Search results for: overseas chinese

Authors: Lei Qin

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Culture has long been recognized as a possible reason to influence travelers’ decisions, which explains why travelers in different countries make distinct decisions. Cultural distance is a concept illustrating how much difference there is between travelers’ home culture and that of the destination, but the research in distinguishing short-and-long haul travel destinations is limited. This study explored the research gap by examining the impact of cultural distance on Chinese travelers’ intentions to visit short-haul and long-haul destinations, respectively. Six cultural distance measurements, including five measurements calculated from secondary database (Kogut & Singh, Developed Kogut & Singh, Euclidean distance Index (EDI), world value survey index (WVS), social axioms measurement (SAM)) and perceived cultural distance (PCD) collected from the primary survey. Of the six measurements, culture distance has the opposite impact on Chinese outbound travelers’ intentions in the short-haul and long haul. For short-haul travel, travelers’ intentions for traveling can be positive influenced by cultural distance; a possible reason is that travelers’ novelty-seeking satisfaction is greater than the strangeness obtained from overseas regions. For long-haul travel, travelers’ intentions for traveling can be negative influenced by cultural distance, a possible explanation is that travelers’ uncertainty, risk, and language concerns of farther destinations.

Keywords: cultural distance, intention, outbound travel, short-long haul

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Authors: Xiaoling Dai

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Many Chinese artists have used digital photography to create works with features of Chinese landscape paintings since the 20th century. The ‘New Mountains and Water’ works created by digital techniques reflect the fusion of photographic techniques and traditional Chinese aesthetic thoughts. Borrowing from Chinese landscape paintings in the Song Dynasty, the Chinese photographer Yao Lu uses digital photography to reflect contemporary environmental construction in his series New Landscapes. By portraying a variety of natural environments brought by urbanization in the contemporary period, Lu deconstructs traditional Chinese paintings and reconstructs contemporary photographic practices. The primary object of this study is to investigate how Chinese photographer Yao Lu redefines and re-interprets the relationship between tradition and contemporaneity. In this study, Yao Lu’s series work New Landscapes is used for photo elicitation, which seeks to broaden understanding of the development of Chinese landscape photography. Furthermore, discourse analysis will be used to evaluate how Chinese social developments influence the creation of photographic practices. Through visual and discourse analysis, this study aims to excavate the relationship between tradition and contemporaneity in Lu’s works. According to New Landscapes, the study argues that in Lu’s interpretations of landscapes, tradition and contemporaneity are seen to establish a new relationship. Traditional approaches to creation do not become obsolete over time. On the contrary, traditional notions and styles of creation can shed new light on contemporary issues or techniques.

Keywords: Chinese aesthetics, Yao Lu, new landscapes, tradition, contemporaneity

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Authors: Meilee Shen

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Buddhist nuns in Taiwan have shouldered various responsibilities in educational, cultural, economic, and social aspects that transforms and transcends Chinese Buddhism to a higher level in Taiwan and overseas. In the recent years, Nuns in Taiwan have formed various associations to reach their goals and satisfy their needs. This research will focus on the following: 1. How to distinguish a Buddhist organization from temple? 2. Whether the forming of female Buddhist organizations reveals religious purpose or gender conflict in Buddhism? 3. How can nuns in Taiwan be unified together to establish their identification? This paper will mainly study on the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association (CBBA) because they have gained allies together to work for religious causes and social needs since 1996. However, with a mission to promote female practitioners’ role in Buddhist circle, CBBA did not contribute much to the gender issue in Buddhism. The research found that CBBA did not achieve their goal to unite nuns in Taiwan because they failed to support nuns' education and did not recruit young and highly educated ones as CBBA's faculties. In conclusion, the research suggests i) to connect with other Buddhist organizations in order to achieve the dream of unity, ii) to fill the generation gap by overturn hierarchical system in Buddhist community and create a new environment for new generation to grow, iii) to shift financial contribution from social charity to nuns’ education to promote female role in Buddhism in the future.

