Journal articles on the topic 'Chinese – Australia – Social life and customs'

Dalem Balingkang temple depicts distinctive ornaments and interiors that resemble Chinese ambiance. It could be seen from the dominance of red and golden paints, architectural finishing, and Chinese shrine existence inside the main temple. The temple has been acknowledged as representing Balinese and Chinese customs acculturation that has existed for centuries. It was a palace for King Sri Haji Jaya Pangus who according to Purana Dalem Balingkang, reigned Bali in 1053 Isaka/1131 AD. However, due to some circumstances, the castle was left abandoned. Then a King from Pejeng, I Dewa Mayun Sudha, reconstructed the palace ruin into a temple to praise the late King and Queen of Dalem Balingkang. King Sri Haji Jaya Pangus’s marriage with the daughter of Chinese trader Kang Ching We became a significant momentum of the acculturation of two cultures, Balinese and Chinese. As upper-class citizens, their marriage set a new standard in society. Gradually some foreign habits and customs were absorbed in local daily life. It can be seen in various aspects of their life, from ritual, economic, religion, social, architecture, art and culture. Further, Balinese Chinese culture’s acculturation also occurred throughout Bali’s region and existed up to the moment.

The subject of the article is the numerical culture of China, the meaning of numbers in the traditional and modern Chinese culture. When investigating issues related to intercultural philosophy, we should remember about the bearers of a certain traditional philosophy - people who grew up in a specific cultural and historical environment, who absorbed certain cultural, philosophical and worldview attitudes, manifested in everyday household traditions and views. One of the most important elements of Chinese everyday traditions is numbers, which, except for the division into even-odd (yin/yang), each have their own symbolic meaning, reflected in customs, holidays, gifts, interiors, etc. The study of cultural and philosophical roots of these phenomena will allow us to form a wider angle of view on Chinese rationality. Materials related to the traditional understanding of numbers associated with the Lo Shu square were studied, in particular, the numeric expression of ideas about the universe. Also, we considered some features of Chinese traditional architecture that reflect these representations, superstitions and some details of everyday life associated with numbers, folk holidays and important dates that arose in connection with the ordinary and traditional perception of numbers. An attempt has been made to trace intracultural worldview and linguistic connotations. It is shown that the traditional ‘numerical’ worldview is still manifested in areas related to aspects typical of Chinese culture - everyday life, arrangement of space (including feng shui), traditional medicine, etc. The belief of the Chinese in the magic of numbers is still quite strong. In some cases, the socialization of ancient texts has taken place, and we see how traditions cement the social space. It can be concluded that the modern everyday understanding of numbers among the Chinese, on which modern signs and customs are based, is closely connected with emotional perception, associative thinking, as a special kind of rationality, which can also be described as the rationality of everyday life.

The present study aimed to examine the factors related to the mental health of elderly Chinese-Australians. Using the framework of Berry (1997), the study examined how individual variables such as social support, length of time in Australia, English competency, self-efficacy and sense of personal control were related to the life satisfaction of elderly Chinese-Australians. The participants consisted of 157 elderly Chinese male and female immigrants (aged 50 or above) recruited through various community groups. Participants completed a questionnaire with several scales on the above issues, and a section on demographic information. The results indicated that life satisfaction was related to age, age at migration, English proficiency, locus of control, social support, and self-efficacy. Implications for service provision were also discussed.

Using examples from Sydney Today, this article discusses the challenges facing Australia in its attempt to engage diasporic media for the purpose of public diplomacy towards China. Based on a pilot study, the article first reviews some of the major developments in the Chinese-language media in Australia, paying particular attention to the key features of digital/social media since the arrival of migrants from the People’s Republic of China. Second, it presents examples from four key content categories: Australia–China relations, politics, economics, and cultural life. Finally, the article identifies the challenges and opportunities facing Australia’s public diplomacy towards China, and outlines some key methodological and analytical frameworks for future research

Globally, women represent more than half the people living with HIV. This proportion varies by country, with an over-representation of HIV among men who have sex with men (MSM) in some regions. For example, in Australia, MSM account for over 60% of transmissions, with heterosexual sex accounting for almost a quarter of transmissions. Irrespective of geographic region, there is evidence that women can have a different lived experience of HIV due to their unequal social and economic status in society, while MSM can have a different lived experience depending on the laws and customs of their geographic location. Gender differences related to risk factors, stigma, access to services, mental health, health-related quality of life and economic consequences have been consistently reported globally. This paper explores the subjective lived experience of gender and sexuality disparities among three individuals living with HIV in Australia: a male who identified as gay, and a male and female who each identified as heterosexual. Analysis of themes from these three case reports indicated discernible differences by gender and sexuality in four areas: access to medical services, social support, stigma and mental health. It is argued that knowledge and understanding of potential gender and sexuality disparities must be factored into supportive interventions for people living with HIV in Australia.

This paper discusses the theme of “progress” in Australian and Chinese cultures in the period of 1920s and 1930s. During this period, both cultures had an outpouring of patriotic and sentimental feelings. In this social context, both cultures constructed a theme of “progress” – the transformation of natural environment with human power, or the active participation in social life, for the purpose of “civilization”, a concept closely connected with the idea of social engagement, transformation and modernization. In Australia, this ideology was a continuation of the old idea of transforming “untamed” nature and bringing material progress through human labour; in China, it was a new theme which betrayed the old “reclusive” spirit. In Australia, it is represented most clearly in film, in China, it is represented in both film and painting.

Background China is the second largest source country of immigrants to Australia every year. The elderly parents of these working-age immigrants in Australia usually visit their children on a tourist visa, which allows short term family gatherings. These visits do not require much effort. However, when it comes to long-term transnational migration, the decision becomes hard to make and often involves complex factors, such as personal preferences and lifestyle choices. Aims This paper aims to examine the later-life transnational migration intentions of elderly Chinese parents and how the parents’ intentions are affected by personal preferences, personality and lifestyle differences between the generations. Data and methods This paper uses data from a two-stage study including an online survey and semi-structured interviews conducted in Sydney from October 2018 to May 2019 with both caregivers (adult children who are first-generation immigrants living in Australia) and their elderly parents. Results The study found that external contributors such as language barriers and transport dependence in Australia, and existing social ties as well as another adult child living in China, have a negative influence on moving to Australia. Conclusions Elderly parents with an optimistic and outgoing personality are more likely to consider moving to Australia compared to those who are more conservative. Foremost, conflicts due to different lifestyles between the generations reduces the possibility of parents’ later-life migration to Australia.

In the context of global migration, diaspora’s use of digital media to maintain transnational connections has become a focus of intense research. By deploying the walkthrough method and semi-structured in-depth interviews, this study explores the transnational practices of Chinese queer women living in Australia for maintaining digital connections with queer women communities in China through Rela, a Chinese lesbian social app. Rela live streaming is innovatively used by Chinese queer women in Australia to maintain diverse transnational relationships, including friendships with streamers and viewers, and romantic relationships with their partners. Rela groups have also become vital spaces through which diasporic Chinese queer women connect with the Rela queer women community. Nevertheless, although the use of Rela diversifies Chinese queer women’s diasporic life and helps them gain a sense of belonging, it reduces their participation in local queer activities and limits their interactions with queer women communities in Australia.

A rich migration literature has been written on the issues and difficulties that Chinese migrants encountered in their adjustment in various host countries. Instead of focusing on negative migration experiences, this paper aims to examine the subjective experiences of middle-class Chinese women who perceived themselves as successfully settled in Australia. More specifically, this paper analyzes the in-depth interviews of five skilled women migrants from Hong Kong to understand how they were able to overcome obstacles during their early resettlement years. A content analysis of interviews allowed themes to emerge that revealed how the five women were able to resettle in Australia. Their responses fall into three themes that are explored in this paper: (1) common issues faced at the start of resettlement, (2) the recognition of individual resilience and informal social support in facing adversity and resettlement in Australia, and (3) possible strategies to orient themselves to life in a new country.

Jin-merchant refers exclusively to the social group of merchants in ancient Chinese Shanxi province who ran businesses and engaged in commodity trading. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Jin-merchants were the leading merchant groups with their wisdom and talent in merchandise management. In the long-term development, the Jin-merchant group gradually formed a relatively complete ideological and cultural system, supporting the development of the Jin-merchants cause. The Jin merchant culture, with Confucianism as its core, has been widely nourished by traditional Chinese culture and has internalized local traditional customs and folklore into their temperament and character, forming a series of specific historical and cultural symbols, which permeate the Jin-merchants code of living and life pursuit, and are gradually evolved into various decorative patterns to integrate into life, in which future generations can feel inspired and enlightened by traditional culture and Jin-merchant philosophy.

Japan's Soka Gakkai International (SGI) has established a small but growing chapter in Australia that in 2002 had about 2,500 members nationwide. Since its founding in the mid-1960s, SGI Australia (SGIA) has evolved into a highly heterogeneous movement dominated by ethnic Asians, of which a large number are Chinese from Southeast Asia. SGIA's appeal is both social and religious. A key factor for SGIA's growth is its emphasis on the concept of community. The fast pace of life, constant movement of people, and a sizeable growth of immigrants have created a sense of rootlessness among many Australians. SGIA's tradition of forming small chapters whose members often meet in each other's homes or community centers creates a tightly bonded group. SGIA members find their movement's form of Buddhism appealing because it is said to give them a greater sense of confidence and self-empowerment, permitting them to manage their own lives in a more creative manner.

Moslem is a human obedience in submission to Allah SWT. The surrender to Allah SWT consists of spiritual and civic practices based on the Quran and Sahih Hadits. In community practices are influenced by how culture forms in society. Identity is part of the culture and social environment that can be shifted according to the dynamics of society life. Identity revolves around the space and time of every generation in the world of everyday life that comes from human thoughts and actions and evolves into real practice including Chinese culture which became a variety of Nusantara ethnic groups summarized in the activities of the Lautze 2 Mosque. The aim of this article is to examine how a Chinese Muslim as an Indonesian Nation by maintaining Chinese cultural identity without conflicting with religious rules by making the mosque utilizes. The method used is descriptive qualitative method to analyze how the Lautze 2 Mosque in Bandung has an active role in community activities and da’wah. The result show that the Chinese Muslim community has an active role in the utilize of the Lautze 2 Mosque as a means of religious da'wah, has an active role in helping people regardless of ethnicity and customs but still maintaining their identity as Chinese Muslims.

Despite clear evidence pointing to the centrality of the Chinese press in the historical formation of the Chinese community, and despite the continued importance of the Chinese-language press in the current political, cultural, social and economic life of the Chinese community, there is little understanding of its history and recent growth in mainstream English-language media scholarship. Worse still, the shift in recent scholarship to the power of cyberspace and other forms of new media in assisting the formations of diasporic subjectivities runs the risk of giving the impression that the print media are no longer relevant. Our article aims to address this blind spot by mapping out the contours of change and continuity within the Chinese-language press in Australia. In the first part, we provide a brief historical account of the Chinese migrant communities in Australia, and the role of the press in their formation. We argue that this symbiotic relationship is crucial to understanding the development of the early Chinese-language print media in Australia, which was a less than hospitable society for the Chinese migrants. We then trace the development and evolution of the Chinese-language print media in a range of areas, including the Chinese-language media's current modus operandi, business strategies, cultural practices and ideological positioning, within the context of China's rise and the widening impact of China's promotion of soft power. We conclude by identifying some future directions in the research on the Chinese-language media in Australia, thus contributing to our understanding of some of the opportunities and challenges present in the (re)shaping of Australia's multicultural policies and politics.

Paper-cut, as a traditional folk art, has become a treasure of Chinese folk art in its long history of development. Paper-cut gives people artistic enjoyment visually with its unique creative techniques, full composition and vivid and interesting patterns. Methods: Traditional folk paper-cut art records the folk customs of the Chinese nation and embodies the temperament and national style of the Chinese nation. Its unique way of thinking and expression provide unique creative ideas and rich visual art resources for modern graphic design. Chinese folk paper-cut is an organic combination of decoration and practicality. Results: It can not only show the rich and colorful folk life, but also meet the aesthetic needs of a variety of situations. How to combine rich traditional culture and art with graphic design concepts and the spirit of the times to design works with national style, so as to better integrate folk paper-cut art with graphic design, is the pursuit of graphic designers. Conclusion: Based on visual communication design, this paper discusses the comparison and integration between traditional Chinese folk paper-cut art design and modern graphic design.

