Academic literature on the topic 'She ying yi shu'

Waƙa wata hanya ce ta isar da saƙonni daban-daban cikin salo mabambanta. Wannan ya sanya waƙa ta zama sha-kundum, har ake yi mata kallon magani ga dukkanin abin da ake da cutarsa. A wannan maƙala, an yi ƙoƙarin bibiyar wasu waƙoƙin situdiyo domin a fito da misalan turakun da suke ƙunshe cikin waƙoƙin baka na situdiyo, wanda hakan ya nuna cewa lalle waƙoƙin baka na situdiyo sun zama magani ga kowace irin damuwa a cikin al’umma. Wannan nazari ya yi ƙwai da ƙyanƙyasa a farfajiyar waƙoƙin na situdiyo, inda aka taɓo turke kaɗai domin fito da A’i daga rogo, sannan aka yi ƙoƙarin bayyana wasu waƙoƙi a kowane ɓangaren da suka shafi rukunin da aka ajiye su. Yayin gudanar da binciken, an bi hanyoyi da dama da kuma yin amfani da dabaru, inda aka yi ƙoƙarin nemo waƙoƙin da kuma sauraronsu sauraronsu, da zaƙulo irin abin da ake buƙata a waƙar, domin ishara zuwa ga gaɓar da ake magana a kai. A wannan bincike, an yi ƙoƙarin ɗora shi a kan Ra’in Mazahabar Nason Adabi a Aladu (Folk-Cultural Theory) wanda Williams Bossom ya ƙirƙire ta, sannan aka sami mabiya daga ƙasar Amurka waɗanda suka bi ta. Wannan bincike ya ƙarƙare da zayyano sakamakon da aka samu yayin gudanar da shi.

Abstract Background: With more endocrine therapies- (ET) based treatment (tx) available, genomic markers that could assist in the prediction of tx outcome is critical. The role of ctDNA mutations in ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (MBC) after prior ET is based on retrospective study results. Methods: ER+/HER2- MBC patients (pts) starting ET-based salvage tx were eligible (NCT04212702). Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) was extracted from plasma before tx, and prepared for next-generation sequencing (NGS) analysis. The targeted NGS for ctDNA included regions of the ESR1 ligand-binding domain, PIK3CA hotspot mutations, and TP53 DNA-bonding domain mutations. 96% of the samples were sequenced at an average depths >10000x using the Ion Torrent platform. Progression-free survival (PFS) was defined from the start of the salvage tx to the date of progression. Results: From 2015/08 to 2020/05, a total of 163 pts treated with ET-based tx were prospectively enrolled. The median age was 60 (32-92). 13%, 15%, 48%, and 17% of pts received ET only, ET + CDK4/6 inhibitor, ET + everolimus, and ET + metronomic chemotherapy, respectively. Only 14 patients received fulvestrant as ET. The median level of recovered cfDNA was 38.5 ng (range 4.4-1935) and the level of cfDNA was significantly and inversely correlated with PFS (p = 0.0032). With mutation ctDNA ≥ 0.5% as a threshold for positive calling, 100 (61.3%), 41 (25.1%), and 25 (15.3) pts have at least one ESR1, PIK3CA, and TP53 mutation, respectively and 61 (37.4%) pts had >1 ESR1 mutation genotypes. The median PFS of the cohort (n=163) was 8.3 mos (95% CI 5.7 – 11.1 mos). PIK3CA mutation (MT) in ctDNA was associated with a worse outcome in all patients (HR 1.91, 95% CI 1.20 to 3.04, p = 0.0064) and the subgroups of ET + everolimus (HR 2.20, 95% CI 1.10 – 4.39, p = 0.025) and ET + metronomic chemotherapy (HR 5.34, 95% CI 1.63- 17.54, p = 0.006). The presence of TP53 MT ctDNA was also associated with worse PFS (HR 1.81, p = 0.043, n = 163) but also exerted a poor prognostic impact in pts with wild type (WT) PIK3CA (HR 3.28, 95% CI 1.44 – 7.48, p = 0.0048). However, the variant allelic frequency (VAF) of PIK3CA MT (p = 0.0421), but not TP53 MT (p = 0.7723), had a inverse linear correlation with PFS. Surprisingly, pts with ESR1 MT had a better PFS as compared to ESR1 WT pts (HR 0.68 95% CI 0.46 – 0.99, p = 0.049). However, if the threshold for. variant calling was raised to 2%, then ESR1 MT (n= 52, 31.9%) vs WT pts had similar PFS (median PFS 8.6 vs 7.8 mos, HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.62-1.37, p = 0.69), suggesting that defining different VAF threshold of MT ESR1 may have divergent PFS impact. How ERS1 MT ctDNA affected PFS was dependent on PIK3CA/TP53 status. When either PIK3CA or TP53 MT ctDNA was present, the ESR1 MT ctDNA did not have any impact on PFS, regardless of VAF. In pts with WT PIK3CA/TP53, pts with ESR1 MT ctDNA VAF 0.5 – 2.0% had a significant better PFS as compared with triple WT pts (HR 1.9, p = 0.0035). Conclusion: Using a 3-gene panel for ctDNA testing with MT ctDNA ≥ 0.5% as a threshold for positive calling in ER+/HER2- MBC pts treated with ET-based tx, the presence of PIK3CA and TP53 mut in ctDNA conferred a worse prognosis. The positive prognostic impact of ESR1 was only noticeable in pts with PIK3CA and TP53 WT ctDNA, and the presence of a low VAF ESR1 MT ctDNA, which may suggest an ER denpendency, was significantly correlated with a better outcome. Table 1.Median PFS of pts with and without PIK3CA, TP53 and ESR in ctDNAPopulation (n)Genotype(s)Median PFS (mos)Hazard Ratiop-valueAll (163)PIK3CA MT (41) vs. WT (122)(VAF ≥ 0.5%)5.4 vs. 10.31.910.0064TP53 MT (25) vs. WT (143)(VAF ≥ 0.5%)4.1 vs. 8.91.810.0439ESR1 MT vs. WT(VAF ≥ 0.5%)9.8 vs. 5.80.680.0493ET + everolimus (82)PIK3CA MT vs. WT(VAF ≥ 0.5%)2.8 vs. 5.92.200.0254PIK3CA and TP53 WT (106)WT vs ESR1 MT (VAF ≥ 0.5% - < 2%)6 vs 15.61.910.0035WT vs ESR1 MT (VAF ≥ 2%)6 vs 121.360.355 Citation Format: Tom Wei-Wu Chen, Wen Hsiao, Ming-Shen Dai, Ching-Hung Lin, Dwang-Ying Chang, I-Chun Chen, Ming-Yang Wang, Ling-Yi Huang, Shu-Han Chang, Shu-Min Huang, Ann-Lii Cheng, Kien Thiam Tan, Yen-Shen Lu. Clinical impact of ESR1 mutation ctDNA on survival outcome is dependent on PI3KCA/TP53 ctDNA mutation status [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P2-01-09.