China and the West

David Hinton studied Chinese at Cornell University and received the MFA. Then he studied Chinese in Taiwan.

Aufführung von Kong fang zheng ren = The witness for the prosecution = 控方証人 von Agatha Christie, in der Übersetzung von Lu Jingwen durch das Xianggang hua ju tuan ju mu (Hong Kong Repertory Theatre).

Clavell, James. Noble house : a novel of contemporary Hong Kong [ID D33472].
Sekundärliteratur
Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this. And nobody, it seems, can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes.
In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House.
Struan and Company is based on Jardine Matheson Holdings, which continues to exist as an Asian trading company.

Gina Macdonald : In a time of crisis, Dunross takes over Noble House, a private banking house and international shipping firm, and sells public stock in the firm to prevent the bankruptcy pending from an uninsured billion-dollar cargo lost at sea.
Perhaps the mos striking theme of the novel has to do with Hong Kong. Cavell argues that the city is a unique experiment in capitalistic venture and cross-cultural relationships. It epitomizes the good that can result from the peaceful meeting of East and West.
A recurring theme given more weight in Noble House than in Clavell's other books is a warning against Soviet expansionism. Two of Clavell's other recurring themes, cultural differences and gender differences, have a changed focus in this book. The dominating cultural differences are between the English and the Americans, with the Chinese sharing the English reaction to Americans.
Oble House is a tribute to a fascinating city that has become an international definition of successful interface between East and West. Hong Kong has always had one of the highest population densities in the world. Two interlocked characteristics of Hong Kong that Cavell illustrates again and again are its inhabitants' willingness to gamble- to gamble their lives, to gamble on life and, especially, to gamble on business ods – and their lust for money and for power. Cavell captures this gambling spirit and makes it the essential ingredient of his most successful entrepreneurs.
The Struan legacy has a Chinese sense of family continuity and of family commitment to China that is reinforced by family ritual such as the passing of power from tai-pan to tai-pan.
Cavell dramatizes American directness, informality, and business-first mentality grating on both Chinese and British formality and propriety, and his British finding common cause with Chinese associates against the Americans.
In Noble House, the Chinese women of twentieth-century Hong Kong are still trapped in nineteenth-century patterns. The birth control pill has given British women greater freedom and wider choices, but, in general, they, like their Chinese counterparts, accept Hong Kong as a man's world in which women are limited to traditional roles.
The cultural contrasts between East and West have become less striking as the melding of cultures creates Chinese with Western values and ambitions, and Westerners with a Chinese sense of time and strategy.
The Hong Kong setting is equally important, since the city is an experiment in free-wheeling capitalism on the doorstep of two gigantic experiments with Communism : Red China, and, by extension, the Soviet Union. The battle of competing economic systems infuses the book with a spirit of ideological urgency, since the struggles taking place here are more than just personal and financial. Cavell interlocks political and business struggles. Hong Kong is the showplace of capitalism, with the competing socialist model never far away. Cavell argues that, though still an alien culture, with a focus on communal rather than individual values, China cannot close its doors to the West. It has become dependent on Hong Kong as a population outlet in times of trouble and as a source of income and goods ; illegal and legal traffic flows in and out of Hong Kong and back and forth between Kong Kong and the mainland.
Cavell postulates that trade with China over a long period will transform Chinese thinking, and that the Chinese cannot stop those changes ; however, it will also affect Western thinking, and Westerners cannot stop thos changes either. But whichever way the influences flow, it is capitalism that will promote social and personal advances.

