Elizabeth and William Cunningham of Scotland to William Young, Esq. of Port Gibson (Miss.).

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/evans/1003/thumbnail.jp

In Case You Missed It: \u3ci\u3eDreaming in Chinese\u3c/i\u3e

Each time my three Chinese I classmates and I complained that we had chosen a language that was simply too hard to learn, our professor had an answer at the ready

Five Questions (and Answers) About “Autumn Gem”

At the beginning of March, Rae Chang and Adam Tow came to UC Irvine to show their docudrama about the life of Qiu Jin, Autumn Gem (see here for their blog post about the UCI event, and here for a list of upcoming screenings around the country). The movie traces the life of “China’s first feminist,” Qiu Jin (1875-1907), who was a leader in both the nationalist and women’s movements and was executed at the age of 32 for her involvement in a plot to overthrow the Qing government. Hailed as a revolutionary martyr in China, Qiu Jin is little known outside the country, but the Autumn Gem screenings are bringing her story to American audiences. After seeing the movie, I wanted to learn more about its development, and conducted this brief interview with Rae Chang by e-mail

Coming Distractions: Chinese Whiskers

Pallavi Aiyar’s 2008 memoir, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, details the six years she spent living in Beijing, first teaching English and then becoming a reporter for The Hindu. Now stationed in Brussels with the Business Standard, Aiyar’s articles tend to focus on topics such as Belgium’s cultural conflicts and theuneven parallels drawn between India and China. For this reason, I was quite surprised to learn that Aiyar’s second book, to be released by Harper Collins India in early 2011, is a story of Beijing narrated by two cats: Tofu and Soyabean, the protagonists of Chinese Whiskers, share the story of their hutong life amidst the backdrop of the SARS epidemic and pre-Olympic construction. In a concise and gripping tale, Aiyar conveys the chaotic and ever-changing landscape of Beijing in the early 2000s as experienced by some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, both human and feline. Eager to learn more about this unusual book, I posed a few questions to Aiyar via e-mail

A Phenomenological Study: Marriage and Family Therapists\u27 and Clinician\u27s Perceptions of How Secondary Traumatic Stress Affects Them and Their Families

Multiple facets of clinicians\u27 lives are influenced by compassion fatigue including physiological well-being, the perspective of clinicians in relation to the world, and psychological and emotional reactions to trauma triggers (Figley, 1998). Work stress research considers the systemic effects of stress on workers\u27 relationships. Research also shows that romantic relationships are negatively influenced by work stress (Sanz-Vergel, Rodriguez, Bakker & Demerouti, 2012). This phenomenological study investigated the lived experience of three clinicians and how compassion fatigue was experienced in their relationships with their partners and children. Clinicians completed the Professional Quality of Life assessment and those with a score of 23 or higher on the secondary traumatic stress and burnout subscales participated in an interview. The major themes that emerged in this study were: (a) awareness of the effect of compassion fatigue on relationships; (b) awareness of clinician\u27s psychosomatic symptoms related to compassion fatigue; (c) awareness of the effect of compassion fatigue symptoms on the clinician\u27s social interactions; (d) awareness of the importance of clinician\u27s boundaries and self-care after the onset of compassion fatigue symptoms; (e) heightened awareness of spirituality or religiosity after the onset of compassion fatigue; and (f) awareness of the children\u27s presence mitigating compassion fatigue symptoms. This dissertation also addresses the implications of this study regarding self-care, the limitations of this study and future research

Reading Round-Up: Reactions to the Wenzhou Train Crash

There has been a huge amount of reporting on the July 23 train accident in Wenzhou that killed at least 39 and incited a continuing outcry among Chinese journalists and internet users, as well as government efforts to silence such criticism. Here, a collection of links connected to the rail crash and its aftermath

“An Oasis of Peace and Quietude”: The 1964/’65 World’s Fair China Pavilion

My grandfather took his job as family photographer seriously, and over the course of four decades he produced several huge boxes of slides that my mother has recently begun scanning and digitizing. Mixed in with the usual snapshots of weddings, birthday parties, and holiday gatherings are photos he took during a family trip to the 1964/’65 World’s Fair in New York

Yo! AAS Is Coming to the City of Brotherly Love

I’d very much like to be in China this month, as several cities are hosting big literary events that feature many authors I’ve followed for the past several years, and whose names are probably familiar to regular China Beat readers. In Beijing, the Bookworm International Literary Festival is welcoming Graham Earnshaw (The Great Walk of China, March 6), Jonathan Tel (The Beijing of Possibilities, March 8; two excerpts are here and here), and Jeremy Goldkorn (Danwei, March 18). The Shanghai International Literary Festival is also boasting a program chock-full of talks I’d love to hear, such as Hyejin Kim on “Writing Contemporary Historical Fiction” (March 6), Paul French on “The Down and Dirty Secrets of Seedy Shanghai and Perverted Peking” (March 7), and Andrew Field on “Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954” (March 13)