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a head and neck cancer involving epithelial squamous-cell carcinoma of the nasopharynx that mainly occurs in individuals from East and Southeast Asia. We investigated whether Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as a complementary therapy offers benefits to these patients. We retrospectively evaluated the Taiwan Cancer Registry (Long Form) database for patients with advanced NPC, using or not using CHM, between 2007–2013. Cox proportional-hazard model and Kaplan‒Meier survival analyses were applied for patient survival. CHM-users showed a lower overall and cancer-related mortality risk than non-users. For advanced NPC patients, the overall mortality risk was 0.799-fold for CHM-users, after controlling for age, gender, and Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) score (Cancer stages 3 + 4: adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 0.799, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.676–0.943, p = 0.008). CHM-users also showed a lower cancer-related mortality risk than non-users (aHR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.53–0.96, p = 0.0273). Association rule analysis showed that CHM pairs were Ban-Zhi-Lian (BZL; Scutellaria barbata D.Don) and For single herbs, Bai-Hua-She-She-Cao (Herba Hedyotis Diffusae; Scleromitrion diffusum (Willd.) R.J.Wang (syn. Hedyotis diffusa Willd.) and Mai-Men-Dong (MMD; Ophiopogon japonicus (Thunb.) Ker Gawl.), and Gan-Lu-Yin (GLY) and BHSSC. Network analysis revealed that BHSSC was the core CHM, and BZL, GLY, and Xin-Yi-Qing-Fei-Tang (XYQFT) were important CHMs in cluster 1. In cluster 2, ShengDH, MMD, Xuan-Shen (XS; Scrophularia ningpoensis Hensl.), and Gua-Lou-Gen (GLG; Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim.) were important CHMs. Thus, as a complementary therapy, CHM, and particularly the 8 CHMs identified, are important for the treatment of advanced NPC patients.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 本文主要分析香港20世紀六十年代的一本重要左派文藝刊物《海光文藝》中的流行小説。之前對《海光文藝》的研究主要在於它作爲左派的灰色刊物在冷戰時期的意義，本文則對其中的流行小説部分進行細讀，大致分爲兩個部分，第一部分討論《海光文藝》中對流行文學的研究，包括梁羽生、金庸對於武俠小説的討論，盈若思對瓊瑤及郭良蕙的言情小説的分析等。第二部分以文本細讀的方法，分析《海光文藝》刊登的流行短篇小説，特别是選取鄭慧、依達、亦舒這三個分别在五十年代、六十年代及七十年代最爲流行的言情作家作品來討論他們所寫作的言情小説中所反映的不同世代的創作特色。文章認爲《海光文藝》在評論及創作兩個方面均對當時的流行文學研究做出貢獻。它以一種嚴肅的、論文探討式的方式來分析時下的流行文學類型，同時，在創作上，刊物中發表的流行文學在世代、性别、背景上也有多樣化的特點，因此在香港六十年代流行文學的研究及創作上具有重要價值。 This paper discussed the popular fiction in Haiguang wenyi, one of the most important literary journals by the leftist in the 1960s Hong Kong. Previously the studies of this journal mainly focused on its significance as a grey journal of the leftists during the cold war, this paper, however, conducted a detailed analysis in its texts of popular fiction. It consisted two parts. Part one discussed the essays on the theory of popular literature published in this journal, including discussions on martial art fiction by Liang Yusheng and Jing Yong, the analysis by Ying Ruosi on the topic of romances of Qiong Yao and Guo Lianghui. Part two did a detailed readings of the popular fiction in this journal, especially the stories written by Zheng Hui, Yi Da and Yi Shu. These three writers were the most popular romance writers of the 50s, 60s and 70s each. In general, this paper argued that Haiguang wenyi contributed greatly to the popular literature writings in the 1960s Hong Kong literature. Not only did it take a serious attitude to treat popular literature at that time, but also the popular stories published in this journal exhibited the diversity of genres and generations at that time.

