Joan Hinton (1921-2010)

2012

The China Quarterly, 1994

the field of modern Chinese studies lost a prolific scholar, a fine colleague and compassionate individual. Having only retired from active teaching in 1992, Hinton was maintaining his characteristically busy professional life as a writer, lecturer, researcher, consultant, conference goer and paper giver. In between he took the time to explore the Rocky Mountains and American West with his beloved wife Carolyn, from their new home in Estes Park, Colorado. Harold departed before his time and will be remembered fondly by colleagues, friends, family and former students. As his former student I have taken the liberty of writing this memorial essay on behalf of his many admirers in the China field. Harold was my mentor, colleague and friend. As my undergraduate supervisor at George Washington University, Professor Hinton (a title that still seems more natural) taught me, counselled me and steered me into the field of Chinese studies. In reconstructing and recalling Harold's career for the purposes of this essay, I have benefited from the recollections of several of his contemporaries and colleagues-A

MELUS;, 2015

Anchee Min made her literary debut in 1994 with a memoir titled Red Azalea, which told the story of her growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Her new memoir, The Cooked Seed, released on 7 May 2013, picks up her story of leaving the shocking deprivations of her homeland to arrive in Chicago without language, money, or a clear path. During the last thirty years in the United States, as she painstakingly taught herself English, Min found her literary voice and established herself as a best-selling writer. In addition to her two memoirs, she has published six novels, many about important women and key events in Chinese history. Anchee Min was born in Shanghai on 14 January 1957. The oldest of four children, she grew up during Chairman Mao Zedong’s rule over Communist China, which began in 1949 and lasted until his death in 1976. Her parents were teachers who, as Min writes in Red Azalea, “believed in Mao and the Communist Party, just like everybody else in the neighborhood.” Min describes herself in her first memoir as “an adult since the age of five” (3). She was in charge of her younger siblings and had no options other than to do well at school and distinguish herself as a young Communist, which she did, even publicly shaming one of her favorite schoolteachers. As a result of this revolutionary act, at seventeen Min was sent to work at the Red Fire Farm labor camp near the East China Sea. After three years, she was cast in a propaganda film produced by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, who was known as Madame Mao. Chairman Mao died before the film was completed, and Min was labeled a political outcast by association and forced to work menially for the film studio. She was determined to flee China for the United States, which she did successfully on 31 August 1984 with the help of a Chinese friend, actress Joan Chen, who was already in the country. The story of what Min experienced as a non-English speaker on her arrival in Chicago is chronicled in her second memoir, The Cooked Seed. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, married a Chinese immigrant like herself (in February 1991), and had a baby, Lauryann, that fall. After her marriage ended in divorce two years later, she moved to California where, while raising her young daughter, Min began writing about Chinese history. Collectively, her work has

Science and Society

A review of the famed William Hinton's final, posthumous book, which is itself a remarkably detailed and strongly critical study of the volume "Chinese Village, Socialist State," edited by Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, Mark Selden, and Kay Ann Johnson.

Journal of Modern Chinese History, 2022

With a historical approach that contextualizes transnational and gender approaches, this study investigates how a second-generation Chinese American woman negotiated her identity as she moved to China and then back to the United States. Margaret Woo (1912-1982) was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. with her mother in 1914. Her father, Woo Du Sing, had immigrated c.1882 and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he owned a restaurant. A classic sojourner, Du Sing built a house in his home village and intended to retire there. He died in Minneapolis in 1935, however, and his family returned to China to bury his body there and to live in the overseas house. As a young woman raised in America, Margaret disliked village life and left for nearby Canton to become a student at Lingnan University. She returned to the U.S. in late 1937 to escape the Japanese. This study is based on primary sources including interviews with Woo family members in China and the U.S., Margaret’s diary from her time in China, artifacts such as the Woo family house in Kaiping and a collection of cheongsam (qipao) dresses owned by Margaret Woo, and Lingnan University records. Historiographic issues addressed include the sojourner hypothesis, the transnational nature of early 20th century overseas Chinese who built houses in their home village, the role of fashion in exemplifying Chinese feminism and modernity, and the assimilation of second generation Chinese American female immigrants into American life.

TDR: The Drama Review, 2021

Magic Theatre’s San Francisco production of Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady plays with theatrical time to stage a confrontation between the 19th-century American past and the Trump-era present.

Poligrafi, 2019

Alma Maximiliane Karlin (1889–1950) was a world traveller, writer, journalist, and collector from Slovenia. She embarked on an eight-year journey around the world in November 1919, in the course of which she published a series of travel sketches in the Cillier Zeitung, a local German-language newspaper. In one of these she reported on funerary rituals and mourning practices in China. After returning to Europe, she was to cover the same topic in her three‑volume travelogue, published between 1929 and 1933. In this paper we analyse these two early accounts of Chinese funerary rituals by Alma Karlin. We also consider some material objects linked to mortuary rites and ancestor worship that she brought back from her voyage in order to gain a broader understanding of her views on Chinese attitudes towards the dead. Supported by a close reading of material and textual sources on Chinese funeral practices, we compare her treatment of the subject with other accounts written by Slovenian miss...

Centre for the History of Political Economy, working paper series , 2021

Joan Robinson’s infatuation with Mao’s China remains the most controversial episode of the Cambridge economist’s life. Drawing on the literatures on observation in science and economics, and economists’ travels, we aim at overcoming the dichotomy between Robinson as a ‘political pilgrim’ and as a ‘development economist’. Instead, we take a closer look at her observation practices, her literary choices, and her position within different political and intellectual communities. The structure of the paper is quasi-chronological: each trip to China is described in its own right, but also treated as an entry point to shed light on a particular aspect of Robinson’s engagement with the country.

American Art, 2008

Econ Journal Watch, 2020

Joan Robinson was one of the most renowned leftist economists of the 20th century. She wrote for almost 30 years, until her death, about Mao Zedong’s China. While her admirers argue that her support of the Cultural Revolution in particular was an eccentric detour she later renounced, and that overall her writings on China have held up well, this paper documents that she had a long history of supporting disastrous Chinese policies because they were consistent with how she saw the world, and that her later reconsideration of these views was modest at best. Because of her overall scholarly accomplishments, much has been and will continue to be written about her. Since 1978, China has moved in a direction very different than that she recommended.