Latest news with #MingDynasty
Scroll.in
4 days ago
- General
- Scroll.in
A 16th-century Chinese writer spoke of workplace burnout, creating a design for radical acts of rest
We are in the middle of a global workplace burnout epidemic — aptly named the 'burnout society ' by Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Four centuries ago, late Ming Dynasty scholar-official Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) shifted from state administrative work to xiaopin – brief, personal essays celebrating everyday pleasures like gardening, leisurely excursions and long vigils beside a rare blossom. Today, his Ming Dynasty-era practice resonates with uncanny urgency within our burnout epidemic. Amid the Wanli Emperor's neglect and escalating bureaucratic infighting in Beijing, Yuan turned away from what today we call a 'toxic workplace.' Instead, he found refuge in Jiangnan's landscapes and literary circles. There he exchanged hierarchical pressures, administrative tedium and cut-throat careerism for moments of unhurried attention. Yuan's xiaopin, alongside those of his contemporaries, transformed fleeting sensory moments into radical acts of resilience, suggesting that beauty, not institutions, could outlast empires. The Ming Dynasty: A literary rebellion The late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) was an era of contradictions. While Europe hurtled toward colonialism and scientific rationalism, China's Jiangnan region – the fertile Yangtze Delta in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces – flourished via merchant wealth, global silver trade and a thriving print culture. Bookshops lined city streets like modern cafés. They peddled plays, poetry and xiaopin volumes like Meiyou Pavilion of Arts and Leisure (1630) and Sixteen Xiaopin Masters of the Imperial Ming (1633). The imperial examination system, a civil service written exam – once a path to prestige – had become a bottleneck. Thousands of scholars languished in bureaucratic limbo, channelling their frustrations and exhaustion into xiaopin 's intimate vignettes. In his preface to Meiyou Pavilion, editor Zheng Yuanxun (1603–1644) praised the genre's 'flavour beyond flavour, rhythm beyond rhythm' – a poetic nod to its rich sensory detail and subtle musicality – rejecting moralising orthodox prose by embracing immersive aesthetics. Against neo-Confucianism 's rigid hierarchies, xiaopin elevated the private, the ephemeral and the esthetically oblique: a well-brewed pot of tea, the texture of moss on a garden rock and incense wafting through a study. Wei Shang, professor of Chinese culture at Columbia University, has noted such playful text flourished among late Ming literati disillusioned with the era's constraints. The texts reframed idleness and sensory pleasure as subtle dissent within a status-obsessed society. When doing less becomes radical Long before French poet Charles Baudelaire's flâneur used dandyism and idle promenades to resist the alienating pace of western modernity, Ming literati like Chen Jiru (1558–1639) and Gao Lian (1573–1620) framed idleness as defiance. Drawing on Daoist wu wei (non-action), Gao praised the 'crystal clear retreat' that scrubbed the heart of 'worldly grime' and cultivated 'a tranquil heart and joyful spirit.' For him, human worth lay not in bureaucratic promotions but in savouring tea, listening to crickets or resting against a well-fluffed pillow. Hung-tai Wang, a cultural historian at Academia Sinica in Taipei, identifies xiaopin as a 'leisurely and elegant' aesthetic rooted in nature's rhythms. Chen Jiru, a Ming Dynasty-era painter and essayist, embodied this framework by disallowing transactional logic. In one essay, Chen lauds those who possess 'poetry without words, serenity without sutras, joy without wine.' In other words, he admired those whose lives resonated through prioritizing lived gestures over abstract ideals. In the late Ming's burgeoning urban and commercial milieu, xiaopin turned everyday objects into remedies for social isolation. In the Jiangnan gardens, late Ming essayists saw landscapes infused with emotion. At the time, essayist Wu Congxian called it 'lodging meaning among mountains and rivers:' moonlight turned into icy jade, oar splashes to cosmic echoes. Chen Jiru had study rituals – fingering a bronze cauldron, tapping an inkstone – curating what he termed 'incense for solitude, tea for clarity, stone for refinement.' This cultivation of object-as-presence anticipates American literary scholar Bill Brown's 'thing theory,' where everyday items invite embodied contemplation and challenge the subject-object binary that enables commodification. The Ming Dynasty-era scholar-connoisseur, Wen Zhenheng (1585–1645), turned domestic minutiae into philosophical resistance. His xiaopin framed everyday choices – snowmelt for tea, rooms facing narrow water, a skiff 'like a study adrift' – as rejections of abstraction. Through details like cherries on porcelain or tangerines pickled before ripening, he asserted that value lies in presence, not utility. Wen