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The Chinese Essay

Edited and translated by David E. Pollard

Reviewed by Charles A. Laughlin MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January 2004)

David E. Pollard, editor and translator. The            Chinese Essay. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 372            pp. US $65.00, ISBN: 0-231-12118-0 (cloth); US $24.50, ISBN: 0-231-12119-9.

David E. Pollard, editor and translator. The Chinese Essay . New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 372 pp. US $65.00, ISBN: 0-231-12118-0 (cloth); US $24.50, ISBN: 0-231-12119-9.

The Chinese Essay is the first anthology to provide a comprehensive introduction to Chinese literary non-fiction prose from earliest times to the present. Comparable collections in print, such as Richard Strassberg’s Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China and Sang Ye’s Vignettes from the Late Ming, are restricted to the premodern period, and until now modern essay translations (often Pollard’s) have only appeared scattered in journals like Renditions and Chinese Literature and in more general anthologies like The Literature of the Hundred Flowers , The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature , and monographs devoted to individual authors such as Zhou Zuoren and Yu Pingbo. The selections in The Chinese Essay represent most of the best-known Chinese essayists, through some of their most anthologized and well-known works. Never have premodern and modern essays been placed next to each other, and never has the considerable tradition of the modern Chinese essay been presented so richly. Pollard’s effort is commendable, and should be interesting not only to the general reader but a great boon as well to instructors of courses devoted to Chinese literature or to the essay across cultures.

Pollard has translated all of the essays himself. As a much-published translator, and author of A Chinese Look at Literature: The Literary Values of Chou Tso-jen (Zhou Zuoren, the pioneer of the modern Chinese literary essay), there could hardly be a better choice for this task. Not only are the translations faithful to the semantic meaning of the original texts (as far as I can tell), but Pollard’s clipped, dry, and often humorous style is also often perfectly suited to the spirit of the essays presented here. The anthology also includes portraits or photographs of many of the authors as well as their calligraphy or handwriting. Though not numerous, these illustrations very effectively convey the love of writing and the emphasis on personal style that tie together the many phases of the Chinese literary essay’s long tradition.

Because of the infancy of the study of the Chinese essay in English, an anthology like this and its introduction are potentially seminal statements, situating this genre in the field of Chinese cultural studies in general, justifying our interest in it, and pointing the way to avenues of further inquiry. But if The Chinese Essay answers the question, Why publish or read such an anthology?, it does so only meekly. Pollard observes that there has not been a general anthology of Chinese essays published since Herbert Giles’ 1884 Gems of Chinese Literature , so his argument begins from a gap or lack in the representation of a genre. Rather than engage with this lack critically, Pollard goes on to assert two reasons for it, almost as if to justify it, namely, the inherent difficulty of representing and discussing linguistic style in a foreign language (but why should this not have been a hindrance to the translation and circulation of other Chinese literary genres?), and the decline in prestige of the essay in the English-speaking world. Thus, in effect, rather than answering the question of why he is offering this anthology now, Pollard is simply providing convincing reasons why it had not been done before. What is missing from this explanation is why the prestige of the essay in modern and contemporary China, unlike the English speaking world, has not declined. If this book could bring the English reader around to understand the power and agency of the essay in contemporary China, despite all that has been said in our field about the overwhelming importance of fiction, it would create more than enough motivation and capacity to appreciate the importance of the contents of this anthology on its own terms, even for a general reader.

The general reader, moreover, seems to be the main target of this anthology. Yet this general-audience orientation is belied by the inclusion of Chinese characters for authors’ names and titles to works. Indeed those who would benefit from the Chinese characters (most of the likely audience of this collection) will generally want more bibliographical information, as well as some engagement with scholarship in the field such as Yu-shih Chen’s Images and Ideas in Chinese Classical Prose: Studies of Four Masters , Chih-p’ing Chou’s Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School . In addition to a more in-depth and informative introduction, I think the book as a whole could have included more scholarly apparatus, including a less sketchy, multi-lingual bibliography, without harming its appeal to a general audience.

If Pollard assumes anything about his audience, it is that they are familiar with the European prose essay, which I think leaves some room for doubt especially with respect to the younger generations. The European essay was of course an important context for the modern Chinese essay, but Pollard is probably putting unnecessary emphasis on features peculiar to the European tradition (“absence of dignity,” “refining and directing sensibilities to create a polity that was new and particular,” “entertainment value,” [p. xii-xiii] “independence of thought,” [p. 7] etc.) in the effort to define the Chinese essay for the general English reader. It might have been more effective and engaging to discuss what prose essays in China are like and what they are used for, rather than comparing them (often unfavorably) to the European tradition that the reader may not be very familiar with anyway.

