Academic Interests
I have a broad spectrum of research interests in Chinese Studies, ranging from the language, art, cultural and intellectual history of early China, to the economic history of Chinese diaspora from a regional and global perspective.
Ongoing Research Project
My PhD dissertation investigates the role of Cantonese diaspora in the capital accumulation in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century East Asia. This project aims to contribute to the European Research Council-funded interdisciplinary project "Brokering China’s Extraversion: An Ethnographic Analysis of Transnational Arbitration" from a historical dimension.
Background
2019– Doctoral Research Fellow, the University of Oslo
2017–2019 Research Fellow, TU Darmstadt
2016 Teaching Assistant, the University of Oslo
2016 MPhil, the University of Oslo
2015–2016 Erasmus+ Master's exchange, Heidelberg University
2011 BA, Fudan University
2009 Undergraduate exchange, UCLA
Tags:
Chinese,
China,
East Asia,
Economic History
Publications
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Wu, Wei (2014). Color Symbolism of Redness in The Dream of the Red Chamber—Are We All Misunderstanding the Title of Hongloumeng 紅樓夢?. European Journal of Sinology (EJSin).
ISSN 2190-085X.
5, s 76- 110
Show summary
In traditional China, colors acted as symbols signifying cosmological concepts, representing rank and implying higher knowledge of the material world. Given the pervasive redness throughout The Dream of the Red Chamber, there has been substantial research on color terminology and its translation. Existing studies, however, whether qualitative or quantitative, focus exclusively on textual sources, and leave material evidence untouched. Furthermore, in previous investigations, different shades of red remain underexplored. This paper builds on available corpus databases, going through all uses containing two main characters for the color red: “chì 赤” – the saturated hue denoting the color of fire – and “hóng 紅” – the name of the fabric dyed in whitish red (pink) in early China, but being synonymous with “chì 赤” in modern Chinese. A solid statistical account will show how their distributions differ, whether their meanings overlap with each other and how much “hóng 紅” refers to the saturated red. In addition to hóng 紅 and chì 赤, the usage of other words for various reddish hues listed in previous studies is also taken into account. A comparison of their combinations with those of hóng 紅 will provide an inclusive representation of “redness” in the novel. Furthermore, artistic images –contemporary Qing paintings in particular – serve as an importance source for the use of “hóng 紅” in architectural contexts, demonstrating what exactly “hóng 紅 ” buildings were like during the Qing dynasty. This detailed analysis of the semantics of redness and its symbolism in the novel will contribute not only to a more precise understanding of the novel's title, but also to a better grasp of its underlying color symbolism.
Published July 29, 2019 9:16 AM
- Last modified Apr. 27, 2020 5:21 PM