The Lost Wall Author: Yan Ming.
Publication date: November 2023.
Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press.
Yan Ming, a famous photographer and winner of the Hou Dengke Award, has recently published his first collection of color photographs, "The Lost Wall".
Yan Ming's representative photographic works are the "Chronicles of the Great Country" series and the "Yesterday's Hall" series, which are collected by many art institutions and collectors at home and abroad. "Lost Wall" includes more than 100 works taken by Yan Ming in the past four years, which is not only a visual feast, but also a profound depiction of the spirit of the times.
The Lost Wall is divided into four series: "Love Traces", "Lost Wall", "Impermanence" and "Weiyang", supplemented by four paragraphs. Each text is a continuous dialogue between his life, art and self-perception, which is both the "labyrinth" of his work and the "key" of photographic exploration.
In the essay "I Want to Fly in Every Colorful Dream of Yours" in the book, Yan Ming wrote: "Black and white depicts the existence of objects in light and shadow, but color can describe things leaving with a low saturated appearance. Against the direction of time, it is also possible to open up the boundaries beyond the visual facts and reach new frontiers. Sleepwalking in the big places, stunning in the small places. It can be ancient, and it will be new. It shouldn't just be a visual hanging, I want to fly in every colorful dream of yours. I was immersed in this spiritual drift, fleeing back and forth between ecstasy and disappointment. Facing the vanishing with art may be the most beautiful gesture that a person can choose. The old fabrics of fate, the hot hope that cools away, are also a monument to the pieces of life. ”
Raw and Cooked: The Mountains, Forests, Markets and Rivers and Lakes of Pu'er Tea".
Author: Zhang Jinghong.
Publication date: November 2023.
Publisher: East China Normal University Press.
Pu'er tea has been cultivated for centuries in Yunnan's "Six Tea Mountains", from the southwest to the world via the Ancient Tea Horse Road. In the 90s of the 20th century, Pu'er's characteristics of "the older the more fragrant" were rediscovered, and it became the favorite of tea customers, and its value has risen all the way. In 2007, the Pu'er tea market went up and down, first to a climax and then to collapse.
"Raw and Cooked Ways" traces the beginning and end of this phenomenon. By tracing and focusing on the harvesting, processing, trading, and consumption space of Pu'er tea, anthropologist Zhang Jinghong vividly describes the process of Pu'er tea from a family handicraft to an important industry.
The book was first published in English in 2013 and won the 2013 2015 Outstanding Book Award in English Social Sciences at the International Conference of Asian Studies Scholars (ICAS). In the following decade, the author visited the field several times, revised the first edition by more than 60%, and launched a new Chinese version in 2024. This book is not only suitable for tea lovers and connoisseurs, but also for readers who want to understand topics such as localization, globalization, modernity, and the reinvention of traditions.
Making Fake Come True: A Perspective on the Phenomenon of Pharmaceutical Advertising Fraud in Modern Shanghai
Author: Zhang Zhongmin.
Publication date: October 2023.
Publisher: Fudan University Press.
This book starts with two famous fake tonic drugs in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty, "Bird's Nest Saccharin" and "Ailuo Brain Juice", and discusses the production process, narrative structure and rhetorical characteristics of newspaper and periodical medical advertisements, the readers' and consumers' reactions to medical advertisements, the situation of celebrity endorsement of medical advertisements, and the phenomenon of pseudonymization in medical advertisements, revealing the process of commercial collusion with the body, race and country, and the construction of modern Chinese consumer culture, body culture and political culture.
The book is rich and diverse, using newspapers and periodicals, notes, diaries, anthologies, correspondence and even ** materials to truly reflect the times at that time;The writing is meticulous and sharp, and it is a good combination of academics and readabilityThe discussion was in-depth, and the actual occurrence and construction process of modern China's modernization was thoroughly sorted out and analyzed.
In the book, the author Zhang Zhongmin actually reflects multiple aspects of social life by introducing the phenomenon of counterfeit drug consumption, from which we can observe the psychological mechanism behind the "magic" of false propaganda, the social background of the tonic trend, the influence of modern media and its demographics, the role of literati in advertising production, and the interweaving ...... of physiological knowledge and national consciousness
In an interview, he pointed out: "The close combination of the reasons for consumption or non-consumption with grand political concerns such as 'patriotism' and 'strong seeds' can easily be manipulated and exploited by people with ulterior motives, and can easily lead to populism and intolerance, which invisibly commercializes, formalizes, and hypocrisies the nationalist narrative, and finally not only fails to promote the development of the nationalist cause, but often ridicules or dissolves the meaning of nationalist discourse and its practice." ”