China - 2500 Jahre Entdeckungsreise vom Altertum bis ins 20. Jahrhundert

China - 2500 Jahre Entdeckungsreise vom Altertum bis ins 20. Jahrhundert Copyright: Frederking & Thaler Verlag Das sagenhafte Reich der Mitte zog seit der Antike viele Reisende magisch an. Griechische Kaufleute kamen wegen der berühmten Seide, irische Mönche drangen bis in die Weiten der Mongolei vor, portugiesische Seefahrer schufen die ersten westlichen Handelsniederlassungen und Entdecker wie Sven Hedin begeistern bis heute ihre Leser mit abenteuerlichen Berichten von einer faszinierenden Kultur. Illustriert ausschließlich durch zeitgenössische Stiche, Zeichnungen und Malerei erzählt dieser opulente Band die wechselvolle und spannende Geschichte von 2500 Jahren Begegnung zwischen Ost und West. 2500 Jahre Begegnung mit dem Reich der Mitte: Pilger, Kaufleute, Missionare, Eroberer und Diplomaten - sie alle zogen aus, das ferne Land im Osten zu erkunden, um das sich bis heute viele Legenden ranken. Dennoch blieb China dem Abendland auch in den drei Jahrhunderten fremd, die auf die ersten Handelskontakte der Portugiesen im 16. Jahrhundert folgten. Doch die Neugierde der westlichen Welt konnte besonders durch die Missionare des Jesuitenordens geweckt werden, chinesisches Porzellan und Malerei fanden viele Bewunderer, und China wurde an den europäischen Höfen salonfähig. Im 19. Jahrhundert bedingten Industrielle Revolution und die politischen Interessen der Großmächte eine neue Form der Begegnung zwischen West und Ost. Die Briten zwangen das Reich der Mitte, seine Häfen für den Handel und den Opiumimport zu öffnen. 1860 hatten die Europäer faktisch die Macht in China übernommen und blieben dort bis zum Fall der Mandschu-Dynastie zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts und dem Ende des Himmlischen Kaiserreiches. Der vorliegende Band beruht auf zahlreichen, bislang unveröffentlichten historischen Dokumenten und faszinierenden Bildern unterschiedlicher Epochen. Er beschreibt die schwierige Kontaktaufnahme Europas mit China von den ersten vorsichtigen Handelsverbindungen in der Antike über das Zeitalter des Kolonialismus bis hin zum Fall des Reiches und den Anfangen der maoistischen Revolution in China. Das Buch zollt der Geschichte Tribut, zugleich und vor allem aber auch der Kunst und Kreativität der Chinesen, deren einzigartige Kultur und unverwechselbarer Stil in vielen der hier abgebildeten Meisterwerke zutage tritt. Gianni Guadalupi China 336 Seiten / 600 Farbfotos 25,5 x 35,5 cm ISBN 3-89405-475-1

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations

As China emerges as a great power, much attention has been devoted to understanding China’s present and prospective foreign affairs. With the rise of nationalism in China, policymakers have begun to worry about whether the Chinese leadership will adopt a more assertive nationalistic posture in foreign affairs. Zheng Wang uses recollections and representations of past historical events shared by the Chinese to emphasize that the understanding of the past impacts the present and the future. This book is less about Bwhat actually happened^ in history, but about Bwhat the Chinese remember and what they choose to forget^ in a recounting of the country’s past. It seeks to explain China’s political transition and foreign policy behavior in the post-Tiananmen era through the lens of historical memory. This study makes a valuable contribution to examining the function of historical memory and consciousness in Chinese politics and foreign relations. In this book, historical memory is identified as a powerful force in the formation of a country’s national identity and worldview. National identity is viewed as a key determinant for national interests, which in turn are considered as a driving force behind foreign policy and state action. As indicated in the title, this book primarily focuses on the Chinese people’s collective historical memory about the so-called Bainian guochi (century of national humiliation) beginning with the First Opium War (1839–1842) through the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1945. The Chinese people remember this period as a time when their country was attacked and bullied by foreign powers. Wang examines how the Chinese historical memory about the country’s past humiliation, combined with the Communist leaders’ political use of the past to reshape national identity, influenced China’s political transformation and international behavior. To conduct this research, the author applies an in-depth qualitative and historical approach, using evidence gathered from historical textbooks, official documents, memoirs, and interviews. Based on the existing literature on historical memory and theories of identity and beliefs, the first chapter of the book develops two analytical frameworks that help to categorize and measure the effects of historical memory. Adopting the Harvard Identity Project model and social identity theory, the first analytical framework provides a method to measure the content of historical memory as a collective identity. The second one provides a set of questions categorizing causal pathways in which collective identity serves to influence political actions. Based on the analytical frameworks, the next five chapters explore the role of historical memory in the construction of national identity and nation building, with each chapter dealing with a different aspect of historical memory issues. Starting with an overview of China’s century of national humiliation in Chapter 2, the following chapters examine how the discourse of China’s humiliating modern history has been revised and institutionalized in the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to construct the rules and norms of the ruling party. In particular, they provide a detailed account of how the Chinese government has used the content of historical memory to conduct ideological education as a central component of its patriotic education campaign that started in 1991. Wang argues that the state-led campaign of patriotic education contributed to the rise of nationalism in China which helped the Communist government to regain its legitimacy in the post-Tiananmen era. In Chapter 6, the author uses the historical memory variable to explain Chinese behavior during the Olympic Games and the Sichuan earthquake relief effort in 2008. Chapter 7 and 8 present case studies examining the impact of China’s institutionalized historical consciousness on its foreign relations, especially in relations with the United States and Japan. Based on these case studies, the author claims that historical memory often serves as a major driving force leading to international conflict, especially when the confrontation is perceived by the Chinese as an assault on the country’s national dignity (or face). Ideational factors including historical memory have been underestimated in the study of politics and international relations due to the difficulties in incorporating cognitive variables into empirical research. This book makes a significant contribution to providing researchers with analytical frameworks and methodological approaches for a systemic examination concerning the use of historical memory as a variable to explain political action. Therefore, I believe a wide range of readers with interests in China’s historical memory, national identity, nationalism and foreign relations will gain useful insights from this intriguing book 

