This article examines the life and work of famous Chinese writer Li Yu (李渔, 1611–1680), who made a great contribution not only to the development of literature, drama and painting, but also wrote entire essays about incense culture. Analysis of his activities and literary works gives reason to consider Li Yu as the most prominent representative of the wenren intellectual community and a great incense connoisseur. His aesthetic concept of using incense as an important tool for personal self-improvement and ‘nurturing life’ (养生 yangsheng) is studied, using his philosophical essay ‘An Accidental Haven for Idle Thoughts’ (闲情偶寄 Xianqing ouji) devoted to various areas of everyday life. Li Yu’s aesthetic views are further illustrated with essay excerpts presented in the translation by the author of this article. Publications of Li Yu’s works continue to be widely published both in China and in the West. Essays devoted to his work, categorized as literature on psychology, philosophy and art are also very popular. All these factors give rise to the relevance of the study of the multifaceted creativity of Li Yu, as well as other representatives of Chinese intellectuals (文人 wenren) at the turn of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) eras, who by their activities, significantly developed various types of traditional culture, including literature, aesthetics, aromatherapy and arts and crafts.

The objective of this article is to check the reliability of the attribution of the medieval Chinese painting “Fanqi tu” (“Nomads”) to Hu Huan (Hu Huai), an artist living at the end of 9th – beginning of the 10th century. In order to achieve this objective, two tasks must be undertaken: 1) compare “Fanqi tu” with other paintings by Hu Huan, and 2) widen the range of comparisons by including paintings of the renwu genre of other artists close to Hu Huan’s paintings. Some of the compared pictures do have reliable chronological attributions that help to determine the dates of the others, including “Fanqi tu”. This study used hair-styles of saddle-horses’ tails as the ethno-chronological marker which has never been used before by anyone in this way. The analysis showed that neither “Fanqi tu”, nor “Zhuosetu” (another picture attributed to Hu Huan) can be among his works. They were painted much later. The “Zhuosetu” scroll reflects contacts of Qidan (Khidan) and Jurchen peoples and belongs to 1110–1140 AD. As the ethno-chronological marker of Qidan (Khidan) attribution of the personages depicted, this study picked out the lacing of the tails of their saddle-horses in the middle. The tails of saddle-horses of Jurchen (Jin) and Southern Song peoples were the same: a tight knot with two hanging locks. Therefore, this was a chronological sign, not an ethno-cultural one. It would seem that long loose flowing tails were primarily used by Mongolian-time saddle-horses. Therefore, the “Fanqi tu” painting must be dated to the middle – second half of 13th century (from the collapse of the Jin Empire in 1234 to the flourishing of Zhao Mengfu’s paintings).

The article is an attempt to analyze the history of translation of the First Law of painting into Russian and other European languages. The First Law, formulated in 5th century AD by artist and thinker – Xie He, was one of the most important principles in the history of Chinese aesthetic thought. A comprehensive and concise formulation of the Law gave rise to extensive commentaries and made its interpretation fundamentally ambiguous. For centuries, the discussion on understanding the First Law has carried on among Chinese artists and continues up to this day in sinology. Both foreign and Russian researchers have repeatedly addressed this issue and proposed a significant number of translation options. The most fruitful is probably an approach which implies choosing a specific translation in accordance with a deep study of the origin, grammar and interpretation of the First Law. At the same time, the development of a single universal translation is practically impossible due to the constant evolution of rendering the First Law within the Chinese artistic tradition itself. Therefore, it is thought that the descriptive interpretation of Xie He’s First Law of painting is the most suitable.

The article presents materials of the excavations of Qin burials near the area of the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang. To the west of its outer wall, a burial ground of nine large tombs has been excavated, which are dated to the age of the empire's formation, however the possibility of an earlier date is not excluded. The most interesting finds were reportedly from grave M1, which included bronze bells and ritual vessels, iron armament, jade scepters and disks, gold buckles, numerous metal figurines of people and animals, including gold and silver camels. This discovery made it possible to raise the question of the formation of a stable trade “highway”, later determined as the Great Silk Road, already in the late period of the Qin Dynasty (the last quarter of 3rd century BC), but not under the rule of Han Emperor Wu-di (156–87 BC), as previously thought. Perhaps a high-ranking dignitary buried in grave M1 was chief administrator of this project, therefore he can be denoted as “Qin Zhang Qian”. One more golden trail leading from the depths of Asia to the Yellow River’s valley can be found in the nine golden buttons from grave M5, excavated at Taerpo, in the area of Xianyang, the ancient capital of the state of Qin. Some of the buttons were decorated by granulation, and it is highly likely that such technology could have penetrated into China from Western Asia. The materials obtained from these excavations once again illustrate how the Qin Empire, despite its short life and inglorious death, managed to lay many important pillars of future development.