Abstract The mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males in Australia is often misunderstood, mainly because it has been poorly researched. When analyzing the quality of life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males, it is crucial to consider the associated factors that have directly and indirectly contributed to their poor health and wellbeing, that is, the effects of colonization, the interruption of cultural practices, displacement of societies, taking away of traditional homelands and forceful removal of children (assimilation and other policies). The displacement of families and tribal groups from their country broke up family groups and caused conflict between the original inhabitants of the lands and dislocated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribal groups. These dislocated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were forced to reside on the allocated government institutions where they would be (allegedly) protected. Whilst in the institutions they were made to comply with the authority rules and were forbidden to practice or participate in their traditional rituals or customs or speak their own tribal languages. Additionally, the dispossession from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional lands and the destruction of culture and political, economic, and social structures have caused many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a pervading sense of hopelessness for the future. The traditional customs and life cycles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males were permanently affected by colonization adversely contributing to mental health problems in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In this article we aim to provide a better understanding of the processes impacting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males' social and emotional wellbeing.

The present study investigated undergraduate Canadian music education students’ personal and professional experiences during a three-month residency in China. Participants (N=3), in this case study, were part of a SSHRC funded Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Program and were in the process of completing a Bachelor of Education degree. The participants observed classroom teaching, attended workshops/presentations at Southwest University in Chongqing, China, and gave presentations to Chinese teachers and students. They were asked a wide range of open-ended questions relating to their preconceptions of life in China, coping strategies (e.g., language, local customs, environmental context, etc.), curricular and pedagogical similarities/differences, relationships with their Chinese counterparts, and potential impact on their future educational and professional plans. The findings indicated intellectual, social, and personal growth over this three-month period. Students spoke of overcoming fear and acquiring increased personal/professional self-awareness. However, there was no solid assurance that the participants’ experiences would have a lasting positive effect on their future pedagogical practices.

In today’s world, globalization has developed well, and it is in a potential and relatively stable state in both its depth and breadth. Building cultural confidence while strengthening cultural communication is an important issue facing every part of the world at present. Furthermore, the path of cultural communication is not limited to the cultural level itself but permeates all aspects of social life. Chinese cuisine has a long history and is well-known all over the world. This paper studies the spread of Chinese cuisine Lao Gan Ma to Australia, aiming to explore its cultural core through the analysis of the trade path of products.

ABSTRACTThis paper presents the findings of a study of the support and service needs of older Chinese people in Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, Australia. There were two specific objectives: to ascertain the problems encountered by older Chinese-Australians in their daily lives and social activities; and to develop policy and service development recommendations, with a view to mitigating their problems, meeting their unmet needs, improving their quality of life, and enhancing their participation in Australian society. The study used multiple methods, including a literature review, focus group meetings, and a community survey. The findings indicate that older Chinese people, and particularly women, experience significant restrictions in their activity patterns, social isolation and loneliness. Their lack of proficiency in the English language, and the difficulties they have in accessing language-support and interpretation services, limit their autonomous mobility and make them heavily dependent on their adult children, not least for transport. Their physical and psychological wellbeing is affected further by strained relations with their adult children, and these are compounded by financial concerns. The implications of the findings for welfare policy and practice are discussed at the end of the paper.

AbstractWhat little has been written about Chinese immigrants in the British Empire has focused mainly on laborers, commonly known as “coolies,” and their roles in imperial society, culture, and industry. Chinese commercial immigrants, though they loomed large in public dialogues about race, migration, and empire, have been virtually ignored. This article examines how such immigrants were represented, and how two prominent individuals represented themselves, in London and metropolitan Australia, respectively, during a high tide of British imperialism and Chinese global migration. By the 1920s, the ardent pro-British sentiment expressed by Mei Quong Tart, thede factorepresentative of the Chinese merchant class in Australia, had been superseded by the anti-colonial critique of Lao She, one of China's foremost modern novelists. Lao She's semi-autobiographical depiction of Chinese life in London condemned the violent and emasculating character of British imperialism, while also excoriating Chinese society's failure to modernize, cohere as a nation, and overcome internecine class conflicts. Both authors were concerned with social relations between Chinese men and white British women, as were British commentators throughout this period, and with differentiating themselves from laboring Chinese immigrants. Contrary to Stuart Hall's famous assertion that “race is the modality through which class is lived,” for these Chinese commercial immigrants class and gender proved to be more essential than were crude concepts of race to their experiences and self-identification, and ultimately to British society's rejection of their attempts to assimilate.

The enhancement of university students’ happiness is important for self-growth, family togetherness, social stability, and national development. This study aimed to explore the main factors that influence university students’ happiness. This study constructs a system comprising of 17 factors, such as personal health status, family atmosphere, school life satisfaction, and degree of social justice, which are extracted into four dimensions—individual, family, societal, and school—according to principal component analysis. Based on the data pertaining to the current state of university students’ happiness, the study used Pearson Correlation Analysis to analyze the correlation between the four dimensions and university students’ happiness, and the interaction between four dimensions were researched by the mediation model. The results of the principal component analysis indicate that the individual dimension explained most of the factors influencing happiness, which is consistent with the feature of subjective well-being. Pearson Correlation Analysis showed that the four dimensions all have positive effects on students’ happiness, and there are also significant correlations among the four dimensions themselves. Additionally, mediating effects analysis shows a significant mediating effect among the four dimensions. Based on this, this study argues that the happiness of students needs to be improved by focusing on four areas: cultivating a positive personal psychology, passing down good family traditions and customs, paying attention to the leading role of school education, and building a just and harmonious social environment.

Silver Sister, a biographical novel telling the unique life stories of the so-called “comb-ups,” represents China as a troubled homeland with turmoil, war, and painful memories. Silver, the protagonist of this novel, as a Chinese comb-up, has mixed and doubled identities as an illiterate Chinese female in diaspora. On one hand, she is imprinted with characteristics of Chineseness. On the other hand, the novel contests the notion of Chineseness by demonstrating the interactive relation between Silver’s personal remembrance and collective memory of common Chinese females at that time. In this essay, it is argued that this novel is more precisely about how traumatic memory transforms Chinese women’s diasporic identity in a global context, instead of only in a journey from China to Australia. Its meaning lies not only on the way of representing trauma and memory respectively, but the way how traumatic memories together with other diasporic memories function on influencing identity politics.

Chinese enterprise personnel are faced with the problem of intercultural adaptation. Based on Black's theory of "three-dimensional" model of intercultural adaptation, this paper proposes a "four-dimensional" model of intercultural adaptation, namely, life adaptation, work adaptation, interpersonal adaptation and Chinese image adaptation. The research method of semi-structured in-depth interview is used to interview 23 Chinese people from one Chinese enterprise in Saudi Arabia, who have worked there for at least one year. We get findings as follows: (1) Life adaptation: maladjustment is mainly reflected in religious restriction. Especially, religious regulations and taboos make the life of Chinese enterprise personnel restricted. However, there are also many aspects of adaptation, such as Saudi cuisine, living environment and leisure life, which bring the satisfaction of life demands to Chinese enterprise personnel. (2) Work adaptation: foreign companies must employ a certain proportion of local people to work in their companies; the roles of buyers and sellers in Saudi Arabia and in China are different; the concept of time is different. (3) Interpersonal adaptation: Chinese people in Saudi Arabia still have the most frequent contact with their Chinese compatriots, and it is difficult for them to develop close friendship with foreigners. Chinese people are good at creating harmonious interpersonal relationships for work through some after-work activities, such as drinking tea, eating out and holding football matches. (4) Chinese image adaptation: Chinese enterprise personnel in Saudi Arabia have decent income, and Saudi police fail to check Chinese cars, all of which make the Chinese people have a positive face value. In view of the above four adaptation situations of Chinese enterprise personnel in Saudi Arabia, the following suggestions are proposed: (1) Be strict with yourself in life, respect local social and religious customs, and also keep a careful attitude and actively deal with disadvantageous factors. (2) While benefiting from working or doing business in Saudi Arabia, we should make contributions for the development of local economy and society, providing employment and training for local people. (3) We should observe the local laws and regulations, and also follow the local and international market rules. (4) In interpersonal communication, we should combine the maintenance mode of Chinese "guanxi" (relationship) with western "principle" on the one hand, and make a difference between them on the other hand. (5) In terms of image adaptation, besides maintaining a good image politically and economically, it is also necessary to improve our individual quality and our cultural cultivation overseas, be a communicator bridging Chinese and foreign excellent culture, and build a positive national image and individual image.

Wine has an indispensable position in the ancient national food culture. Among them, wine vessels, as material carriers, are the core of ancient national wine culture, reflecting social functions, plastic arts, craft production, customs, habits, etc., and therefore are also the concrete expression of spiritual and institutional culture. Ancient ethnic traditional drinking vessels are not only a comprehensive manifestation of the precious material cultural heritage but also of the ancient spiritual culture of the nation. Through the study of the representational design and cultural characteristics of ancient ethnic traditional drinking vessels and the aesthetic tendencies they reflect, we can see the unique philosophy of life and the spiritual reverence of ancient peoples. Although these traditional ancient ethnic drinking vessels are now gradually marginalized and some have completely withdrawn from the historical stage, their spiritual and cultural value has increased rather than decreased. This paper explores the representational design and cultural characteristics of ancient traditional drinking vessels and the aesthetic tendencies they reflect and analyzes the correlation between them using ML methods and semiotic theory, to get a glimpse of the unique talent and wisdom of the ancients in aesthetic creation and gain new design inspiration from them.

The aim of the present study was to examine the cross-cultural differences in the relationship between personality traits and neurasthenia across early adolescence. The participants were from Australia and China. Adolescents’ personality was measured by the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and neurasthenia was measured by the Somatic and Psychological Health Report. Structural equation modeling showed that neuroticism significantly predicted neurasthenia for both Chinese and Australian adolescents. Multigroup comparisons indicated that the strength of the relationship between neuroticism and neurasthenia was consistent across Australian and Chinese adolescents. Our findings imply that the relationship between personality traits and neurasthenia is consistent across different cultures.

Education is not only a science but an art. During the children's entire education, school education is in a dominant position but family education plays a key role. Children's growth needs education, help, and guide from parents. With the development of Chinese society and economy, the importance of family education of children grows more and more significant. But because of cultural traditions, lifestyle, social customs, ideas and sense of heritage, family education in China is still a weak part. The traditional concept of family education is being challenged. And many parents lack understanding of physiological and psychological development of the children during their growth, and lack proper education and effective methods to face the different stages of children's development. Consequently, parents tend to miss crucial educational opportunities. With different history, culture and social economic conditions between China and America, the formations of family education are producing a huge impact. American high level of culture and education also determines the United States the world leader in science and technology. The US has not only advanced school education but advanced family education, and their advanced educational concepts and teaching approaches are in line so that we can learn from American family education in a lot of places.Through questionnaire investigation and contrastive analysis, this thesis studies the differences between Chinese and American family educational approaches by three main aspects of intellectual education, moral and physical education, and life education. Firstly, this thesis discusses the reasons on the historical and cultural backgrounds and social conditions. Then this thesis describes the specific performance including the different status and contents, the comparison of parenting methods. In the end, this thesis has a brief summary of advantages and disadvantages of Chinese and American family educational approaches. This thesis tries to briefly describes and compares the intellectual education, moral and physical education and life education. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is in order to improve the quality of our family education. By studying the differences of family educational style between China and America, we do not mean to belittle our Chinese family education but is a kind of reflection. Absorbing American family education's advantages and removing the disadvantages of our family education style as well as keep our Chinese traditional merits of family education could make a benign circulation of healthy personnel training in our country. Thus, we could gain a competitive advantage in the future competition and gradually adapt to the world trend of the future.