Su-Jeong Kang

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations

 Scholars studying China are quite familiar with themes like national humiliation, nationalism as a new source of regime legitimacy vis-à-vis communism, and China’s anti-US and anti-Japan polemic. Zheng Wang’s book Never Forget National Humiliation captures the interrelated nature of these themes in a skilful manner and is a valuable addition to the study of Chinese nationalism. Wang analyses the commonly shared thinking of the Chinese about their place in the world and their view of how the world sees them (p. xii). His analysis attempts to explain the ultimate aim and implications of China’s rise. He underscores that China’s ‘historical consciousness’ revolves around ‘myth’ and ‘trauma’—the dominant features of China’s contemporary national thinking shaping its national identity. The ‘historical consciousness’ defines its national interests and tunes its motivations behind its international interactions, and is necessary to understand China’s present foreign policy. Thus, the author discusses two variables in this context: historical consciousness and national identity in China’s contemporary foreign policy. The central question of the book is how the Chinese, particularly the youth, have come to be ranked ‘among the most patriotic’ and ‘establishment supporting’, from the earlier Mao’s Red Guards and later ‘the anti-dictatorship Tiananmen Generation’ of the 1980s (pp. 1–2). Answering the question, the book discusses the communist regime’s cultivation of a new national identity from 1991 onwards, based on ethnic patriotism. This would be done by constructing a new historical consciousness, through government interventions, that strengthens the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s legitimacy. The book describes the Chinese government’s selective but systematic usage of memories to fulfil its legitimacy requirements and create the kind of nation it wants (pp. 6–7). Wang points out that the Chosenness-Myths-Trauma (CMT) complex, which the regime has carefully created over the past two decades, constitutes China’s contemporary mainstream historical consciousness. The CMT contains belief in the ancient glory of China—belief in divine chosenness, cultural superiority and a civilisation boundless (best expressed in the concept of 天下 Tianxia, ‘the realm under heaven’) (pp. 42–43)—and memories of China’s defeat at the hands of foreign powers after the first Opium War (1839–42) until 1945, when the Japanese withdrew from China after a prolonged Sino-Japanese war. In the CMT complex, China’s earlier defeats are ignored as the invaders at that time, the barbarians, became civilised by assimilating with the Chinese culture. The invaders, the devils, after the first Opium War, knockeddown Tianxia. Similarly, other tragedies—those pertaining to the civil war or the catastrophic famine in the late 1950s or the political tragedy of the Cultural Revolution—are ignored by the CCP. Thus, only the selective simulation of the defeats and consequent unequal treaties during the said period make up the traumas in CMT. While the remembrance of the ancient mythical or historical glories boosts Chinese society’s self-esteem, the selective traumas seek to ‘mourn and/or reverse’ national humiliation and contribute to forming a strong national identity (p. 68). Wang describes the contemporary patriotic surge in China’s textbooks and entertainment industry as the post-Tiananmen development. He reminds us that in spite of occasional sharing of political slogans in their joint fight against the warlords and the Japanese invasion, the CCP generally used class-oriented language describing China’s humiliation as part of a global trend, unlike its narrative today. Conversely, the Kuomintang (KMT) spoke essentially a Confucian nationalist language. Later, the communists produced a ‘victor discourse’ and the narrative of history full of socialist idioms after 1949 in which, as Wang underscores, ethnic patriotism was absent (pp. 82–91). The class distinction defined the political identity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as representing only the workers and peasants, discarding ethnicity during the Maoist era. Ethnic patriotism found no sympathy in Mao’s internationalism and ‘progressive’ China. For them, the Chinese civil war and the Japanese and other foreign aggressions were class wars. Moreover, the communists’ ‘victor’ sense after 1949 and their claim of liberating China from the hands of oppressors—their source of legitimacy—had no place for stories on national humiliation. Besides, the CCP was not in a position to ratchet up their claims about the victory over the Japanese beyond a certain point, as the hard fact was that it was the KMT, whom the communists shunned, that essentially fought the war against the Japanese (pp. 86–88). Consequently, the National Library of China had ‘no books on the subject of “national humiliation” published in China between 1947–90’. The Maoist era ‘consciously suppressed’ the ‘historiography of the Nanjing Massacre’ (p. 86). The 1989 Tiananmen episode symbolised the culmination of the ideological crisis of the official socialist ideology losing sync with the changing economic orientation of China. The crisis had been building up since the late 1970s. Deng Xioping accepted that ‘[t]he biggest mistake for the CCP in the 1980s was that the party did not focus enough attention on ideological education … we did not tell them about what China was like in the old days and what kind of a country it was to become’ (p. 96). China needed a new ideology. In the light of Deng’s guiding directive, Jiang Zemin undertook a massive project to rewrite the textbooks of history, to create a new historical narrative and to introduce a new curriculum in order to overhaul China’s political and ideological education (pp. 100–104). Wang argues that Jiang, who is mainly known for his successes on the economic and foreign policy fronts, implemented a silent revolution in the educational arena, which is his most enduring legacy (p. 136). Jiang transformed Mao’s ‘victor’ China into ‘the victim’ China. The old narrative of the Sino-Japanese war being a class war was changed to an international ethnic conflict with ‘considerable credit to the KMT’s military resistance’ (p. 102). Now the claim of legitimacy for the CCP is that it ended the era of national humiliation and unequal treaty, not the liberation. The Chinese state has employed various instruments such as rewriting the textbooks, making history a compulsory subject for students in various ways, subsidising and promoting movies and television serials based on war themes and building monuments for war heroes to sell its version of history. Evoking memories of the Sino-Japanese war by the leaders has become fashionable. According to Wang, the aim of all this is to ‘rejuvenate China’, which for many Chinese means reclaiming ancient glory, not aspiring to anything new. This massive exercise has not only established nationalism as a new source of legitimacy but has redefined the role of the CCP too. Jiang’s ‘Three Represents’ principle (‘advanced productive forces, advanced Chinese culture and the fundamental interests of the majority’) signifies the end of the class character of the Chinese state for many. The author points out that the success of the project was witnessed during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 when the patriotic demonstrations by the overseas Chinese, particularly by students abroad, overwhelmed and outperformed pro-Tibet and other pro-human rights demonstrations in the backdrop of the Olympic Torch relay to Beijing. Wang identified the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia and the EP-3 incident in 2001 as the three major incidents after the end of the Cold War in which China’s reaction had direct links with the nationalism project it had undertaken in the 1990s. He argues that in view of the US’s conciliatory approach, China’s reaction was disproportionate and not normal during these episodes. He is of the view that China exploited these incidents to ‘activate’ the memories of past injustice by foreigners. His core argument is that ‘emergency (accident or unexpected events) incidents that cause Chinese suffering and a dispute with a country that historically has had troubles with China’ provide an opportunity to ‘activate Chinese historical memory’ (p. 200). China’s insistence on seeking apology—for example in the case of the EP-3 incident from the US and from Japan about the atrocities committed on the Chinese during its invasion of China and about the Japanese history textbooks—serves its victim righteousness and satisfies the moral superiority as part of its nationalism project. Wang cautions that the kind of anti-foreign nationalist path China has chosen to tread is quite dangerous. It does help the regime to keep its authority legitimate and stable by avoiding internal political animosity, but it can also create complications in policy making. Sometimes, mass hysteria about past injustices may not recognise its limits and may build a momentum of its own, beyond CCP control (p. 191). In conclusion, the book is illuminating, engrossing and highly recommendable. It is a high-quality scholarly work that very lucidly unravels many entwined themes and does full justice to the subject it discusses.

