Essays

Elixirs of Nature

Dustin Grinnell

How Chinese medicine uses the potency of herbs – Dustin Grinnell

In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang became the first emperor of China after conquering the warring states and unifying an immense territory. A leader of colossal vision, Qin oversaw the building of the Great Wall, constructed a national road system and standardized China’s currency. To protect him in the afterlife, the emperor spent almost forty years building a mausoleum in his imperial city of Chang’an in central China, guarded by the Terracotta army.

Obsessed with immortality, Qin commissioned alchemists to scour the country in search of an “elixir of life,” a concoction that would cure all diseases and stave off death. These alchemists brought back plants, minerals, animals, insects and metals from every corner of China. After repeatedly ingesting small silver balls of mercury, a highly poisonous metal, the emperor grew increasingly ill. On a tour of eastern China, he died of mercury poisoning, killed by the very elixir he had hoped would grant him eternal life.

Q&A

Anglophone Asian Poetics

Nicholas Wong

Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Jason Eng Hun Lee interview Nicholas Wong

 

How many years have you been writing poetry?

The first poem was written when I was in my third year at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), when Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim was teaching Creative Writing there. But serious creative writing only began in 2010, when I officially started my MFA at City University of Hong Kong.

Do you remember what inspired you to write your first poems?

It’s my sexuality, but I didn’t see it as a source of inspiration. I had to write something, because there was an assignment to be done.

Borderlands

Modernity with Yi Characteristics

Stevan Harrell

Adapting traditions in 21st century China – Stevan Harrell

The Sani people, an Yi group who live in the hills east of Kunming, have faced the puzzle of modernity longer than most. Many were part of a utopian Catholic experiment started by Père Paul Vial in 1887. Vial wanted them to be modern, educated and Catholic, while still being Sani. He built churches, translated scripture into Sani, published a Sani-French dictionary and purchased land for agricultural improvement projects. He also fought fiercely for Sani autonomy and against what he saw as their oppression by Han Chinese landlords and officials. About a third of the Sani population became Catholic by the time Vial died in 1917, and many remain Catholic to this day.

Chinese Corner

One Language, Two Systems

Ash Henson

Traditional vs. simplified characters – Ash Henson

As if learning to write Chinese characters isn’t enough of a headache already, there are two character systems in common use in the Sinosphere. “Traditional” characters, also known as “complex” characters, have been in continuous use for 1,500 years, and are the standard in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and many diaspora communities. “Simplified” characters are the result of script reforms made in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, and are also used in Singapore. It's an emotional topic for a lot of native speakers, not to mention a source of great strife for students of Mandarin. There’s something offensive for everyone.

Reviews

The People’s War

John B. Thompson

John B. Thompson reviews China at War by Hans van de Ven

Novelist Lao She watched Chongqing, China’s provisional capital during World War II, burn after a Japanese firebombing on May 4, 1939. “This is ‘May Fourth’!” he wrote, recalling the political and cultural movement to revive Chinese nationalism which started on that same date in 1919. “We will not accept this menace, this fire and blood! We will spill our hearts to struggle for and win rebirth for all of China!”

At the time, many Chinese argued that the War of Resistance Against Japan would win a new life for China, fractured by civil war and colonialism since the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. What kind of nation was to be reborn was not clear. As Hans van de Ven emphasizes in China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China, “China was at war not just with Japan but also with itself” in a protracted struggle for China’s future between the sovereign Nationalist Party and their Communist rivals.