Shanghai in the early 1970s

Shanghai photographs in the early 1970s under the influence of the Cultural Revolution.

圖片來源：上海市攝影藝術展覽會編：《上海攝影藝術作品選》第2冊（上海人民，1974）、上海巿工人文化宮編：《上海工人業餘攝影作品選 》（上海人民，1975）及《上海工人攝影作品選 》及《上海工人攝影作品選 》（上海人民，1976）。

《上海攝影藝術作品選》開首引用《毛主席語錄》：
我們的文學藝術都是為人民大眾的，首先是為工農兵的，為工農兵而創作，為工農兵所利用的。

《上海工人業餘攝影作品選 》前言：
一九七四年上海工人業餘攝影作品展覽會，是在深入開展批林批孔運動的大好形勢下舉辦的。

廣大工人業餘攝影作者，滿懷革命激情，拍下了一幅幅生氣盎然的攝影作品，熱情地歌頌了黨和毛主席，歌頌無產階級文化大革命的豐碩成果，生動反映了全市各條戰線社會主義革命和建設的大好形勢。

同時，他們還充份利用攝影這一戰鬥武器，狠批林彪、孔老二搞復辟倒退的反動罪行，反擊安東尼奧尼[hoito: Michelangelo Antonioni, an Italian film director, 'made the documentary Chung Kuo, Cina, but it was severely denounced by the Chinese authorities as "anti-Chinese" and "anti-communist"']之流反華的醜惡行徑，使攝影作品真正成為「團結人民、教育人民、打擊敵人、消滅敵人」的有力武器。

上海巿工人文化宮在1958年編《上海工人攝影作品選》（上海人民美術）的前言寫道：
攝影，在工會活動裏是一種有力的宣傳鼓動工具。

Edinburgh old pictures in the 1890s

The following colour photochrome prints of Edinburgh were produced between 1890 and 1900.



Princess Street, the castle, and Scott Monument, Edinburgh, Scotland (1890-1900). Source.

Princess Street and castle from Scotts Monument, Edinburgh, Scotland (1890-1900). Source. 

Edinburgh from the castle, Scotland (1890-1900). Source.

Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland (1890-1900). Source.

More picture postcards of Edinburgh could be found here.

surrender or killed

敵人不投降堅決消滅他 surrender or killed. 

Chairman Mao

Resource:

Persistent Link:

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:10901257

Description:

China. 敵人不投降堅決消滅他. [n.p., 1946 or 1947].

Repository:

Harvard College Library Harvard-Yenching Library

Institution:

Harvard University

Accessed:

14 December 2015

Creating the 'Other' Hongkongers

blogpost first drafted in July 2011.

retrieve my mailbox archive to update the latest H-Net academic announcements, which arrived some time ago last week. In the context of Hong Kong, the following conference topic is especially inspiring in creating the 'Other' Hongkongers

Creating the ‘Other’ A Postgraduate Conference at the University of Essex, Department of History, 20 September 2011

Throughout history, there has been a recurrent theme of groups imagining others as apart, as fundamentally and irrevocably different and inferior, as ‘Other’. 

At intrapersonal, societal, and international levels, and governed by notions of, for example, class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion or patterns of consumption the tendency to define persons as beyond the boundaries of, or subordinate to, the community seems one which has been ever-present. 

These definitions have been continually utilised to seek legitimacy for discriminatory and exploitative social relationships. Such matters are of great interest to the historian, as to define what is ‘Other’ is also to define oneself in opposition to it; and the study of the creation of the ‘Other’ thus offers a means of discerning the self-conceptions of individuals and groups, and of the social and cultural forces and dynamics of power operating in specific historical contexts. 

This conference intends to explore these issues. Possible questions/themes could include (though are by no means limited to):

• What is the ‘Other’?
• How has the ‘Other’ been constructed throughout the history?
• What purposes has the ‘Other’ served for individuals, groups and societies?
• How have these processes of ‘Othering’ differed in respect to gender, race, and class for example?
• What have been the results of these processes in history

Art and Politics in Hong Kong in 1949

Published in Hong Kong in October 1949 (misdated as 1939 in Havard-Yenching Library catalog), this paper-cutting art book is an excellent example of the relationship between art and politics, which will be used as teaching materials in my class next semester.

「白米餅噴噴香，毛主席請你嘗，

不是你幫忙，我家那有米餅嘗。」

Resource:

Persistent Link:

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:11240516

Description:

汪潛. 新剪紙藝術. 香港 : 紅田出版社, 1939.