Keywords: Bhikkhuni in Taiwan, Bhikkhuni population and education, Buddhism in Taiwan, Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association

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Authors: Qi Wang

Abstract:

Chinese has become a powerful worldwide language and millions of learners are studying it all over the words. Chinese is a tone language with unique meaningful characters, which makes foreign learners master it with more difficulties. On the other hand, as each foreign language, the learners of Chinese first will learn the basic Chinese Sound Structure (the initials and finals, tones, Neutral Tone and Tone Sandhi). It’s quite common that in the following studies, teachers made a lot of efforts on drilling and error correcting, in order to help students to pronounce correctly, but ignored the training of suprasegmental features (e.g. stress, intonation). This paper analysed the oral data based on our graduation students (two-year program) from 2006-2013, presents the intonation pattern of our graduates to speak Chinese as second language -high and plain with heavy accents, without lexical stress, appropriate stop endings and intonation, which led to the misunderstanding in different real contexts of communications and the international official Chinese test, e.g. HSK (Chinese Proficiency Test), HSKK (HSK Speaking Test). This paper also demonstrated how the Chinese to use the suprasegmental features strategically in different functions and moods (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory and rhetorical intonations) in order to train the learners to achieve better Communicative Performance.

Keywords: second language learning, suprasegmental, communication, HSK (Chinese Proficiency Test)

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Authors: Xianghan O'Dea

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This article argues an urgent need to better understand the personal experiences of Chinese top-up students studying in the UK since the number of Chinese students taking year-long top-up programmes in the UK has risen rapidly in recent years. This lack of knowledge could potentially have implications for the reputation of some UK institutions and also the attractiveness of the UK higher education sector to future international students. This longitudinal study explored the academic and social experiences of twelve Chinese top-up students in a UK institution in-depth and revealed that the students felt their experiences were influenced significantly by their surrounding contexts at the macro and meso levels, which, however, have been largely overlooked in existing research. This article suggests the importance of improving the communications between the partner institutions in China and the UK, and also providing sufficient pre-departure and after arrival support to Chinese top-up students at the institutional level.

Keywords: articulation agreements, Chinese top-up students, top-up programmes, U-curve

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Authors: Sasitorn Chetanont

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The objectives of this study are to study Chinese tourist’s Behaviors towards travel and shopping in Bangkok. The research methodology was a quantitative research. The sample of this research was 400 Chinese tourists in Bangkok chosen by the accidental sampling and the purposive sampling. Inferential Statistics Analysis by using the Chi-square statistics. As for the results of this study the researcher found that differences between personal, social and cultural information, i.e., gender, age, place of residence, educational level, occupation, income, family, and main objectives of tourism with behaviors of Chinese tourists in Bangkok towards travel and shopping in Bangkok.

Keywords: tourists’ behavior, Chinese tourists, travelling, expenses in travels

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Authors: Emily J. Winnall

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It is understood that China has the largest population of people living with dementia in the world; however, little is known about this culturally diverse community, specifically the Chinese Communities, which has been poorly represented in past British research Literature. Further research is needed to gain a greater understanding of the support needs of caregivers caring for a relative living with dementia from the Chinese background. Dementia care and caregivers in Chinese communities are less investigated. The study is a case study of two Chinese community centers and one housing support service. Semi-structured one-to-one interviews and a pilot questionnaire were used as the methods for the study. A toolkit will also be created as a document that provides guidance and signposting to health and social care services for Chinese communities. The findings identified three main themes. Caregivers do not receive any formal support from the UK health and social services, and they felt they would have benefited from getting advice on what support they could access. Furthermore, the data also identified that Chinese organisations do not have the knowledge of dementia, to be able to support those living with dementia and their families. Also, people living with dementia and their families rarely present to Chinese organisations and UK health and social care services, meaning they are not receiving the support they are entitled to or need. Additionally, the community center would like to see workshops/courses around dementia for people from Chinese backgrounds. The study concludes that people from Chinese cultural backgrounds do not have sufficient access to support from UK health and social care services. More information needs to be published that will benefit Chinese communities.

Keywords: Chinese, Chinese organisations, Dementia, family caregivers, social care

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Authors: Jianhua Wang, Ying Zhou, Han Guo

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Translation underwent culture turn for more than half a century, which brought translation and its studies beyond intra-texts. Different cultures in recent years have developed towards a translation turn, which made a great contribution to relocate national or local cultures being localized to become regional or global cultures. As China grows quickly economically integrating into the world, it becomes urgent to relate China’s story and disseminate the Chinese culture. Due to the weaknesses and drawbacks of different existing cultural translation theories for Chinese culture to go out, a new perspective on translation turn for the go-out of Chinese culture should be drawn to spread better and disseminate Chinese culture to other countries. Based on the existing cultural translation theories, the equivalence of ideology, style of the translator and agency of the support are proposed to draw a new perspective: an innovative poly-system theory for Chinese culture translation.