Prashant Kumar Singh

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations.

 Why did the Chinese government escalate some international crises, such as the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and not others, like the 1998 attacks on ethnic Chinese in Indonesia? Why did Chinese youth go from standing in front of tanks in 1989 to becoming the country’s staunchest patriots defending the 2008 Olympic flame in capital cities around the world? Zheng Wang’s book, Never Forget National Humiliation, looks at a particular dimension of China’s socio-political culturehistorical memory, to solve a number of puzzles about the country’s international and domestic politics that the mainstream, realist tradition of International Relations theory has a hard time explaining. Combining insights from the liberal and constructivist traditions, Wang examines Chinese foreign and domestic policies since Jiang Zemin’s ‘patriotic turn’ in the 1990s. Employing historical memory as the main explanatory variable, Wang’s analysis identifies the causal relationship between China’s official historical narrative, the country’s collective identity construction and its foreign policy. The stated aim of the book is to delineate with precision the extent to which ideational factors bring about conflict behaviours. Wang’s original theoretical framework directly links identity to political outcomes, locating three causal pathways in which ideational factors influence policy behaviour: as road maps, as focal points and as institutions. Although this framework heavily draws on insights that most constructivist and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) approaches have already incorporated, namely how cognitive constraints and biases can affect foreign policy-makers, Wang distinguishes himself by giving pride of place to memory. Examining the impact of historical memory and identity on cognition allows him to make sense of some otherwise puzzling instances of Chinese foreign behaviour like the ones mentioned above. Wang’s analysis of how China chooses to remember its past has great relevance for the present. It sheds light on topical questions about the political implications of national historiography, and the role that history education plays in a country’s domestic and foreign relations. Wang offers a map of the meanderings of Chinese historical memory, illustrating the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological evolution from communism to nationalism over the course of the last three decades. This transformation is set against a broader background of the change in China’s self-image during its millenary history.

