Speaker: Professor Michael Puett
Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, Harvard University

Moderator: Prof. Cheung Hiu-yu, Associate Professor, Department of History, CUHK

The Hollywood romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) sheds light on the lifestyle of the ultra-wealthy in Singapore and captures haute couture and culinary trends from an East Asian perspective. The film has helped extend academic, journalistic, and popular discussions of the super-rich, in a way not extensively considered in previous studies of the elites of East Asia. This chapter unpacks the idea of fashionability in three fundamental ways. First, it examines the way historical trade in luxury fashion goods that had resulted in wars, conflicts, and cultural destruction became unfashionable. Second, the chapter shows how the production and consumption of fashionable items and fashionable (alcoholic) beverages as well as drinking styles and drinking preferences have come to represent ideas of civilisation, economic progress, and modernity. Third, it argues that the consumption of fashionable clothing and furnishing and the adoption of fashionable styles of drinking are empowering because the adoption of these fashions is open to different cultural interpretations by different socioeconomic groups. This chapter highlights how the global design and production of luxury beverages, fashion, and related industries are currently influenced by East Asia.

Speaker
Hang Kei Ho (Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong & Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki)
Dr. HO Hang Kei is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also Visiting Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Cultures at the Faculty of Arts, and Associate Professor of Sociology (Title of Docent) at the University of Helsinki. He has worked in academic positions in Finland, Hong Kong SAR, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, lecturing across the fields of Anthropology, Asian Studies, Business Management, Development Studies, Economic Geography, Public Health, Sociology, and Urban Studies. His research themes include luxury consumption and brand management, the globalisation of the wine industry, housing segregation and housing policy, inequality and the super-rich, and the flow of capital from Asia to global property markets. He holds a PhD, an MBA, and three master’s degrees in multiple academic disciplines including electronic engineering, arts and humanities, geography, and luxury brand management.

Speaker 
Dr. Jennifer Wong
Jennifer Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong and now lives in the UK. She has a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. Wong is the author of 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020), which was named the PBS Spring 2020 Wild Card Choice. She has taught creative writing at Poetry School, Oxford Brookes University, City Lit and was writer in residence at Wasafiri in 2011. Her book, Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.
 

Combining a poetry reading with critical discussion, I will explore the notion of poetry as translation. How do we articulate the contradictions or ambivalences within the divided self? For a writer who inhabits different continents and languages, how can she, he or they capture the sense of ambivalence and belonging within the divided self? 

I will discuss the various definitions of diasporic literature and the limitations of these categories, with examples from the works of 2-3 contemporary (Hong Kong) Anglophone Chinese poets covered in my book, Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2023).

In particular, I will reflect on how multilingual writers reconcile their identities. How do they navigate family history, whereby the personal and the collective are intertwined with one’s socio-historical landscapes?

Handwriting is a fundamental skill that plays a pivotal role in communication and academic development. Over the past five years, we have employed neuroimaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), to investigate the neural mechanisms of Chinese handwriting in both typically developing individuals and those with developmental disorders. In this talk, I will share our recent findings concerning the development and evolution of brain systems involved in Chinese handwriting. Firstly, I will present the findings on how functional brain networks underlie the interaction between linguistic and motor components of Chinese handwriting in both adults and middle-aged children, encompassing motor networks and linguistic-cognitive networks. We found neural evidence supporting the interaction hypothesis in different age groups, shedding new light on the neural foundations of handwriting maturation. Next, I will discuss the evolution of the brain substrates of Chinese handwriting. We conducted cross-species comparisons of the anatomical subregions and functional connectivity of Exner's area, a critical region for handwriting, between humans and macaques. Our findings reveal similar structural parcellation and functional connectivity patterns across species, with slight between-species differences in connectivity strength. Finally, I will discuss the findings concerning the behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of handwriting difficulties in children with comorbid developmental dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Additionally, I will introduce digital training programming specifically designed for these children.
 

Speaker 
Professor Yang YANG
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Yang Yang is an associate professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying Chinese reading and writing, as well as the causes and treatments of developmental language disorders, such as dyslexia and stuttering. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals, including Developmental Science, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Neuroimage. Additionally, he has developed several pieces of software for assessing and training Chinese reading and writing skills. His work has received support from various sources, including grants from China's Science and Technology Innovation 2030—a major project in Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by deficits in social interaction, along with a propensity to engage in repetitive behaviours or have restricted interests. Autistic children often exhibit language impairments and delays. In this talk, I will present how 5- to 9-year-old Cantonese-speaking autistic children use syntactic and prosodic cues to comprehend and produce an information structure (i.e., focus), compared to their typically developing peers matched in receptive vocabulary, nonverbal IQ, working memory and maternal education. I will further discuss the role of bilingual exposure and cognitive abilities in shaping autistic children’s performance.
 

