materialworld:

(via the tiger’s mouth · The real face of White Australia)

In October 1911, the Sydney Morning Herald published a short article under the headline, ‘An indignity: photographs and finger-prints’. The article discussed the situation of Charles Yee Wing, a wealthy and respected Sydney businessman, who had asked to be exempted from having to supply his handprint and photograph as part of the process of being issued a CEDT.

Yee Wing had travelled before and was well-known to Customs officials. … Yee Wing’s primary objection was that the officials insisted upon photographing him, in various positions, ‘just like a criminal’.

+++

As part of our Invisible Australians project, Tim Sherratt has recently been experimenting with facial detection technology to automatically extract and crop photographs from CEDTs. You can read Tim’s discussion of what he’s done over at his blog. After extracting 7,000 photographs from Sydney series ST84/1, about a seventh of which is digitised in RecordSearch, Tim built an interface to display them as an interactive wall of faces. As Tim was putting it all together, I thought of Sophie’s critique of the use of photographs of Chinese people in the Forgotten Faces exhibition and of the way the images had been assembled together in rows as a kind of rogues gallery. I also thought of Charles Yee Wing’s comments a hundred years ago about the indignity of having to provide his photograph for a CEDT.

Could the same kind of criticisms be levelled at our wall of faces as at Forgotten Faces? Are we representing our subjects as more than passive victims of a racist bureaucracy? Are we using their images respectfully and decently? Are their images able to be understood by our contemporary audience? And how should we acknowledge the resistance and opposition of people like Charles Yee Wing?

Kate Bagnall on the ethics of using POC imagery/records obtained coercively, in media addressing racist coercion and ommission in historic archives.

Invisible Australian’s is an online gallery project, documenting the thousands of Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Afghani, Indian and Syrian people subject to state surveillance - as migrants at the commencement of the now infamous White Australia Policy.

+ the archive they’re creating counters white nationalist denial of POC contributions to nation building. Their ‘about’ page states: “They celebrated Federation. They fought at Gallipoli. They struggled through the Depression. And they battled for freedom in the Pacific.”

Whatever you think about the links between militarism and nation, this and the photos of families of primarily Asian Australians who served in military and civic roles are a visible counter to current aggressively ahistoric, white nationalist myth building around Gallipolli, the ANZACs etc.

-although these people are now deceased, their descendents may recognize them, using the gallery. You can access the project via a blog - which does have posts describing lives and politics at the time of the photos - acknowledging whatever is known about the subjects, their self perception and how this was disregarded by the WAP. Or you can access a photo browser that directly clips photos of these people with their original migration dept. ‘Excemption from Dictation Test” paperwork.*

That part - the separation of any subjectivity, context, consent etc. from what remains a demeaning white supremist mode of archiving - remains jarring and ethically dubious imo. 

- otoh, much work being done in Asian Australian histories is very academic or highly localized and not public searchable atm. I suppose the thing this prompts and why I’m tumbling it is, because there is a lot of scope for online curation in addressing the legacy of the WAP, just thinking about the how, who, where aspects.   

*dictation tests were English language skills tests that Australian immigration staff could apply randomly at the border. They were manipulated to discriminate against POC or non-British migrants, to whom they were given far more than white Brits, although they could involve esoteric questions that even mother tongue English speakers probably wouldn’t know.

suicideblonde:

Fan Bing Bing in a embroidered Christopher Bu gown at the Cannes Film Festival opening ceremonies and the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, May 16th

Her hair style is a symbol of the Tang dynasty’s noble women and her gown tells the stories of the Four Beauties of ancient China

sinag:

Japan Urges the U.S. to Remove Comfort Women Memorial

foodiewin:

peaceshannon:

HT to reader gabriellelost

Okay, so this is the reason why I’m in law school and I really recommend that everyone looks into this issue. 

The Japanese government is playing a game where they wait out the lives of these women. Through the colonization of Korea, China, and then movements southwards into South East Asia, Japan’s sexual slavery camps have affected huge swaths of the population.

