Friday 31 December 2010

George Leslie Mackay

Rev. Dr. George Leslie Mackay (1844-1901, 馬偕 or 偕叡理) was the first missionary commissioned to Formosa by the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
He left San Francisco for China on 1st November 1871 and it took him nearly two months to arrive in Takow (now Kaohsiung) on 29th December, during which he also visited Yokohama, Hong Kong, Canton, Swatow (in which he met Rev. George Smith), Kit-yang [揭陽?], and landed Tamsui on 9th March 1872.
Reading on board. It is very interesting for me, as a cultural historian, to look at his two-month voyage on which he kept reading works about China and the Chinese intensively and extensively. Below are some excerpts from his recently published diaries.

3 Nov (Fri) 1871: Read Mr. Williams' [?] Years in China [?] (1)
6 Nov (Mon): Read "Observations on China and the Chinese" by N.L.S. Smith. (1)
7 Nov (Tue): Finished reading "China and the Chinese" and began "Social life of the Chinese" by Rev. Justus Doolittle. (2)
9 Nov (Thurs): Read away at "Social life amongst the Chinese (?) (2)
10 Nov (Fri): Still kept reading Doolittle's work. (2)
11 Nov (Sat): Read Nevius on China, also Doolittle. (2)
15 Nov (Wed): Read Doolittles 2nd vol. (2)
17 Nov (Fri): Began to Read 'Middle Kingdom' by S. Wells. Williams. (3)
20 Nov (Mon): Read 'Middle Kingdom'. (3)
21 Nov (Tue): Read Dr. Speer's 'China and the United States?" (3)
24 Nov (Fri): Read 'Visit to China' by Rev. Geo. Smith. (3)
1 Dec (Fri): The roughest day on our voyage -- ate no food, read no books, and Simply vomited - (4)
5 Dec (Tue): Hong Kong. Very early in the morning entered between land on each side. Winding Serpent-like and at 8. A.M. saw the British flag away up on the top of a Peak, Soon entered broad Sheet of Water surrounded by hills. also houses rising in rows above each other on the side of a high hill. Hong-Kong at last. Went below and thanked God for His care and goodness. Went ashore. Met a man Dr. Eitel who asked "Are you Mackay?" (5)
6 Dec (Wed): Remained all night with Dr. Eitel the man who accosted me on the Street yesterday. It seems Dr. Maxwell told him to be on the lookout for me -- At 8 A.M. took steamer for Canton... (5)
8 Dec (Fri): ...arrived in Hong Kong. Went to the German Mission. Saw 40 girls who sang "There is a happy" (5)

Upon arriving in Formosa:
25 Jan 1872: ...Went over sections of MacGowan's book - (English and Chinese dictionary of the Amoy dialects 1883) [? then he frequently drilled on MacGowan] (11-12)
5 May 1873, he wrote "up to this date from the day I landed at Tamsui I gave medicines to one thousand and twenty three (1,023)." (82)

Source: Mackay's Diaries : original English version, 1871-1901 (馬偕日記英文版, 1871-1901年) (Taipei: Altheia University (真理大學), 2007. Trans. & eds. by Reestablishing Committee of Mackay's Diaries, Neng-che Yeh, Chih-Rung Chen, etc.).

Thursday 30 December 2010

Does race matter?

What matter most in a multiracial metropolis, like London and Hong Kong?
Yes, for better or for worse, it remains to be race. Race still matters, and matters more than anything else in a world where multiracial/multiethnic/multicultural ethos continue to grow.
We do have our ways to identity ourselves in terms of race and ethnicity.
Society 'corrects' the ways in which we perceive ourselves and think about race and ethnicity in terms of appearance, skin colour, friends, tastes, etc. Even if we wish "to deny/assert legitimacy of ethnic and racial labels and constructs, or resist racial categorization, the wider societal gaze," the sociologist Miri Song argues, "could make it very difficult for... [us] to remain insulated from racial discourses which assign people to various racial categories."
Miri Song's latest article "Does 'Race' Matter? A Study of 'Mixed Race' Siblings' Identifications" (The Sociological Review, Vol. 58, No. 2, 2010, pp. 265-85) investigate the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families. She asks the role of race and the recognition of difference play in sibling relationships and in family life more generally.
Some of her subjects considered themselves British and ethnicity a "side detail" while to some others physical appearance was the basis of judgement from others which tended to make it impossible to derogate race or ethnicity in their lives.
"People just stereotype me and most Black people on a daily basis. They have their preconceived ideas and prejudices," one respondent reported. One of the respondents who looked White said "When we [his younger sister, Jane, and he] were at school, I used to feel guilty because I never experienced the racism that Jane [who looked Asian because of skin colour] did. I used to see her crying about it as a child."
One interviewee confidently noted "I can blend with any group and I find that I do not get discriminated as a non-White individual...If I felt that my future prospects were being affected by my race I would diplomatically ensure that whoever was getting in my way received a verbal slap and then find another path to where I want to go. My life is not defined by what other people want to let me do."

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Recent readings XXII

T. H. Barrett with Antonello Palumbo, "The mystery of the precious seal of the ruler and the origins of printing," Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2007, pp. 115-30. It may be that in future Daoist materials will prove to contain more useful materials for linking the use of seals to early printing.
Dŭsica Ristivojevic, "They Are Just like the Generations Past: Images of Chinese Women in the Women's Missionary Periodical Woman's Work in China (1884-1885)," Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2008, pp. 143-161.
Due to accessibility problem, Ristivojevic focuses on only four issues of Woman's Work in China (vol. 7(2), 8(1)-(2), 9(1), 1884-5), which was published by Kelly & Walsh? "Chinese and non-Chinese sinologists, in and out of China, in my view should not be unselectively criticized for using the term 'Westerners' as if that is a matter of negligence, oversimplication, and essentailization." (p. 144)
Four constructions of Chinese women: (1) despicable Chinese women who had shown no interest in complying with the Christian religion; (2) Chinese schoolgirls and women-students going through a process of conversion who are portrayed as having been risen from the depths of spiritual, mental and moral darkness, but are seen as constantly in danger of regressing to their degrading non-Christian tradition; (3) Chinese Christian women who are represented as a highly positive mirror image of Western men; and (4) upper-class Chinese women beyond the reach of women missionaries' but occupying a specific place, in the created imaginary, where the liberty of their converted/convertible lower-class sisters is deprived of and indulging in opium consumption.

When foreign advisers such as Edwin Dun came to Japan, they brought much more than their expertise: They brought deeply rooted opinions about the promise of modernization that, when integrated into the Japanese education system, work place, political values, and attitudes about the natural world, laid the foundation on which the modern Japanese nation would be built. political, social, and cultural values and attitudes about the natural world.
Source: Brett L. Walker's "Meiji modernization, Scientific agriculture, and the destruction of Japan's Hokkaido wolf," Environmental History, Vol. 9, No. 2, Apr 2004, pp. 248-74.

B. Luyt, "Colonialism, Ethnicity, and Geopolitics in the Development of the Singapore National Library," Libraries & the Cultural Record, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2009.
D. G. Davis, Jr., "International Trends in Library History," Libraries & the Cultural Record, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2010.
L. M. Han, "The Beginning and Development of the Raffles Library in Singapore, 1823-1941: A Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century British Colonial Enclave," Library & Information History, Vol. 25, No. 3, Sep 2009.
T. Weller, "An Information History Decade: A Review of the Literature and Concepts, 2000-2009," Library & Information History, Vol. 26, No. 1, Mar 2010.
Gabriel M. Wilner, "The Mixed Courts of Egypt: A Study of The Use of Natural Law and Equity," Scholarly Works, Paper 210, 1975. For future use

Tuesday 28 December 2010

English Next II

Following the post on English yesterday, I quickly flipped Graddol's English Next India: The future of English in India, which is free to download on the British Council's website.
Again, it is very informative and enjoyable. I found some similarities between India and Hong Kong, both being former British colonies for more than a century. Take an interesting example here:
In August 2009, the Indian television channel CNN-IBN carried out a "State of the Nation" poll, which showed ambivalence about English that 87% feel that knowledge of English is important to succeed in life and 54% feel those who can speak fluent English are superior whereas 82% feel that knowing the state language is very important and 57% feel that English making us forget our mother tongue. Adding to these, 63% feel jobs should be reserved for those who speak the state language?
If a similar poll could ever take place in Hong Kong (anyone knows?), how far the results would be different from India?

