YUSA, Michiko (Western Washington University)

This article uses McLuhan’s notions of hot and cool as heuristics to advance a critique of the city of Beijing as a living and lived material-symbolic complex. It both extends the applicability of these notions and draws attention to their paradoxical coexistence when the analysis becomes specific. The article ends by calling for a cooler Beijing, a society to come.

– Félix Guattari (1985, p. 460)

“the diameter of the octagonal crossing meausres nearly 140 feet (43 m), almost as great as the Pantheon in Rome.” The octagonal form of the Dome deviated from the classical hemispherical; Brunelleschi used eight visible ribs and sixteen concealed one—“in a manner similar to the construction of Gothic vaults.” Another kind of transformation of Chinese pagoda from square to octagon is from the Period of Simplicity (ca. 500-900) to the Period of Elaboration (ca. 1000-1300); in the former period, there the square form of one-storied, multi-storied, multi-eaved pagodas prevailed in China. After the end of Tang dynasty, one-storied pagoda disappeared; “the octagonal form became the norm and the square plan the exception.” “The octagonal pagoda which first appeared in the Tomb Pagoda of Ching-tsang in 746...” The term of pagoda may be a kind of southern pronunciation of Chinese “pa-chiao-t’a”—“pa-ko-t’a” meaning “eight-cornered pagoda”. Chinese architect, Liang Ssu-ch’eng in his A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture mentions: The word “pagoda” instead of “t’a” is deliberately used in this book because it is accepted in all the European languages as the name for such a monument. The very fact that the word finds its way into almost every European dictionary as the name for the Chinese t’a may reflect the popularity of the octagonal plan at the opening of Western contact. It’s hard to say that the Italian Gothic, eight-corner form have any genetic relation to Chinese pagoda. However, we may ask why this form had been prevailing in Europe (France, Spain, Italy...) and in Asia (e.g. India and China). What communal sense this form aroused in human beings? What is the meaning transmitted by this form? What functions of architecture with this form serve for? What’s the relation between space and architecture with this form in the Italian Renaissance Renaissance and in Chinese Song dynasty?

The Confucian emphasis on ritual propriety and self-discipline is often considered as the antithesis of the Daoist individual freedom. Hahm (2001) using a Foucaultian perspective, argues that the Confucian practices of self-discipline do not inhibit individual freedom—but rather such practices are indispensable for the proper practice of freedom, which Hahm identifies not with individual freedom, but rather with the creation of a free or better society.

A Chinese scholar’s garden, as I suggest elsewhere (2012, 2015), is a place for practising the arts (e.g. poetry, calligraphy, music) through which Confucian personhood is developed. Reading both Confucian classical texts and scholars’ garden essays, I argue, in light of the above, that a scholars’ garden emerged through the sustained Confucian ritual practices of the arts. Instead of being a place to pursue Daoist individual freedom, the scholars’ garden is a place where the scholar harmonizes both his (rarely her) self and socio-political relations, thus practising freedom in a Confucian or Foucaultian sense—to create a better society.

This paper aims to rethink the function of classrooms, a conventional learning space, to expand the ecology of language learning to natural and sociocultural places where learning while doing on the fly is of a normative practice. In place-based learning, learning materials are used as resources. Learners are brought out of the safe haven as protected by well-defined textbook boundaries, teacher expectations and classroom norms. Learners are forced to encounter strangers, odd things, and texts not written for language learners. The same place offers different features to natives vs. non-native speakers. Perception of place results from cultural experiences, which gives rise to different action potentiality (Chemero, 2009). Being in places extends language to things, signs, actions, and a sense of normativity (dialogical third parties in Linell’s sense (2009). Taking action in places cultivates and attunes learners’ affectivity to care for the world and themselves.

For over a decade, Confucian studies has gone through several evolutions and developments. From 2010 to today,this area has delivered a number of the fine scholars.In this paper, I will analyze and compare five current trends in Confucian studies:

In each movement I have in effect discussed certain types of challenges against “orthodox prejudice,” and also compared and contrasted them through a philosophical perspective. The significance of those trends is two-fold: it argues for a new stage in the development of contemporary Confucian studies, and it extends the Confucius thought to Western scholars and people.