Text

E-book China Dreams

---

Penilaian

---

According to legend, the Jade Emperor called all twelve celestial animals to his palace to assign them their place in the zodiac. The Pig, a lazy if intelligent creature, was still in dreamland when the other eleven turned up to claim their places. He ended up last. And so 2019, the eventful Year of the Pig (coincidentally also marked by swine fever and a severe pork supply shortage in the mainland), ended a zodiac cycle that began with the Year of the Rat in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics — often referred to as the official ‘coming-out’ party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By 2019, China had well and truly arrived. It boasted the second biggest economy in the world and could claim significant global influence and power. Yet the ongoing tit-for-tat trade war with the United States afflicted an economy already undergoing its own difficult internal readjustments — even if, by the year’s end, the two sides had signed a (precarious) ‘phase one’ of a peace deal. In Hong Kong, the nightmarish and increasingly violent cycles of protest, police suppression, and popular reaction that began with peaceful mass demonstrations in June showed no sign of abating. The US Congress infuriated the Chinese leadership by passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. While Beijing did its best to show a unified and defiant face to the world, three spectacular and unusual leaks of secret documents revealed the possibility of cracks beneath the surface of unity. These leaks included two tranches of documents concerning Xinjiang, one published by The New York Times and the other by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, as well as a collection of speeches made by China’s top leaders immediately following the events of 4 June 1989, in which they discussed what amounted to a playbook for dealing with future mass movements. The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi ?? once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he realised he was just a man. Then he wondered whether he was not in fact a butterfly dreaming he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly. As Jingjing Chen writes in ‘Zhuangzi and His Butterfly Dream: The Etymology of Meng?’, the Chinese character for ‘dream’ (as seen on the cover) can be a metaphor for transformation.1To speak of a dream in Chinese is also a common way of signifying nostalgia. The character meng has historically also been used to indicate the darker side of palace politics. It would later acquire, from the Western notion of ‘dreams’, the meaning of ideals and aspirations, as in the China Dream ???. Dreams are also illusions, as in another of Chinese culture’s most famous dreams, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also translated as The Story of the Stone). Annie Luman Ren’s forum, ‘From the Land of Illusion to the Paradise of Truth’, looks at the relationship between reality and illusion in both the classic Qing dynasty novel and the ‘post-truth’ media in the contemporary Chinese world.

---

Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

320 GOL c

Penerbit

Australia : ANU Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

328 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781760463748

Klasifikasi

320

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Political dan Government Science

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

Komentar

---

Anda harus masuk sebelum memberikan komentar