Repository:

Harvard College Library Harvard-Yenching Library

Institution:

Harvard University

Accessed:

14 December 2015

they deserve to stay at the bottom of the social pile

對這班"deserve to stay at the bottom of the social pile"的後生來說，經歷會考高考大學，浪費時間在沒有用的知識上，已經是最大的妥協和犧牲。

畢業不是保證成為專業人士嗎？怎麼還要受氣？現實世界怎麼會與學校課本所提倡的理想國不一樣？公義何存？真理何在？

究竟是他們不知道搵食艱難？還是教育制度對他們承諾過多？學習要愉快，畢業變專業。
抑或父母／學校對他們照顧太多？安排實習，貼錢遊學。

作為老鬼，我想我們也需要了解這班「新工人」，應該讀讀Ron Alsop's The trophy kids grow up : how the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace (New York: The Wall Street Journal, 2008).

我要真三保四好

真「三保四好」：
 1959 年5月20日，黔［即貴州］南布依族苗族自治州首府都匀市推行「三保四好」運動：
三保：保安全、保優質高產、保出勤率；
四好：技術經驗交流好、團結互助好、遵守安全规章好、監督别人違章作業好。

資料來源：《黔南布依族苗族自治州志，第26卷，勞動志》（貴陽：貴州人民出版社，2000），頁65。

Chinese rare books in Hong Kong: 清怡親王府藏書

近讀《臺大文史哲學報》，翻到侯印國［南京大學古典文獻學系碩士生］：〈清怡親王府藏書考論：以新發現的《影堂陳設書目錄》為中心〉（《臺大文史哲學報》，第80期，2014，頁109-143），饒有趣味。

「怡府藏書未受到應有的關注。怡府實是清代乃至整個中國藏書史上藏書最多的重要藏書家之一。學界對其藏書的來源、流向、規模及刻書情況、《怡府書目》的編纂時間、怡府主人名號等均存在錯誤的認識，尤其是其藏書來自徐乾學、季振宜的舊說，以及將怡府安樂堂、明善堂與乾隆樂善堂相混淆等錯誤，被學界陳陳相因，沿誤至今。本文利用新發現的怡府書目《影堂陳設書目錄》，及其他新的珍貴材料，並對分藏世界二十餘圖書館的怡府舊藏書籍數百種予以考察，對怡府藏書做系統的考論，在怡府藏書之規模、書目之編纂、藏書之聚散及怡府藏書樓名、刻書情況等各個方面提出新的認識。」

侯氏踏遍大江南北，考察多家圖書館中的怡府藏書，足跡南至澳門大學圖書館，獨欠比鄰的香港。
於是翻開母校圖書館的善本書錄（饒宗頤編著：《香港大學馮平山圖書館藏善本書錄》），至第五至六頁，赫然眼前的是「安樂堂藏書記」和「明善堂珍藏書畫印記」，原來是萬曆刻本的《周易古今文全書》。無閑再翻，想非孤例。或可再查賈晉華主編的《香港所藏古籍書目》，必有所獲。

The Ivory Tower

Research universities announcing seemingly meaningful but domineeringly useless and pompous claims about their cutting-edge research or discovery is no new.

Abstract: This is a historical survey of how and why the notion of the Ivory Tower became part of twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural vocabularies. It very briefly tracks the origins of the tag in antiquity, documents its nineteenth-century resurgence in literary and aesthetic culture, and more careful assesses the political and intellectual circumstances, especially int he 1930s and 1940s, in which it became a common phrase attached to universities and to features of science and in which it became a way of criticizing practices and institutions deemed to be 'irrelevant'. The paper concludes by reflecting on the tag's relationship to pervasive cultural tropes and how its modern history may be used to appreciate better where science and its academic setting now stand in the ancient debate between the active and contemplative lives.

"...following the figure of the Ivory Tower is tracing the historical trajectory of schemes linking knowledge and the polity, epistemic and social virtue." (25)
"It started as a religious figure, which it remained until nineteenth-century writers respecified it in an artistic context. Its subsequent mobilization to say something about what a university was and should be, and the conditions the university provided for the production of knowledge, largely happened during and after the Second World War, as did its relocation from comment on the imaginative arts to those practices which had the potential to produce materially useful goods - the sciences, engineering and the knowledge of the professional schools in particular...the cultural geography of Ivory Tower usages tracks changes in the recognized social value of different intellectual practices."
"it is a modern instantiation of the ancient religious and secular debate over the active and contemplative lives, negotium and otium: is it better, more virtuous, more authentically human to be engaged with civic affairs or is it better - from time to time or always - intentionally to live apart from the polis?" (26)


Steven Shapin's "The Ivory Tower: the history of a figure of speech and its cultural uses," British Journal for the History of Science, 43:1, 1-27.