Covid 19 – living the experience As I sit at my desk at home in suburban Brisbane, following the dictates on self-isolation shared with so many around the world, I am forced to contemplate the limits of human prediction. I look out on a world which few could have predicted six months ago. My thoughts at that time were all about 2020 as a metaphor for perfect vision and a plea for it to herald a new period of clarity which would arm us in resolving the whole host of false divisions that surrounded us. False, because so many appear to be generated by the use of polarised labelling strategies which sought to categorise humans by a whole range of identities, while losing the essential humanity and individuality which we all share. This was a troublesome trend and one which seemed reminiscent of the biblical tale concerning the tower of Babel, when a single unified language was what we needed to create harmony in a globalising world. However, yesterday’s concerns have, at least for the moment, been overshadowed by a more urgent and unifying concern with humanity’s health and wellbeing. For now, this concern has created a world which we would not have recognised in 2019. We rely more than ever on our various forms of electronic media to beam instant shots of the streets of London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong etc. These centres of our worldly activity normally characterised by hustle and bustle, are now serenely peaceful and ordered. Their magnificent buildings have become foregrounded, assuming a dignity and presence that is more commonly overshadowed by the mad ceaseless scramble of humanity all around them. From there however the cameras can jump to some of the less fortunate areas of the globe. These streets are still teeming with people in close confined areas. There is little hope here of following frequent extended hand washing practices, let alone achieving the social distance prescribed to those of us in the global North. From this desk top perspective, it has been interesting to chart the mood as the crisis has unfolded. It has moved from a slightly distant sense of superiority as the news slowly unfolded about events in remote Wuhan. The explanation that the origins were from a live market, where customs unfamiliar to our hygienic pre-packaged approach to food consumption were practised, added to this sense of separateness and exoticism surrounding the source and initial development of the virus. However, this changed to a growing sense of concern as its growth and transmission slowly began to reveal the vulnerability of all cultures to its spread. At this early stage, countries who took steps to limit travel from infected areas seemed to gain some advantage. Australia, as just one example banned flights from China and required all Chinese students coming to study in Australia to self-isolate for two weeks in a third intermediate port. It was a step that had considerable economic costs associated with it. One that was vociferously resisted at the time by the university sector increasingly dependent on the revenue generated by servicing Chinese students. But it was when the epicentre moved to northern Italy, that the entire messaging around the event began to change internationally. At this time the tone became increasingly fearful, anxious and urgent as reports of overwhelmed hospitals and mass burials began to dominate the news. Consequently, governments attracted little criticism but were rather widely supported in the action of radically closing down their countries in order to limit human interaction. The debate had become one around the choice between health and economic wellbeing. The fact that the decision has been overwhelmingly for health, has been encouraging. It has not however stopped the pressure from those who believe that economic well-being is a determinant of human well-being, questioning the decisions of politicians and the advice of public health scientists that have dominated the responses to date. At this stage, the lives versus livelihoods debate has a long way still to run. Of some particular interest has been the musings of the opinion writers who have predicted that the events of these last months will change our world forever. Some of these predictions have included the idea that rather than piling into common office spaces working remotely from home and other advantageous locations will be here to stay. Schools and universities will become centres of learning more conveniently accessed on-line rather than face to face. Many shopping centres will become redundant and goods will increasingly be delivered via collection centres or couriers direct to the home. Social distancing will impact our consumption of entertainment at common venues and lifestyle events such as dining out. At the macro level, it has been predicted that globalisation in its present form will be reversed. The pandemic has led to actions being taken at national levels and movement being controlled by the strengthening and increased control of physical borders. Tourism has ground to a halt and may not resume on its current scale or in its present form as unnecessary travel, at least across borders, will become permanently reduced. Advocates of change have pointed to some of the unpredicted benefits that have been occurring. These include a drop in air pollution: increased interaction within families; more reading undertaken by younger adults; more systematic incorporation of exercise into daily life, and; a rediscovered sense of community with many initiatives paying tribute to the health and essential services workers who have been placed at the forefront of this latest struggle with nature. Of course, for all those who point to benefits in the forced lifestyle changes we have been experiencing, there are those who would tell a contrary tale. Demonstrations in the US have led the push by those who just want things to get back to normal as quickly as possible. For this group, confinement at home creates more problems. These may be a function of the proximity of modern cramped living quarters, today’s crowded city life, dysfunctional relationships, the boredom of self-entertainment or simply the anxiety that comes with an insecure livelihood and an unclear future. Personally however, I am left with two significant questions about our future stimulated by the events that have been ushered in by 2020. The first is how is it that the world has been caught so unprepared by this pandemic? The second is to what extent do we have the ability to recalibrate our current practices and view an alternative future? In considering the first, it has been enlightening to observe the extent to which politicians have turned to scientific expertise in order to determine their actions. Terms like ‘flattening the curve’, ‘community transmission rates’, have become part of our daily lexicon as the statistical modellers advance their predictions as to how the disease will spread and impact on our health systems. The fact that scientists are presented as the acceptable and credible authority and the basis for our actions reflects a growing dependency on data and modelling that has infused our society generally. This acceptance has been used to strengthen the actions on behalf of the human lives first and foremost position. For those who pursue the livelihoods argument even bigger figures are available to be thrown about. These relate to concepts such as numbers of jobless, increase in national debt, growth in domestic violence, rise in mental illness etc. However, given that they are more clearly estimates and based on less certain assumptions and variables, they do not at this stage seem to carry the impact of the data produced by public health experts. This is not surprising but perhaps not justifiable when we consider the failure of the public health lobby to adequately prepare or forewarn us of the current crisis in the first place. Statistical predictive models are built around historical data, yet their accuracy depends upon the quality of those data. Their robustness for extrapolation to new settings for example will differ as these differ in a multitude of subtle ways from the contexts in which they were initially gathered. Our often uncritical dependence upon ‘scientific’ processes has become worrying, given that as humans, even when guided by such useful tools, we still tend to repeat mistakes or ignore warnings. At such a time it is an opportunity for us to return to the reservoir of human wisdom to be found in places such as our great literature. Works such as The Plague by Albert Camus make fascinating and educative reading for us at this time. As the writer observes Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world, yet somehow, we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. So it is that we constantly fail to study let alone learn the lessons of history. Yet 2020 mirrors 1919, as at that time the world was reeling with the impact of the Spanish ‘Flu, which infected 500 million people and killed an estimated 50 million. This was more than the 40 million casualties of the four years of the preceding Great War. There have of course been other pestilences since then and much more recently. Is our stubborn failure to learn because we fail to value history and the knowledge of our forebears? Yet we can accept with so little question the accuracy of predictions based on numbers, even with varying and unquestioned levels of validity and reliability. As to the second question, many writers have been observing some beneficial changes in our behaviour and our environment, which have emerged in association with this sudden break in our normal patterns of activity. It has given us the excuse to reevaluate some of our practices and identify some clear benefits that have been occurring. As Australian newspaper columnist Bernard Salt observes in an article titled “the end of narcissism?” I think we’ve been re-evaluating the entire contribution/reward equation since the summer bushfires and now, with the added experience of the pandemic, we can see the shallowness of the so-called glamour professions – the celebrities, the influencers. We appreciate the selflessness of volunteer firefighters, of healthcare workers and supermarket staff. From the pandemic’s earliest days, glib forays into social media by celebrities seeking attention and yet further adulation have been met with stony disapproval. Perhaps it is best that they stay offline while our real heroes do the heavy lifting. To this sad unquestioning adherence to both scientism and narcissism, we can add and stir the framing of the climate rebellion and a myriad of familiar ‘first world’ problems which have caused dissension and disharmony in our communities. Now with an external threat on which to focus our attention, there has been a short lull in the endless bickering and petty point scoring that has characterised our western liberal democracies in the last decade. As Camus observed: The one way of making people hang together is to give ‘em a spell of the plague. So, the ceaseless din of the topics that have driven us apart has miraculously paused for at least a moment. Does this then provide a unique opportunity for us together to review our habitual postures and adopt a more conciliatory and harmonious communication style, take stock, critically evaluate and retune our approach to life – as individuals, as nations, as a species? It is not too difficult to hypothesise futures driven by the major issues that have driven us apart. Now, in our attempts to resist the virus, we have given ourselves a glimpse of some of the very things the climate change activists have wished to happen. With few planes in the air and the majority of cars off the roads, we have already witnessed clearer and cleaner air. Working at home has freed up the commuter driven traffic and left many people with more time to spend with their family. Freed from the continuing throng of tourists, cities like Venice are regenerating and cleansing themselves. This small preview of what a less travelled world might start to look like surely has some attraction. But of course, it does not come without cost. With the lack of tourism and the need to work at home, jobs and livelihoods have started to change. As with any revolution there are both winners and losers. The lockdown has distinguished starkly between essential and non-essential workers. That represents a useful starting point from which to assess what is truly of value in our way of life and what is peripheral as Salt made clear. This is a question that I would encourage readers to explore and to take forward with them through the resolution of the current situation. However, on the basis that educators are seen as providing essential services, now is the time to turn to the content of our current volume. Once again, I direct you to the truly international range of our contributors. They come from five different continents yet share a common focus on one of the most popular of shared cultural experiences – sport. Unsurprisingly three of our reviewed papers bring different insights to the world’s most widely shared sport of all – football, or as it would be more easily recognised in some parts of the globe - soccer. Leading these offerings is a comparison of fandom in Australia and China. The story presented by Knijnk highlights the rise of the fanatical supporters known as the ultras. The origin of the movement is traced to Italy, but it is one that claims allegiances now around the world. Kniijnk identifies the movement’s progression into Australia and China and, in pointing to its stance against the commercialisation of their sport by the scions of big business, argues for its deeper political significance and its commitment to the democratic ownership of sport. Reflecting the increasing availability and use of data in our modern societies, Karadog, Parim and Cene apply some of the immense data collected on and around the FIFA World Cup to the task of selecting the best team from the 2018 tournament held in Russia, a task more usually undertaken by panels of experts. Mindful of the value of using data in ways that can assist future decision making, rather than just in terms of summarising past events, they also use the statistics available to undertake a second task. The second task was the selection of the team with the greatest future potential by limiting eligibility to those at an early stage in their careers, namely younger than 28 and who arguably had still to attain their prime as well as having a longer career still ahead of them. The results for both selections confirm how membership of the wealthy European based teams holds the path to success and recognition at the global level no matter what the national origins of players might be. Thirdly, taking links between the sport and the world of finance a step further, Gomez-Martinez, Marques-Bogliani and Paule-Vianez report on an interesting study designed to test the hypothesis that sporting success within a community is reflected in positive economic outcomes for members of that community. They make a bold attempt to test their hypothesis by examining the relationship of the performance of three world leading clubs in Europe - Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint Germain and the performance of their local stock markets. Their findings make for some interesting thoughts about the significance of sport in the global economy and beyond into the political landscape of our interconnected world. Our final paper comes from Africa but for its subject matter looks to a different sport, one that rules the subcontinent of India - cricket. Norrbhai questions the traditional coaching of batting in cricket by examining the backlift techniques of the top players in the Indian Premier league. His findings suggest that even in this most traditional of sports, technique will develop and change in response to the changing context provided by the game itself. In this case the context is the short form of the game, introduced to provide faster paced entertainment in an easily consumable time span. It provides a useful reminder how in sport, techniques will not be static but will continue to evolve as the game that provides the context for the skilled performance also evolves. To conclude our pages, I must apologise that our usual book review has fallen prey to the current world disruption. In its place I would like to draw your attention to the announcement of a new publication which would make a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any international sports scholar. “Softpower, Soccer, Supremacy – The Chinese Dream” represents a unique and timely analysis of the movement of the most popular and influential game in the world – Association Football, commonly abbreviated to soccer - into the mainstream of Chinese national policy. The editorial team led by one of sports histories most recognised scholars, Professor J A Mangan, has assembled a who’s who of current scholars in sport in Asia. Together they provide a perspective that takes in, not just the Chinese view of these important current developments but also, the view of others in the geographical region. From Japan, Korea and Australia, they bring with them significant experience to not just the beautiful game, but sport in general in that dynamic and fast-growing part of the world. Particularly in the light of the European dominance identified in the Karog, Parim and Cene paper this work raises the question as to whether we can expect to see a change in the world order sooner rather than later. It remains for me to make one important acknowledgement. In my last editorial I alerted you to the sorts of decisions we as an editorial and publication team were facing with regard to ensuring the future of the journal. Debates as to how best to proceed while staying true to our vision and goals are still proceeding. However, I am pleased to acknowledge the sponsorship provided by The University of Macao for volume 42 and recognise the invaluable contribution made by ISCPES former president Walter Ho to this process. Sponsorship can provide an important input to the ongoing existence and strength of this journal and we would be interested in talking to other institutions or groups who might also be interested in supporting our work, particularly where their goals align closely with ours. May I therefore commend to you the works of our international scholars and encourage your future involvement in sharing your interest in and expertise with others in the world of comparative and international sport studies, John Saunders, Brisbane, May 2020