The book details China’s Patriotic Education Campaign since the early 1990s and through to its latest developments in the twenty-first century, focusing on the content and objectives of the history curriculum. Wang sees historical memory both as a trigger of the country’s nationalistic education and as its product, placing it at the heart of China’s search for identity as a nation-state. His approach to the study of nationalism has both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, Wang accounts for several of the dimensions of Chinese nationalism and avoids the classic top-down bottom-up dichotomy, by describing it not only instrumentally as a state-led ideology or political technique but also as a sentiment pervading civil society and originating from shared memories. Regrettably, the discussion occasionally suffers from a rather muddled understanding of the main terms used in nationalism studies. This severely undermines Wang’s attempt to redefine Chinese nationalism in the last chapter. Nonetheless, overall the discussion remains pertinent, empirically accurate and illuminating. The book benefits from research in primary sources ranging from educational texts and official documents to cultural and popular material, introducing new material to the English-speaking academic debate. Cases are cogently argued and empirically substantiated. An instance of this is the discussion of the change in the description of well-known historical figures reflecting an official change in historical perspectives: General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing dynasty went from being a peasant-suppressing devil in the old textbooks to being a foreign-defeating hero in the new ones. Never Forget National Humiliation appeals to a broad readership, ranging from scholars and students of international relations, nationalism and history, to policymakers and anyone interested in the internal workings of China’s worldview. Accessible to non-specialists thanks to its clarity, Wang’s book does at the same time provide a rigorous contribution to the theoretical debate about the role of national identity in shaping political outcomes. Finally, the book takes on an advocacy position in the controversial debate of textbook writing in East Asia. Describing China’s ‘deep culture’ of national humiliation as articulated in a narrative of chosen myths and traumas, Wang’s book explores the genesis of a self-victimising historical narrative. Far from endorsing it, the book promotes changes in the intellectual discourse on history so that the power of collective memory can foster reconciliation and understanding between China and other countries, especially Japan and the US, rather than conflict. This element of idealism rests on Wang’s solid background in conflict resolution, which lends credence to the book’s proposed ways to deflate the nationalistic animosities currently destabilising China, its region and the world.

Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, by Zheng Wang

 Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, by Zheng Wang

 It focuses on the teaching of modern history in schools, which emphasizes China as the victim of foreign imperialist bullying during the so-called “one hundred years of humiliation” from the Opium War (1839–42) to the Communist victory in 1949. The primary aim of this manipulated historical consciousness is to glorify the Chinese Communists, who drove out the imperialists, but whose image was badly damaged by their crackdown on student protests on 4 June 1989. The secondary aim is to promote anti-Western nationalism, hoping to consolidate national identity and justify one-Party rule. Zheng Wang finds that this manipulated historical  consciousness now directs political discourse at home and foreign policy abroad, laying the foundations for China’s rise.

The book puts its case in nine chapters. The first reviews the existing studies on the concepts of historical memory, identity and politics. In Chapter 2, “Chosen Glory, Chosen Trauma”, the Opium War heralds the Century of Humiliation, while Chapter 3 traces China’s mighty fall from its self-perceived status as the Centre of the World to its resurgence during the Mao era. The fourth chapter describes China’s need to resort to a patriotic education campaign to hold the nation together; Chapter 5 discusses the attempt to salvage a Communist Party badly tarnished by the events in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. Chapter 6 dwells on the use of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake as a new trauma and the Beijing Olympics as a new glory to bind the nation together. Chapter 7 turns to the utilization of national[ist] history in China’s relations with foreign countries; Chapter 8 discusses relations with Japan; and Chapter 9 concludes with an overview of  the use of nationalism, based on selected memory, to foster the so-called China’s Rise. Such a narrative raises more questions than it can provide answers. With regard to foreign policy, the manipulation of historical memory to produce a mentality of victimhood does indeed distract from problems at hand, but can equally generate misunderstandings between China and other nations, with unpredictable consequences. Wang believes that the 1989 protests were about resisting CCP dictatorship, but concludes that manipulation of historical consciousness has succeeded in consolidating one-Party rule, and in fact has intensified Party dictatorship! The students had another major complaint—official corruption—and this has gone from bad to worse, as even the CCP leaders acknowledge. In short, the CCP has only suppressed the symptoms, but not cured the illness. My own research reveals a different dimension to this all-out attempt to suppress the symptoms, and that is that it has encouraged people, first, to further their own interests, and second, not to care about the interests of others (and by implication public interest, so exacerbating problems such as rampant corruption and to many episodes of gross, indeed sometimes grotesque, selfishness recounted by the Chinese media in recent years). If the object of manipulating historical memory has been, as Wang suggests, to build social cohesion, this effort seems to have been remarkably unsuccessful. Indeed, social cohesion and stability are jeopardized by the Chinese authorities’ use of this same manipulated historical consciousness as leverage in both their domestic politics and foreign relations. Once started, however, mass reactions such as street protests often take their own course. In short, the Chinese authorities are sitting on a volcano of their own making. So, where is China going? This is what the powers-that-be care about the least—most of them have sent their children to live overseas, pockets bulging with money. How long that money will last, in the hands of these spoilt princelings, is something that the leaders have not considered. The measures pursued to date in the name of stability may ultimately prove massively counter-productive.

Spelt out in this way, this review is bound to paint a far less rosy picture of the CCP’s future than does the book itself. John Y. Wong University of Sydney

陳雲 13 June 1905 – 10 April 1995

In May 1949, Chen Yun was named head of the new national Central Finance and Economic Commission. In early 1952, Zhou Enlai led a team to draft the first Five-Year Plan which included Chen, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchun and General Nie Rongzhen. Zhou, Chen and Li presented the draft to Soviet experts in Moscow, who rejected it. In early 1953, Gao Gang and the State Planning Commission began work on what would eventually become the final version. After Gao's fall, Chen Yun, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchuan and (later) Li Xiannian would manage the Chinese economy for the next 30+ years.

