Search results for: traditional Chinese medicine supplement

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: Vera Lúcia Raposo

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The right to health care – usually known as the right to health – is recognized in many national laws and Constitutions, as well as in international human rights documents. The kind of health care that citizens are entitled to receive, especially in the framework of the National Health Service, is usually identified with conventional medicine. However, since ancient times that a different form of medicine – alternative, traditional or nonconventional medicine – exists. In recent times it is attracting increasing interest, as it is demonstrated by the use of its specific knowledge either by pharmaceutical companies either by modern health technologies. Alternative medicine refers to a holistic approach to body and mind using herbal products, animal parts and minerals instead of technology and pharmaceutical drugs. These notes contributed to a sense of distrust towards it, accusing alternative medicine of being based on superstition and ignorance. However, and without denying that some particular practices lack indeed any kind of evidence or scientific grounds, the fact is that a substantial part of alternative medicine can actually produce satisfactory results. The paper will not advocate the substitution of conventional medicine by alternative medicine, but the complementation between the two and their specific knowledge. In terms of the right to health, as a fundamental right and a human right, this thesis leads to the implementation of a wider range of therapeutic choices for patients, who should be entitled to receive different forms of health care that complement one another, both in public and private health facilities. This scenario would demand a proper regulation for alternative medicine, which nowadays does not exist in most countries, but it is essential to protect patients and public health in general and to reinforce confidence in alternative medicine.

Keywords: alternative medicine, conventional medicine, patient’s rights, right to health

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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: Qiu Jian-Rong, Li Qing-Hui, Zhan Dong, Zhang Lei

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Facing the problem of the demand of economic restructuring and risk of social economy stagnation due to the ageing of population, the Health Service Industry will play a very important role in the structure of industry in the future. During the process, the orient of Chinese sports medicine as well as the joint with preventive medicine, and the integration with data bank and cloud computing will be involved.

Keywords: China, the health service industry, mass sport, data bank

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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: Liu Yang

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Calligraphy has a unique aesthetic value in Chinese traditional culture. Calligraphy reflects the physical beauty and the dynamic beauty of things through the structure of writing and the order of strokes to standardize the style of writing. In recent years, Chinese researchers have carried out research on the appreciation of calligraphy works from the perspective of psychology, such as how Chinese people appreciate the beauty of stippled lines, the beauty of virtual and real, and the beauty of the composition. However, there is currently no domestic research on how foreigners appreciate Chinese calligraphy. People's appreciation of calligraphy is mainly in the form of visual perception, and psychologists have been working on the use of eye trackers to record eye tracking data to explore the relationship between eye tracking and psychological activities. The purpose of this experimental study is to use eye tracking recorders to analyze the eye gaze trajectories of college students with different cultural backgrounds when they appreciate the same calligraphy work to reveal the differences in cognitive processing with different cultural backgrounds. It was found that Chinese students perceived calligraphy as words when viewing calligraphy works, so they first noticed fonts with easily recognizable glyphs, and the overall viewed time was short. Foreign students perceived calligraphy works as graphics, and they first noticed novel and abstract fonts, and the overall viewing time is longer. The understanding of calligraphy content has a certain influence on the appreciation of calligraphy works by foreign students. It is shown that when foreign students who understand the content of calligraphy works. The eye tracking path is more consistent with the calligraphy writing path, and it helps to develop associations with calligraphy works to better understand the connotation of calligraphy works. This result helps us understand the impact of cultural background differences on calligraphy appreciation and helps us to take more effective strategies to help foreign audiences understand Chinese calligraphy art.

