2,100 research outputs found
Superstition and spiritual worship : deity-spirit beliefs reflected in Chu divinatory bamboo slips = Xin gui hao ci : Chu di bu shi jian suo jian gui shen xin yang
No full textThroughout Chinese history, a Confucianism-centered or northern-biased view, which regards southern China as cultural otherness against the central plain (中原 zhongyuan) or savages (蠻夷 manyi), has promulgated and been greatly embraced. In particular, people in Chu楚, a vast territory across the Yangtze and Han River watersheds in southern China, is typically portrayed as to “believe in shamanistic ghosts and embrace excessive rites”信巫鬼，重淫祀 or to “believe in ghostly spirits and be keen on sacrifices”信鬼而好祠 by Confucianism-influenced élites and scholars. According to this prominent and paradigmatic view, it is primarily its religious beliefs and rituals that delineate Chu from the rest of Chinese cultural sphere. This etic perspective has dominated Chinese literary tradition while only a few epic writings of Chu, such as Chuci楚辭, have been passed down during history.
Curiously, from the mid-20th century and onward, major archeological finds have sprung in the ever-silent region. In particular, a corpus of Warring States period tomb-excavated paleographic records, named “divinatory bamboo slips” (卜筮簡 bushijian) by the majority of paleographists, records the aristocratic tomb occupants’ divinatory activities and sacrificial proposals by their consultants during their lifetime. These shreds of epigraphic evidence yield new perspective into Chu religion and rites, about which scholars know only a little from the transmitted etic writings.
The present dissertation concentrates on the beliefs as reflected in these texts. In Chapter Two, it gives a philological interpretation of the names and natures of deities and spirits as seen from the manuscripts, followed by an analysis of the structure of Chu’s pantheon. Chapter Three moves to an ever-discussed notion of “sui-divination” (busui卜祟), which suggests that ancient Chinese construed calamities, especially illness, as a result of a curse by spirits and divination as a diagnostic method inquiring the sources of the curses. By scrutinizing the nature of Warring States divination as compared to its precedent, Shang divination, the chapter calls the long-asserted notion into re-inquiry and explores issues about the Chu view on the spirits-caused curse. Chapter Four examines issues surrounding sacrificial rites and the theological thoughts behind, with special attention paid to the rites by which the tomb occupants and their consultants attempted to deal with predicted calamities. In this chapter, the nature of these rites and the prerequisite theological beliefs are discussed.
Instead of simply supporting or dismissing the transmitted texts’ view on Chu, the present dissertation attempts to juxtapose these texts, as etic writings, and Chu divinatory bamboo slips, as Chu’s epic writings. It endeavors to uncover the religious, theological aspects of Chu and the contribution of Chu religiosity to the Chinese history of ideology. It advances to how different ideologies, as represented in the bamboo slip manuscripts and canonical texts, may in concert re-illustrate a new “Chu” and have together constituted Chinese ideology and its history.published_or_final_versionChineseMasterMaster of Philosoph
Die “ek” in (‘YK’): Die desentralisasie van die subjek in Breyten Breytenbach se digbundel (‘YK’)
No full textIn Breyten Breytenbach’s poetry the “I” is complex. “I” and “you”, the writer and the reader, are not represented with constituted meanings but as signifiers and as part of language production. This article reflects on the development process of the writer as the textual “I”, the “I” narrator in the poetic text – the “I” of language that is not homogeneous or constant. The text is regarded as a pluriform in dialogue (often incomplete) with a variety of texts, the writer and his text, the texts of the reader and the texts of society and history. The author discusses the decentralisation of the subject in Breytenbach’s poetry with respect to his prison collection (‘YK’), and especially the poem “nekra” (a neologism recalling “necro”)
The Triads As Business
No full textThere is no doubt that the triads have become recognized as a sophisticated and international criminal force and, following the handover of Hong Kong to China, there have been increasing fears that their influence will spread to the West through emigration. This book investigates the reality behind the myth with a study of the Hong Kong triads, generally regarded as the headquarters of triad societies throughout the world. Yiu Kong Chu examines their origins, their organized extortion from legitimate businesses large and small, and their more recent moves into illegal activities such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and gambling.
Contrary to the popular belief that Hong Kong triads are replacing the Italian Mafia as the most powerful criminal organization in the world, this book argues that Hong Kong triads may be declining, as other ethnic Chinese crime gangs emerge as powerful crime groups in Western societies.
Based on interviews with ex triad members and victims of the triads, police from Hong Kong, mainland China and Europe, as well as documentary evidence The Triads as Business gives a vivid and compelling picture of the triads as part of a wider society
Analysis and Reconstruction of Shipwreck YK 11 (c. Seventh Century A.D.) from the Theodosian Harbor at Yenikapı in Istanbul, Turkey
No full textSince 2004, the Istanbul Archaeological Museums have conducted salvage archaeological excavations at the construction site of an underground railway station at Yenikapı in Istanbul, Turkey. These excavations have unearthed the remains of Constantinople’s Theodosian Harbor (Portus Theodosiacus), including 36 Byzantine shipwrecks. The detailed study of eight of these wrecks was allocated to a small international team under the direction of Cemal Pulak from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A&M University. One of these shipwrecks, YK 11, was a small, heavily-repaired, pine-built merchantman abandoned as a derelict at the western end of the harbor early in the seventh century. This dissertation serves as a detailed record of the YK 11 hull remains, provides a theoretical reconstruction of the vessel, compares the ship’s construction with that of contemporaneous vessels, and explores the ship’s historical context.