After detailing in the Preface negative aspects of traditional Chinese culture and literary conventions that explain why premodern Chinese essays do not resemble those of Montaigne and Bacon, Pollard does go on to list what he feels are some of the positive aspects of the Chinese essay in general: “The qualities are on the one hand common to mankind, on the other particular to Chinese literary arts. The first kind includes the expression of character in the writer, either impressively strong or appealingly weak; the expression of sentiment, usually to commemorate friends and relatives; nostalgia for past times; appeals for justice and compassion; pleasure in diversions. The second kind concerns the musicality of the language, a prime and often, regrettably, the prime requirement for approval.” Then he goes on to explain why musicality cannot be translated. Thus, all of the positive aspects of the premodern Chinese essay that are particular to Chinese literary arts are here lost in translation, and what is left is a variety of expressions of ideas and sentiments. I am not certain, but a general English readership (which has already proven itself lukewarm to Chinese fiction and poetry in translation) may not be inclined to delve into this anthology thus described. Why not say more about the extraordinary personalities and intellectual genius evinced in included works by Tao Qian, Han Yu and Su Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Feng Zikai and Zhang Ailing? Why not talk about some of the larger cultural themes for which the Chinese essay served as the principal vessel, and which through the essay traditional and modern writing are linked—the cultivation of the art of living, the struggle between transcendent and worldly values, or the contrarian resistance to “political correctness” of every imaginable kind?

In an anthology with such broad coverage but short length, the editor is obliged to explain his principles for selection, and Pollard very honestly acknowledges that it would have been impossible to adhere to a single principle. I applaud his insistence that personal taste—an important theme in ancient and modern essays—was his principal guide. This accounts for his enthusiastic inclusion of essays by Gui Youguang (1506-1571) despite their criticism by the modern essayist Lin Yutang, his exclusion of Lin Yutang’s own essays, and no doubt as well the inclusion of contemporary writer Yu Qiuyu, well-known for his popular, fictionalized imaginings of significant historical moments, over those with strong links to the Republican period essay tradition like Wang Zengqi, Zhang Zhongxing and Ji Xianlin. On the other hand, in his note on sources Pollard states that “the classical prose section consists almost entirely of anthology pieces; they had to be so in order to represent the classical heritage” (369). He also states that he felt he had to include certain perennial classics (both traditional and modern) that may not have been among his favorites, even when they were available in other collections. In saying this Pollard makes it clear that he intends this collection to represent the Chinese essay with some authority and self-sufficiency, which seems out of step with his claim of using personal taste as his guide. Nevertheless, I think the resulting balance between personal taste and the need to reflect the received canon makes for a selection that both makes good reading and a good textbook.

Though Pollard alludes to wide reading in anthologies, the only one he cites is a 1987 publication, implying that anthologies tend to select the same works for each author. I am currently in the midst of a survey of anthologies of premodern essays that so far suggests to me that selections vary significantly across eras (Qing, Republican, Taiwan, Early PRC, recent PRC) for various different reasons. For example, premodern anthologies such as the seventeenth-century Guwen guanzhi generally favor formal essays of serious import that cleave to Confucian values, while more modern collections increasingly favor heterodox views, and include more “individualistic” essays on small, private matters. This is in part due to the gradual acceptance in the late imperial period that informal or casual writing possesses its own aesthetic value that can be appreciated by posterity. Moreover certain Republican period publications such as Shen Qiwu’s 1932 Jindai sanwen chao (A selection of early modern essays), Zhang Dai’s Tao’an mengyi (Dreamlike remembrance) edited with prefaces by Yu Pingbo and Zhou Zuoren, and Shi Zhecun’s 1935 Wanming ershi jia xiaopin (The Late Ming xiaopin: twenty masters) exerted an influence on the modern Chinese essay, and these could at least have been mentioned. The reader who wants to explore the Chinese essay in more detail would have benefited greatly from some guidance as to which anthologies are best, and which exerted the greatest influence.

