Qiaopi is one of several names given to the 'silver letters' Chinese emigrants sent home in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These letters-cum-remittances document the changing history of the diaspora in different parts of the world and different periods, and its ties to …
The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days, but armistice talks occupied more than two of those years, as more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war refused to return to Communist China and demanded to go to Nationalist Taiwan, effectively hijacking the negoti…
This master’s thesis attempts to analyze the perception and understanding of the concept of wu 武 in the Han dynasty by exploring the relevant literary sources. It is divided into four subsections. In the “Institutional Promotions of Wu,” I explain how the Qin-Han legacy of milit…
Chinese videogames of the “Xia” (could be roughly translated to hero) genre are frequently criticized as an unchanging and stagnant genre of interactive entertainment in terms of both storytelling and game mechanics. In fact, such an impression toward Xia videogames is the uncha…
This study brings together the thought and opinions of a selected group of individuals identified here as "overseas scholars of Confucianism" (haiwai ruxue xuezhe 海外儒學學者). It unveils the historical development and evolution of overseas Confucian discourse through a systematic di…
This thesis spotlights one of Yunnan’s most important Buddhist deities – Acuoye Guanyin. This bodhisattva, also known as the Luck of Yunnan, is unique to the Yunnan region. Acuoye Guanyin played a pivotal role in the political rise of the Nanzhao Kingdom and continued to serve a…
This thesis analyzes how the idea of “folk” is used in discourse by the state and intellectuals to gain internal legitimacy and to reposition themselves globally in early twenty-first century China. By interrogating the discourse of “folk” as intangible cultural heritage and art…
This thesis examines the evolution of signaletic space in early 20th century China by looking at it through two major transformations. First, through the development of radio infrastructures as actualized in the emergence of heterogeneous institutions tied to various global proc…
The erhu is a traditional Chinese bowed lute with a history of more than a thousand years. However, the art of erhu performance as people know today dates back to only the early twentieth century. Throughout its long history, men were the only performers of the instrument at the…
In 1900, the Western world was stunned by the violent success of the Boxer Uprising, a movement of Chinese villagers who attempted to rid China of all Western religious, cultural, and political influence. Prolific as Boxer scholarship already is, there is much still to be discov…
This dissertation challenges the existing narrative in the history of Daoism that asserts that it was precisely during the Yuan period when all the different lineages "converged" to form the "two great Daoist schools" of Quanzhen and Zhengyi and furthermore suggests that there w…
This thesis is a translation and analysis of the “Epitaph of the Wu Kingdom. Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 …
