Christopher K Tong
University of Maryland Baltimore County, Asian Studies, Faculty Member
- Christopher K. Tong is a China expert and tenured professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore county north o... moreChristopher K. Tong is a China expert and tenured professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore county north of Washington, DC. His upcoming book from Oxford University Press focuses on the impact of science and environmental thinking in Chinese and Western societies. He has been named a Fulbright Scholar, a China Studies Fellow by the American Council of Learned Societies, a visiting fellow by the American Philosophical Society, and a Marjorie Harding Memorial Fellow by the Thoreau Society.edit
Hong Kong has been a liminal space for transcultural exchanges between Chinese and Western worlds since the nineteenth century. Despite its unique position vis-à-vis China and the West, however, Hong Kong has long been dismissed as... more
Hong Kong has been a liminal space for transcultural exchanges between Chinese and Western worlds since the nineteenth century. Despite its unique position vis-à-vis China and the West, however, Hong Kong has long been dismissed as lacking cultural gravitas. As such, Hong Kong culture finds itself self-consciously confronting a perennial crisis: as the People's Republic of China gains increasing recognition in the canons of world literature, Hong Kong's cosmopolitan culture is indirectly marginalised in the process. Meanwhile, Hong Kong literature is routinely underrepresented in the canons of modern Sinophone literature. Anthologies of modern Chinese poetry and poetry research, for instance, scarcely include Hong Kong poets, if at all. Given this context, this essay seeks to rearticulate the place of Hong Kong in modern Sinophone literary history. More specifically, it traces the emergence of Hong Kong poetry as a cosmopolitan literary genre in the latter half of the twentieth century. The goals are threefold: to historicise the confluence of Sinophone and Western literary traditions in the city of Hong Kong; to locate specific intersections of identity, language, and politics in the production of Hong Kong poetry; and to introduce biographical and bibliographical data on notable Hong Kong poets such as Ma Boliang and Leung Ping-kwan.
Research Interests:
This article outlines the evolution of Hong Kong consciousness before and after the Handover, from the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 to the pro-democracy movement of 2019-2020. Before 1997, Hong Kongers were largely worried about... more
This article outlines the evolution of Hong Kong consciousness before and after the Handover, from the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 to the pro-democracy movement of 2019-2020. Before 1997, Hong Kongers were largely worried about the disappearance of their culture, way of life, and economic competitiveness. However, as the People's Republic of China integrated the former British colony post-1997, Hong Kongers responded with a mix of acceptance, ambivalence, and even activism. Whereas official narratives tend to emphasize economic opportunity and ethno-nationalism in post-Handover Hong Kong, this article shows how Hong Kongers became more politically engaged over this period. Protest art, slogans, films, and music offered purposive expressions of Hong Kongers’ desire for political rights such as universal suffrage, freedom of speech, and the rule of law. Meanwhile, the collective will of Hong Kong people was time and again reflected in elections for the Legislative and District Councils. However, the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020 has drastically altered the legal and legislative infrastructure in the city. The cultural logic of expiration, first experienced by Hong Kongers in the 1980s and 1990s, finds a new iteration twenty-five years after the Handover. Written for a broad audience, this article offers a succinct introduction to Hong Kong for students and non-specialists and advances a fact-based counternarrative for scholars of modern China.
Research Interests:
Existing approaches to Chinese poetry tend to discuss landscapes primarily in relation to the figure of the poet. In most instances, the representation of landscapes is intricately linked to the textual knowledge, bodily experience, and... more
Existing approaches to Chinese poetry tend to discuss landscapes primarily in relation to the figure of the poet. In most instances, the representation of landscapes is intricately linked to the textual knowledge, bodily experience, and mental state of the poet (or persona). Nonhuman entities in the landscapes are rarely discussed in traditional Chinese literary criticism as beings in their own right. Focusing on the poetry criticism of the late Qing aesthetician Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877-1927), this paper draws on the theoretical resources of traditional Chinese poetics and Western philosophy to develop a framework for understanding the nonhuman. With a close reading of Renjian cihua (Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World 人間詞話), the author argues that Wang’s concept of wuwo zhi jing 無我之境 is as much concerned with the cultivation of a state of mind as it is with the increasing awareness of the presence of nonhumans. That is to say, wuwo zhi jing is the realm in which the human self withdraws, relinquishing its claim to primacy and thereby reversing the conventional privileging of humans over nonhumans. As such, Renjian cihua not only constitutes a unique synthesis of traditional Chinese literary criticism and Western aesthetics in the early 20th century, but also offers an intellectual basis for thinking about Nature in a way that allows for the renewed appreciation of nonhuman beings in traditional and modern Chinese poetry.
