Search results for: characteristics of Chinese cities

Authors: Yilin Wang, Ayumi Goto

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Although most females will experience menopause due to social value habits of cultural factors, some Chinese women may lack the confidence to talk about the problems they are experiencing while going through menopause. Also, sometimes the inappropriateness of medical terminology leads to panic when women face the symptoms associated with menopause. On top of that, when women avoid discussing menopause as a topic, others are less likely to pay attention to the needs of menopausal women as their bodies change. This research will compare the experience of Chinese menopausal women and diasporic Chinese women's perceptions of menopause. A qualitative study will be conducted by collecting and analyzing experiences and perceptions to compare differences in women's perceptions of menopause, considering cultural and social factors. In addition, the study will gather information on the differences in the conceptualization of menopause between the Chinese and Canadian medical fields. Co-design sessions will be held to establish how to bring menopause to the attention of people other than women. Furthermore, a support network for menopause women will be created through these co-design sessions. It is hoped that this research will contribute to a proper understanding of menopause and provide support for Chinese women. This research is built upon feminist standpoint theory and inclusive design theory. The results of this study will be presented in this paper.

Keywords: menopause, feminist standpoint theory, Chinese national & diasporic women, inclusive design

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Authors: Sinming Law

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Many Chinese families face many difficulties in maintaining their heritage language for their children in English-dominant societies. This article first looks at the losses from monolingualism and benefits of bilingualism. Then, it explores the common methods used today in teaching Chinese. We conclude that families and community play an indispensable role in their children’s acquisition. For children to acquire adequate proficiency in the language, educators should inform families about this topic and partner with them. Families can indeed be active in the process. Hence, the article further describes a guide designed and written by the author to accommodate the needs of parents. It can be used as a model for future guides. Further, the article recommends effective media routes by which families can have access to similar guides.

Keywords: children learning Chinese, biliteracy and bilingual acquisition, family and community support, heritage language maintenance

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Authors: Ahmed M. Jihad

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The paper presents the concept of sustainable development, and the role of geographic techniques in the design, planning and presentation of maps of smart cities with geographical vision, and the identification of programs and tools, and models of maps of Arab cities, is the problem of research in how to apply, process and experience these programs? What is the role of geographic techniques in planning and mapping the optimal place for these cities? The paper proposes an addition to the designs of Iraqi cities, as it can be developed in the future to serve as a model for interactive smart cities by developing its services. The importance of this paper stems from the concept of sustainable development dynamic which has become a method of development imposed by the present era in rapid development to achieve social balance and specialized programs in draw paper argues that ensuring sustainable development is achieved through the use of information technology. The paper will follow the theoretical presentation of the importance of the concept of development, design tools and programs. The paper follows the method of analysis of modern systems (System Analysis Approach) through the latest programs will provide results can be said that the new Iraqi cities can be developed with smart technologies, like some of the Arab and European cities that were newly created through the introduction of international investment, and therefore Plans can be made to select the best programs in manufacturing and producing maps and smart cities in the future.

Keywords: geographic techniques, planning the cities, smart cities, sustainable development

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Authors: Zhaohui Tian

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China’s growing and deepening engagement in Africa has attracted numerous controversial debates on Chinese-African social-racial relations both in the media and academia. Most research tends to discuss this issue and the tensions involved at the state level, but limited attention has been given to the individual relating processes of those two racial groups from an intercultural politeness evaluation angle. Thus, taking Kenya as a country focus and putting it under recent perspectives on pragmatics and politeness, this study explores the Chinese-Kenyan workplace relating experience in Chinese-owned companies with the aim to offer new insights on Chinese-African social-racial tensions. The original data were collected through 25 interviews from 29 Chinese and Kenyan participants working in different Chinese companies and industries, some of which had been later on converted into 182 short story data in order to better capture the process and content dimensions of their experiences using Spencer &Kádár’s politeness evaluation model. Both interview and story data were analysed in MAXQDA to understand the personal relating process and the criteria they were drawing from when making evaluative judgements of their relations. The result particular draws attention to tensions around goals, rights, and obligations, and social-moral dimensions that had been underrepresented in intercultural and pragmatics literature. The study offers alternative empirical insights into Chinese-Kenyan relations from an intercultural politeness management perspective and the possible mismatches of the evaluative criteria that potentially cause tension in this context.