Monday 27 December 2010

English Next

Last week, I read a recent column on English Today titled "Will Chinese take over from English as the world's most important language?" (Vol. 26, 2010, pp. 3-4.). Questions of this kind, like "Will China take over the role of the US to become the world's sole superpower?", tend more often to draw anxiety and resistance than discussion and negotiation. The author, David Graddol, gives a fresh discussion saying that the next future of English probably is a language of different regional patterns of English-knowing bilingualism, and no single language taking over the role of English as a global lingua franca.
Graddol, coincidentally, is visiting my university in the Department of English. Not long ago in early November, he gave a public lecture titled "The Future of English in Hong Kong", in which he discussed the strategic importance of English to Hong Kong’s future economy. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the lecture, which I think should be of great interest to us all in Hong Kong.
He aroused my interest to read further on this topic and I just scanned his English Next (London: British Council, 2006) at the time when I am writing this post and shall now turn to his latest English Next India: The future of English in India (London: British Council, 2010).

Sunday 26 December 2010

lovely sunflower eggs

Back in the days while I worked nine-to-five, I used to have breakfast with two sunflower eggs in my favourite nearby restaurant to kick off the blue Monday.
One day, I found something strange with the egg yolks. It looked gorgeous, more yellow than ever before. I thought, happily, the restaurant changed the egg supplier.
If you, like me in this case, find your restaurant's brilliant decision one day, you should be happy, shouldn't you?
You shouldn't. Because it might be the result of a vitamin mixture added to the hens' feed that changes everything.
It is possible, and practical, to add artificial colouring to the grain to enhance the hue of egg yolks. Martin Lindström, a very successful branding consultant, instead of doing so, which he considered unethical, helped his Saudi Arabian client identify the vitamin mixture that would produce yolks from light yellow to middling-yellow to the passionate yellow, and all the variations in between.
From his book, Buy.ology: truth and lies about why we buy (New York: Doubleday, 2008), I also found something more interesting to carry on and took pride of while being told that the pink-product boom was ignited by the Hong Kong company VTech, which manufactured pink laptop and made an unexpected success in the market.
Buy.ology is a book about marketing and science, neuromarketing technically, which explores "the subconscious thoughts, fellings, and desires that drive the purchasing decisions we make each and every day of our lives". Lindström brilliantly presented to us a lot of interesting stories, experiments and investigation, which stimulate us, as consumers, to think about our subconscious buying behaviour.

Saturday 25 December 2010

a banquet

On April 15, 1952, the Encyclopaedia Britannica Corporation hosted a celebratory banquet in New York City's luxury Waldorf Astoria Hotel situated on the prestigious Park Avenue in the heart of midtown Manahattan.
Noteworthy invitees included Connecticut Senator William Benton; Hollywood film "Code" enforcer Will H. Hays, prominent businessmen Alfred Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, Jr., and Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Dinner speakers were the University of Chicago's Chancellor, Lawrence Kimpton, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins, Professor Mortimer J. Adler, and Senator Benton. Attendees included Jacques Barzun, Scott Buchanan, William Gorman, Richard McKeon, and Mark van Doren.
The publisher announced the publication of the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World. Attendees feasted on prime rib and inspected "Founders Editions" of the set's two-volume Syntopicon and introductory volume, The Great Conversation. Subscribers had earned a $500 each, to get the set published.
The editorial board was not in the hope of achieving a "universal swindle" (selling art as trinkets), or to effect the "abolition of the individual" in favour of the "mass man," but for the practical purpose of instilling intellectual virtues by a thorough exploration of the history of Western ideas. The most important thing was to democratize the great books idea, and that meant maximizing accessibility to the great books for readers o varying intellectual backgrounds.

Source: Tim Lacy, "The Lovejovian roots of Adler's philosophy of history: authority, democracy, irony, and paradox in Britannica's Great Books of the Western World," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 71, No. 1, Jan. 2010, pp. 113-137.

Friday 24 December 2010

a coffee story

Not everyone can afford a luxury car, luxury holiday or a luxury meal but everyone can afford a luxury coffee.
I practised running with a good friend yesterday and we talked about ground coffee. It all started a few weeks ago I decided to make ground coffee drinks instead of instant ones in the office.
I was gulping down a cup of freshly ground coffee to kick off the morning on Christmas Eve while I was to finish reading Sahar and Bobby Hashemi's Anyone can do it: building Coffee Republic from our kitchen table: 57 real-life laws on entrepreneurship (Oxford : Capstone, 2002), which I also shared with Joyce, who is in her fledging handmade jewellery business.
The sister and brother team who built Coffee Republic generously tells their intriguing story of leaving their most sought-after professions (lawyer and ibanker) and swimming in the ocean of entrepreneurship, which is, Bobby says, the best business school in the real word, offers us thoughtful and instructive laws on entrepreneurship.
law 1 (above all): forget about the swashbuckling 'Richard Branson' type (you don't have to be a genius to be an entrepreneur)
law 2: entrepreneurship is not a personality trait (don't take it personal)
law 3: behaving like an entrepreneurship is a process anyone can learn (anyone can do it)
law 4: passion will activate your entrepreneurial qualities (24/7 jobs need real passion)
law 5: you don't need skills or expertise (all you need is to act)
law 6: anyone can do it - but does everyone want to? is entrepreneurship your sort of thing? (yes, anyone can do it)
law 7: warning: success is not all that easy to come by. the failure rate is 99% (let's face it)
law 8: so decide for yourself what to do. you have to make the decision and only you can do it (it's all on you)
law 9: you can't be a half-hearted entrepreneur (commitment!)
law 10: don't bother if you're just in it for the cash (don't chase after money. let money chase after you, their father said)
law 11: your idea doesn't need to be new, original or revolutionary (you have to be creative though)
law 12: remember that entrepreneurs are different from inventors (again, you don't have to be a genius to be a entrepreneur)
law 13: be your own first customer (buy yourself before selling to customers)
law 14: don't approach your idea with money in mind. money doesn't turn on your light bulb! (not the first thing at least)
law 15: make sure the business idea suits you (the business is an extension of you)
law 16: an idea not acted upon is worthless (act is the only action word here)
law 17: entrepreneurs do not procrastinate (act now!)
law 18: commitment is generated by working on your idea (again, act!)
law 19: market research is nothing more than a massive fact-finding mission (live it, sleep it, and breathe it)
law 20: follow the Zulu principle (anyone can become an expert about anything)
law 21: when it comes to market research, do it yourself (it's your business, not others')
law 22: inspiration is all around you (inspiration is as close to you as your iphone)
law 23: do not give the game away. be discreet (this is very important)
law 24: call as many people as you can bear to - there's safety in numbers (don't give up)
law 25: don't be selective. go to everything (possibility lies somewhere you never thought about)
law 26: become a regular of the competition (to learn from the competitors)
law 27: formal customer surveys are out! (it's worthwhile quoting what Henry Ford said: "If I had asked customers what they wanted they would have a faster horse.")
law 28: the 80:20 rule (be bold)
law 29: it's your recipe for success (that's is a business plan)
law 30: it's a structured brain dump, and brain dumps need structure (if you can't write it, you don't know it)
law 31: a business plan is your calling card. it gives you external credibility (much more than a name card)
law 32: raising money is the first critical sale you have to make (spend/raise before you earn)
law 33: strike a fine balance being conservative and ambitious (yin and yang)
law 34: write a plan you can beat (anyhow, write it)
law 35: 90% of start-ups are financed by the guts, creativity and faith of the founders (guts)
law 36: be prepared for rejection and disappointment (rejection is nothing to be ashamed of)
law 37: the success of your idea depends on the quality of your implementation (implementation is the key)
law 38: the quality of your implementation is what will set you apart from the competition (quality implementation)
law 39: you are still swimming against the tide (you'll need to grow a thick skin)
law 40: the resources won't be there so you have to fill the gap between what's out there and what you need (creativity counts)
law 41: credibility has to be earned. you have a 'liability of newness' (credibility doesn't grow on trees)
law 42: the devil is in the detail (there is no such thing as a minor detail)
law 43: the bootstrapping rule. 2+2=5 (doing and knowing come hand in hand)
law 44: you can do anything, no matter how monumental, if you break it down into the small, manageable chunks (piece by piece)
law 45: success happens when preparation meets opportunity (the twins of success)
law 46: there is a lot to be said for the naivety of entrepreneurs. the importance of being clueless (like swimming in the ocean)
law 47: don't expect customers to flock in. success is not an entitlement (good things take time)
law 48: it won't be easy at the beginning. you need stickability (never give up)
law 49: keep focused (don't be defeated by "I told you so")
law 50: it's a marathon not a sprint! look after yourself (it's meant to be tough)
law 51: there is no plateau - you either go up or down (evolves or die)
law 52: a warning - monitor your speed. growth can kill (lots of recent cases)
law 53: you will need to adapt and tweak your original concept (the need to change)
law 54: bootstrapping is not a long term strategy. time to upgrade your resources (be prepared to change)
law 55: go with smart money. angels bring in experience as well as money (investors might join at some point)
law 56: don't just accept the first cheque you are offered - bringing in an investor is like inviting someone to live in your home (be very discreet)
law 57: don't get too many small investors on board (be focused)

the key was: for better or worse, they acted. their best advice is: start working immediately
At some point or other, I was deeply touched by the monumental passages about how they managed to turn their ideas into a business, the moment they secured the first loan and the triumphing email, the first day of opening and excitement, the bottle neck of the first few months, the persistence test, the media coverage, and even their departure from the business...
It's more than a book of self-help business book; it's a book of brilliant and touching story of successful business.