Keywords: cultural translation theory, Chinese culture, innovative poly system, global cultures

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Authors: Xiujuan Wang, Weiguo Wang, Lei Yu, Xue Liu

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There are many purported benefits of public bike systems, therefore, it has seen a sharp increase since 2008 in Hangzhou, China. However, there are few studies on the public bicycle system in Chinese cities. In order to make recommendations for the development of public bicycle systems, this paper analyzes the influencing factors by using the system dynamics method according to the main characteristics of Chinese cities. The main characteristics of Chinese cities lie in the city size and process of urbanization, traffic mode division, demographic characteristics, bicycle infrastructure and right of way, regime structure. Finally, under the context of Chinese bike sharing systems, these analyses results can help to design some feasible strategies for the planner to the development of the public bicycles.

Keywords: engineering of communication and transportation system, bicycle, public bike, characteristics of Chinese cities, system dynamics

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Authors: Zhao Hong

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When international students study Chinese as a foreign or second language, it is important for them to form constructive viewpoints and possess an open mindset on Chinese culture. This helps them to make faster progress in their language acquisition. Observations from African students at Liaoning Institute of Science and Technology show that by integrating video-focused social networking apps such as Tiktok (“Douyin”) on a controlled basis, students raise their interest not only in making an effort in learning the Chinese language, but also in the understanding of the Chinese culture. During the last twelve months, our research group explored a teaching model using selected contents in certain classroom settings, including virtual classrooms during lockdown periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using interviews, a survey was conducted on international students from African countries at the Liaoning Institute of Science and Technology in Chinese language courses. Based on the results, a teaching model was built for Chinese language acquisition by entering the "mobile Chinese culture".

Keywords: Chinese as a foreign language, cultural education, social networking apps, teaching model

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Authors: Wanghongshu Zhou

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This study aims to explore the relationship between the L2MSS and WTC among Chinese non-English major students in order to provide pedagogical implications for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Chinese universities. By employing a mixed methods approach, we involved 103 Chinese non-English major students from a typical university in China, conducted questionnaire survey to measure their levels of L2WTC and L2MSS level, and then analyzed the correlation between the two above mentioned variables. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants to provide a deeper understanding and explanation of the questionnaire data. Findings show that 1) Chinese non-English major students’ ideal L2 self and L2 learning experience could positively predict their L2 WTC in EFL class; 2) Chinese non-English major students’ ought-to L2 self might have no significant impact on their L2 WTC in EFL class; and 3) self-confidence might be another main factor that will influence Chinese non-English major students’ L2 WTC in EFL class. These findings might shed light on the second language acquisition field and provide pedagogical recommendations for pre-service as well as in-service EFL teachers.

Keywords: L2 willingness to communicate, L2 motivation, self-confidence, Chinese non-English major students

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Authors: Qian Wang

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In this study, Chinese highly educated women referred to those women who are currently doing their Ph.D. studies, and those who have already had Ph.D. degrees. In ancient Chinese society, women were subordinated to men. The only gender role of women was to be a wife and a mother. With the rapid development of China, women are encouraged to pursue higher education. As a result of this, the number of highly educated women is growing very quickly. However, people, especially men, believe that highly educated women are challenging the traditional image of Chinese women. It is thus believed that highly educated women are very different with the traditional women. They are demonstrating an image of independent and confident women with promising careers. Plus, with the reinforcement of mass media, highly educated women are regarded as non-traditional women. People stigmatize them as the 'third gender' on the basis of male and female. Now, the 'third gender' has become a gender stereotype of highly educated women. In this study, 20 participants were interviewed to explore their perceptions of self and how these highly educated women respond to the stereotype. The study finds that Chinese highly educated women are facing a variety of problems and difficulties in their daily life, and they believe that one of the leading causes is the contradiction between patriarchal values and the views of gender equality in contemporary China. This study gives rich qualitative data in the research of Chinese women and will help to extend the current Chinese gender studies.