“The Shi Jing’’(‘‘The Book of Poetry”） is one of the first poems in the world, including Chinese poems, from the 11th century BC to the 6th century BC. During this period, about 3 000 verses appeared, of which 305 poems were selected by Confucius. Poetic texts in “The Shi Jing’are divided into three categories: regional songs, odes, hymns. The composition of the poems uses such techniques as Fu, Bi and Xing. These poems constitute the creative source (source) of Chinese poetry. “Fu”，“Bi” and “Xing” are important artistic features of “The Shi Jing”. “Fu”” - direct narration, parallelism. “Bi” is a metaphor, comparison. “Sin” means “stimulation”， it first speaks about others, then about what the poet wants to express. Fu and Bi are the most basic techniques of expression, and Xing is a relatively unique technique in “The Shi Jing”， even in Chinese poetry in general. “The Shi Jing” is an excellent starting point for Chinese literature, which has already reached a very high artistic level from the very beginning. "The Shi Jing” affects almost all aspects of the early social life of ancient China, such as sacrifice, banquet, labor, war, love, marriage, corvee, animals, plants, oppression and resistance, manners and customs, even astronomical phenomena, etc. It became historical value for the study of that society. The overwhelming majority of the poems in “The Shi Jing”reflect the reality, everyday life and everyday experience. There is almost no illusory and supernatural mythical world in it. As the first collection of poetry in China, “The Shi Jing” laid the foundation for the lyrical and realistic tradition of Chinese literature. “The Shi Jing” also has a huge impact on the genre structure and linguistic art of Chinese literature, etc., which is a role model for writers of later generations. “The Shi Jing”has already been translated into the languages of the countries of the world. “The Shi Jing”has been influencing Chinese poetics; it has become the source of the classical realistic tradition and literature in China. Lively description is essential for historical, anthropological and sociological research. We expect that as the cultural ties between China and Russia deepen, as well as the popularization and spread of Chinese-Russian translations, more and more Russian people will read “The Shi Jing”， study “The Shi Jing”， the Russian translation of “The Shi Jing” will improve and play its role as the original classic of Chinese literature. “The Shi Jing”is a book that cannot be read or translated forever. Keywords: “The Shi Jing” （“The Book of Poetry” )， regional songs, odes, hymns, artistic features, Chinese unique cultural value

Different from many other communities, Australian aboriginal communities had lived separately from the rest of the world without any contact with great civilizations for tens of thousands of years before English men’s invasion of Australian continent. Hence, their socio-economic development standards was backward, which can be clearly seen in their economic activities, material culture, mental culture, social institutions, mode of life, etc. However, in the course of history, Australian aborigines created a grandiose cultural heritage of originality with unique identities of their own in particular, of Australia in general. Despite the then wild life, Aboriginal Art covers a wide medium including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, sandpainting and ceremonial clothing, as well as artistic decorations found on weaponry and also tools. They created an enormous variety of art styles, original and deeply rich in a common viewpoint towards their background – Dreamtime and Dreaming. This philosophy of arts is reflected in each of rock engravings and rock paintings, bark paintings, cave paintings, etc. with the help of natural materials. Although it can be said that most Aboriginal communities’ way of life, belief system are somewhat similar, each Australian aboriginal community has its own language, territory, legend, customs and practices, and unique ceremonies. Due to the limit of a paper, the author focuses only on some traditional art forms typical of Australian aboriginal communities. These works were simply created but distinctively original, of earthly world but associated with sacred and spiritual life deeply flavored by a mysterious touch. Reflected by legendary stories and art works, the history of Australian Aboriginal people leaves to the next generations a marvelous heritage of mental culture.

ABSTRACTBackground: This study aimed to examine the levels and rates of depression in Chinese residents living in ethno-specific nursing homes (NHs), and Chinese residents living in mainstream NHs in Sydney. Australia has a growing aging migrant population and rates of depression in NHs are high, but the prevalence of depression in culturally and linguistically diverse residents has received little attention in the research literature.Methods: Older persons from a Chinese background residing in either Chinese-specific or mainstream NHs located in Sydney were invited to participate in a cross-sectional survey. Assessments included the Mini-mental State Examination, the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD), and interviews with family carers and staff.Results: Fifty-eight Chinese residents were recruited from three Chinese-specific NHs (n = 31) and 13 mainstream NHs (n = 27). There were no significant differences in resident depression levels or rates between the facility types. Mean CSDD scores were 9.4 (SD = 6.0) and 11.2 (SD = 6.1) in Chinese-specific and mainstream NHs, respectively. Chinese-specific NH residents had lower prescription levels of antipsychotics and more of them received effective antidepressant therapy in comparison to those in mainstream NHs.Conclusions: These findings suggest that in comparison to mainstream care Chinese ethno-specific care does not impact on levels or rates of depression but is associated with less antipsychotic use and higher numbers of residents treated effectively with antidepressant therapy. Longitudinal research with larger samples and a range of outcome measures including quality-of-life and social engagement is required to explore further the effects of ethno-specific care.

Globalization, modernization processes, as well as a sense of constant threat (military, terrorist, environmental, etc.) have an impact on individuals, increasing their interest in their traditions and customs, acting as a factor of stability and permanence. The study of ethnic communities, their functioning and cultural reproduction is among most acute in social cognition. Ceremonial forms of weddings appeared in ancient times and now are the most stable element in the life of ethnic groups, reflect their culture. In this regard, the study of wedding traditions of different peoples as a way of expressing their ethnic identity becomes relevant. The article presents the results of the analysis of weddings of various ethnic groups. The purpose of the study is to analyze the images of the wedding ceremony in the representations of Master's students of the Institute of Humanities of the Altai State University (using the example of Chinese and Scottish traditional weddings), based on the results of associative experiment and a psychosemantic analysis. The results of the study revealed the structure and content of the images, as well as the views on wedding ceremonies of young and older generations.

The ricepaperplant pith is also known as Tetrapanax papyrine, Akebia, or tall gastrodia fruit, a kind of shrub or small tree of the Araliaceous. It is native to south China and Taiwan Prov., the raw material of rice paper. Extract its central tissue from the stem to make pith slices which could be made as the watercolor painting paper. It arose in Guangzhou in the 19th century, and the themes are mainly focused on reflecting the social life scenes as well as various characters in late Qing Dynasty, such as officials, soldiers, juggling, weaving, playing instrument, etc. The works are lively, vivid, and bright in colors. As the result of using western painting principles and reflecting Chinese local customs, rice paper watercolor paintings were admired by Westerners at that time. However, as pith paper is fragile, the size of painting was usually small and difficult to conserve, there are few works handed down in China. In recent years, the rice paper watercolor painting has attracted more and more concern, which is of great significance to the study of the development of early Western paintings in China.

The return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China was nearly fifteen years ago but only recently have researchers been interested in studying the impact of the handover. This article reflects on the literature of Macao, focusing on texts exploring the displacement of poets from Portugal, Australia, and China to Macau. Poetry has been a crucial form of production that has showcased the social changes of this multicultural place. Although it is difficult to characterize a specific Macao way of life, during the transition period between 1987 and 1999, many poets sought to show the conflicts that occurred in the development of this special administrative region. This article attempts to analyze and characterize literary representations of recent Macao poetry published in Chinese, English, and Portuguese languages in order to define differences as well as a common sensibility.

The role of set phrases in the process of Master’s degree (Philology) students foreign texts comprehension (English and Chinese) is determined in the article. The types of phraseological units and their distinctive features in both languages are dealt with. It is proved that phraseological system of the English and the Chinese languages is being developed and also motivates the Master’s degree (Philology) students to understand national and cultural specificities of the countries whose languages are studied and increases their perception. The article proves that both English and Chinese are considered to be one of the richest languages in the world. One can assert it owing to a great variety of phraseological units and phraseological turns. Idioms take a huge layer in their structure. All events, taking place both in Great Britain and China, often reflect social, political, sport, cultural, astrological and everyday life of these countries. Many words become obsolete but a lot of them are replaced by new ones. It happens because a lot of new words are bright, alive and witty. They arouse a genuine interest in the Masters’ degree (Philology) students’ minds. The students begin to learn them with pleasure and to penetrate in their essence. Their speech becomes emotional, colourful, expressive and figurative. The application of idioms significantly saves time and enhances the perception of a foreign language. So, one can say with certainty that both languages phraseological system will develop and acquire new shapes. As for the students they will also have a wonderful opportunity of enriching their inner world. It also concerns each individual resident of the Foggy Albion and China. A great exuberance of phraseological stock is peculiar to Chinese and English. Chinese phraseological units are people’s mirror. They are also the legacy of the past. Such Chinese realities as dragon, jasper, jade and the well-known heroes are captured in them. Phraseological units in English are mostly traditional. They acquired so-called typical English flavor, which reflects the features of English culture. They are all connected with the traditions, customs and beliefs of the English people, as well as with legends and historical facts. That’s why it’s expedient to pay attention to the issue, connected with set phrases, idioms, proverbs and sayings.

This paper firstly investigates the perception of the Ottoman Turks on China and Chinese which was reflected in “Khitaynameh” (Book of China) by Ali Ekber and “Kitab-ı Tevarih-i Padişahan-ı Vilayet-i Hindu ve Hitây” (Book on the Histories of the Rulers of the India and China) by Seyfî Çelebi. These were two typical historical geographical works written in the 16th century, indicating the interest of the Ottoman Turks in the country and people of China during the Ming Dynasty. Both works contain valuable records of China’s topography, history, economy, social life and traditional customs. The Ottoman Turks used the term Khitay (Hitay) and Chin to talk about China in these works. Next, the paper analyzes the Chinese perception on the Ottoman Turks and explicates the origin of name Lumi (Rumi State). Then, according to the official records of the Ming Dynasty, the paper describes the major events of the relations between the Ming Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th-17th centuries. Based on the chronicles of Mingshi (History of the Ming Dynasty), the Ottoman Turks sent their envoys seven times to China in 1524, 1527, 1559, 1564, 1576, 1581 and 1618. According to Ming shilu (Veritable Records of the Ming) and Da Ming hui dian (Collected Statues of the Great Ming), the Ottoman delegations paid visits to China for a total of 19 times. And one of the particular details recorded is that because the Ottoman Empire often sent the tributes of lions and rhinoceroses to the Ming court, the relations between the two countries during this period were expresed in a metaphorical way as “lion diplomacy”.

In recent years, research on social minorities and the weak, such as women, the disabled, and Hansen, has begun to be conducted within the historical community in line with the growing interest in social minorities. In line with this trend of the times, the relief study on the traditional Chinese era can be an important link in examining how the field of social work was established and developed as a mechanism of protection and integration for the socially disadvantaged during this period. Instead of girls, the trend of belittling was rooted in the unique cultural soil of the Fu-Jian region and entwined with economics, population, family ethics, and wedding customs, becoming an exclusive state. Since then, as the government has taken the lead in implementing the relief policy for orphans since the early Qing Dynasty, orphanages have been intensively built in the Fu-Jian area, which was most vulnerable to this problem. Therefore, the rules of operation of orphanages also focused on the food, clothing, and medical services of children in the facility. However, since then, changes to various policies have been attempted as operational personnel, financial limitations, and various evils occurring within the facility have been amplified. For example, the problem of non-professionality and exploitation of allowances of orphanage workers was serious, and as the social and economic environment worsened, the number of dependents increased, and the protection program in the facility became insufficient. Therefore, the operation policy of adopting girls to general families began to be subdivided and operated. In the orphanage in the Fu-Jian area, an operating system for encouraging and post-management of girls has developed. In families adopting, adoptive daughters were relatively the center of the choice, and they directly raised them to form an artificial family relationship. This development of social relief reflects the social policy on the life-saving of abandoned children, and it can be said that it was actively promoted in order to expand the social safety net of completing familism.(Chosun University)

Indonesia merupakan salah satu negara multikultural terbesar di dunia yang memiliki struktur masyarakat yang beragam, mulai dari adat, tradisi, budaya, bahasa, agama, etnis dan sebagainya. Salah satu golongan etnis yang ada di Indonesia ialah etnis Tionghoa. Salah satu budaya Tionghoa yang masih dilestarikan sampai saat ini pada masyarakat Tangerang Cina Benteng adalah tradisi Cap Go Meh yang dirayakan lima belas hari setelah tahun baru Imlex atau yang disebut dengan penanggalan Cap Go – Jia Gwee. Masyarakat Cina Benteng di Tangerang setiap tahun merayakan tradisi Cap Go Meh di berbagai tempat salah satu nya di Klenteng Tjo Soe Kong yang terletak di Pesisir Utara Tangerang. Konsep multikuluralisme tradisi budaya dalam setiap Etnis mampu membentuk rasa kebersamaan pada suatu tatanan kehidupan bermasyarakat di tengah-tengah perbedaan yang ada. Tahapan yang dilakukan peneliti dalam melakukan penelitian dimulai dengan mencari teori-teori yang relevan sebagai dasar teori dan mengikuti rangkaian perayaan Cap Go Meh serta metode yang di gunakan ialah Metode Kualitatif Etnografi yang dikembangkan oleh James P. Spradley. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa terdapat nilai-nilai esensial yang sejalan dengan konsep keilmuan multikultular di Indonesia yang terintegrasi ke dalam Ilmu Sosial sebagai salah satu ilmu yang meng interpratasikan nilai budaya. Nilai tradisi budaya Cap Go Meh mampu membentuk siswa menjadi manusia yang toleran dan berintegrasi tinggi dalam memamahi Kebhinnekaan di Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the largest multicultural countries in the world that has a diverse community structure, ranging from customs, traditions, culture, language, religion, ethnicity and so on. One of the ethnic groups in Indonesia is the Chinese. One of the Chinese cultures that is still preserved today in the Tangerang Cina Benteng community is the Cap Go Meh tradition which is celebrated fifteen days after the Imlex New Year or what is known as the Cap Go – Jia Gwee calendar. The Chinese Benteng community in Tangerang annually celebrates the Cap Go Meh tradition in various places, one of which is the Tjo Soe Kong Temple located on the North Coast of Tangerang. The concept of multiculturalism of cultural traditions in each ethnic group is able to form a sense of togetherness in an order of social life in the midst of existing differences. The stages carried out by researchers in conducting research are starting by looking for relevant theories as a theoretical basis and following a series of Cap Go Meh celebrations and the method used is the Qualitative Ethnographic Method developed by James P. Spradley. The results of the study show that there are essential values ​​that are in line with the concept of multicultural science in Indonesia which is integrated into Social Sciences as one of the sciences that interprets cultural values. The values ​​of Cap Go Meh's cultural traditions are able to shape students into tolerant and highly integrated human beings in understanding Diversity in Indonesia.