Keywords: Chinese calligraphy, eye-tracking, cross-cultural, cultural communication

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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: Xingyue Yang

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This study focused on Chinese social media stars and the relationship between their level of fame on the social media platform Sina Weibo and their sales revenue on the E-commerce platform Taobao/Tmall.com. This was viewed from the perspective of Adler’s superstardom theory and Rosen and MacDonald’s theories examining the economics of celebrities who build their audience using digital, rather than traditional platforms. Theory and empirical research support the assertion that stars of traditional media achieve popular success due to a combination of talent and market concentration, as well as a range of other factors. These factors are also generally considered relevant to the popularisation of social media stars. However, success across digital media platforms also involves other variables - for example, upload strategies, cross-platform promotions, which often have no direct corollary in traditional media. These factors were the focus of our study, which investigated the relationship between popularity, promotional strategy and sales revenue for 15 social media stars who specialised in culinary topics on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo. In 2019, these food bloggers made a total of 2076 Sina Weibo posts, and these were compiled alongside calculations made to determine each food blogger’s sales revenue on the eCommerce platforms Taobao/Tmall. Quantitative analysis was then performed on this data, which determined that certain upload strategies on Weibo - such as upload time, posting format and length of video - have an important impact on the success of sales revenue on Taobao/Tmall.com.

Keywords: attention economics, digital media, network effect, social media stars

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Authors: Lily Ye

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The contemporary fashion industry has witnessed the global rise of Chinese fashion designers. China plays more and more important role in this sector globally. One of the key debates in contemporary time is the conception of Chinese fashion. A close look at previous discussions on Chinese fashion reveals that most of them are explored through the lens of cultural knowledge and assumptions, using the dichotomous models of East and West. The results of these studies generate an essentialist and orientalist notion of Chinoiserie and Chinese fashion, which sees individual designers from China as undifferential collective members marked by a unique and fixed set of cultural scripts. This study challenges this essentialist conceptualization and brings fresh insights to the discussion of Chinese fashion identity against the backdrop of globalisation. Different from a culturalist approach to researching Chinese fashion, this paper presents an alternative position to address the research agenda through the mobilisation of Giddens’ (1991) theory of reflexive identity formation, privileging individuals’ agency and reflexivity. This approach to the discussion of identity formation not only challenges the traditional view seeing identity as the distinctive and essential characteristics belonging to any given individual or shared by all members of a particular social category or group but highlights fashion designers’ strategic agency and their role as fashion activist. This study draws evidence from a textual analysis of published stories of a group of established Chinese designers such as Guo Pei, Huishan Zhang, Masha Ma, Uma Wang, and Ma Ke. In line with Giddens’ concept of 'reflexive project of the self', this study uses a narrative methodology. Narratives are verbal accounts or stories relating to experiences of Chinese fashion designers. This approach offers the fashion designers a chance to 'speak' for themselves and show the depths and complexities of their experiences. It also emphasises the nuances of identity formation in fashion designers, whose experiences cannot be captured in neat typologies. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) is adopted to identify and investigate common themes across the whole dataset. At the centre of the analysis is individuals’ self-articulation of their perceptions, experiences and themselves in relation to culture, fashion and identity. The finding indicates that identity is constructed around anchors such as agency, cultural hybridity, reflexivity and sustainability rather than traditional collective categories such as culture and ethnicity. Thus, the old East-West dichotomy is broken down, and essentialised social categories are challenged by the multiplicity and fragmentation of self and cultural hybridity created within designers’ 'small narratives'.

Keywords: Chinoiserie, fashion identity, fashion activism, narrative inquiry

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Authors: Wai Ha Leung

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Mother tongue language (MTL) curriculum is core to school education in most countries/regions' school curriculum. Through mother tongue language learning, students are expected to enhance their understanding of the nation's culture and foster the sense of cultural and ethnic identity. However, MTL education in Hong Kong is complicated by the colonial history. This study examines Hong Kong Chinese language teachers' perceptions of MTL education, and the implication on MTL curriculum development. The questionnaire was administrated to 97 teachers, and interviews were carried out on 17 teachers. Usually, MTL is both the tool with which knowledge and skills are taught and learned and the vehicle for students to learn about the traditions of the countries' literature and culture. In Hong Kong, 95% of the population is of Chinese descent. Traditionally, education in China was a mixture of philosophy, history, politics and literacy. Chinese as an MTL subject in pre-colonial Hong Kong has always been assigned the mission of developing students' cultural identity in addition to the development of linguistic proficiency. During the colonial period, the Chinese Language curriculum shifted to be more language skills based with less emphasis on Chinese culture and moral education. After the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, although a new curriculum was implemented in 2002, teaching and learning in school as well as public examinations seem to be remaining language skills oriented instead of culturally based. This deviation from the trend of both Chinese traditional education and global mother tongue language education makes some Chinese language teachers feel confused. In addition, there is comment that in general Hong Kong students' Chinese language proficiency is becoming weaker and weaker in recent years. Thus, effectiveness of the skills oriented language curriculum has come under question. How a language teacher views the aims and objectives of the language subject he or she is teaching has a direct effect on the curriculum delivery and pedagogies used. It is, therefore, important to investigate what is the language teachers' perception of MTL education, and whether the current school curriculum can meet the teachers' expectation as well as achieve the aims of MTL education. Given this context, this study explored the views of Hong Kong Chinese language teachers on MTL education. The data indicate that teachers showed a strong resentment towards the current curriculum. Results may have implications on mother tongue language curriculum development.

