Organizer: Marilyn Levine, Lewis-Clark State College
"What's in a Name" in Tracing the History of Urban Morphology
Widya Wijayanti, Diponegoro University, Indonesia
This paper is not dealing with the drama of the Montagues and Capulets, nor is it associated with the English literature. Sir William Shakespeare's words in that masterpiece: "What's in a name," inspire me in tracing the morphology of Semarang through the inquiry of the origin of place and street names.
What's in a (place) name is a collective memory of the community. In Semarang, it relates to seven different things: a landowner or a distinguished person who resides in the area, i.e., Kepatihan (the residence of the patih, the Javanese prime minister); activities dominating the particular area, i.e., Kulitan, (leather tanning); ethnic or smaller social group, i.e., Pecinan (the Chinese district) and Kauman (the strict Moslem district); existence of a structure or a landmark in the area, i.e., Wotgandul (a suspended bridge); position, i.e., Pungkuran (an area behind the Kanjengan); physical characteristics, i.e., Gang Cilik, (a narrow path); and elements of landscape such as Gunung Sawo (Mount Sawo).
Most street and place names that were basically formed in Javanese were collective memories of two predominant ethnic groups, Javanese and Chinese. The Dutch people who, once, exclusively resided in the fortified town, named the places in their own language and thus, share the collective memories among themselves.
This paper examines the role of the knowledge of the origin of area/street names in describing the growth and change of the urban morphology within two centuries, from 1745 to 1945. A series of maps will be constructed and presented to the participants.
The New Chinese Cities: Mapping Urban Change in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, and
Guangzhou
Piper Gaubatz, University of Massachusetts
New urban and economic development is transforming the fundamental nature and structure of China's cities. The distinctive patterns wrought by overlaying socialist ideals on the pre-1949 city are giving way to new forms reflecting the country's changing economic, social and political conditions. These new forms have substantive implications for both the changing quality of life of urban dwellers and new patterns of domestic and international investment in urban real estate and development projects. This poster provides a visual analysis of the impacts of new thinking about social organization and urban lifestyles and the demands of a changing economy on the urban form and spatial organization of Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Guangzhou. Maps, diagrams and photographs illustrate the re-organization of the cities around multiple business and service centers, increased district specialization, a new emphasis on large-scale development zone-based planning, transformation to high-volume traffic systems, new interpretations of open space and the development of competitive regional urban systems. China's urban landscapes are both converging and diverging in their appearance. Analysis of these four rapidly changing cities highlights both the significant regional variation in urban development in China and the emergence of common trends in development and form. The poster is based on fourteen months of field research conducted between 1992-1995 with the support of a faculty fellowship from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, as well as subsequent data analysis and updating.
A Tale of Two Lakes: From Tian Chi to Tian Chi
Stanley Toops, Miami University
Two Tian Chi are profiled, one in the Northeast and one in the Northwest. The first Tian Chi, Heaven Lake, is located in the Changbai Shan on the border of Jilin Province and North Korea. The second Tian Chi, Heaven Lake, is located in the Tian Shan just north of Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This comparison of the two region's cultural landscapes is based on the author's trips to both of these areas.
These frontier regions are in mountainous areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. The Korean inhabitants around Jilin's Tian Chi are residents of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous District. This alpine lake is situated at the peak of Paektusan (Korean for Whitetop Mountain) above the treeline. Around the shores of Xinjiang's Tian Chi enshrouded in conifers are Kazak summer encampments. Kazak and Uygur call the lake Bogda Kol, the Eye of God.
There is an inherent contradiction at each of the lakes. Both sites have been developed as tourist zones, and yet both are also environmental protection zones. The open door policy has also strongly shaped the development of the lakes. These two lakes, at opposite ends of China, represent evolving frontiers transformed through the reform process. The twin processes of reform and of opening have changed the nature of China's frontier.
