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1919: Female Students in Our Era of Destruction and Construction

Translated below the second article of Volume One of Bing Xin’s Collected Works 冰心全集 See also: 1919: Bing Xin on Attending Trial of Peking U Students 1930: A Ying on Writer Bing Xin 冰心/Xie Wanying 1919 Female Students in Our Era of Destruction and Construction The term “female student” (女学生) is a new one that has emerged in the past few decades. Society has held varying views, made differing…

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1919: Bing Xin on Attending Trial of Peking U Students

Bing Xin’s 1919 report followed by the Chinese Communist Party News Network website’s 2018 backgrounder on the trial. I added some links and comments. See also: 1930: A Ying on Writer Bing Xin 冰心/Xie Wanying Reflections on Attending the Trial on the 21st (1919) １９１９年二十一日听审的感想 (first article in Volume One of Bing Xin Collected Works 冰心全集 [Note in Bing Xin Collected Works Vol 1] On May 4, 1919,…

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1930: A Ying on Writer Bing Xin 冰心/Xie Wanying

Her exact contemporary A Ying 阿英/Qian Xingcun 钱杏村 (1900 – 1977) wrote an appreciation of poet and writer Bing Xin 冰心/Xie Wang Ying (1900 – 1999). A Ying’s 1930 article on Bing Xin from Volume II of A Ying’s Collected Works 阿英全集 published by the Anhui Educational Publishing House includes extensive citations from Bing Xin’s own poetry and prose. Translated below is A Ying’s article “Women Writers…

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2022: The Red Legend of an Austrian Jew — Ruth Weiss in Shanghai

Translation of a 2022 biographical article about the Austrian-Chinese journalist, teacher and translator Ruth Weiss (1908 – 2006). Weiss, a journalist, teacher and translator published her autobiography Am Rande der Geschichte. Mein Leben in China. [At the Edge of History: My Life in China] in a 2005 revised edition with Wagener Edition. The 2002 article translated below by Zheng Xian published…

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2025: Hunan Xiangya Hospital Whistleblower Murder Case Exposed, Ongoing Suppression by Censors -- ChatGPT Quick Search Tool Example

Here is a dramatic ongoing 2024 Luo Shiyu 罗帅宇 Hunan Xiangya Second Hospital 中南大学湘雅二医院 whistleblower murder case (the authorities say it was suicide, there is some evidence to the contrary) with posthumous exposure of thousand-plus page whistleblower documentation recovered from his ‘wiped’ computer through data forensics. This case is getting great attention on Chinese social media with…

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Studying Abroad and Returned Students: It's Complicated

Love-hate relationships sometimes.  In 1973 when I was studying in France, a Jordanian student told me  “People from my country who study in the Soviet Union become pro-American, while those who study in the USA become pro-Soviet!” Perhaps not true in all cases yet…  The reality of one side you know with all its strengths and weaknesses vs. the dream of what the other side is like.  I’ve been…

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1920s-40s: Contemporary Chinese Sources on Wang Jingwei 汪精衛; Literature as History

A distinguished sinologist recently shared a list of Chinese works, some many decades old, relating to the career of Wang Jingwei, the prominent KMT figure and later collaborator with the Japanese during World War II — as Wikipedia notes president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. Flag of the Reorganized National Government of…

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2020 Gao Yang: How to Understand Diplomacy Through “Diplomatic Jargon”

This article titled “高扬：如何透过‘外交行话’看外交？” [ How to Understand Diplomacy Through “Diplomatic Jargon”] first appeared in print on May 29, 2020, as featured on page 3 of the Tongue of the Party — People’s Daily (人民日报) ] The author Gao Yang 高扬 (male) holds a Ph.D. from Jilin University and is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Contemporary World Studies under the International Liaison…

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What was Party's Role in the May 30th Movement of 1925?

I find ChatGPT4o, in particular its searching capabilities (search best done in Chinese for Chinese topics) a fine tool. The narratives it generates, although stimulating are not entirely reliable or reasonable, and often overconfident depending upon the sparseness of the data in its training and net searches. My recently updated article here Chinese Language Study and Translation Tools provides…

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2021: Protecting PRC Ideological Security in Sino-Foreign Joint Education

Ideological security is an essential component in the Chinese Communist Party’s and China’s national security concept. Protecting the Party and the PRC from ideological infection from foreigners or from Chinese expatriates is one of the roles of Party and PRC propaganda and media efforts. Chinese language media investment, control and influence efforts as well as the United Front Work Department…

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2021: A Ying -- 20th C Chinese Writer, Playwright, Bibliophile

A Ying 阿英 — pen name of Qian Xingcun (钱杏村) or Qian Xingsen (钱杏森) birth named Qian Defu 钱德富 was a 20th century Chinese writer and playwright active from the 1920s onwards, a founder of the League of Left-Wing Writers, underground literary activist in the 1930s and 1940s and legendary bibliophile. His book collection was plundered by the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution. Wikipedia has…

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2025: "PRC Returned Overseas Students are American Spies, I Wouldn't Hire Any" Controversy

There is an equal and opposite Chinese counterpart to the views some of the MAGA people in the USA who suspect there are lots and lots of Chinese spies among Chinese studying in the USA.  There are also Chinese people (feeling pressure from the Party and may be some are Make China Great Again (MCGA) people who worry that there are lots and lots of US spies among the Chinese studying in the…

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2025: Names, Names -- Many Names for Chinese Writers, Scholars and Revolutionaries

Translating several works by and articles about the early 20th century revolutionary writer Jiang Guangci I noticed he used quite a few names. Some of this may have been because his writings were politically sensitive but having several alternate names including pennames is fairly common. In China even more so! Confucius stressed rectifying names zhengming 正名 meaning that people should properly…

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1998 WONG Wang Chi: Why Lu Xun Became a Target in the 1928 Revolutionary Literature Debate

What happened to Jiang Guangci? He was a very popular ‘revolutionary’ writer on the 1920s, one of the earliest members of the Chinese Communist Party, a co-founded of the Sun Society in early 1928. Jiang was a founding member of the League of Left-Wing writers in 1930 yet expelled from both the League and the Communist Party that same year. The answer I gather from the article translated below,…

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2025: A Chinese Perspective on the Extraordinary Corruption of the Trump Regime

Observations on US corruption from China’s Fudan University’s US-China Friendship and Mutual Trust Cooperation Program. The “Program to Promote China-U.S. Friendship, Trust and Cooperation” is an academic initiative jointly launched by the Fudan Development Institute (FDDI) at Fudan University and Ample Harvest Capital. Its primary aim is to foster mutual understanding and collaboration between…

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1928: On Revolutionary Literature by Jiang Guangci

On Revolutionary Literature (1928) By Jiang Guangci 关于革命文学 蒋光慈 1 I’m ashamed to admit it. I’ve long been engaged in revolutionary literary work, yet to this day I have never published a formal essay on revolutionary literature!  In my book Russian Literature I have touched on the theory of revolutionary literature piecemeal but I have never formally expressed my views on how to build…

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2025：If Xi were Like Trump -- An AI assisted Parody

I thought of a thought experiment today — what if Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping had a Me Too moment and decided to act like US President Donald Trump. What if — To do a Trump, Xi would be say threatening the Russian Federation with annexation, calling for conquest of North Korea (it would be better off with Chinese military protection (I did hear 30 years ago about some…