suggests that exhaustion stems not from labour but from disconnection. The burnout rebellions: ' Tang ping,' 'quiet quitting' Just as xiaopin turned domestic rituals into resistance, today's movements recast the mundane as a mode of defiance. In April 2021, China's tang ping ('lying flat') movement surfaced with a post by former factory worker Luo Huazhong: 'Lying flat is justice.' The message was simple and subversive: work had become intolerable, and opting out was not laziness but resistance. In a backlash against China's '996' work model extolled by tech moguls like Jack Ma, tang ping rejects the sacrifice of dignity and mental health for productivity and casts idleness as a quiet revolt against exploitative norms. In the West, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked similar reckonings. The ' Great Resignation ' saw millions leave unfulfilling jobs. And 'quiet quitting' rejected unpaid overtime and emotional labour. These movements emerged as a soft refusal of hustle culture. As anthropologist David Graeber argues in Bullshit Jobs (2018), the 'moral and spiritual damage' inflicted by meaningless work reflects a profound political failure. Just like the late Ming literati who poured their lives into a state that repaid them with hollow titles and bureaucratic decay, today's workers withdraw from institutions that exploit their labour yet treat them as disposable. Unlike French philosopher Michel de Montaigne's introspective self-examination in his Renaissance-era Essays, xiaopin refuses utility. In doing so, it inverts the contemporary self-help trend critiqued by Byung-Chul Han, which co-opts personal ' healing ' as a form of productivity through neoliberal logic. Xiaopin proposes resistance as an existential shift beyond (self-) optimisation. Its most radical gesture is not to demand change, but to live as if the system's demands are irrelevant. Xiaopin asks: What is progress without presence? Its fragments – on lotus ponds, summer naps, a cat's shadow – prove that resistance need not be loud. Like Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's vision of contemporary literature as 'a space of individual recovery,' the genre shelters us from 'hierarchy and efficiency.' Here, time is not spent but reclaimed. To pause in an age of weaponised ambition is in fact revolt. Tracing a petal's vein, sipping tea until bitterness fades, lying flat as the machinery of productivity grinds on – these are not acts of shirking reality, but defiant gestures against the systems that feed on our exhaustion. They are affirmations of agency: microcosms where we rehearse what it means to belong to ourselves, and thus, to the world. Xiaopin 's revolution awakens in a flicker of attention: a reminder that presence, too, is a language – one that hums beneath the buzz of progress, waiting to be heard. Jason Wang is Postdoctoral Fellow, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Tahawul Tech
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Tahawul Tech
Killing Floor 3 and WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers launch with NVIDIA DLSS 4
Gamers have a lot to celebrate this week as NVIDIA brings major performance upgrades to two highly anticipated titles – Killing Floor 3 and WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers. Both games now support NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, allowing smoother gameplay, sharper graphics, and significantly higher frame rates on GeForce RTX GPUs. To enhance the experience, NVIDIA has released a new GeForce Game Ready Driver, ensuring both games run at their best while also preparing systems for Valorant's upcoming upgrade to Unreal Engine 5. Developed by Tripwire Interactive, Killing Floor 3 is a co-op action-horror FPS that challenges players to survive waves of deadly Zeds. With DLSS 4 and NVIDIA Reflex, players can enjoy faster performance, reduced latency, and stunning visuals. Meanwhile, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers, developed by Leenzee and published by 505 Games, is a dark, soulslike action RPG set in the late Ming Dynasty. It launches with full support for DLSS 4, Reflex, and AI-powered graphics enhancements that boost 4K frame rates by nearly 6x on average. Other updates include: The First Descendant : A preview of its Season 3 content begins July 24, with DLSS 4 and Unreal Engine 5 support improving co-op shooter gameplay. : A preview of its Season 3 content begins July 24, with DLSS 4 and Unreal Engine 5 support improving co-op shooter gameplay. Wildgate : This new PVP multiplayer blends spaceship combat with first-person action, powered by DLSS Super Resolution. : This new PVP multiplayer blends spaceship combat with first-person action, powered by DLSS Super Resolution. Valorant: Set to upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 on July 29, the new NVIDIA driver ensures optimal performance and continued Reflex support. In addition, NVIDIA's updated app lets users easily access DLSS 4 features and the latest AI enhancements to take their games to the next level.
