Lifting the Veil on China under Mao: Frank Dikötter and People's Trilogy

One of the University's most high-profile research outputs has come from Chair Professor of Humanities Frank Dikötter. The Dutch historian, who arrived as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2004, has spent more than a quarter of a century researching modern China and has published several critically acclaimed books on the subject. But it is his People's Trilogy, a series on the impact of communism on the country, that is changing the way historians look at 20th-century China.

With unrestricted access to little-used local, county and provincial archives, Dikötter made his mark with the first book of the trilogy, Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, documenting how at least 45 million people died in the largely man-made famine of 1958-62. It won Britain's most prestigious book award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was also a HKU Research Output Prize winner.

His second book in the trilogy, The Tragedy of Liberation, challenges the view that the birth of the People's Republic heralded a benign period after years of civil war with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and occupation by the Japanese. It details how Mao Zedong and the Communists consolidated their hold on power after the end of World War II to 1957 through a systematic wave of terror that included the confiscation of all property, the incitement of neighbours to kill each other and quotas for official executions, paving the way for the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Published in 2013, it has been well received all around the world, creating much anticipation for the final part of the trilogy on the horrors of Cultural Revolution.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page:

Mao's Great Famine: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/maos-great-famine-9780747595083/

The Tragedy of Liberation: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-tragedy-of-liberation-9781620403471/

Wang Aihe and Painters' Secret Community during the Cultural Revolution

It's hard to imagine how doing a still-life painting of something as serene as a peach blossom in a vase can be called an act of counter-revolution, but that's the risk Dr Wang Aihe took every time she painted with her friends in the last years of the Mao Zedong era. Long before Wang joined the School of Chinese, she spent several years at the latter end of the Cultural Revolution as a member of an underground collective of young artists known as the Wuming (No Name) group in Beijing.

The group was formed spontaneously and comprised artists from different social classes, occupations and educational backgrounds. Their clandestine meetings were in direct contravention of the ban on free association and their individualistic work was a challenge to the orthodoxy of the day, which demanded that art represent and serve the state. Many of them sunned the social realist style prevalent at the time in favour of Western styles of painting.

They produced thousands of paintings but apart from a series of secretive exhibitions, little was known or recorded about the artists until 2010, when Wang put together a 13-volume publication and online database of their work. It also includes autobiographical essays by the artists on the historical and social contexts in which the paintings were produced. The 13 bilingual volumes help provide an important insight into the counter-culture of the day, and mark an important step in the research of modern Chinese art history.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=16&Charset=iso-8859-1&page=-1&key=9789888028344

Adams Bodomo on Africans in China

As an African arriving in Hong Kong in 1997 to teach at the University, Dr Adams Bodomo had to get used to being stared at in the streets by people who were not accustomed to seeing a black face. Today, Africans in Hong Kong are still a relatively rare sight, but their numbers throughout the rest of China have grown into a migration phenomenon since the turn of the millennium. So much so that Bodomo, as Associate Professor of Linguistics and African Studies at the School of Humanities, devoted much of his time to researching the subject. In 2012 he published Africans in China: A Sociocultural Study and Its Implications on Africa-China Relations.

The pioneering book has become a must-read for the growing number of scholars in the field and made Bodomo the go-to consultant worldwide for discussions or analysis on Africans in China. There has long been an African presence in China, but it began to grow significantly in the late 1990s as China forged numerous connections with African countries to secure oil to fuel its booming economy. These connections encouraged the flow of African migrants to China, a trend that was increased by China's admission to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. The vast majority are in the country to buy goods and return home, but more and more are staying to set up business. One of the most evident examples of this is in Guangzhou, home to many of the factories that produce the kinds of goods in demand in the African market. There are so many black Africans living there today, writes Bodomo in the book, that part of the city has been nicknamed "Chocolate City".

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://www.cambriapress.com/cambriapress.cfm?template=4&bid=487

Hong Kong History Made Accessible: John Carroll's Concise History of Hong Kong

With its heady mix of Eastern and Western influences, a colonial past and a new role as gateway to China, Hong Kong continues to fascinate and perplex observers. Professor John Carroll's intention, when he wrote A Concise History of Hong Kong (Rowman and Littlefield/HKUP 2007), was to provide undergraduates and general readers with a short, accessible overview that combined elements of political, social and cultural history. He also wanted to present this history, not solely from a British point of view as many other works have done, but from a more balanced perspective, as well as to look at the legacies - both good and bad - of colonial rule and the challenges and advantages of reintegration with China. Based on the work of other scholars and on Carroll's own research, the book is presented in a very readable way and explores Hong Kong's unique identity. The resulting work is an accessible and engrossing narrative that details the remarkable history of this fascinating place from the early 1800s through to 2005.