Keywords: chinese-kenyan, evaluation, relating, workplace

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Authors: Man-Ching Yu

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In Chinese music, pentatonic collection is central in constituting all the harmonic and melodic elements; most of the traditional Chinese musicians particularly emphasize the importance of the smoothness between pentatonic collections when one collection modulates to another collection, articulating the roles of the pentatonic common tones. On the contrary, in post-tonal Chinese music the central features of the pentatonic modulations tend to reflect a larger number of semitonal relationships with a lesser number of common tones. This paper offers an analytical account of the transformations between pentatonic collections that arise in post-tonal Chinese music by adopting the methodology of the Tonnetz, in particular, Dual Interval Space (DIS), to elaborate and reexamine pentatonicism by focusing on the transformations between pentatonic elements, especially semitonal motion and common tones. In the essay, various pentatonic passages will be analyzed by means of DIS for highlighting the transformation of the collections. It will be shown that the pentatonic collections that are in semitonal, third, and augmented fourth relationships exhibit the maximum number of semitonal shifts.

Keywords: tonnetz, pentatonicism, post-tonal Chinese music, dual interval space, transformation

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Authors: Xiaohui Pan

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As the most influential media for the dissemination of Chinese culture, films and television dramas have played cognitive orientation in guiding young audience to understand its cultural value. Taking a retrospective overview of the Chinese domestic film and television dramas in the last decade, it is tangible to notice that Westernization has become irresistible force in the presentation of Chinese youth culture, such as the rise of sensibility, publicity of subjectivity, and the resistance to mainstream discourse. However, the process of deconstruction and transition of these film and television works on Western youth culture brought about more comprehensive conflicts and integration rather than providing a panoramic interpretation to young Chinese. Issues of tradition and modernization, oriental and Western, and serious thinking and the spirit of entertainment overwhelmed those Chinese works. This study attempts to examine the mechanism of young Chinese’s resistance, compromise and re-construction in their marriages during the dynamic cultural intergration between traditional Chinese culture and Western culture. To investigate such a mechanism, this study analyzed four Chinese television dramas themed on family ethics to reveal the conflictions between two generations, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, aiming to identify their strategies of their struggles. Incorporating the theory of Scott's weapons of the weak, this study examines the dynamic model of the struggles content analysis on their hidden language and the power. The finding shows that young Chinese identified their self-awakening during the resistance. The study also finds out that the external factors might have the functions of switching the power from the strong end to the weak end. The finding of this study can provide useful insights for researchers in this area and for those in the process of exploring cultural integration issues.

Keywords: intergration, integration, resistance, youth culture

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Authors: Yuqing Sun

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Chinese has been regarded as one of the most difficult languages in learning due to its complex spelling structure, difficult pronunciation, as well as its varying forms. Since vocabulary acquisition is the basic process to acquire a language, to express yourself, to compose a sentence, and to conduct a communication, so learning the vocabulary is of great importance. However, the vocabulary contains pronunciation, spelling, recognition and application which may seem as a huge work. This may pose a question for the language teachers (language teachers in China who teach Chinese to the foreign students): How to teach them in an effective way? Traditionally, teachers have no choice but teach it all by themselves, then with the development of technology, they can use computer as a tool to help them (Computer Assisted Language Learning or CALL). Now, they move into the Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) method to guide their teaching, upon which the appraisal is convincing. It diversifies the learning material and the way of output, which can activate learners’ curiosity and accelerate their understanding. This paper will focus on actual case studies occurring in the universities in China of teaching the foreign students to learn Chinese, and the analysis of the utilization of WeChat channel as an example of MALL model to explore the active role of MALL to enhance the effectiveness of Chinese vocabulary acquisition.

Keywords: Chinese, vocabulary acquisition, MALL, case

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Authors: Marcin Adamczak

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The growth of Chinese film market and its dynamic incomparable to any other historical phenomenon has already made China the second world market and potential future leader in 2-3 years period. The growing power of Chines box-office and its future prospects is then the crucial and potentially disturbing factor for persistence of global Hollywood reality. The paper is based on market statistical data. The main findings of the analysis are defining of essential obstacles for the development of Chinese market and its foreign expansion. However, the new strategies employed by the industry (acquisitions of cinema chains abroad, blockbuster made with the involvement of figures from Hollywood star system, coproduction ties within Pacific basin) could be a successful remedy for current shortcomings. The main factor for development will be wider economical framework and maintenance of growth pace. The future state of Chinese film market will be one of the main factors shaping global film culture and film market in following decades of XXI century.

