This article takes as its subject the late Qing science-fiction novel Xin jiyuan [The New Era, 1908] and, through close reading, investigates how the imagination of tomorrow’s world was affected by racist discourse and how it unconsciously replicated the logic of colonialism. It reveals that although the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) calendrical system advocated by the author is a replica of the Gregorian calendar, China’s native time measurement still played a role in the novel. Along with the author’s own perplexity, brought on by the apparent zero-sum contest between Chinese and western culture and epistemologies, the entanglement of different time systems also provided a starting point for the narration of the future. The result is that the “future of China”
described in this fiction is little more than a description of the contemporary west. Magic weapons such as “soul-stealing sand” (zhuihun sha), which determine the outcome of the war in this story, have long been regarded by researchers as the remnants of Chinese novels about spirits and devils. By tracking relevant information
about these magic weapons, however, this article demonstrates that the author borrowed these speculative and fantastic novelties from contemporary newspaper and magazine reports introducing the latest western inventions.

From the moment The Three-Body Problem (English translation, 2014) won the Hugo Award and global renown, the cultural and academic spheres have lavished increasing attention on Liu Cixin and his writing. THE THREE-BODY TRILOGY, in the midst of its canonization, is not merely an exemplary work of Liu Cixin the individual author; it is also the greatest accomplishment of Chinese sf since its resurgence in the 1990s. Beyond this, astute scholars have pointed out that Liu Cixin’s sf writing has kindled hopes of “rebuilding the totality” of comparatively circumscribed mainstream Chinese literature. The uniqueness of Liu Cixin’s science fiction and its historical significance are not
given their due if they are understood only in terms of the development of the twenty-first-century literary field. Looking backward through the lens of characteristic features of Liu Cixin’s sf to the developmental history of Chinese literature from the early twentieth century onward engages a new historical perspective on areas (especially sf and other marginal genres) ignored or given short shrift by previous literary histories.

“Death Ray on a Coral Island” (Shanhudao shang de siguang)—
archaeologist, historian, and SF writer Tong Enzheng’s (1935–97)
1978 short story—delivered readers exactly what the title promised,
throwing in a number of other technological marvels and a healthy
body count for good measure. First printed in People’s Literature (Renmin wenxue) and awarded the National Prize for Outstanding Short
Story (Quanguo youxiu duanpian xiaoshuo jiang) in 1978, the exotic
locations and techno-scientific wonders were ripe subjects for Zhang
Hongmei’s 1980 cinematic adaptation of Death Ray, the first SF film
produced in mainland China (hereafter “Death Ray” for the literary
version, Death Ray for the film). The story later was produced as a
radio drama, spawned numerous print knockoffs as a lianhuanhua
(children’s pocket-comic), recently was reincarnated as a cell phone
video game, and now enjoys a vibrant second life on the Internet.
Tong’s work and its facsimiles and imitations in the Chinese mediascape signaled the revival of a literary genre that had been all but invisible during the Maoist era, bringing critical recognition to a form often
dismissed as a subcategory of children’s literature.

Kexue xiangsheng (science crosstalk) features comic dialogues aimed at popularizing knowledge in the physical and social sciences. This genre emerged in the late 1950s in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as part of a massive effort in the state-supervised culture industry to promote science. The genre shared many of the hallmarks of PRC
instrumentalist science fiction, as both were based on a Soviet model. Authors and literary theorists like Guo Moruo, Ye Yonglie, and Gu Junzheng reiterated developmental narratives of socialism and of the power of science as a tool for mastery of nature developed by authors like Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Il’in. These works of socialist
realism narrated transformations in the consciousness of their characters as they came to understand guiding principles of the world around them, including basic science, evolution, and dialectical materialism. Dramatic forms like kexue xiangsheng worked
in concert with other socialist-realist representative modes, including popular performance, reportage, fiction, film, song, and reappropriations of premodern literary forms. In the process, notions of scientific thinking were conflated with political orthodoxy in promoting public health and political campaigns, and science was dismantled as a professional
institution, shifting from a rationalized bureaucratic endeavor to grassroots efforts aimed at solving pragmatic problems. Through education in what I term the “quotidian utopian”—small health and hygiene measures that had the potential to ameliorate major health challenges—these popular science genres also straddled
the line between Frederic Jameson’s “Utopian form and Utopian wish,” between what was part utopian text and part expression of the impulse to enact utopia through changes in policy and reconfigurations of the collective body.

