Chinese Serial

Cannibalizing Classics, Colonial Slaves, Sino-Noir, and Taiwan

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

1 895 kr

Kommande

Beskrivning

Sustaining Chinese culture like the ritual of breakfast cereal, one of the earliest classic chapter novels, Monkey, unfolds as a pilgrimage over 81 calamities revolving around the pilgrim’s flesh that gives immortality to whomever partakes it.China’s never-ending toothsome and nauseous cannibalistic trope continues in modern (neo)colonial feeding frenzy in Lu Xun, Wu Zhuoliu, and Yu Hua. Embodying (neo)colonial powers, the epithet “foreign devils” in Lu Xun and his contemporaries turns into an idol should one of the devils love chinoiserie as much as Robert Hans van Gulik, who sires the oc/cult in the Tang dynasty’s Judge-cum-Detective Dee. Dynastic TV dramas on Dee and others invariably feature the proverbial “half-men,” eunuchs who usurp the imperial power, exposing the master-slave bond/age in figurative castration.This flesh-eating chop suey feast comes to span China, Europe, and America, where Oriental stigma of slanting eyes is transformed into stigmata of white and off-white—mainstream and ethnic—spiritual triumphalism. Asian North American self-Orientalizing meets one Asian immigrant talking back from Taiwan’s juancun, military dependents’ village. This magical menu even boasts of the as yet inedible rock of Taiwan, which fantasizes itself a tasty morsel to Japan to perish any thought of Red China’s maws. Seriality then turns deadly in Chinese TV dramas featuring serial killers and dismemberments. Does this turn to Sino-noir signal a psychological displacement from one’s terminal condition, cowering under that which cannot be named—the dictatorship not so much of the proletariat as of the Party secretariat?After this teasing/teething "Appetizer" of an introduction that sets the table of contents—or just the table—the cannibalistic chop suey countenances "Ten Courses" and one "Dessert," all in the flourishes of the Edwardian font becoming any designer menu at an upscale establishment. The appetizer, ten courses, and dessert make twelve dishes, a perfect Taiwanese banquet. Bon Appetit!

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-12-10
Mått:152 x 229 x 13 mm
Vikt:328 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:240
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9798216450047

Utforska kategorier

Television inom Kultur

Mer om författaren

Sheng-mei Ma is Professor of English at Michigan State University in Michigan, USA, specializing in Asian Diaspora culture and East-West comparative studies. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Chinese Serial (2026); Cultural Bifocals (2025); China Pop! (2024); The Tao of S (2022); Off-White (2020); Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet (2017); The Last Isle (2015); Alienglish (2014); Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity (2012); Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture(2011); East-West Montage (2007); The Deathly Embrace (2000); Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures (1998). Co-editor of five books and special issues, Transnational Narratives (2018) and Doing English in Asia (2016) among them, he also published a collection of poetry in Chinese, Thirty Left and Right.

Recensioner i media

Chinese Serial is an intellectually critical study that rethinks Chinese literary and media traditions through the lens of seriality and consumption. Erudite, original, and unsettling in the best sense, it laid out new dining tables/set up an interesting dinner set for dinner conversations around Sinophone literary, media, and cultural studies.

Innehållsförteckning

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementAppetizer1. The First Course: Mythical Monkey: Eat People or Oneself, Spill Blood or Light2. The Second Course: Lu Xun: Socialist Superman, Dangling Sick Man3. The Third Course: The Orphan Teared Up; Surreal Horror Tore Up4. The Fourth Course: The Oc/cult in Dee: Di Gong, Van Gulik, Tsui Hark, Chinese TV5. The Fifth Course: Master-Slave Bond/age in China’s Wuxia with Eunuchs6. The Sixth Course: Stigma/ta: Eyes Slant like Chinks of Christ, or Chin-Kee of American Born Chinese7. The Seventh Course: Bao and Turning Red: Eating Chinese in Bloody Toronto8. The Eighth Course: Get Out of the Village: Watching The Prisoner with Chinese Subtitles in Juancun9. The Ninth Course: Colonial “Shina Swine”; Millennial Taiwan’s Nipponophile 10. The Tenth Course: Sino-Noir of Serial Killers and DismembermentsThe Dessert of TaiwanBibliographyEndnotesIndex