Keywords: Chinese highly educated women, gender stereotype, self, the ‘third gender’

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Authors: Yuxi Wang, Xuan Gao

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Traditional Chinese medicine has been used in the treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD) for centuries, and in recent years, the research data on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine through clinical trials has gradually increased to explore its real efficacy and internal pharmacology. However, due to the complexity of traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions, the efficacy of each component is difficult to clarify, and pharmacological research is challenging. This study aims to systematically review and clarify the clinical efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of coronary heart disease through a meta-analysis. Based on PubMed, CNKI database, Wanfang data, and other databases, eleven randomized controlled trials and 1091 CHD subjects were included. Two researchers conducted a systematic review of the papers and conducted a meta-analysis supporting the positive therapeutic effect of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of CHD.

Keywords: coronary heart disease, Chinese medicine, treatment, meta-analysis

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Authors: Pei-Jun Xue, Ming-Yu Hsiao

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Chinese characters, or hanzi, represent a process of simplifying three-dimensional signs into plane signifiers. From pictograms at the beginning to logograms today, a Han linguist thus classified them into six categories known as the six categories of Chinese characters. Design is a process of signification, and cultural-creative design is a process translating ideas into design with creativity upon culture. Aiming to investigate the process of cultural-creative design transforming cultural text into cultural signs, this study analyzed existing cultural-creative products with the six categories of Chinese characters by treating such products as representations which accurately communicate the designer’s ideas to users through the categorization, simplification, and interpretation of sign features. This is a two-phase pilot study on designing cultural-creative products with the six categories of Chinese characters. Phase I reviews the related literature on the theory of the six categories of Chinese characters investigated and concludes with the process and principles of character evolution. Phase II analyzes the design of existing cultural-creative products with the six categories of Chinese characters and explores the conceptualization of product design.

Keywords: six categories of Chinese characters, cultural-creative product design, cultural signs, cultural product

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Authors: Woon Lam Ng.

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This paper explores the basic structures of Chinese calligraphy brushwork, its textures, its characteristic forms, and how its strength can be incorporated into 3d animation. It investigates how these structures could create visual simplification and suggest movement. The conceptual difference between realistic rendering and the Chinese calligraphic concept of simplification is discussed. With the help of the Python programmable environment in Maya, the concept of Chinese calligraphy in 3d space and its idea of visual simplification and abstraction were explored. The work demonstrates how the Chinese calligraphic brushwork could suggest the dynamics of motion in 3d space. Some limitations of the Maya emitting process are also discussed. Possible further explorations through additional mathematical adjustments to the selected Maya shader are also suggested to enhance the presentation.

Keywords: calligraphy, brushwork, dynamics, movements

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Authors: Jin Chuhao, Chen Xiang

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In recent years, due to the rapid development of Chinese urbanization, a great deal of rural population surge into urban to make a living. This fact causes the vicious circulation of rural development including sharp decrease of agricultural labor force in rural area, the obvious increase of rural land price, the shrinking of traditional agriculture and the bigger gap between Chinese urban and rural areas. With the improvement of living condition and ideological level of the Chinese people, the use and renewal of the traditional villages are gaining more and more attention, thus agricultural cultural and creative industries appears. Basing on the investigation of practical projects, this paper discusses how the agricultural cultural and creative industries promote the sustainable development of Chinese rural areas.

Keywords: sustainable design, Chinese rural areas, renewal, agricultural cultural and creative industries

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Authors: Thuy Hanh Nguyen Thi

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Since 1940, existentialism has penetrated into China and continued to profoundly influence contemporary Chinese literature. By the method of deep reading and text analysis, this article analyzes the existential feeling in Yan Lianke’s novels through various aspects: the Sisyphus senses, the narrative rationalization and the viewpoint of the dead. In addition to pointing out the characteristics of the existential sensation in the writer’s novels, the analysis of the article also provides an insight into the nature and depth of contemporary Chinese society.

Keywords: Yan Lianke, existentialism, the existential feeling, contemporary Chinese literature

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Authors: Qi Wang

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Accurate pronunciation is the first condition of communication. Compared with the alphabetic languages, Chinese is more difficult for the foreigners to study as a second language, due to the tonal language with the meaningful characters as the written system, especially speaking. This research first presents the statistics of the typical errors of the pronunciations, based on the data of our two- year program of graduate students, which shown 90% of their speaking with strong foreign accents and no obvious change of the pitches, even if they could speak Chinese fluently. Second part, analyzed the caused reasons in the learning and teaching processes. Third part, this result of this research, based the theory of Chinese prosodic words, shown that the earlier the students get trained on prosodics at the beginning and suprasegmentals at intermediate and advanced levels, the better effects for them to communicate in Chinese as a second language.