This paper examines filmic representations of trains in the PRC from 1949 to 1976, as a figure for modernization and the formation of a national body. Within these narratives, I examine how PRC cultural production focused on "citizen science," how the train was used as a metaphor for the formation of a national body, and how these works depicted the formation of a national body as a form of bodily discipline. During the 1960s in the PRC, "science" shifted from a rationalized, bureaucratic endeavor focused on understanding natural phenomena through experimental models to a grassroots endeavor aimed at the resolution of pragmatic issues. Mid Century Chinese depictions of science valorized amateur production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, and depictions of trains, railroads and the lives of their passengers were no exception. These narratives also focus on the construction of what I term "quotidian utopias"-utopian spaces carved out in the contemporary moment through a communal investment in mutual sacrifice. This space becomes a metaphor for industrial and social progress, represented by the broad swaths of working class proletarian passengers. Key among the laboring masses aboard the train are the train conductors, attendants, and rail workers. These workers are often depicted as learning new Maussian "techniques of the body" in service of their duties maintaining the trains and the social welfare of the passengers.

borrows the title of his study of humor in late Qing and Republican-era Chinese literary and popular culture in part from historian Neil Harris's description of the skeptical attitude towards authority prevalent in pre-Civil War American popular culture, a posture he sees reflected in turn of the twentieth-century China. The other half of the title, "a new history of laughter," is borrowed from a series of jokes serialized by prolific author Wu Jianren in early twentieth-century China, a counterpart to his novel A History of Pain. The title also signals a juxtaposition with the prominent English-language body of research that gazes into the abyss of trauma and pain categorizing a wide swath of modern Chinese literature, among them Michael Berry's A History of Pain and David Wang's The Monster That is History. This is a new history, because laughter has been in many respects expurgated from standard Chinese literary histories. The author uses "history," meanwhile, in a more classical sense of the Greek history or the Chinese shi as used in the publishing industry of early twentieth-century Shanghai, denoting "an 'inquiry into' or an 'investigation of'" (8) rather than a blow-by-blow chronicle. This dynamic and pluralistic examination of laughter explores multiple "cultures of humor" (14) that occupied an ever-evolving field of cultural production. Through re-examination of a familiar set of authors and texts-Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Wu Jianren 吳趼人and Lu Xun 魯迅, to name a few luminaries-Rea highlights the critical role laughter played in the first decades of the twentieth century, bringing to light one more aspect of the polygeneric pastiche of late Qing and Republican cultural field. In holding these well-known works up at a different angle, Rea succeeds in elucidating the humorous aspect of what other scholars have called utopian, dystopian, sciencefiction, science-fantasy, social commentary, and others. For example, Rea convincingly argues that the science-fictional "futuristic conceits" (49) of Liang Qichao's Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記) and Wu Jianren's New Story of the Stone (Wu Jianren's New Story of the Stone Xin shitou ji 新石頭記) could be subsumed in the category of play just as reasonably as they can be read as science fiction. In the five principle chapters of the book, Rea explores five aspects of laughter. The title of each chapter is derived from an English translation of a Chinese term germane to the subject: jokes (xiaohua 笑話), play (youxi 遊戲), mockery (maren 罵人), farce

Deployment of a new generation of Internet protocols is on its way. It is a process that may take several years to complete. In the meantime, the deployment raises considerable new issues, being security one of the most compelling. This paper reviews some of the improvements associated with the new Internet Protocol version 6, with an emphasis on its security-related functionality. At the end, it concludes summarizing some of the most common security concerns the new suite of protocols creates.

La tesis central del libro El capital del siglo veintiuno del economista francés Thomas Piketty es muy simple. Abandonado a su libre albedrío, el sistema capitalista favorece la acumulación de la riqueza por una minoría súper rica, beneficiaria de una porción cada vez mayor del ingreso nacional, mientras que el resto de la población recibe una cada vez más reducida porción de ese mismo ingreso. La única forma como esta tendencia natural puede romperse o amortiguarse es por medio de grandes disrupciones -del tipo de una guerra mundial, por ejemplo, o cuando hay grandes avances tecnológicos -o por la intervención del estado, concluye el francés.