Chen Yun was elected Party Vice Chairman in 1956.

Throughout the 1950s, Chen was the official who did the most to moderate Mao's radical economic reforms. Looking back, Chen would later believe that it was the Chairman's errors that most kept China from achieving its Five-Year Plans

Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?

Idiomuri chinezesti Chinese idioms

 

1.一丝不苟 (Yīsībùgǒu)

The meaning of this idiomatic expression is to be meticulous and to attend to every detail. This phrase is particularly useful when you want to paint the character in your composition as a highly detailed oriented person. It is a sweet and concise way to describe such a person. A literal translation is: “一丝” referring to a little bit and “不苟” referring to not careless at all. Thus, explaining its meaning.

2. 一窍不通 (Yīqiàobùtōng)

This idiom essentially means that a person is completely unaware and ignorant about something. 一窍不通 (yīqiàobùtōng) literal meaning is “passing not even one hole” (as “一窍” translates to one hole/opening and “不通” is blocked/impassable).

It is also somewhat like the English expression of “It’s Greek to me”. Students can use this phrase in their Chinese composition when they want to describe characters not understanding how to use computers or just being unable to make any sense of the current situation.

3.哪壶不开提哪壶 (Nǎ Hú Bù Kāi Tí Nǎ Hú)

This idiomatic expression is an uncommon one and probably a good one to impress the examiner. This idiom means to touch a soft spot in someone. It can be used when someone said or did something which caused others to suddenly remember an unfortunate past or something unpleasant. It’s literal translation to English is “to pick a kettle that is not boiling”.

4.民以食为天 (Mín Yǐ Shí Wéi Tiān)

This is also yet another idiomatic expression that does not follow the typical 4 characters idiom. This is a great and refreshing idiom for students to use in their composition relating to food, health and fitness! Since Singapore is a food haven, it is highly appropriate to use it to discuss the importance of food in this little red dot. The literal translation of this idiomatic expression is that people view food as their heaven, this highlighting that people place a high priority on food.

5.鹤立鸡群 (Hèlìjīqún)

This Chinese idiomatic expression suggests that the person which we are referring to is outstanding and excels in whatever he/she is doing. It is useful for students as they can use this idiom to describe a person who is talented in a certain skill. The literal meaning of this meaning in English is translated to this “A crane standing in a flock of chicken”, thus implying that the person is a high achiever and stands out from the rest.

6. 豁然开朗 (Huò Rán Kāi Lǎng)

This idiom is used to describe the eureka moment that you have. It means that the person has gained enlightenment to a difficult problem or situation, and he/she suddenly saw the light. It is really helpful when you want to express that the character suddenly thought of a great brilliant idea, this idiom is as commonly used by students, so utilising this in essay would impress your examiner!

7. 爱不释手 (Àibùshìshǒu)

This is a rather common idiom which students use, so it is best to know it! This means to love something so much that you are unwilling to let go of it. That is the literal translated meaning as “释手” essentially means to let go, hence the idiom when translated means unwilling to part with the object. This idiom can be used when you would like to describe a child in the toy store being unwilling to put down the toy he saw.

8. 不可兼得 (Bù Kě Jiān Dé)

This idiom means that one cannot get both things at the same time, or rather you cannot have the best of both worlds. It came from a longer Chinese idiom “鱼与熊掌不可兼得”, meaning, you are not able to always get everything you want.

9.塞翁失马 (Sàiwēngshīmǎ)

This Chinese idiom was derived from the ancient Chinese story of when an old man who lost his horse and yet it brought about good things when the horse came back with another fine horse, giving them good fortune. However, this idiom also depicts that happiness may also bring about misfortune, thus it is a dual meaning proverb.

Essentially, it implies that setbacks are oftentimes a blessing in disguise and not all happiness is long lasting, as it can slowly turn to misfortune. Therefore, it is useful for students to use this to depict events where a misfortune actually has a silver lining!

10. 心血来潮 (Xīn Xuè Lái Cháo)

This idiom is suitable to be used in the beginning of the sentence to signal an impulse or doing certain things on a whim. This phrase is directly translated to “heart blood which comes suddenly” in English. It is used to describe the feeling of desiring to do something on an impulse. Therefore, it is very suitable for students to use this expression to describe somebody’s actions that were prompted by an impulse and the spur of a moment.

11.全力以赴 (Quán Lì Yǐ Fù)

This idiom literally translates into giving it your all. It is a highly versatile idiom that can be used in writing or in oral conversations. Possessing a positive connotation which signals a person’s determination to achieve a goal, it is used to describe the actions during the process and not those that have already been completed.

12.不可思议 (Bù Kě Sī Yì)

Breaking down this 4 character idiom, we will have “不可” which means cannot and “思议” which means imagine or believe. Hence, this phrase means that something (can be a place, thing or an event) is unbelievable and unimaginable. It can have both positive and negative connotations to indicate that something is noteworthy or marvellous in an unexpected way.

13.理所当然(Lǐ Suǒ Dāng Rán)

The meaning of this phrase is that “it goes without saying”. It is used to refer to the inevitability of things and it is reasonable should something happen. It is an excellent connector and phrase to start the sentence, replacing the mediocre “当然”.