Keywords: second language, prosodic word, foot, suprasegmental

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Authors: Xueying Li

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Different from English, it is common to observe Chinese clauses logically related in an implicit way without any conjunctions. This typological difference has posed a great challenge for Chinese-English translators, as 1) translators may interpret logical meaning in different ways when there are no conjunctions in Chinese Source Text (ST); 2) translators may have questions whether to make Chinese implicit logical meaning explicit or to remain implicit in Target Text (TT), and whether other dimensions of logical meaning (e.g., type of logical meaning) should be shifted or not. Against this background, this study examines a comprehensive arrange of Chinese-English translation choices of logical meaning to deal with this challenge in a systematic way. It compiles several ST-TT passages from a set of translation textbooks in a corpus, namely Ying Yu Bi Yi Shi Wu (Er Ji)) [Translation Practice between Chinese and English: Intermediate Level] and its supportive training book, analyzes how logical meaning in ST are translated in TT in texts across different text types with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the theoretical framework, and finally draws a system network of translation choices of logical meaning from Chinese into English. Since translators may probably think about semantic meaning rather than lexico-grammatical resources in translation, this study goes away from traditional lexico-grammatical choices, but rather describing translation choices from the semantic level. The findings in this study can provide some help and support for translation practitioners so that they can understand that besides explicitation, there are a variety of possible linguistic choices available for making informed decisions when translating Chinese logical meaning into English.

Keywords: Chinese-English translation, logical meaning, systemic functional linguistics, translation choices

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Authors: Yuh-Jen Wu, Chun-Min Lin

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Homophonic words are common in Mandarin Chinese which belongs to the tonal language family. Using homophonic cues to study foreign languages is one of the learning techniques of mnemonics that can aid the retention and retrieval of information in the human memory. When learning difficult foreign words, some learners transpose them with words in a language they are familiar with to build an association and strengthen working memory. These phonological clues are beneficial means for novice language learners. In the classroom, if mnemonic skills are used at the appropriate time in the instructional sequence, it may achieve their maximum effectiveness. For Chinese-speaking students, proper use of Chinese-English homophonic word pairs may help them learn difficult vocabulary. In this study, a database program is developed by employing Visual Basic. The database contains two corpora, one with Chinese lexical items and the other with English ones. The Chinese corpus contains 59,053 Chinese words that were collected by a web crawler. The pronunciations of this group of words are compared with words in an English corpus based on WordNet, a lexical database for the English language. Words in both databases with similar pronunciation chunks and batches are detected. A total of approximately 1,000 Chinese lexical items are located in the preliminary comparison. These homophonic word pairs can serve as a valuable tool to assist Chinese-speaking students in learning and memorizing new English vocabulary.

Keywords: Chinese, corpus, English, homophonic words, vocabulary

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Authors: Peng Yew Wong

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House prices in the Australian capital cities were at record levels subsequent to Global Financial Crisis (GFC) 2008 and many believed that foreign investors, especially the Chinese investors, were the main reason for the Australian capital cities’ house prices escalation. This research conducted an Australian cross border semi-structured interviews in Shanghai, China to uncover historical evidence and emerging trend supporting the existence of a significant relationship between overseas investors and residential housing markets performance in Australia subsequent to the GFC 2008. Some unique investment strategies of private investors from China which emphasised on non-capitalist factors such as early education were identified, alongside with some insights on the significant China government policies that have incentivised the cross border investments from China. It is believed that this understanding will assist policy makers to effectively manage the overheated Australian residential property market without compromising the steady flow of FREI.

Keywords: Australian housing market, residential property, foreign real estate investment, education, China investor

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Authors: Xuefan Li, Donghua Li, Juanjuan Li

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This study explores the changes in policies toward Chinese students studying abroad in different countries during the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic periods. Interviews and questionnaire surveys were conducted with participating institutions at the China International Education Exhibition. The results indicate that institutions were impacted by the pandemic differently, with a gradual recovery in the two years following the initial outbreak. Institutions encourage and support Chinese students to resume offline studies during the post-pandemic period. The impact of the pandemic on the recruitment of Chinese students by international institutions varied, with different measures being adopted by different institutions. Compared with universities, colleges were more affected in terms of student employment rates. Some institutions were able to respond quickly and effectively to the pandemic due to their online teaching platforms. Overall, this study is expected to provide insights into the changes in policies toward Chinese students studying abroad during the pandemic and highlights the diverse responses of international institutions.

