East Asia Symposium » 2008 Presenters & Abstracts

2008 Presenters & Abstracts

Sam Ashworth, General Studies ‘09, English
Bad Fiction

The emergence and proliferation of “youth tribes” in China is becoming a subject of increasing interest to China watchers. Since Reform and Opening, the confluence of many factors (including the vacancy left by the abandonment of Maoist ideology, the ragged traditions that survived the Cultural Revolution, and the sudden influx of Western pop culture) has left the present generation of Chinese youth not only deeply at odds with their predecessors, but also with a sense of alienation from their own history and culture. The name given to this generation is xinxin renlei, “neo-neo humanity” or “neo-neo tribe.” In this presentation I examine what precisely it means to be of the xinxin renlei, as well as where the phenomenon came from, the sociocultural factors behind its emergence, and its impact on modern Chinese society. I use three recently-published novels, Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby, Mian Mian’s Candy and Chun Sue’s Beijing Doll, to illustrate the attitudes characteristic of the xinxin renlei. I also investigate the reasons behind the success of these books, which are all of varying degrees of awfulness, on both a domestic and an international level.

Sam Ashworth, GS ‘09, Department of English. His academic pursuits include James Joyce, Chinese language and contemporary culture, and Jewish humor. His extracurricular pursuits include trying reconcile these three in his head.

Katherine Atwill, Columbia College ‘08, East Asian Studies and Creative Writing
Acting on the Illusion: Living and Dying in the Story of the Stone

The question of whether or not human will has any effect upon fate is one of the fundamental questions of literature. Through an examination of Cao Xueqin’s classic Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone, this presentation challenges the assertion that personal agency is at odds with fate. Through analysis of sickness and medical treatment, both in the text itself and in Chinese medical texts from the same era, the author searches for what, if any, role individuals have in affecting their own lives. Scholars have claimed that “discrepancies” and “inaccuracies” exist within both Xueqin’s work and Chinese Medicine as a whole, making research on the topic a seemingly futile task. However, by analyzing the texts using the same methods that characters in Stone use to analyze one another, “Acting on the Illusion…” resolves these “tensions.”

Katherine Atwill is a senior at Columbia College, majoring in East Asian Studies and Creative Writing. When she’s not researching painful deaths in Chinese literature, Katherine also enjoys computer science, cooking, and performing arts. She will be teaching high school English in New York City this fall.

Geoff Aung, Columbia College ‘08, Anthropology
“Now We Have a Lightbulb”: The Millennium Road and Development Discourse in Modern Mongolia

Since the beginning of Mongolia’s difficult transition to a market economy in the early 1990’s, the discourse of development has played a crucial role in directing and reflecting the major social changes that have characterized this time period. As a large-scale infrastructure development initiative, the Millennium Road project is a window on this discourse, a test case that stands to challenge both development advocates and critical theory. This paper uses the findings of ethnographic fieldwork, conducted at a Millennium Road construction site in Khentii aimag (province) and several locations throughout Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, to interrogate development discourse as represented by the conversations surrounding the Millennium Road. How is this discourse produced, disseminated, and known? What are the resulting implications? This paper concludes that the Millennium Road as a discourse constitutes a set of “discontinuities,” systematic gaps in communication which lead to a devaluing of local agency through willful linguistic, spatial, and political moves. As such, the discourse of the Millennium Road points to deeper problems within development discourse in Mongolia, and it makes constructive demands on the theory of critical scholars.

Geoff Aung is a Columbia College senior majoring in Anthropology and concentrating in Human Rights and American Studies. Last year he spent a full semester studying in Mongolia, and he plans to return in the summer of 2008. In one of his many other lives, he is deeply committed to Burma-related human rights advocacy. Currently he is at work on his senior thesis, an ethnography titled ‘Images in Air: Burmese Exile and Mediations of Nation in New York City.

Pin-Quan Ng, Columbia College ‘10, Political Science and Economics
Transforming Corporate Japan for the Challenges of Global Capitalism

In this essay, I argue that the collapse of the asset-price bubble and subsequent banking crisis created fundamental systemic changes to Japan’s political economy and institutions, and heightened its sensitivity to international capital markets and global economic forces. These challenges will require Japanese companies to achieve an efficient allocation of physical, financial, and human capital by adjusting their human resource management policies to leverage on foreign and female talent, adopting a more meritocratic and flexible corporate culture, and changing their approach to corporate governance. This presentation is based on a prizewinning submission to the Japan Foreign Trade Council (日本貿易会) 2007 essay competition.

Pin-Quan Ng is a sophomore John W. Kluge Scholar at Columbia University, majoring in Economics and Political Science, and his academic interests are in market systems, civil liberties, and international development, for which he has been awarded grant funding to pursue his research. He has published op-eds and essays on these topics that have won various awards, most recently from the Social Equity Venture Fund and the St. Gallen Symposium. A native of Singapore, Pin-Quan completed his term of compulsory military service before starting college in the United States, where he is an active participant in microfinance and social enterprise organizations, and has worked for a management consulting firm in Singapore and a Washington foreign policy think-tank. Pin-Quan aspires to a career in the international development field, and hopes to work towards peace, prosperity and freedom in Asia and around the world.