The Evolution of Environmental Interest in the People's Republic of China:
Population, Power and Global Ecopolitics
Jonathan Harrington, Loyola University of Chicago
In recent years, many people in the People's Republic of China have expressed an increasing interest in environmental issues, both at home and abroad. Many take a cynical view of this progress, stating that it is mainly precipitated by a desire to prop up China's international image and placate increasingly environmentally sensitive international lending organizations who continue to play an instrumental part in China's economic growth. This cynicism is also fueled by the fact that many characteristics that are commonly associated with the growth of environmental saliency in the developed world such grassroots activism, NGO activity and the rise of green party politics are not present in the PRC. There is growing evidence, however, that while international pressure has had a catalyzing effect on the growth of environmental interest in the PRC, other purely domestic factors such as growing concerns about population growth, falling agricultural productivity, bureaucratic reform and generational changes in political leadership structures have also precipitated this interest. The Chinese experience provides an interesting look at how environmental interest can develop in developing, even authoritarian nations in the Third World. I plan to present six posters which visually lay out both the internal and external factors that have fostered the increased saliency of environmental issues in the PRC and its relationship to the evolution of global ecopolitics.
Differing Chinese Views of Corruption in Reform China
Richard Levy, Salem State College
Building on the analytical framework in my article "Corruption, Economic Crime and Social Transformation Since the Reforms: The Debate in China," this paper will outline different Chinese approaches to corruption in China since 1989.
While the majority of Chinese analyses of corruption recognize the threat to the regime's legitimacy, they disagree on the sources and consequences of such corruption, and thus on the means for controlling and/or eliminating it.
The success of any anti-corruption process is determined by numerous factors, including: (1) the actual causes and consequences of corruption and the ways in which they are perceived or blocked out by the regime's analytical framework; (2) regime goals, including the degree to which, by promoting the transformation of the forms of legitimate economic intercourse, it encourages changing what is defined as corruption; and (3) the degree to which it is capable of accomplishing its goals once set.
Drawing upon interviews and materials from my 1996 research in China, this paper will focus on the first two factors, revealing the different schools of thought. Differences are apparent definitions of corruption, sources of corruption, manifestations and consequences of corruption, proposals for combatting corruption, and, perhaps most significantly, the degree to which corruption is linked or not linked to class struggle and, if so, how. Ironically, both the "conservatives" within the Party and the advocates of the development of a national bourgeoisie and/or a middle class more clearly recognize this a link in their analyses and prescriptions than do the official advocates of reform.
Problems Caused by Variation of Income and Expense for Chinese Ordinary People
Ying Xiong, China North An-Hua General Company
Economic development and stability of society were sensitively affected by the situation of effective income and expense for ordinary people. Therefore, it is necessary to study the variations and problems of income and expense for every country. This work is based on both the data reported by The China Statistical Information and Advisory Service Center and the results obtained from sampling investigation by the author in different regions, including rural and urban regions in the boom regions of southern China and east coast, northern China, western China and other backward parts of the country. The results of analysis show that in 1995 the average income in urban regions was 3390 yuan, 7.9% more than last year, while those in rural regions were 1260 yuan and 4.9%, respectively. The income and expense in the boom regions got a huge raise and thousands of people became millionaires. However, the inflation index stayed around 15%, and ordinary people in these regions live from day to day on a very tight budget. The incomes in inland were much lower than those in coastal regions; especially, some backward regions still do not have enough food. Other problems include high inflation index, differential of incomes between businessmen and people working for a state-owned firm, 16.7% unemployment rate, etc. Moonlighting and "second jobs" have become a popular way to supplement one's income. Those problems caused by uneven distribution of wealth would be a strong factor for increasing the instability of Chinese society.
Medicine as Philosophy and Fiction: The Intertextuality of Traditional Chinese
Medicine
Da'an Pan, Muhlenberg College
This paper explores the intertextuality of traditional Chinese medicine in relation to traditional Chinese philosophy and literature. Such intertextuality has facilitated the development and popularization of this discipline but also caused its charlatanization to some extent. During its evolution, traditional Chinese medicine came under the influence of the philosophy of Yi jing, developing an analogy to the latter in the mode of conceptualization and of rationalization. Such an analogy helps to formulate the theory of traditional Chinese etiology, pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics, and pharmacology, making the medical discourse a metaphysical one.