In the People’s Republic of China, “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming) has emerged as an expression that generates meaning on multiple levels. First introduced in 2007 at the 17th Party Congress, it has become an umbrella term... more
In the People’s Republic of China, “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming) has emerged as an expression that generates meaning on multiple levels. First introduced in 2007 at the 17th Party Congress, it has become an umbrella term for the type of comprehensive development that China’s political leadership envisions for the country. In 2018, “ecological civilization” was incorporated into the PRC Constitution, joining a list of key terms that have guided China’s development in the post-Mao era. However, despite its resonances with Western understandings of sustainable development and environmental protection, “ecological civilization” serves ideological purposes as well: it refers to a broad set of strategies by Chinese authorities to address environmental issues, while maintaining rhetorical flexibility with which to interpret, adapt, and implement state policies.
While “ecological civilization” continues to accrue substance as a policy framework, it appears to be a contradictory term from a historical perspective. Ironically, China’s claim to be one of the world’s oldest civilizations is at odds with its long history of environmental transformation. I call this the “paradox of China’s sustainability”: if a civilization thrives by modifying, exploiting, and damaging its ecosystems—and has done so for several millennia—does it make sense to call it a “sustainable” one?
Tong, Christopher K. "The Irony of China's 'Ecological Civilisation'." In Shades of Green: Notes on China’s Eco-civilisation, book series of Made in China, edited by Olivier Krischer and Luigi Tomba, 33-35. Sydney: The University of Sydney, 2020.
While “ecological civilization” continues to accrue substance as a policy framework, it appears to be a contradictory term from a historical perspective. Ironically, China’s claim to be one of the world’s oldest civilizations is at odds with its long history of environmental transformation. I call this the “paradox of China’s sustainability”: if a civilization thrives by modifying, exploiting, and damaging its ecosystems—and has done so for several millennia—does it make sense to call it a “sustainable” one?
Tong, Christopher K. "The Irony of China's 'Ecological Civilisation'." In Shades of Green: Notes on China’s Eco-civilisation, book series of Made in China, edited by Olivier Krischer and Luigi Tomba, 33-35. Sydney: The University of Sydney, 2020.
Research Interests:
If a civilization thrives by modifying, exploiting, and damaging its environment--and has done so for several millennia--does it make sense to call it a “sustainable” one? With its claims to be one of the oldest civilizations in world... more
If a civilization thrives by modifying, exploiting, and damaging its environment--and has done so for several millennia--does it make sense to call it a “sustainable” one? With its claims to be one of the oldest civilizations in world history and a rising superpower in the twenty-first century, China is a paradoxical case. Not only are China’s aspirations for sustainable development at odds with its current status as one of the world’s worst polluters, but the expansion of Chinese-style settlements and croplands has historically been a major driver of environmental transformation and degradation on the eastern Eurasian landmass. As China’s environment continues to be altered in the twenty-first century, “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming) has emerged as an ideological framework for the type of sustainable development that China’s political leadership envisions for the country. Incorporated into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2018, “ecological civilization” is the newest among five guiding principles for China’s development in the post-Mao era. To address the potentialities of China’s “ecological civilization,” we should first recognize the paradoxical nature of Chinese interactions with the environment. This chapter offers a critical survey of key positions on China’s history, culture, and environment to illuminate what scholars perceive to be the paradox of China’s sustainability.
Tong, Christopher K. “The Paradox of China’s Sustainability.” In Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practices of Environing at the Margins, edited by Chia-ju Chang, 239-270. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Tong, Christopher K. “The Paradox of China’s Sustainability.” In Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practices of Environing at the Margins, edited by Chia-ju Chang, 239-270. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Research Interests:
Analyzing the form and content of Hong Kong urban cinema as a genre, this book chapter shows that Ackbar Abbas' theory of Hong Kong's "disappearance" concerns the filmic representation of reality rather than the disappearance of Hong Kong... more
Analyzing the form and content of Hong Kong urban cinema as a genre, this book chapter shows that Ackbar Abbas' theory of Hong Kong's "disappearance" concerns the filmic representation of reality rather than the disappearance of Hong Kong in the literal sense. Building on Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and existing scholarship on cinematic representation, the author argues that Hong Kong ecocinema not only approximates the real Hong Kong more closely by debunking its misrepresentations, but also employs the cinematic gaze as a tool to hold ourselves accountable for social and environmental justice. It examines several relevant films by Hong Kong director Fruit Chan (Chen Guo) such as Durian Durian (2000), Hollywood Hong Kong (2001), and Public Toilet (2002) as examples of Hong Kong cinema evolving toward the form of ecocinema.