“Bird-tracks” and “tadpoles” are both names for ancient script. As customs changed, the script came to be used less and less, until any basis for knowledgeable discussion was lost and it was known only from hearsay. The Grand Preceptor said: “When the [forms of the] rites are lost, search for them in the countryside.” Might not ancient script be even better than the countryside?The names of dozens of artists from the tenth century have come down to us, for the most part with very little information about their lives and scarcely more about their art. Fortunately, the life and professional career of Guo Zhongshu 郭忠恕 (928–977) can be reconstructed in enough detail to give a sense of the personality of the artist and the world that he experienced. Indeed, we are doubly fortunate because Guo, it turns out, had no ordinary life. Known to art historians today primarily as one of the great painters of architectural subjects in Chinese history, Guo entered adult life in a different guise, as a brilliant young paleographer and calligrapher. This aspect of his career, no less important than his painting, is the subject of the present study. Although specialists have recognized his scholarly and calligraphic achievements, we still lack a contextualized account that incorporates what can be known of his biography and social circumstances. More important for the theme of this special issue, the material dimension of Guo's paleographic and calligraphic activities also remains to be explored. Any discussion can only be very partial, however, since no manuscripts or autograph calligraphies survive, only stone steles; fortunately, Guo's engagement with stele production is in itself of the highest historical interest. The chronologically organized text that follows tells a biographical story, with as much detail as the available sources allow, which eventually opens out onto the material world of steles, before returning to biography to recount the last chapter of Guo Zongshu's life. Rather than offering a conclusion, I end with a reflection on the materialities of transmission of paleographic and calligraphic knowledge. For the purposes of this article I have not thought it necessary to choose between the very different lenses of biography and material culture, since my goal is not to prove a thesis but to reconstruct an unfamiliar world. As I hope to show, the understanding of one person's life can enrich the understanding of artifacts associated directly and indirectly with the person, and vice versa.

Appraisals and emotional regulation play a central role in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite research demonstrating cultural differences in everyday appraisals and emotion regulation, little research has investigated the influence of culture on these processes in PTSD. This study examined cultural differences in the associations between appraisals, emotion regulation and PTSD symptoms using trauma survivors from an individualistic Western culture (Australia) and a collectivistic Asian culture (Malaysia). Trauma survivors (N = 228; 107 Australian with European cultural heritage, 121 Malaysian with Malay, Indian or Chinese cultural heritage) completed an on-line survey assessing PTSD (PTSD Checklist for the DSM-5 with Life Events Checklist), appraisals (trauma-related, fatalism, cultural beliefs about adversity) and emotion regulation (suppression, reappraisal, interpersonal). The Malaysian group reported significantly greater fatalism, cultural beliefs about adversity, suppression and interpersonal emotion regulation than the Australian group. Greater trauma-specific appraisals, greater suppression, fewer cultural beliefs about adversity, and less use of social skills to enhance positivity were generally associated with greater PTSD symptom severity, with little evidence of cultural group moderating these associations. Interdependent self-construal mediated the relationships between cultural adversity beliefs, enhanced positivity, reappraisal, perspective taking and PTSD symptoms. Independent self-construal mediated the relationships between fatalism and perspective taking and PTSD symptoms. Cultural group did not moderate these indirect effects. Interdependent self-construal mediated the associations between interpersonal regulation strategies of soothing and social modelling with PTSD symptoms for the Malaysian but not the Australian group. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering self-construal and culture in understanding factors associated with PTSD.

PurposeCOVID-19, an infectious disease first identified in China, has resulted in an ongoing pandemic all over the world. Most of the countries have been experiencing a difficult period during the fighting of this pandemic. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of privacy concerns and cultural differences on public opinion related to the pandemic. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of public opinion in the US and in China as a case study, in order to determine the results.Design/methodology/approachNational policies on important issues faced during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US and in China were examined through a comparative analysis. The authors used text clustering and visualization to mine public opinion on two popular social media platforms, Twitter and Weibo. From the perspectives of concern for privacy and of national culture, this study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to discover the acceptance level of national policies by the public in the two countries.FindingsThe anti-pandemic policies and measures of the US and China reflect the different characteristics of their respective political systems and national cultures. When considering the culture of the US, it is hard to establish and enforce a rigorous regulation on either mask wearing in public or home quarantine on the national level. The opinions of US people are diverse, regarding national COVID-19 policies, but they are rather unified on privacy issues. On the other hand, Chinese people show a high acceptance of national policies based on their mask-wearing customs and their culture of collectivism.Originality/valuePrior studies have paid insufficient attention to the ways in which user privacy and cultural difference affect public opinion on national policies between the US and China. This case study that compares public opinion on current and topical issues which are closely bound up with public life shows originality, as it innovatively provides a cross-cultural perspective on the research of public opinion dissemination during emergencies by considering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Ecological civilization refers to the sum of the material production and consumption mode, social organization and management system, values and ethics, and resource development and environmental influence mode between man and nature created in the practice of transforming nature, adapting to nature, conserving nature, and savoring nature. The construction of ecological civilization is an important part of the realization of the new rural construction goal of “production development, well-off life, civilized village customs, clean village appearance, and democratic management.” With the comprehensive promotion of the construction of a new socialist countryside in China, the ancient villages, as the source foundation of Chinese national culture and the real record of historical information, have become an urgent and severe topic for the current village renovation and protection. This article studies the architectural modeling, village layout, space, color application, and other aspects of ancient Huizhou village architecture, appreciates some elements of form aesthetics, and explores its rich content in modern society, cultural background, and economic conditions. At the same time, starting from the architectural characteristics of ancient Huizhou villages, integrate and understand the characteristics of village layout, architectural shape, and space color application in Huizhou traditional ancient village architecture, and analyze the harmonious beauty, overall beauty, nature, and coordination covered in Huizhou traditional ancient village architecture beauty and other beautiful features. To study the architectural shape, village layout, space, and color application in Huizhou's ancient village buildings, appreciate some elements of morphological aesthetics, and explore its rich content contained in modern society, cultural background, and economic conditions. At the same time, starting from the architectural characteristics of Huizhou ancient villages, we can integrate and understand the characteristics of village layout, architectural shape, and spatial color application in Huizhou traditional ancient villages, and analyze the characteristics of harmony, overall beauty, nature, and coordinated beauty covered in the architecture of Huizhou traditional ancient villages. This study is of great practical significance to promote the comprehensive improvement and protection of historical buildings, traditional residential communities, historical features, and surrounding ecological environment in ancient villages, and to realize the unity of ecology and civilization, efficiency and energy saving, healthy and sustainable development of ancient villages.

The subject of this research is a scientific contribution to the promotion of free trade in underdeveloped countries and developing countries, both in theoretical and practical terms. Bearing in mind that the world trade is a young scientific area that has evolved from skill through the methodology of dealing with people in organizations to forms as professions and scientific discipline. Experience shows that developing countries that have understood this and started using scientific achievements in the field of international trade business and free trade, have in practice achieved far faster development than other underdeveloped countries. The promotion of free trade in developing countries is more decades in the circles of interest for numerous economic theorists and practitioners, bearing in mind the fact that free trade is the first-rate factors of the economic development of each country. This paper presents a contribution to the analysis of the competitiveness of free trade in developing countries and persistent analysis compared to developed countries. The paper points to the importance of membership in the World Trade Organization, which entails access to the market, benefits, relief and exemption from customs duties. The starting assumption is that the competitiveness of the economy of countries that are underdeveloped or in development is at a very low level. Therefore, an increase in competition between undeveloped countries would be conditional on an increase in exports and thus developed a more favorable environment for attracting foreign direct investments. This is why the basic message of this scientific research paper is that, with cooperation with international monetary, financial and trade institutions, allow developing countries to open their markets and seize the benefits of engaging in international trade flows . Therefore, on the work of the paper a special emphasis is placed on cooperation with the World Trade Organization, the WTO. The theoretical and empirical foundation of this scientific and research work stems from the realization that investments in the development of free trade are an increasingly significant factor of growth and development of each economy. The experience shows that countries that save on these activities are the ones who are working too little for their present and not for their future. The lack of investment in the promotion of free trade is reduced in the final instance to poverty in the quality of economic development. And the quality of planting and future economic growth is based on programmed production, redistribution and allocation of quality scientific programs with calculated effects on labour productivity, savings and prosperity. Investing in improvement and cooperation with international trade institutions of the current and future leaders of undeveloped countries provides answers to evolving challenges. Improving foreign trade is one of the most cost-effective investments of an underdeveloped state. Knowledge and expertise in the field of foreign trade are the fundamental determiners of the development of the most solemn, the vreiority and the quality of human life in these countries. The entire future of one country is based on science, education and knowledge that liberate the social, economic and cultural difference.Chinese foreign direct investment in the world has long and successful tradition. Over the past decade, China has become one of the largest exporters of foreign investment in the world, including European countries. China's investment in Europe brings a number of benefits in terms of technology, know-how, improving the reputation of existing brands, establishing a logistical market in the European market. Looking from the viewpoint of the host countries, the inflow of Chinese investments brought new economic opportunities, especially in those European countries that had poor economic growth, faced with high unemployment after the Euro crisis. This paper presents global trends of Chinese foreign direct investment, the motives that have prompted Chinese investors to invest in European countries, the needs of the EU for Chinese investment, and good example of attracting Chinese investments in Serbia.