This paper also argues that traditional Chinese medicine figures significantly in traditional Chinese literature and in particular fiction. In the classical masterpiece Dream of the Red Mansion, medicine and medically-related events play a substantial role in plot structure, theme development, and character portrayal. Discourses of medicine are interwoven with, and in some cases, "fictionalized" or charlatanized by mythology, folklore, and superstition, though they also document certain cases and cures including food therapy and personal hygiene hitherto unrecorded in formal medical literature.
This paper concludes that while traditional Chinese medicine is increasingly achieving worldwide prominence and popularity today, many aspects of its theory and practice remain to be further explored and elucidated. An investigation into the intertextuality of Chinese medicine will contribute to a better understanding of this discipline and to a more convivial dialogue and synthesis between Eastern and Western medicine.
Curable Cancers and Fatal Ulcers Update: Changing Attitudes Toward Cancer
Disclosure in Japan
Susan O. Long, John Carroll University
Based on recent fieldwork in Japan, this presentation will indicate areas of change and continuity in attitudes toward disclosing a cancer diagnosis. In the fifteen years since publication of "Curable Cancers and Fatal Ulcers,"1 the majority of Japanese have come to see truthful disclosure as desirable for themselves, and many physicians at least consider whether they should inform their patients of their diagnosis and prognosis. Membership in the Japan Society for Dying with Dignity has grown dramatically in the years since the Showa Emperor's death from cancer. Yet there remain qualifications on this more open attitude. Family members frequently ask that an elderly relative not be informed, and such requests seem generally to be honored by physicians. Physicians often claim that it is best to decide on a case-by-case basis rather than accept disclosure as an automatic response. The ethics of disclosure thus remain strongly within a Japanese worldview that emphasizes family and the relativity of values. The poster will include a sample living will, relevant quotations from physicians and patients, and results of public opinion polls.
1. Long, Susan O. And Bruce D. Long. Curable Cancers and Fatal Ulcers: Attitudes Toward Cancer in Japan. Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 16, pp. 2101-2108, 1982.
The Probe into Conflicts and Solutions on Sino-U.S. Intellectual Property
Protection
Wei Wu, Shenzen Antaeus Law Firm
This paper is a study of the conflicts that occurred regarding Sino-U.S. intellectual property protection in the past few years. It analyzes the different intellectual property protection systems, protection scopes, and protection degrees in the United States and the PRC, the main causes of conflict, and the influence that conflicts have produced. It also raises solution proposals for discussion.
Before writing this article, the author made a thorough investigation and study on the intellectual property protection system in China. To present a true story, he personally visited many cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xian, and Shenzhen, etc., to investigate and obtain an understanding of local intellectual property protection situations. As a result, he finally found many severe intellectual property infringements in certain places, where intellectual property rights could not be properly protected. The author has made an analysis on the basis of statistics of intellectual property cases the Chinese judicial offices have handled. In 1994, the court in China accepted and heard altogether 3,955,475 cases, including 625 intellectual property cases, or 0.0158% of the total. These figures reflect the need for further strengthening of intellectual property protection in China.
Through analysis of Sino-U.S. intellectual property conflicts, the author raises his own solution proposal for discussion, hoping to promote the exchange and cooperation of intellectual property between the PRC and the United States.
The Economic Effects of Education in Rural China
Mun C. Tsang, Michigan State University
Rural economic reform has been a major component of the overall economic reform in China since the early 1980s. A key concern of both policymakers and researchers is the impact of the reform on the income of rural residents of China, especially those in poor areas. With more production incentives and responsibilities at the household level, skills and knowledge are becoming an important determinant of productivity and thus earned income in economic production in rural China. This paper is a study of the impact of education on earned income in rural China a decade after the initial launch of rural economic reform. Primary and secondary data were obtained from 3,709 male and female residents working in different economic sectors in six provinces in China in 1991. Three of the provinces are from southwestern China which are among the poorest provinces in China and which have a significant percentage of ethnic minorities; the other three are poor provinces from central China with a small percentage of ethnic minorities. The analysis finds that education has a significant and positive impact on the earned income of rural residents. The economic returns for each additional year of education for males and females are similar. However, education's income effect is much stronger in central China than southwestern China; it is also stronger in the agricultural sector than in the industrial-service sector. The result is consistent with the view that the economic effect of education is stronger in a more modernizing environment.