23 April is World Book Day. This year's reading day is more special, because of the epidemic, we are all trapped at home in Shanghai, and reading has become a good way to fight the epidemic. This month's list of books, we recommend the following, let the books tell us about spring.
The Lady Who Turned Her Back: A Dynamic Study of the Living Of Local Folklore
Chen Yongchao/Author, Peking University Press, October 2015
Recommended by: Huang Xiaofeng
Testimonials:
This book was recommended by a senior scholar a few years ago, but I bought it and have not read it. After reading Mr. Shi Aidong's "Law of Stories" at the beginning of the year, I suddenly thought that this book could be read correctly. The study of the "Law of Stories" is to draw the greatest common divisor from a large number of stories, and the research orientation of this book is just the opposite, the author through the field investigation of the legend of Niangniang's life that lasted for eight years in the "Picking Up the Aunt and Welcoming the Niangniang" belief activity in the Hongdong area of Shanxi, the description of various legend forms and their speech behavior, to analyze the construction practice of the subjectivity of the people in the local society, and in addition to exploring the complex coexistence strategies within the local area, further focus on the diverse connections with the mainstream social and cultural processes outside the local area. (10 pages)
In this religious activity, simply put, Emperor Yao lived in Yanghu Village in Hongdong County, and married his daughter Emperor E and Daughter Ying to Shun, who lived in Lishan Village, Hongdong County, and the two places were connected by marriage. Every year on March 3, the villagers of The Sheep Badger go to Alexandria to pick up Niangniang and return to their mother's home; and April 28 is the birthday of King Yao, on this day, people from Alexandria and other places come to Yang badger, while paying homage to King Yao, and by the way, they also take Niangniang back to their in-laws' home. (p. 35) However, this book is not concerned with the structure of the plot units, but with "legendary dynamics", that is, exploring in the context of fieldwork situations... The reason why a legend is told this way and not that way, it contains the actual purpose for which the narrator can be observed, is that the narrator consciously promotes the mutation of the legend. (131 pages)
For the convenience of analysis, the author divides the narrators of the legend into seven levels: first, ordinary villagers, second, Xiuyi villagers, third, witch villagers, fourth, the deacons of the society, fifth, folk intellectuals, sixth, government officials, and seven, cultural others. (pp. 132-138) These different narrators' discourse power, charisma, and enthusiasm for participation constitute the driving factors behind the legendary landscape. For example, the "folk elites" represented by folk intellectuals "rode on the strong east wind of the local government's application for heritage, and actively carried out a round of very deliberate screening, correction and compilation of local legends to echo the situation of the government's external propaganda" (p. 233), which played a role in the right to speak about the various details of the legend. For example, the title of the book, "The Big Lady who turned her back", refers to the legend that Emperor E and Lady Ying fought for the size of Emperor Shun's house in three rounds of competition, and Emperor E lost to do small, but was reluctant in his heart, so the original statue of The Great Lady Emperor E turned her back to express unhappiness. However, the author did not find a statue of Emperor E with his back to Hongdong, because it did not conform to the Confucian concept of harmonious family.
The dynamics of this legend also affect actual interpersonal relationships. The author found that "in the whole circle of legends, since Yao Shun and the two niangniang are generally symbols of positive values, almost all villages want to get a piece of this additional identity." But there is also an exception, that is, Hanjiazhuang, because it is considered by some people in local legends to be the village of Queen Shun's stepmother, and in both mainstream literature and local legends, Shun's stepmother is the negative protagonist of abusing and even murdering King Shun. (p. 198) Some of Han Jiazhuang's narrators are therefore very dissatisfied with this, believing that it was made up by the Lishan people.
Another thing has also affected relationships. In order to unify the statement in the application for the relic, Wan'an was identified as a resting place for the parade of the gods, rather than the main palace of niangniang, so the Wan'an people were very dissatisfied after applying for the relic, "On October 23, 2012, the sheep badger people went up to Alexandria to pay homage to the second aunt, and came down to Eat in Wan'an as usual, and as a result, the Wan'an people sang a traditional play of "She'an", and the sheep badger people were particularly angry, feeling like going to Wan'an to beg for food, most of them left without eating, only a dozen people were left to eat, and asked the Wan'an people to change the play, and as a result, they changed to "Broken Bridge". Both of these plays were traditionally forbidden to be staged during the Temple Festival, and the Sheep Badger asserted that the Wan'an people were deliberate, not unintentional." (pp. 254-255)
The author attaches particular importance to the dynamic role of folk intellectuals, on the one hand, because they can speak the Tao, full of dedication enthusiasm, on the other hand, they are enthusiastic to write various legendary pamphlets to publicize, forming a discursive advantage. However, the author unexpectedly found that many people wrote pamphlets, silently and heavily used the plot of a popular novel "Ancient Mythology", although the novel is fictional, but those folk writers fundamentally believe that writing legends is to write history, with authenticity as the ultimate appeal, so the book "Ancient Mythology" is tacitly "used without citation". (292 pages)
The introduction to the book sorts out and analyzes the theory of legendary dynamics, and mentions that the fieldwork team he led filled out the national intangible cultural heritage declaration form, which was approved in 2008. As observers (cultural others), they also become a branch of the legendary dynamics, and thus unconsciously promote the mutation of the legend, although this mutation may not be detectable by outsiders at all. This interesting phenomenon is reminiscent of the uncertainty principle in physics. Of course, the author's purpose of this book was never to describe an authoritative version of the legend, and the driving force was that the legend was always mutating.