AbstractWhat occupies us in this volume is how women at all social levels devise their own coping mechanisms to deal with the impact of externally imposed pressures. Their stories reflect the creative solutions with which they have come to terms with some of the resulting problems, but always in a very personal way and without recourse to any form of collective action or organization. With a few exceptions, most of these women are still committed to traditional roles and the perception of obligations, even if the content of the role has changed. At least these "core" roles seem ideologically more resistant to change, such that there is a considerable lag between changing social conditions and the values underpinning them (cf. Goody, 1984). Apparently, it is only when women have become exposed, either through education, overseas travel or scholarly professions, that outside ("Western") notions of feminism and gender equality emerge. It is the highly unique and privileged upper middle class who agitate and raise the consciousness of their "deprived" sisters, and who also initiate women's organizations and support centres. If an awareness of womanhood for itself, a gender-as-class type of feminism has yet to surface in most of the societies of Southeast Asia, it is still legitimate to pursue the question of situation of women as a group-in-itself, as a potential action group. If we focus on the kinship system, as we have seen above, there is little in the ideology, distribution of resources and male-female relationships in traditional Southeast Asian practice (the immigrant Chinese here being something of an exception), to suggest an undue exploitation or oppression of women as a whole. In the domestic arrangements of most of them, a modus vivendi had been struck, an acceptance of role complementarily whether labelled the "myth of male dominance" (Rogers, 1975; Hirschon, 1984), or the false consciousness so readily perceived by many outsiders. Operating from the domestic core, women devise all manner of individual strategies to pursue their interests, influence their kin and turn events towards their chosen direction. Whether within or outside the household, such strategies are in the broadest sense political and can have substantial impact upon the male world (Collier, 1974). Commonly, women act or achieve their goals indirectly through men, particularly by the manipulation of husbands, brothers and sons, so that even the Chinese woman may eventually come into her own as a mother-in-law. In this collection of stories, Chat is the supreme example of this kind of successful manipulator. Satisfaction may even be had vicariously, as in Tok Nyam's pleasure in seeing her husband and sons make the pilgrimage to Mecca ahead of her. All of these women have managed to make, within their own small worlds, a choice of action between two or more options: Maimunah and Ah Ling opted for a non-traditional life of their own in the city, while Zainab chose to retreat from it and ease her family into compliance with her choice. The Singapore women's solutions to their working situation constantly result in a creative tension and some changes in the original Chinese family organization. For all the poverty of her family, even Yurni has been bold enough to spurn employment with and dependence on Ibu Ica, whom she dislikes, taking up alternative sharecropping and embroidery jobs instead. Rufina left Manila to marry the man of her own choosing, and in the most desperate of circumstances, devises a constant series of strategies of survival, while she and Tia Lilia are both victims of a system of rural proletarianization endemic in the Philippines. The deprivations of the latter two women stem, not from their position in a kinship, domestic or male-dominated system, but rather from the inequities of the wider society beyond them. In the case of the Muslim women in particular, some "interference" or even conflict emerges between the ideologies of their religion and kinship customs. In matrilineal Minangkabau society, Islam's main impact on Yurni has been in diverting the girls to an inferior or less modern type of education in favour of preparing the boys for a profession or other career. Islam moulded the sequence of Tok Nyam's divorce, remarriage and such important events in her life as the pilgrimage, but in no way prevented her from enjoying an active community life and the profits of her pandanus mat trade. Zainab happened to be growing up at a time when Islam was on the upswing in her social set and the immediate pressures of her social environment undoubtedly provided some coercive effect. Yet the final choice was still her own: Maimunah, living in the same time and place, charted a different path for herself. In the final analysis, it is probably to the world beyond the kin and family group that we must turn to seek the locus of the real inequities and the sources of oppression as they affect women, both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. As noted above, the origins of most of the problems of the disadvantaged women of our collection lie in their overall class position, or in the political situation of their country. Rufina and Tia Lilia are the most dramatic examples here, and to a lesser degree, Yurni. In these cases, it must be recognized that the men, alongside the women, are also in positions of dependence and deprivation lacking the means to take control of their own lives and condition. It is a fallacy to assume that women represent an undifferentiated common interest group on the basis of their gender alone, for factors more powerful emerge on the backs of such distinctions as wealth, status, class, ethnicity and religion. Even the "advantages" of involvement in modern economic development, employment and education institutions are dependent upon these same distinctions, such that, for example, elite women may benefit more than those of lower status, as shown by Ibu Ica and Yurni, or women of one ethnic origin may be eligible for certain employment opportunities less available to those of other backgrounds for political reasons, as the urban careers of Maimunah, Zainab and Ah Ling illustrate. In the Philippines, it is to the destructive process of increasing rural proletarianization and poverty affecting the country as a whole that Rufina and Tia Lilia owe their pitiful existence, of which their menfolk are equally victims. Women in their own daily lives take cognisance of these various roles in devising strategies of action and charting paths to particular goals. None of this is quantifiable in any reliable way and to attempt to do so is to reduce the women actors to the anonymous shadow, dependent role occupants that most feminists would strenuously avoid. The alternative pursued here is the biographical method which allows us to present more of the individual richness of the situations of a small sample of selected women, as seen through their own eyes. In this exercise, the observer/biographers have deliberately refrained from passing judgment of a cultural, feminist or other variety, instead using the opportunity for interaction with their subjects to gain insights into both cultures through a process of defamiliarization and refamiliarization simultaneously.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus officially announced the Corona virus (Covid 19) as a pandemic on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, so the world community and countries of the world were excited and asked to take steps prevention measures according to the health protocol established by WHO. The WHO reason is that prevention needs to be carried out by world countries, because the Corona Covid 19 Virus pandemic is an infectious disease that spreads easily from human to human in various parts of the world. I do not know, from where the source of this corona virus appears and infects and exposes the virus so that it becomes pandamic and kills many people in the countries of the world so quickly. Citing Worldometers website data, Tuesday (2/6/2020), the number of confirmed cases of corona virus infection globally is 6,358,294 (6.36 million) cases. Meanwhile, the number of deaths recorded was 377,031 cases. While the number of patients recovered as many as 2,888,571 (2.89 million) people. The number of active cases is 3,092,692 (3.09 million) cases, with 3,039,290 (3.04 million) in mild conditions, and 53,402 in serious conditions. Furthermore, the global tragedy to follow up and respond to the insistence of the WHO world health organization, the Indonesian state took anticipatory steps with the congressional movement starting on April 13, 2020, through the President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo expressly announcing and establishing and stating that the Covid 19 Virus is as a non-natural national disaster spreading Corona Virus Diseasses 2019 (Covid 19) as a national disaster. In order to prevent the exposure or the strongest Covid 19 virus to the people of Indonesia, the government issued Presidential Regulation No. 12 of 2020, and Government Regulation No. 21 of 2020 concerning the implementation of the related large-scale Social Restrictions (hurud b), Article 49 Paragraph (3) and Article 59 of Law Law No. 6 of 2018 concerning Health Qulity. Indonesia did not want to bother, and asked WHO, the results of the Corona Covid 19 virus were accepted, but were more focused on handling the corona virus in the country. Meanwhile, developed countries such as America, Britain, Australia, opposed cool in an opinion war against China, which is associated with several countries Corona Virus came and began to plague in Wuhan, China using the source of infectious diseases through the bat virus. America, can receive that information, namely the President of the United States Donald Trump, accepts anger and sulking, and even has evidence of the results of his intelligence reports related to it, the Corona virus is actually not a virus transmitted from a bat virus to humans, but Donald Trump's presumption , that's the corona virus, originating from chemical laboratories in Wuhan China, which leaked and infected humans and eventually became a plague of infectious viruses throughout the world. Latest information, Britain, Australia, America will file a claim for compensation to the Chinese state through a lawsuit to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Furthermore, to support the objectives of this study, the paradigm used in this study is the post-positivism paradigm. The post-positivism paradigm wants to prove everything is based on reality (which can be built based on experience, observation), the researcher is neutral towards the object of research, even though the researcher holding this paradigm remains neutral towards the object of research, but he wants to examine what actually happened from things the thing that seems certain. The post-positivism paradigm ontologically conceptualizes reality as it really is, but it is realized that there are actually many factors that influence that reality. Consequently, ontologically the post-positivism paradigm conceptualizes the law as a set of rules that apply in society whose behavior will be influenced by factors (economic, political, cultural, etc.). Epistemologically, researchers sit themselves impersonal, separate from the object of research. The researcher's position on the object of research is neutral and impartial.

Abstract Background “Houtu” is the most unique cultural symbol and emotional link in the inheritance of agricultural cultural beliefs in ancient China, and it is also one of the important components of contemporary folk culture. Belief has been a unique psychological phenomenon of human beings since ancient times. It reflects human belief and compliance with the world outlook, outlook on life and values through psychological activities. “Houtu belief” originated from people's worship of land and first appeared in ancient agricultural society. Shanxi fenyin is the birthplace of “Houtu belief”, which is regarded as “the oldest ancestor and the most outstanding God in China”. Its temple is also a place for emperors of each dynasty to make pilgrimages and worship gods. It is also regarded as the crown of Houtu temple in China and the source of Houtu Royal worship. At the same time, with the rise of the study of regional emotional change, this study also helps to better understand the later beliefs. Subjects and Methods Starting with the investigation of Houtu temple in fenyin County, Shanxi Province, this paper puts forward some problems, such as divine gender, image transformation and so on. From the pre Qin Dynasty to the early Western Han Dynasty, the Houtu God was the God of men, but now the Nuwa statue in Wanrong Houtu temple is the God of women. What's the reason? In view of this, this paper examines the evolution process and function of backland image from the perspective of belief psychology, and probes into its contemporary artistic value. In addition, this paper also uses Likert scoring method to evaluate the scale. Pearson correlation, standard deviation and statistical significance are combined to illustrate the correlation. The t-test of independent samples was used to verify the differences between male and female believers. According to the statistical value of emotion, participants were divided into three groups: low, medium and high groups. The questionnaire includes two kinds of anxiety, namely debilitating emotion and promoting emotion. Through t-test, univariate and multivariate analysis of variance and regression analysis, we investigated the relationship between time span, psychological activities and social status of believers of different beliefs and genders. Results According to the conclusion of this paper, the evolution of Houtu culture is an interactive process between objective social environment and subjective belief psychology. The image of Houtu culture and its belief activities have experienced a relatively unique cultural evolution process. The study studied male god believers and goddess believers, and found that compared with male god believers, goddess believers have much higher social status and audience. However, there was no significant difference in emotional level between male and female gods. With the development of society, it is gradually socialized and official. The image of backland has been recognized, re understood and recognized in the historical changes in order to adapt to and deal with social and cultural beliefs and historical context. It creatively reforms and integrates the national historical and cultural traditions and the social practical experience of various times, and constructs a new cultural form that respects the tradition and reflects the social practical experience. Conclusions Nowadays, in the multicultural context, “Houtu belief”, as a new national custom and cultural event, not only ensures the cultural legitimacy of Houtu culture in the local society, but also continues the inseparable relationship and memory between them and their ancestral civilization. It provides a new theoretical perspective and practical basis for the later research in the multicultural context. It can also promote the use of psychology to broaden the direction of studying national customs and culture. Acknowledgement Supported by the following projects, 2019 Jinzhong University “1331 Project” innovation team “Shanxi Cultural Heritage Inheritance and Provincial Cultural Tourism Strengthen Provincial Strategy Research” (JzxycxTD2019002). 2020 Shanxi Philosophy and Social Science Research Project: Research on animal Images of Chinese Buddhist Art (2020W184). University-level teaching reform project of Jinzhong University: Research on teaching reform of “Intangible Cultural Heritage” into “Colleges and University Zhejiang Provincial Heritage Conservation Technology Project (2020016).

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.本文以《後漢書˙列女傳》為例，探討女性在節死問題上的道德取向及對自殺行為的道德詮釋。筆者認為，《列女傳》所體現的價值取向屬於儒家道德的大傳統，同時由於其“性別倫理”的特質，又涵蓋了特殊的生死觀，反映出儒家在“肉身”價值與“精神”價值議題上的考量。本文試圖說明，女性自殺有其背後特有的時代精神與文化傳統，因此對它的道德評估要比儒家大傳統中所謂“為己性”與“為他性”的劃分更為複雜，它既反映出儒家在女性問題上的奇特性，也反映出儒家在生死問題上的複雜性。“節死”議題所反映的不僅僅是一個單一的儒家價值取向，因為任何道德理論或規範在“具體化”的實踐過程中都會存在詮釋上的多元性與複雜性。The Lienüzhuan (LNZ) or the Collected Life-Stories of Women complied by the late-Western Han Confucian scholar Liu Xiang (79-8 B.C.E.), consists of 125 exemplary life stories of women covering a broad period from earlier legendary time to the Han Dynasty. LNZ, like many other narratives in the early Chinese tradition, is a form of character-focused narrative based on quasi-historical accounts. To locate this Han text in a comprehensive framework of Confucian moral philosophy is not an easy task, and neither is recreating the moment of interpretative creativity. What intrigues the reader today about this work is not whether it accurately represents the lives of early Chinese women, but how it represents an ideal of female virtues within the Confucian ethical system, especially Confucian morality on life and death.The LNZ has eight chapters, of which six are devoted to six forms of virtuous conduct: (1) maternal rectitude (muyi); (2) sage intelligence (xianming); (3) benevolence and wisdom (xianzhi); (4) purity and obedience (zhenshun); (5) chastity and righteousness (jianyi); (6) skillfulness in argument, rhetorical/ tactical skill (biantong). Each form of conduct is exlicated in a specific narrative. This essay focuses on two chapters of the book, “Purity and Obedience” (zhenshun) and “Chastity and Righteousness” (jieyi), which explore the ethical dimension of female virtues and suicide.The LNZ offers various stories about why women commit suicide, and they all deal with the female virtues of chastity, loyalty, and righteousness. Some stories give examples of women who refuse remarriage. This kind of practice became an ethical norm in the following dynasties, emphasized by what is called “the cult of chastity”. Other stories talk about the importance of women practicing traditional rituals and customs. The “Wife of the Duke of Song” （《宋恭伯姬》）gives an account of how a woman refused to flee a fire because she insisted on performing the ritual that does not allow a woman to walk out of the inner chamber alone at midnight. But there are exceptions to this kind of gender-based ethics in the LNZ. For instance, the “Chaste Woman from the Capital” （《京師節女》）is a totally different kind of story where a woman’s husband is in the danger of being murdered. The assassin hears that this chaste woman possesses the virtues of benevolence, filial piety, and righteousness, and kidnaps her father as a hostage to get to the husband. Here the woman is facing a moral dilemma: if she does not meet the assassin’s demand, her father will be killed. That would violate the virtue of filial piety; if she were to turn her husband in, that would violate the virtue of righteousness. “Without filial piety or righteousness, I am not worthy living in this world,” says the woman. It follows that the woman decides to sacrifice her own life to save the lives of her father and husband. At the end of the story, she tells the assassin that she will help him to have her husband murdered. She tells him that she will open the window that night and the one lying on the east side of the house will be her husband. That night, the assassin goes in through the window and murders the one lying on the east side, only found out that it is the wife. The murderer is deeply touched by the woman’s heroic act and decides to give up the killing altogether (LNZ 5.15). The eulogy states: The woman of chastity shows benevolence and filial piety, and values righteousness more than her life. In this story, the notion of benevolence, filial piety, and righteousness fits perfectly into Confucian virtue ethics. From such narratives the author draws the contention that the Confucian notion of “honor” in terms of chastity, filiality, and righteousness is by no means a simple moral principle to be taken as dogma. The gender-based suicide has to be explicated within the broad framework of Confucian moral philosophy, especially its view of life and death. The essay attempts to show that the moral dilemma exemplified by female virtues in the case of the LNZ is much more complicated than the dichotomy between corporeality and spirituality, or the self-regarding suicide and other-regarding suicide. Furthermore, the embodiment of a particular virtue has always been influenced by a broader social context and the established value system that is based on its own understanding of early tradition. The moral ambiguities of suicide cases represented by the “cult of chastity” (Ming and Qing periods in particular) lie in its misinterpretations of the moral pronouncements and properties of suicidal actions advocated by early Confucianism.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 1687 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