14. 纸上谈兵(Zhǐshàngtánbīng)

The literal meaning of this idiom means to talk about the military on paper, which is deemed useless and impractical unless one combines experience and practical skills with it.

This idiomatic phrase originated from a story narrating how the general Zhao Kuo of Zhao Dynasty only studied military strategies and tactics on paper but never practiced it on a battlefield. As such, the lack of practical exercises led to his defeat and failure during the Campaign of Changping.

15. 自相矛盾 (Zìxiāngmáodùn)

This idiom explains the meaning of contradicting oneself. “自相” means self and “矛盾” means to contradict. This idiom came about when a man boasted that the spear could penetrate anything, yet he also sold a shield which he claimed that no spear could pierce through it, thus an obvious contradiction. As such, this idiom is suitable for describing paradoxical situations or people who have contradictory opinions.

16.有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎(Yǒupéng Zì Yuǎnfāng Lái, Bù Yì Lè Hū)

Now, this string of characters is definitely not the norm. It has more than four characters, but it is still considered an idiomatic expression just that it is a quote from Confucius. This can be a little tough to memorise, so knowing its context and meaning might help a little. Essentially, this is the more complex version of “好久不见”  which means “long time no see” in English. This is especially suitable for context when you reunite with your old friends and you would like to express more happiness and positive vibes.

17. 一鸣惊人 (Yī Míng Jīng Rén)

This idiom means to wonder and amaze the world with a brilliant act. It can be used positively to show that the character has surprised people with his success or carry out astounding acts such as displaying one’s dancing or singing talents.

18. 多多益善 (Duo Duo Yi Shan)

This idiom means the more the better. It can be used in situations when you would like to depict the greater the help, the better the situation. For example, it can be used in compositions where you are describing charity work or to garner support and cooperation, basically a call to action since the more the merrier.

19. 学富五车 (Xue Fu Wu Che)

In literal translation from Chinese to English, this idiom means that the person possesses more knowledge than the knowledge combined in 5 books, therefore he or she is steeped in knowledge. It can be used to describe someone noble, or in a high position such as the school’s principal or a famous person in history.

20. 挑拨离间(Tiǎobō Líjiàn)

This idiom means to stir trouble or to drive a wedge between people. It is usually used to describe a third party who spread rumors or did something to cause trouble and sow dissension between two people who have established a good relationship.

Learning idioms is by no means an easy task. However, it can be fun and interesting through storytelling and constant revision of the phrases! It is definitely the number one tip to impress your examiners and display your proficiency in Chinese.

田家英; January 4, 1922 – May 23, 1966

In the early 1960s, Mao sent Tian to organize an investigation team to investigate in Hunan to understand the situation and problems in implementing the "Regulations on the Work of Rural People's Communes ". Tian's report questioned the efficacy and logic behind the Great Leap Forward.

秘书田家英为何吊死在毛泽东藏书室？触犯最大忌讳

Red-Color News Soldier cartea zilei

 李振盛 -  红色新闻兵 2000

凌遲(丛刟 凌遲)

千刀萬剮

Historical Chinese Communsit Terminology (Great Leap Forward)

 包产到户 - household contract system

单干风 - winds of individual farming

黑暗风 - winds of darkness 

中心小组 - central structure

包产责任制 - responsibility system for contracting work and output

责任田 - farming responsibility system

鄧子恢 17 August 1896 – 10 December 1972

 鄧子恢 17 August 1896 – 10 December 1972

Deng became a strong defender of peasant property rights, he started opposing the radical policies of forced agricultural collectivization pursued by Mao, especially after the Great Leap Forward

He relied on extensive investigations into the rural economy to support legal protection of peasant property rights while advocating against policies involving extreme egalitarianism, by opposing policies such as excessive government grain requisitions, state monopoly of agricultural pricing and the frequent and rapid transfer of property ownership. Deng's proposals inaugurated major agricultural reforms, such as the 'household contract system' (包产到户). In this system, Deng found an efficient means of resolving the recurrent difficulties that were being faced in the management of collective work.

Deng was persecuted by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing and purged from all positions during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Beset with illness and bereft of official protection, Deng died from an accident on 10 December 1972 in Beijing.

安土重遷

 安土重遷

兔死狗烹

一抔黃土

蒸蒸日上

人間蒸發

真槍實彈

放聲大哭

乃 (迺 廼)

 1. a fi

此乃中国特产。

產

失敗乃成功之母。

2. asadar

因山勢高峻，乃在山腰休息片時。

o clipa

3. doar atunci

今乃知之。

4. al dumneavoastra

乃父

Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution

 