Thursday 23 December 2010

Why are we not rational?

Why would Harvard Business School MBA students pay as much as $204 for a $20 note?
The deeper the hole we dig themselves into, the more we continue to dig.
Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
If you think you know how you think, you'd better think again!
Alan M. Webber
This week I am enchanted by a thoughtful and compelling book on behavioural science: Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman's Sway : the irresistible pull of irrational behavior (New York : Doubleday, c2008).
The hidden currents and forces that lead us to make irrational decision include loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid possible losses; thus we overreact to perceived losses), value attribution (our inclination to imbue a person or thing with certain qualities based on initial perceived value; thus we undermine invaluable evidence and information), and the diagnosis bias (our blindness to all evidence that contradicts our initial assessment of a person or situation; thus we listen only to our ego self).

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Recent readings XXI

Jens-Uwe Guettel, "From the frontier to German South-West Africa: German colonailism, Indians, and American westward expansion," Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2010, pp. 523-52. The United States was regarded as a "model empire" to German liberals. Guettel argues that positive perceptions of American westward expansion played a major role both for the domestic German debate about the necessity of overseas expansion and for concrete German colonial policies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

大久保英哲 (Okubo Hideaki):〈近代日本体育史における林正十郎「木馬之書」(推定1867年)の意義〉 (On the historical meaning of "Mokuba no Sho" [The Book of Wooden Horse] written by Hayashi Shojuro (presumption in 1867) for the history of physical education in modern Japan),《体育学研究》 (Research of Physical Education),卷38 (Vol. 38),第3號 (No. 3),1993,頁157-173。 Hayashi Shojuro (1824-1896) was formerly a professor of Reench at Kaiseisho, National Academic Institute. He translated the French Army's textbok on gymnastics instruction Ministère de la guere: Instruction pour l'enseignement de la gymnastique (1847) into Japanese as「木馬之書」(The Book of Wooden Horse), which is held at 金沢市立図書館.

Glenn Timmermans, "Sir George Thomas Staunton and the Translation of the Qing Legal Code,"Chinese Cross Currents, Vol. 2, No. 1, January-March 2005, pp. 26-57.
日下翠 (Kusaka Midori):〈香港漫画考〉 (A study on "Hong Kong cartoons"),《比較社会文化:九州大学大学院比較社会文化学府紀要》(Bulletin of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University), 第10卷,2004,頁1-14。
日下翠 (Kusaka Midori):〈中国「新漫画」事情〉 (Chinese "new cartoons" as a new cultural form),《比較社会文化:九州大学大学院比較社会文化学府紀要》(Bulletin of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University), 第8卷,2002,頁17-26。
Richard C. Powell, "Geographies of science: Histories, localities, practices, futures," Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2007, pp. 309-29. Powell argues that different geographies of science are emerging considering a broad range of engagements with spatiality by historians, sociologists, anthropologists and posthmuanist practice theorists.
Mona Domosh, "The world was never flat: Early global encounters and the messiness of empire,"Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 34, No. 4, 2010, pp. 419-35. Singer Manufacturing Company's archives, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
Andrew Godley, "Selling the sewing machine around the world: Singer’s international marketing strategies, 1850–1920," Enterprise and Society, Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 266-314. absence of China market?
Diarmid A. Finnegan, "Natural history societies in late Victorian Scotland and the pursuit of local civic science," British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 38, Iss. 1 , pp 53 -72.
Falk Muller, "Johann WIlhelm Hittorf and the material culture of nineteenth-century gas discharge research," British Journal for the History of Science, article advance, 34pps. stimulating and interesting.

Monday 20 December 2010

Chinese Pidgin English (CPE)

A friend of mine, Si Jia, Associate Professor in the Department of History, Fudan University, recently published an article on Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries in the latest issue of Chinese Culture Quarterly (《九州學林》), published by the Chinese Civilisation Centre, City University of Hong Kong, in which I also contributed a review article on a recent work about British sinology (熊文華's 《英國漢學史》).
Her paper triggered me to look into the growing body of research on pidgin language and a scholarly journal in the genre: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, from which I read some interesting discussion on varying scope of pidgin and creole language relating to the Chinese language. They are:
Bao Zhiming and Khin Khin Aye, "Bazaar Malay topics," Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2010, pp. 155-71. It's a shame that I know nothing about Malay though my aunt and her family live, study and work in Malaysia.
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews, and Geoff Smith, "China Coast Pidgin: Texts and contexts," Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2010, pp. 63-94.
Jeff Siegel, "Chinese Pidgin English in southeastern Australia: The notebook of Jong Ah Siug,"Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2009, pp. 306-37. A 80-page notebook written in a form of English by a Chinese gold miner, Jong Ah Siug (Zhongshan, 1837 - Melbourne, 1900), who arrived in Victoria around 1855. Ruth Moore and John Tully's A Difficult Case by Jong Ah Siug: An Autobiography of a Chinese Miner on the Central Victorian Goldfields (translated and annotated by the authors, with a historical introduction) (Daylesford, VIC: Jim Crow Press, 2000).
Ronald I. Kim, "California Chinese Pidgin English and its historical connections," Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2008, pp. 329-44. Sources: a collection of telegrams sent among Chinese immigrants to and from Downieville, Sierra County in 1874; legal testimony from the trial of The People of the State Califronia vs Ah Jake, Defendant on 23 October 1874;The Chinese Must Go: A Farce in Four Acts, a drama by Henry Grimm of San Francisco, published in 1879.
Roman Shapiro, "Chinese Pidgin Russian," Journal of Pidgin and Creole Language, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2010, pp. 5-62. existed at the Chinese-Russian border since at least the 18th century. rare primary and secondary sources. It is shame that I don't read the Russian language.

Sunday 19 December 2010

Haggis again

Elizabeth Buettner's 'Haggis in the Raj: Private and public celebrations of Scottish in Late Imperial India,' The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 2, Oct. 2002, pp. 212-239.
Philip Constable's 'Scottish missionaries, "Protestant Hinduism" and the Scottish sense of empire in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century India,' The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, Oct. 2007, pp. 278-313.
Robert Anderson's 'Ceremony in context: the Edinburgh University tercentenary, 1884," The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, Apr. 2008, pp. 121-145.