Obituary
Keith Corkhorn and Ann Rowe/ Xu Longhua/Translation, Nova Press, January 2022 edition
Recommender: Gu Ming
Testimonials:
In 1995, the Economist magazine, which had been in existence for more than 150 years, finally had an obituary column. Under the auspices of two authors, the two authors of the book, the obituary of The Economist gradually gained praise. The obituary column is about a thousand words long each time, and the criteria for selecting characters have always remained the same, that is, their lives must be interesting and thought-provoking, and it does not matter whether they are celebrities or not. In this way, The Economist's obituary column slowly developed its own unique style. Among them in their columns are the President of the United States, Princess Diana, the writer, the director, the Great African Dictator, the Gang Boss, the New York celebrity, the firefighter, the forger of Hitler's diary, and even an African Grey Parrot.
The Obituary is a selection of 201 of these obituarys, and you can read these short essays as excellent examples of character sketches. The two authors are beautifully written, and there are often amazing good sentences popping up. A short thousand words of text can not only review the life of the character, but also accurately grasp the personality characteristics of the character. Their usual writing routine is to start by throwing out a detailed description or story that reflects the main characteristics of the character, quickly attracting the reader's attention, and then completing the prescribed action of the obituary - a brief description of the character's life. For example, the obituary of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who begins by visiting many churches while filming "WinterLights", and will sit with the photographer on a church bench to observe the change of light, sitting from morning to afternoon. The transformation of light and shadow is the theme that Bergman repeatedly expresses in the film, and even becomes a footnote in his life.
Usually, obituary chooses the best side of a person's life to write, and many mistakes are forgiven with the advent of death. But this is not the case with The Economist's obituary, which insists on showing both the good and the bad in a person. For example, the heroic firefighter who extinguished the fire in Kuwait's oil wells within nine months, while describing his heroic deeds, the author will also write that when he extinguishes the fire, he will ask the Kuwaiti government to fill the aircraft with whiskey, and also apply for 4,000 pigs to be used as victims of detonating mines - of course, all of which were rejected. Write about Mrs. Helmsley, a famous New York woman, saying that she is the embodiment of arrogance, once saying that "we do not pay taxes, only small people pay taxes", and believed that employees were hired to be scolded and slapped. Doctors who write about the relationship between smoking and cancer have provoked strong opposition from the public for experimenting with dogs.
And the end of the obituary is even more amazing. For example, at the end of the Obituary of bao Dake, the "China Pass" of the United States, it was written that an adviser to President Clinton ran to him to ask him how to handle Sino-US relations, "Bao Dake said that the overall policy toward China should be not to be a troublemaker. 'Stay calm. At the end of the obituary of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the author writes that some Nationalist-fanatical Japanese suspect that he worships the West too much." In the face of this reproach, Akira Kurosawa points to his antique collection: alongside Japanese lacquerware, french glassware. Both are beautiful. Japan and the West, he said, coexisted in his mind. After the writer Saul Bellow became famous, all four marriages ended in failure, and his moral consciousness emerged in his later years. In the last paragraph of the obituary, the author tells about a small incident in Bellow the day before the birth of the last child. "One night, a waiter in a restaurant served a ridiculous dessert, and the eighty-four-year-old Nobel Prize winner stared at the dots of jam that were evenly arranged in a circle." Ah,' he commented immediately mischievously, 'Euclid's acne! Hahaha, laugh three times and go out. (If only I could get out now!) ）
Essays for Children
Li Tuo, Kitajima/Selected Editors, CITIC Publishing Group Movable Type Culture, June 2015 edition
Recommender: Fang Xiaoyan
Testimonials:
It is true that I took it from a child's bookshelf, but let me speculate that most of the articles here should be unread by adults like me, and they should not be regarded as children's books. The two editors selected 46 modern Chinese essays since May Fourth, from Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Feng Zikai, Lao She to contemporary writers such as Shi Tiesheng, Han Shaogong, Wang Anyi, and Mo Yan, and the last one was Li Juan's "Time to Wash Clothes by the River".
