EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 3 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 45 project with the characteristics similar to those of the written communication on the internet, especially, in the microblog format. As soon as microblogging became widespread in China, that similarity started to attract attention. Both researchers and the general public began to look for more traditional books with interactive features. But You Meng Ying, though not unparalleled, is the most striking and definite example of a successful interac- tive endeavor in premodern Chinese literature. It is demonstrated how the text can become highly interactive without the internet tools, but with the use of traditional channels of information exchange, such as corre- spondence, personal meetings, and publishing. In order to highlight specific features of You Meng Ying, it is compared with the traditional interlinear commentary zhushi 註釋 and with modern collaborative writing. Vitiello Giovanni (University of Naples ) The Rise of Erotic Fiction in Late Imperial China as a Cultural Phenomenon Key words: Ming-Qing literature, erotic fiction, passion and pleasure, printing industry, book market My paper deals with a sizable subgenre of pre-modern Chinese narrative, erotic fiction, that sees its moment of greatest development in the seventeenth century, having originated roughly in the middle of the previous century and having virtually exhausted itself by the middle of the following one. In spite of its importance, both in terms of literary history — as a relevant streak of the “novel of manners” that emerges in the late Ming period — and as a source for the history of sexuality in late imperial China, the rise of erotic fiction as a cultural phenomenon still awaits an adequate scholarly evaluation. Providing such an evaluation necessarily implies detailing the genealogy and development of this literary genre, as well as seeing it in relation to other textual traditions involved in articulating and disseminating knowledge on sex. Studying erotic fiction as a cultural phenomenon also requires an exploration of the intellectual as well as the material conditions that allowed for it to emerge and develop in the historical moment it did. My paper will especially explore the link between the production of erotic fiction in the late Ming period and the contemporary discourses on passion (qing 情 ) and pleasure (qu 趣 ). In addition, it will also focus on the economic conditions — especially the unprecedented expansion of the printing industry—that guaranteed the circulation of this particular literary product as well as the commercial strategies that helped its diffu- sion in the late imperial book market. By using both external and internal evidence, I will also touch upon the question of the reception of erotic fiction, that is to say, the reaction to the circulation of such literary product from the part of late imperial critics and general readers, as well as the response to it from the part of political and religious institutions. Wang Bing (Nanyang Technological University) Classical Chinese Poetry in Southeast Asia Since 1881 Key words: classical Chinese poetry, Southeast Asia, Sinophone literature, cultural change Classical Chinese Poetry in Southeast Asia (CCPSA) is a precious heritage of Southeast Asian Chi- nese. Since the founding of Southeast Asia’s first newspaper Lat Pau 叻报 in 1881, Chinese intellectuals from all walks of life have chronicled their emotions and what they saw in Southeast Asia — far away from China — in classical Chinese poems. Later, Southeast Asia went through a wave of anti-colonial and pro-independence movements; it was during this period when CCPSA reached its peak. The creation of CCPSA is an on-going process; officially registered groups such as the International Classical Chinese Poetry Association 全球汉诗总会 in Singapore and poetry associations in other Southeast Asian countries are still writing classical Chinese poems. According to rough statistics by Singaporean scholar Li Qingnian 李庆年 , there are up to five thousand classical Chinese poems published in various Singapore and Malaya newspapers before World War II, while almost 120 anthologies were published from post-war to the 1980s. These numbers only represent Singapore and Malaya, so the figure for the entire Southeast Asia region would unquestionably be much higher. Academic of CCPSA is a new focal point filled with urgency and potential. Current research about Overseas Chinese literature in mainland China or in Southeast Asia itself