Keywords: international education, Chinese international education, COVID-19 pandemic, international institutions

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Authors: Yiwen Jin, Jing Xiao, Pinfang Su

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The idea of adapting authentic materials in language teaching is from the communicative method in the 1970s. Different from the language in language textbooks, authentic materials is not deliberately written, it is from the native speaker’s real life and contains real information, which can meet social needs. It could improve learners ' interest, create authentic context and improve learners ' communicative competence. Authentic materials play an important role in CFL（Chinese as a foreign language） classroom. Different types of authentic materials can be used in different ways during learning and teaching. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic，a lot of Chinese learners are learning Chinese without the real language environment. Although there are some well-written textbooks, there is a certain distance between textbook language materials and daily life. Learners cannot automatically fill this gap. That is why it is necessary to apply authentic materials as a supplement to the language textbook to create the real context. Chinese teachers around the world are working together, trying to integrate the resources and apply authentic materials through different approach. They apply authentic materials in the form of new textbooks, manuals, apps and short videos they collect and create to help Chinese learning and teaching. A review of previous research on authentic materials and the Chinese teachers’ attempt to adapt it in the classroom are offered in this manuscript.

Keywords: authentic materials, Chinese as a second language, developmental use of digital resources, materials development for language teaching

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Authors: Li-Jun Zheng

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The use of drums as an accompanying instrument is a common phenomenon in traditional Chinese folk rituals and musical culture. Especially, some folk rituals construct ritual-related sounds and give them ritual-specific symbolic and meaningful systems through the combination and use of multiple percussion instruments. The Yue drum(岳鼓), an asymmetrically shaped thin waist drum, is currently used in Han Chinese Shigong（师公）rituals in Guangxi, China, and is an important ritual instrument in Shigong rituals. This paper examines the use of the Yue drum and other percussion instruments in Han Chinese Shigong rituals in Guangxi, China, and shows the current status of combining instrumental accompaniment forms with human voices in Shigong rituals. Through further analysis of the musical and dance forms of Han Chinese Shigong rituals, this paper shows how Han Chinese Shigong ritual performers construct the ritual field through "sound-human-dance" and further explains the relationship between the existing and fictitious performance fields in the rituals. In addition, this paper demonstrates the relationship between Han Chinese Shigong rituals and the religious beliefs they involve, such as Taoism and Buddhism. And it further explores how performers in Han Chinese Shigong rituals use Yue drums for the dual purpose of "entertaining the gods" and "entertaining the people".

Keywords: sound research, the Han Chinese Shigong ritual, the thin waist drum, folk beliefs, ritual music

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Authors: Veronica Ramirez

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For over 40 years now, the Philippines has been supplying Household Service Workers (HSWs) globally. As a requirement of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), all Filipinos applying for overseas work undergo medical examination and a certificate of good health is submitted to the foreign employer before hiring. However, there are workplace-related health problems that develop during employment such as musculoskeletal strain or injury, back pain, hypertension and other illnesses. Some workers are in good working conditions but are on call more than 12 hours per day. There are also those who experience heavy physical work with short rest periods or time off. They can also be easily exposed to disease outbreaks and epidemics. It was the objective of this study to determine the common health problems of Filipino Overseas Service Workers and analyze their implications to wellness in the workplace. Specifically, it sought to describe the work conditions of HSWs and determine the work-related factors affecting their health. It also identified the medical care they avail of and how they perceive their health and wellness as determinants of well-being. Finally, it proposes ways to promote wellness among HSWs. This study focused on physical illnesses and does not include mental problems experienced by HSWs. Using a questionnaire, primary data were gathered online and through survey of HSW rehires who were retaking Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar at recruitment agencies. The 2010 Health Benefit Availment data from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) was also utilized. Descriptive analysis was employed on the data gathered. Key stakeholders in the migration industry were also interviewed. Previous research studies, reports and literature on migration and wellness were used as secondary data. The study found that Filipino overseas HSWs are vulnerable to physical injury and experience body pains such as back, hip and shoulder pain. Long hours of work, work hazards and lack of rest due to poor accommodations can aggravate their physical condition. Although health insurance and health care are available, HSWs are not aware how to avail them. On the basis of the findings, a Wellness Program can be designed that include health awareness, health care availment, occupational ergonomics, safety and health, work and leisure balance, developing emotional intelligence, anger management and spirituality.