In the days of sitting in the well and watching the sky, reading Lu Xun wrote: "I seem to remember that I once took a boat through the mountain vagina, the black oak on both sides of the river, the new grass, the wildflowers, the chickens, the dogs, the bushes and dead trees, the huts, the towers, the garlands, the farmers and the village women, the village women, the clothes that were sunburned, the monks, the stalks, the heavens, the clouds, the bamboo... They are all reflected in the clear blue river, and with each oar, each one carries a flickering daylight" ("Good Story"), the beauty of the wind and the beauty of the arrangement of the wind and the beauty of the arrangement, which makes people look down. Watching Wang Zengqi list the hot bones, suo powder, white meat hu cake, Taiping Biluo, wisp meat soup, lotus meat cake, hot golden intestines, single steamed buns, and belly soup ("Eating and Drinking of the Song Dynasty"), I thought about it for a while. There is also this poetic text in Gu Cheng's "Notes on Learning Poetry": "The grass grows out of the bitter and salty land, so small and so dense, standing under the sky, standing under the dark clouds and the hot sun, greeting the inevitable." No one knows them, no butterflies, no bees, no sighs of wonder, no praises; yet they grow and blossom small flowers, proudly lifted above their heads... They tell me about spring, they tell me about the responsibility of poetry. ”
Guan Yu: History and Imagination of Van Sanctification
Tian Hai/Wang Jian et al./Translation, Nova Press, March 2022 edition
Recommended by: Huang Xiaofeng
Testimonials:
The image of Guan Yu is well known to everyone, of course, most of us have an impression of Guan Yu from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Although everyone knows that it is a fictional work, not a history, it is still involuntarily substituted for the image in the novel. This book traces the historical evolution and multiple aspects of the Guan Gong cult, and the author combines a large number of historical materials and relics, and even first-hand information obtained from fieldwork, to examine the cultural mechanism behind it in detail. He argues that Guan Yu's belief arose in oral culture rather than in the Three Kingdoms narrative tradition advocated by most studies.
The author points out that the Guan Gong faith began to become popular in the north from the late 10th century and the early 11th century, long before the Three Kingdoms story became the mainstream narrative tradition. In order to replace the legendary narrative of the Qin and Han Dingge, the government promoted the story of the Three Kingdoms in the early Ming Dynasty and achieved success. This narrative tradition emphasizes the loyalty of the protagonists— the three brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, and the ingenious general Zhuge Liang. And the religious worship of Guan Gong was already popular long before this ideologically based promotion movement appeared... Finally, the popularity of the Three Kingdoms narrative has never provoked similar reverence for other protagonists, such as Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Zhuge Liang. (pp. 95-96)
If Guan Yu's historical merits played a systematic role in the rise and spread of his faith, then the geographical distribution of Guan Gong's faith and its specific content should be very different from what it is now. In other words, his belief should have spread more widely in the former Shu Han region, and the former ruling areas of Wei and Wu in his place of death disappeared. But we see that the actual situation is just the opposite. Saying this does not mean that narrative traditions or historical records are not helpful in legitimizing this belief. (96 pages)
Although this statement is not enough to affect our love for Guan Yu and play various games of the Three Kingdoms, it is undeniable that this is a very powerful and logical question and inference.
The worship of the Guan Gong faith originated in the Yuquan Mountain in Dangyang, Hubei Province, and is related to the founder of the Tiantai Sect, Zhi Yan, "Guan Gong, who shows himself in the image of a demon, assisted Zhi Yan in building a monastery... This relationship between Guan Gong and the Tendai Monastery did not become part of the great Tendai tradition... It was only at the end of the Ming Dynasty that monks as far away as Tiantai Mountain in Zhejiang Province began to tell the story of Guan Gong, because the great influence of Guan Gong at that time had far exceeded the prestige of Tiantai Mountain itself." (p. 43) In fact, Guan Gong's relationship with Taoism is even closer, and the author notes that "a great change between the Song and Yuan dynasties is undoubtedly closely related to the growing influence of southern Taoist rituals to drive away evil spirits and exorcise ghosts." The popularity of the worship of Guan Gong as a protector general is part of this belief." (p. 60) At the same time, "in the 11th century, especially in other counties near Xiezhou, the archetype of the Guan Yu faith had matured and spread to other parts of northern China. This belief is a local social cult in a broader sense, and it is not just because it can defend the salt ponds that it has gained its reverence." (63 pages)
The author also points out an interesting phenomenon, until the Northern Song Dynasty, the Guan Gong faith was only popular in the north, and in the Guangong Temple in the south, the author only found two records, located in Shaowu, Fujian and Haiyan, Zhejiang. (p. 106) So, after the spread of the Guan Gong faith throughout the country, there is also a process of spread and diffusion, and the author believes that immigrant groups from different regions play an important role in the process of spreading the faith. (p. 113) However, the author has only made some speculations about the path and form of these spreads, such as Guan Gong, as the protector of the Xiezhou salt pond, which is likely to have spread with the salt merchants.
In chapters 6, 7, and 8, the author introduces different aspects of Guan Gong's beliefs, such as the god of rain, the god of wealth, the protector of the warriors, and the savior. This is also a process of gradual diffusion in the god-making movement.