Over HKU's first century, other History professors have also devoted time to chronicling the past of this great city and its first university. They include George Endacott, who was responsible in 1946 for the post-war re-establishment of the History Department where he continued to teach for some 16 years, and who wrote the first comprehensive history of Hong Kong titled simply A History of Hong Kong, first published in 1958. Over the past 25 years, Dr Elizabeth Sinn has written important books on the Tung Wah Hospital, the Bank of East Asia and Chinese emigration to California. In 2012 Dr Peter Cunich published the first of a two-part history of HKU, A History of the University of Hong Kong, Volume 1, 1911-1945, to mark the University's centenary and he is currently completing Volume 2. Meanwhile, Dr. K.W. Fung in the School of Chinese is preparing a Chinese history of HKU, Virtues and Intellect in Unity: A Centennial History of the University of Hong Kong 1911-2011.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publishers' page:

Rowman and Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742534223/A-Concise-History-of-Hong-Kong

HKUP: http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Cid=16&key=9789622098787

Strangers on the Western Front: Xu Guoqi on Chinese Labourers in the First World War

China's emergence as a global power in the 21st century, with the world's second-largest economy, a growing influence in international politics and a blue water navy, can be traced back almost 100 years to the country's involvement in World War I. Professor Xu Guoqi of the Department of History has spent much of his academic career unearthing the facts of China's little-known contribution to the war effort in Europe when the fledgling republic was eager to establish a national identity and claim a place at the table of international power brokers. China was also keen to recover Shandong Province which had been a German concession since 1898.

It was for these reasons that China sent 140,000 peasants to act as labourers for the French, British and United States Allies on the Western Front. They began arriving in 1916, most of them illiterate farmers from Shandong who were mainly employed digging trenches and transporting munitions, and who were paid a lot more than they could earn at home. They were not allowed to fight, but still about 3,000 of them were killed during the conflict because they had to work on the frontline.

China officially declared war on Germany in 1917, but the Treaty of Versailles the following year dashed hopes of recovering Shandong when Japan, which had joined the Allies in 1914, was given control of Germany's colonial possessions in China. Xu has written two books on the subject, one in 2005 and the latest, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War, published in 2011 by Harvard University Press.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049994

Douglas Kerr on Arthur Conan Doyle

There seems to be no end to the reinventions of Sherlock Holmes, in print and on the screen, and a research project in English focuses on the work of the famous detective's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. Besides the Holmes stories, Conan Doyle was a prolific writer of stories of adventure and the supernatural, historical and science fiction, journalism and history, and memoirs. Professor Douglas Kerr has made a comprehensive study of all of Conan Doyle's work and investigates him as a maker of culture and an important interpreter of the times he lived in, especially in the spheres of sport, medicine, science, law and order, army and empire, and spirituality. His findings are published in an Oxford University Press book entitled Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession and Practice (2013), reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement as "erudite and arresting".

Kerr is a director and former Chairman of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, and besides enabling conversation between Hong Kong readers and writers from all over the world, he has given talks about his own work on Conan Doyle and other 20th-century writers to academic and non-academic audiences in Mainland China, Asia and Europe. He also hosts the RTHK programme, The Big Idea, where he talks to locals and visitors on subjects ranging from "Romanticism" to "Cancer". He next turns his attention to a very different English writer, George Orwell.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/conan-doyle-9780199674947?cc=hk&lang=en&

The Great Kantō Earthquake: Charles Schencking and the History of Japan's Natural Disasters

It's a macabre irony that the worst natural disaster to hit Japan, resulting in the loss of more than 110,000 human lives, is also seen as providing a perfect example of the human condition. The Kantō earthquake of September 1, 1923 reduced 45 per cent of Tokyo to smouldering rubble. At the time, the earthquake's 7.9 magnitude was one of the largest ever recorded in a country that suffers 20 per cent of the world's tremors of a magnitude of 6.0 or above every year. Most of the deaths and destruction were caused by fire that broke out across the city. But it is what happened in the aftermath that became the focus of Professor Charles Schencking of the Department of History.

An active and widely published researcher of Japanese history, natural disasters and war, Professor Schencking's book The Great Kantō Earthquake offers harrowing accounts of the human tragedy during the earthquake and its immediate aftermath. He examines how the disaster was interpreted by many social commentators as an act of divine punishment to admonish Japanese for leading what many suggested were hedonistic, luxury-minded lifestyles. He also charts how grandiose reconstruction dreams were tempered by political conflict and fiscal penury. His work points to the extraordinary resilience of Tokyo's citizens as they rebuilt their city and the world around them from ruins.

Schencking credits his research into the book with changing his attitude towards teaching and historical enquiry, leading him to concentrate on the human side of this discipline and earning him a Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2010. He has also pioneered taking his subject to the wider community with his department's "History in the Making" public lecture series and a companion website to his book.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-great-kanto-earthquake-and-the-chimera-of-national-reconstruction-in-japan/9780231162180

Defining Happiness, East and West: Timothy O'Leary's Philosophical Pursuit

We all strive for happiness in life, yet our notions of what it comprises can be vague and inconsistent. The "pursuit of happiness" is actually written into the American constitution, while Chinese philosophy has concepts of joy but not happiness. Is it a psychological state or simply the result of living a comfortable life? And why are people so fascinated by trying to define happiness and how to achieve it? That fascination led Philosophy Professor Timothy O'Leary to instigate a major research project entitled Happiness East and West, on comparative philosophical approaches in the two cultures to what constitutes happiness, and how those ideas have shifted over time.