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LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.本文討論香港醫療制度的融資安排與改革，並探討進行改革所帶來的社會公義問題。本文認為一個符合社會公義的公共醫療制度要保證市民得到一個得體而又最基本（decent minimum）的服務，這個服務水平要由一個公開和有廣泛公眾參加的醫療配給制度。本文建議香港確立一個這樣的配給制度監按公共醫療服務的增長，並且透過改革收費制度或輕微地增加稅收，便可以在符合社會公義的大前提下解決融資安排問題。本文反對採用強制性儲蓄計劃、保險計劃或保健組織（HMO） 制度對香港的醫療制度進行改革，因為這些供款計劃會帶來不少道德危險問題，有違社會公義。This paper discusses the financial arrangement of the healthcare system and the issues of justice arising from healthcare reform in Hong Kong. The current Hong Kong public healthcare system is quite efficient. The population of Hong Kong has higher life expectancy and lower infant and maternity mortality rates than that of many developed countries, such as the United States. However, the public expenditure in healthcare in Hong Kong only amounts to 2.18% of GDP. This is much lower than most of the developed countries although the per capita income of Hong Kong has surpassed that many industrialized nations, including Canada and Australia. But more than 90% of the hospital services is provided by public hospitals. Moreover, the all-inclusive per diem hospital charge is HK$68 (roughly US$8.5), which only covers 2% of the average cost of a patient day, and so the system is almost universally accessible as well. In fact, since 1974, the government has adopted the policy that no one should be denied adequate medical treatment through lack of means.However, the current system has been under stress mainly for three reasons: (1) aging population, (2) increasing medical expenditure arising from the advancement of medical technology, and (3) rising expectation from the community triggered by the rapid economic development over the past one to two decades. Various proposals have been put forward to reform the healthcare system in Hong Kong so as to make it more financially sustainable in the long term. These proposals include: increase in personal and corporate income tax;increase in the per diem charge of public health care services;mandatory savings scheme;coordinated voluntary or mandatory insurance scheme;health maintenance organization scheme.This paper concedes that healthcare reform is not only a technical issue in financial management, but will have long term impact on the distribution of healthcare benefits and burdens in Hong Kong society. So the problem of justice must be addressed before launching any healthcare reform plan.This paper discusses the major approaches to the justice problem in healthcare financing. The libertarian approach is rejected because the free market mechanism advocated by the approach, such as voluntary insurance schemes, will put the worse off in a vulnerable position. The paper on the one hand agrees with the egalitarian approach that the claims of healthcare needs have their moral force, but on the other hand maintains that the egalitarian approach may overburden the public healthcare system. Based on the ideas of public choice theory and socialized care, it is argued that a just healthcare system needs only to guarantee a decent minimum level of healthcare services for all that is regarded as affordable by the general public.The paper maintains that what constitutes such a level of services should be determined by a rationing system. Various utilitarian approaches to rationing are critically examined. It is found that although these approaches provide useful indices for decision-making in healthcare rationing, none of them could provide a mechanical procedure that could substitute for a fair deliberative process. The paper argues that the decent minimal level of healthcare services guaranteed for all should be determined by an open and a democratic process, and recommends that such a rationing system be set up in Hong Kong.Since various performance indices have shown that the healthcare system in Hong Kong is quite efficient, the claim that the existing system is "on the verge of reaching a crisis situation" is likely to be an exaggeration. Those who uphold this claim tend to support the more radical proposal of introducing various contributory schemes, including proposals (3) - (5), to reform the financial arrangement of the existing healthcare system. The paper rejects this approach, because social justice could be undermined by the moral hazard problems created by these contributory schemes and the government would consequently not be able to uphold the policy already adopted in 1974, which guarantees that no one will be denied adequate medical treatment because of inability to pay.It is believed that the stress of the public healthcare system in Hong Kong can be alleviated to a large extent by setting up an open and a democratic rationing system to monitor the increase of medical costs, a modest increase in service charges, a further improvement in the efficiency of the existing system, and perhaps a small increase in tax rates too. For the sake of justice, as the paper maintains, the government must be very cautious in adopting any more radical reform initiative.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 159 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

ISCPES stands for International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sports and it is going to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2018. Since the beginning (Israel 1978) the main goals of the Society were established under a worldwide mind set considering five continents and no discrimination of any kind. The founders wanted to compare Physical Education and Sports across the world, searching for the best practices deserving consideration and applied on the purpose of improving citizen quality of life. The mission still stands for “Compare to learn and improve”.As all the organizations lasting for 39 years, ISCPES experienced several vicissitudes, usually correlated with world economic cycles, social and sports changes, which are in ISS journal articles - International Sport Studies.ISS journal is Scopus indexed, aiming to improve its quality (under evaluation) to reach more qualified students, experts, professionals and researchers; doing so it will raise its indexation, which we know it is nowadays a more difficult task. First, because there are more journals trying to compete on this academic fierce competitive market; secondly, because the basic requirements are getting more and more hard to gather in the publishing environment around Physical Education and Sports issues. However, we can promise this will be one of our main strategic goals.Another goal I would like to address on this Editorial is the language issue. We have this second strategic goal, which is to reach most of languages spoken in different continents; besides the English language, we will reach Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. For that reason, we already defined that all the abstracts in English will be translated into Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese words so people can find them on any search browser. That will expand the demand for our journal and articles, increasing the number of potential readers. Of course this opportunity, given by Motricidade, can be considered as a good example to multiply our scope.In June 2017 we organized a joint Conference in Borovets, Bulgaria, with our colleagues from the BCES – Bulgarian Society for Comparative Educational Studies. During those days, there was an election to appoint a new (Portuguese) president. This constitutes an important step for the Portuguese speaker countries, which, for a 4th year term, will have the opportunity to expand the influence of ISCPES Society diffusing the research results we have been achieving into a vast extended new public and inviting new research experts to innovative debates. This new president will be working with a wide geographical diverse team: the Vice President coming from a South American country (Venezuela), and the other several Executive Board members are coming from Brazil, China, Africa and North America. This constitutes a very favorable situation once, adding to this, we kept the previous editorial team from Australia and Europe. We are definitely committed to improve our influence through new incentives to organize several regional (continental) workshops, seminars and Conferences in the next future.The international research is crossing troubled times with exponential number of new indexed journals trying to get new influence and visibility. In order to do that, readers face new challenges because several studies present contradictory conclusions and outcome comparisons still lacking robust methodologies. Uncovering these issues is the focus of our Society.In the past, ISCPES started its activity collecting answers to the same questions asked to several experts in different countries and continents across the world. The starting studies developed some important insights on several issues concerning the way Physical Education professionals approached their challenges. In the very starting documents ISCPES activity focused in identifying certain games and indigenous activities that were not understood by people in other parts of the world, improving this international understanding and communication. This first attempt considered six groups of countries roughly comprehending 26 countries from all the continents.ISCPES has on its archives several seminal works, PhD proposals and program proposals, which constitutes the main theoretical framework considered in some textbooks printed at the end of the sixties in the XXth century.The methods used mostly sources’ country comparisons, historic development of comparative education systems, list of factors affecting those systems and a systematic analysis of case studies; additionally, international organizations for sports and physical education were also required to identify basic problems and unique features considered for the implementation of each own system. At the time, Lynn C. Vendien & John E. Nixon book “The World Today in Health, Physical Education and Recreation”, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1968, together with two monographies from William Johnson “Physical Education around the World”, 1966, 1968, Indianapolis, Phi Epsilon Kappa editions, were the main textbook references.The main landscapes of interest were to study sports compared or the sport role in Nationalisms, Political subsidization, Religion, Race and volunteering versus professionalism. The goal was to state the true place of sports in societies.In March 1970, Ben W. Miller from the University of California compiled an interesting Exhibit n.1 about the main conclusions of a breakfast meeting occurred during the American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. There, they identified thirty-one individuals, which had separate courses in “Comparative and/or International Physical Education, Recreation and Sports”; one month later, they collected eighteen responses with the bibliographic references they used. On this same Exhibit n.1 there is detailed information on the title, catalogue description, date of initial course (1948, the first), credit units, eligibility, number of year offer, type of graduation (from major to doctorate and professional). Concluding, the end of the sixties can be the mark of a well-established body of literature in comparative education and sports studies published in several scientific journals.What about the XXIst century? Is it still important to compare sports and education throughout the world? Only with qualitative methods? Mixed methods?We think so. That is why, after a certain decline and fuzzy goal definition in research motivations within ISCPES we decided to innovate and reorganize people from physical education and sports around this important theme of comparative studies. Important because we observe an increasing concern on the contradictions across different results in publications under the same subject. How can we infer? What about good research questions which get no statistically significant results? New times are coming, and we want to be on that frontline of this move as said by Elsevier “With RMR (results masked review) articles, you don’t need to worry about what editors or reviewers might think about your results. As long as you have asked an important question and performed a rigorous study, your paper will be treated the same as any other. You do not need to have null results to submit an RMR article; there are many reasons why it can be helpful to have the results blinded at initial review”.https://www.elsevier.com/connect/reviewers-update/results-masked-review-peer-review-without-publication-bias.This is a very different and challenging time. Our future strategy will comprehend more cooperation between researchers, institutions and scientific societies as an instrument to leverage our understanding of physical activity and sports through different continents and countries and be useful for policy designs.Next 2018, on the occasion of the UE initiative Sofia – European Capital of Sport 2018 we - Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES) & the International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport (ISCPES) - will jointly organize an International Conference on Sport Governance around the World.Sports and Physical Education are facing complex problems worldwide, which need to be solved. For health reasons, a vast number of organizations are popularizing the belief that physical education and sports are ‘a must’ in order to promote human activity and movement. However, several studies show that modern lifestyles are the main cause for people's inactivity and sedentary lifestyles.Extensive funded programs used to promote healthy lifestyles; sports media advertising several athletes, turning them into global heroes, influencers in a new emerging industry around sports organizations. Therefore, there is a rise in the number of unethical cases and corruption that influence the image of physical education and sports roles.We, the people emotional and physically involved with sports and physical activity must be aware of this, studying, discussing and comparing global facts and events around the world.This Conference aims to offer an incentive to colleagues from all continents to participate and present their latest results on four specific topics: 1. Sport Governance Systems; 2. Ethics and Corruption in Physical Education and Sports Policies; 3. Physical Education and Sport Development; 4. Training Physical Educators and Coaches. Please consider your selves invited to attend. Details in http://bcesconvention.com/

