The RAS Journal is now receiving submissions for the 2022 edition. Authors intending to submit an article must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 31 March 2022, and completed articles will be due 15 June 2022. The journal generally comprises original unpublished research and observations, essays, book reviews, and other items of interest to our readership. Translations from Chinese into English are also welcome. The scope of the journal is broad: we hope the journal will inform readers about life in China and Asia – past, present and future. Although authors are welcome to write about any subject of interest to Asia scholars, please note that material contravening the guidelines established by the Chinese government for speech and publications will not be accepted. For more information about the Royal Asiatic Society and the Journal, please visit our website.
You can view past examples of the RAS Journal at the Royal Asiatic Society China Library, located in The House of Roosevelt, Number 27 on The Bund, Shanghai (see library opening hours here). The library holds an almost complete set of journals going back to 1858, which document the earliest years of the expatriate community in Shanghai, and the Royal Asiatic Society’s history in China. Copies of recent journals can be viewed online.
You can see the guidelines for author submissions below. Please feel free to contact the Journal Editor, Melinda Liu, at editor@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn for more information.
The Royal Asiatic Society China (RAS) publishes the RAS China Journal annually in Shanghai in print and online. The journal comprises original research articles, essays and book reviews on topics of Asian scholarship, with a focus on China.
All articles must be original and previously unpublished. Articles should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and references. Book reviews should contain no more than 2,500 words.
Authors wishing to have their work considered for inclusion in this year’s journal should first submit, no later than 31 March 2022, an abstract or outline of the intended article to the journal editor, Melinda Liu at: editor@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
Authors should follow the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) Style Guide when preparing articles, to ensure consistency of style. The MHRA Style Guide is an easy to use and comprehensive guide, and is available as a free download here. Please ensure that British English spelling and grammar rules are used. Articles should be submitted as Word or Pages documents (.doc, .docx, .pages).
It is the responsibility of an author to obtain any necessary permission for quotation of copyrighted material and for image usage. The author should ensure that permission to reproduce material in all territories and all media (e.g. print and electronic) is granted.
The text of articles submitted for consideration should be formatted using double-spaced 12-point serif font. The title of the article and the author’s name should be printed in bold at the top of the document.
The document file name should include the author’s surname and brief reference to the article’s title.
Articles should include a reference list to acknowledge work cited, placed at the end of the article and titled “References”. The JRAS does not use bracketed references in the body of an essay. Instead, superscript numbers are used to indicate where other authors’ works are cited in the text, which appear at the end of the article in the Reference section, in the order that they were cited. The reference entries must contain the full reference for the work cited, following the comprehensive guidelines given in the MHRA.
In addition to numbered references indicating citations of other authors’ works within the text, authors may use footnotes to add brief explanatory notes that will be displayed at the bottom of the relevant page. Authors are requested to keep explanatory footnotes to an absolute minimum.
Authors submitting essays, which employ a more general tone, may prefer to include a bibliography of appropriate works to inform further reading, in lieu of a reference list.
All articles are to include an abstract of up to 180 words. The abstract should introduce the major aspects of the article and provide context.
Authors may include images in colour or black and white. In the printed edition, images will appear in black and white, but colour reproductions will be available in the online version. All images should be supplied in separate, well-labelled files in formats such as jpeg or tiff, and should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi (images should be as large as possible). Images should be labelled as “Figures”, and listed in numerical order. A text note in the body of the article should indicate the desired position of each image (eg: [Fig. 1 here]).
Authors should also include a brief introduction about themselves, including professional and/or academic background and any personal information that relates to their article. This should be no more than a couple of paragraphs (approximately 150 words), and may be edited by the editor to fit with the style of the journal. Authors should not include a CV or a self-portrait photograph.
Article submission final deadline: 15 June 2022. Please note that authors intending to submit must send an abstract or article outline to the editor before 31 March 2022.
For further information about the Royal Asiatic Society China Journal and submission of articles, please contact the journal editor at editor@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
“Like a Dickens or Dostoevsky novel, tale of Beijing hutong life The Wedding Party, by Liu Xinwu, conceals drama and trauma beneath the seemingly inconsequential…
In a Beijing alleyway community Auntie Xue is preparing a wedding celebration for her son. Outside the hutong, China is changing in Deng Xiaoping’s reform era…
So begins Liu Xinwu’s newly translated 1984 novel, in which, as in tales by Dickens and Dostoevsky, jealousies and resentments swirl beneath a mundane surface.”
This weekend the South China Morning Post weekend magazine published my story of the real life case of Seto Gin (one of her many aliases), a Hong Kong woman busted arriving at San Francisco in 1939 with rather a lot of opium. It’s a tale of dope and money, war and desperation, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and California, betrrayal and doomed love. I hope you can past the paywall (if not drop me a line and I might be able to help….
Following the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice.
Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.
Last year was a tough year for tourism in Beijing…no tourists basically. And so companies and tour guides had to think up ideas to appeal to local people and long term ex-pats still in the city. Working with Bespoke Beijing, the company that has long run the Official Penguin China Midnight in Peking walking tour, historian and guide Jeremiah Jenne devised a walking tour looking at old Peking’s famous retinue of foreign aesthetes, authors, scholars and occasional spies – the tour was based on some of the chapters/characters in my collection Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books) and Jeremiah’s own research. Here, in That’s Beijing magazine, he talks about the state of the tourism market in Beijing, the walk and other issues of history and the city. Click here to read.
Paul Bevan has provided us with the first English translation of The Adventures of Ma Suzhen, a novel published in 1920s Shanghai. The book also includes an essay that contextualises the comic tale, and reveals its multiple lives as a stage play, film and novel. The Adventures of Ma Suzhen contributes to the growing interest in martial arts and ‘knight-errant’ novels worldwide, while feeding into the general reading public’s increasing demand for books in this genre in English translation….
The comic novel, The Adventures of Ma Suzhen, was written during a highpoint in the popularity of xia “knight-errant” fiction. It is an action-packed tale of a young woman who takes revenge for her brother, Ma Yongzhen, a gangster and performing strongman, who has been murdered by a rival gang in China’s most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai. After publication of the book in 1923, the character of Ma Suzhen appeared on stage, and subsequently in a film made by the Mingxing Film Company. The book version translated here, displays a delightful combination of the xia and popular“Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies” genres, with additional elements of Gong’an “court case” fiction. The translation is followed by an essay that explores the background to the legend of Ma Suzhen – a fictional figure, whose exhilarating escapades reflect some of the new possibilities and freedoms available to women following the founding of the Chinese Republic.
Back in 2016 I posted a rather plain advertisement for (what I assumed to be) the rather uninspirignly named shop SWETCO, a silver and glass tableware company on the Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing West Road). However, it is a much more interesting store.
My thanks to Fred Schevtz who got in touch to let me know that his grandfather owned the store – Shvetz Co. became shortened to ‘Swetco’. He also kindly sent me the picture below with his mother – Eda (Dinaburg) Shvetz – and grandmother – Lisa Dinaburg – outside the gorgeous shopfront on the Bubbling Well Road. No precise date but this would be around 1940 or shortly thereafter.
