HIST/EAST 224
Spring 2011
MODERN CHINA
States, Transnations, Individuals, Worlds
TR 1:10-2:30
PAC002
Tony Day
tday@wesleyan.edu
Course description
This course examines “China” and the “Chinese” in the 20th and early 21st centuries. We
will not focus exclusively on the PRC or mainland Han Chinese. Taiwan, Southeast Asia,
Xinjiang, and Tibet will also be part of the “China” we consider. Lectures and readings
for the course will cover the important historical events and themes in the history of the
modern Chinese nation-state, but we will also be concerned with “dislocating” China and
dominant historical narratives about it in various ways. For example, we will listen to
what individual voices, heard through fictional works, a memoir, and examples of
Chinese reportage, tell us about the experience of being “Chinese” over the last century
or so. We will study centers and leaders, but also learn about peripheries, subalterns, and
minorities. Viewing films and documentaries will help make the multiple histories of
Chinese people (i.e., of people in China and Chinese people elsewhere) more palpable
and real.
Requirements
1 mid-term and 1 final take-home test (2-3 pp., 10% each).
2 short papers (4-6 pp., 20% each).
1 long paper (8-12 pp., 40%).
Students taking the course for CR/U must achieve a final “B” grade or higher for any
60% combo of the requirements.
I prefer that all papers be submitted to me electronically on or before the specified due
dates. Unexcused late work will be penalized.
Regular attendance and participation in class discussions are expected.
IMPORTANT DATES
Tuesday, February 15: first short paper due.
Thursday, March 3: take-home mid-term due by 12 midnight.
Tuesday, April 5: long paper proposals due.
Thursday, April 21: second short paper due.
1
Tuesday, May 3: take-home final due by 12 midnight.
Thursday, May 12: long paper due.
Major readings
The following books will be read and discussed intensively in the course. They have been
put on 2-hour reserve in Olin but can also be purchased from Broad Street Books.
Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai
Lama (U of California Press, 1997).
Kang Zhengguo, Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China (Norton, 2005).
Diana Lary, China’s Republic (CUP, 2007).
Liauw Yiwu, The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up
(Pantheon, 2008).
Liu Binyan, Two Kinds of Truth: Stories and Reportage from China (Indiana
University Press, 2006).
Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of
Lu Xun (Penguin, 2009).
Yokomitsu Riichi, Shanghai (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan,
2001).
Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (Norton, 2nd edition, 1999).
Zhang Guixing, My South Seas Sleeping Beauty (Columbia University Press, 2007).
All other readings are available on ERes in Olin or are posted on the course Moodle page.
Note on the weekly readings and PowerPoint presentations
Readings for the course are listed after each lecture topic. I encourage you to come to
class with questions of your own, and I will have some to throw out for class discussion,
so it would be helpful if you do some reading for each lecture topic before coming to
class. For the purposes of the two take-home tests, you will be responsible for the
readings marked required and for the material presented in class and on the PowerPoint
slides.
Readings designated as “optional” offer background, additional information, critical
insights, and greater nuance to the required readings. Optional readings will be useful to
you when you are writing your papers. Papers that show evidence of your having
consulted the optional readings will receive higher grades than those that don’t.
2
Note on the long papers
The long-paper assignment gives you the opportunity to formulate your own topic and
write at some length about it. You are asked to send me a half-page statement about your
topic, with three or four titles of books/articles/films/stories you intend to discuss, by
April 5. It would be a good idea for you to meet with me to discuss your long paper
project before that date. The important caveat to bear in mind is that whatever the main
disciplinary interest and focus of your paper (e.g., economics, politics, literature,
film, etc.), you must address one or more central “historical” question you have
encountered in the course, either in the lectures or in the reading. Thinking done and
papers written for other courses on East Asia in other disciplines that you have taken or
are taking concurrently are of course useful, but work done elsewhere may not be simply
“saved as” submissions to Hist/East224.
Films and documentaries
Throughout the course, we will watch and discuss clips from feature films,
documentaries, and YouTube. As of the Spring 2009 semester, it is no longer possible to
upload and stream this material through the Wesleyan system. However, you will be
tested on video material presented in class, so it is important that you attend
lectures regularly and take notes on the film clips that are shown. The following five
feature films and four documentaries will receive particular attention:
Rickshaw Boy (dir. Ling Zifeng, 1982)
Good Men, Good Women (dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1995)
The Horse Thief (dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986)
Mee Pok Man (dir. Eric Khoo, 2001)
Sepet (Slant-Eye) [dir. Yasmin Ahmad, 2004]
China from the Inside (dir. Jonathan Lewis, 2006)
China: A Century of Revolution (dir. Sue Williams, 1989-97)
Morning Sun (dir. Carma Hinton, Geremie R. Barmé, Richard Gordon, 2005)
Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion (dir. Tom Peosay, 2003)
Schedule of lectures, test/paper due dates, and readings
1/20
Lecture 1: What is “China”? Who is “Chinese”? Required: Tu Wei-ming,
“Cultural China: The Periphery as Center,” in Tu Wei-ming, ed., The Living
Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, pp. 1-34 (ERes).
