The Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster is offering two Leverhulme Trust-funded MPhil/PhD Studentships for a three-year research project on "Conflicts in Cultural Value: Localities and Heritage in Southwestern China".
The studentships are for full-time study starting in September 2013 and include a fee waiver and maintenance grant (£15,600 per annum for Home/EU students, £8,100 per annum for Overseas students).
This week's video is of Professor Mark Elliott's lecture "Reinventing the Manchus: An Imperial People in Post-Imperial China", which he presented at the Australian National University in June 2012 as part of the university's George E. Morrison Lecture series. In it he discusses post-imperial Manchu history, gives a short history of the reinvention of the Manchus as a minority nationality following the birth of the People's Republic, and ponders the future of Manchu cultural identity and its implications for the development of a single, unified Chinese nation state.
NOTE: Part One of this article can be found here.
Excavations of the houses built alongside Miran's northern city wall revealed that some of their occupants took advantage of their surroundings by carving alcoves or small granaries out of the thick city wall and using cowhide as wall coverings. Dang Zhihao (党志豪), a researcher from the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology…
The ruins of thirty-six houses and over 300 precious artefacts were unearthed during a rescue excavation conducted at the site of the ancient oasis town of Miran (米兰) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (新疆维吾尔自治区) last year when archaeologists returned to the site after a forty-year hiatus. Miran was listed as a "Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at National Level" back in 2001, so the area surrounding the ruins, which encompasses a total area of almost 45 square kilometres, became a protected historical site under the watchful eye of the Chinese government.
News:
Relics Unearth History of Shanghai Shipping (China Daily)
The discovery of hundreds of artefacts dating back to the Tang Dynasty in Qinglong (青龙), Shanghai, may prove that Shanghai's history as a shipping centre goes back further than previously thought.
Mogao Grotto Murals Prepped for Digital Display (China Daily)
More than 50 of the Mogao Grottoes' (莫高窟) murals have been preserved in digital images and will be on public display at Zhejiang University (浙江大学) later this year.
I'd like to wish my readers and followers a very happy and healthy Year of the Snake! 祝大家蛇年大吉，万事如意，身体健康！
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The Forgotten Kingdom is a 23-minute documentary on Naxi culture and Dongba script (东巴文) produced by ITV and the University of Northampton in conjunction with the Communication University of China (中国传媒大学). A team of students and researchers from the University of Northampton's School of Arts was invited to Lijiang (丽江), Yunnan Province, last year to learn about Naxi culture and Dongba religion and to help catalogue and study ancient cave paintings found in Tiger Leaping Gorge (虎跳峡).
