Written by Coraline Jortay Let us consider for a minute this 1953 new-style New Year’s print (年画 nianhua) captioned “His labouring work is the best.” On a first level, the print was described by its contemporaries as representing women washing clothes…
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Written by Bendi Tso The replacement of the Mongolian language with Chinese in schools in Inner Mongolia has prompted protests in China as well as international condemnation. We have seen similar curriculum changes in Xinjiang and Tibetan areas across China….
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Written by Race MoChridhe In February, China’s Ministries of Education and of Science and Technology released two documents that reshaped the research landscape: “Some Suggestions on Standardizing the Use of SCI Paper Indexes” and “Some Measures to Eliminate the Bad…
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Written by Gina Tam This excerpt is from my book Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960. The book centers the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan – languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that…
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Written by Alexandra Grey China sees linguistic diversity and language use as matters to be governed. It has therefore enacted laws and promulgated official policies about (non-Mandarin) minority languages, national standardized Mandarin (Putonghua) and Mandarin dialects over the course of…
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Written by Editor Our sixth issue explores the politics of language in modern and contemporary China. We asked our contributors to reflect on the various ways in which languages (spoken, written, signed and/or otherwise) are understood, practiced, taught, learned, promoted,…
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