Keywords: Chinese language education, curriculum development, mother tongue language education, teachers' perception

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Authors: Arunporn Itharat, Kamonmas Srikwan, Srisopa Ruangnoo, Pakakrong Thongdeeying

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Background: The rhizomes of Smilax glabra (SG) has long been used in Traditional Chinese and Thai herbal medicine to treat a variety of infectious diseases and immunological disorders. Objective: To investigate the in vitro anti-allergic activities of crude extracts and pure isolated flavonoid compounds from SG by determination of inhibitory effects on antigen-induced release of β-hexosaminidase from RBL-2H3 cells. Methods: The in vitro inhibitory effects of crude aqueous and organic extracts on beta-hexosaminidase release in RBL-2H3 cells were evaluated as an in vitro indication of possible anti-allergic activity in vivo. Bioassay-guided fractionation of extracts was used to isolate flavonoid compounds from the ethanolic extracts. Results: The 95% and 50% ethanolic extracts of SG showed remarkably high anti-allergic activity, with IC50 values of 5.74 ± 2.44 and 23.54 ± 4.75 μg/ml, much higher activity than that for Ketotifen (IC50 58.90 μM). The water extract had negligible activity (IC50 > 100 μg/ml). The two isolated flavonols, Engeletin and Astilbin, showed weak anti-allergic activity, IC50 values 97.46 ± 2.04 and > 100 μg/ml, respectively. Conclusions: The 95% and 50% ethanolic extracts of SG showed strong anti-allergic activity but two flavonol constituents did not show any significant anti-allergic activity. These findings suggest that a combination of effects of various phytochemicals in crude extracts used in traditional medicine are responsible for the purported anti-allergic activity of SG herbal preparations. The plethora of constituents in crude extracts, as yet unidentified, are likely to be acting synergistically to account for the strong observed anti-allergic in vitro activity.

Keywords: Smilax glabra, anti-allergic activity, RBL-2H3 cells, flavonoid compounds

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Authors: Wan Aminah Hasbullah

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The knowledge of medicine in Malay society stemmed out from the need to remedy disease process. Such knowledge came from observations by looking at the signs on the plants which signify it uses, the doctrine of signature, and also observing what kind of animal and its parts that can be used to treat the disease. Prayers (jampi and doa’) play a very important role in the therapeutic processes addressing the ethereal part of the body. In Malay medicine, prayers were said in the heart of the Malay bomoh (medicine man) when they are first approaching the diseased person, seeking the help of Allah in accurately directing his mind into making the right diagnosis and subsequently the right choice of treatment. In the making of medicine, similar rituals were religiously followed, starting from gathering the materia medica to the final concoction of the medicine. Thus, all the materia medica and the prayers in Malay medicine were gathered and documented in the medical manuscript known as MSS 2999 Kitab Tibb. For this study, a collection of vegetative materia medica which is specialized for the women illness from this manuscript will be gathered and analysed. A medical and cultural interpretation will be highlighted to see the relationship between efficacy in traditional Malay medicine as practiced in the past and the recent practice of the modern medicine.

