Browsing by Author "Ching, Leo"

The term “Cloud Player” (云玩家) has been widely used as a put-down of the alleged pseudo-players who actively engage in online game discussion but seldomly play games themselves, and game live streaming is considered as the major channel for those to indirectly experience games. This paper enquires into the identification and population of the so-called cloud players in China by investigating Chinese players’ habits, consumption, and preferences in game and game live streaming through survey and interviews. The study showed that cloud players are an endogenic subgroup of the Chinese game community that has been marginalized and stigmatized. Cloud player as an identity is not a static but fluid and composite status an individual can opt for in experiencing one game at a time. To analyze the complex play mechanism of cloud players, a particular play conduct named proxy play by which gamers actively take on avatars of avatars and tune their levels of agency to varying play scenarios, is proposed and elucidated based on the established research on individuals’ motivations for and engagement in game live streaming as well as reflective discussion of prominent theoretical frameworks in game studies such as the magic circle and the frame theory.

With empathy, agony, and hatred, the "Comfort Women" issue has sparked vehement discussions in 21st-century China. Despite its belated emergence, the rising Chinese "Comfort Women" case has adopted a new format of commemoration to continue its discussion, situated at the crossroads between the international redress effort related to the comfort system and the creation of a legitimized narrative surrounding the "Nanjing Massacre." To contextualize the resurgence of attention towards Chinese "Comfort Women" within the framework of questions about why, for whom, and how the memory of wartime sexual violence can and should be narrated, this paper explores the contested effort in constructing Chinese "Comfort Women," considering collective remembrance, gender disparities, and national sentiments in contemporary China. This research provides a substantial analysis of news coverage from 1992 to 2023. By analyzing the frequency of mentions of the discourse of "Comfort Women," I aim to explore the context in which "Comfort Women" were reintroduced in China and how history serves as a site of political activity. Followed by the emphasis on documentary "Twenty-Two" to dismantle this macro theme into the micro digital sphere, challenging state-approved patriotic sentiments regarding "Comfort Women." Furthermore, a case study of the "Lijixiang" museum highlights the contradictory tension between the overlooked subjectivity of the survivors and the prevailing national sentiments in the name of reflection. This helps to reveal the prevalent silence among Chinese survivors, shedding light on wartime violence in villages and the ongoing patriarchal suppression faced by women. To further challenge the authenticity of national sentiments, against singular emphasis on imperial perpetration.

What is a hot pot? As a Chinese cooking method, prepared with a simmering pot of soup stock at the dining table, containing a variety of East Asian foodstuffs and ingredients, hot pot is not just one dish. This thesis is aimed at using the booming hot pot catering industry in over the last three decades as an entry point to examine the shift from the socialist asceticism to the capitalist abundance in contemporary urbanities in PRC and attempt to address the following questions: first, in which ways does a hot pot express the post-socialist Chinese society? Second, how does the transformation and increasing popularity of hot pot represent the modern middle-class lifestyle? Third, what can hot pot tell us about the spread of a food trend via mass media and popular culture? Combining the ethnographical engagement with the physical restaurant space exemplified by Dong Lai Shun and Hai Di Lao, and an anthropological approach towards the cultural and historical representations of hot pot, this thesis argues that hot pot represents the postmodern feature in the post-socialist China.

My thesis focuses on the popularity of otome games in Japan and mainland China. During the time of COVID-19, people have to stay at home and be isolated from their families and friends. Thus, playing video games, individually or collectively, has become a way to relax and socialize. I noticed that information about different otome games can be easily seen online, and some players have spent a great amount of money on them. As a female in my twenties, I myself am a target player of this game genre. Thus, I became interested in the popularity of this genre of game.My thesis has two chapters. After the Introduction, Chapter 1 discusses otome games from the cultural perspective, and I argue that this game genre today is popular in both locations after it is introduced from Japan to mainland China in the early 2000s. Furthermore, I explore otome game’s “queer potential” to suggest that the game goes beyond its intended player demographics, young heteronormative women. Chapter 2 analyzes the sociological implications beyond gameplay itself and onto the social relationship fostered by otome game culture. I argue that, as one of the manifestations of the popularity of this game genre, otome dream has been brought from the virtual world to the real world, but this digital intimacy has caused certain problems that may limit otome games’ possibilities to be enjoyed and further developed.