Andrew Scheineson, Columbia College ‘09, East Asian Studies
From Laws to Levees: Methods of Water Control in the Qing Dynasty

As China faces a water crisis that becomes more severe every day, it is perhaps useful to look back on historical management and exploitation of this all-important resource. This paper examines the governmental and social structures that supervised and ultimately failed to maintain the dikes, dams, and canals that helped stem the destructive floods of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, fed the fields of China’s farmers, carried their produce to market, and became a point of conflict between local and national interests during the Qing Dynasty. In their attempts to administer tens of thousands of waterworks effectively and cut down on corruption, the central government in Beijing applied a variety of approaches, ranging from direct central control of the Yellow River to granting relative autonomy around Shanghai. Dozens of unique experimental systems appear to have risen from this variegated policy, even including semi-democratic institutions, revealing the individual characteristics of different regions. By the fall of the Qing Dynasty, millions of taels had left the Imperial Treasury for the rebuilding of failing dykes, as social disruptions and poor enforcement mechanisms led to their deterioration, possibly contributing to the empire’s collapse. In modern China, where billions of yuan are funneled into dams (and the pocketbooks of dishonest officials), and immense projects like the Three Gorges Dam cause intense social upheaval and geological instability, could such a fate be lurking on the horizon? By considering overarching themes of conflict of interest, bureaucratic inefficiency, and corruption, and by acknowledging the difficulties inherent in maintaining a public good like water, the past can hold valuable lessons for the present, and possibly influence decisions in the future.

Andrew Scheineson is a Columbia College junior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures with a concentration in Environmental Science. After three days floating down the Yangtze River, watching the piles of trash floating by, and several months studying in smog-filled Chinese cities, he took an interest in China’s environmental issues and policy. While waterworks administration may not appear to be the most exciting topic, it piqued an interest in him which he hopes to pursue for his senior thesis next year.

Benjamin Shaffer, Columbia College ‘09, East Asian Studies
‘Happy Dancing Natives’: Minority Film, Han Nationalism, and Collective Memory

This article explores the genre of “minority film” in Chinese Cinema and the construction of boundaries between majority and minority ethnicity that emerged with the rise of Han nationalism in contemporary China. During the 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party led campaigns to classify its diverse range of ethnic minorities, and Han Chinese representations of ethnic minorities have since been prominent in visual culture. Minority films tend to display the ostensibly “colorful” and “exotic” elements of minority culture, portraying minorities rather monolithically as fond of song, dance, and lively festivals. A collective memory of these films remains among members of contemporary Chinese society, and this article focuses on four particular films produced in China’s Yunnan Province: Five Golden Flowers (1959), Ashima (1964), Sacrificed Youth (1985), and King of the Children (1987). This article examines what minority films represent to individuals in China today, both Han and non-Han, who recall fondly the fanciful, colorful moving images from films like Five Golden Flowers and Ashima as they resurface from distant memory.

Benny Shaffer is a Columbia College junior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. He spent last fall in China’s Yunnan Province studying representations of ethnic minorities in Chinese Cinema. This summer he plans to research trends in visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking in Yunnan. He likes to juggle, play the drums, and drink tea (not at the same time though; that would be dangerous).

Tedde Tsang, Columbia College ‘08, East Asian Studies
The ‘Choosy’ Sex: The Ideal Mate Selection Criteria of Urban Chinese Youth and the Female Penchant for Rationality

This paper examines demand in the relationship market of Peking University students using ratings of mate selection criteria to determine the characteristics of an ideal mate. By examining cross-gender perceptions of demand in the relationship market, it makes a new contribution to the study of Chinese mate selection criteria. The results of this research show that traditional gender roles are still heavily pronounced among young Chinese and that the importance they place on love and personality criteria have yet to fully align with developed, Western countries. These, along with other factors, create a contemporary relationship market driven by the rational-criteria-based demands of females, greatly disadvantaging males who do not display an ability to succeed in China’s growing economy.

Tedde conducted field research in Beijing on ideal mate selection for this paper, which uses statistical methods to identify demand in the marriage market of contemporary urban Chinese youth. Tedde is also Co Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia East Asia Review, a partner organization of the Symposium.

Diana Xiaojie Zhou, Barnard ‘08, East Asian Studies
The Cycle of Inequality, Poverty and HIV/AIDS in Rural China

This paper examines three factors affecting the response of government and non-government actors to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in rural villages. Significant social and cultural stigmatization of HIV/AIDS has complicated problem identification and is directly related to lack of education. The center-local divide in China’s decentralized and fragmented bureaucracy stymies effective information flow, incentivizes local level corruption and complicates the process of getting aid to AIDS victims. Lastly, as few populations have been left unaffected by China’s recent, uneven economic growth, the AIDS villages too have felt the impact of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. One of the byproducts of the central government’s single-minded focus on raising GDP is a neglected rural health care system that is inadequate in the face of an epidemic outbreak. Although this paper centers on China’s first AIDS villages in Henan Province, the problem is nationwide. An illegal blood trade continues to persist in poor, remote villages, putting cash-strapped farmers at high risk for HIV/AIDS. Addressing this at-risk population had pressing implications for China’s future.

Diana Xiaojie Zhou is from Seattle, WA. She traveled to AIDS villages around China to conduct research for this paper. Her other preoccupations include the Zhuangzi and torrential downpours.

Grace Zhou, Columbia College ‘10, East Asian Studies
Language Attitudes of Central Guizhou’s Gelao Population

The purpose of my project was to investigate the language attitudes of central Guizhou’s Gelao (仡老) population towards their ethnic Gelao language in comparison with their attitudes towards China’s official language of Mandarin (Han). The Gelao people are considered one of China’s fifty-six official minority groups. Their population is estimated to be around 550,000 and they are native to the area of Guizhou province. I mainly conducted interviews in the villages/counties of Wanzi (湾子) and Heqiao (河桥 ) in the suburbs of Anshun. My findings reflect that the identity and language of the Gelao are affected by a variety of forces—not just by external states such as geographic location, historical events, interactions with other cultures, but they are also impacted by more abstract ideas and feelings of community, identity, and by a consciousness of outside perceptions.

Grace is a sophomore in Columbia College majoring in Linguistics and concentrating in Anthropology and Russian. She is interested in Slavic and Celtic Linguistics, language preservation, and minority languages of China and Siberia.