In the reading, some small problems or doubts were also found, for example, the author quoted a poem in the Tang Dynasty that contains "Sorrow to Chen Traces", he believes that "Chen" guides the Chen regime, which is probably a misreading, "Chen Traces" is "Relics". (37 pages)
On page 31, the author notes: "The cult of Guan Gong reflects a relatively new type of worship at the time, namely that people would worship those who had been violently killed and turned into hungry ghosts. This type of cult often became an important part of zhiwei novels, which at that time were a popular genre of storytelling among the cultural elite. He also believes that the "Yin Soldiers" led by Guan Gong in the legend are the subordinates of the demons. There seems to be something to discuss here, too. The ancients' understanding of the deceased has always had two contradictory aspects, on the one hand, they believe that their ancestors will bless themselves, and on the other hand, they are worried that the deceased will return to the Yang to harass the living. At least in the Middle Ages, these two aspects were mixed together, as can be seen from the town tomb texts and land purchase vouchers unearthed at that time. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the legend of the Manifestation of Guan Gong on Yuquan Mountain must indicate that he is an evil ghost or a demon, and that kind of superpower is difficult to judge by the standard of good and evil. Further, "Yin Bing" does not specifically refer to evil ghosts or plague ghosts in Zhiwei novels, but is often a subordinate of the local protector god, and in the "Northern Dream Trivia", there is even a record of Yin Soldiers dredging rivers for yang.
On page 172, the author cites a record from volume XVII of The Son of Silence and then says: "Since the display of force is an exorcism activity, this special performance containing the 'Big Flower Face' becomes an exorcism method, scaring away all the ghost audiences and revealing the true face of the performance venue." However, this record is about the situation in which the ghost singing hall will be broken by the Yang Ma, not caused by Guan Gong exorcising the ghost. In the record, the ghost once instructed the drama team: "As long as you sing the Sheng Dan opera, you are not allowed to face the hall with big flowers, and use big gongs and drums to disturb and annoy." It has been hinted at, and it is clearly stated in a record in the Ear Talk: "Ghosts belong to the yin, so they are afraid of the male voice." There are similar hints in other opera performances that have nothing to do with Guan Gong, that is, ghosts are yin objects, and the social life of ghosts should not be in conflict with the yang, and if they are broken or seen, they will disappear immediately. Therefore, this record does not show that Guan Gong opera has the function of exorcising ghosts.
"Red Mountain Zoo is My Home"
Shen Zhijun and Zhu Yingchun/Editor-in-Chief, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, Purui Culture, January 2022 edition
Recommended by: Zhu Fan
Testimonials:
In this spring when you can't visit the zoo, this little book about the zoo is a rare comfort. Humane primates, cats favored by God, cute top pandas... Although the garden tour on paper damages the enjoyment of the senses, it gives the reader the leeway to slowly understand each species and even carefully identify each animal.
The stories of private rooms between keepers and their animal friends in their care are particularly precious, telling their daily work about new and old people, competition and fraternity in the zoo, and viewing the relationship between people and animals with an equal attitude of "one life accompanies another life". What struck me the most was the story of the black bear baby stone and pearl refusing to go home. One early spring night, two bears who had eaten and drunk in the afternoon decided not to eat dinner, hanging on the trees in the outreach area to watch the moon, and the keepers sat on the ground to discuss countermeasures, and could not help but be touched by the quiet beauty of the picture in front of them, so they gave up the plan to call them home, just opened the bedroom door for them and put food on them. It was their first overnight stay in the wild, and the next morning, the two cubs slept huddled together in the grass on the hillside. Breeder Pembella concludes the story by saying, "Pearls and stones must have learned something important in nature at night." Maybe it's friendship, maybe it's courage, maybe it's the connection between morning light and birds, and there's more to the little secrets that we don't know about bears. ”
Panic Empire: Infectious Diseases and Dominion Anxiety
Bai Jinwen/Editor He Wenzhong, Cai Sihui, Zheng Wenhui/Translation, Zhejiang University Press, December 2021 edition
Recommended by: Yu Shujuan
Testimonials:
Infectious diseases always cause panic, and panic can spread and spread into diseases.
Panic Empire is a collection of academic papers on the topic of "panic", based on a series of case studies from East Asia in the early 19th century to the United States in the 21st century, which attempt to discuss what panic is, how people understand panic, and how panic is managed and exploited. Most of the articles included in the collection focus on infectious diseases, such as yellow fever, cholera, plague, and influenza, and it is not only diseases that cause panic.
Take, for example, the fifth chapter of the book. The article focuses on two infectious diseases experienced in India – the bubonic plague of 1896–1897 (the Black Death) and the pandemic of 1918–1919. These two infectious diseases have caused a large number of deaths worldwide, and India has been particularly hard hit. However, the social responses of the two infectious diseases are in stark contrast, and the severity of the crisis is not equal to the level of panic it has caused. Bubonic plague spread to India in 1896 and killed 10 million people by 1921, while the pandemic claimed 12 million lives in just a few months, but the panic caused by the plague was even worse, both during the British colonial regime and among the colonists in India itself — large numbers of people fled, rumors were rife, government interventions were not trusted, and there was strong suspicion and opposition. In Mumbai, workers attacked hospitals, elsewhere ambulances were attacked, Europeans were chased, and in June 1897 a plague commissioner was assassinated... The angry government decided to be more resolute in its coercive and repressive measures, but the result was that the implementation of anti-epidemic measures was extremely costly and costly administrative resources. This in turn lengthened the fight against the plague, which lasted until the 1920s. The authors look for answers in the epidemiological comparison of different diseases, sociocultural constructs, differences in government and public health responses, domestic and economic developments at the time of infectious disease outbreaks, and international situations.