Keywords: production studies, film market, Chinese film market, distribution

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Authors: Ju May Wen, Chun Hung Lin, Eric Zhi Feng Liu

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Flow theory implies that people are persuaded by happiness. By focusing on an activity, people turn a blind eye to external factors. This study explores the influence of educational board games and fundamental Chinese language teaching on students’ learning motivation and flow experience. Fifty-three students studying Chinese language fundamental courses were used in the study. These students were divided into three groups: (1) flash card teaching group; (2) educational original board game teaching group; and (3) educational Chinese board game teaching group. Chinese language teaching was integrated with the educational board game titled ‘Transportation GO.’ The students were observed playing this game as the teacher collected quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data was collected from the learning motivation scale and flow experience scale. Qualitative data was collected through observing, recording, and visiting. The first result found that the three groups integrated with Chinese language teaching could maintain students’ high learning motivation and high flow experience. Second, there was no significant difference between the flow experience of the flash card group and the educational original board game group. Third, there was a significant difference in the flow experience and learning motivation of the educational Chinese board game group vs. the other groups. This study suggests that the experimental model can be applied to advanced Chinese language teaching. Apart from oral and literacy skills, the study of educational board games integrated with Chinese language teaching to enforce student writing skills will be continued.

Keywords: Chinese language instruction, educational board game, learning motivation, flow experience

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Authors: Obasa Joshua Ifeoluwa

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Phonetics is the foundation and most important part of language learning. This article, through an acoustic experiment as well as using Praat software, uses Yoruba students’ Chinese consonants, vowels, and tones pronunciation to carry out a visual comparison with that of native Chinese speakers. This article is aimed at Yoruba native speakers learning Chinese phonetics; therefore, Yoruba students are selected. The students surveyed are required to be at an elementary level and have learned Chinese for less than six months. The students selected are all undergraduates majoring in Chinese Studies at the University of Lagos. These students have already learned Chinese Pinyin and are all familiar with the pinyin used in the provided questionnaire. The Chinese students selected are those that have passed the level two Mandarin proficiency examination, which serves as an assurance that their pronunciation is standard. It is discovered in this work that in terms of Mandarin’s consonants pronunciation, Yoruba students cannot distinguish between the voiced and voiceless as well as the aspirated and non-aspirated phonetics features. For instance, while pronouncing [ph] it is clearly shown in the spectrogram that the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of a Chinese speaker is higher than that of a Yoruba native speaker, which means that the Yoruba speaker is pronouncing the unaspirated counterpart [p]. Another difficulty is to pronounce some affricates like [tʂ]、[tʂʰ]、[ʂ]、[ʐ]、 [tɕ]、[tɕʰ]、[ɕ]. This is because these sounds are not in the phonetic system of the Yoruba language. In terms of vowels, some students find it difficult to pronounce some allophonic high vowels such as [ɿ] and [ʅ], therefore pronouncing them as their phoneme [i]; another pronunciation error is pronouncing [y] as [u], also as shown in the spectrogram, a student pronounced [y] as [iu]. In terms of tone, it is most difficult for students to differentiate between the second (rising) and third (falling and rising) tones because these tones’ emphasis is on the rising pitch. This work concludes that the major error made by Yoruba students while pronouncing Chinese sounds is caused by the interference of their first language (LI) and sometimes by their lingua franca.

Keywords: Chinese, Yoruba, error analysis, experimental phonetics, consonant, vowel, tone

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Authors: Yajing Jiang, Jing Wu

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Residential area construction links many problems such as population resources, ecology, social values, public services and transportation in the city. After Chinese housing reform, a large number of residential area development accompanied by the loss of agricultural and ecological land. To explore the future of Chinese urban residential area, this article concentrates on how the 'Compact Settlement' behaves in improving the living environment and saving the resources. Through the research of residential area in Hangzhou, there are some determines that increasing the development intensity of the area can indeed bring some improvement in the overall environment. In conclusion, possible design alternatives are discussed for leading Chinese urban development towards a more sustainable path.

Keywords: compact city development, environmental sustainability, residential area, Hangzhou

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Authors: Han Hongmei

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University image is receiving attention because of its key role in influencing student choice, faculty loyalty, and social recognition. Therefore, all universities strive to promote their positive images. However, for most people, the positive image of a university is often from fragmented perceptual understanding. Since universities’ official websites are important channels for image promotion, a corpus approach to university profiles in their official websites can reveal holistic positive images of universities. This study aims to compare positive images of high-level universities in China and English-speaking countries based on a profile corpus of theseuniversities. It is found that the positive images revealed in these university profiles are similar, with some minor differences. The similarities are reflected in the campus environment, historical achievements, comprehensive characteristics, scientific research institutions, and diversified faculty; while the differences are reflected in their unique characteristics. Furthermore, the findings also reveal a gap between Chinese universities and high-level universities in the English-speaking countries.