It is interesting that The Chinese Essay , covering both premodern and modern periods, devotes the lion’s share of its space to the modern period. There are about forty pages devoted to ancient-medieval times (through the Song Dynasty), forty to late imperial times (Ming and Qing dynasties), about 170 to the first half of the twentieth century, when the modern essay came into its own, and ninety to the post-war period; thus over seventy percent of this collection is from the past 100 years. The slant in favor of modern essay has the effect of showing the reader the pre-modern essay through modern eyes, which I applaud, but the editor could have been more forthcoming about this in the introduction. If, for example, the reader took The Chinese Essay to be a general survey of the Chinese essay from antiquity to the present, it would give the impression that the essays of the twentieth century are much more important than those in the more than two millennia before. Modern Chinese essays can often be understood better through their relationships (sometimes conspicuous) with premodern literary or philosophical trends, and these relationships do not in themselves lessen the modern texts’ “modernity,” but help constitute it. In this respect, if it was in fact Pollard’s intention to present premodern essays primarily as precursors to modern ones, he could have done more in the introduction, commentary and translator’s notes to emphasize which kinds of premodern texts have particularly exerted agency in modern times, which modern texts manifest their influence, and how.

Turning to the modern period, the cavalier dismissal of prose literature under leftism and socialism is unfortunate; the development of the genre of reportage is misrepresented in the introduction as originating as anti-Japanese propaganda in the War Against Japan and developing in Communist China only to extol the Party (p. 20), and no mention is made at all of prominent lyrical essayists within the socialist camp like Qin Mu, Yang Shuo and Liu Baiyu, leading to the mistaken impression that all socialist prose is reportage. The exclusion of all of this material detracts from the anthology’s authority as a survey of the genre. As I have argued elsewhere, reportage may be looked upon as the leftist answer to the essay, but it originates as a form of revolutionary social critique in the 1930s, and its use in the War Against Japan is much broader than just propaganda. Moreover, though it would not be appropriate to include examples in the anthology, it should have been pointed out in the introduction that reportage made an important revival in the 1980s and beyond in the hands of Liu Binyan, Su Xiaokang and others; the concern for the environment that Pollard so admiringly observes in the contemporary Taiwanese essay has been one of the major themes of mainland Chinese reportage literature for at least ten years.

Another ramification of the editor’s inattention to the condition of modernity is Pollard’s explanation of the Chinese term sanwen . Pollard presents the Chinese concept as stable and unchanging, and explains its meaning entirely in terms of contrasts with European concepts. But the term sanwen was not used to denote a literary genre until modern times and even now critics and literary historians struggle with the equivocal nature of the term (“literary genre” vs. “all kinds of writing not in verse form”). It would have been helpful to put more emphasis on the particular modes or genres that the premodern works belong to (memorials to the emperor, philosophical treatises, formal and informal correspondence, prefaces and colophons, travelogues, epitaphs, biographies, etc.). This is not to say that this variety of forms ought not to be placed in a more general category under the term “sanwen,” but it is regrettable that the modern cultural process by which this was achieved receives no emphasis or attention.

Pollard’s concern here with limiting the scope of the collection to a describable form (“a free-standing, self-contained, relatively short composition” that “surfaced in the stable empire of the Han dynasty”) is, I think, unnecessarily limiting, and in fact might hamper the uninformed reader’s understanding of the broader context of the Chinese essay’s evolution. On page 2 of the introduction, Pollard makes a convincing, if somewhat defensive, argument for excluding the writings of the ancient Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi. However, informed readers reading through the selections throughout both premodern and modern periods will easily discern the pervasiveness of Zhuang Zi’s influence in this genre. Indeed, Zhuang Zi’s playful spirit and philosophical critique of Confucianism may be described as one of the principal characteristics that distinguish the Chinese informal essay, which was the principal model for the modern literary essay, from formal prose. Similarly, though he devotes a page or so to the tremendous significance of Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian as a model for the spirit and the letter of prose writing, Pollard excludes it because, “[being] a work of objective history, however, or at least attempting to be such, the author’s own comments are minimal” (4), implying that self-expression is working as a criterion for selection (see also his comments on page 5 about Cao Pi’s use of the term qi to denote “the physical underpinning of the distinctive character, or personal stamp, that an author’s writing is imprinted with”), but that self-expression can only be manifested in the form of direct “comments.” How many readers of even a few biographies from the Shi ji , though, come away from it without feeling that Sima Qian has very forcefully expressed his own views through them? A similar example is the exclusion of the Six Dynasties collection of anecdotes, Shishuo xinyu (New account of tales of the world), of which a translation by Richard Mather was published a generation ago. Like Zhuang Zi and the wealth of apocryphal writings of the Daoist tradition, Liu Yiqing’s New Account , which describes remarkable events, actions and utterances of the medieval aristocracy, though perhaps not fitting. Pollard’s criterion, was an important and frequently imitated foundation of the Chinese essay tradition.