O'Leary draws on philosophical resources from both cultures to help determine what factors are considered important for achieving happiness in today's world. He feels the human preoccupation with happiness comes partly from the fact that the world changes constantly and so the ingredients that make a happy life change. Studying the subject via the two cultural traditions may cast some understanding on this and allow researchers to build new theoretical frameworks enabling different disciplines to come together. For example, the study also includes a collaborative project with HKU's Department of Psychology on emotion and psychological well-being.

Happiness East and West is at https://teoleary.com/happiness-east-and-west/

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Stephen Matthews on Bilingualism in Children

Ten years of research was a labour of love for Professor Stephen Matthews of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities. He and his fellow linguistics expert wife, Professor Virginia Yip of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, were inspired by the birth of their children to produce an award-winning study into the early development of language in a bilingual family. Their son and two daughters were among the subjects of the couple's research that produced new findings on how children acquire two languages from birth and threw fresh light on the acquisition of English and Cantonese in childhood - a hitherto under-researched area.

Using an approach where one parent speaks to the child in one language, and the other parent speaks to the child in another, the two co-directors of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre observed and recorded regular sessions of their children from the ages of one to two-and-a-half years engaged in daily activities such as playing, reading and role playing. The subjects were encouraged to speak in Cantonese for half an hour and in English for half an hour. The 170 hours of recordings were stored in The Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus video-linked database and resulted in a groundbreaking book published in 2007, The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact, which won the prestigious Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistic Society of America in 2009. A major conclusion from the research is that parents who delay exposing their children to both languages fearing it will be too much for them to absorb are labouring under a misapprehension.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://www.cambridge.org/hk/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/psycholinguistics-and-neurolinguistics/bilingual-child-early-development-and-language-contact?format=PB

Yoshiko Nakano and the Story of the Rice Cooker

The made-in-Japan rice cooker is ubiquitous in Hong Kong and regarded with deep affection by people here. This phenomenon struck Dr Yoshiko Nakano of the Department of Japanese Studies as curious and inspired her to launch a deeper investigation. Through oral history interviews with users, distributors and makers of rice cookers in Hong Kong and Japan, she uncovered a story of globalisation and innovation in which Hong Kong played a major role. The results were published in her 2009 book, Where There Are Asians, There Are Rice Cookers: How "National" Went Global via Hong Kong.

The electronic rice cooker was invented in Japan in 1955, becoming part of the 1960s Japanese economic miracle when the country's consumer goods began to conquer the world's markets. Its introduction to Hong Kong under the National brand (nowadays Panasonic) was down to a local entrepreneur, William Mong, founder of the Shun Hing Group. He persuaded National to put a window in the lid so people could see the rice cooking and know when to add lapchong sausage to suit local tastes. In the 1960s, this localised model became an icon of modern living for Hong Kong people, who felt acquiring a rice cooker showed they were no longer poor. In the 1980s, Mong also advised that the rice cooker be made to produce more steam to replicate the old clay pots used for cooking rice. In this way, the Japanese electric giant learned how to localise and then globalise its product, working in collaboration with the Chinese entrepreneur. Hong Kong's position as a free port also helped to spread the rice cooker to the rest of Asia and Asian communities all around the world.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

Please click on the following link to access the publisher's page: http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=16&Charset=iso-8859-1&page=-1&key=9789888028085

Unravelling the Secrets of the Qin: Dr. Yang Yuanzheng's Research on the Ancient Chinese Stringed Instrument and its Music

Disputes between China and Japan are nothing new, but Dr Yang Yuanzheng from the Department of Music managed to uncover one stretching back to the seventh century. Yang has become a world authority on the qin since embarking on two highly-acclaimed postgraduate theses on the ancient Chinese stringed instrument and its music after completing a BE in Mechanics and Engineering at Peking University in 2003. His work tells the story of how China's position as the fount of qin music has been challenged by Japan since the discovery in the 17th century of two scrolls of music that originated in China but had been hidden in the Japanese imperial library for 1,000 years.

Yang's work -- which has involved cooperating with experts from Europe to digitise the invaluable scrolls so they could be studied by other music scholars and doing CAT scans of antique qin instruments held in US museums -- has been recognised and rewarded several times over the past 10 years. Among his achievements was being awarded the Li Ka Shing Prize twice (2003-05 and 2007-08) and the Ford Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council in New York City (2006). He has held research fellowships at Princeton University and Utrecht University and published in the world's most prestigious musicological journals. Yang also received an Early Career Award from the Research Grants Council.

With assistance from his colleague in the Music Department, Professor Chan Hing-yan, Yang has organised several concerts and recordings of qin music while pioneering further research into the sounds and musical influences of the Tang Dynasty.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)