There is no number to this atrocity. Shame, death, censure, and a ton of other factors have kept women from coming forward and that is fine. But the Japanese government needs to do right by them. No textbooks in Japan mention this event. There are academics in Japan (thankfully only a handful) that say the women chose this or that it was a wartime necessity (see the works of Ikuhiko Hata [major trigger warning there] and contemporaries).

These women were kidnapped and tricked into this situation of utter exploitation and humiliation. 

There is so much I want to write about this right now but I really can’t do it justice. I have sources and stuff if anyone is interested. The U.N. Report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-like Practices During Armed Conflict by Gay McDougall is really well-done. She’s brilliant and I love her.

Also to add a couple links specific to the Philippines: On Filipino Comfort Women and a briefer on some suits filed by the Malaya Lolas. Many of the petitioners in these suits have now died of old age, and those remaining are still denied justice.

fireofspring:

asianhistory:

“In his Web blog entry dated October 7, 2010, Neil Gaiman, author of the Newbery-winning title The Graveyard Book (2008), quoted a passage from a Chinese reader’s message to him:

[O]ne sentence in Graveyard Book said “mass graves is a good place for munching a meal”. [I]t is insulting to Chinese!I know you are just for fun, but I cannot bear it! 

Gaiman quoted further communications between him and the reader, and showed the process of how both reached the revelation that the source of “insult,” or offense, came not from Gaiman’s original English text, but from a word choice in the Chinese translation of his book, published as Fen Chang Zhi Shu [坟场之书] in China in 2010. The last quote, written seemingly in a beginner’s English, from that reader says, By now I know it is translator’s fault, not of yours…. “Plague pits is good eating” in Chinese that I translate means “鼠疫坑很好吃” is not insulting. [A]nd the translation in the book that the translator wrote “万人坑很好吃” is insulting (as cited in Gaiman, 2010) Most Westerners will require some explanation of Chinese language, history, and culture to fully understand what caused this peacefully resolved conflict. From Gaiman’s book, the word “plague-pits” in “ ‘Plague-pits is good eatin’,’ said the Emperor of China” (2008, p. 84) is translated into “wan ren keng [万人坑]”, literally meaning “ten-thousand people’s pit.” The lure and danger of adopting this translation are both strong. “Ten-thousand people’s pit” is a colloquial term in Chinese and semantically a good match for “Plague-pits.” The term has been found in an ancient text “Jiashen Zaji” [甲申雜記], written by WANG Gong in the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127), to refer to massive graves for people who die in a famine, thus “ten-thousand people’s pit” makes a more colloquial choice than “shu yi keng” [鼠疫坑, or plague-pit], a made-up word combination in Chinese. However, 900 years after Wang’s time, “ten-thousand people’s pit” is no longer a neutral noun, but in certain contexts can be a politically and emotionally charged term, thanks to the history of Japanese colonization and military aggression during the first half of the 20th century in China. Though not its only usage in contemporary China, the term is frequently used to refer to the massive pits, discovered in various parts of China, prepared by the Japanese colonizers and army for Chinese forced labor (coal miners, in particular) and victims of massacres, including those who were buried alive. Any ghoulish humor in “ten-thousand people’s pits is good eatin’ ” can be lost to a Chinese audience. In the case of the anonymous Chinese reader who took the trouble to send an electronic message to Neil Gaiman and exchange information and opinions with him back and forth, he or she was greatly offended—imagine how a Western audience would feel about a ghostly joke like “Auschwitz is perfect for partying.”

(source)

I can only assume that an overseas Chinese was responsible for the translation?

A literary historian has uncovered thousands of banned books buried seven storeys underground in the National Archives of Australia building in Sydney.

It’s a prude’s nightmare but a book collector’s dream: Nicole Moore found 793 boxes filled to the brim with books Australians were never allowed to read.

The books were banned by authorities for various reasons between the 1920s and 1980s.

Associate Professor Moore has now written her own book - The Censor’s Library - explaining why so many publications were deemed unfit for consumption, including novels that are now highly acclaimed.