Keywords: vegetative, materia medica, woman illness, Malay medical manuscript

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Authors: H. Chabalala, A. Grootboom, M. Tang

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The innovative development, production, and clinical utilisation of African natural medicines requires frameworks from systematisation, innovation, registration. Afrika faces challenges when it comes to these sectors. The opposite is the case as is is evident in ancient Asian (Traditional Chinese Medicine and Indian Ayurveda and Siddha) medical systems, which are interfaced into their respective national health and educational systems. Afrikan Natural Medicines (ANMs) are yet to develop systematisation frameworks, i.e. disease characterisation and medicines classification. This paper explores classical medical systems drawn from Afrikan and Chinese experts in natural medicines. An Afrikological research methodology was used to conduct in-depth interviews with 20 key respondents selected through purposeful sampling technique. Data was summarised into systematisation frameworks for classical disease theories, patient categorisation, medicine classification, aetiology and pathogenesis of disease, diagnosis and prognosis techniques and treatment methods. It was discovered that ancient Afrika had systematic medical cosmologies, remnants of which are evident in most Afrikan cultural health practices. Parallels could be drawn from classical medical concepts of antiquity, like Chinese Taoist and Indian tantric health systems. Data revealed that both the ancient and contemporary ANM systems were based on living medical cosmologies. The study showed that African Natural Healing Systems have etiological systems, general pathogenesis knowledge, differential diagnostic techniques, comprehensive prognosis and holistic treatment regimes. Systematisation models were developed out of these frameworks, and this could be used for evaluation of clinical research, medical application including development of curriculum for high-education. It was envisaged that frameworks will pave way towards the development, production and commercialisation of ANMs. This was piloted in inclusive innovation, technology transfer and commercialisation of South African natural medicines, cosmeceuticals, nutraceuticals and health infusions. The central model presented here in will assist in curriculum development and establishment of Afrikan Medicines Hospitals and Pharmaceutical Industries.

Keywords: African Natural Medicines, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Medical Cosmology, Clinical Application

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Authors: Mohammad Soltani, Ayoub Saeidi, Nikoo Khosravi, Hanieh Nohbaradar, Seyedeh Parya Barzanjeh, Hassane Zouhal

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Exercise training and herbs supplement represent have role in the treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, it is unclear combined effects of exercise training and herbs supplements on diabetic risk markers. This study aimed to determine the effect of 12 weeks of combined exercise and broccoli supplementation on decitin-1 and insulin resistance in men with type 2 diabetes. Forty-four type 2 diabetes men (age, 48.52 ± 4.36) were randomly allocated to training -supplement (TS, n = 11), training- placebo (TP, n = 11), supplement (S, n = 11) and control- placebo (CP, n = 11) groups. The combined exercise program included 12 weeks, three sessions per week, that each session contained 45 minutes of resistance training with intensity 60-70% of one maximal repetition and 30 minutes aerobic training (running) with intensity 60-70% of maximum heart rate. In addition supplement groups consumed 10 grams of Broccoli per day for 12 weeks. Plasma Decitin-1, HOMA-IR, Insulin, glucose and body composition were assessed before and after training. Plasma Dectin-1, HOMA-IR, glucose and BMI significantly decreased in TS, TP and S groups compared with CP group (P < .05). In addition Insulin and skeletal muscles mass showed significant increase in TS and TP groups compared with S and CP groups (P < .05). It is concluded that both combined exercise training (aerobic-resistance) or broccoli supplement can improve plasma Decitin-1 and insulin resistance in two diabetic patients however combine of exercise training and broccoli supplement have more effective on these markers.

Keywords: broccoli supplements, combined training, decitin-1, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes

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Authors: Aferdita Stroka Koka, Laver Stroka, Juna Musa, Samanda Celaj

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Non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) are the most common human malignancies. About 5.4 million basal and squamous cell skin cancers are diagnosed each year in the US and new cases continue to grow. About eight out of ten of these are basal cell cancers. Squamous cell cancers occur less often. NMSC usually are treatable, but treatment is expensive and can leave scars. In 2019, 167 patients of both sexes suffering from NMSC were treated by traditional medicine. Patients who have been diagnosed with Basal Cell Carcinoma were 122 cases, Squamous Cell Carcinoma 32 cases and both of them 13 cases. Of these,122 cases were ulcerated lesions and 45 unulcerated lesions. All patients were treated with the herbal solution called NILS, which contains extracts of some Albanian plants such as Allium sativum, Jugulans regia and Laurus nobilis. The treatment is done locally, on the surface of the tumor, applying the solution until the tumor mass is destroyed and, after that, giving the necessary time to the wound to make the regeneration that coincides with the complete healing of the wound. We have prepared a collection of photos for each case. Since the first sessions, a shrinkage and reduction of the tumor mass were evident, up to the total disappearance of the lesion at the end of treatment. The normal period of treatment lasted 1 to 2 weeks, depending on the size of the tumor, then take care of it until the closure of the wound, taking the whole process from 1 to 3 months. In 7 patients, the lesion failed to be dominated by treatment and they underwent standard treatment with radiotherapy or surgery, while in 10 patients, the lesion recurred and was treated again. The aim of this survey was to put in evidence the good results obtained by treatment of NMSC with Albanian traditional medicine methods.