James Huntley Grayson, "Basil Hall's Account of a Voyage of Discovery: The value of a British naval officer's account of travels in the seas of eastern Asia in 1816," Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2007, pp. 1-18. Basil Hall's, a Scot of the petty nobility (baronetage) of Scotland, eldest child Eliza Jane (1825?-1856?) was the mother of Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935).
Tamson Pietsch, "A British sea: making sense of global space in the late nineteenth century," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 423-46. The paper offers detailed discussion of the journeys of James Thomas Wilson (1861-1945), a young Scottish medical student in Edinburgh who between 1884 and 1887 made three voyages to China and one to Australia, whose letters to his parents are held in the University of Sydney Archives. His biography could be found in Australian Dictionary of Biography Online here. In Hong Kong, in 1885, "Wilson was delighted by the Chinese New Year celebrations, marvelling at the rich and gorgeous clothes: 'But the colours! Brilliant & various they are'...In Shanghai, he procured a Chinese guide and 'paid a visit to the Chinese city - Shanghai proper'. (USA, JTWP, P162 6/1, 16 February 1885; 25 February 1885)

Saturday 18 December 2010

history of medicine

Although I am a layman of history of medicine, I recently surfed a related journal, Social History of Medicine. Here are some articles interested me most.
Pierre-Yves Donzé, "Studies abroad by Japanese doctors: A prosopographic analysis of the nameless practitioners, 1862-1912," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2010, pp. 244-260. Between 1862 and 1912, no fewer than 763 Japanese doctors trained abroad in western universities. China context?
M. Cristina Zaccarini, "Modern medicine in twentieth-century Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian and Sichuan: Competition, negotiation and cooperation," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2010, pp. 338-355. China Christian Advocate, Chinese Medical Journal, and Chinese Recorder.
Mark Emmanuel, "Viewspapers: The Malay press of the 1930s," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2010, pp. 1-20. a revisionist contribution to the bourgeois public sphere in Colonial Malaya.
Ryan Johnson, "Colonial mission and imperial tropical medicine: Livingstone College, London, 1893-1914," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2010, pp. 549-66. The Scot physicians Patrick Manson (1844-1922) and James Cantlie (1851-1926) were among the earliest lecturers.
Willemjin Ruberg, "The letter as medicine: Studying health and illness in Dutch daily correspondence, 1770-1850," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2010, pp. 492-508. letter writing as social practice approach. It should be noted that new approaches often stereotyped their predecessors to emphasise their own innovative aspects. From the social history of medicine in the 1970s against a traditional medical history which concentrated on the celebrated of great doctors and their discoveries and instead studied patients as well as the daily practices of medicine to the rise of the cultural history of medicine, in the 1990s, with an increasing interest in the social construction of disease and the body, which focused on textual and discursive analysis and examined the making of meaning, studying language, power and the construction of medical categories. Ruberg also draws my attention to Frank Huisman and JohnHarley Warner (eds.)'s Locating Medical History: the stories and their meanings(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) and Willem de Blécourt and Cornelie Usborne (eds.),Cultural approaches to the history of medicine : mediating medicine in early modern and modern Europe (New York, N.Y. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Friday 17 December 2010

how Confucian are YOU?

From time to time, I am astounded by rumours about certain highly distinguished and widely known professors of Confucianism/Chinese philosophy jumped the queue at a bus stop in campus considering himself the first in a non-existent queue solely for professors or literally sneered at (via email) a perspective postgraduate student who was unable to study with him due to family responsibility.
They, of course, might be misunderstood or mistaken, or even in their highest esteem were teaching students invaluable lessons of life. Yet, this is life. They are still considered professors of Confucianism/Chinese philosophy.
After all, is it not possible to measure/categories/label Confucian actors, or strong/weak Confucians? A distinguished scholar and his team tell us why it is possible.
I strongly recommend interested (or disinterested; you will be inspired) researchers of humanities and social sciences (sciences and engineering too; interdisciplinary is a discipline) of Chinese (or non-Chinese; you will also be enlightened) decent living in Chinese (or non-Chinese; we are living in a multi-cultural world, ain't we?) societies should read the following scholarly article on contemporary Chinese and ask yourself a big question: how Confucian I am, by using the yardstick of the researchers suggest. Have a go. Confucius will be pleased.
Tak Sing Cheung, Hoi Man Chan, Kin Man Chan, Ambrose Y.C. King, Chi Yue Chiu, Chung Fang Yang, "How Confucian are contemporary Chinese? Construction of an ideal type and its application to three Chinese communities," European Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, Oct. 2006, pp. 157-80.
Given that normative and behavioural orientations derived from Confucianism may still guide Chinese behaviour as a consequence of processes of social reproduction across generations, they seeks to question to what extent and in what respects is Confucianism still relevant for understanding Chinese society, and endeavour to contemplate a methodical tool for the measurement of Confucianism; in other words, they attempt to construct the ideal type of Confucian actors and distinguish between formal and substantive values in Confucianism. The big question of the paper is to ask "How Confucian are contemporary Chinese?"
In searching relevant entry of this paper, I found, from the leading author's (Tak Sing Cheung) website, surprisingly (without any mention in the English paper) that he also wrote a similar Chinese paper on this topic in 2001 titled 當代華人有幾儒?儒人理念型的構造及大陸、港台三個地區的調查分析,in 《社會理論論叢》,第1輯,頁151-172。

Thursday 16 December 2010

Recent readings XX

Daniel Cook, "Bodies of scholarship: witnessing the library in Late-Victorian Fiction," Victorian Literature and Culture, article advance, 2011, 19pps. the library nineteenth-century Chinese fiction.
Andrew M. Stauffer, "Digital scholarly resources for the study of Victorian literature and culture," Victorian Literature and Culture, article advance, 2011, 11pps. very useful.
Anthony Webster, "The development of British commercial and political networks in the Straits Settlements 1800-1868: The rise of a colonial and regional economic identity?" Modern Asian Studies, article advance, 2010, 31pps. Scottish merchants in the SS.
Sabine MacCormack, "Pausanias and his commentator Sir James George Frazer," Classical Reception Journal, Vol. 2, Iss. 2 (2010), pp. 287-313. Sir Frazer was born in Glasgow. It reminds me of the Chinese scholar Xu Dishan, who had applied Frazer's comparative and anthropological method to his studies on Chinese religion.
Jan van der Putten, "Negotiating the Great Depression: The rise of popular culture and consumerism in early-1930s Malaya," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2010, pp. 21-45. illustrated Malay commercials includes the Singapore-based Fraser and Neave Company.
Timothy P. Barnard, "Film Melayu: Nationalism, modernity and film in a pre-World War Two Malay magazine," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2010, pp. 47-70. The magazine was written and produced by Utusan Melayu Publications, Ltd., one of the strongest advocates of Malay nationalism in the late 1930s an early 1940s, in Singapore and printed at the Shaw Printing Works.
Terence Chong, "Manufacturing authenticity: The cultural production of national identities in Singapore," Modern Asian Studies, 2010, 21pps.
Stanislas Dehaene's Reading in the brain : the science and evolution of a human invention (New York : Viking, 2009). "The uniqueness of our species," Dehaene says "may arise from a combination of two factors: a theory of mind (the ability to imagine the mind of others) and a conscious global workspace (an internal buffer where an infinite variety of ideas can be recombined). (p. 9)

Wednesday 15 December 2010

方法不對

上星期讀到新牢騷集的推薦,我從教育學院圖書館(經館際互借)借來竹中平藏的《方法不對,學什麼都沒用》(台北:遠流,2009年,張鳳譯)。
除了牢騷先生摘錄竹中引佐貫利雄的說:「不管幾個笨蛋加在一起還是笨蛋!」(頁83)之外,我也拈出一些有意思的地方出來。
矩陣學習座標:有範圍而作為武器的學習:記憶的學習;有範圍而作為連結人與人的學習:興趣的學習;沒有範圍而作為工作的學習:記憶的學習;沒有範圍而作為連結人與人的學習:人性的學習。(頁32-4)十分有用的分類。
真正重要的情報畢竟還是掌握在人的手裡。(頁79)對極了!
畢竟,對文化或藝術而言,如果沒有贊助是無法發展的。對於新興事業也是一樣。(頁88-9)一般來說,有文化/知識的人總是不願多付點金錢扶助文化/藝術事業。
知識生活必須建立在健康之上……熬夜或睡眠不足絕對是知識生活的最大敵人(頁91)緊記!
日本其實是「考試經歷社會」,而不是「學歷社會」。日本企業重視的只是「你考上了哪裡」而已。(頁110)發人深省。
逛街就是要東張西望。(頁145)對極了!
大學生水評不斷下降嗎?京都大學經濟學教授吉田和男認為這樣說是不對的。他說:「這個社會已經進步到連笨蛋也可以上大學的豐衣足食年代,這應該是好事。」(頁157-8)下學期上課用。
風一吹,水桶店就賺錢?(頁164-5)大膽思考。
學習都是孤獨的。能夠解救這份孤獨感的,就是夥伴們的相互鼓勵。(頁185)吾道不孤。
點對點,線連線的思考習慣。知識或情報連結成線,而每一條線再相互交織成網,進而發展成立體空間。(頁186-8)極易也極難。
現在的年輕人都只看到我三十歲以後的經歷,那可是我在二十幾歲的時候,所擁有「雜務經驗」才可能做到的。(頁193)「能被利用於雜用」,就表示到哪兒都派得上用場,是一種實用性很高的技能。……只會做一件事的人,幾乎亮無例外的,都不敢承擔風險。(頁194)每個人都應該有的過去。
「和每個人都要成為好朋友」是孩童時期才必要的理論。(頁202)贊同!
學習是知識經濟時代的基本能力。(頁205)眼見不少同輩都已拒絕學習。

