Journal of Sinology and Chinese Language Education

BOOK REVIEW: The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng: Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China

Wanlin HU — 2026-08-22

Book Review

Alison Hardie, The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng: Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022, 308 pp.

BOOK REVIEW: International Chinese Language Education Management

Yarong ZHANG — 2026-08-22

Book Review

耿军，周婷：《国际中文教育管理学》，重庆：西南大学出版社，2026年

Mapping Identity in Chinatown: A Spatial Critique of Yan Gelling’s The Lost Daughter of Happiness

Hongying WANG — 2026-08-22

Investigations of Chinatown in Chinese American literature have typically adhered to two fixed paradigms: it is portrayed either as an oppressed ghetto or as a nostalgia-laden cultural enclave. Grounded in classical spatial criticism, this paper integrates recent insights from the sensory turn and decolonial space studies to re-examine Chinatown. Although existing scholarship on Yan Geling’s The Lost Daughter of Happiness (2001) has extensively addressed its feminist and narrative dimensions, its underlying spatial logic remains underexplored. The novel foregrounds three interrelated dynamics—the urban discipline imposed upon immigrants, their embodied sensory resistance, and the ongoing negotiation of hybrid identity. This paper argues that Yan constructs a nuanced model of spatial belonging, illuminating how immigrants inhabit and reshape their environment through sensory experiences, cultural practices, and mobility across contested boundaries. Ultimately, this study explores identity formation amid spatial oppression, everyday acts of resistance, and the reconstruction of self-identity in contemporary contexts, foregrounding the complex negotiation of cultural belonging and identity among Chinese immigrants.

A Brief Study of the Practical Wisdom in YAN Yuan’s (1635–1704) Pragmatic Thought

Jakkapong CHODCHOY — 2026-08-22

Yan Yuan (1635–1704) was a thinker of the pragmatic empirical school of the early Qing China (1644–1911). The core concept of his thought is that practices for governing the country and benefitting the people should be for achieving unity of the “inner sagehood and outer rulership”. According to the viewpoint of Aristotle’s (384–322 BC) practical wisdom, this paper is mainly discussing two parts: the meaning of the concept of practical wisdom, and the practical activities of practical wisdom in Yan Yuan’s pragmatic thought. The result of the research shows that Yan’s pragmatic thought has four characteristics: practicality, militancy, plebeianisation and national identity. However, Yan Yuan only focused on knowledge derived from concrete rational thinking and direct sensory experiences. Therefore, his practical wisdom limited his practices to the personal realm, meaning they were ultimately unable to develop into the social or human realms. Although Yan Yuan’s pragmatic empirical school was formed during the period of feudalism in China, there still exists universal value in his practical wisdom, and it has contemporary value for exploring the meaning of life.

A Thai-Style Allegory/Prediction of Class: Exploring Marxist Characteristics in Chart Korbjitti’s The Personal Knife

Zhong ZHENG — 2026-08-22

As a pioneering dystopian short story in twentieth-century Thai literature, Chart Korbjitti’s The Personal Knife presents a stark class allegory set within capitalist society. Drawing on Marxist critical theory, this paper examines the fourfold metaphor of the “personal knife”—the Blade of Power, Violence, Discipline, and Alienation—to systematically analyse the core issues of class oppression, violent domination, ideological control, and human alienation depicted in the narrative. By deconstructing the extreme scenario of a “cannibalistic feast,” The Personal Knife not only exposes the structural contradictions of Thai society during the capitalist acceleration of the 1980s, but also reflects the author’s distinct Marxist stance and penetrating social critique.

Evolution of Heritage Language Resources on the Chinese-language Enclave: A Case Study of a Town in Southern Thailand

Zongwang CUI — 2026-08-22

The process by which overseas Chinese shifts from a native language to a heritage language, referred to in this study as heritagization, has rarely been examined from a diachronic perspective or documented through empirical case studies. Taking Chandee, a town in southern Thailand and a long-established Chinese-speaking enclave, as a case study, this study investigates diachronic patterns of heritage-language replacement across regional and domain-specific dimensions through a systematic survey of multilingual linguistic landscapes, intergenerational language use in the community, and heritage-language conversations within families. The findings reveal that the evolution of heritage-language resources follows a clear stratified replacement. At the regional level, heritage-language replacement proceeds from the community to the family. Two subsidiary replacement sequences are also identified: Chinese dialects gradually give way to Mandarin and subsequently to local lingua franca, while Chinese monolingualism is first replaced by bilingualism before returning to local-lingua-franca monolingualism. The family constitutes the final stronghold for heritage-language maintenance, and the re-monolingualization of family language use may be regarded as an indicator that heritagization has been completed. At the domain level, heritage-language replacement unfolds across the political, public service, commercial, and cultural and religious domains. Within the educational domain, Traditional Chinese is gradually replaced by Simplified Chinese. Among these domains, the cultural and religious domain retains the last remaining heritage-language resources and therefore demonstrates the greatest resilience. This case study identifies a typical trajectory through which Chinese in overseas Chinese communities shifts from a native language to a heritage language, providing empirical evidence for understanding the dynamic process of heritagization.