Keywords: health, household service worker, overseas, wellness

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Authors: Changyin Zhou

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Verb-argument relation is a very important aspect of syntax-semantics interaction in sentence processing. Previous ERP (event related potentials) studies in this field mainly concentrated on the relation between the verb and its core arguments. The present study aims to reveal the ERP pattern of Chinese pseudo-object structures (SOSs), in which a peripheral argument is promoted to occupy the position of the patient object, as compared with the patient object structures (POSs). The ERP data were collected when participants were asked to perform acceptability judgments about Chinese phrases. Our result shows that, similar to the previous studies of number-of-argument violations, Chinese SOSs show a bilaterally distributed N400 effect. But different from all the previous studies of verb-argument relations, Chinese SOSs demonstrate a sustained anterior positivity (SAP). This SAP, which is the first report related to complexity of argument structure operation, reflects the integration difficulty of the newly promoted arguments and the progressive nature of well-formedness checking in the processing of Chinese SOSs.

Keywords: Chinese pseudo-object structures, ERP, sustained anterior positivity, verb-argument relation

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Authors: Liang Zhang

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Chinese traditional gardens are the historical and cultural treasures of the whole mankind, among which the excellent parts still have important guiding significance for modern urban design. Based on the background of eco-garden city and reality, through the analysis of various design elements of classical gardens, combined with the needs of today's urban development, starting from the three needs of landscape, energy saving and environmental protection. To explore how Chinese traditional gardens can be revitalized in modern urban planning.

Keywords: Chinese traditional gardens, eco-garden city, modern urban planning, urban development

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Authors: Chak Kwong Lau

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Many buildings in Hong Kong are graced with enchanting works of Chinese calligraphy. An excellent example is Tao Fong Shan Christian Center founded by a Norwegian missionary, Karl Ludvig Reichelt (1877-1952) in 1930. Adorned with many inspiring works of Chinese calligraphy, the center functions as a place for the study of Christianity where people of different religions can meet to have religious discussions and intellectual exchanges. This paper examines the pivotal role played by Chinese calligraphy in creating a significant context for the center to fulfill her visions and missions. The methodology of this research involves stylistic and textual analyses of works of calligraphy, in particular through an examination and interpretation of their extended meanings in terms of architectural symbology and social and cultural contexts. Findings showed that Chinese calligraphy was effectively used as a powerful vehicle for a purposeful development of contextual Christian spirituality in Hong Kong.

Keywords: Chinese calligraphy, Hong Kong architecture, Hong Kong calligraphy, Johannes Prip-Møller, Karl Ludvig Reichelt, Norwegian missionary, Tao Fong Shan Christian Center, traditional Chinese architecture

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Authors: Hochan Seok, Woosik Jang, Seung-Heon Han

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The stagnant global construction market has intensified competition since 2008 among firms that aim to win overseas contracts. Against this backdrop, subcontractor selection is identified as one of the most critical success factors in overseas construction project. However, it is difficult to select qualified subcontractors due to the lack of evaluation standards and reliability. This study aims to identify the problems associated with existing subcontractor evaluations using a correlations analysis and a multiple regression analysis with pre-qualification and performance evaluation of 121 firms in six countries.

Keywords: subcontractor evaluation system, pre-qualification, performance evaluation, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis

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Authors: Xiao Yao

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The escalating tech innovation in new media culture is liberating audiences from passive consumption to more productive and critical engagement with the legacy and streaming television media. However, how fan translation is furthering the reception and interpretation of global screen stories remains the outlier of television studies. This paper will showcase the fan-based cross-cultural engagement with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in China. This is to highlight: 1) the ways marginal audiences (Chinese MCU fans) seek to sync with the recent telecinematic expansion of MCU; 2) the forensic and interpretative works done by Chinese MCU fans who persistently seek to amplify the pleasure of MCU content in their media contexts; 3) the crucial but largely unacknowledged cultural value generated by Chinese MCU fandom in the outlier of contemporary Chinese TV culture. Taken together, this study aims to further explore the notion of “translational fandom” and integrate its theorisation into the present research in television culture.

Keywords: Chinese MCU fans, cross-cultural engagement, Loki, television media, translational fandom

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