The introductions to the sections on each author, though at times impressionistic, often include insightful analytical meditations or epigrammatic summaries of the author’s style that strike me as most apt and useful. However, I am not sure it is necessary for Pollard to separately include “commentary” and “translator’s notes” (sometimes both) before or after certain works in addition to the introductory sections on each author. Often the translator’s note will emphasize interpretation in a cross-cultural context, as in the case of Zhu Ziqing’s “View from the Rear” (Bei ying), but I feet that such considerations would have been much more effectively delivered in a critical essay that treats a variety of issues of style or interpretation, or this could have been integrated with the historical overview given in the introduction. The second of the three paragraphs of commentary on Zhuge Liang, for example, is almost identical in content to the last page of Zhuge Liang’s own text; the first paragraph of the “Translator’s Note” to Han Yu’s “Address to the Crocodiles of Chaozhou” simply reiterates the corresponding section of the biography of Han Yu given in the “Commentary” two pages before. Together with the functional overlap of the preface and introduction, the commentary and translators notes make The Chinese Essay overly complex in its multilayered contextualization of the translations and thus unnecessarily confusing.

Apart from stealing thunder from the essays themselves, the volume of notes and commentary raises an important question that plagues the translation of Chinese literature into English in general: can these texts not speak for themselves? If this collection really is intended for a general readership, I think it is safe to assume that such readers would be more interested in texts that speak directly to them without a great deal of explanation from the translator. And it is not only a question of “how much” explanation would be needed to supplement a “raw” translation; the act of translation itself imparts meaning. If scholarly semantic fidelity were relaxed to the degree that items were made easier for the general reader to relate to with a reduced amount of explanation, the potential impact of this book would be greatly enhanced.

The Chinese Essay does nevertheless fill a crucial gap in materials for courses on Chinese literature in translation. While most scholars in the field of Chinese literature are probably not going to set up a course exclusively devoted to the essay even with a comprehensive anthology available, the selections in this book would mix well with other genres and materials in a more general course. I could see using it this way in either premodern or modern Chinese literary courses, but more likely for the modern period because of the greater concentration of material there.

Charles A. Laughlin Associate Professor, Chinese Literature Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures Yale University

Columbia University Press

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The chinese essay.

An Anthology

Selected and translated by David Pollard

Columbia University Press

The Chinese Essay

Pub Date: September 2002

ISBN: 9780231121194

Format: Paperback

List Price: $38.00 £32.00

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In keeping with its venerable tradition of publishing scholarship on China, Columbia has produced a groundbreaking work edited by a respected Sinologist and translator. In his lengthy and useful introduction to this collection of essays by 36 Chinese authors, Pollard discusses the important differences between the Western notion of 'essay' and its Chinese version--or sanwen (everything that is not a poem)--which is steeped in the classical school curriculum....Pollard's up-to-date, lucid translations of this specialized form of prose can be read effectively as a companion piece to Elizabeth Buckley Ebrey's sourcebook Chinese Civilization and Society (CH, Jul'81) by anyone interested in serious study of Chinese history and culture. B.M. McNeal, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvnia, Choice

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Contemporary chinese short-short stories: a parallel text. reviewed by hui faye xiao.

Translated and edited by Aili Mu with Mike Smith New York: Columbia University Press, 2017 528 pages, ISBN: 978-0231181532, Paperback

book cover for Contemporary Chinese Short-Short Stories: A Parallel Text by aili mu

The editor and translator of this volume, Dr. Aili Mu, in collaboration with Mike Smith, is a pioneering figure in introducing this delightful literary form to English readers. She has coedited and cotranslated (with Julie Chiu and Howard Goldblatt) an earlier collection, Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). In her tireless efforts to study this less trekked front of modern Chinese literature, Mu has spent years conducting field research in China, interviewing writers, attending cultural events promoting short-shorts, collecting, translating, and annotating representative works of the particular genre. Her hard work has congealed in this thick volume (528 pages) that has won the prestigious 2018 Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Franklin R. Buchanan book award for her great contribution not only to the field of literary studies, but also for her development of an outstanding pedagogical resource in Asian studies (grades K–16).