Keywords: university image, positive image, corpus of university profiles, comparative analysis, high-frequency words

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Authors: Fangfei Li

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Studies on teacher feedback have produced a wide range of findings in aspects of characteristics of good feedback, factors influencing the quality of feedback and teachers’ perspectives on teacher feedback. However, perspectives from students on how they perceive and respond to teacher feedback are still under scrutiny. Especially for Chinese overseas students who come from a feedback-sparse educational context in China, they might have different experiences when engaging with teacher feedback in the UK Higher Education. Therefore, the research aims to investigate and shed some new light on how Chinese students engage with teacher feedback in the UK higher education and how teacher feedback could enhance their learning. Research questions of this study are 1) What are Chinese overseas students’ perceptions of teacher feedback in courses of the UK higher education? 2) How do they respond to the teacher feedback they obtained? 3) What factors might influence their’ engagement with teacher feedback? Qualitative case studies of five Chinese postgraduate students in a UK university have been conducted by employing various types of interviews, such as background interviews, scenario-based interviews, stimulated recall interviews and retrospective interviews to address the research inquiries. Data collection lasted seven months, covering two phases – the pre-sessional language programme and the first semester of the Master’s degree programme. Research findings until now indicate that some factors, such as tutors’ handwriting, implicit instruction and value comments, influence students understanding and internalizing tutor feedback. Except for difficulties in understanding tutor feedback, students’ responses to tutor feedback are also influenced by quantity and quality of tutor-student communication, time constraints and trust to tutor feedback, etc. Findings also reveal that tutor feedback is able to improve students’ learning in aspects of promoting reflection on professional knowledge, promoting students’ communication with peers and tutors, increasing problem awareness and writing with the reader in mind. This paper will mainly introduce the research topic, the methodological procedure and research findings gained until now.

Keywords: Chinese students, students’ perceptions, teacher feedback, the UK higher education

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Authors: Ziwen Wang

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There are close links between religion and migration. As newcomers to a foreign nation, new immigrants endured many pressures and challenges. Religion can be an important part of a migrant’s personal identity, and religious communities can offer valued connections and relationships. During the migration process, religion can undergo significant changes as migrants travel across geographical and cultural gaps and as they face new opportunities or new constraints. For those migrants who are not religious, during this unsettling time, people might become sensitive to the "sacredness", accepting its guidance, and occasionally contemplating religious conversion. This research examines the role of faith and the church in supporting new Chinese immigrants from the perspective of the social function of Christianity, utilizing Chinese immigrants in New Zealand as a case study. Through participant observation in four Chinese churches and over seventy semi-structured interviews, this research illustrates how religion has provided them with a haven and how the church provides indispensable material, spiritual, and informational resources essential for their adaptation to life in New Zealand.

Keywords: migration and religion, overseas chinese, religious capital, christianity

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Authors: Muriel Canas-Walker

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The 2012 TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is one of the most popular and influential historical dramas on Chinese television and is regularly discussed on Chinese social media such as Weibo. Set in the Qing dynasty, the 76 episodes series features palace intrigues focused on female characters. In the Forbidden City, concubines must survive the cruelty of an extreme polygamy system, constantly competing against each other. The patriarchal oppression of the women sequestred in the harem relies on fierce female competition and does not leave much room for compassion. Using Michel Foucault’s theory of power, feminist theories, and visual anthropology, this paper analyzes the complex relationships between the female characters, from their rise to power to their fall from grace, from alliances to betrayals, from sorority to sororicide. This analysis aims to understand what makes this series particularly popular with young female audiences in China and explain its importance in Chinese media.

Keywords: Chinese TV Drama, feminism, popular culture, Theory of Power

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Authors: Shu-Chen Wu

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This paper will present a study by the author which investigates Chinese teachers’ perspectives on learning at play and their teaching activities in the designed play activities. It asks the question of how Chinese teachers understand learning at play and how they design play activities in the classroom. Six kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong were invited to select and record exemplary play episodes which contain the largest amount of learning elements in their own classrooms. Applying video-stimulated interview, eight teachers in two focus groups were interviewed to elicit their perspectives on designing play activity and their teaching activities. The findings reveal that Chinese teachers have a very structured representation of learning at play, and the phenomenon of uniformity of teachers’ act was found. The contributions of which are important and useful for professional practices and curricular policies.