1/25
Lecture 2: Last days of the Qing in the age of imperialism. Required: Lary, pp.
1-44; Spence, pp. 223-42, 253-63. Optional: Spence, pp. 149-66 (Opium War and
Treaty of Nanjing); 167-80 (Taiping Uprising); 208-14 (Overseas Chinese).
1/27
Lecture 3: The new republic. Required: Lary, pp. 45-80. Optional: Spence, pp.
271-89; Marie-Claire Bergère, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 19111937, pp. 63-98 (Moodle).
3
2/1
Lecture 4: May Fourth and the birth of the CCP. Required: Spence, pp. 290-341.
Optional: Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern
World, pp. 3-68 (Moodle); ch. 13, “A Road is Made,” in Pai-Kai Cheng and
Michael Lestz, with Jonathan D. Spence, eds., The Search for Modern China: A
Documentary Collection, pp. 233-51 (ERes).
2/3
Lecture 5: Lu Xun. Required: from Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q:
Introduction; “Preface;” “Diary of a Madman;” “Medicine;” “A Minor
Incident;” “A Passing Storm;” “My Old Home;” “The Real Story of Ah Q;”
“Village Opera;” “New Year’s Sacrifice;” “In Memoriam.” Optional: Lu
Hsun, “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?,” in Ding Ling and Lu Hsun
(intro. by Tani E. Barlow), The Power of Weakness: Stories of the Chinese
Revolution, pp. 84-92 (ERes).
2/8
Lecture 6: Shanghai (1). Required: Lary, pp. 81-111; Leo Ou-Fan Lee,
Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 19301945, ch. 1 (“Remapping Shanghai”), ch. 9 (“Shanghai Cosmopolitanism”),
and “Epilogue: A Tale of Two Cities,” pp. 3-42, 307-23, and 324-41 (ERes).
Optional: Spence, pp. 342-409; Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s
Gateway to Modernity, pp. 147-284 (Moodle); selected essays and stories by
Eileen Chang (ERes).
2/10
Lecture 7: Shanghai (2). Required: Yokomitsu, Shanghai (entire); Frederic
Wakeman, Jr., “Licensing Leisure: The Chinese Nationalists’ Attempt to
Regulate Shanghai, 1927-49” (Moodle); Gail Hershatter, “The Hierarchy of
Shanghai Prostitution, 1879-1949” (Moodle). Optional: David Strand,
Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s, ch’s 1-3, pp. 1-64
(ERes); Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early
Twentieth Century, ch. 2 (“The World of Rickshaws”), pp. 67-109
(DS796.S25.Electronic Book).
Film: Rickshaw Boy
2/15
Lecture 8: The resistance war. Required: Lary, pp. 112-50. Optional: Spence,
pp. 413-58.
First short paper due.
2/17
Lecture 9: Civil war. Required: Lary, pp. 151-177. Optional: Spence, pp. 459513; Ding Ling, “When I was in Xia Village,” in Ding Ling and Lu Hsun, The
Power of Weakness: Stories of the Chinese Revolution, pp. 128-56 (ERes).
2/22
Lecture 10: Taiwan (1). Required: Lary, pp. 178-210; June Yip, Envisioning
Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary, ch’s 3 and
4, “Remembering and Forgetting,” pp. 69-130 (ERes). Optional: Spence, pp.
4
53-58 (17th century background); Leo T.S. Ching, Becoming “Japanese”:
Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation, ch. 1 (“Colonizing
Taiwan”), pp. 15-50 (ERes).
Film: Good Men, Good Women
2/24
Lecture 11: Taiwan (2). Required: Zhuoliu Wu, Orphan of Asia, ch’s 2 and 3,
pp. 54-154 (ERes). Optional: Ching, ch. 5 (“‘Into the Muddy Stream’: Triple
Consciousness and Colonial Historiography in Orphan of Asia”), pp. 174-210
(ERes).
3/1
Review.
3/3
No class. Take-home mid-term due by 12 midnight.
3/4 – 3/21
SPRING BREAK
3/22
NO CLASS.
3/24
Lecture 12: The PRC, 1949-1957. Required: Spence, pp. 489-543; Kang, ch. 1,
pp. 3-13 and Lecture 13. China and the Cold War. Required: Chen Jian,
“Bridging Revolution and Decolonization: The ‘Bandung Discourse’ in
China’s Early Cold War Experience,” in Christopher Goscha and Christian
Ostermann, eds., Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in
Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 , pp. 137-71 (Moodle). Optional: Chris Alden, China
in Africa, pp. 1-58 (Moodle); NYT “Uneasy Engagement,” series of articles on
China’s foreign relations (access through the NYT China link).