book spread of the beginning of chapter 1. on the left page is chinese writing, on the right page is the english translation

Contemporary Chinese Short-Short Stories: A Parallel Text includes thirty-one short-short stories in total, which are categorized under nine interlocking themes: li (ritual and propriety) and ren (humanity or benevolence), xiao (filial piety), yin-yang , governance, identity, face, (romantic) love, marriage, and yi (changes). While the first half of the themes alludes to the time-honored teachings and cardinal virtues of Confucianism, the second half resonates more with readers’ daily experiences and life concerns as modern beings living in today’s world. Each themed section opens with a short preface that explicates the meaning of the central concept in the Chinese context. Following the informative prefaced essay, three to four short-shorts are grouped together to illustrate different aspects of the central theme and its manifestation in common people’s everyday lives and aesthetic imaginations.

The short-short author’s biography at the end of each story not only helps students come up with a better understanding of the literary text, but also brings together a broad spectrum of different groups of writers. In comparison to many other anthologies of modern Chinese literature, the volume selects works of established senior writers, literary professionals working in state institutions of art and literature, and common folks from all walks of life whose names are less known to students and scholars of modern Chinese literature. The inclusion of the underrepresented group of writers sheds unusual light on common people’s aesthetic creativity, apprehensions and aspirations, and upward mobility in contemporary Chinese society.

In addition to the short introduction at the beginning of each themed section, what is equally helpful for readers of this book is a bilingual general introduction to the whole volume. The volume introduction, coauthored by Mu and Smith, identifies the central issue in the current Chinese-language teaching on American campuses: “how do we train a student who can greet a Chinese associate at the airport into someone who also understands Chinese culture well enough to develop and sustain collaborative relationships?” (xxi). Indeed, this is a question weighing on many Chinese teachers’ minds. This volume presents an experienced teacher and scholar’s unmatched effort in addressing this important question. The selected short-short stories not only demonstrate authentic samples of Chinese-language usage, but also provide a window into the fast-changing social and ethical landscape in today’s China, making this popular literary genre an appealing and accessible tool of integrating essential cultural elements and social issues with language learning for intermediate- to advanced-level students on American campuses. Hence, this volume offers great opportunities of cross-cultural exchange and communication for readers to immerse in easily and engage critically with a different linguistic and cultural environment. Mu also composed a Chinese-language user guide, “How to Use This Parallel Text to Teach Chinese Language and Culture,” included at the end of the book. It is another valuable resource of pedagogical use that generously shares sample questions, teaching methods, and classroom activities for teachers of Chinese language and literature.

Thanks to its rich content, artful translation, and innovative format, this volume can be creatively deployed as an invaluable teaching tool for a variety of courses. First and foremost, it can serve as an ideal textbook for upper-level Chinese-language instruction. Current textbooks widely used in such a class are either lacking an “in-depth systematic understanding of cultural behavior” (xxi) or often feature an outdated collection of essays and short stories composed by the May Fourth intellectuals a century ago, such as Hu Shi’s “Mother’s Words” ( Muqin de jiaohui ) and Lu Xun’s “A Small Incident” ( Yi jian xiaoshi ). These canonical works, of course, are culturally and historically meaningful readings. However, they fail to catch up with the latest changes of contemporary China or engage with a reconfiguring social reality from a grassroots perspective, and thus could hardly be appreciated by American students. The vocabulary in these pieces published at the very beginning of the baihua wen yundong (vernacular Chinese movement) also appears esoteric and impenetrable for today’s young readers.

In comparison, stories collected in this 2017 volume can offer more updated reading materials written in the standard modern Chinese language. The glossary following each short-short story highlights a set of new words, phrases, and idioms; their pinyin romanizations; English meanings; and common usage, which help students grasp the fundamental meaning of the story. The following list of questions in both Chinese and English propels students to delve into a more in-depth discussion and critical analysis of the cultural connotations of the story under the guidance of the class instructor. In addition to improving their linguistic proficiency in the target language, students can also develop their communication skills and cross-cultural awareness through reading and discussing a series of bilingual texts centered on various cultural values and sensibilities, institutional structures, practices of governance, and ways of life. If needed, these discussion questions can be easily converted into topics for writing assignments that extend students’ critical engagement with a different language and culture, and encourage them to make thoughtful reflections on their own cultural assumptions and stereotypes in the written form. Informed by Mu’s longtime rich experience in teaching advanced Chinese-language and translation classes, this volume showcases an innovative effort in developing “a curricular structure that integrates language and culture learning” (ix).