Keywords: local treatment, nils, NMSC, traditional medicine

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Authors: Cher Leng Lee

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The existence of multiple first-person pronouns (1PPs) in classical Chinese is an issue that has not been resolved despite linguists using the grammatical perspective. This paper proposes pragmatics as a viable solution. There is also a lack of research exploring the evolving usage patterns of 1PPs within the historical context of Chinese language use. Such research can help us comprehend the changes and developments of these linguistic elements. To fill these research gaps, we use the diachronic pragmatics approach to contrast the functions of Chinese 1PPs in three representative texts from three different historical periods: The Analects (The Spring and Autumn Period), The Grand Scribe’s Records (Grand Records) (Qin and Han Period), and A New Account of Tales of the World (New Account) (The Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Period). The 1PPs of these texts are manually identified and classified according to the pragmatic functions in the given contexts to observe their historical changes, understand the factors that contribute to these changes, and provide possible answers to the development of how wo became the only 1PP in today’s spoken Mandarin.

Keywords: Chinese language, classical Chinese, historical linguistics, pragmatics, first-person pronouns

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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: 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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Authors: R. Henry, H. Andriamboavonjy, J. B. Paulin, S. Drahy, R. Gourichon

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During past decade, Chinese monetary policy has been to maintain stability of exchange rate CNY/USD by creating parity between the two currencies. This policy, against market equilibrium, impacts the exchange rate in having low Yuan currency, and keeping attractiveness of Chinese industries. Using macroeconomic and statistic approach, the impact of such policy onto CNY/USD exchange rate is quantitatively determined. It is also pointed out how Chinese banks respect Basel III ratios, in particular the foreign exchange ratio. The main analysis is focusing on how Chinese banks will respect these ratios in the future.

Keywords: macroeconomics models, yuan floating exchange rate, basel iii, china banking system

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Authors: Chung-Kwei Wang, Kuo-Ying Lo

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The study is aimed to examine main and moderation effect of Chinese traditional social wisdom ‘Ren-qing Shi-kuon' the adjustment of social worker students during their practicum. Ren-qing Shi-ku as a social wisdom has been emphasized by collective-oriented Chinese society for thousand years. Based on interview and literature review, we operationalized the concept as four factors, including ‘harmonious interaction’, ‘understanding and tolerance’, ‘empathetic communication’ and ‘rule abiding’. We administer the scale to 96 social worker senior students before their summer practicums begins and collect their response on emotion labor, emotional exhaustion, work load, work satisfaction. We also ask their supervisors rated their performance on empathy, interpersonal relationships, performance on practicum and their Ren-qing Shi-ku performance. Results indicated that self-ratings of students on Ren-qing Shi-ku scale are correlated with rating from their supervisors. Students who have higher Ren-qing Shi-ku have better adjustment and higher ratings from their supervisor. Ren-qing Shi-ku also moderate effects of surface acting labor and work load on emotional exhaustion and work satisfaction. However, Ren-qing Shi-ku seems more beneficial under low work load situations. The finding of this study suggested traditional social skill training might be very effective for social service providers in a collective-oriented culture.