Diabetes Mellitus has been becoming a disease of the century, and disease incidence is still rising worldwide. It causes many serious complications, especially in the eye, heart, kidneys, brain, and vascular system, such as diabetic nephropathy, diabetic retinopathy, liver fa­ilure, etc. Moreover, the process of controlling this disease is complicated. Meanwhile, the antidiabetic drugs on the market are facing some problems with a wide range of adverse reactions. Therefore, finding new drugs to treat diabetes has always been a topic that many researchers are interested in, especially drugs derived from nature like microorganisms and medicinal plants. This review is to provide knowledge concerning the effects of α-glucosidase inhibitors, which are oral antidiabetic drugs commonly used for diabetes mellitus type 2. 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IntroductionWhat can we learn about anomaly from the strangeness of a puppet, a lifeless object, that can both bleed and die? How does the filming process of a puppet’s death engage across media and produce a new media genre that is not easily classified within traditional conventions? Why do these fighting and bleeding puppets’ scenes consistently attract audiences? This study examines how Pili puppetry (1984-present), a popular TV series depicting martial arts-based narratives and fight sequences, interacts with digital technologies and constructs a new media genre. The transmedia constitution of a virtual world not only challenges the stereotype of puppetry’s target audience but also expands the audience’s bodily imagination and desires through the visual component of death scenes. Hence, the show does not merely represent or signify an anomaly, but even creates anomalous desires and imaginary bodies.Cultural commodification and advancing technologies have motivated the convergence and displacement of traditional boundaries, genres, and media, changing the very fabric of textuality itself. By exploring how new media affect the audience’s visual reception of fighting and death, this article sheds light on understanding the metamorphoses of Taiwanese puppetry and articulates a theoretical argument regarding the show’s artistic practice to explain how its form transverses traditional boundaries. This critical exploration focusses on how the form represents bleeding puppets, and in doing so, explicates the politics of transmedia performing and viewing. Pili is an example of an anomalous media form that proliferates anomalous media viewing experiences and desires in turn.Beyond a Media Genre: Taiwanese Pili PuppetryConverging the craft technique of puppeteering and digital technology of filmmaking and animation, Pili puppetry creates a new media genre that exceeds any conventional idea of a puppet show or digital puppet, as it is something in-between. Glove puppetry is a popular traditional theatre in Taiwan, often known as “theatre in the palm” because a traditional puppet was roughly the same size as an adult’s palm. The size enabled the puppeteer to easily manipulate a puppet in one hand and be close to the audience. Traditionally, puppet shows occurred to celebrate the local deities’ birthday. Despite its popularity, the form was limited by available technology. For instance, although stories with vigorous battles were particularly popular, bleeding scenes in such an auspicious occasion were inappropriate and rare. As a live theatrical event featuring immediate interaction between the performer and the spectator, realistic bleeding scenes were rare because it is hard to immediately clean the stage during the performance. Distinct from the traditional puppet show, digital puppetry features semi-animated puppets in a virtual world. Digital puppetry is not a new concept by any means in the Western film industry. Animating a 3D puppet is closely associated with motion capture technologies and animation that are manipulated in a digitalised virtual setting (Ferguson). Commonly, the target audience of the Western digital puppetry is children, so educators sometimes use digital puppetry as a pedagogical tool (Potter; Wohlwend). With these young target audience in mind, the producers often avoid violent and bleeding scenes.Pili puppetry differs from digital puppetry in several ways. For instance, instead of targeting a young audience, Pili puppetry consistently extends the traditional martial-arts performance to include bloody fight sequences that enrich the expressiveness of traditional puppetry as a performing art. Moreover, Pili puppetry does not apply the motion capture technologies to manipulate the puppet’s movement, thus retaining the puppeteers’ puppeteering craft (clips of Pili puppetry can be seen on Pili’s official YouTube page). Hence, Pili is a unique hybrid form, creating its own anomalous space in puppetry. Among over a thousand characters across the series, the realistic “human-like” puppet is one of Pili’s most popular selling points. The new media considerably intervene in the puppet design, as close-up shots and high-resolution images can accurately project details of a puppet’s face and body movements on the screen. Consequently, Pili’s puppet modelling becomes increasingly intricate and attractive and arguably makes its virtual figures more epic yet also more “human” (Chen). Figure 1: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Killing Blade (1993). His facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid then. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 2: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Nine Thrones (2003). The puppet’s facial design and costume became more delicate and complex. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 3: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons (2019). His facial lines softened due to more precise design technologies. The new lightweight chiffon yarn costumes made him look more elegant. The multiple-layer costumes also created more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enact more complicated manipulations. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.The design of the most well-known Pili swordsman, Su Huan-Jen, demonstrates how the Pili puppet modelling became more refined and intricate in the past 20 years. In 1993, the standard design was a TV puppet with the size and body proportion slightly enlarged from the traditional puppet. Su Huan-Jen’s costumes were made from heavy fabrics, and his facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid (fig. 1). Pili produced its first puppetry film Legend of the Sacred Stone in 2000; considering the visual quality of a big screen, Pili refined the puppet design including replacing wooden eyeballs and plastic hair with real hair and glass eyeballs (Chen). The filmmaking experience inspired Pili to dramatically improve the facial design for all puppets. In 2003, Su’s modelling in Pili Nine Thrones (TV series) became noticeably much more delicate. The puppet’s size was considerably enlarged by almost three times, so a puppeteer had to use two hands to manipulate a puppet. The complex costumes and props made more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enrich the performance of the fighting movements (fig. 2). In 2019, Su’s new modelling further included new layers of lightweight fabrics, and his makeup and props became more delicate and complex (fig. 3). Such a refined aesthetic design also lends to Pili’s novelty among puppetry performances.Through the transformation of Pili in the context of puppetry history, we see how the handicraft-like puppet itself gradually commercialised into an artistic object that the audience would yearn to collect and project their bodily imagination. Anthropologist Teri Silvio notices that, for some fans, Pili puppets are similar to worship icons through which they project their affection and imaginary identity (Silvio, “Pop Culture Icons”). Intermediating with the new media, the change in the refined puppet design also comes from the audience’s expectations. Pili’s senior puppet designer Fan Shih-Ching mentioned that Pili fans are very involved, so their preferences affect the design of puppets. The complexity, particularly the layer of costumes, most clearly differentiates the aesthetics of traditional and Pili puppets. Due to the “idolisation” of some famous Pili characters, Shih-Ching has had to design more and more gaudy costumes. Each resurgence of a well-known Pili swordsman, such as Su Huan-Jen, Yi Ye Shu, and Ye Hsiao-Chai, means he has to remodel the puppet.Pili fans represent their infatuation for puppet characters through cosplay (literally “costume play”), which is when fans dress up and pretend to be a Pili character. Their cosplay, in particular, reflects the bodily practice of imaginary identity. Silvio observes that most cosplayers choose to dress as characters that are the most visually appealing rather than characters that best suit their body type. They even avoid moving too “naturally” and mainly move from pose-to-pose, similar to the frame-to-frame techne of animation. Thus, we can understand this “cosplay more as reanimating the character using the body as a kind of puppet rather than as an embodied performance of some aspect of self-identity” (Silvio 2019, 167). Hence, Pili fans’ cosplay is indicative of an anomalous desire to become the puppet-like human, which helps them transcend their social roles in their everyday life. It turns out that not only fans’ preference drives the (re)modelling of puppets but also fans attempt to model themselves in the image of their beloved puppets. The reversible dialectic between fan-star and flesh-object further provokes an “anomaly” in terms of the relationship between the viewers and the puppets. Precisely because fans have such an intimate relationship with Pili, it is important to consider how the series’ content and form configure fans’ viewing experience.Filming Bleeding PuppetsDespite its intricate aesthetics, Pili is still a series with frequent fighting-to-the-death scenes, which creates, and is the result of, extraordinary transmedia production and viewing experiences. Due to the market demand of producing episodes around 500 minutes long every month, Pili constantly creates new characters to maintain the audience’s attention and retain its novelty. So far, Pili has released thousands of characters. To ensure that new characters supersede the old ones, numerous old characters have to die within