Speaker 
Prof. Haoyan GE
Hong Kong Metropolitan University
Dr. Emily Ge is currently Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She obtained her MPhil and PhD in Linguistics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on language development in typical and atypical populations, including autistic children, bilingual children and second language learners. She has served on 10 research grants (three funded by RGC) as principal investigator or co-investigator. Her work has appeared in top-tier SSCI-indexed journals, including Autism, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Psycholinguistics, and First Language. Dr. Ge is also qualified to administer and code the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule Second Edition (ADOS-2) (a gold-standard instrument for diagnosing autism) for clinical and research reliability.

講者與講題：
陸明華（上海博物館）
明代藩王用瓷的綜合研究

尹翠琪（香港中文大學）
十五世紀中期明代藩王府五爪龍紋瓷器的設計與屬性

王冠宇（香港中文大學）
明代皇室與外銷瓷器：明益宣王及王妃合葬墓出土克拉克瓷盤新考

高憲平（北京科技大學）
內御外藩：十五世紀安南黎初朝官窯瓷器初探——兼與明早期藩王瓷器比較

趙輝（山西省考古研究院）
太原東山明代晉端王墓考古發現

萬軍衛（河南省開封市文物考古研究院）
明代開封周藩王府出土景德鎮窯瓷器分類及研究

劉毅（南開大學）
明代藩王陵墓出土的祭祀用瓷和葬儀用瓷

郭學雷（深圳博物館）
景德鎮法花瓷器用途考

陳寧（景德鎮陶瓷大學）
成都東華門明代蜀王府遺址出土景德鎮青花瓷及相關問題探討

蔡路武（湖北省博物館）
湖北明代藩王墓葬及出土瓷器

蕭發標（江西省文物考古研究院）
淮府有佳器——明代淮王府遺址出土瓷器擷珍

Speaker 
Prof. Matthew Adams

I examine how experiments can justify normative principles. Some contend that experiments justify indirectly: experiments provide evidence for non-normative claims which, in turn, ground normative principles. Although plausible, this isn’t a significant methodological innovation. Others contend that experiments justify in a freestanding way: all the assumptions needed for experimental justification can, at least ultimately, themselves be justified using experimentation. But this proposal is susceptible to a regress problem. I provide a new version of experimental justification— direct midlevel experimentalism—that is more ambitious than indirect experimentalism but avoids the regress problem. Using a case study about central banking, I argue that experiments offer a distinctive type of procedural justification for midlevel normative principles.

Economic development of a remote, mountainous region poses a challenge anywhere. Based on field research and documentary evidence, this talk will examine how such a development challenge has been addressed in Daocheng county, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. In doing so, the speaker will present the different forms of economic development, how such development comes about, and the role played by government in economic development. The talk will also probe the broader socioeconomic consequences of economic development. The fact that Daocheng is a predominantly Tibetan county adds a nationality dimension to the issue of economic development.

Speaker 
Prof. Carsten Holz
Carsten A. Holz is a professor of economics in the Social Science Division at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. His research focuses on the reform period economy of the People’s Republic of China. His publications include articles and books on financial system and state-owned enterprise reform, the quality of Chinese statistics, and, most recently, on issues of economic growth and development in under-developed regions of the PRC.

Most of the historiography of the conquest of Africa in the late nineteenth century stresses the role of advanced weapons: machine guns, new pattern light artillery and repeating rifles. While there is no doubt this technology was important, studying operational reports of various campaigns, it turns out that often the turning point was a bayonet charge. Although the new weapons could be effective they used a lot of ammunition quickly and required substantial supply lines. Moreover, many African armies also used some of the advanced weapons. The key point was that most African armies had become so dependent on firearms that they no longer possessed the skills in fighting hand to hand. A major exception was in Ethiopia where troops were prepared to fight hand to hand and were equipped to do so.

Speaker 
Prof. John THORNTON
Department of History, Boston University

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183;
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

This talk presents a ‘primacy of domestic politics’ interpretation of the Thatcher government’s main objectives in the negotiations of the early 1980s, which secured the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. In the immediate aftermath of the Falklands conflict, sovereignty issues were uppermost in public discourse and the government’s decision to cede sovereignty over Hong Kong seems inconsistent with other elements of Thatcher’s foreign policy. However, when placed in the context of domestic economic objectives it is clear that the liberalisation and deregulation agenda would be undermined by a lack of investor confidence in sterling overseas should business confidence be disrupted in Hong Kong with a potentially disastrous diversification out of sterling. The 1984 Joint Declaration secured special status for Hong Kong enshrining the independence of the currency and the Hong Kong banking system thereby averting a sterling crisis which would have had major implications for the City of London and Thatcher’s domestic policies.

Speaker

Rong WEI
Rong WEI is a doctoral candidate in the Politics and International Studies Department, School of Government at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the UK’s foreign policy towards China from 1979 - 2014 and adopts a ‘primacy of domestic politics’ approach to explore what led to the ‘Golden Era’ in UK-China relations in 2015. Rong is also an Associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEFI University of Birmingham).