Most of the cases involved in "Panic Empire" mainly focus on the colonial empire of Britain, and the last two or three chapters take the reader's vision to the 20th and 21st centuries, the Cold War, counter-terrorism, global finance, new infectious diseases, anxiety, panic has never ended... What can the past tell us, and how can we deal with today's uneasiness?
The Use and Abuse of History
Margaret Macmillan / by Sun Weihan / Translation, Guangxi Normal University Press, April 2021 edition
Recommended by: Shanshan Peng
Testimonials:
A popular little book that I often read Chang Xin, in my hand, is the third edition printed in May 2021 - two reprints in the first month of the market, which shows the enthusiasm of readers. As the author puts it, there has been a "historical upsurge" in recent years: historical writing (especially popular history books) is sought after, museums like to hold exhibitions of historical figures or events, and more and more people are investigating and exploring their family history. Historians no longer need to "defend historiography" and explain to the public what the use of historiography is; one wonders how history is "used" and "abused" in reality, or how history, the "little girl dressed up", is "dressed up"?
Use history to assert sovereignty and territorial legitimacy, to establish identity, to provide impetus for nationalism, to mobilize people to achieve future goals, to instill and transmit values, and even to attack and belittle others... The author, Margaret Macmillan, takes a broad perspective from the history of Europe, North America and even China, India and Japan, telling these various "effects" without spoilers. In short, "the past can also be used by us to achieve all the purposes of the present", and "when we make lies or write history from a single point of view, we are abusing history".
Margaret Macmillan, the great-granddaughter of World War I British Prime Minister Lloyd George and a well-known expert on the history of international relations, revealed that her historical book on the post-World War I great power game was of no interest to publishers in the 1980s, and did not regain attention until the 1990s, when the Cold War pattern broke and the international situation changed. She believes that "today's world situation is very similar to the international situation before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 or in the 1920s" and that "in the face of today's confusing and complex situation, history can provide people with a relatively simple and easy to understand explanation", so many people turn their eyes to history and hope to get answers to the current situation.
She also notes that the circle of historical research over the past few decades has become smaller and smaller, and "if they (professional researchers) can't get the public to read what they're doing, then there will be others to fill the void." It could be politicians who portray themselves as myths and misuse history for their own ends, or it could be amateur history buffs who can't delve into the complex face of history itself and tell a story that looks like good and evil, but can only tell part of the truth about historical facts. Therefore, "professional historians should not give up their fields" and "must not completely abandon the study of political history and devote themselves to the study of social or cultural history."
Macmillan believed that history was very useful if we could learn humility, skepticism, and self-reflection from the study of history. She quotes the English writer John Carey as saying: "One of the most useful functions of history is to show us how intensely, sincerely and painfully generations pursued their goals, which now seem absurd or shameful to us." "For example, many have sworn to the death to defend slavery, asserted that there is superiority and inferiority of human races, and even a few decades ago there were people who felt that women and blacks could not be competent for the work of engineers or doctors..." We should be wary of those who make grand claims in the name of history, and those who claim to have discovered the truth of history once and for all." In the end, she wrote: "My only suggestion is that we can use history and enjoy it, but we should always be serious about it." ”
Demon Hunter
[Poland] Andrey Sapkowski / by Ulan, Zhao Lin, Xiaolong / Translation, Chongqing Publishing House, January 2015 - January 2022
Recommended by: Han Shaohua
Testimonials:
The eight volumes of fantasy novels, published in 2015 until the beginning of this year, have undergone a revision of the translation. There are also games of the same name derived from the story of this book, and there are also TV series, which help each other, which has made this book very famous.
Maybe unlike ordinary fantasy stories, the protagonist of this story also wears the aura of the protagonist, but it is of little use. The identity of the Demon Hunter in this alternate world is a profession that is hated and needed. Because of this, there is no shortage of light humor in the story, but the whole is immersed in a powerless atmosphere.
As a contemporary creator, there are already a wealth of collected and collated folklore for writing and using, and the author certainly does not give up making full use of and rewriting these materials. Popular literature is only, so I will not excerpt some of it.
The eight-volume edition is very long, and it has been collected successively as a fan in the past seven or eight years, and when I bought it, I may not have read it, just at this moment, I strive to read it.
The Economics of Rights, Cooperation and Welfare
Robert Sagden / Author Fang Qin / Translation, Fudan University Press, March 2022 edition
Recommended by: Zheng Shiliang
Testimonials:
There are two approaches to the book The Economics of Rights, Cooperation and Welfare.