A Multimodal Study on Chinese Teachers’ Body Language for Laotian Students

Xiao JIANG — 2026-08-22

As a core element of nonverbal communication, Chinese teachers’ body language complements and reinforces classroom linguistic modalities. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this study examined three international Chinese teachers and 61 beginner learners at a Laotian university through observations, questionnaires, and interviews. Results show that gestures and head movements dominate across teachers, while proxemic behavior is low-frequency yet highly efficient. The use of body language varies significantly by course type. Laotian students highly recognize gestures and facial expressions but show perceptual deviations in eye contact and proxemics, revealing a mismatch between teacher output and student perception. Accordingly, the study proposes targeted improvements across facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and proxemic behavior, emphasizing functionality, compatibility, and cooperativity, to enhance teaching quality and support multimodal collaborative instruction.

A Comparative Study of Measure Words in Chinese and Akan

Edward Joseph YAWSON — 2026-08-22

Measure words, as a crucial lexical category for expressing quantity across languages, reveal the distinct cultural and structural features of Chinese and Akan. Although Akan does not have an independent class of measure words, it exhibits classifier-like phenomena. Grounded in language typology and contrastive analysis, this study employs questionnaires and corpus methods to systematically compare Chinese measure words and Akan classifier-like items, examining how their similarities and differences impact language learning and teaching. The findings show that the use of measure words in both languages is shaped not only by structural properties but also by socio-functional factors. Among Ghanaian learners, basic nominal measure words are relatively easy to acquire, whereas the acquisition of verbal measure words remains weaker and more prone to errors. The study further analyzes factors affecting acquisition and proposes targeted teaching strategies. This research provides new evidence for cross-linguistic studies of Chinese measure words and offers practical implications for teaching Chinese to African learners.

A study of the Demand for Thai Translators & Interpreters in the Chinese Labor Market

Kullayanee KITTOPAKARNKIT — 2026-08-22

This research aims to study the demand for Thai translators and interpreters in the Chinese labor market. By collecting data from 269 job advertisements for Thai translators and interpreters from 3 Chinese job websites, the research results found that 1) Types of business and regions where establishments need Thai translators and interpreters 1.1) Type of business is the service industry, information, software and information technology the most at 37 percent 1.2) Region of job advertisement is southern China at 33 percent 2) Qualification requirements for Thai translators and interpreters 2.1) Educational qualifications are the highest at bachelor's degree at 62 percent 2.2) Work experience qualifications, the proportion of those with no restrictions on work experience is the highest, reaching 42 percent 2.3) Language and specialized skills qualifications are the highest at English, Chinese and Thai including study experience abroad at 47 percent 3) Work characteristics and compensation for Thai interpreters and translators 3.1) Work characteristics are full-time work the most at 74 percent 3.2) Salary rate according to the nature of the work, full-time work is the highest at 30,001-50,000 baht at 51 percent 3.3) Welfare for working in Thai-Chinese and Chinese-Thai translation is Five Insurance and Housing Fund, and additional welfare from the workplace, with the group providing the most additional compensation at 34 percent. The results of this research will be beneficial to those interested in working in Thai-Chinese and Chinese-Thai translation and interpretation. It will also serve as a guideline for developing teaching and learning in translation and interpreting in various subjects.

Research on the Evaluation of Country-Specific Teaching Materials for “Chinese+ Hospitality and Tourism”

Yong RONG — 2026-08-22

This study employs Litz’s textbook evaluation framework to systematically assess six representative localized “Chinese + Hospitality & Tourism” textbooks from Korea, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Multi-dimensional analysis of questionnaire data from 31 international Chinese teachers reveals significant divergence in evaluation perceptions: teachers with compilation experience prioritize communicative authenticity, meaningfulness, and language internalization. Persistent common deficiencies include insufficient communicative value in exercise design, weak skills training, inadequate linguistic authenticity, inappropriate vocabulary selection, and limited topical timeliness. Accordingly, this study recommends enhanced field research and pilot implementation in country-specific textbook compilation, closer attention to evaluator expertise in review processes, and the incorporation of listening-speaking priorities, localized parameters, and dynamic assessment tools in future development of the “Evaluation Scale for Chinese for Specific Purposes Textbooks.”

Research on the Construction of an Intelligent Classroom Assessment Framework: Effective Chinese Language Learning in the Digital Age

Junfeng LU — 2026-08-22

With the deep integration of digital technology and education, the field of international Chinese education is undergoing a revolutionary transformation in its assessment paradigm. Intelligent classroom assessment is becoming a key support for achieving intelligent, precise, and personalized assessment in international Chinese education. In international Chinese teaching practice, intelligent assessment has shown four core characteristics: multi-modal integration, personalized response, immediate feedback, and multi-faceted collaboration. Based on these core characteristics, this study proposes a framework for constructing intelligent classroom assessment of Chinese learning outcomes in the digital era from four dimensions: technical foundation and core algorithms, assessment dimensions and model construction, teaching application and intervention feedback, ethics, validity and teacher development. This study further explores the challenges and countermeasures encountered during the construction process, hoping to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for building a scientific and efficient intelligent classroom assessment system for Chinese teaching.