2011 Events Echoes of the Past: Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting January 5 – June 26, 2011 Berkeley Art Museum During the last half of the seventeenth century, a group of artists known as the Four Wangs came to dominate the Chinese painting scene. These artists looked back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, drawing inspiration from ink masterpieces of the Song and Yuan dynasties, yet transforming and reinterpreting the past. Over the past two years, BAM/PFA's collection of works by Ming and Qing dynasty artists working in traditional formats, including the Four Wangs, has been enriched through purchase and gifts of key works. Echoes of the Past: Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting presents a selection of these new acquisitions, which exemplify the great tradition of Chinese ink painting. Among the most celebrated artists of the seventeenth century, Wang Hui (1632-1717) is credited with establishing the stylistic foundations of Qing dynasty painting, which was firmly rooted in ancient traditions stretching back to the eleventh-century Northern Song period. The youngest member of the group, Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715), painted at such a high level as to be commissioned by the Emperor. Following in the footsteps of his famous grandfather, Wang Shimin (1592–1680), he emphasized his debt to the Yuan period in BAM/PFA's newly acquired 1702 landscape painting by referencing in his inscription and his brushwork the fourteenth- century painter Huang Gongwang (1269–1334). Works by Wang Hui and Wang Yuanqi are joined by those of Wang Shimin and Wang Jian, making up a full complement of Four Wangs. Tickets required: $10 Adults (18–64), $7 Non-UC Berkeley students, senior citizens (65 & over), disabled persons, and young adults (13–17) and after 5 p.m. selected Fridays, free BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff, and children (12 & under) Ticket info: Purchase tickets at front desk. Contact the Berkeley Art Museum ([email protected], 510-642-0808) for more information. Weaving Local Stories into Epic Theatre: On "The Village" and the Preservation of Collective Memory Stan Lai, Playwright, and an Alumnus of UC Berkeley January 18, 2011 Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies "The Village" (Chinese Baodao Yicun) is one of the most celebrated plays of the recent Chinese Theatre. After finishing a West coast tour of the play, Writer-Director Stan Lai will be on campus to talk about the unique process he used to create this work, weaving personal stories and using improvisation as a creative tool. In a changing national and cultural context, he will also discuss the role of theatre, film and other cultural forms as vehicles for preserving fragile collective memories. Stan Lai is a unique cultural figure in the modern history of Taiwan, lauded by many as the father of modern Taiwanese theater. He is also a key player in and commentator upon the current "cultural turn" of contemporary China. Lai will share thoughts and entertain questions about his unique career, which has helped create a new theatre culture in Taiwan and China. Contact the Institute of East Asian Studies ([email protected], 510-642-2809) for more information. Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate Aihwa Ong, Anthropology, UC Berkeley January 19, 2011 Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies Providing the first overview of Asia's emerging biosciences landscape, this collection brings together ethnographic case studies on biotech endeavors such as genetically modified foods in China, clinical trials in India, blood collection in Singapore and China, and stem-cell research in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. While biotech policies and projects vary by country, the contributors identify a significant trend toward state entrepreneurialism in biotechnology, and they highlight the ways that political thinking and ethical reasoning are converging around the biosciences. Asian Biotech explores the interplay among biotechnologies, economic growth, biosecurity, and ethical practices in Asia. Introduced by Larissa N. Heinrich, Literature, UC San Diego. This event is part of the IEAS Book Series "New Perspectives on Asia." Contact the Institute of East Asian Studies ([email protected], 510-642-2809) for more information. Unwilling to Become "The Poor": Laid-off Workers in China's Urban Periphery Mun Young Cho, Postdoctoral Fellow 2010–2011, Center for Chinese Studies January 20, 2011 Center for Chinese Studies From poverty relief to affordable housing, governmental programs for urban poverty in post- reform China are predicated upon and actively shape the expectations of what the poor are – and should be – like. However, ethnographic research (2006–2008) in a decaying neighborhood of Harbin, a city in Northeast China, brings to my attention the unwillingness of urban laid-off workers to conform these expectations. In this presentation, the speaker will examine the experiential condition of impoverishment of China's urban workers, once considered representatives of "the people" in the People's Republic of China. Ethnographic findings demonstrate how their struggle is played out in governmental interventions that seek to make them legible as "the poor." As she will detail, the specter of "the people" haunts the management of urban poverty. Impoverished workers are not merely subjected to but continuously struggle with the new gazes and techniques directed toward them. Open to all audiences. Contact the Center for Chinese Studies ([email protected], 510-643-6321) for more information. The Politics of Privacy in Japan: Global Policy Convergence and the Personal Information Protection Act Eiji Kawabata, Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies January 25, 2011 Center for Japanese Studies The protection of privacy is integral to democracy but the development of digital network technology heightens the risk of exposing citizens' private lives to the public. To deal with this problem, governments in advanced industrial democracies have been implementing privacy protection policies since the early 1970s. In contrast, the Japanese government has been slow in developing privacy regulations, until the enactment of the Personal Information Protection Act in the early 2000s which has made Japan's privacy regulation comparable to other industrial democracies'. What explains this slow but radical transformation of Japan's privacy regulation? The talk will address this question by examining the impact of global forces, such as international rules, market competition, and neoliberal ideology, based on discussions in international political economy. Eiji Kawabata is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law Enforcement at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at CJS for the 2010–11 academic year. Contact the Center for Japanese Studies ([email protected], 510-642-3156) for more information. Ethics and Literature: Chinese Experimental Fiction in the 1980s Lin Zou, Visiting Scholar, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University January 26, 2011 Center for Chinese Studies This talk asks an old question that still confronts literary critics today, and that is important to contemporary Chinese literature: how do we understand the relation between literature's ethical concerns and its pursuit of creativity not confined by ethical values? The speaker engages this question by looking into Chinese experimental fiction in the 1980s that reflects on the violence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and by further exploring the dilemma facing experimental fiction in an era of global commercialization. Focusing on the fiction of Yu Hua and Ge Fei, she suggest that the earlier experimental fiction of these writers puts humanistic concerns into what she calls an ironic relation with the exploration of a destructive and unfathomable human spirit. This ironic structure enables literature to bring humanistic concerns and creative energy into mutual critique, while allowing literature to explore both. She will discuss how the dilemma facing Chinese experimental fiction is specifically about the relation between ethics and literature in an age of consumerism and postmodern dissolution of meaning. Contact the Center for Chinese Studies ([email protected], 510-643-6321) for more information. Ryukyu and Taiwan on the East Asian Seas Man-houng Lin, Academia Sinica, Taiwan January 26, 2010 Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies Man-houng Lin interrogates the origins of nationhood in the maritime histories of Taiwan and the trading networks of the Ryukyu islands. The emergence of large-scale political systems, issues of natural resources, and the dynamics of 14th to 21st century Asian maritime history are explored in explaining the eclipse of the Ryukyus and ascendance of Taiwan. Contact the Institute of East Asian Studies ([email protected], 510-642-2809) for more information. The Holloway Series in Poetry Presents Arthur Sze with Javier O. Huerta January 26, 2011 Center for Chinese Studies, Department of English Arthur Sze is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998, Archipelago, and one book of translations, The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese. He is also the editor of Chinese Writers on Writing. A professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Arthur Sze is a UC Berkeley graduate and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Javier O. Huerta's book of poetry titled Some Clarifications y otros