Keywords: learning at play, teacher involvement, video-stimulated interview, uniformity

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Authors: Lung-Lung Hu

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Ronald Dworkin offered a legal theory of ‘chain enterprise’ that all the judges in legal history altogether create a ‘law’ aiming a specific purpose. Those judges are like co-writers of a chain-story who not only create freely but also are constrained by the story made by the judges before them. The law created by Chinese traditional judges is another case, they, compared with the judges mentioned by Ronald Dworkin, have relatively narrower space of making a legal sentence according to their own discretions because the statutes in Chinese traditional law at the very beginning have been designed as panel code that leaves small room to judge’s discretion. Furthermore, because law is a representative of the authority of the government, i.e. the emperor, any misjudges and misuses deviated from the law will be considered as a challenge to the supreme power. However, different from judges as the defenders of law, Chinese litigation masters who want to win legal cases have to be offenders challenging the verdict that does not favor his or his client’s interest. Besides, litigation master as an illegal or non-authorized profession does not belong to any legal system, therefore, they are relatively freer to ‘create’ the law. According to Stanley Fish’s articles that question Ronald Dworkin and Owen Fiss’ ideas about law, he construes that, since law is made of language, law is open to interpretations that cannot be constrained by any rules or any particular legal purposes. Stanley Fish’s idea can also be applied on the analysis about the stories of Chinese litigation masters in traditional Chinese literature. These Chinese litigation masters’ legal opinions in the so-called chain enterprise are like an unexpected episode that tries to revise the fixed story told by law. Although they are not welcome to the officials and also to the society, their existence is still a phenomenon representing another version of justice different from the official’s and can be seen as a de-structural power to the government. Hence, in this present paper the language and strategy applied by Chinese litigation masters in Chinese legal stories will be analysed to see how they refute made legal judgments and challenge the official standard of justice.

Keywords: Chinese legal stories, interdisciplinary, litigation master, post-structuralism

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Authors: Sharapat Sharapat

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English language is perceived as cultural capital in many non-native English-speaking countries, and minority groups in these social contexts seem to invest in the language to be empowered and reposition themselves from the imbalanced power relation with the dominant group. This study is devoted to explore how English learning influence minority Kazakh students’ identity (re)construction at Chinese universities from the scope of ‘imagined community, investment, and identity’ theory of Norton (2013). To this end the three research questions were designed as follows: 1) Kazakh minority students’ English learning experiences at Chinese universities; 2) Kazakh minority students’ views about benefits and opportunities of English learning; 3) the influence of English learning on Kazakh minority students’ identity (re)construction. The study employs an interview-based qualitative research method by interviewing nine Kazakh minority students in universities in Xinjiang and other inland cities in China. The findings suggest that through English learning, some students have reconstructed multiple identities as multicultural and global identities, which created ‘a third space’ to break limits of their ethnic and national identities and confused identity as someone in-between. Meanwhile, most minority students were empowered by the English language to resist inferior or marginalized positions and reconstruct imagined elite identity. However, English learning disempowered students who have little previous English education in school and placed them on unequal footing with other students, which further escalated the educational inequities.

Keywords: minority in China, identity construction, multilingual education, language empowerment

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Authors: Sombol Mokhles

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This paper tries to show the prospects of utilising (big)data for enabling just the transition of diverse cities. Our key purpose is to offer a framework of applications and implications of utlising (big) data in comparing sustainability transitions across different cities. Relying on the cosmopolitan comparison, this paper explains the potential application of (big) data but also its limitations. The paper calls for adopting a data-driven and just perspective in including different cities around the world. Having a just and inclusive approach at the front and centre ensures a just transition with synergistic effects that leave nobody behind.