No dejar de ser refrescante que en esta era supuestamente posideológica la figura de un intelectual del calibre del historiador británico Eric Hobsbawm sea objeto de todo tipo de tributos y reconocimientos, aun desde los lugares menos esperados. Hobsbawm murió en Londres el pasado lunes 1 de octubre a los 95 años de edad. Entre los signatarios de sus múltiples obituarios se encuentran figuras tan disímiles como el historiador Niall Ferguson, paladín de la derecha conservadora británica-quien lo describe como "uno de los más grandes conversadores sobre historia" que él había conocido-o los líderes laboristas ingleses Ed Milliband y Tony Blair-este último lo describe en su obituario como "un agitador incansable por un mundo mejor". De él dijera una vez Christopher Hitchens, quien a pesar de su total desacuerdo ideológico admiraba su particular "desapego y objetividad" como historiador, que era una de las figuras más prominentes de todo un grupo de historiadores ingleses del siglo pasado, entre quienes destacan Edward Thompson y John Saville. Más reciente, el crítico y colega marxista Terry Eagleton le describe con la para algunos excesiva y para otros bien acertada calificación de "indomable", Admirado como académico, denunciado como arrogante y charlatán, Hobsbawm siempre despertó reacciones encontradas, muchas de ellas de su propia hechura, paridas de sus propias contradicciones, sus virtudes que mutaban continuamente en defectos y viceversa, como también nos advirtiera en el mismo lugar Chris Hitchens.

In this study, dynamic assessment is employed to help understand the developmental processes of two Anglophone learners of Spanish at the third year university level as they produce a series of past narrations in a synchronous computer-mediated environment. The assessments were conducted in six weekly one-hour chat sessions about various scenes of a Spanish language film. The analysis illuminates the zone of proximal development of the participants, characterizing not only their current level of independent functioning, but also their potential when provided with mediation. The utility of synchronous computer-mediated communication as a medium for dynamic assessment is also discussed.

This study explores social interactive features of synchronous computermediated communication (CMC)-commonly known as "chat"-as such features unfolded in real time and developed over a nine-week period in two fourth-semester college Spanish classes. The study invoked the Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical framework and employed discourse analysis as a research tool to describe and explain outstanding features of chat room communication. Specific interactional features examined are intersubjectivity, off-task discussion, greetings and leave-takings, identity exploration and role play, humor and sarcasm, and use of the L1 (English). Through these communicative behaviors, learners appropriated the chat room environment, transforming it into a learner-centered discourse community governed by communicative autonomy and the use of language and discourse functions that go beyond those encountered in the typical L2 classroom.

This study provides a theory-driven account of community building in a bilingual telecollaborative chat setting. A symmetrical arrangement of 70 L1 English learners of Spanish and L1 Spanish learners of English engaged in weekly Internet chat sessions in small groups. The learning metaphors of community and participation serve as the theoretical framework to describe linguistic and social behaviors and interpersonal relationships among participants in two ongoing chat groups, while, at the same time, discourse data are used to build upon theory of (virtual) community. Based on Brown's (2001) classification of levels of online community, the findings illustrate the discursive construction of one community that reached the third, cooperation/camaraderie, level and another that struggled to maintain the second, membership, level.

During the last decade, researchers of foreign language pedagogy have become increasingly interested in the " language-literature divide " (Donato and Brooks 2004). The purpose of the current study is to contribute to this growing body of research by investigating the extent to which whole class discussions in three third-year undergraduate Spanish literature/culture courses provided opportunities for learners to engage in the communicative functions corresponding to the advanced and superior levels of the " ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines—Speaking. " The analysis included teacher questions, quantity of learner versus teacher speech, and distribution of teacher and learner verb forms. The results showed that, although there were some opportunities for learners to converse at the advanced and superior levels, the majority of learner discourse occurred below the advanced level. Recommendations for further research and pedagogy are provided. Keywords: ACTFL Standards/criterios de ACTFL, discourse analysis/análisis del discurso, pedagogy/ pedagogía, second language proficiency/competencia L2