China from the Margins

New Narratives of the Past and Present

Emily Williams, Loredana Cesarino, Emily Williams, Loredana Cesarino

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781032621098
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040087039
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores and brings to light untold stories from the margins of Chinese society. It investigates and reveals grassroots and popular cultural beliefs, amusing anecdotes, items of lore, and accounts of the strange and the unusual. It delves into questions of identity formation, considering gender, sexuality, class, generational divides, subcultures, national minorities and online communities. It examines heritage-making practices and the persistence of marginalized memories. Bringing together views from cultural studies, literature, gender studies, cultural heritage, sociology, history and more, the book argues that neither the margins nor the centre can be understood in isolation, and that by focusing on the margins, a fuller picture of Chinese society overall emerges, including new perspectives on spatial and social marginality, on hierarchies of marginality, and on neglected spaces, voices and identities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• China from the Margins: Introduction
• 1. Jewish Models and Modelling Jews: Representations of Jews and Jewishness in the Harbin Jewish Museum
• 2. Austrian Jewish Exiles from the Margins of China: Mark Siegelberg, Hans Schubert, Susanne Wantoch, and Richard Frey
• 3. Hegemonic Han Identities and Alternative Subjectivities: The Contemporary Hanfu Movement as a Marginal Cross-generational Subculture
• 4. Place, Home, and People in the Making: Stories of Liangzhu Culture Village
• 5. Marginal Histories at the Centre of the Revolution: Red Collecting in Shaanbei1
• 6. Marginality as a Dreamland: Native Place, Everyday Life, Nostalgia, and Coming of Age in Three Works by Wei Wei
• 7. The Inn in Wuxia Narratives
• 8. From the Periphery of Literature: Marginal Urban Lives and Recognition(s) in the Picun Literature Group
• 9. Returning to a Marginal Genre: Liminal Space and the Revival of Gui 鬼 in Mo Yan’s Fantastic Tales
• 10. Mistresses, Maids, and Servants’ Wives in Lin Lan Xiang: The Everyday Life of Women in a Fictional Late Imperial Chinese Elite Household
• 11. Four Marginalised Women and Loser Subculture in Ren Xiaowen’s Novel Life Is Like That
• 12. Marginal Fears in Yue Jun’s ‘Ershilu’ 耳食录 (1792–94): Terror and desire in the story of Hu Haohao
• Index