Beginning in the 1920s thousands of Chinese revolutionaries set out for Soviet Russia. Once there, they studied Russian language and experienced Soviet communism, but many also fell in love, got married, or had children. In this they were similar to other people from all over the world who were enchanted by the Russian Revolution and lured to Moscow by it.
The Chinese who traveled to live and study in Moscow in a steady stream over the course of decades were a key human interface between the two revolutions, and their stories show the emotional investment backing ideological, economic, and political change. They embodied an attraction strong enough to be felt by young people in their provincial hometowns, strong enough to pull them across Siberia to a place that had previously held no interest at all. After the Revolution, the Chinese went home, fought a war, and then, in the 1950s, carried out a revolution that was and still is the Soviet Union's most geopolitically significant legacy. They also sent their children to study in Moscow and passed on their affinities to millions of Chinese, who read Russia's novels, watched its movies, and learned its songs. Russian culture was woven into the memories of an entire generation that came of age in the 1950s--a connection that has outlasted not just the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also the subsequent erosion of socialist values and practices. This multi-generational personal experience has given China's relationship with Russia an emotional complexity and cultural depth that were lacking before the advent of twentieth century communism--and have survived its demise. If the Chinese eventually helped to lead a revolution that resembled Russia's in remarkable ways, it was not only because class struggle intensified in China due to international imperialism as Lenin had predicted it would, or because Bolsheviks arrived in China to ensure that it did. It was also because as young people, they had been captivated by the potential of the Russian Revolution to help them to become new people and to create a new China.
This richly crafted and narrated book uses the metaphor of a life-long romance to tell a new story about the relationship between Russia and China. These lives were marked by an emotional engagement that often took the form of a romance: love affairs, marriages, divorces, and "love children," but also inspiring revolutionary passion. Elizabeth McGuire offers an alternative to the metaphors of brotherhood or friendship more commonly used to describe international socialism. She presents an alternate narrative on the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s by looking back to before the split to show how these two giant nations got together. And she does so on a very personal level by examining biographies of the people who experienced Sino-Soviet affairs most intimately: Chinese revolutionaries whose emotional worlds were profoundly affected by journeys to Russia and connections to its people and culture.

Sidney Rittenberg: Chairman Mao's favourite American

 As China's Communist Party marks its 90th birthday, one man has a unique perspective - an 89-year-old American ex-communist who spent 35 years in China and rubbed shoulders with Chairman Mao.

Sidney Rittenberg has lived a life usually seen only in Hollywood movies.

As a young man, he turned his back on the country of his birth, the United States, and threw in his lot with China's fledgling Communist Party.

He personally knew the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, spent time in solitary confinement after being accused of spying and, disillusioned, finally returned to America following a second stint in prison.

But the 89-year-old has never lost his love for China and its people, and now returns regularly for work and to see old friends.

As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its 90th anniversary, there can be few people still living who have seen its ups and downs from such close quarters.

Born in South Carolina into a prominent family, Sidney Rittenberg came to China with US forces in 1945, at the end of World War II.

His left-wing beliefs - and China's pitiful state at that time - naturally drew him towards Mao's communist party, based in the minor inland city of Yan'an.

"The normal state of existence for way over half of the people was hunger and the communists were the only group trying to get China out of that kind of poverty," he told the BBC while visiting the home he still keeps in Beijing.

At the time China was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist Party. The victory of the communists was, for many, still an unlikely outcome.

In Yan'an, Mr Rittenberg worked for Xinhua, the news agency that still exists today, and regularly rubbed shoulders with the party's leaders.

He became a party member.

"If you were walking down a road and ran into Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai or whoever, it was no big deal - it was normal," he said.

"You might stop and chat - anyone might stop and chat. You didn't feel a gulf."

Hysteria

But a gulf eventually did open up between him, a foreigner, and the Chinese revolutionaries he supported.

They blamed overseas powers, such as Britain and France, for many of China's problems and so a foreigner was always likely to be viewed with suspicion.

And so it turned out. Shortly after the communists took power in 1949, Mr Rittenberg was accused of being a spy and sent to prison. He spent time in solitary confinement, and was only released in 1955.

"I felt this terrible hurt. It's like you have a sweetheart that you've been in love with for years and it's been a wonderful relationship. All of a sudden, she appears in court and accuses you of rape," he said.

But Mr Rittenberg did not lose his faith in the Chinese communists and, when Chairman Mao launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966, the American was caught up in the hysteria of the times.

In the chaos, many were accused of political crimes at denunciation sessions that lasted for hours. The accused were often forced to wear dunce's caps and stand in painful positions.

Mr Rittenberg took part in these sessions. He said his participation was "inevitable".

"I was very enthusiastic about the prospect of building a world without classes, without war, without poverty - and it looked to me like this was what Mao was trying to do."

His verdict on Mao now? "He was a great historical leader and a great historical criminal - very few have reached this status in both of those aspects."

Renewal

Eventually the Cultural Revolution turned on many of its fiercest advocates and, like many others, Mr Rittenberg was sent to prison again - as an "enemy" of the party.

Disenchanted with communism, on his release he decided to leave China for good with his Chinese wife and four children.

It was 1980 and he was about to start a new life as a consultant advising companies that wanted to do business in China, from a base across the Pacific Ocean, in Washington state.

At about the same time, China's Communist Party was also starting again. Under Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, it ditched many of the former chairman's ideas and principles.

In Mr Rittenberg's view, the new top leader saved the party, but changed it in such a way as to make it unrecognisable.

He said it might have to change again if it is to survive.

"We'll get to certain point where people will no longer be willing to have an advanced market economy and a backward political system," he said.

Sidney Rittenberg was born just a few weeks after the Chinese Communist Party held its first congress in Shanghai in 1921 and so, like the party, he will soon celebrate his 90th birthday.

And like the party, he is not thinking of retiring just yet - he is still too passionate about the country he adopted more than six decades ago.

Mao Zedong remembered: China's multi-faceted deep-thinking leader?

 

US citizen Sidney Rittenberg spent 35 years in China at a time of momentous upheaval, personally befriending Mao Zedong and other veteran Chinese revolutionary leaders as they seized power from the Kuomintang from 1945 onwards. Here he reveals his unique perspective on the civil war, the early days of Communism and Mao's philosophy.