Introduction Special occasion cookery has been a staple of the cookbook writing in the English speaking Western world for decades. This includes providing catering for personal milestones as well as religious and secular festivals. Yet, in an era when the culinary publishing sector is undergoing considerable expansion and market segmentation, narratives of foods marking of one of life’s central and inescapable rites—death—are extremely rare. This discussion investigates examples of food writing related to death and funeral rites in contemporary cookbooks. Funeral feasts held in honour of the dead date back beyond recorded history (Luby and Gruber), and religious, ceremonial and community group meals as a component of funeral rites are now ubiquitous around the world. In earlier times, the dead were believed to derive both pleasure and advantage from these offerings (LeClercq), and contemporary practice still reflects this to some extent, with foods favoured by the deceased sometimes included in such meals (see, for instance, Varidel). In the past, offering some sustenance as a component of a funeral was often necessary, as mourners might have travelled considerable distances to attend the ceremony, and eateries outside the home were not as commonplace or convenient to access as they are today. The abundance and/or lavishness of the foods provided may also have reflected the high esteem in which the dead was held, and offered as a mark of community respect (Smith and Bird). Following longstanding tradition, it is still common for Western funeral attendees to gather after the formal parts of the event—the funeral service and burial or cremation —in a more informal atmosphere to share memories of the deceased and refreshments (Simplicity Funerals 31). Thursby notes that these events, which are ostensibly about the dead, often develop into a celebration of the ties between living family members and friends, “times of reunions and renewed relationships” (94). Sharing food is central to this celebration as “foods affirm identity, strengthen kinship bonds, provide comfortable and familiar emotional support during periods of stress” (79), while familiar dishes evoke both memories and promising signals of the continued celebration of life” (94). While in the southern states and some other parts of the USA, it is customary to gather at the church premises after the funeral for a meal made up of items contributed by members of the congregation, and with leftovers sent home with the bereaved family (Siegfried), it is more common in Australasia and the UK to gather either in the home of the principal mourners, someone else’s home or a local hotel, club or restaurant (Jalland). Church halls are a less common option in Australasia, and an increasing trend is the utilisation of facilities attached to the funeral home and supplied as a component of a funeral package (Australian Heritage Funerals). The provision of this catering largely depends on the venue chosen, with the cookery either done by family and/or friends, the hotel, club, restaurant or professional catering companies, although this does not usually affect the style of the food, which in Australia and New Zealand is often based on a morning or afternoon tea style meal (Jalland). Despite widespread culinary innovation in other contexts, funeral catering bears little evidence of experimentation. Ash likens this to as being “fed by grandmothers”, and describes “scones, pastries, sandwiches, biscuits, lamingtons—food from a fifties afternoon party with the taste of Country Women’s Association about it”, noting that funerals “require humble food. A sandwich is not an affront to the dead” (online). Numerous other memoirists note this reliance on familiar foods. In “S is for Sad” in her An Alphabet for Gourmets (1949), food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes of mourners’s deep need for sustenance at this time as a “mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem breaking and our lives too bleakly empty” (135). In line with Probyn’s argument that food foregrounds the viscerality of life (7), Fisher notes that “most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak. […] It is as if our bodies, wiser than we who wear them, call out for encouragement and strength and […] compel us […] to eat” (135, 136). Yet, while funerals are a recurring theme in food memoirs (see, for example, West, Consuming), only a small number of Western cookbooks address this form of special occasion food provision. Feast by Nigella Lawson Nigella Lawson’s Feast: Food that Celebrates Life (2004) is one of the very few popular contemporary cookbooks in English that includes an entire named section on cookery for funerals. Following twenty-one chapters that range from the expected (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and wedding) to more original (children’s and midnight) feasts, Lawson frames her discussion with an anthropological understanding of the meaning of special occasion eating. She notes that we use food “to mark occasions that are important to us in life” (vii) and how eating together “is the vital way we celebrate anything that matters […] how we mark the connections between us, how we celebrate life” (vii). Such meals embody both personal and group identities because both how and what is eaten “lies at the heart of who we are-as individuals, families, communities” (vii). This is consistent with her overall aims as a food writer—to explore foods’ meanings—as she states in the book’s introduction “the recipes matter […] but it is what the food says that really counts” (vii). She reiterates this near the end of the book, adding, almost as an afterthought, “and, of course, what it tastes like” (318). Lawson’s food writing also reveals considerable detail about herself. In common with many other celebrity chefs and food writers, Lawson continuously draws on, elaborates upon, and ultimately constructs her own life as a major theme of her works (Brien, Rutherford, and Williamson). In doing so, she, like these other chefs and food writers, draws upon revelations of her private life to lend authenticity to her cooking, to the point where her cookbooks could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). The privileging of autobiographical information in Lawson’s work extends beyond the use of her own home and children in her television programs and books, to the revelation of personal details about her life, with the result that these have become well known. Her readers thus know that her mother, sister and first and much-loved husband all died of cancer in a relatively brief space of time, and how these tragedies affected her life. Her first book, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (1998), opened with the following dedication: “In memory of my mother, Vanessa (1936–1985) and my sister Thomasina (1961–1993)” (dedication page). Her husband, BBC broadcaster and The Times (London) journalist John Diamond, who died of throat cancer in 2001, furthered this public knowledge, writing about both his illness and at length about Lawson in his column and his book C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1999). In Feast, Lawson discusses her personal tragedies in the introduction of the ‘Funeral Foods’ chapter, writing about a friend's kind act of leaving bags of shopping from the supermarket for her when she was grieving (451). Her first recipe in this section, for a potato topped fish pie, is highly personalised in that it is described as “what I made on the evening following my mother’s funeral” (451). Following this, she again uses her own personal experience when she notes that “I don’t think anyone wants to cook in the immediate shock of bereavement […] but a few days on cooking can be a calming act, and since the mind knows no rest and has no focus, the body may as well be busy” (451). Similarly, her recipe for the slowly hard-boiled, dark-stained Hamine Eggs are described as “sans bouche”, which she explains means “without mouths to express sorrow and anguish.” She adds, drawing on her own memories of feelings at such times, “I find that appropriate: there is nothing to be said, or nothing that helps” (455). Despite these examples of raw emotion, Lawson’s chapter is not all about grief. She also comments on both the aesthetics of dishes suitable for such times and their meanings, as well as the assistance that can be offered to others through the preparation and sharing of food. In her recipe for a lamb tagine that includes prunes, she notes, for example, that the dried plums are “traditionally part of the funeral fare of many cultures […] since their black colour is thought to be appropriate to the solemnity of the occasion” (452). Lawson then suggests this as a suitable dish to offer to someone in mourning, someone who needs to “be taken care of by you” (452). This is followed by a lentil soup, the lentils again “because of their dark colour … considered fitting food for funerals” (453), but also practical, as the dish is “both comforting and sustaining and, importantly, easy to transport and reheat” (453). Her next recipe for a meatloaf containing a line of hard-boiled eggs continues this rhetorical framing—as it is “always comfort food […] perfect for having sliced on a plate at a funeral tea or for sending round to someone’s house” (453). She adds the observation that there is “something hopeful and cheering about the golden yolk showing through in each slice” (453), noting that the egg “is a recurring feature in funeral food, symbolising as it does, the cycle of life, the end and the beginning in one” (453). The next recipe, Heavenly Potatoes, is Lawson’s version of the dish known as Mormon or Utah Funeral potatoes (Jensen), which are so iconic in Utah that they were featured on one of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games souvenir pins (Spackman). This tray of potatoes baked in milk and sour cream and then topped with crushed cornflakes are, she notes, although they sound exotic, quite familiar, and “perfect alongside the British traditional baked ham” (454), and reference given to an earlier ham recipe. These savoury recipes are followed by those for three substantial cakes: an orange cake marbled with chocolate-coffee swirls, a fruit tea loaf, and a rosemary flavoured butter cake, each to be served sliced to mourners. She suggests making the marble cake (which Lawson advises she includes in memory of the deceased mother of one of her friends) in a ring mould, “as the circle is always significant. There is a cycle that continues but—after all, the cake is sliced and the circle broken—another that has ended” (456). Of the fruitcake, she writes “I think you need a fruit cake for a funeral: there’s something both comforting and bolstering (and traditional) about it” (457). This tripartite concern—with comfort, sustenance and tradition—is common to much writing about funeral foods. Cookbooks from the American South Despite this English example, a large proportion of cookbook writing about funeral foods is in American publications, and especially those by southern American authors, reflecting the bountiful spreads regularly offered to mourners in these states. This is chronicled in novels, short stories, folk songs and food memoirs as well as some cookery books (Purvis). West’s memoir Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life (2000) has a chapter devoted to funeral food, complete with recipes (132–44). West notes that it is traditional in southern small towns to bring covered dishes of food to the bereaved, and that these foods have a powerful, and singular, expressive mode: “Sometimes we say all the wrong things, but food […] says, ‘I know you are inconsolable. I know you are fragile right now. And I am so sorry for your loss’” (139). Suggesting that these foods are “concern and sympathy in a Pyrex bowl” (139), West includes recipes for Chess pie (a lemon tart), with the information that this is known in the South as “funeral pie” (135) and a lemon-flavoured slice that, with a cup of tea, will “revive the spirit” (136). Like Lawson, West finds significance in the colours of funeral foods, continuing that the sunny lemon in this slice “reminds us that life continues, that we must sustain and nourish it” (139). Gaydon Metcalf and Charlotte Hays’s Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (2005), is one of the few volumes available dedicated to funeral planning and also offers a significant cookery-focused section on food to offer at, and take to, funeral events. Jessica Bemis Ward’s To Die For: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales from the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia (2004) not only contains more than 100 recipes, but also information about funeral customs, practical advice in writing obituaries and condolence notes, and a series of very atmospheric photographs of this historic cemetery. The recipes in the book are explicitly noted to be traditional comfort foods from Central Virginia, as Ward agrees with the other writers identified that “simplicity is the by-word when talking about funeral food” (20). Unlike the other examples cited here, however, Ward also promotes purchasing commercially-prepared local specialties to supplement home-cooked items. There is certainly significantly more general recognition of the specialist nature of catering for funerals in the USA than in Australasia. American food is notable in stressing how different ethnic groups and regions have specific dishes that are associated with post-funeral meals. From this, readers learn that the Amish commonly prepare a funeral pie with raisins, and Chinese-American funerals include symbolic foods taken to the graveside as an offering—including piles of oranges for good luck and entire roast pigs. Jewish, Italian and Greek culinary customs in America also receive attention in both scholarly studies and popular American food writing (see, for example, Rogak, Purvis). This is beginning to be acknowledged in Australia with some recent investigation into the cultural importance of food in contemporary Chinese, Jewish, Greek, and Anglo-Australian funerals (Keys), but is yet to be translated into local mainstream cookery publication. Possible Publishing Futures As home funerals are a growing trend in the USA (Wilson 2009), green funerals increase in popularity in the UK (West, Natural Burial), and the multi-million dollar funeral industry is beginning to be questioned in Australia (FCDC), a more family or community-centered “response to death and after-death care” (NHFA) is beginning to re-emerge. This is a process whereby family and community members play a key role in various parts of the funeral, including in planning and carrying out after-death rituals or ceremonies, preparing the body, transporting it to the place of burial or cremation, and facilitating its final disposition in such activities as digging the grave (Gonzalez and Hereira, NHFA). Westrate, director of the documentary A Family Undertaking (2004), believes this challenges us to “re-examine our attitudes toward death […] it’s one of life’s most defining moments, yet it’s the one we typically prepare for least […] [and an indication of our] culture of denial” (PBS). With an emphasis on holding meaningful re-personalised after-disposal events as well as minimal, non-invasive and environmentally friendly treatment of the body (Harris), such developments would also seem to indicate that the catering involved in funeral occasions, and the cookbooks that focus on the provision of such food, may well become more prominent in the future. References [AHF] Australian Heritage Funerals. “After the Funeral.” Australian Heritage Funerals, 2013. 10 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.ahfunerals.com.au/services.php?arid=31›. Ash, Romy. “The Taste of Sad: Funeral Feasts, Loss and Mourning.” Voracious: Best New Australian Food Writing. Ed. Paul McNally. 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AbstractInternational social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and performed ‘soft but independent’ Chinese rural female image, is constructed by a social media influencer Li Ziqi with affective associations. At a conceptual and practical level, the findings of this study contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussions on how China engages with the globalized world through cultural diplomacy from the bottom-up, while existing research primarily takes a top-down approach.