the plot.The adoption of new media allows the fighting scenes in Pili to render as more delicate, rather than consisting of loud, intense action movements. Instead, the leading swordsmen’s death inevitably takes place in a pathetic and romantic setting and consummates with a bloody sacrifice. Fighting scenes in early Pili puppetry created in the late 1980s were still based on puppets’ body movements, as the knowledge and technology of animation were still nascent and underdeveloped. At that time, the prestigious swordsman mainly relied on the fast speed of brandishing his sword. Since the early 1990s, as animation technology matured, it has become very common to see Pili use CGI animation to create a damaging sword beam for puppets to kill target enemies far away. The sword beam can fly much faster than the puppets can move, so almost every fighting scene employs CGI to visualise both sword beams and flame. The change in fighting manners provokes different representations of the bleeding and death scenes. Open wounds replace puncture wounds caused by a traditional weapon; bleeding scenes become typical, and a special feature in Pili’s transmedia puppetry.In addition to CGI animation, the use of fake blood in the Pili studio makes the performance even more realistic. Pili puppet master Ting Chen-Ching recalled that exploded puppets in traditional puppetry were commonly made by styrofoam blocks. The white styrofoam chips that sprayed everywhere after the explosion inevitably made the performance seem less realistic. By contrast, in the Pili studio, the scene of a puppet spurting blood after the explosion usually applies the technology of editing several shots. The typical procedure would be a short take that captures a puppet being injured. In its injury location, puppeteers sprinkle red confetti to represent scattered blood clots in the following shot. Sometimes the fake blood was splashed with the red confetti to make it further three-dimensional (Ting). Bloody scenes can also be filmed through multiple layers of arranged performance conducted at the same time by a group of puppeteers. Ting describes the practice of filming a bleeding puppet. Usually, some puppeteers sprinkle fake blood in front of the camera, while other puppeteers blasted the puppets toward various directions behind the blood to make the visual effects match. If the puppeteers need to show how a puppet becomes injured and vomits blood during the fight, they can install tiny pipes in the puppet in advance. During the filming, the puppeteer slowly squeezes the pipe to make the fake blood flow out from the puppet’s mouth. Such a bloody scene sometimes accompanies tears dropping from the puppet’s eyes. In some cases, the puppeteer drops the blood on the puppet’s mouth prior to the filming and then uses a powerful electric fan to blow the blood drops (Ting). Such techniques direct the blood to flow laterally against the wind, which makes the puppet’s death more aesthetically tragic. Because it is not a live performance, the puppeteer can try repeatedly until the camera captures the most ideal blood drop pattern and bleeding speed. Puppeteers have to adjust the camera distance for different bleeding scenes, which creates new modes of viewing, sensing, and representing virtual life and death. One of the most representative examples of Pili’s bleeding scenes is when Su’s best friend, Ching Yang-Zi, fights with alien devils in Legend of the Sacred Stone. (The clip of how Ching Yang-Zi fights and bleeds to death can be seen on YouTube.) Ting described how Pili prepared three different puppets of Ching for the non-fighting, fighting, and bleeding scenes (Ting). The main fighting scene starts from a low-angle medium shot that shows how Ching Yang-Zi got injured and began bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Then, a sharp weapon flies across the screen; the following close-up shows that the weapon hits Ching and he begins bleeding immediately. The successive shots move back and forth between his face and the wound in medium shot and close-up. Next, a close-up shows him stepping back with blood dripping on the ground. He then pushes the weapon out of his body to defend enemies; a final close-up follows a medium take and a long take shows the massive hemorrhage. The eruption of fluid plasma creates a natural effect that is difficult to achieve, even with 3D animation. Beyond this impressive technicality, the exceptional production and design emphasise how Pili fully embraces the ethos of transmedia: to play with multiple media forms and thereby create a new form. In the case of Pili, its form is interactive, transcending the boundaries of what we might consider the “living” and the “dead”.Epilogue: Viewing Bleeding Puppets on the ScreenThe simulated, high-quality, realistic-looking puppet designs accompanying the Pili’s featured bloody fighting sequence draw another question: What is