Tuesday 14 December 2010

林奕華 V

第五本是《娛樂大家:明星編》(2008)
香港明星不只給香港人提供「成功」的幻想,他們也是全球華人綺夢的對象。然而,不論這些圖騰帶來多少正面負面的影響,香港的明星效應到底是一個城市二十年的日月精華,一旦物換星移,當他們的光芒隨著老化的老化,青澀的青澀而無法將魅力順利交捧和換班;香港,作為華人夢工場的大招牌,恐怕也無可避免的要轉掛在另一個屋簷下。(頁2)
香港的新一代女明星女藝人,沒幾個不愛以「天真無邪」形象示人,造成她們被慾望的層面相對狹窄--少了膽色,自然欠缺生命力。(頁3)
熟悉香港演唱會模式的觀眾都知道,「性感」元素雖然從來不缺,但尺度永遠是以衣服布料多寡來定;歌手本來應該散發的性感氣息--也就誘惑觀眾對她產生慾望的力量--卻常常借助可以穿得更少,肢體動作更大膽奔放的舞者來「代班」。原因是大部份香港人對「性感」總是愛彼為難:看是想看,但又害怕被指為咸濕,是以女歌手才要極力避免扮演引人犯罪的角色,只好把精神和肉體分家來順應觀眾的人格分裂--露此露那跟她個人氣質無關,也就是露完一大輪之後,身上那件不過是肉色的緊身衣。(頁22)
我們的電影通常只反映一種文化、一種趣味,那就是「草根」。港產片的主旋律是黑社會片,黑社會不見得只是拍給黑道中人看,但觀眾買票入場,肯定有著對低下層的「男人們」內心種種對壓迫別人與被壓迫、反抗和妥協有強烈認同和興趣。(頁29)
都怪香港不是日本,女明星只能靠商品而不是個人作品的流行度來維持人氣,這種生存方式解釋了為甚麼了為甚麼我們的天空上越來越少女明星。(頁30)
香港是一個對「早熟」有著莫明熱衷的地方,尤其在娛樂卷。(頁45)

Monday 13 December 2010

林奕華 IV

第四本是《娛樂大家:電影編》(2008)
一個不要求自己,另一個不要求自己對別人要有要求,然後便切安好,沒事發生,直至這個同流關係在承受不了過多沒有人願意承擔的責任而破裂時,一切已經太遲了。(頁40)
「想像」自己對物質要求很少、生活態度簡單、做人單純沒機心,又因為自認是滄海一粟,對別人自然沒有威脅等等。這些想像,無一不是現實中香港人的相反:貪小便宜、喜歡不勞而獲、恐懼自己與別人不同,更恐懼別人比自己優勝,因而不惜採取集體排斥、打壓創意等等手段的精神面貌。(頁42)
香港影人最擅長的,是以「搵食艱難」作為「主題」,製造大量你死我亡互相逼害。(頁55)香港電影一直宣洩的焦慮,其實是來自對金錢、地位和身份求之不得的恐懼。(頁56)暴力,乃香港電影的金鎖匙。有時我想,把港產片裏的動作鏡頭剪在一起,可會佔去香港電影全部膠片的三份二?(頁57)
一切以「搵食」(為兩餐)為出發點的愚昧或迷失都是不應被苛責的,因為那便是「平凡人」的人生。當整個社會都是趨向「不要跟別人不同時」,「不平凡」使是要與大眾為敵。在香港生活的人不難隨時聽到以下的幾句話:......「凡事都沒有絕對,一切不過是觀點角度問題,見仁見智罷了。」它們的受歡迎程度,反映出香港人的集體信念便是沒有信念。(頁72)既不想活得平凡,但又只想(能)當個平凡人是香港人的終極矛盾,因為香港人既既想享受不平凡所帶來的好處,但又不希望承擔不平凡者要承受的責任。(頁74)

Sunday 12 December 2010

林奕華 III

第三本是《等待香港:女人篇》。
書如其名,這本書就像一個成熟的女人。手上從圖書館借來的《女人篇》,莫名其妙地有一陣陣香水的餘韻。
想起小時候,有買拍紙簿的嗜好(不是習慣)。買的不是一般單調沉悶,只有線和格的拍紙簿,而是色彩斑爛,設計獨特,有時有點誇張,在上邊寫字卻連字都被頁上的色彩和線條淹去的拍紙簿。可以是史樂比,也可以是沒有公仔的。
第一次開卷,那股突如其來的襲擊,仍然在記憶之中。每次開卷,都好像走近一個噴滿香水的成熟女人,芬香撲鼻,再加上書中圍繞著一個又一個女性,無疑會引人遐想。每次掩卷,女人身上的香氣沾滿雙手,令我難以忘懷之餘,又不忍把留在雙手上久久不散的餘韻洗去,著實有點可惜又可恨。
說是書中自有顏如玉,未免有老土之嫌。每次翻頁之際,一剎那間香氣四溢。回過神來,香氣又回歸到書頁之上。

「香港女性對待自己的形象和吸引力,有可能將經歷史無前例的轉變:由以往急趨步向成熟,改為刻意將小女孩階段無限期的延長。這種趨勢其實與一發不可收拾的瘦身風氣配合無間......她們追求的不是智慧的累積,而是深受社會推崇的『無知』。」(〈少女是無知旳好?〉,2002年11月,頁13)
「大多數的『香港女人』均願意相信『身體就是本錢』......最重要的,還是『財不可露眼』。......香港女人不習慣被人『看』,說穿了,是不喜歡成為別人想入非非的對象。於是,『眼啒啒』與『嘴藐藐』的女人走在街上比比皆是,也矚目驚心!......香港女性太uptight了。......『香港女人』的前途......想結婚,想生孩子,想拍拖......問題的源頭會不會是『香港女人』的類型在過去十年已變得越來越少?而最主流的一種,剛巧又是男人們避之則吉的『婆仔』?......她們並不知道怎樣去celebrate自己的sexuality.....『香港女人』的前途其實也有點像現在的香港:明明處於不太有利的境況,卻不懂得與時並進,反而繼續『幸福』不是來自個人的努力進取,而是由於她是不折不扣的『小女人』!真的要衝出困局另覓新天,我認為『香港女人』必須摒棄『幸福』與『小女人』之間的等號。」("Re-inventing Hong Kong Women", 2003年3月,頁19-20)
「『女人』根本就想每日看上去都是簇新的,且不管這渴望是否會教她們看來像不斷被重新包裝上的貨品。」("I Shop, Therefore I am", 2003年4月,頁23)
「香港女性之中,還是喜歡cutie的多一點。」(〈妳為什麼喜歡去東京?〉,2003年8月,頁33)
「在我們的社會裏,『看不起模特兒』是被很多女性認為理所當然的--她們全都是『出嚟行』,出賣的也只是那個『殼』,根本無血無肉,遑論靈魂。......近似同仇敵概的『看不起』其實不過是出於防衞心理。一來是恨自己欠缺與她們爭長短的條佚,二來是妒忌她們光靠炫耀外表便能享受到各式特權;至於第三,則是擔憂這些模特兒們,在不知不覺間,已在男士的心裏播下了『標準「美女」』的種子,變相地道的香港女孩:覺得自己不夠完美。」(〈出嚟行的女人〉,2003年9月,頁35-6)
「這個城市一日復一日地意圖以購買外國名牌來清洗身上的鄉氣與寒酸氣,然而效果每弄巧反拙--都怪社會上有權力的決策人大多是『平民』出身,又或當有了權力之後,他們的慾望還是太『平民化』了?」(〈美齡與愛玲),2003年10月,頁48)
「年齡身份模糊化的普及文化潮流,正改寫香港人對『女孩』的定義。......眼下這股女孩子不願長大的潮流,可會是香港女性既想成為慾望對象(因此受人注、喜愛),但又不要與性扯上直接關係(害怕承擔長大的責任)的體現?」(〈為什麼女人不願意長大),2004年3月,頁58-9)
「女人所以得不到幸福,理由是『這世界還有其他女人』,所謂『其他』,更多時候,原來是她不滿意的另一個自己。」(〈瓊瑤〉,1999年7月31日,頁67)
「終身致力向上爬的香港人,誰都可以轉瞬變身,身份升級不難......可會身是中產,心卻依然草根?」(〈依然草根〉,2000年3月24日,頁86)
「在我眼中,黃碧雲是很沒趣的寫作人,因為她缺少想像力,沒有幽默感。是的,我認為她沒有才華。連英文裏的considerable talent,我都認為沒有。......我認為黃能有今天的地位,是她完全切合一般文學愛好者對『文學(家)』所抱存的幻想(對我來說,是定見)--寫作使作者的痛苦受到正視......『受苦』,一直是黃的『主題』(抑或『風格』)......黃的文字,如果是苦澀,是苦瓜的皮,並未苦到肉和核心。」(〈皺眉女子〉,2000年8月18日,頁139)
「要在香港討論『何謂「平庸」』......會惹人白眼的。......很多人不是不想受到注意(例如被羨慕),而是希望它可以得來容易一點、現成一點,毋須千山萬水,汗流浹背。......學歷就是知識就是財富就是社會地位就是權力--當這方程式漸變成社會上近乎唯一的一條食物鏈時,我認為集體的平庸便順利誕生。」(〈一種宿命〉,2000年8月22日,頁142)

