July 21, 2009

The mere thought of ‘private library’ is captivating enough for any book-lover, and so when I came across this article about in search of China’s old libraries on China Heritage Quarterly link
I couldn’t help but read it through.
It was the translated version of a few sections from Wei Li’s book Lingering Traces: A Search for China’s Old Libraries by Duncan Campbell. Mr Wei, a native of Tianjin, is both a writer and a noted contemporary private Chinese book collector. In the introduction of Campbell’s article, he said: “Wei Li sets out to find some of the remains of these libraries in the hope both of reminding people of their cultural importance and of alerting everyone to the need to preserve (indeed, restore) these sites. His is a compelling but elegiac voice.

If anyone who still has doubts of Mr Wei’s intentions of carrying out various excursions to Zhejiang, Changshu, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hunan, Guangdong and Shangdong in search of these old private libraries, then the introduction of his book certainly provides the answer:
‘We all admire the splendid holdings of these libraries; few give even a passing thought to the generations of book collector whose painstaking efforts have made these books available to us, to those bibliophiles of old who have passed on to us the torch of learning. Whenever such thoughts came to me I would become absorbed by the idea of a grand scheme: to seek out and to visit each and every one of the private library buildings’.

And it was where his mission started…

Written by: hiuylee

July 15, 2009

Just a piece of good news for Pulse readers from the Chinese Civilisation Centre!

Two out of three research proposals submitted by the CCIV have been awarded 2009-10 General Research Fund (GRF). They are:

1. Twentieth-century Kunqu Heritage and Chinese Cultural Tradition (二十世紀崑曲傳習與中國文化傳承)

2. A Buddhist View of Chinese Translations of Buddhist Classics  (漢譯佛典佛教觀念之研究)

The high success rate once again testifies the Centre’s high research quality, and undoubtedly will become further impetus for enhancing the Centre’s research resources and output. For details of other research projects, please go to: http://www.english.cciv.cityu.edu.hk/home/research.php

Written by: hiuylee

July 2, 2009

Wonder if anybody have an interest in the notion of adaptation and appropriation in the literary field? The idea that each text (across genres) is somehow related to another text underlies the notion of intertextuality, one which has gained increasing prominence especially at a time when cross-genre/cross-disciplinary study is increasingly popular in the academia these days. So many literary works have been adapted for movies or theatres that perhaps you may take them for granted, yet somehow they also posed the question as among all the adapted works, what are the most ‘authentic’ or closest to the original works?

In a more ’subversive’ setting, adaptation and appropriation can be a means to challenge the more well-established, or so-called canonical works by highlighting those ‘underprivileged’ characters or what may otherwise be ‘trivial events’ at first glance. This is especially so in postmodernist/postcolonial writing. Yet such an act of writing and writing back has arguably reinforced the literary canons’ status quo, sometimes to the detriment of the new, emerging works that may otherwise attract far more attention should the dominance of canonical works have less force than at present.

And so the argument continues….my take on this is that one shouldn’t brush aside the creative process involved in the adaptation and appropriation not only during cross-genre adaptations but also in the process of ‘writing back’. At the moment, I still grapple with the notion of intertextuality, adaptation and appropriation. For, underneath these words lie a whole set of complicated ideas and literary movement that has characterised the modern literary development, and I believe it really takes time to untangle them.

Written by: hiuylee