Another particularly well-designed feature in the layout of the anthology is its side-by-side parallel text format, i.e., on the left page, the Chinese text is printed, and on the right page, its English translation is juxtaposed. Such a layout allows students to refer to the English text easily when they encounter language barriers in the original Chinese text. This format renders a smoother and more enjoyable reading experience. It also creates a great opportunity for teachers to use this book in a translation class. Chinese University Press of Hong Kong and Penguin have published their own series of bilingual Chinese literary works, but they tend to focus on longer pieces. With a more concise form of short-short stories, students in a Chinese–English translation class will find it much easier to concentrate on a close reading, or what Mu calls an “analytical scrutiny” (xix) of a manageable size of the text, comparing its original Chinese version with its English translation. Following such a careful line-by-line examination and analysis, students, under the teacher’s guidance, can continue discussing a series of linguistic and cultural differences, and what possible translational strategies can be adopted to deal with the challenges caused by such differences. The inclusion of several excellent translational works of Mu’s students would encourage more students to follow their exemplary models and take up the daunting but rewarding task of literary translation.

Indeed, the parallel bilingual format of this volume makes it a truly versatile tool of education for different types of classes. In addition to Chinese- language and translation classes, this book can also be used in an introductory course on Chinese literature and culture for students with little or no knowledge of the Chinese language. In my contemporary Chinese literature class, I have used several short-short stories from this volume and other anthologies. Stories like “Catharsis” and “Fake Love Letter” help students gain a better understanding of common people’s lives during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), as well as the resilience of love, courage, and humanity even at the most turbulent and traumatizing historic moments. Short-shorts are often my students’ favorite works, thanks to their engaging plots, unique storytelling skills, stylistic innovation, nuanced interpretation of cultural values, and ingenious capacity of dealing with a variety of issues and themes within a shorter span of reading time and textual length.

In addition to literature classes, a wide array of survey courses, ranging from contemporary China to Chinese cultural legacies or East Asian civilizations, might find this volume a precious asset. For instance, when I deliver a lecture about changing family structure and ethics in contemporary Chinese society, the altering practices of filial piety often stir students’ interests and ignite a cross-cultural discussion in which students compare the Confucian idea of filial piety with the American pattern of old-age support and draw on their own personal observations. The section on xiao in Mu’s volume will serve as wonderful reading material for a teaching session like this. These short-shorts provide concrete case studies of the multiple meanings and forms of filial piety in a fast-changing Chinese society. The vivid depiction of the affectionate intergenerational bonding in Chi Zijian’s “Father Makes the Lantern” challenges a common assumption shared by many American students that xiao is forced on the younger generations by their elderly family members and thus carries the negative connotations of dominance and subjugation in an individualistic society. Through such a cross-cultural learning process, students become more aware of their own experiences and biases, and learn to make critical reflections on their own value assumptions and the American way of life lived and taken for granted on a daily basis.

To prepare the next generation for an increasingly globalizing and interconnected world, cultivating students’ critical thinking ability and openness to pluralistic voices and a global vision have become core constituents in American college curricula. In this light, this volume serves as a great educational tool that encourages students to nurture a more nuanced understanding of alternative value systems and ways of thinking, behaving, and living, which often challenges their possibly ethnocentric views of a different language, culture, people, and society on the other side of the globe. ■

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Unit Essay 5

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

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  • 12 February 2024

China conducts first nationwide review of retractions and research misconduct

  • Smriti Mallapaty

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Technicians wearing full PPE work in a lab

The reputation of Chinese science has been "adversely affected" by the number of retractions in recent years, according to a government notice. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty

Chinese universities are days away from the deadline to complete a nationwide audit of retracted research papers and probe of research misconduct. By 15 February, universities must submit to the government a comprehensive list of all academic articles retracted from English- and Chinese-language journals in the past three years. They need to clarify why the papers were retracted and investigate cases involving misconduct, according to a 20 November notice from the Ministry of Education’s Department of Science, Technology and Informatization.

The government launched the nationwide self-review in response to Hindawi, a London-based subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, retracting a large number of papers by Chinese authors. These retractions, along with those from other publishers, “have adversely affected our country’s academic reputation and academic environment”, the notice states.

