Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Rarely does a researcher have the opportunity to participate in something he has described and even predicted. This reporter was therefore both honoured and fascinated to be part of the International Symposium on the Great Wall (Chctngcheng guoji xueshu yontao hui), sponsored by the China Great Wall Society, of which Huang Hua, the former Foreign Minister (1976–82) of the PRC, is chairman.
1 Waldron, Arthur, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); “Representing China: the Great Wall and cultural nationalism in the twentieth century,” inGoogle ScholarHarumi, Befu (ed.), Cultural Nationalism in East Asia (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), pp. 36–60.Google Scholar
2 A short report of the conference appeared later in the People's Daily: Ren, Ji, “Changcheng yanjiu zouxiang shijie” (“Great Wall studies emerge”), Renmin ribao, 18 January 1995, p. 11.Google Scholar
3 Unless otherwise noted, this article draws upon the author's notes on the meeting, and various meeting programmes and hand-outs. The proceedings will be published eventually by the China Great Wall Society.
4 The patriotic significance of the Great Wall as a “symbol of the spirit of the Chinese [zhonghua] race” was extolled in Dawei, Cao, “Changcheng de lishi jiazhi yu wenhua neihan” (“The historical value and cultural significance of the Great Wall”), Guangming ribao, 3 October 1994, p. 3.Google Scholar
5 See “Zhongguo huajia Zhu Chunyi ‘Changcheng fengqing tu’ ji zuopin jianjie” (“Introducing the ‘Great Wall Panorama’ by the Chinese painter Zhu Chunyi”). My thanks to Tom Lamb for use of this item.
6 Changchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 1994.
7 China Today, Vol. 43, No. 8 (August 1994), p. 14.
8 Hua, Huang, “Renovating the Great Wall,” China Today, Vol. 43, No. 8 (August 1994), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
9 The China Confucius Society was founded in 1985, and “Confucian values” are now increasingly invoked to justify, among other things, authoritarian rule. Rediscovery of the Second World War was marked by an exhibit at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, Beijing, in August 1985. See Jingsheng, Wu, “40 years after: reassessing the War in China,” Beijing Review, Vol. 28, No. 32 (12 August 1985), pp. 13–22.Google Scholar
10 Ling, Liu, “Raising the red flag,” Beijing This Month, No. 10 (September 1994), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
11 See Renminribao, 9September 1994, pp. l,3.Cited in China News Analysis, No. 1520 (15 October 1994), p. 4
12 See Waldron, Great Wall, p. 219.