Chinese Spirit, Russian Soul, and American Materialism: Images of America in Twentieth-Century Chinese and Russian Travelogues

Chinese Spirit, Russian Soul, and American Materialism: Images of America in Twentieth-Century Chinese and Russian Travelogues This study is concerned with the process of understanding and representation of the Other in travel narratives and the role of the traveler\u27s cultural tradition and ideological beliefs in this process. I explore the images of the United States in some of the most influential twentieth-century Chinese and Russian travelogues. There are deep cultural differences between China and Russia, yet their relationships with the West show certain similarities. The first important parallel is that the contacts with the West was a catalyst in the modernization of both countries. The second is that the West in general and the United States in particular is portrayed in comparable ways. The West is perceived to be a land of technology and materialism, whereas China and Russia are both depicted as old civilizations of superior spiritual, moral, and artistic achievements. The third important similarity is that at the beginning of China and Russia\u27s links with the United States, it was seen as different from the other Western countries. With the development of their relations, the United States gradually became the country symbolizing the West, and the paradigm of Materialistic West versus Spiritual China and Russia was used in describing America in China, Russia, and the Soviet Union. The Chinese travelogues I consider are Fei Xiaotong\u27s First Visit to America: Chufang Meiguo 1945) and Glimpses of America: Fang Mei lüeying 1980), Wang Zuomin\u27s The American Kaleidoscope: Society, Landscape, People: Meiguo Wanhuatong: Shehui, fengguang, renwu 1985), Liu Zongren\u27s Two Years in the Melting Pot: Da rong lu liang nian 1987), and Ding Ling\u27s Random Notes from a Visit to America: Fang Mei sanji 1984). My central Russian travelogues are Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov\u27s One-storey America: Odnoetazhnaia Amerika 1937), Vassily Aksyonov\u27s In Search of Melancholy Baby: V poiskakh grustnogo beiby 1987) and Non-Stop Round the Clock: Impressions, Meditations, Adventures: Kruglie sutki non-stop: vpechatlenia, razmishlenia, prikliuchenia 1975). Fei Xiaotong, Ding Ling, Ilf and Petrov, and Vassily Aksyonov are among the most popular twentieth-century authors in their countries. Liu Zongren and Wang Zuomin are journalists whose travelogues about the United States became bestsellers in China. Therefore, all these books played a substantial role in creating images of the United States in China and the Soviet Union. The travelogues were written before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when socialism was seen as a viable alternative to capitalism, and the American cultural Otherness was reinforced by the ideological antagonism between capitalism and communism. I analyze how the Marxist paradigm molded the travelogues and to what extent it is embraced, circumvented or vehemently negated by their authors. The communist writers tend to represent the United States as an aggressive imperialist state using democratic demagogy to cover its greed and exploitative practices, whereas the anticommunist writers see it as a democratic stronghold and the freest country on Earth. In addition to examining the ideological beliefs through which the authors of the travel books filtered their impressions of the United States, I concentrate on the influence of the most popular paradigm in the East-West exchange, namely, the Spiritual East and the Materialistic West. The idea of spiritual, cultural, and ethical superiority of China and Russia in contrast to the material affluence of the United States is traceable in all travelogues. The theoretical framework of my thesis is based on the ideas of the relations between the Self and the Other and cross-cultural communication created by Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. I utilize Todorov\u27s suggestion of three levels on which the problematics of alterity can be located. The axiological plane includes value judgments, the praxiological permits rapprochement to or distancing from the Other, and the epistemic is the level of an endless process of better understanding. My goal in analyzing these books is to discover whether these authors are capable of associating with alterity on the epistemic level, that is, of listening attentively to the otherness they encounter, and of creating an image of the American Other that is relatively free from ideological projections and inherited concepts. Both Gadamer and Bakhtin\u27s principles of communication exclude the rigidly constructed image as an epistemological tool. Instead, they think that the Self should constantly check and change its images of the Other in order to open a space for a true dialogue. Approaching the Other on axiological or praxiological levels excludes the implementation of Gadamerian hermeneutics because on these levels Others are manipulated or controlled by the Self. The images of America in the travel books are complex, controversial, and multilayered, yet there are some common characteristics among them. First, ambivalence is a common stance in both Chinese and Russian travelogues. Both Chinese and Russian authors vacillate between admiration for American people on the one hand, and criticism of American political system on the other. Moreover, the fascination with American technological and economic power is paired with indignation over the social problems plaguing the richest country in the world. Second, all writers underscore the natural beauty of the United States and the innovative genius of its people. Third, ideology plays equally significant roles in both Chinese and Russian books.Yet there are differences among the travelogues that determine the prevalence of the epistemic or the axiological level in their presentations of the United States. Although the concept of Materialistic West versus Spiritual China and Russia has been used to describe America in both China and Russia, its influence is more visible in the Russian books. The continuity with the long tradition of presenting America as a land devoid of culture and spiritual life revealed in the Russian travelogues determines the dominance of the axiological level in approaching alterity in these books. The axiological level of presentation is less prominent in the Chinese travel books. With the exception of Ding Ling all other Chinese writers demonstrated a desire to understand the foundation of American wealth and power, and to use this understanding as a model for the amelioration of China. This genuine drive to learn undergirds the predominance of the epistemic level of presenting the American Other in the Chinese travelogues