This research focuses on the early period of the development of Freemasonry in China in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as this period was characterized by the establishing of a dozen lodges under English, Scottish, Massachusetts, Philippine Constitution. While Freemasonry had no decisive influence on politics or the economy of China, it acted as a major force for the consolidation of foreigners, especially in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, contributing to preserve the “oasis” of Western traditions in a foreign cultural environment, creating new trans-Asian business relations between business members of lodges. The membership of each lodge was not high in numbers, however they included representatives of different strata, but above all - entrepreneurs and traders. Charity and support of freemasons’ families became an important part of the lodges’ activities. However, by the 1920s-1930s, the “colonial” character of Freemasonry began eroding, and since some Shanghai lodges contained mostly Chinese members, local freemasons even raised the suggestion of conducting rituals in Chinese.

The author reveals and analyzes the historical background of an early period of the Soviet-Chinese cooperation in documentary cinema at the beginning of the 1950s. The partnership became possible only after the creation of the People’s Republic of China, although initial attempts were made somewhat earlier. However political reasons and ideology differences became an insurmountable obstacle in the way of productive interaction. The first joint colour full-length documentary films “The Victory of the Chinese People” and “Liberated China” (1950) became a symbol of friendship and close ties between the two countries. This characterized the period of the 1950s. The collaboration based on a common ideological platform, subjected to common political goals, met the tasks of both communist parties and took place on the basis of directive documents of the highest party and state bodies of the two countries. Both sides attached great attention to the propaganda and educational significance of the mentioned films, therefore the best specialists were sent to make them. Soviet film makers found themselves in a completely new political situation, social and everyday life environment. Therefore, Chinese colleagues provided comprehensive assistance. Interaction with the Chinese military and civilian consultants, attached to the groups of Soviet film makers, ensured the complete fulfillment of the goals set by the leadership. This was the first completed project in Soviet-Chinese cooperation while work on industrial sites had just begun. This first collaboration helped to restore and develop the Chinese film industry, demonstrated the productivity and possibility of the joint working groups. The films were highly appreciated in both countries and marked the beginning of further Soviet-Chinese cooperation, which continues in the 21st century.

This article is the first comparative analysis of world history schoolbooks recommended for secondary educational establishments in the PRC, UK and USA. The aim is to determine and contrast the ways these didactic materials represent one of the most recognizable and impressive cultural symbols of Russia – Emperor Peter the Great. The choice of the sources for the analysis is explained by the fact that due to secondary education being compulsory in all three countries, the ‘school’ information about world history, including Russia, becomes available to wide masses of society, therefore influencing the image of Peter I formed by the population. Several aspects are taken into consideration – the amount of information offered in the books, the factual material itself, and the way the Russia of Peter the Great is described. Contrasting these makes it possible to reveal similarities and differences. The authors discover that the period of Peter the Great’s reign is included, if rather briefly, in the curricula of Chinese and American high schools, while no mentioning of it is found in history schoolbooks of the UK. Compilers of these books, both in China and the USA, seemingly strive to adhere to the principle of historical accuracy. As for some differences, the textbooks of the PRC acquaint readers with the historical material in a more uniformed way, offering a conceptually consistent ‘standard’ set of facts about Peter the Great, which, to some extent, corresponds to the current situation in the PRC, while the history schoolbooks of the USA are less standardized and motivate students to think critically.

This article analyzes the fiction of the contemporary Chinese writer Zhang Xuedong (b. 1972). As a prominent representative of Ningxia literature, which is also attributed to the literature of North-Western China, he is ready to present his literature on the world stage. In the last twenty years, the writer published more than one hundred short stories, several dozen stories and six novels. In his texts, Zhang Xuedong constantly strives to search for new themes, forms, genres and linguistic means and is inclined towards the description of history with a critical and deep rethinking of the events of the past. The heroes of his stories are usually suffering women, embittered adolescents, lonely middle-aged people. Their misfortunes come not only from material poverty, but also from mental loneliness. This topic is exacerbated by the conflict between the town and the countryside. Due to the motive of the contradiction inherent in the writer's creative manner, contrasting scenes of cruelty and mercy coexist on the pages of his works, while even the most terrible scenes are often saturated with lyricism.

The paper focuses on describing different language techniques exploited in contemporary Chinese poetry of both “intellectual” (zhishifenzi) and “popular” (minjian) camps. Six works are analyzed in-depth to show the textual mechanics behind contemporary poets’ paratexts and their linguistic exploration. Both the “intellectuals” and “popular” poets share a vision of poetic text as a “sublimation” of the ordinary, however in actual practice they rely on the notion of a deviant textual substance that constitutes the very core of the poetic. Their pursuit for metalinguistic reflection leads contemporary poets to a fusion type of text blending the linguistic phenomena of traditional Chinese verse and Western modernism’s linguistic experimentation. They borrow traditional techniques such as parallelism, elliptical constructions, and nontrivial semantic links created through language phonographics to create connections with classical images and the tradition of 20th century Chinese “new poetry” while simultaneously accommodating Western ideas about language.