Keywords: emotion labor, ren-qing shi-ku, emotional exhaustion, work satisfaction and performance

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Authors: Xinyu Chen

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This article reviews Chinese psychoanalytic theorist, Dr. Huo Datong’s notion, the complex of generation, around which Huo conceptualizes a localized set to recapitulate the unconscious structure of Chinese people. Psychoanalysis underwent constant localization influenced by the socio-cultural milieu and endeavored by scholars receiving training backgrounds from different psychoanalytic schools. Dr. Huo Datong is one of the representatives with a Sino-French background of psychoanalytic training, whose enterprise has demonstrated psychoanalysis's cultural and ideological accommodability. Insufficient academic attention has been paid to this concept as the core of Huo’s re-framework. This notion is put forward by sharing a western psychoanalytic reading of Chinese mythologies to contour Chinese unconsciousness. Regarding Huo’s interpretation of the Chinese kinship network as the basis to propose an omnipotent symbolic mother rather than an Oedipal father, this article intends to review this notion in terms of its mythological root to evaluate the theoretical practicality.

Keywords: psychoanalysis, China, Huo Datong, mythology

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Authors: Saiping An

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The spells in Chinese Buddhism are often regarded by current scholarship as syllables with mystical power, as a ritual and practice of oral chanting, or as texts engraved on cultural relics. This study hopes to point out that the spell as a kind of behavior and material also provokes the believers to interpret its soteriology with various Buddhist doctrines and philosophies. It will analyze Mahāvairocana Tantra which is the main classic of the tradition regarded by the academic circles as 'Esoteric Buddhism', two annotations of these scriptures composed in the Tang and Liao Dynasty respectively, as well as some works of monks and lay Buddhists in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. It aims to illustrate that spells in Chinese Buddhism are not simply magical voices and the words engraved on the cultural relics; they have also enriched the doctrines and thoughts of Chinese Buddhism. Their nature and soteriological methods are far more abundant than current academic circles have revealed.

Keywords: spell, Chinese Buddhism, philosophy, Buddhist doctrines

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Authors: Dan Xie

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The use of discourse markers (DMs) can play a crucial role in representing discourse interaction and pragmatic competence. Learners’ use of DMs and differences between native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) in the use of various DMs have been the focus of considerable research attention. However, some commonly used DMs, such as you know, have not received as much attention in comparative studies, especially in the Chinese context. This study analyses data in two corpora (COLSEC and Spoken BNC 2014 (14-25)) to investigate how Chinese learners differ from NNSs in their use of the DM you know and its functions in speech. The results show that there is a significant difference between the two corpora in terms of the frequency of use of you know. In terms of the functions of you know, the study shows that six functions can all be present in both corpora, although there are significant differences between the five functional dimensions, especially in introducing a claim linked to the prior discourse and highlighting particular points in the discourse. It is hoped to show empirically how Chinese learners and NSs use DMs differently.

Keywords: you know, discourse marker, native speaker, Chinese learner

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Authors: Yimeng Zhang

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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a prevalent mental health condition with a substantial economic impact and limited treatment options. Acupuncture has gained attention as a promising non-pharmacological intervention for alleviating depressive symptoms. However, its mechanisms and clinical effectiveness remain incompletely understood. This meta-analysis aims to (1) synthesize existing evidence on the mechanisms and clinical effectiveness of acupuncture for depression and (2) compare these findings with pharmacological interventions, providing insights for future research. Evidence from animal models and clinical studies indicates that acupuncture may enhance hippocampal and network neuroplasticity and reduce brain inflammation, potentially alleviating depressive disorders. Clinical studies suggest that acupuncture can effectively relieve primary depression, particularly in milder cases, and is beneficial in managing post-stroke depression, pain-related depression, and postpartum depression, both as a standalone and adjunctive treatment. Notably, combining acupuncture with antidepressant pharmacotherapy appears to enhance treatment outcomes and reduce medication side effects, addressing a critical issue in conventional drug therapy's high dropout rates. This meta-analysis, encompassing 12 studies and 710 participants, draws data from eight digital databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, CNKI, CBM, Wangfang, and CQVIP) covering the period from 2012 to 2022. Utilizing Stata software 15.0, the meta-analysis employed random-effects and fixed-effects models to assess the distribution of depression in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The results underscore the substantial evidence supporting acupuncture's beneficial effects on depression. However, the small sample sizes of many clinical trials raise concerns about the generalizability of the findings, indicating a need for further research to validate these outcomes and optimize acupuncture's role in treating depression.