Saturday 11 December 2010

林奕華 II

第二本是《等待香港:娛樂篇》。
林奕華引述荃灣某中學副校長在接受有線娛樂新聞台時,解釋為何全校要在周會『悼念』梅艷芳:「佢有創意囉!形象百變吖嘛,百變即係創意囉!」林奕華認為香港人的感情有兩個特點:一是香港人的感情是浮誇的、膚淺的、虛假的、abusive的、容易受人影響的;二是香港人的感情(sentiments)是由香港娛樂圈塑造出來的。(〈是這樣的嗎?〉(2004年1月),頁18-19)
「香港年青人對於濱藝人物的認識和接受程度,其實主要還是靠『匙羹飼養』(spoon-feed)而不是自動自覺地吸收。或,事情可以反過來看,『匙羹效應』不只存在於大眾與演藝圈之間,它根本就是香港人的成長模式,近年甚至出現愈是年輕的香港人愈是缺乏個性的普遍現象。......要在香港取得『大眾』的認同以至歡心,我認為有一點非常重要:這個人的出身最好是中下階層,即『草根』。......你甚少會在港產片以至電視劇中看見『中產階級』的生活狀況--但是,你卻可以說它是個不折不扣的反映:這社會其實沒有『中產階層』。表面上有著中產收入的香港人,當中許多的價值觀念仍然是由草根的心態來操控。」(〈成為張艾嘉〉(2004年3月),頁51-52)
「健康的性感」其實是說「性感得來很乏味」,因為性感應該帶有一點沉溺,一點神秘。(〈雕塑未完成--吳彥祖為什麼性感〉(2003年9月),頁73)
林奕華引用湯禎兆的〈Twins撒嬌求免責〉:「我們都慣了有楊千嬅之流砍手對歌藝一貫馬虎看待,每次早已慣了以『駛唔駛咁認真』(用不用得著這麼認真)來故混過關」(〈劉德華是下屆香港特首,為什麼不?〉(2003年6月),頁77-78)讀著這遍文章的時候,碰巧電視正放映著《國產凌凌漆》,袁詠儀對著身負槍傷的周星馳,也用上看同一樣的說話。又,林在結尾氣道:「追求『與別人沒有不同』(香港做普通人!)已成為香港年輕一族的普遍理想。」(頁79)
「香港文化的一大特色,乃眾所周知的一窩蜂。......香港的演員只會演自己,而不懂得演角色。......港產片『多見明星,少見演員』」(〈明星後遺症〉(2005年5月),頁84)
林氏認為「本地電視文化對香港人素質下降的問題大有『貢獻』」,所以「我們便有理由要求每個人正視自己與TVB的過去、現在與未來。」它「的確就是助長香港人以被動來面對無力感的一台巨型機器。......骨子裏卻是香港人最樂意跟隨的模階。......我們的手腳早已不受控制,因為我們的思想叫TVB。......香港人在眼界和胸襟上的狹窄,無疑是受到『腦袋』--TVB的壓縮所影響。......過去二十多年無綫為香港製造了整整兩代的愚民(滿足於低層次精神生活的一些人)」(〈我和無綫電視的恩恩怨怨(第一章)〉(2003年10月),頁93-95;第二章在2004年4月,頁96-98)
林氏指電視劇是人民質素的當下反映。在面對電視劇每況愈下,日趨平庸,印證了他一直重覆「我們是活在『崇尚平庸』的時代裏」;「香港人對『人生』的概念,一直都是從電視劇得來的。」「在無綫戲劇組負責人的眼中,邊看邊鬧與愈鬧愈看正正就是無綫劇集與香港觀眾再也正常不過的『受虐與施虐關係』」。林奕華再引用一位大學講師一番義正詞嚴的說話:「搵食很重要啊!我唔食我隻狗都要食!」林批評他「完全忘記了自己是一名菁英--我說的菁英,不是『身份』,而是『角色』--也即是在領了學位,拿了高薪之後必須對社會履行責任的人。但是,在我接觸過的好些大學生和講師之中,不乏不肯承認,甚至刻意否定自己是『菁英』的人--......一旦領受了這名銜,許多責任將排山倒海而至,不是說推便推得了的--例如......『犧牲小我,完成大學』。」(〈沒有帝女那有花〉(2003年5月),頁99-103)
「由社會對傳媒你抄我抄的無限容忍可見,香港人從不覺得抄襲貓有何不妥。」「我一直懷疑無綫編劇人人都有一本手冊,裏面註明那些場合該有那些對白和行為。」「一個很『香港人』的信念:為了逃避壓力,必須先將責任架空,由對事情(還是自己?)沒有要求開始。」(〈隔世救不了未來》(2004年7月),頁110)

Friday 10 December 2010

林奕華 I

早陣子不斷在看林奕華的書,看了不下五本。他的觀點有些與別不同的地方,算是有創見,也有偏見和定型的時候。不過,總括來說,還是很有摘錄的價值。

第一本是《等待香港:青春篇》。
〈我看創意教育〉(2005年2月)「香港的新一代若凡事繼續只看功利和短期收益,多與少一門有關『藝術』的學科,對改變香港的前景,恐怕幫助不大。」(頁10)
〈等待香港〉「香港年青人都是不喜歡在公開場合表達意見的。」(頁11)
「『每個人都有自己的煩惱,沒必要再加添煩惱』,除了是他個人的『信念』,也得到另一些同學的支持,其中一位很有信心的說:『當社會上大多數人都是這樣想,我不明白為何它還會是一個『問題』(problem)?如果我不把它當作『問題』(question)來思考,那又有何不妥?』」(頁13)
「同學們喜歡用『平凡』來界定自己--例如,『我覺得一個平凡人比較適合我,這是我的選擇,有甚麼不妥?』--但它既可能不是一種選擇(包括形容自己『平凡』的人,會因受到『不平凡』的人的威脅而及早扼殺他們的生存空間),也可能與平凡無關,不過是被人們利用它來掩飾自己的平庸。平凡和平庸的差別,在於前者是生活的取向,後者卻可以被統治者藉著經濟、政治手段來達致對人們的思想控制。其目的是讓人們滿足於低層次的生活權利,因而失去對自己的要求,於是整個社會變成千人一面,不獨會自動減少異類的聲音,就是有人『與別不同』,也不用勞煩統治者和他的管理班子把他攆出去--羣眾自會互相監察,再把少數不一樣的人排擠、消滅。」(頁15)
〈大學生的八卦與功利〉(寫於2003年9月22日)。八卦:對娛樂新聞的興趣與師奶愈拉愈近。「今天某藝人被捧上神枱,大家其實已在等著看他下地獄。」(頁17)功利:只願意對一件事情付出心力。林奕華問「為什麼他們〔大學生〕會有那許多事情不知道,未曾聽過,甚至不想知道,連聽也不想?為什麼有那麼多的大學生會以對很多事情『不感興趣』為榮?(頁18)
又與大學生有關。「大多數二十上下的人們,是如何守口如瓶,惜『發問』如金,連帶你向他們提出,『問題』都避之則吉。」「有一次我對某個妥協的建議表示不敢苟同,差一年才大學畢業的某君連隨板起面孔教訓我:『那麼,你就是扼殺自己的市場!」(〈個別〉,1999年12月17日,頁106)翌日寫成一篇〈市場〉。「〔一位大學生說〕:『此乃市場定律,你若與它背道而馳,便被淘汰。』」「社會已成功地教曉年青人『接受現實』(及有義務強迫別人也一樣)。」(頁107)
林奕華經常接觸年輕人。他們認為「『個人』才是世界的中心,所以有很多在表面上是幫助或鼓勵他們學習公民責任的機會,都會變成向上爬的梯階。他們亦會因此而一日比一日的功利起來‧‧‧‧‧‧譬如『學習』,也會先談條件:『學咗對我有咩好處先?』」(〈好的學生〉,2001年5月22日,頁154)又是第二日,寫成〈有咩好處先?〉。學習是投資,可帶來立竿見影的成效。他歸咎於我們的某些共通性格--「自私、功利、短視,懶惰、反智、反思考--典型的『香港人』。」學習的目標是成功,卻忘卻了學習應該包括失敗,失敗又變相鼓勵我們摸索的作用。「大家只會希望盡快『出廠』--完成被賦予能力的工序,正式成為有價的商(產)品。」(頁155)