The paper deals with some features of Late Classical Chinese based on material from «Lunheng» (1st century AD), specifically, the process of 被 bèi grammaticalization and its possibility to be a distinctive context for noun lexemes. In modern Chinese, 被 bèi is a passive marker in sentences such as O 被 bèi SV. There is also a short form like O 被 bèi V, which is the initial stage in the formation of a passive construction, while the full form appears in late medieval texts. However, it is necessary to understand when exactly the process of grammaticalization of 被 bèi began, and whether this process affected the language of Late Classical Chinese. The main questions this paper addresses are: (1) when did the process of 被 bèi grammaticalization begin; (2) is 被 bèi still a verb in the Late Classical Chinese language and can we syntactically distinguish an argument of a clause in the context of 被 bèi. Not only are verb functions of 被 bèi (which can be found in 5th century BC texts) analyzed, but also supposedly its original nominal functions in earlier texts. The study shows that the passive-like 被 bèi begins to appear even in BC texts, but the verbal lexeme functions remain a major. It can be assumed that in Late Classical Chinese, particularly in the language of the «Lunheng» text, the lexeme 被 bèi doesn’t have passive marker qualities and 被 bèi can and should be analyzed from the point of view of lexical categories, as a transitive verb specifically. Such conclusions make it possible to analyze 被 bèi in an argument distinctive context, that is, the position of 被 bèi in a sentence next to any lexeme can help to identify the syntactic function of this lexeme within the specified context. This means it is possible to determine the position of the argument of any clause, which can later be used for PoS parsing of Late Classical Chinese texts.

The article provides an overview of different terms for describing lexical units of such a category as the 代词 daici ‘pronoun’. The evolution of grammar terminology’s formation is considered based on the example of this category. It is shown that prior to 1898, Chinese scholars used no special terms to classify 代词 daici, as these lexical units were described in function words’ dictionaries (written by Lu Yiwei 卢以纬, Yuan Renlin 袁仁林 etc.). At that time, the course of linguistic research was determined by exegetics, and the main emphasis was placed on the description of semantics and usage of characters. After 1898, the situation changed. Modern linguists characterize 代词 daici as an element of the general system of word classes. The nature of 代词 daici causes difficulties in classification: should lexical units of this category be considered function words or content words, or perhaps even words of a special category that duplicate content words. The position of 代词 daici in the general system of word classes may differ depending on the author’s approach for selecting parts of speech. Approaches of Ma Jianzhong 马建忠, Li Jinxi 黎锦熙, Lü Shuxiang 吕叔湘, Wang Li 王力, Zhu Dexi 朱德熙, Xing Fuyi 刑福义, Guo Rui 郭锐, Yuan Yulin 袁毓林, Zhang Bin 张斌 are presented in the article. Chinese is an isolating language, therefore syntactic properties of lexical units play a significant role in expressing relationships between the words. This fact is reflected in the considered classifications of Chinese linguists based on the functional characteristics of lexical units. As for grammar terminology, modern linguists emphasize the substitutive function of 代词 daici (the sign 代 dai means ‘to replace’) and show that代词 daici may replace not only 名词 mingci ‘noun’ (do not use the term 代名词 daimingci, for example), but also other parts of speech.

The paper aims to systematically review the works of the outstanding Russian sinologist, a missionary of the 10th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing – Archimandrite Daniil (Dmitry P. Sivillov, 1789–1871). The novelty of the study is in the systematic analysis of already known facts about Sivillov`s scholarly endeavors and translations replenished with new facts discovered by the authors, shedding light on Sivillov`s translations of the works of the fathers of the Russian Orthodox church into Chinese. Three previously unknown hand-written translations of religious works made by Arch. Daniil are introduced for the first time. They are stored at the library of St. Petersburg State University and include: ‘The Mirror of the Orthodox Confession’ by St. Dimitry Rostovsky, ‘The Hundred Words by St. Gennady’, liturgical texts and prayers. The paper provides detailed accounts of these manuscripts and draws comparisons between them, concluding that the books contain three versions of the translator`s preface and a short catechism translated into Chinese in order to introduce basic principles of the Christian religion to the descendants of the Albazinians (originally Russian nationals captured by the Qing) who had forgotten their fathers` language and religion. The purpose of these translations has also been in teaching this audience prayers required by the Russian Orthodox church for daily use.