Keywords: Chinese medicine, acupuncture, depression, meta-analysis

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Authors: Marta Blavia

Abstract:

Magiciens de la terre, organized in 1989 by the Centre Pompidou, became 'the first worldwide exhibition of contemporary art' by presenting artists from Western and non-Western countries, including three Chinese artists. For the first time, West turned its eyes to other countries not as exotic sources of inspiration, but as places where contemporary art was also being created. One year later, Chine: demain pour hier was inaugurated as the first Chinese avant-garde group-exhibition in Occident. Among the artists included was Cai Guo-Qiang who, like many other Chinese artists, had left his home country in the eighties in pursuit of greater creative freedom. By exploring artistic non-Western perspectives, both landmark exhibitions questioned the predominance of the Eurocentric vision in the construction of history art. But more than anything else, these exhibitions laid the groundwork for the rise of the so-called phenomenon 'global contemporary art'. All the same time, 1989 also was a turning point in Chinese art history. Because of the Tiananmen student protests, The Chinese government undertook a series of measures to cut down any kind of avant-garde artistic activity after a decade of a relative openness. During the eighties, and especially after the Tiananmen crackdown, some important artists began to leave China to move overseas such as Xu Bing and Ai Weiwei (USA); Chen Zhen and Huang Yong Ping (France); or Cai Guo-Qiang (Japan). After emigrating abroad, Chinese overseas artists began to develop projects in accordance with their new environments and audiences as well as to appear in numerous international exhibitions. With their creations, that moved freely between a variety of Eastern and Western art sources, these artists were crucial agents in the emergence of global contemporary art. As other Chinese artists overseas, Cai Guo-Qiang’s career took off during the 1990s and early 2000s right at the same moment in which Western art world started to look beyond itself. Little by little, he developed a very personal artistic language that redefines Chinese ideas, symbols, and traditional materials in a new world order marked by globalization. Cai Guo-Qiang participated in many of the exhibitions that contributed to shape global contemporary art: Encountering the Others (1992); the 45th Venice Biennale (1993); Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1997), or the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), where he recreated the Chinese monumental social realist work Rent Collection Courtyard that earned him the Golden Lion Award. By examining the different stages of Cai Guo-Qiang’s artistic path as well as the transnational dimensions of his creations, this paper aims at offering a comprehensive survey on the construction of the discourse of global contemporary art.

Keywords: Cai Guo-Qiang, Chinese artists overseas, emergence global art, transnational art

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Authors: Yuhang Wang

Abstract:

As energy is vital to industrial productivity and human existence, ensuring energy security becomes a critical government responsibility. The Chinese government has implemented the energy transition to safeguard China’s energy security. Throughout this progression, the Chinese government has faced numerous obstacles. This article seeks to describe the causes of China’s energy transition barriers and the steps taken by the Chinese government to overcome them.

Keywords: energy transition, energy market, fragmentation, path dependency

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Authors: Guangyan Chen

Abstract:

This study examined Chinese teachers’ perceptions of assessing U.S. college students’ L2 (second language) Chinese oral performances at different levels. Ten oral performances were videotaped from which three were chosen as samples to represent three different proficiency levels based on professionals’ judgments according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. The three samples were shown to L2 Chinese teachers who completed questionnaires about their assessments for each speech sample. In total, 104 L2 Chinese teachers responded to each of the three samples. The Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) of the teachers’ responses revealed three similar rating criteria patterns for assessing the three levels of oral performances. The teachers’ responses to Samples 2 and 3 revealed five rating criteria: Global proficiency, Chinese conceptual framework, content richness, communication appropriateness, and communication clarity. The teachers’ responses to Sample 1 revealed four rating criteria: global proficiency, Chinese conceptual framework, communication appropriateness/content richness, and communication clarity. However, the analyses of variance (ANOVAs) revealed that the proficiency levels of the three oral performances differed significantly across all rating criteria. Therefore, the data suggests that L2 classroom teachers could use the similar rating criteria pattern to assess college-level L2 Chinese students’ oral performances at different proficiency levels.