Tong, Chris. “Toward a Hong Kong Ecocinema.” In Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge, edited by Sheldon Lu and Jiayan Mi, 171-193. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
Tong, Chris. “Toward a Hong Kong Ecocinema.” In Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge, edited by Sheldon Lu and Jiayan Mi, 171-193. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
Research Interests:
Audience reception has been an important area of research in literary, cinema, media, and performance studies in the West. The audience as a whole has become an influential force in the global cultural sphere today, as audience... more
Audience reception has been an important area of research in literary, cinema, media, and performance studies in the West. The audience as a whole has become an influential force in the global cultural sphere today, as audience participation no longer occurs solely in physical gatherings, but often through online and social media in addition to traditional channels of mass communication. In the field of ecocinema studies, recent scholarship has expanded the focus of research from the formal, psychological, historical, material, and intercultural dimensions of ecocinema to include more empirical approaches that take into account how individual viewers receive specific films. At the same time, audience members are not passive recipients, but rather active participants that impact the processes of cultural production. In this article, the author argues that audiences are conceptually intertwined with publics and analyzes the dynamics between aesthetic judgment and political engagement in the reception of ecocinema.
内容提要: 西方对观众接受的研究在文学、电影、媒体、表演等学术领域里都占有一席之地。观众群体作为一个整体在全球的文化界内成为了一股强大的影响力， 其中的原因在于借助了传统大众媒体之外的网络、社交媒体等交流渠道的帮助， 观众群体的参与性已经突破了线下集会这一局限。在生态电影的研究领域里， 近期的学术成果把研究的焦点从生态电影的形式、心理、历史、物质和跨文化维度拓展到了诸如思考关于个体观影者如何接受特定电影这类涉及到实证研究法的问题。本文中， 作者论述了观众与公众二者间在概念上的纠葛， 并分析了生态电影在接受过程中引起的美学判断与政治参与间的张力。
Tong, Christopher K. 唐思凯 "Ecocinema's Audiences and Publics 生态电影的观众与公众." Huaxia wenhua luntan 华夏文化论坛 19, no. 1 (2018): 391-402.
内容提要: 西方对观众接受的研究在文学、电影、媒体、表演等学术领域里都占有一席之地。观众群体作为一个整体在全球的文化界内成为了一股强大的影响力， 其中的原因在于借助了传统大众媒体之外的网络、社交媒体等交流渠道的帮助， 观众群体的参与性已经突破了线下集会这一局限。在生态电影的研究领域里， 近期的学术成果把研究的焦点从生态电影的形式、心理、历史、物质和跨文化维度拓展到了诸如思考关于个体观影者如何接受特定电影这类涉及到实证研究法的问题。本文中， 作者论述了观众与公众二者间在概念上的纠葛， 并分析了生态电影在接受过程中引起的美学判断与政治参与间的张力。
Tong, Christopher K. 唐思凯 "Ecocinema's Audiences and Publics 生态电影的观众与公众." Huaxia wenhua luntan 华夏文化论坛 19, no. 1 (2018): 391-402.
Research Interests:
Films about China tend to employ the rhetoric of the monumental and the insignificant to comment on the country’s rise in the global market economy at the turn of the millennium. Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004), for example, is set in a... more
Films about China tend to employ the rhetoric of the monumental and the insignificant to comment on the country’s rise in the global market economy at the turn of the millennium. Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004), for example, is set in a Beijing theme park featuring replicas of international landmarks. The film not only alludes to China’s quest to find its place among these great nations, but also paints a grim picture of migrant workers suffering behind this Potemkin village of economic development. Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes (2006), which introduces Edward Burtynsky’s photography, reiterates well-rehearsed criticisms of China’s rapid industrialization. Placing human bodies against backdrops such as the Three Gorges Dam and sprawling factory complexes, Manufactured Landscapes tends to aestheticize the insignificance of individuals in relation to the monuments of human construction. If the built structures in these films symbolize the grandeur and promise of the People’s Republic, then the jarring discrepancy between the monumental and the insignificant shifts the focus toward the workers who have made China’s economic growth possible.
Tong, Christopher K. “Scale.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10, no. 1 (2016): 23-26.
Tong, Christopher K. “Scale.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10, no. 1 (2016): 23-26.