Compositional identification of 6th c. AD glass from the Lower Danube

A group of finds (vessels, raw glass chunks, window panes) from three sites in present-day Bulgaria was selected as representative of the circulation and usage of glass in the Lower Danube region during the 6th c. AD. In total, 79 samples were analysed by EPMA and/or LA-ICP-MS techniques. The data quality was assessed for each analytical run according to the measurement of reference glasses and to pairs of results obtained from representative samples of archaeological glass analysed by both techniques. Combining EPMA and LA-ICP-MS data allowed a sufficiently consistent and unified set of primary results to be formed. As already suggested in an earlier preliminary paper, only a single glass composition was found to dominate the 6th c. contexts in the region. The current study recognises this 6th c. glass from the Lower Danube as identical with the so called 'Serie 2.1.' defined by D. Foy and co-workers (2003) in various assemblages in Southern France and North Africa. The major, minor and trace oxide evidence presented here indicates that this is a distinct primary glass composition, with an iron-rich sub-group tentatively differentiated within the main group. Accordingly, an attempt is made to situate it relative to the other main primary compositions in the region. The proposed interpretation is that the 6th c. glass should not be linked to the HIMT glass despite the nominal similarity between them due to their elevated iron oxide, manganese, and titania concentrations. Instead, a possible link between the geochemical characteristics of the 6th c. glass and an earlier group of manganese decolourised glass, equivalent to 'Serie 3.2.' outlined by D. Foy and co-workers (2003) is suggested. This may imply the use of sand from a broadly identical geological area, hence it is possible that both the 6th c. glass and the manganese decolourised composition are likely to share a common origin

Profits Uber everything? The gig economy and the morality of category work

In this essay, we address the question of how the strategic and organizational activities of on-demand sharing economy companies such as Uber are labeled and classified. We approach this question through a categorization lens and explore in particular whether sharing economy companies can legitimately frame the individuals who work for them as “independent workers” and what this implies for the nature of the employment relationship in such on-demand business models. Our overall aim in doing this is twofold. First, we highlight and address an important categorization issue in our current society, which has potentially far-reaching consequences for the nature of employment and the securities and protections that workers used to enjoy in many parts of the world. Second, we advance prior research in the strategy and organizational domain by elaborating how acts of categorization are inherently moral and political in nature. In this way, we aim to provoke researchers toward studying the moral basis of categorization work and we provide pointers in this essay for how they might do so

Composition and texture of a set of marvered glass vessels from 12th century ad Braničevo, Serbia

Strongly coloured glass vessels decorated with marvered threads of white glass are a wide-spread and popular, but rarely studied group of high-quality glassware of medieval Islamic origin. Relatively little is known about the composition and production places of these vessels, and their chronological range is not very well defined, as many of the published finds lack contextual evidence. Here, we present detailed chemical and microstructural data on a set of well-dated purple glass vessels decorated with white threads, excavated at the Mali Grad site in Braničevo, Serbia, in an archaeological context dated to the middle/second half of the 12th century AD. The set comprises at least sixteen different vessels, manufactured from two different batches of probably Levantine plant-ash glass coloured by manganese oxide. Significantly, the results demonstrate that these batches are correlated to particular vessel shapes. The base glass of the white threads is comparable to that of the purple vessel glass, but instead of being coloured by added manganese oxide, it contains considerable amounts of tin and lead oxides which provide the effect of opacity and white colour. No difference in composition can be seen between the white glass threads used to decorate the vessels from the two different manganese-coloured batches, thus indicating a likely common production origin of the whole set

Художествено-конструктивни дейности в обучението по изобразително изкуство на учениците от VII клас – проект "Кукерска маска"

Направеното изследване описва творческият процес и мотивирането на учениците от VII клас на СУ "Емилиян Станев" за участие, желание за изява и работа в екип в часовете по изобразително изкуство. Художествено-конструктивните дейности имат за цел създаване на нови оригинални проекти и модели, които развиват пластичността и динамичността на детското въображение.This study describes the creative process and motivation of the students of VII-th grade of Emiliyan Stanev school in Veliko Tarnovo for participation, desire for expression and teamwork in the art lessons. The artistic and constructive activities aim at creating new original designs and models that develop the plasticity and dynamism of child imagination