The article examines a previously unknown manuscript “The Song of the Holy Dream” from the collection of the Academic Library of St. Petersburg State University. It belonged to the head of the Tenth Orthodox Mission in Beijing (1821–1830), Archimandrite Peter (P. I. Kamensky, 1765–1845). The manuscript contains parallel Chinese and Russian texts of the Catholic work “The Vision of St. Bernard” by Bernard of Clairvaux (10 0–1153). It was revealed that the author of the Chinese translation of the ‘Song’ was a Catholic missionary in China, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649). The author of the Russian translation was the Chinese man Peter Zhou Bourgeois, who was a student of Orthodox missionaries in Beijing. The meaning of the ‘Song’ in European Catholic literature and the place of this composition in the missionary activity of the Jesuits in China are explained. It is suggested that the ‘Song’ could serve as a model of didactic Jesuit literature, the purpose of which was to convey to the Chinese inhabitants the moral pillars of Christianity. Previously unknown information about Peter Bourgeois and his Russian translation is introduced. The text of the translation is analyzed and its features are identified. In a comparative analysis of the Chinese original text, the translation by Peter Bourgeois and the translation made by the author of the article, it was concluded that Peter Bourgeois made a word-by-word translation. This translation is mostly accurate, but there are often stylistic and spelling errors, unusual word combinations and specific phrases, which together reveal the translator to be a foreigner who does not speak Russian with sufficient confidence. It turns out that the purpose of the translation was merely exercises for the purpose of Russian language study by Peter Zhou Bourgeois.

Following reorganization of the Confucius Institute Headquarters in 2021, the project “Confucius Institute at Novosibirsk State University” was taken patronage by its Chinese partner – Xinjiang University. This article observes three fields of activities of the NSU Confucius Institute Center that took place that year: teaching Chinese, organizing cultural events, conducting scholarly research. It encountered numerous difficulties such as the decrease of teaching staff, the number of Chinese learners shrinking by half, school closures and restrictions in holding cultural events, cancellation of academic mobility and international visits. The center, however, adapted to the new normal having benefited from its patrons from both sides and having succeeded in everything planned. Some of the achieved goals were the construction of a recreational area in a national style where visitors can concurrently learn about the institute’s activity, renovation of an old room to be a resource library for students and teachers, the launch of a distance learning platform for studying Chinese online, establishment of the Knowledge student club. All things considered, the activity of the Confucius Institute at Novosibirsk State University consolidates the idea of working ‘together for a shared future’.

Xinhuanet is a portal of Xinhua News Agency, which is also the most globally influential Chinese website in China. Its Russian version publishes information about China, especially today's China to Russian speakers around the world, provides a window and bridge function in transmitting China's voice, promoting mutual understanding and people-to-people ties. Investigation and analysis of ИА Синьхуа in the Russian-speaking world propagation status, can understand its capabilities and validity of international communication, and also provide reference and experience for relevant media. The key to realizing the capability of news communication is to integrate propagation breadth and validity properly. This survey, is divided into two levels of propagation quantity surveys and propagation values, with data information based on Factiva-Global News Monitoring & Search Engine | DOW Jones, the world's largest digital news database. Starting with six representative keywords about China, this survey investigated the release of relevant content on ИА Синьхуа in the last ten years. The results of the survey showed that, the average display rate in the ИА Синьхуа headlines is 20% of the whole network, which has enhanced the display degree of China on the Internet and achieved the effective coverage of information in a certain extent. Through the comparison and linear regression analysis of the word cloud of high-frequency words with relevant thematic texts in foreign media, it is proved that the frequency of high frequency words in ИА Синьхуа has a significant positive impact on the related values of foreign websites, and the dissemination of which is actively effective. The survey also reflects that there is a problem and deficiency in ИА Синьхуа in terms of international communication, which are mainly reflected in the lack of total volume and continuity of headline dissemination and the difference in focus with foreign media. As an important window for the CIS countries to understand China, ИА Синьхуа needs to further improve the total text volume, especially pay attention to the head- lines design of the text, to make it more in line with the online audience's reading habits. At the same time, in order to continuously improve the external communication power and influence from many aspects such as scale and effect, and continue to provide high-quality information about China for the Russian-speaking world, it is necessary to take into account the information needs and receptive psychology of the audience.

A report on the scientific and practical conference held on November 1–2, 2021 in Novosibirsk State University is presented. The conference has an international status, because of 23 foreign participants from 5 countries. A wide range of topical issues related to history, archaeology, economy and culture of China, to studying and teaching Chinese etc. was discussed at the conference. And among the speakers on the plenary was presented online our special guest Daniel Waugh, Professor Emeritus of the Washington State University.