Like everything else in China, Mao's role today is a study in paradox. He is both more and less than the ginormous portrait that dominates the centre of Beijing's Tiananmen Square - and which will not be coming down anytime soon.

More, because Mao is the George Washington figure, the founder of the People's Republic of China, the great unifier of his ancient, far-flung and multifarious people.

Less, because Chinese youth today, including young Party members, typically know nothing about his writings, his doctrine, his great successes and monstrous errors.

Xi Jinping and his new leading team have warned that Soviet-style de-Maoification could lead to great confusion and weakening of the present regime - a regime whose stability they consider essential for leading China down the thorny path of reform.

At the same time, they make no bones about the catastrophic latter-day Maoist adventures like the "Great Leap Forward" of the late 1950s and the (anti-) Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Those megalomaniacal social experiments cost tens of millions of innocent lives.

Unlike Stalin, Mao sentenced no-one and certainly did not intend to create a terrible famine.

But he did know full well that he was engaged in huge social experiments, which disrupted the lives of multitudes - and that he himself was not sure what the outcome would be.

He confessed as much to the left-wing American writer Anna Louise Strong in 1958, when she was about to write a book acclaiming Mao's Great Leap Forward.

"Wait another five years before you write it," he told her, explaining that he was not sure yet what the outcome would be.

So is Xi reviving Maoism? Or, was disgraced former party boss in Chongqing, Bo Xilai?

The answer is "No", in both cases.

Bo was simply using demagogic egalitarian slogans to catch the fancy of the poor.

As for Xi, his reform policies run directly counter to Maoist economics, but he makes adroit use of Maoist dialectic logic to analyse China's problems and their putative solutions, and he argues for acknowledging the positive achievements of Mao's leadership.

Which leads us to the really interesting point - almost universally overlooked by Western scholars, with a few honourable exceptions, like Cambridge's Peter Nolan: Mao's analytic/synthetic philosophy is China's genuine secret weapon, although much neglected even in China today.

Take the scene when I arrived in China, September 1945.

Two rival parties, Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists and Chinese Communists, were drawing up their armed forces, preparing to contend for power in a bloody civil war.

On the Nationalist side were well-fed, well-trained troops with air support, tank divisions, heavy artillery, motorised transportation - and out-numbering the Communists manyfold.

They controlled all major lines of communication, all major cities outside of Manchuria. They enjoyed enormous support in arms and money from the USA. Their superiority seemed absolute.

On the Communist side? In November 1946 I hiked 40km (miles) out from Yanan to meet the Communists' crack 359th Brigade, whose commander, Wang Zhen, was a friend.

The 359th had been on the legendary Long March and had forged a path all the way to southern Guangdong Province to support the building of an American airbase there in World War Two.

Meeting them as they marched towards Yanan, I was appalled by what I saw.

They were a rag-tag and bob-tailed crowd. Most of them looked like teenagers.

A few in each squad wore baste shoes, most tramped along in self-woven grass sandals. Of the 10 men in a squad, five or six would have captured Japanese rifles; the rest carried knotty clubs or red-tasseled spears.

My heart sank at the sight: How could they possibly win?

et, they did win, and quite handily at that. Why? Because of a superior, more scientific way of thinking, which led to ingenious and highly popular policies (like land reform) and to versatile tactics that clobbered the stodgy KMT officer corps.

Mao always described himself to visitors as a "primary school teacher". He was, in fact, probably the largest-scale teacher of philosophy in human history. Among his main tenets were:

• Seek truth from facts. Investigate and study the facts on your specific task or locality, and base your policy and actions on that. Do not start from preconceived "truth" and amass the facts to prove yourself right, neglecting facts that cast doubt on your conclusions. In 1947 I translated a set of 40 Articles on how to carry out the land reform. Article 40 was written personally by Mao, with his big wolf-hair writing brush. It said, if any land reform workers disagree with the 40 Articles, and want to sabotage them, the most effective means of sabotage is to carry them out in your village exactly as they are written here. Do not study your local circumstances, do not adapt the decisions to local needs, do not change a thing - and they will surely fail. "No investigation, no right to speak," said Mao.

• "One divides into two." Everything is many-sided, everything is in flux, nothing is pure and simple. Not analysing, not probing, assuming that "what you see is what you get" is a recipe for over-simplification and disaster. A KMT commander may be bitterly anti-Communist, but his co-ed daughter may be in the student movement and able to influence him, he may be seriously disgruntled with Chiang Kai-Shek, his secretary may be a secret Communist, He is a complex, many-sided man. Find his buttons, and push them.

• The enemy far out-numbers and out-guns you? Then, only fight him in small increments, in local situations where you out-number and out-advantage him - never fight when victory is not certain. Your overall strategic position at the beginning is defensive, but each individual battle must be offensive, in order to change the balance of forces and win the war.

• The Mass Line "From the masses and to the masses". The leading team should be a processing plant, gathering data on the needs and demands of people at the grass roots, formulating policies to meet those needs, returning to the grassroots to monitor the implementation of the decisions, and making the appropriate revisions. This should be a continuous "down-up-down" process of leadership. Restoring attention to this process has been a major effort of the Xi Jinping team.

Historians in China and abroad will continue to study Mao's role for centuries, but this multi-talented figure with the great good and great bad he gave rise to, is not likely to be cast aside by the Chinese people.