the effect of watching human-like puppets die? What does this do to viewer-fans? Violence is prevalent throughout the historical record of human behaviour, especially in art and entertainment because these serve as outlets to fulfill a basic human need to indulge in “taboo fantasies” and escape into “realms of forbidden experience” (Schechter). When discussing the visual representations of violence and the spectacle of the sufferings of others, Susan Sontag notes, “if we consider what emotions would be desirable” (102), viewing the pain of others may not simply evoke sympathy. She argues that “[no] moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties. Just the provocation: can you look at this? There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching” (41). For viewers, the boldness of watching the bloody scenes can be very inviting. Watching human-like puppets die in the action scenes similarly validates the viewer’s need for pleasure and entertainment. Although different from a human body, the puppets still bears the materiality of being-object. Therefore, watching the puppets bleeding and die as distinctly “human-like’ puppets further prevent viewers’ from feeling guilty or morally involved. The conceptual distance of being aware of the puppet’s materiality acts as a moral buffer; audiences are intimately involved through the particular aesthetic arrangement, yet morally detached. The transmedia filming of puppetry adds another layer of mediation over the human-like “living” puppets that allows such a particular experience. Sontag notices that the media generates an inevitable distance between object and subject, between witness and victim. For Sontag, although images constitute “the imaginary proximity” because it makes the “faraway sufferers” be “seen close-up on the television screen”, it is a mystification to assume that images serve as a direct link between sufferers and viewers. Rather, Sontag insists: the distance makes the viewers feel “we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (102). Echoing Sontag’s argument, Jeffrey Goldstein points out that “distancing” oneself from the mayhem represented in media makes it tolerable. Media creates an “almost real” visuality of violence, so the audience feels relatively safe in their surroundings when exposed to threatening images. Thus, “violent imagery must carry cues to its unreality or it loses appeal” (280). Pili puppets that are human-like, thus not human, more easily enable the audience to seek sensational excitement through viewing puppets’ bloody violence and eventual death on the screen and still feel emotionally secure. Due to the distance granted by the medium, viewers gain a sense of power by excitedly viewing the violence with an accompanying sense of moral exemption. Thus, viewers can easily excuse the limits of their personal responsibility while still being captivated by Pili’s boundary-transgressing aesthetic.The anomalous power of Pili fans’ cosplay differentiates the viewing experience of puppets’ deaths from that of other violent entertainment productions. Cosplayers physically bridge viewing/acting and life/death by dressing up as the puppet characters, bringing them to life, as flesh. Cosplay allows fans to compensate for the helplessness they experience when watching the puppets’ deaths on the screen. They can both “enjoy” the innocent pleasure of watching bleeding puppets and bring their adored dead idols “back to life” through cosplay. The onscreen violence and death thus provide an additional layer of pleasure for such cosplayers. They not only take pleasure in watching the puppets—which are an idealized version of their bodily imagination—die, but also feel empowered to revitalise their loved idols. Therefore, Pili cosplayers’ desires incite a cycle of life, pleasure, and death, in which the company responds to their consumers’ demands in kind. The intertwining of social, economic, and political factors thus collectively thrives upon media violence as entertainment. Pili creates the potential for new cross-media genre configurations that transcend the traditional/digital puppetry binary. On the one hand, the design of swordsman puppets become a simulation of a “living object” responding to the camera distance. On the other hand, the fighting and death scenes heavily rely on the puppeteers’ cooperation with animation and editing. Therefore, Pili puppetry enriches existing discourse on both puppetry and animation as life-giving processes. What is animated by Pili puppetry is not simply the swordsmen characters themselves, but new potentials for media genres and violent entertainment. AcknowledgmentMy hearty gratitude to Amy Gaeta for sharing her insights with me on the early stage of this study.ReferencesChen, Jasmine Yu-Hsing. “Transmuting Tradition: The Transformation of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry in Pili Productions.” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 51 (2019): 26-46.Ferguson, Jeffrey. “Lessons from Digital Puppetry: Updating a Design Framework for a Perceptual User Interface.” IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, 2015.Goldstein, Jeffrey. “The Attractions of Violent Entertainment.” Media Psychology 1.3 (1999): 271-282.Potter, Anna. “Funding Contemporary Children’s Television: How Digital Convergence Encourages Retro Reboot.” International Journal on Communications Management 19.2 (2017): 108-112.Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.Silvio, Teri. “Pop Culture Icons: Religious Inflections of the Character Toy in Taiwan.” Mechademia 3.1 (2010): 200-220.———. Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. Honolulu: U Hawaii P, 2019. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004.Ting, Chen-Ching. Interview by the author. Yunlin, Taiwan. 24 June 2019.Wohlwend, Karen E. “One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play with Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies.” Theory into Practice 54.2 (2015): 154-162.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-123). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

In tracing the experience of Chinese Canadians in the 20th Century, we need to look further back into its history. Most people believe that the increasing number of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s played the most important roles in the social and economic changes during the latest decades of the 20th Century. The contribution of the Chinese Canadians settlement throughout the 20th Century should also be considered as it marks the beginning of the rise of their social status and identity in Canada. Although the Chinese Canadians earned their fame and status since the 1980s, they had been racially discriminated for more than a century. To probe into the situation, the social and political situations in the Chinese Canadian community will be meticulously analyzed and their contribution in difference aspects examined. In addition, other minority ethnic groups, such as the Japanese, Jewish and Indian, will be used as a comparison to demonstrate the change of policies towards the Chinese in Canada. In doing so, both English and Canadian Chinese newspapers will be used to illustrate the cultural difference between the “whites” and “non-whites”. To illustrate the changes, the 20th Century will be break into three parts. In most of the pre-Second World War period, the Chinese community was isolated from the mainstream community with their activities largely confined to Chinatowns in cities, such as Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and so on. For the Chinese living in small townships, such as Prince Rupert, Richmond and so on, their daily life will also be examined. When Canada declared war on Japan on 7th December 1941, Canada became an ally of China during the war. A sentiment of acceptance of the Chinese in the mainstream society began to take shape. Some of the Chinese chose to contribute their efforts to Canada by joining the Canadian Armed Forces and went into battle alongside the White Canadians. After the Second World War, Canada adopted a new policy towards the minority ethnic groups and Chinese Canadians started to enjoy political equality. In May 1947, the Canadian Government repealed the Chinese Immigration Act. In 1967, after the liberalization of the Canadian immigration policy, the Chinese, once again, were allowed to immigrate freely to Canada as an individual. With granted full citizenship, the Chinese social and political status began to change. In 1957, Douglas Jung, a Canadian born Chinese, was elected a Member of the Parliament, which can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese involvement in the political arena of the Canadian community. Since then, Chinese Canadians were able to achieve equality in the society. Based on documentary accounts and oral history research, this thesis re-constructed the history of Canadian Chinese involvement in the 20th Century and the change of their identity and social status thereafter.
published_or_final_version
Social Work and Social Administration
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

Abstract This chapter surveys the development of new ideas about nature, the universe, and the human body in ancient China, focusing on the period between the fifth century bce and the second century ce. It focuses in particular on cosmogony (the study of the origins of the universe) and cosmology, astrology and the calendar, and medicine, as well as developments in mathematics, music, and geography. It charts the development of correlative cosmology, focusing on the notion of qi as the fundamental stuff of the cosmos, and how it went through processes based on cycles of yin and yang. It surveys the contributions of leading figures such as Zi Wei, Shi Shen, and Chunyu Yi.