The ghostly collection, including copies of the Karma Sutra and first-edition comics from the 1950s, reveals attitudes towards sexuality, politics, birth control, reading, pleasure and race.

jhameia:

excentricyoruba:

Adeline Koh’s ‘Digitizing Chinese Englishmen’ is now live!

Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is a project that involves both digitization and academic commentary on the Straits Chinese Magazine, a literary magazine published in colonial Singapore from 1897-1907 by a combination of Southeast Asian-born Anglophone Chinese subjects, European colonial writers and mixed-race Eurasian writers.

Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ documents how British colonial culture created a group of “Asian Victorians” in Southeast Asia through the establishment of a colonial intermediary class within the diasporic Chinese group known as the “Straits Chinese.” While the Straits Chinese had established roots in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century, under British rule they became an important comprador class serving as mediators between the British and the rest of the Empire. Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is an attempt to give voice and representation to formerly colonized subjects, and to attempt to work against the “imperial meaning-making” of the archive by implementing new types of reading and commenting technologies that disrupt the idea of dominant and subjugated knowledges.

Please check out the project and support. Learn more about the ‘Asian Victorians’.

(I’m so excited about this…and not only because this humble tumblr was linked on there but I get to be a part of the project too! excited.gif)

Fascinating!! I was just thinking the other day how cool it would be to learn classical Chinese and find literatures written by Chinese peoples in SEAsia, particularly in the Straits. Way awesome! 

creolesoul:

Extraordinary 298-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered Under Chinese Coal Mine

American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.

 (Read more at Gizmodo)

fuckyeahchinesemyths:

Guys, if I posted a picture for this entry I would totally have to make this blog NSFW, and you’ll kinda see why. Since it’s February, the month of loooove, we’re gonna talk about all kinds of love and relationships, including homosexual ones. (This is so I can introduce a god to you later.)

Homosexuality in China (Sharing the Peach and Cutting the Sleeve)

So we’re gonna talk about the first figure of speech, and this totally happened wayyy back, during the Three Kingdoms era. See, there was this dude, called Duke Ling of Wei, and he and this official, Mizi Xia were obviously having the sexytiemz with each other, and apparently Mizi Xia had a face that was “as pretty as that of a blossoming maiden.” (Oooooh.) So anyways, they were like, walking and holding hands in the Duke’s Eastern Garden, and Mizi Xia picked up a peach and started nomming, and after he was done, he pushed the leftovers into Duke Ling’s mouth. Errbody who saw that like, totally gasped, ‘cause it was so damned rude! But All Duke Ling did was say, “This tastes good ‘cause it was in yo’ mouth,” so that’s how this scandal started, and that’s how ‘sharing the peach’ meant that two men were totally gettin’ it on.

Now for the second figure of speech. See, Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty also had it goin’ on with Dong Xian, who was like, also one of his court officials. And they were pretty cute, too, ‘cause one day, they took a nap together (awwwww) and like, Emperor Ai was called to do some shit, ‘cause Emperors never really rest. And the thing is, Emperor Ai totally didn’t wanna disturb his beau, so he cut the part of the sleeve which Dong Xian was lying on, and went to do his official duties. Hence, the term ‘cutting the sleeve’ also meant that two people were in a homosexual relationship. 

Homosexual Relationships (Manchu Style!)

So we’re gonna fastforward stuff a little, towards the end of the Ming Dynasty and the start of the Qing, yo. Aaaanyways, durin’ this period of time many scholars and poets were like, totally havin’ sexytiemz with boys, and these boys were called “shu tong” （书童）, or book carryin’ boys. And y’know, since these poets and scholars had no wimminz when they went on long journeys, guess who ‘accompanied’ them - yes, that’s right. These boys.

Homosexuality was also like, totally allowed in the Qing court. Why? ‘Cause the Manchus were like, rulin’, yo, and if a Manchu married a Han Chinese it was like, a super no-no ‘cause they wanted their blood to be pure, and so sodomy was allowed between two Manchu males.