The YK 11 hull was excavated, dismantled, and removed from the construction zone at Yenikapı in 2008. The author conducted the post-excavation documentation of the ship’s timbers between 2009 and 2012, following methods established by Fred van Doorninck and J. Richard Steffy of INA in their work with Mediterranean shipwrecks. This documentation revealed that YK 11 had undergone a series of significant repairs over the ship’s lifetime. In these repairs, much of the ship’s original planking, edge fastened with unpegged mortise-and-tenon joints below the waterline, was replaced with planks lacking edge fasteners; a considerable number of the ship’s frames were also replaced. These repairs to YK 11 significantly complicated the interpretation of its original construction.
The paucity of edge fasteners, presence of caulking, and attachment of frames to the keel might be taken as evidence that YK 11 was built after a skeleton-based tradition. However, with the detailed documentation of each component timber, a careful analysis of fastening patterns, the identification of repairs, and a thorough study of the preserved surface detail, it is clear that YK 11, although exhibiting evidence of both shell-first and skeleton-first techniques, was initially designed and built as a primarily shell-based vessel. As such, this study of YK 11 contributes valuable new information toward a better understanding of the transition from shell-based to skeleton-based shipbuilding in the Mediterranean
Suržyk as a Transitional Stage from Russian to Ukrainian: The Perspective of Ukrainian Migrants and War Refugees in Finland
No full textThis article examines how Ukrainian migrants and war refugees in Finland perceive and use Suržyk, a cluster of intermediate varieties between Ukrainian and Russian, as a transitional stage facilitating the shift from Russian-dominant to Ukrainian-dominant speech. Drawing on 1615 survey responses collected between November 2022 and January 2023, the study reveals that 42 respondents view Suržyk as a bridge that supports the gradual acquisition of standard Ukrainian. Qualitative content analysis of open-ended responses shows repeated references to Suržyk as a “stepping stone”, “temporary means” or “bridge”, highlighting its role in maintaining intelligibility and fluency for speakers who are not confident in standard Ukrainian. Although some respondents acknowledge the stigma associated with mixed speech, they also stress Suržyk’s practical advantages in contexts shaped by the 2022 full-scale war and heightened purist discourses. Speakers report pressure to adhere to purist language norms in formal settings, whereas in informal spaces, they consider Suržyk a natural outcome of bilingual backgrounds. These findings illuminate the interplay between language ideologies, sociopolitical dynamics, and individual agency, suggesting that for many Ukrainians in Finland, Suržyk serves as a temporary yet functional means to align with Ukrainian identity under rapidly changing circumstances
Rapid and selective isolation of beta-xylosidase through an activity-based chemical approach
No full textGuaranteed cost control of networked control systems under limited communication capacity and variable sampling
No full textThe problem of guaranteed cost control for the networked control systems (NCSs) with time-varying delays, time-varying sampling intervals and signals quantization was investigated, wherein the physical plant was continuous-time one, and the control input was discrete-time one. By using an input delay approach and a sector bound method, the network induced delays, quantization parameter and sampling intervals were presented in one framework in the case of the state and the control input by quantized in a logarithmic form. A novel Lyapunov function with discontinuity, which took full advantages of the NCS characteristic information, was exploited. In addition, it was shown that Lyapunov function decreased at the jump instants. Furthermore, the Leibniz-Newton formula and free-weighting matrix methods were used to obtain the guaranteed cost controller design conditions which were dependent on the NCS characteristic information. A numerical example was used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods
Signal difference-based deadband control for networked control systems with variable sampling intervals
No full textThis study investigates a signal difference-based deadband control approach as a solution to reduce data transmission in networked control systems (NCSs). A new modelling method for the NCSs with time-varying delays, time-varying sampling intervals and signal transmission deadbands is presented. The Lyapunov functional with discontinuity is exploited, which takes full advantages of the NCSs' characteristic information including the bounds of network delay (BND), the bounds of sampling interval (BSI) and the bounds of transmission deadband (BTD). In addition, it has been shown that Lyapunov functional decreases at the jump instants. Furthermore, the new stability analysis and stabilisation conditions for the NCSs are proposed, which describes the relationship of BND, BSI, BTD and the system stability. Three examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The simulation results have shown that the proposed approach could guarantee the system asymptotically stable and effectively reduce the data transmission in network channel
Dynamic quantization control for networked control systems with limited communication and variable sampling
No full textThe problems of modeling, analysis and control for variable sampling networked control systems (NCSs) with induced delay and signal quantization are studied in this paper. A more general mathematical model for such NCSs is built. A new Lyapunovfunctional which is dependent on the bound of network delays and the bound of sampling intervals is constructed, and introducing some relax variables technology is used to effectively reduce the conservativeness of the stability conditions brought by those factors of delays, quantization errors and variable samplings. Furthermore, the quantitative relation of those three factors and stability is presented, and the design method for dynamical quantization controller is given. Numerical example illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed method
Signal difference-based deadband H-infinity control approach for networked control systems with limited resources
No full textThis paper investigates a signal difference-based deadband H-infinity control approach for networked control systems (NCSs) with limited resources. The effects of variable network-induced delays, sampling intervals and data transmitting deadbands are considered simultaneously and the model of the NCS is presented. A Lyapunov functional is adopted, which makes full use of the network characteristic information including the bounds of network delay (BND), the bounds of sampling interval (BSI) and the bounds of transmission deadband (BTD). In the meanwhile, the new Hoo performance analysis and controller design conditions for the NCSs are proposed, which describe the relationship of BND, BSI, BTD and the system's performance. Three examples are used to illustrate the advantages of the proposed methods. The results have shown that the proposed method not only effectively reduces the data traffic, but also guarantees the system asymptotically stable and achieves the prescribed H-infinity disturbance attenuation level
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