Keywords: big data, just sustainable transition, cosmopolitan city comparison, cities

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Authors: Gu Sihao

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The coordinated development of "ecology-production-life" in cities has been highly concerned by the country, and the transformation development and sustainable development of resource-based cities have become a hot research topic at present. As an important part of China's resource-based cities, coal resource-based cities have the characteristics of large number and wide distribution. However, due to the adjustment of national energy structure and the gradual exhaustion of urban coal resources, the development vitality of coal resource-based cities is gradually reduced. In many studies, the deterioration of ecological environment in coal resource-based cities has become the main problem restricting their urban transformation and sustainable development due to the "emphasis on economy and neglect of ecology". Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Central Government has been deepening territorial space planning and development. On the premise of optimizing territorial space development pattern, it has completed the demarcation of ecological protection red lines, carried out ecological zoning and ecosystem evaluation, which have become an important basis and scientific guarantee for ecological modernization and ecological civilization construction. Grasp the regional multiple ecosystem services is the precondition of the ecosystem management, and the relationship between the multiple ecosystem services study, ecosystem services cluster can identify the interactions between multiple ecosystem services, and on the basis of the characteristics of the clusters on regional ecological function zoning, to better Social-Ecological system management. Based on this cognition, this study optimizes the spatial function zoning of Gujiao, a coal resource-based city, in order to provide a new theoretical basis for its sustainable development. This study is based on the detailed analysis of characteristics and utilization of Gujiao city land space, using SOFM neural networks to identify local ecosystem service clusters, according to the cluster scope and function of ecological function zoning of space partition balance and coordination between different ecosystem services strength, establish a relationship between clusters and land use, and adjust the functions of territorial space within each zone. Then, according to the characteristics of coal resources city and national spatial function zoning characteristics, as the driving factors of land change, by cellular automata simulation program, such as simulation under different restoration strategy situation of urban future development trend, and provides relevant theories and technical methods for the "third-line" demarcations of Gujiao's territorial space planning, optimizes territorial space functions, and puts forward targeted strategies for the promotion of regional ecosystem services, providing theoretical support for the improvement of human well-being and sustainable development of resource-based cities.

Keywords: coal resource-based city, territorial spatial planning, ecosystem service cluster, gmop model, geosos-FLUS model, functional zoning optimization and upgrading

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Authors: Thomas Benson

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Smart cities have been heralded as multi-faceted entities which utilise information and communication technologies to enhance citizen participation. The purpose of this paper is to outline authoritative definitions of smart cities and citizen participation and investigate smart city citizen-centrism rhetoric by examining urban governance and citizen participation processes. Drawing on extant literature and official city government documents and websites, Singapore (Singapore) and Tokyo (Japan) are chosen as comparable smart city case studies. For the smart city to be truly realised, this paper concludes that smart cities must do more to incorporate genuine citizen participation mechanisms.

Keywords: citizen participation, smart cities, urban governance, Singapore, Tokyo

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Authors: Yuchao Yao

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As two of the main characteristics of Chinese demographic trends, increasing divorce rates and decreasing fertility rates both shaped the population structure in the recent decade. Figuring out to what extent can be having a child make a difference in the divorce rate of a couple will not only draw a picture of Chinese families but also bring about a new perspective to evaluate the Chinese child-breeding policies. Based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) Data 2010-2018, this paper provides a systematic evaluation of how children influence a couple’s marital stability through a series of empirical models. Using survival analysis and propensity score matching (PSM) model, this paper finds that the number and age of children that a couple has mattered in consolidating marital relationship, and these effects vary little over time; during the last decade, newly having children can in fact decrease the possibility of divorce for Chinese couples; the such decreasing effect is largely due to the birth of a second child. As this is an inclusive attempt to study and compare not only the effects but also the causality of children on divorce risk in the last decade, the results of this research will do a good summary of the status quo of divorce in China. Furthermore, this paper provides implications for further reforming the current marriage and child-breeding policies.

Keywords: divorce risk, fertility, China, survival analysis, propensity score matching

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Authors: Elvan Ender Altay, Zeynep Pirselimoglu Batman, Murat Zencirkiran

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Ancient cities are, according to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), landscape areas designed and created by people, at the same time naturally developing and constantly changing sustainable cultural landscapes. Ancient cities are the urban settlements where we can see the reflection of public lifestyle existed thousands of years ago. The conceptual and spatial traces in ancient cities, are crucial for examining the city history and its preservation. This study is intended to demonstrate the impacts of human life and physical environment on the cultural landscape. This research aims to protect and maintain cultural continuity of the ancient cities in Bursa which contain archeological and historical elements and could not majorly reach to the day because of not being protected and to show importance of landscape architecture to ensure this protection. In this context, ancient cities in Bursa were researched and a total of 7 ancient cities were identified. These ancient cities are; Apollonia, Lopadion, Nicaea, Myrleia, Cius, Daskyleion and Basilinopolis. In the next stage, the spatial performances of ancient cities were assessed by weighted criteria method. The highest score is the Nicaea Ancient City. Considering current situation of the ancient cities in Bursa, it is seen that most of them could not survive until our day due to lack of interest in these areas. As a result, according to the findings, it is a priority to create a protective band with green areas around the archaeological sites, thus adapting to nearby areas and emphasizing culture. In addition, proposals have been made to provide a transportation network that does not harm the ancient cities and the cultural landscape.