One, the Eight Classics of Zheng'er, one board and one glance: the foundational work in the field of game theory institutional analysis, on the basis of Hume's "Theory of Human Nature" and David Lewis's "Convention", combined with the evolutionary game theory tools derived from the field of biology, expanded a set of theoretical systems on the spontaneous generation and evolution of social systems. I believe that most people have not finished reading this long sentence, and they have no interest.
There is another kind of relaxation: this book is the economist to talk to everyone about "morality". To be more specific, it is: what is morality, and why do we need morality?
Of course, the laxity of the introductory method does not mean that the book is lax, and it is indeed a very serious economic classic full of all kinds of terms and formulas. It is also very normal for readers—especially those with non-economic backgrounds—to feel difficult and obscure. However, the book is preceded by a Preface to Mr. Weisson's Chinese translation, "Striving to Explore the Spontaneous Mechanism of Social Conventions", and a translator's preface to Mr. Fang Qin, who translated the book, and in my opinion, these two prefaces alone make this book worth the ticket price. Through the explanations of the two scholars, and reading this book, you can get a deeper understanding of how Professor Sagden deepened Hume's theory of morality (through the use of game theory tools): morality is not only artificial, but also generated through people's behavior that follows conventions.
《Shanghai Support National (1949-1976)》
Party History Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China/ Editor, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, May 2011 edition
Recommended by: Ding Xiongfei
Testimonials:
In the past month, the whole country has supported the fight against the epidemic in Shanghai, and tens of thousands of medical personnel from all over the world have come to Shanghai alone. In the period of socialist construction, supporting the whole country was "a major strategic task entrusted to Shanghai by the central authorities." Proceeding from the strategy of "one game of chess for the whole country", the central authorities require that the most important industrial cities and industrial bases in Shanghai and other countries be based on the whole country, and support small and medium-sized cities in developing local industries and help industrially underdeveloped areas in terms of technology, equipment, and talents. According to incomplete statistics, from 1950 to 1958, Shanghai mobilized more than 1.5 million laborers to participate in industrial and agricultural construction in other places, and from 1950 to 1962, a total of 679 factories and enterprises moved abroad. The two-volume "Shanghai Supports the Whole Country" presents this history to us through reviews, sub-narratives, oral accounts, archival documents, and newspaper abstracts.
Take, for example, Shanghai's support for Fujian. In the summer of 1959, Chen Pixian, secretary of the Shanghai Municipal PARTY Committee whose ancestral home was Changting, Fujian, visited Fujian and was very concerned about Fujian's industrial construction. When Fujian proposed to move some small factories in Shanghai to Fujian, he immediately expressed his support. In the decade since, dozens of Shanghai factories have moved to Fujian. Although they were mostly lilong factories, they brought with them the advanced domestic production industry and management experience at that time, so that Fujian industry had a higher starting point for development, and soon formed its own "hematopoietic" function.
The book introduces the situation in Sanming City in particular. Before 1957, Sanming City was a small mountain city with a population of only 6,000 people, mainly based on agriculture, and after being identified as an industrial base in Fujian Province, a large army of construction along the way gathered, setting off a boom in entrepreneurship. However, as a heavy industrial base, the vast majority of Sanming's enterprise workers are young men, if they do not support the development of a number of light textile industry and service industry, do not recruit a group of female workers, they will have difficulties in finding a partner to fall in love in the future. Therefore, Ye Fei, then secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee, approached Chen Pixian and asked for help in solving this problem, and received the latter's support. Shanghai's supporting support for Sanming has well solved the personal problems of enterprise workers, and also promoted the rapid prosperity of Sanming City, making Sanming transform from a heavy industrial city to a complete industrial city. The oral accounts recorded in the book about the relocation of Shanghai Samsung Candy Factory to Sanming Food Factory, Shanghai Guomian No. 26 Factory to Sanming Textile Factory, and Shanghai Lifeng Dyeing and Weaving Factory to Sanming Printing and Dyeing Factory are all precious materials about this period of history.
Today's readers are surprised that in the process of supporting construction, Shanghai and Fujian have also developed cultural connections. Because the employees and their families who moved inland were eager to see Yue opera, on January 26, 1959, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture moved the entire troupe of 66 members of the Fanghua Yue Opera Troupe, together with 83 family members, led by the leader Yin Guifang, to Fuzhou. After Fanghua arrived in Fuzhou, he overcame various difficulties and performed in various places, which was warmly welcomed by the vast audience and gradually won a large number of new audiences. By the early stage of reform and opening up, there were more than 30 Yue opera troupes in Fujian Province, and Yue opera became the second largest genre in the province after Fujian opera.