Research Interests:
Existing approaches to Chinese poetry tend to discuss landscapes primarily in relation to the figure of the poet. In most instances, the representation of landscapes is intricately linked to the textual knowledge, bodily experience, and... more
Existing approaches to Chinese poetry tend to discuss landscapes primarily in relation to the figure of the poet. In most instances, the representation of landscapes is intricately linked to the textual knowledge, bodily experience, and mental state of the poet (or persona). Nonhuman entities in the landscapes are rarely discussed in traditional Chinese literary criticism as beings in their own right. Focusing on the poetry criticism of the late Qing aesthetician Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877-1927), this paper draws on the theoretical resources of traditional Chinese poetics and Western philosophy to develop a framework for understanding the nonhuman. With a close reading of Renjian cihua (Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World 人間詞話), the author argues that Wang’s concept of wuwo zhi jing 無我之境 is as much concerned with the cultivation of a state of mind as it is with the increasing awareness of the presence of nonhumans. That is to say, wuwo zhi jing is the realm in which the human self withdraws, relinquishing its claim to primacy and thereby reversing the conventional privileging of humans over nonhumans. As such, Renjian cihua not only constitutes a unique synthesis of traditional Chinese literary criticism and Western aesthetics in the early 20th century, but also offers an intellectual basis for thinking about Nature in a way that allows for the renewed appreciation of nonhuman beings in traditional and modern Chinese poetry.
Tong, Christopher K. “Nonhuman Poetics (By Way of Wang Guowei).” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 37 (2015): 5-28.
Tong, Christopher K. “Nonhuman Poetics (By Way of Wang Guowei).” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 37 (2015): 5-28.
Research Interests:
However well-intentioned, the ‘audience’ may be a limiting concept in ecocinema studies. The audience does not sit passively in front of the screen, but rather participates actively in the world of multimedia. In fact, there is no hard... more
However well-intentioned, the ‘audience’ may be a limiting concept in ecocinema studies. The audience does not sit passively in front of the screen, but rather participates actively in the world of multimedia. In fact, there is no hard and fast boundary between actors and spectators, producers and consumers, senders and receivers, academics and fans. Ecocinema studies benefits greatly from this insight: researchers can now turn to the most general user of media, i.e. everyone. The more we open ourselves to how others view ecocinema, the more we can uncover—rather than suppress—cinema’s latent richness. An inclusive dialogue on ecocinema keeps us attuned to the sense of coexistence that is the hallmark of ecological thinking. In this article, I propose four modes of viewing ecocinema: activist, allegorical, evocative, realist.
Tong, Chris. “Ecocinema for All: Reassembling the Audience.” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 4, no. 2 (2013): 113-128.
Tong, Chris. “Ecocinema for All: Reassembling the Audience.” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 4, no. 2 (2013): 113-128.
Research Interests:
‘Scale’ is a nest of complications: it is a highly contested term in a range of disciplines, from geography to ecology, from philosophy to science and technology studies. The heart of the problem is the dispute over its ontological status... more
‘Scale’ is a nest of complications: it is a highly contested term in a range of disciplines, from geography to ecology, from philosophy to science and technology studies. The heart of the problem is the dispute over its ontological status and topological properties. ‘Scale’ is often assumed to be an ordered totality that one can navigate by zooming in and out, as in Powers of Ten and Google Earth. Such modes of visualisation not only give form to a planetary consciousness, but also enable surveillance and warfare in what the author calls ‘the age of the world zoom’. Whereas some geographers have called for the rejection of scalar thinking altogether, he demonstrates how object-oriented ontology (OOO) and actor-network theory (ANT) can offer new insights into conceptualising the interrelations of entities without falling into the traditional pitfalls of ‘scale’. These approaches lay the groundwork for ‘ecology without scale’, or thinking about interconnectedness beyond scalar notions.
Tong, Chris. “Ecology without Scale: Unthinking the World Zoom.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 2 (2014): 196-211.
Tong, Chris. “Ecology without Scale: Unthinking the World Zoom.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 2 (2014): 196-211.