3/29
Lecture 14: The Great Leap Forward. Required: Kang, ch’s 2 to 11, pp. 14-99;
Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine, Parts Three-Five, pp. 127-265, and
“An Essay on the Sources,” pp. 341-48 (Moodle). Optional: Spence, pp. 54464.
3/31
NO CLASS.
4/5
Lecture 15: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Required: Kang, ch’s 12
to 32, pp. 100-234; Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker, “The Former Red
Guard;” Optional: Spence, pp. 565-86; Chen Ruoxi, “The Execution of Mayor
Yin” (ERes); Michael Dutton, “Naming,” in Streetlife China, pp. 165-71
(Moodle).
Half-page on long paper topic due.
4/7
Lecture 16: China in the 1980s and the global era. Required: Spence, pp. 64776; Liu, pp. 1-26 and 43-105. Optional: Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the State: The
Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang, “The Roots of China’s Economic Boom” (Part 3),
5
pp. 89-154 (Moodle); “Comedians’ Dialogues” (xiangsheng), in Perry Link, ed.,
Stubborn Weeds: Popular and Controversial Chinese Literature after the Cultural
Revolution, pp. 252-75 (ERes).
4/14
Lecture 17: The “fifth modernization.” Required: Liu, pp. 281-99; Spence, pp.
677-728; Wang Hui, “The Historical Conditions of the 1989 Social Movement
and the Antihistorical Explanation of ‘Neoliberalism’,” in Wang Hui,
China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition, pp. 46-77
(ERes). Optional: Sang Ye, China Candid: The People on the People’s Republic,
pp. 1-9 (“Introduction: Words and Saliva”); ch. 1, pp. 13-27 (“A Hero for the
Times”); ch. 13, pp. 166-80 (“Unlevel Playing Field: Confessions of an Elite
Athlete”)(ERes).
4/19
Lecture 18: “Other” Chinese. Required: Goldstein, pp. 37-131; James
Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, ch. 6 (“In the People’s
Republic of China (1950s-1980s),” pp. 235-84 and ch. 7 (“Between China and
the World (1990s-2000s)”), pp. 285-355 (ERes). Optional: Dru Gladney,
Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and other Subaltern Subjects, ch. 2
(“Cultural Nationalisms in Contemporary China”) and ch. 5 (“Film and
Forecasting the Nation”), pp. 6-27 and 85-98 (ERes); John and Yingtsih Balcom,
eds., Indigenous Writers of Taiwan, pp. xii-xxiv (“Translator’s introduction”);
25-40 (Badai, “Ginger Road”); 129-32 (Rimui Aki, “The Sound of a Flute in the
Mountains”)(ERes).
Film: The Horse Thief
4/21
Lecture 19: Being “Chinese” in Singapore and Malaysia. Required: Norman
Owen, ed., The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia, ch’s 29 and 30, pp. 41430 (ERes); Carl A. Trocki, Singapore: Wealth, Power and the Culture of
Control, ch’s 4-5, pp. 107-59 (Moodle); Zhang, My South Seas Sleeping
Beauty (entire). Optional: Yu Dafu, “Sinking, ” in Joseph Lau and Howard
Goldblatt, eds., The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, pp. 31-55
(ERes); Yao Souchou, “Books from Heaven: Literary Pleasure, Chinese Cultural
Text and the ‘Struggle Against Forgetting’,” The Australian Journal of
Anthropology, 8,2 (1997): 190-209 (Moodle).
Second short paper due.
4/26
Lecture 20: Everyday life in “Chinese” Southeast Asia: Mee Pok Man and Sepet.
Required: Chua Beng Huat, “Conceptualizing an East Asian popular
culture,” in Kuan-Hsing Chen and Chua Beng Huat, eds., The Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies Reader, ch. 4, pp. 115-39 (Moodle). Optional: Geraldine Heng
and Janadas Devan, “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality,
and Race in Singapore,” in Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, eds., Bewitching
Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, ch. 6, pp. 195215 (ERes); Donald Nonini, “Shifting Identities, Positional Imaginaries:
6
Transnational Traversals and Reversals by Malaysian Chinese,” in Aihwa Ong
and Donald Nonini, eds., Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern
Chinese Transnationalism, ch. 7, pp. 203-27 (ERes).
4/28
Lecture 21: Challenges of the new century. Required: Elizabeth Economy, The
River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future, Chapter 2
(“A Legacy of Exploitation”), pp. 27-57 (ERes); “The Great Leap Backward?
The Costs of China’s Environmental Crisis,” Foreign Affairs
September/October 2007, vol. 86, no. 5, pp. 38-59 (ERes); NYT series
“Choking on Growth;” Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman,
“Introduction: Historical Reflections on Grassroots Political Reform in
China,” in Perry and Goldman, eds., Grassroots Political Reform in
Contemporary China, pp. 1-19 (ERes). Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker, any
five sketches (other than “The Former Red Guard”).
5/3
Review. Take-home final due by 12 midnight.
5/12
Long papers due.
7