Emperor Xianfeng also liked them boys, and durin’ that period of time, Peking Opera was like, the trend, and all the women’s parts were like, played by boys who were kinda effeminate. Hmmm… Backstage, these boys totally had to please the court officials if they totally wanted their careers. Emperor Xianfeng liked this man, Chu Lianfeng (not too sure about the spelling). This man really looked like a woman on stage, and of course Emperor Xianfeng took a fancy to him. But the thing is, Chu Lianfeng already had a bf, called Lu Maozhong (again with the spelling!) and so when Lu learned that his bf was like, having the sexytiemz with the Emperor, he was so upset that he said, “His Majesty should totally concentrate on rulin’ and not having so much sexytiemz, yo.” Of course the Emperor was like, real pissed and banished Lu. Chu was so upset he committed suicide (he was suffering from TB anyways) and had to renounce his association with his now ex-bf.

Sigh.

Emperor Tongzhi, the son of Xianfeng, also loved them males, too. The thing is, this happened when the Emperor was like, a teenager, and after he got married, he was like, “Oh man, women are boring. Imma go look for men,” and that’s what he did. See, he pretended to be a son of a rich merchant, and met this young scholar in a restaurant. So the thing is, they had an affair for quite some time, and then Prince Kung heard about it, and so errbody went on this search for him. The totally found the Emperor and the scholar making out in some wine shop. So like, the general found him and said, “Uh, your majesty, you kinda needa go home now.” The scholar heard, flipped his shit, and went back to Hunan and totally didn’t bother to sit for the Imperial exams, LOL.

Thing is, there were like, many male prostitutes around, too, and yes, many court officials loved them ‘personal attendants’ and took them errwhere, hint hint, and some generals even had ‘personal aides’ wearin’ make-up. Hmmm. But yes, gays did exist, and the Han Chinese didn’t like them, and so called them ‘mock women’ or ‘rabbits,’ which was like, super derogatory ‘cause it meant that they had a lower status compared to female sex workers. 

From Rabbit to Prime Minister, yo

One ‘rabbit’ was also lucky enough to be like, Prime Minister ‘cause he was basically sexing up the Emperor Qianlong, yo. His name was He Shen, and basically, well, when the Emperor saw that He Shen looked like a very beautiful woman, and he was like, “Oh my god! This totally reminded me of my dad’s concubine, which I totally tried to seduce when I was a kid.” So he also found out that He Shen was born on the day his the concubine was executed, he was like, “Yeah, this is the concubine I tried to seduce!” (Funny, wikipedia states otherwise.) So anyway, He Shen thought the Emperor had a few screws loose, but whatevs, ‘cause he was in the Emperor’s favour, which was awesome.

So basically, He Shen would go to the Emperor’s chamber to talk about ‘state affairs,’ and pretty soon he was like, promoted to handle all state funds, which he took a lot of. Anyway, to pretend that they were totally not sexing each other, the Emperor made He Shen get married, and He Shen’s son was like, totally betrothed to the Emperor’s youngest and fave daughter. Too bad his luck ran out, ‘cause Qianlong abdicated and Jiaqing took over, ready to suss him out, ‘cause they knew he totally embezzled state funds. So, after Emperor Jiaqing tried him in court, he realized that He Shen’s accumulated funds was worth more than the state treasury. And the thing is, since Chinese people were all about face, he made He Shen hang himself.

Nearly all of this info is from the book, The Dragon and the Phoenix by Eric Chou, which is very educational but also super smutty!

And now, since we know all of this, Imma introduce you to the god of homosexuality, so hang tight!

jhameia:

Legendary Amazons, formerly Lady Generals of the Yang Family, trailer and if this awesome is not enough, check out the promo posters!

grabby hands

siterlas:

“It came as a surprise to me after over 20 years of seeing “normal” world maps to come across an upside down one. The most surprising thing was that I found it surprising. It is completely artificial that we have North at the top of a map.

The convention came a few centuries ago when Northern hemisphere, European navigators started using the North star and the magnetic compass. Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from.”

- the upside-down map page