Thursday 9 December 2010

French Colonial History

Glanced a few articles in French Colonial History.

First of all, it is Takao Abe's "What determined the content of missionary reports? The Jesuit Relations compared with the Iberian Jesuit accounts," French Colonial History, Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 69-83. The former refers to the mission in Canada in the first half of the seventeenth century, the latter in Japan in the second half of the sixteenth/early seventeen centuries. Abe argues, by comparing them, that one cannot entirely count on the published official reports to reveal each priest's profound personality and ideas, especially about non-Christian people; and however personal the written observations may appear to be, the thematic and interpretive descriptions were influenced more by the interests of the Jesuit mission as a religious order than by personal initiatives.

Secondly, Christina E. Firpo's "Lost boys: 'abandoned' Eurasian children and the management of the racial topography in colonial Indochina, 1938-1945," French Colonial History, Vol. 8, 2007, pp. 203-221. The French colonial government's "use" of abandoned Eurasians to augment the colony's white presence amounted to social engineering for the purpose of managing the racial order, and they, who were recognized as social pariahs in the 1930s but later considered French, were used to bolster white authority and domination.
The third one is Ronald S. Love's "'A Passage to China': A French Jesuits perceptions of Siberia in the 1680s," French Colonial History, Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 85-100. Père Philippe Avril (1654-1698)'s, who departed in 1684 on an expedition to find an eastward passage to China but was rejected by the Qing authority to traverse Chinese inland and thus returned six years later to Europe not having found a path to the East, Voyage en divers états d'Europe & d'Asie, entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine (Paris: Claude Barbin, Jean Boudot, and George et Louis Josse, 1692), which was translated into English in 1693 titled Travels into divers parts of Europe and Asia, Undertaken by the French King's Order to discover a new way by land into China (London: T. Goodwin, 1693). Having met Père Philippe Couplet (1623-1693) at Paris in 1684, Avril might have met the widely-known Chinese convert Michael Shen Fu-Tsung (Miguel Shen Fuzong), who was brought with him to France in 1684 and later became a Jesuit.
Next one is Frédéric Roustan's "Français, Japonais et Société Coloniale du Tonkin: Exemple de Représentations Coloniales," French Colonial History, Vol. 6, 2005, pp. 179-204. Nice postcards. Japanese residents in Indochine were 192 in 1912, 161 in 1915, 316 in 1925, 234 in 1938 while in Hong Kong were 881 in 1909, 1149 in 1912, 1555 in 1915, 1649 in 1925.
Last but not least, it is Matthew G. Stanard's "Selling the Empire between the Wars: Colonial Expositions in Belgium, 1920-1940," French Colonial History, Vol. 6, 2005, pp. 159-178. To popularize the Belgian Congo.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

history of science and seriality

Nearly finished the special issue of the History of Science of the latest titled "Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century".
Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord, "Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century," History of Science, Vol. 48 Pt. 3/4, No. 161, Sep./Dec. 2010, pp. 251-285.
Volker Hess and J. Andrew Mendelsohn, "Case and Series: Medical Knowledge and Paper Technology, 1600–1900," pp. 287–314
Nathan Schlanger, "Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology," pp. 343-369.
Chitra Ramalingam, "Natural History in the Dark: Seriality and the Electric Discharge in Victorian Physics," pp. 371-398.
Alex Csiszar, "Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print and its Problems During the Late Nineteenth Century," pp. 399–434.
Marianne Sommer, "Seriality in the Making: The Osborn-Knight Restorations of ­Evolutionary History," pp. 461–482.

Tuesday 7 December 2010

why I love Edinburgh, sometimes?

Two papers made me to.

Robert W. Rix's "Oriental Odin: Tracing the east in northern culture and literature," History of European Ideas, Vol. 36, Issue 1, Mar. 2010, pp. 47-60. Thomas Percy (1729-1811). It draws me to The Percy Letters (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944-88), which are not available locally but in Edinburgh (hooray! will meet them soon in the coming summer), and James Watt's "Thomas Percy, China, and the Gothic," The Eighteen Century, Vol. 48, No. 2, 2007, pp. 95-109.
Ruth Scurr's "Inequality and political stability from Ancien Régime to revolution: The reception of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments in France," History of European Ideas, Vol. 35, Issue 4, Dec. 2009, pp. 47-60. Another paper leads me to some further readings; they are Kenneth E. Carpenter's The dissemination of The wealth of nations in French and in France, 1776-1843 (New York : Bibliographical Society of America, 2002), which is, again, not available in HK but in the NLS.
Additional reading: Brian Dolan's "Second opinions: history, medical humanities and medical education," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 393-405.

Monday 6 December 2010

Japanese spirit, or Yamato damashii

Today's list: Richard Reitan's "Völkerpsychologie and the appropriation of “spirit” in Meiji Japan"(Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, issue 3, Sep 2010, pp. 495-522), which resonates with the conception of Yamato damashii 大和魂, drew me to reconsider the Japanese translation strategies toward European texts in favour of their articulation of the Japanese ethos in relation to Chinese context and led me to rethink the publishing sphere of the late-nineteenth-century Japan particularly in Tokyo.
Reitan's article also brought me to two important works: Nitobe Inazo (ed.), Western Influences in Modern Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931) [HK none], and the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)'s The Psychology of Peoples (Les Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples, 1894), which divided humanity into four groups: the primitive, inferior, intermediate, and superior races, the Japanese and the Chinese being in the intermediate category, was translated three times into Japanese: Rubon shi minzoku shinrigaku, trans. Tsukahara Msaji (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1900); Kokumin shinrigaku, trans. Kokmin kyoiku gakkai (Tokyo: Kinshodo, 1900); and Minzoku hatten no shinri, trans. Maeda Chota (民族発展の心理. Tokyo: Dai Nihon bunmei kyokai, 1910). It is intriguing to note that, as Reitan told us, Chota's translation edited out all references to Japan.