A Nature analysis shows that last year, Hindawi issued more than 9,600 retractions, of which the vast majority — about 8,200 — had a co-author in China. Nearly 14,000 retraction notices, of which some three-quarters involved a Chinese co-author, were issued by all publishers in 2023.

This is “the first time we’ve seen such a national operation on retraction investigations”, says Xiaotian Chen, a library and information scientist at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, who has studied retractions and research misconduct in China. Previous investigations have largely been carried out on a case-by-case basis — but this time, all institutions have to conduct their investigations simultaneously, says Chen.

Tight deadline

The ministry’s notice set off a chain of alerts, cascading to individual university departments. Bulletins posted on university websites required researchers to submit their retractions by a range of dates, mostly in January — leaving time for universities to collate and present the data.

Although the alerts included lists of retractions that the ministry or the universities were aware of, they also called for unlisted retractions to be added.

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More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record

According to Nature ’s analysis, which includes only English-language journals, more than 17,000 retraction notices for papers published by Chinese co-authors have been issued since 1 January 2021, which is the start of the period of review specified in the notice. The analysis, an update of one conducted in December , used the Retraction Watch database, augmented with retraction notices collated from the Dimensions database, and involved assistance from Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. It is unclear whether the official lists contain the same number of retracted papers.

Regardless, the timing to submit the information will be tight, says Shu Fei, a bibliometrics scientist at Hangzhou Dianzi University in China. The ministry gave universities less than three months to complete their self-review — and this was cut shorter by the academic winter break, which typically starts in mid-January and concludes after the Chinese New Year, which fell this year on 10 February.

“The timing is not good,” he says. Shu expects that universities are most likely to submit only a preliminary report of their researchers’ retracted papers included on the official lists.

But Wang Fei, who studies research-integrity policy at Dalian University of Technology in China, says that because the ministry has set a deadline, universities will work hard to submit their findings on time.

Researchers with retracted papers will have to explain whether the retraction was owing to misconduct, such as image manipulation, or an honest mistake, such as authors identifying errors in their own work, says Chen: “In other words, they may have to defend themselves.” Universities then must investigate and penalize misconduct. If a researcher fails to declare their retracted paper and it is later uncovered, they will be punished, according to the ministry notice. The cost of not reporting is high, says Chen. “This is a very serious measure.”

It is not known what form punishment might take, but in 2021, China’s National Health Commission posted the results of its investigations into a batch of retracted papers. Punishments included salary cuts, withdrawal of bonuses, demotions and timed suspensions from applying for research grants and rewards.

The notice states explicitly that the first corresponding author of a paper is responsible for submitting the response. This requirement will largely address the problem of researchers shirking responsibility for collaborative work, says Li Tang, a science- and innovation-policy researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. The notice also emphasizes due process, says Tang. Researchers alleged to have committed misconduct have a right to appeal during the investigation.

The notice is a good approach for addressing misconduct, says Wang. Previous efforts by the Chinese government have stopped at issuing new research-integrity guidelines that were poorly implemented, she says. And when government bodies did launch self-investigations of published literature, they were narrower in scope and lacked clear objectives. This time, the target is clear — retractions — and the scope is broad, involving the entire university research community, she says.

“Cultivating research integrity takes time, but China is on the right track,” says Tang.

It is not clear what the ministry will do with the flurry of submissions. Wang says that, because the retraction notices are already freely available, publicizing the collated lists and underlying reasons for retraction could be useful. She hopes that a similar review will be conducted every year “to put more pressure” on authors and universities to monitor research integrity.

What happens next will reveal how seriously the ministry regards research misconduct, says Shu. He suggests that, if the ministry does not take further action after the Chinese New Year, the notice could be an attempt to respond to the reputational damage caused by the mass retractions last year.

The ministry did not respond to Nature ’s questions about the misconduct investigation.

Chen says that, regardless of what the ministry does with the information, the reporting process itself will help to curb misconduct because it is “embarrassing to the people in the report”.

But it might primarily affect researchers publishing in English-language journals. Retraction notices in Chinese-language journals are rare.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00397-x

Data analysis by Richard Van Noorden.

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What to Know About Pakistan’s Election

Analysts say Pakistan’s powerful military has never intervened so openly on behalf of its preferred candidate.

  • Share full article

A street scene with people and motorbikes. Campaign posters hang outside market stalls near colorful garlands.