With the widespread stigmatization of “women’s rights” in China, I observed that young women increasingly reject the identification of “feminists.” In comparison, some of them voice their opinions on social media advocate for “feminist” agenda, such as demands for equal employment opportunities and an end to sexual harassment. This thesis focuses on a cultural phenomenon, which I call “feminist without feminism.” I argue that “feminism without feminists” is symptomatic of the failure of both state feminism and Western neoliberal feminism to address daily issues confronting Chinese women today. Social media provides the space for them to challenge patriarchy on a micro-level, sometimes by strategically avoiding being targeted by censorship or vilified by misogynist netizens. Moreover, I believe this feminism-from-below constitutes a postmodernist/postsocialist rejection of any singular feminist metanarrative. With guerilla-like decentralized tactics, “feminism without feminists” is a creative and strategic form of online activism

This thesis examines colonial exhibitions as imperial propaganda tools in Taiwan, particularly the 1935 exhibition The Taiwan Exposition under Japanese rule, and compares it with fascist Italy's 1940 Mostra d’Oltremare and Korea's 1929 Chosun Exposition. Among the research on Taiwan's history during the Japanese colonial period, this study delves into a nuanced analysis of how Japan, aspiring to match Western imperial powers, adopted and adapted the concept of exhibitions to compete with the West and to project its imperial ambitions. It contextualizes Japan's engagement with museum and exhibition culture as part of its broader modernization and imperial agenda. By delving into the exhibitions' function in manifesting the regimes’ ambitions through carefully curated displays, artwork, and spatial designs, the analysis underscores The Taiwan Exposition as not merely strategic embodiments of political power and ideology but also as cultural spectacles designed to engender a colonial fascination. This approach subtly packages and presents these exhibitions in a way that ideologically shapes colonial subjects, molding their perceptions through the awe-inspiring experiences they offer, thereby spotlighting The Taiwanese Exposition's pivotal role in this intricate process. By juxtaposing The Taiwan Exposition with its counterparts, the study seeks to unravel the layered expressions of colonialism, nationalism, and cultural exchange, offering insights into the WWII colonial discourse.

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975 many Southern Vietnamese were displaced and forced to relocate. Many of those refugees settled into an area located in Orange County, California and for the past fifty years have worked together to establish the community and space that is now recognized as Little Saigon. This thesis is a study of Little Saigon in particular, how Vietnamese immigrants have deterritorialized, or rejected the dominant notion of having to assimilate and adopt American culture to fulfill the American dream. Instead, community members have made purposeful interconnections to reterritorialize to construct a space meaningful to them where they, through their own minor strategies can productively and successfully live their own version of the Vietnamese American dream, thus allowing them to climb the ladder of upward mobility and attaining opportunities to physical mobility. I first trace the ways in which the first and generation physically alter the space in Orange County to a space that is accessible and makes sense to them by analyzing historical and present maps. Next, I examine the ways Vietnamese culture is produced and maintained in the United States for this community by examining the content and distribution of entertainment shows such as Paris By Night. Lastly I trace the impact of Vietnamese contribution to the nail salon industry and how the expansion of manicuring services has allowed for Vietnamese women to successfully become independent entrepreneurs and breadwinners in their family.

The development of television in postwar Japan synchronized with both Japan’s nation building project after World War II and its geopolitical positionality within the global Cold War. While much of the previous scholarship has been dedicated to postwar Japan and its political and economic entanglement with the Cold War, the dearth of research on how the Cold War culture, or the cultures of the Cold War, shaped the growing nation leaves room for further discussion. Following the “cultural turn” in Cold War studies and taking television as the vantage point, this thesis aims to unpack the correlation between television culture and nation building during the ideological war. The conviction that television should be understood as contextualized within the socio-cultural background leads to the emphases of the thesis not only on the technological features of the apparatus, but also on its social and cultural reception and implications. The thesis firstly traces the development of and discourse on television in postwar Japan to shed light on how television has been inextricably intertwined with the nation since its nascent stage; secondly analyzes the popularization of television as a household appliance and suggests television’s omnipresent role in mediating the relationship between nation and quotidian life; thirdly focuses on television’s live broadcast technology and its utilization during the national events to indicate television’s centrality to the construction of national imaginary. Resorting to both archival resources and secondary materials, to both historical documents and TV commercials, to methodologies in both media studies, visual studies and cultural studies, and to such theorists as Raymond Williams, amongst others, the thesis argues that 1) the development of television in postwar Japan was in sync with Japan’s nation building and economic booming; 2) television presents itself as a spectacle of national prosperity towards its audience, situates the audience in the “national time” and contributes to a national “imagined community.”

From North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, the Americas, and East Asia, the social movements of the past decade have, without being in explicit dialogue with one another, resembled the same march into the public street. Despite the breadth of the cultural, political, and topographical variations in the spaces and places that these movements cover, even in a city like Hong Kong, where the development of urban space has taken a trajectory and assumed a quality of unique status, protest seems to march to the beat of the same drum in Hong Kong’s tropical, urban financial center as it does in St. Louis’ suburban neighborhoods. Why, despite the obvious differences from city-to- city and street-to-street, does protest seem to look the same across societies, cultures, and regimes?

This paper explores the theoretical matrix by which discourses of the street have emerged alongside the imperialisms of the nineteenth century to take inventory of the ways in which the street speaks and is spoken about in the city, in politics, in poetry and literature. While these discourses illuminate the coordinates and mediations in the implicit conception of the street, they only complement the very real emergence and mutations of urban space in Hong Kong in the twentieth century driven by finance capital. I chart the contours of the history of the street in Hong Kong and the ways of capturing the assemblies that have always taken place on it in a step towards understanding how social movement and political assembly can be made effective in contemporary urban space.