t really know how to talk to him.

Barnett also discussed the effect of news on the radio from afar. Interestingly, Tibetans who live in the countryside have access to the Voice of America and are very well informed on world events but the Chinese jam the radio waves in the city and as a result urban dwellers are dismally informed.

There have been multiple tiny protests in various towns in Tibet recently consisting of one or two people standing up in the town square voicing discontent and slogans. The Chinese, Barnett argues, have to be very careful about how they deal with these since if they crack down too hard they will have a full-scale protest on their hands rather quickly.

I don’t know about you, but we are getting tired of winter’s bitter cold and snow assaulting us here in New York City.
To encourage warmer weather we offer below a poem from the anthology Beyond Spring: Tz’u poems of the Sung Dynasty, translated by Julie Landau.

P’o chen tzu

The day the swallows come, spring begins
After the pear blossoms fall, it’s Ch’ing-ming*
On the pond a few specks of green
Under the leaves, the yellow oriole tries a note or two
All day long the catkins fly

The girl from next door comes giggling
We meet picking mulberry leaves along the path
No wonder I had such a good spring dream last night –
Today my fighting grass beats hers
Smiles grow on both cheeks

By Yen Shu (991-1055)

*Ch’ing ming is a festival devoted to sweeping the graves of the ancestors and going into the country to enjoy nature.

Take a look at other titles also in the Translations from the Asian Classics series here.