Keywords: language assessment, L2 Chinese, oral performance, rating criteria

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Authors: Zeliha Ustun, Mustafa Ersoz

Abstract:

In the study, a traditional herbal supplement black cumin seed (Nigella sativa) oil properties has been studied to protect the main quality parameters by a new supplement application. Black cumin seed and its oil is used as a dietary supplement and preferred traditional remedy in Africa, Asia and Middle East for centuries. Now it has been consuming by millions of people in America and Europe as natural supplements and/or phytotherapeutic agents to support immune system, asthma, allergic rinnitis etc. by the scientists’ advices. With the study, it is aimed to prove that soft gelatin capsules are a new and more practical way of usage for Nigella sativa oil that has a longer stability. With the study soft gelatin capsules formulation has been developed to protect cold pressed black cumin seed oil physicochemical properties for a longer period. The product design has been developed in laboratory and implemented in pilot scale soft gelatin capsule manufacturing. Physicochemical properties (peroxide value, free fatty acids, fatty acid composition, refractive index, iodine value, saponification value, unsaponifiable matters) of Nigella sativa oil soft gelatin capsules and Nigella sativa oil in liquid form in amber glass bottles have been compared and followed for 8 months. The main parameters for capsules and liquid form found that for free fatty acids 2.29±0.03, 3.92±0.11 % oleic acid, peroxide 23.11±1.18, 27.85±2.50 meqO2/kg, refractive index at 20 0C 1.4738±0.00, 1.4737±0.00, soap 0 ppm, moisture and volatility 0.32±0.01, 0.36±0.01 %, iodine value 123.00±0.00, 122.00±0.00 wijs, saponification value 196.25±0.46, 194.13±0.35 mg KOH/g and unsaponifiable matter 7.72±0.13, 6.88±0.36 g/kg respectively. The main fatty acids are found that linoleic acid 56.17%, oleic acid 24.64%, palmitic acid 11,94 %. As a result, it is found that cold pressed Nigella sativa oil soft gelatin capsules physicochemical properties are more stable than the Nigella sativa oil stored in glass bottles.

Keywords: black cumin seed (Nigella sativa) oil, cold press, nutritional supplements, soft gelatin capsule

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Authors: Lim Pey Huan

Abstract:

Yi-Kuan-Tao has been developing in Malaysia for nearly 60 years. It was initially introduced from mainland China and later from Taiwan starting from the 1970s. Yi-Kuan-Tao was considered a 'new religion' for the local Chinese community in Malaysia in its early stages, as Chinese immigrants primarily practiced Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Catholicism upon settling in the region. The overseas propagation and development of Yi-Kuan-Tao today primarily occur through Taiwanese temples, which began spreading abroad as early as 1949. Particularly since the 1970s, with the rapid economic growth of Taiwan, various branches of Taiwanese Yi-Kuan-Tao have gained economic strength to propagate abroad, further expanding the influence of Yi-Kuan-Tao overseas. Southeast Asia is the region out from Taiwan where the propagation and development of Yi-Kuan-Tao are fastest and most concentrated. With approximately over 6 million Chinese inhabitants, Malaysia's pursuit of traditional Chinese culture has led to a flourishing interest in Yi-Kuan-Tao, particularly its advocacy of the unity of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, with an emphasis on promoting Confucian thought. Moreover, Taiwan's rapid economic development since the 1970s has enabled Yi-Kuan-Tao to allocate significant human and financial resources for external propagation efforts. Additionally, Malaysia's government has adopted a relatively tolerant policy towards religion since that time, further fostering the flourishing development of Yi-Kuan-Tao in Malaysia. Furthermore, this thesis aims to strengthen the lineage and continuity of the Yi-Kuan-Tao tradition, particularly the branch of Fa Yi Chong De, through the perspective of Heavenly Mandate (天命). By examining the different origins and ethnic backgrounds, it investigates how the Malaysian Chinese community has experienced different changes through the cultural baptism of religion, thus delving into the religious influence of Yi-Kuan-Tao. Given that the Fa Yi Chong De Academy in Taiwan is currently in an active development and construction phase, academic works related to Yi-Kuan-Tao will lay a more solid academic foundation for the future establishment of the academy.

Keywords: initial exploration, cultural shifts, Yi-Kuan-Tao, Malaysian Chinese community

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