Keywords: ancient cities, Bursa, landscape, spatial performance

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Authors: Yongsheng Guo, Shuchao Li

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This study explores Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Europe and the cross-cultural cooperation between Chinese and European managers. The aim of this research is to shed light on the phenomenon of investments in developed countries from an emerging market and to gain insights into the cooperation process. A grounded theory approach is adopted, and 46 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 case companies in Germany and 13 case companies in the UK. Grounded theory models are developed from primary data and interview quotes are used to support the themes. The interviewees perceived differences between the two parties in cultural traits, management concepts, knowledge structure and resource endowment between the two parties. Chinese and European partners can take advantage of different resources and cooperate in innovative ways to improve corporate performance. Moreover, both parties appreciate different ethical and cultural characteristics and complement each other to develop a combined organizational culture. This study proposes an ethical and cultural diversity theory in international management arguing that a team with diversified values and behaviors may be more excited and motivated. This study suggests that “resource complement” and “cross-cultural cooperation” might be an advantage for international investment. Firms are encouraged to open their minds and cooperate with partners with different resources and cultures. The authorities may review the FDI policies to reduce social and political barriers.

Keywords: cross-culture, FDI, cooperation, innovation, China, Europe

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Authors: Patricia P. M. C. Lourenco, Javier Bringué Sala, Anaisa D. A. de Sena

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Almost everyone in Dramaland knows the names of big Korean stars that grace their computer screens on a roll through social media and video streaming platforms that enable awareness of Korean dramas and lifestyle at a click. A surface culture instilled with notions of belonging has redefined the meaning of friendship and challenged deep inner values. Not everyone, however, knows Chinese Dramas or their stars, which is a consequence of Dramaland's focus on Korean dramas and promoting the Korean experience. Despite a parity in terms of production quality, star power, scripts and compelling visual settings, Chinese Dramas have been playing catch up to their famous counterparts. While they might have a strong competitive soft power for international drama fans, the soft power of Korean dramas is imbued with substantial societal values that they want to share with others. Those values are portrayed in an artistic way that connects with audiences who experience loneliness in the non-virtual world contrary to the way Chinese Dramas are perceived.

Keywords: Chinese dramas, fandom, Korean dramas, participatory culture, value perception, soft power, surface culture

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Authors: Mizuno Norihito

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This study attempts to examine Japanese views of Thailand primarily in the 1920s and 1930s through the analysis of documents published by the Office of Governor-General of Taiwan (Taiwan Sotokufu) and its affiliated organizations. Japan regarded Taiwan, under its control since 1895, as a foothold to making inroads into the South, and The governor-general office was active in investigations and intelligence gathering in Southeast Asia, as well as the southern part of the Chinese continent. Documents published by the governor-general office and its related organizations, especially those in a couple of decades following the First World War, reveal that the Japanese paid attention to the presence of the-Thai-Chinese during the time period. It would not be surprising that the desiring to penetrating into the Thai market, as well as the markets of the rest of Southeast Asia, the Japanese could not ignore the presence of the Thai-Chinese because of their local economic influences. The increased Japanese concern about the Thai-Chinese toward the end of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s was, moreover, intertwined with the increased tension between China and Japan. In other words, Thailand, as well as the rest of Southeast Asia, became another arena of Sino-Japanese confrontation. The rise of nationalism against Japan in China infected the Thai-Chinese communities and threatened Japanese economic activities in the country. However, the Japanese simultaneously found out that Thai-Chinese concert with anti-Japanese in China did not necessarily match their business interests and that the Thai government’s efforts to assimilate the Thai-Chinese into the Thais society and strategic approach to Japan in the late 1930s hampered their anti-Japanese actions.

