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china for bookworms

Across centuries, a wealth of excellent books and oeuvres were written by European authors inspired by China. And of course the real Chinese literature is a to explore.

Interesting reading tips inspired by the Land of the Dragon are presented in this blog authored by Julien Ménabréaz, including classic literature, European Chinoiseire, poetry, crime novels.

Read the full blog on Europeana website >>

image:   Plaque depicting a woman reading, from Rijksmuseum, Public Domain via Europeana.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

the dragon lady

As an interesting yet highly stereotypical Chinese character which entered the Western culture, the concept of a sensual, beautiful, dangerous and lethal Chinese woman has been depicted in comics, novels, computer games and of course action movies, performed by famous actresses of Asian decents.

The story of the “Dragon Lady” character derives from past times of extreme discrimination and racism towards Chinese people, which affected both Europe and America from late 19th century onwards. Next to admitting the biases of Chinese community representation in our pop culture, it is also worth to notice that strong and powerful Chinese women actually existed and had a prominent role in recent history, but not reflecting at all the sensual and threatening femme fatale character that still today animates fictional spy-stories.

Read the full blog about the Dragon Lady between history and fiction, authored by Sofie Taes and developed in collaboration with Europeana XX Century of Change project on Europeana website >>

image:  Anna May Wong on a poster promoting the movie Świat nocy (‘Piccadilly’), c. 1929, from: Mazowiecka Biblioteka Cyfrowa, Public Domain via Europeana.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

a souvenir from china

Over two centuries ago, Chinese craftsmen used to produce a very peculiar kind of paintings expressely intended to be sold as souvenir for Westerners, with a range of subjects going from flowers, animals and landscapes, to scenes of daily life and processes of manufacturing local products like tea or silk. These depictions gave foreigners a taste of China and answered to the European taste for exoticism, so that they soon became very popular in Europe and a much lucrative trade.

Most of these paintings were brushed on pith paper: a cheap, spongy material made with the earth of a shrub native from southern China, and because of the nature of the paper, the paintings were very fragile. Most of these paintings were made by a team in a studio. Painters used watercolour or gouache (oil paintings were less common), producing vividly colourful impressions of China. Because these export paintings were generally made by craftsmen and not artists, they weren’t considered to be an art form by the Chinese, unlike calligraphy or ink paintings. This may be the cause for it taking such a long time before Chinese export paintings became a serious object of historical and artistic study.

Read the full story of the Chinese export paintings and enjoy a nice selection of images from Europeana in the blog authored by Julien Ménabréaz in The quayside at Canton, 18th-19th century, CC-BY-SA Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen via Europeana.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

china as depicted in united archives’ collections

image of the original Carl Simon’s projector and materials. Courtesy of United Archives. Photo Alex Wittmann.

With 10 press photo agency- and publisher archives, 13 photographer lifeworks and many more assets to our name, United Archives is today looking at a combined stock of several million images – and can say today, that these collections are united in United Archives. Many of UA’s archives hold images which have a relationship to China: most of them are travel images, which show what was in the focus of tourists in the 1979ies, 1980ies and 1990ies or what professional travel photographers thought could be of interest for their picture agencies worldwide.

A small but highly peculiar collection with great historical interest is the lecture about China created by Carl Simon in the first half of the last century. We are sure that Carl Simon never visited China, nevertheless he created a lecture with about 80 hand colored glass slides, to show his audiences in the Germany of the early last century his ideas about Chinese culture, history and politics. The lecture was not precise or professionally curated, and for illustration purposes he also mixed images of Japan and China – this creating some inconsistencies which showed up only during the PAGODE – Europana China project: a curatorial mistake done about 100 years before.


As said above, Carl Simon somehow had these black and white glass slides coloured by his staff. The slides were arranged according to corresponding themes or countries and conserved into small wooden boxes. For these slide series we assume that he had teachers or historians involved to create the so-called “lecture booklets”, in which every slide motif was individually described. He used to lend these wooden boxes with the hand-coloured slides to interested people, together with the lecture booklets and a slide projector, so to allow replication of the show. The slides were shown for example in the town hall or in a parish with the Dia projector and supplemented by the detailed lecture texts: in this way it was easy to tell exciting stories and present the appropriate pictures, thus recreating an educational and also entertaining event.

We have to imagine that at the beginning of the 20th century only a few people were able to travel to get to know other countries, their people and culture. For the others, all this was made possible by Carl Simon’s visionary idea, which motivated him throughout his life. Unfortunately we do not know how he came to this large slide collection. Perhaps he got it from those early travellers who came back in Europe, or from photographers he knew. That will remain his secret: there are no more contemporary witnesses.

Next to Carl Simon’s glass slides, the participation of United Archives in PAGODE was much larger, with over 3.900 beautiful photographs provided in Europeana with the highest standards of quality and completely open access.


PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

pagode festival: gems from the lesser-known chinese collections in europe

PAGODE Digital Festival is proud to present an online talk and presentations to discover barely seen collections of Chinese heritage in the holdings of PAGODE content partners Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, KIK-IRPA and United Archives. The thematic focus of the the event will be on the “everyday exceptional”, to discover daily life in China through digital heritage collections.

Organized by the Department of Asian Studies at University of Ljubljana.

Moderated by Maja Veselič.

Date and time: Tuesday 15th June 2021 h. 15:00 – 16:00 CEST

Programme:

  • Introduction to the PAGODE project (Antonella Fresa, Promoter s.r.l.) – view presentation
  • Chinese heritage in Europe as a result of exchange of objects, ideas and people (Maja Veselič, University of Ljubljana)
  • Collection highlights from KIK-IRPA (Erik Buelinckx, KIK-IRPA) – download PDF
  • Collection highlights from United Archives (Carsten Pauly, United Archives) – download PDF
  • Collection highlights from SEM Slovene Ethnographic Museum (Ralf Čeplak Mencin, SEM)
  • Engagement with PAGODE – Europeana China (Sofie Taes, Photoconsortium)
  • Q&A

Hosted on Zoom by the University of Ljubljana.

DISCOVER ALL THE EVENTS IN THE PAGODE DIGITAL FESTIVAL >>>


PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

pagode – video challenge showreel

PAGODE – Europeana China is making an impact on education, being included in a students project for the Master in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven. The organizing students of this “PAGODE group” are Gelan Cen, Lilia Chalakova, Shau Zou Fong, Jing Yun and Emily Jayne Benson-Kallman.

The students’ project included a video competition, where participants were expected to select one, several or a series of pictures from the Scenes and People from China campaign in the PAGODE crowdsourcing page and explain the reasons for their choices by recording a nice video to be shared on social media. The videos were be evaluated by an independent jury basing on a detailed evaluation system, to award the nicest one.

We are happy to present the best videos from the competition!


first prize: sudan chen


second prize: Cynthia


second prize: Chloe Lam


Third prize: xue’er Huang


Third prize: jade zhang


third prize: wayne

image on top: The solitary stillness of the mountains and ravines, c. 1980, CC-BY Qian Songyan, Östasiatiska museet via Europeana

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839