By Christina Goldbaum

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan

Pakistan went to the polls on Thursday for an election that analysts say will be among the least credible in the country’s 76-year history, one that comes at a particularly turbulent moment for the nation.

For nearly half of Pakistan’s existence, the military has ruled directly. Even under civilian governments, military leaders have wielded enormous power, ushering in politicians they favored and pushing out those who stepped out of line.

This will be only the third democratic transition between civilian governments in Pakistan’s history. And it is the first national election since former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from power after a vote of no confidence in 2022. Mr. Khan’s ouster — which he accused the military of orchestrating, though the powerful generals deny it — set off a political crisis that has embroiled the nuclear-armed nation for the past two years.

The vote on Thursday is the culmination of an especially contentious campaign season , in which analysts say the military has sought to gut Mr. Khan’s widespread support and pave the way to victory for the party of his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif .

Here’s what you need to know.

What’s the campaign been like?

Over the past two years, Pakistanis have come out in droves to protest the behind-the-scenes role that they believe the military played in Mr. Khan’s ouster. The generals have responded in force, arresting Mr. Khan’s allies and supporters, and working to cripple his party ahead of the vote.

While the military has often meddled in elections to pave the way for its preferred candidates, analysts say this crackdown has been more visible and widespread than others.

That has also made this perhaps Pakistan’s most muted election in decades. Streets that would normally be filled with political rallies have remained empty. For weeks, many people were convinced that the election would not even take place on the scheduled date. A common refrain among Pakistanis is that this is a “selection” — not an election — as many feel it is clear that the military has predetermined the winner.

Who’s running?

Roughly 128 million voters were eligible to cast ballots for a new Parliament, which will then choose a new prime minister after the election.

There are 266 seats to fill in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, with an additional 70 seats reserved for women and minorities. If no party wins an outright majority — which is considered highly likely — then the one with the biggest share of assembly seats can form a coalition government.

Three main parties dominate politics in Pakistan: the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (P.M.L.N.), the Pakistan People’s Party (P.P.P.) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (P.T.I.).

Mr. Khan, the leader of P.T.I., has been notably absent from the campaign: He was arrested in August and has since been sentenced to multiple prison terms for a variety of offenses and barred from holding public office for a decade. Candidates from his party say they have been detained , forced to denounce the party and subjected to intimidation campaigns.

Most election observers expect a victory by the P.M.L.N. , the party of Mr. Sharif. A three-time prime minister, Mr. Sharif built his political reputation on reviving economic growth. He has repeatedly fallen out with the military after pushing for more civilian control in government, only to find himself once more in its favor in this election.

The P.P.P. is led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007 . The party is expected to win some seats in the south, where it has a power base, and would most likely form part of a Sharif-led coalition government.

What’s at stake?

Pakistan’s next government will inherit a raft of problems. The economy is in shambles, terrorist attacks have resurged and relations with neighbors — particularly Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban — are tense.

The cost of living has soared in Pakistan, where inflation last year hit a record high of nearly 40 percent. Meanwhile, gas outages and electricity blackouts are frequent occurrences for the country’s 240 million people. Pakistan has had to turn to the International Monetary Fund for bailouts to keep its economy afloat and prop up its foreign exchange reserves. It also has relied on financing from wealthy allies, like China and Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, extremist violence in Pakistan has surged since the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan in 2021. Much of it has been carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P. — an ally and ideological twin of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

That has stoked tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with Pakistani officials accusing the Taliban of offering the Pakistani Taliban safe haven on Afghan soil, a claim that Taliban officials deny. Those tensions appeared to boil over last year when Pakistan ordered all undocumented foreigners to leave the country by Nov. 1, a move that has primarily affected Afghans .

How will the vote take place?

A day before the election, two separate explosions outside election offices in an insurgency-hit area of Pakistan killed at least 22 people . The blasts were the latest in a series of attacks on election-related activities, including the targeting of candidates, throughout the campaign season.

In light of such security threats, the authorities have designated half of Pakistan’s approximately 90,000 polling stations as “sensitive” or “most sensitive” and have deployed the military to secure them.

The polls officially closed at 5 p.m. Preliminary results are expected by late Thursday night, but it could take up to three days for all votes to be officially counted.

Once the count is finalized, members of Parliament will convene to form the government and choose the next prime minister. The selection of the prime minister is expected by the end of February.

Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times. More about Christina Goldbaum

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