Keywords: Japanese-Thai Relations, Sino-Japanese relations, Thai Chinese, Overseas Japanese

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Authors: Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, Jun Lang

Abstract:

Numeral classifiers are common in Asian languages. Research on numeral classifiers primarily focuses on noun classifiers that quantify and individuate nominal referents. There is a scarcity of research on event quantification using verb classifiers. This study aims to understand the semantic and conceptual basis of event quantification in Chinese. From a usage-based Construction Grammar perspective, this study presents a corpus analysis of event quantification in Chinese. Drawing on a large balanced corpus of contemporary Chinese, we analyze 667 NOUN col-lexemes totaling 31136 tokens of a productive numeral classifier construction in Chinese. Using collostructional analysis of the collexemes, the results show that the construction quantifies and classifies dramatic events using a theater-based conceptual metaphor. We argue that the usage patterns reflect the cultural entrenchment of theater as in Chinese conceptualization and the construal of theatricality in linguistic expression. The study has implications for cognitive semantics and construction grammar.

Keywords: event quantification, classifier, corpus, metaphor

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Authors: Xingdu Wang, Charlie Gere, Emma Rose, Yuxuan Zhao

Abstract:

The study introduces a fresh perspective on the digital realm through an examination of the Chinese concept of Xiang, elucidating how it can build an understanding of pixels and textures on screens as digital trigrams. This concept attempts to offer an outlook on the intersection of digital technology and the natural world, thereby contributing to discussions about the harmonious relationship between humans and technology. The study looks for the ancient Chinese theory of Xiang as a key to establishing the theories and practices to respond to the problem of Contemporary Chinese technics. Xiang is a Chinese method of understanding the essentials of things through appearances, which differs from the method of science in the Westen. Xiang, the basement of Chinese visual art, is rooted in ancient Chinese philosophy and connected to the eight trigrams. The discussion of Xiang connects art, philosophy, and technology. This paper connects the meaning of Xiang with the 'truth appearing' philosophically through the analysis of the concepts of phenomenon and noumenon and the unique Chinese way of observing. Hereafter, the historical interconnection between ancient painting and writing in China emphasizes their relationship between technical craftsmanship and artistic expression. In digital, the paper blurs the traditional boundaries between images and text on digital screens in theory. Lastly, this study identified an ensemble concept relating to pixels and textures in computer vision, drawing inspiration from AI image recognition in Chinese paintings. In art practice, by presenting a fluid visual experience in the form of pixels, which mimics the flow of lines in traditional calligraphy and painting, it is hoped that the viewer will be brought back to the process of the truth appearing as defined by the 'Xiang’.

Keywords: Chinese cosmotechnics, computer vision, contemporary Neo-Confucianism, texture and pixel, Xiang

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Authors: Li Xiaoge, Wang Chaodong

Abstract:

We introduce the first Chinese Coreference Resolution Model based on BERT (CCRM-BERT) and show that it significantly outperforms all previous work. The key idea is to consider the features of the mention, such as part of speech, width of spans, distance between spans, etc. And the influence of each features on the model is analyzed. The model computes mention embeddings that combine BERT with features. Compared to the existing state-of-the-art span-ranking approach, our model significantly improves accuracy on the Chinese OntoNotes benchmark.

Keywords: BERT, coreference resolution, deep learning, nature language processing

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Authors: Li Lin, Hein Roelfsema

Abstract:

To achieve aggressive expansion goals, many Chinese companies are seeking resources and market around the world. To an increasing extent, Chinese enterprises recognized the Netherlands as their gateway to Europe Market. Yet, large cultural gaps (e.g. individualism/collectivism, power distance) may influence expat leaders’ influencing process, in turn affect intercultural teamwork. Lessons and suggestions from Chinese expat leaders could provide profound knowledge for managerial practice and future research. The current research focuses on the cultural difference between China and the Netherlands, along with leadership tactics for coping and handling differences occurring in the international business work. Exclusive 47 in-depth interviews with Chinese expat leaders were conducted. Within each interview, respondents were asked what were the main issues when working with Dutch employees, and what they believed as the keys to successful leadership in Dutch-Chinese cross-cultural workplaces. Consistent with previous research, the findings highlight the need to consider the cultural context within which leadership adapts. In addition, the findings indicated the importance of recognizing and applying the cultural advantages from which leadership originates. The results address observation ability as a crucial key for Chinese managers to lead Dutch/international teams. Moreover, setting a common goal help a leader to overcome the challenges due to cultural differences. Based on the analysis, we develop a process model to illustrate the dynamic mechanisms. Our study contributes to the better understanding of transference of management practices, and has important practical implications for managing Dutch employees.

Keywords: Chinese managers, Dutch employees, leadership, interviews

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