Clasper, Paul. C.S. Lewis's contribution to a missionary theology : an Asian perspective [ID D34428].
Once while lecturing in the Lutheran Seminary in Shatin, Hong Kong, the discussion turned to a perennial problem: how can one be authentically Christian and authentically Chinese in the same existence? I was interested to learn that many had found Lewis the most helpful writer at just this point. This seemed especially significant to me since he had never visited Asia, nor written about contextual theology, nor entered into ecumenical conferences or congresses on evangelism for Asians. What he had done was to show that Christ completes cultural aspirations, since, as Augustine put it, God places salt on our tongues so that we thirst for Him.
The college where I teach has taken as its symbol the old Nestorian Christian symbol of the lotus and the cross. This has been the Asian Christian's way of saying that the best of Asian wisdom and insight must be brought to, and enhanced by seeing it in the light of, the cross and the resurrection. The Chinese Bible uses the rich word Tao to translate the Greek word Logos.
In our great city-state [Hong Kong] every possible missionary society seeks to have a beach-head, or at least a launching-pad, to show that it takes China seriously. Hong Kong is an ecumenical chaos! It is no wonder that Christians in China today insist that there will be no going back to the days of divisive, sectarian Western Christianity. They keep saying that today the Chinese must make their own way and not be disintegrated by the influences of Western Christian money and people who will be eager to spread their peculiar and divisive emphases.
Lewis's use of the Bible shows it to be the source of truth and nourishment which the Christian community has always claimed it to be. He points to a way which avoids the rocks of literalism and the whirlpool of de-mythologization.
Few things are as important as this for Asian Christians. The legacy of Protestant evangelical missions has produced a 'people of the Book', to borrow an Islamic phrase. The Bible, obviously, has a large place in the life of Asian Christians. But giving the Bible to all, and insisting on the priesthood of all believers, has not been an unmixed blessing or a pure strength.
We could wish that Asian Christians might be spared some of the bloody battles over the use of the Bible which has seared Western Christendom. The insistence on the acceptance of a certain view of the way inspiration must have taken place does nothing to aid in the understanding or profitable use of the Bible.
One of the deepest yearnings of Asian Christians is in the vague area called 'the quest for an Asian spirituality' and the experience which the catholic tradition has termed 'spiritual direction'. I believe this yearning is also deeply sensed in the West, so we are here in touch with one of the 'signs of the times'. But there is a special concern for it in the East. Asian Christians are surrounded by time-honored disciplines of 'spirituality'. Their own poverty in this regard seems all the more apparent.
Anyone living in Hong Kong, London or New York will be aware of the problem of trying to transplant the life-style of Judson or Lewis. But if our concern is with 'missionary theology' we cannot get off the hook so easily. 'Missionary theology' is by nature a listening and learning theology; it takes the other seriously, which means taking time for conversation and communion. Lewis has given us more than fresh ideas well expressed; his life-style is also a source of encouragement.
He is like a hearty older brother whose zesty friendship is an encouragement to us to use what gifts we have in the part of the vineyard where we have been called to serve.
In a way, this is what Asian Chrisitans most want and need from their Western friends. In China today you will hear it said, as we did last summer in Shanghai: "We don't need you to do it for us or even to show us your ways. But support us with your concern, friendship and understanding."

[Twain, Mark]. Make Tuwen zi zhuan. Make Tuwen zhu ; Xu Ruzhi yi. [ID D29484].
Xu praises Twain as an outstanding anti-imperialist author who supported China during the invasion of the Eight-Nation-Alliance [Boxer Rebellion]. He also cites Russian critical opinion of Twain.

Henry Henne ist Professor an der Universität Bergen und gibt Kurse in Vietnamesich, Kantonesisch und Japanisch.

Zuo, Yi. Tiannaxi Weiliansi de zao qi zuo pin. In : Dang dai wai guo wen xue ; issue 4 (1981). [Artikel über Tennessee Williams]. 田纳西•威廉斯的早期作品
In William's canon, almost no one won victory through struggle. Williams always sided with the weak characters and thought threir tragedy was caused by society, although they themselves had shortcomins. They were victims of the time. From Williams's point of view, the human being and the world were hostile to each other. The reason why men committed crimes was because the world itself was not perfect. When Williams exposed their sufferings using his sharp pen, to some extent he reflected the capitalist American society in which the middle and low class people were placed in situations which made them lonely and powerless. Actually, America was not a country in which every one had equal opportunities. It was a country in which the strongest existed and the weakest perished. Some of Williams's characters have made great efforts to improve their situations such as Jin in Glass menargerie and Chance in The lovely youth island, but finally their future was still dark and hopeless. Williams's plays have stirred the great responses of the Chinese people.

Giorgio Casacchia ist Assistent an der Scuola Orientale dell'Università di Roma "La Sapienza".

Roberto Ciarla ist Lecturer in Far Eastern prehistoric archaeology for the prehistory and protohistory of Asia, Itituto universitario orientale, Neapel. 1981, 1985-1988.

Ellen B. Widmer promoviert in Chinese Literature an der Harvard University.

Ellen B. Widmer ist Lecturer on Chinese, Head Tutor of East Asian Studies der Harvard University, und Visiting Assistant Professor der Wesleyan University.

Kolloquium über Aleksandr Pushkin, Mai 1981 in Changsha, Hunan. 59 Artikel des Kolloquiums wurden 1985 veröffentlicht.
http://dieliteratur.eu/index.php?newsid=328005&news_page=2.

Ba Jin said in an interview of May 1981 that Turgenev and Tolstoy were the first to teach how to be a good, upright person, to face life honestly and tell the truth to readers.

A Chinese film delegation attended the film festivals in Sydney and Melbourne.

Gerald E. Clark ist britischer Commercial Councellor in China.

Anthony Galsworthy ist Counsellor der britischen Botschaft in Beijing.

Robin J.T. McLaren ist Political Adviser in Hong Kong.

Reise der Delegation der Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik unter der Leitung von Bruno Mahlow nach Beijing.

Richard L. Williams ist handelnder Generalkonsul des amerikanischen Generalkonsulats Hong Kong und Macao.

Ein chinesisches Peking-Operensemble ist auf Tournee in der Schweiz.