15,544 research outputs found

    Wang Shuo and the commercialisation of contemporary Chinese culture

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    This thesis examines the commercialisation of Chinese culture that has taken place over the past twenty years in mainland China. It explores the contribution of Wang Shuo, a cultural figure who straddles different fields of culture, moving from literature to the ultimate mass culture medium of television, this study plots Wang Shuo' s development from educational failure, to business failure, to fiction writer, film & TV editor, film director and cultural critic and analyst. His stories, films, TV series and articles have caused shock-waves throughout national cultural circles as he has transformed the terms of the debate from academic discourse to a validation of the role of the market in the culture field. Although Wang Shuo has not been labelled as a dissident, his approach to the culture market has had a more subversive effect on official ideology that those overt dissidents who have had to live in exile or have been imprisoned. He has utilised the language of official ideology to satirise the authorities, turning the ideology and its supporters into figures of fun. Yet his own goals have been strictly personal and economic ones. The authorities recognize the value of Wang Shuo's work in the cultural market but at the same time distrust his works and place him under strict censorship. Examining the way Wang Shuo and people surround him have succeeded in different fields of cultural achievement is a mirror to understanding the process of the transformation of contemporary Chinese culture from a socialist state-controlled culture to a market-oriented mass culture industry

    Wang Meng and contemporary Chinese literature: the vicissitudes of a committed writer

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    This thesis examines the way Wang Meng has developed as a writer from the 1950s to the 1990s in the context of New China's political and literary background. It looks at the compromises he was forced to make between his political beliefs in the Communist Party and his chosen role as a professional writer. After his disastrous early foray into what was deemed to be unacceptable political criticism with The Young Newcomer in the Organisation Department in the 1950s, when the opportunity came to start publishing again in the late 1970s he was boldly innovative in style, helping to transform New Period literature, but conservative in content, sticking to politically acceptable topics. It was only with Hard Porridge in 1989 that he ventured again, and very successfully, into political comment. There is no outstanding leading writer in contemporary China, but Wang Meng is a leading contender for the title

    JL-2: A Mobile Multi-robot System with Docking and Manipulating Capabilities

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    This paper presents a new version of the JL series reconfigurable multi-robot system called JL-2. By virtue of the docking manipulator composed of a parallel mechanism and a cam gripper, every mobile robot in the JL-2 system is able to not only perform tasks in parallel, e.g. moving and grasping, but also dock with each other even if there are large misalignments between two robots. A motorized spherical joint is formed between two docked robots to enhance the locomotion capability of JL-2. To fulfill the demands of reconfiguration, a distributed control system and sonar based docking guidance system are designed for the JL-2 prototype. Based on the above design, the JL-2 prototype has been built and successfully demonstrated to confirm the validity and functionality of the proposed capabilities
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