"She's from Mariupol"
Natasha Woding / Author [De] Qi Qinwen / Translation, Nova Press, April 2021 edition
Recommender: Zhong Yuan
Testimonials:
She's from Mariupol is a family history by the German writer Natasha Woding. But it is different from traditional family history writing, which does not use linear narrative, but adopts a jigsaw puzzle and fragmentary writing method, allowing the reader to enter the author's perspective and follow her to find piece after piece of the puzzle in her family history. At first reading, the clues are complicated, and a large number of psychological activities of the author are also slightly "nagging", but just like excellent detective novels, the beginning is always full of suspense, clouds and fog, patiently read, find more and more puzzles, and the whole picture of the author's family history is slowly presented. Natasha Woddin's mother, born in Mariupol, Ukraine, was sent to German forced labor in 1943 and lived in a small city in West Germany after World War II, committing suicide in October 1956. In her 36 years of life, she experienced the Russian Civil War, the Great Purge, the Famine and German labor, and was forgotten in the vast sea of people after the war. The suffering of members of the author's family is not only a personal misfortune, but also a historical allegory of suffering in Eastern Europe. When her mother was alive, she used to say to Natasha Wodding, "If you've seen what I've seen..." This sentence runs through the author's childhood. Eventually, when Natasha was in her 70s, through unremitting searching, she finally saw what her mother "had seen", the extraordinary era of aggression and humiliation.
"Deep in My Heart"
Woody Allen, Steger Björkman/ By Zhou Xinqi/ Translation, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House Yazhong Culture, June 2020 edition
Recommended by: Zang Jixian
Testimonials:
This is an interview with American director Woody Allen, and it is also a conversation from nearly 20 years ago. Through this book, you can learn about Woody Allen's early filmmaking. The original English edition was published in 2005, and Woody Allen has made a lot of interesting films since then, but it is impossible to get his ideas about those films from this book. Watching his movies, I always think he is still a young man, but in fact, the old man is now 86 years old. In the interview, he was still writing on a typewriter that had followed him for more than forty years, and had never used a computer, enough to show his age. But I'm not sure if his habits have changed after 20 years. Like the cultural people of this age (perhaps regardless of borders), although he defines himself as a comedian and claims not to be as profound and serious as philip Ross and Saul Bellow, his deep cultural attainments are not unrelated to the era in which he grew up. However, born in the United States in the 20th century, Woody Allen, who has not been beaten by life, has no obsession with fame and fortune, and places it in some places like a post-00s who have no worries about food and clothing and pursue their hearts. "Psychiatric hospitals make patients weave bamboo baskets or draw with their fingers, because these things help them get back healthy, and that's what I'm doing for the film," he said. Over the years I've found that the various awards haven't given me any sense of accomplishment, and what's really happy is the process of making movies. Another interesting takeaway from reading this interview is that despite the many neurotic characters created in his writing, Woody Allen himself actually has a regular life and emotional stability — "I have never experienced a bottleneck period, I will not sit at home and drink, nor will I invite women to the house, nor have I experienced a chaotic marriage." ”
The Little Mandate of Heaven: Ancestral Shrines and the Politics of the Ming Dynasty
Shi Shanshan/Shao Changcai/Translation, Guangdong People's Publishing House, February 2022 edition
Recommended by: Huang Xiaofeng
Testimonials:
Although the phenomenon of Lisheng Ancestral Hall existed in the Han Dynasty, it is speculated that many people should have known about the Ancestral Temple because of Wei Zhongxian. Inspector Pan Ruzhen of Zhejiang, after seeing that his colleagues had made Wei Zhongxian a son and a grandson, quickly added officials to the knighthood, so Inspector Pan fu put on the Taoist chapter, saying that the Textile Workers' Association in Hangzhou had signed a petition collectively, and must build an ancestral hall for Wei Jiujiu, so that he could worship every day and show his loyalty. Soon, the edict came down, did not say much, just gave the ancestral hall an inscription "Pude". This is almost clear, Inspector Pan will be all his life stud, and the result is a gamble to win. Soon, a round of construction of Wei's ancestral hall and writing of the lyrics set off in the whole country. Lu Wanling, a certain prison student, said: "Confucius wrote "Spring and Autumn", and Zhongxian wrote "Essential Classics". Confucius was a young man and a loyal man. "Wei Chitose's merit can be compared with that of The Sage of Kong, and the temple should be built next to Taixue, and the sacrifice treatment should be referred to Confucius." All localities have gone up: they demanded that the temples of Zhou Dunyi and Ercheng be demolished, and that the temple of Wei Zhongxian be built, and the fire-fire insects such as the theorists dared to compete with Wei Shenxian for glory. Unfortunately, when the song was sent to Beijing, Emperor Mingxi had already died, and the newly enthroned emperor was the Chongzhen Emperor. The ending, of course, need not be said.