Research Interests:
Excerpt: "City at the End of Time stands in refreshing contrast to the works of recent literary prize winners, Mo Yan from the People’s Republic of China and Yang Mu from Taiwan. What distinguished Leung Ping-kwan (also known by his pen... more
Excerpt: "City at the End of Time stands in refreshing contrast to the works of recent literary prize winners, Mo Yan from the People’s Republic of China and Yang Mu from Taiwan. What distinguished Leung Ping-kwan (also known by his pen name, Ye Si) from most Chinese-language writers was that he spoke and worked primarily in Cantonese, not Mandarin. Along with writers such as Liu Yichang, Jin Yong (Louis Cha), Xi Xi, and Li Bihua (Lilian Lee), Leung introduced Hong Kong literature to the Chinese-speaking world and beyond. As a Hong Kong poet, writer, critic, and scholar, he was all the more important for giving voice to his city’s everyday life, cultural heritage, and linguistic milieu. He published over thirty volumes of poetry, fiction, and prose and was recognized with literary awards in Hong Kong as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Reissued by Hong Kong University Press 20 years after its original publication in 1992, this poetry collection invites a retrospective look at Leung’s oeuvre and a contemplation of Hong Kong’s evolution since its 1997 Handover."
Tong, Chris. Review of Leung Ping-kwan’s City at the End of Time. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation 21, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 295-298.
Tong, Chris. Review of Leung Ping-kwan’s City at the End of Time. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation 21, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 295-298.
Research Interests:
Excerpt: "In an August 1995 issue of the American entertainment news magazine Variety, Todd McCarthy published an article titled 'Eng’s Lost Pix, a Chinese Puzzle,' mentioning Esther Eng for the first time in recent memory. Despite the... more
Excerpt: "In an August 1995 issue of the American entertainment news magazine Variety, Todd McCarthy published an article titled 'Eng’s Lost Pix, a Chinese Puzzle,' mentioning Esther Eng for the first time in recent memory. Despite the recent surge of scholarship on issues such as identity and gender in Asian cinema, film historians seem to have forgotten this pioneer in Chinese-language filmmaking. More unfortunately, her films seem to have eluded film archives altogether. If Eng had worked in the film industry today, she could have easily been seen as a champion of transnational filmmaking, feminist filmmaking, or antiwar filmmaking. In many ways, Eng was ahead of her time. As a Chinese-American woman filmmaker active from the 1930s to the 1950s, she put into practice many theories that later gained currency in academic scholarship."
Law, Kar. “In Search of Esther Eng: Border-Crossing Pioneer in Chinese-Language Filmmaking.” In Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, edited by Wang Lingzhen, translated by Chris Tong, 313-329. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Law, Kar. “In Search of Esther Eng: Border-Crossing Pioneer in Chinese-Language Filmmaking.” In Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, edited by Wang Lingzhen, translated by Chris Tong, 313-329. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Research Interests:
Excerpt: "Sometimes, my heart is heavy with worry. I worry whether our literary endeavors in the past thirty years would be all in vain. If someone wrote a history of Chinese literature three hundred years from now and, in the last... more
Excerpt: "Sometimes, my heart is heavy with worry. I worry whether our literary endeavors in the past thirty years would be all in vain. If someone wrote a history of Chinese literature three hundred years from now and, in the last chapter, used one hundred words to describe us during these three decades, what would he say and which names would he mention?"
Zhan, Hongzhi. “Two Types of Literary Mind.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 310-313. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Zhan, Hongzhi. “Two Types of Literary Mind.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 310-313. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Research Interests:
Excerpt: "From my own life experience, I believe that China consciousness commonly exists among Taiwanese people. My father grew up in a fishing village in northern Taiwan, received a Japanese education. He often talks about how we... more
Excerpt: "From my own life experience, I believe that China consciousness commonly exists among Taiwanese people. My father grew up in a fishing village in northern Taiwan, received a Japanese education. He often talks about how we Chinese are like this or like that, even when it is to criticize the Chinese."
Zhan, Hongzhi. “Taiwan Consciousness of the Taiwanese People.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 329-331. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Zhan, Hongzhi. “Taiwan Consciousness of the Taiwanese People.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 329-331. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Research Interests:
Excerpt: "Zhan Hongzhi’s views are almost otherworldly. Why must Taiwanese literature appear only in the history of Chinese literature, and why on the last page? Why only one hundred words? Why couldn’t literary works created in Taiwan be... more
Excerpt: "Zhan Hongzhi’s views are almost otherworldly. Why must Taiwanese literature appear only in the history of Chinese literature, and why on the last page? Why only one hundred words? Why couldn’t literary works created in Taiwan be written into a history of Taiwanese literature? Why would the efforts of Taiwanese literature be for nothing if it distanced itself from the center of China?"
Song, Dongyang (Chen, Fang-ming). “The Question of Nativization in Taiwan Literature at the Present Stage.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 343-346. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Song, Dongyang (Chen, Fang-ming). “The Question of Nativization in Taiwan Literature at the Present Stage.” In The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, edited by Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, and Ming-ju Fan, translated by Chris Tong, 343-346. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.