1st Edition

China from the Margins New Narratives of the Past and Present

Edited By Emily Williams, Loredana Cesarino Copyright 2025
280 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores and brings to light untold stories from the margins of Chinese society. It investigates and reveals grassroots and popular cultural beliefs, amusing anecdotes, items of lore, and accounts of the strange and the unusual. It delves into questions of identity formation, considering gender, sexuality, class, generational divides, subcultures, national minorities and online... Read more

List of Figures

 

List of contributors

 

Preface

 

Introduction (Emily Williams & Loredana Cesarino)

 

Part 1: Marginal Identities & Subcultures

 

Chapter 1: Corey K. N. Schultz, ‘Jewish Models and Modelling Jews: Representations of Jews & Jewishness in the Harbin Jewish Museum’

 

Chapter 2: Brian Haman, ‘Austrian Jewish Exiles from the Margins of China: Mark Siefelberg, Hans Schubert, Susanne Wantoch, and Richard Frey’

 

Chapter 3: Andrew Law & Qianqian Qin, ‘Hegemonic Han Identities & alternative subjectivities: the contemporary Hanfu movement as a marginal cross-generational subculture’

 

Part 2: Memory in/of Marginal Places

 

Chapter 4: Yu Hua, ‘Place, Home & People in the Making: Stories of Liangzhu Culture Village’

 

Chapter 5: Emily Williams, ‘Marginal histories at the Centre of the Revolution: Red Collecting in Shaanbei’

 

Chapter 6: Giulia Rampolla, ‘Marginality as a Dreamland: Native Place, Everyday Life, Nostalgia and Coming of Age in Three Works of Wei Wei’

 

Part 3: Marginal Spaces in Literature

 

Chapter 7: Janice Kam, ‘The Inn in Wuxia Narratives’

 

Chapter 8: Federico Picerni, ‘From the Periphery of Literature: Marginal Urban Lives and Recognition(s) in the Picun Literature Group’

 

Chapter 9: Eugenia Tizzano, ‘Returning to a Marginal Genre: Liminal Space and the Return of Gui in Mo Yan’s Fantastic Tales’

 

Part 4: Gender at the Margins of Literature

 

Chapter 10: Barbara Witt, ‘Mistresses, Maids and Servants’ Wives in Lin Lan Xiang: The Everyday Life of Women in a Fictional Late Imperial Chinese Elite Household’

 

Chapter 11: Li Meng, ‘Four Marginalized Women and Loser Subculture in the Ren Xiaowen’s Fiction Life is Like That’

 

Chapter 12: Cesarino Loredana, ‘Marginal Fears in Yue Jun’s Ershilu 耳食录 (1792-94): Terror and Desire in the Story of Hu Haohao

 

Index

Biography

Emily Williams is an Associate Professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

 

Loredana Cesarino is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China