It is very interesting that this book does not discuss the matter of Wei Zhongxian's ancestral hall, but only introduces the overview of Wei Zhongxian's ancestral hall with a very visual sense at the beginning: "Every ancestral hall erects a tall monument to praise virtue... In the middle of each ancestral hall stands a statue of Wei Zhongxian, mostly wooden, bronze or gilded. (p. 10) Obviously, the purpose of this book is not to discuss an event, but to study the ancestral hall between the politics and beliefs of the Ming Dynasty, and through a large number of inscription records, local fangzhi and literary collections, examine the shengci system and expound the thinking on the political and ideological system of the Ming Dynasty. The nine chapters of the book are divided into three parts: the foundation and the ground, the pillars and beams, the walls and the roof, which discuss the basic situation of the construction of the ancestral hall and its institutional legitimacy, the political space and populism reflected in the late Ming Dynasty, and on a larger scale, the late Ming "The practice of the shengci shows another kind of hidden and mimetic feudalism, using the family as a metaphor to establish a 'shadow local state' centered on the bureaucrats appointed by the imperial court, giving them a power beyond the appointment of the imperial court." (p. 296) This is what the title calls "Little Destiny."
The author points out that among the criteria of the Ming Dynasty Lisheng Ancestral Hall, it is very important that local officials and military officers who have made outstanding contributions to judicial justice and people's livelihood issues are important. (pp. 89-95) Thus, the shrine "embodies the proposed parent-child relationship between state and county officials and local people." (p. 132) The Ming court's relaxed attitude toward local ancestral halls, in the author's view, "added a clear political dimension to the ming dynasty populist picture from four aspects." First of all...... To see the shrine as a place for political participation means turning attention to everyday politics... Second, in the Book of The Ancestral Temple, commoners did cooperate with local gentry and members, but sometimes they were also the first to be initiators of commemoration or criticism of the bureaucracy appointed by the Son of Heaven. Third, the Monument transcends the expression of public emotions and the Han Dynasty's theories of weiwei, and the dialogue in it shows the rational and thoughtful expression of their views by the common people. Finally, even the inscriptions written by high-ranking bureaucrats argue that the political participation of the local people, including the common people, is not merely a fact of practice, but also a fully legitimized existence under the politics of mandate of heaven. (pp. 227-228)
The author repeatedly refers to the populism embodied in the Shengci because she believes that the political ethics behind the Shengci temple are hidden: "It is necessary to recognize another vein of the political discourse of the Ming Dynasty: the broad masses of the people are the ultimate judges of good and bad governance, and they have the right to express their views in the long-standing system and the public texts carved on the stone." (pp. 286-287) And the ten characteristics of the "little mandate of heaven," which she concludes, also unfolds on this assertion.
These perspectives are very interesting, and they are very different from the late Ming Dynasty that we most people understand, so there will be some confusion: First, in the author's narrative, the Ming people, especially the people, almost do not care much about the difference between the ancestral shrine and the relic, if the shengci reflect the populism of the Ming Dynasty, is it also reflected in the relic? Second, the authors find that "most of the shrines that promise eternal remembrance have rapidly gone into decay." (p. 171) It is probably because the ancestral shrine cannot compete with the relics in terms of spirituality, and the scholars also try to avoid the people's worship of the ancestral shrine from going to the strange and chaotic gods. The influence of the ancestral temples that are in the overall inferiority in the competition for shrines is not so great among ordinary people, and the political space it represents may be very limited. Third, the author also acknowledges that "every stone stele studied in this book may have been a lie cobbled together by corrupt and illegal local gentry." (p. 286) If this is the case, then there is even more reason to wonder to what extent these shrines represent the will of the truly ordinary people, and how much the resulting public opinion relates to local politics and even to political culture as a whole. After all, every Chinese reader should be able to appreciate more deeply what "a lie cobbled together by corrupt and illegal local officials and gentry."
A passage recorded in volume 66 of the Ming Chronicle may help me better understand what public opinion is:
Wang Xijue tasted Gu Xiancheng's words: "The most strange person today, the right and wrong of the temple, the world will want the opposite." Xian Cheng said: "I see the right and wrong of the world, and the temple will want to do the opposite!" ”
"The Bottom of Fracking"
Eliza Grieswald / By Zeng Xiaochu / Translation, Wenhui Publishing House / New Classic Amber, January 2022 edition
Recommended by: Gong Siliang
Testimonials:
I'd like to start with a passage from the newspaper: "The U.S. response to its own energy needs has always been to dig deeper." Over the past few decades, a technological innovation called 'hydraulic fracturing' – or 'fracturing for short ' – has made it possible to extract natural gas from deep rocks... Ten years ago, fracking unleashed a 'gas boom' that sent a lot of money to appalachia. It also takes a toll on lives in carbon-mining areas. "Mining that seems to bring huge benefits only brings a few hundred dollars a year in land use fees to the locals, and most of the profits generated by mining go elsewhere."
More seriously, when the plutocrats left, they were left with thousands of miles of red streams contaminated with acid mining wastewater, mountains of slag, and hollowed-out towns in the coal mining belt. The enterprise city faces massive unemployment, as well as a series of environmental and social problems left by industry. In this book, the author exposes the economic, health, and spiritual crises of people in the industrial zone by describing the plight of single mother Stacey Henny and her family.
For Stacey, mining not only destroyed the pastoral life of the past, but also caused a division of society. On the one hand are those who make a lot of money, and on the other side are those whose water, air and health are threatened. Behind all this is the breakdown of local trust in the government and the inability to do anything about the oil and gas industry giants.