社會科學通識叢書

由香港中文大學社會科學院籌劃,馬傑偉及吳俊雄主編,香港中文大學香港亞太研究所及香港教育圖書出版,一套八冊的《社會科學通識叢書》。力求與時並進的通識系列。
葉蔭聰:《為當下懷舊:文化保育的前世今生》(香港:香港中文大學香港亞太研究所,2010)。批判論述
陳智傑編著:《開拓通識:知識份子的香港路》(香港:香港中文大學香港亞太研究所,2010)。
許寶強:《限富扶貧:富裕中的貧乏》(香港:香港中文大學香港亞太研究所,2010)。批判論述
馬嶽:《香港政治發展歷程與核心課題》(香港:香港中文大學香港亞太研究所,2010)。民主派論述取向
梁麗娟:《媒介之都:縱論大眾傳播與社會》(香港:香港教育圖書公司,2010)。複述主流菁英的偏頗,又有反中亂港之嫌。談美女經濟:「背後支撐的是一套違反自然定律及傳統價值標準的審美觀,目的是要男男女女追逐一種非自然及不可能單憑個人能力可達到的標準」(頁5)二元分野:沿襲一直以來文人〔或稱菁英操控〕和商人辦報對立的陳腐論述(頁34-5);完全市場導向和傳統編輯導向新聞的對立。(頁42-4)誤導性問題:「為何香港不像外國一樣有足夠的質報讀者?」何若總要以只有區區七百萬人的香港與外國比高低?(頁48)自相矛盾:「只要有高要求的用戶、高質素的媒介製造者,才能催生高質素的傳媒。」與由菁英操空及市場導向何異?知識判偽,我非專業,談何容易?感性抵抗廣告,媒體收入何來?道德抵制,輿論根本被媒體操控,如何抵制?美學欣賞,何以強要平民成菁英?何不揭櫫媒體監察和撻伐媒體?大眾傳媒,本是互相競爭。大眾媒體,本是大眾消閒娛樂,偶有論評,不過而已。
馬傑偉、曾仲堅:《影視香港:身份認同的時代變奏》(香港:香港教育圖書公司,2010)。
陳效能:《性通識:本性權利與道德爭識》(香港:香港教育圖書公司,2010)。
吳俊雄、張志偉、曾仲堅編:《普普香港:閱讀普及文化2000-2009》(香港:香港教育圖書公司,2010)。

Sunday 5 December 2010

spatial turn

'Spatial turn', the idea of place and space, of place as social practice and of placing as a process in accounting for the uneven movement of ideas over space and time may help provide some precision and strengthen connections between geography and history. (Withers, p. 638-9) I have been recently intrigued by two related articles:
Robert J. Mayhew, "Geography as the eye of Enlightenment historiography," Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2010, pp. 611-27.
Charles W. J. Withers, "Place and the 'Spatial Turn' in Geography and in History," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 70, No. 4, October 2009, pp. 637-658.

And drawn to the following references, some of which might look too hard for me:
Diarmid Finnegan, ‘‘The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science,’’ Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 41 (2007): 369–88;
Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
John Agnew, Place and Politics (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987).
John Agnew and James Duncan, eds., The Power of Place (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity (London: Macmillan, 1991).
Lynn Staeheli, ‘‘Place,’’ in A Companion to Political Geography, ed. John Agnew, Kathrynne Mitchell and Gerard Toal (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 158–70.
Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997),
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
Lewis Holloway and Phil Hubbard, People and Place: The Extraordinary Geographies of Everyday Life (Harlow: Pearson, 2001 and, as part of a series concerned with ‘‘Re-Materialising Cultural Geography,’’ Tom Mels, ed., Reanimating Places: A Geography of Rhythms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
J. E. Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006).
Robert Sack, Place, Consumption and Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
Robert Sack, Homo Geographicus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London:
Verso, 1995).

Saturday 4 December 2010

sociology frenzy II

Race frenzy
Becky Francis and Louise Archer, "Negotiating the dichotomy of boffin and triad: British-Chinese pupils' constructions of 'laddism'," The Sociological Review, Vol. 53, No. 3, Aug 2005, pp. 495-521. a thought-provoking article about race, gender, and discourse.
ill-conceived stereotypes of the Chinese as collectivist, conformist, entrepreneurial, deferent, and conforming to Confucian values, and the Chinese pupils as uniformly ‘good pupils’.
"the discourses of ‘the good Chinese pupil’ and ‘Chinese value of education’ were frequently drawn on by pupil respondents [80 British-Chinese pupils, 48 girls and 32 boys from Years 10 and 11, i.e. 14-16 years old], with the result that the pupils often presented British-Chinese manifestations of ‘laddism’ as unnatural as 'infected' by 'others' and mild versions in comparison with pernicious ‘others’ [British]"
Given their "finding that teachers tend to stereotype British-Chinese boys as non-laddish, obedient, 'good pupils', Francis and Archer found that "a majority of teachers presented a dichotomous view of British-Chinese, being that the vast majority are seen as diligent and obedient, and as not expressing 'laddish' behaviours," which resonates with traditional, if not imagined, stereotypes of the Chinese in general, "except in a small minority of cases where 'bad' Chinese boys (often 'infected' by Anglo and African-Caribbean working-class boys) are frequently associated with Triadism."
Teachers tends to position British-Chinese as good pupils, but not ideal pupils, which derives from the dominant construction of the ideal pupils as active, questioning, challenging, and 'naturally brilliant'; traits which are ascribed as masculine and as white and middle-class. British-Chinese pupils, in a way, are positioned as feminised.
Francis and Archer found that "both teachers and some British-Chinese pupils saw 'laddish' British-Chinese boys as having been 'contaminated' by (working-class) white and black boys". "[S]ome teachers", Francis and Archer observed, "appeared to apply an orientalist view of the Chinese as a homogeneous mass uniformly conforming to industrious Eastern values and tyrannous family expectations".
If time allows, I would pick some of the references cited in the article below.
Ang, M. (2001) On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West, New York: Routledge.
Archer, L., (2002), 'It's easier that you're a girl and that you're Asian: interactions of 'race' and gender between researchers and participants' Feminist Review, 72: 108-132.
Archer, L. & Francis, B., (2005) ‘‘The never go off the rails like other ethnic groups’: Teachers’ constructions of British Chinese pupils’ gender identities and approaches to learning’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 26, No. 2, Apr. 2005, pp. 165-182.
Chau, R. & Yu, S., (2001), ‘Social Exclusion of Chinese People in Britain’, Critical Social Policy, 21 (1): 103-125.
Francis, B. & Archer, L. (2005a) British-Chinese Pupils’ and Parents’ Constructions of the Value of Education, British Educational Research Journal, 31 (1) 89-107.
Song, M., (1997), ‘‘You’re Becoming More and More English’: investigating Chinese siblings’ cultural identities’, New Community, 23 (3): 343-362.

Thursday 2 December 2010

sociology frenzy

Japan's hikikomori and Manchester's gay village
The Japanese education system is single track, rigidly organised and highly pressured. There are few second chances or alternative routes. In many western societies, however, there are frequently second chances and alternative routes. A process of drift is socially acceptable and can occur without long-term damage, whereas in Japan it is a process that is often viewed with suspicion. (Andy Furlong, "The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon: acute social withdrawal among young people," The Sociological Review, Vol. 56, Issue 2, May 2008, pp. 309–325.)
To be cosmopolitan is to be educated or sophisticated; to be a cosmopolitan one has to have access to a particular form of knowledge, able to appropriate and know the other and generate authority from this knowing; thus cosmopolitanism is conceived as a particular attitude towards difference. (Jon Binnie and Beverley Skeggs, "Cosmopolitan knowledge and the production and consumption of sexualized space: Manchester's gay village," The Sociological Review, Vol. 52, Issue 1, February 2004, pp. 39–61.)

Elite frenzy
John Scott, "Modes of power and the re-conceptualization of elites," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 27-43.
Michael Moran, "Representing the corporate elite in Britain: capitalist solidarity and capitalist legitimacy," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 54-79.
Paul du Gay, "Keyser Süze elites: market populism and the politics of institutional change," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp.80–102. the rise of market populism, elite of anti-elitists, elitist denial, and irresponsibility.
Charles Harvey and Mairi Maclean, "Capital theory and the dynamics of elite business networks in Britain and France," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1:Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 105-120. interesting.
Dave Griffiths, Andrew Miles and Mike Savage, "The end of the English cultural elite?" The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 189-209.
Alan Warde and Tony Bennett, "A culture in common: the cultural consumption of the UK managerial elite," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 240-259.
Shinobu Majima and Alan Warde, "Elite consumption in Britain, 1961-2004: results of a preliminary investigation," The Sociological Review, Volume 56, Issue Supplement s1: Remembering Elites, May 2008, pp. 210-239.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

What makes capitalism work?

Jagdish Bhagwati's "What makes capitalism work?" in Michael Kinsley with Conor Clarke,Creative capitalism : a conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and other economic leaders (New York : Simon & Schuster, 2008; Chinese translation: 《從貪婪到慈悲:啟動金字塔底層的商機》,李芳齡譯,台北:天下雜誌,2009), pp. 190-2.)
Capitalism flourishes when one of the following five conditions exist:
1. the poor do not envy or resent the rich because they believe in the myth that the too can get rich;
2. even if the poor do not buy into the upward mobility myth, if the rich do not flaunt their wealth by practicing an ostentatious style of living;
3. the poor feel that the riches are deserved or legitimate;
4. wealth is not used for instrusion into politics;
5. last but not least, the rich spend their money not on themselves but on social projects.