CNET
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Review
505 Games Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is the latest high-profile Soulslike game, this time coming from Chinese developer Leenzee Games. Unlike some of the most recent Soulslike releases, Wuchang is more faithful to the formula created by FromSoftware's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but the changes it does make might be the game's downfall. Wuchang is an ambitious Soulslike, which helps it stand out in what's one of the newest and most popular subgenres around. What keeps it from being great is that all these new systems are a chore to actually understand and use. I'm sure that if players perfectly grasp a balance of the systems, they could make a character with some amazing capabilities, yet it's hard to reach that sweet spot playing through the game. Just to get it out of the way, Wuchang's story is like a lot of Soulslike games. You play as the titular Bai Wuchang, a pirate warrior suffering from amnesia who has to fight through different areas in ancient China during the Ming dynasty. People have been victims of "feathering," the game's sickness that makes the infected sprout feathers and eventually turn into monsters. Wuchang can harness the power of feathering, making her the ideal warrior to uncover what's going on. Is this a confusing and vague storyline? Yes, because it's a Soulslike and that's practically a requirement. The people you meet speak vaguely about other people and subjects that don't make sense until you piece them together with item descriptions, clues found throughout the areas and environmental story elements. It's hardly a storyline that you could fully figure out in a casual playthrough, so I'll be depending on the lore guys on YouTube to piece the story together in the days and weeks after the game's release. Progression system has too much going on What's important for Wuchang -- and any Soulslike that aims to stand out in the subgenre -- is the gameplay, and it's certainly unique. It's dynamic but almost to a fault, with a lot of complexity getting in the way of combat flow. As Wuchang, you have access to five classes of weapons: axes that do big damage but are slow; longswords that do good damage while allowing for parries; twin swords that allow for quick attacks at the cost of lower damage; one-handed swords that are in the midrange for damage and speed; spears that do solid damage while also being able to poke at a longer distance. Throughout the game, you'll come across different weapons of each type. There's 25 in total, and they all have a unique look, abilities and stats from each other. So you're not as overwhelmed as, say, in Elden Ring, where you have more than 300 weapons to choose from. To make full use of these weapons, however, you have to work your way through the skill tree, and this tree represents a hurdle for the game as it overcomplicates things. 505 Games The skill tree reminds me more of the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. It's split into six paths, one for each weapon and one for general-purpose use with universal upgrades like adding to your healing flasks, being able to do more damage with certain effects, and getting more magic points. Along each path are also various stat improvements like adding an extra point to strength, endurance, agility and so on. When you acquire enough red mercury, the souls or currency in the game, you can gain a level, providing a red essence that unlocks a spot on the grid. You need to go down these paths to power up Wuchang as well as the weapons, as improved attacks and mastery of a weapon also require going down each path. Then, at a certain point of unlocking more spots on the grid, the path extends to give you even more stats, abilities and so on. If you're confused by reading this, it's going to be just as confusing when you try it out for yourself. It's one thing to level up a character and put points into various stats, but it's another to level up and realize that you need to spend skill points unlocking a path to get more healing flasks. Where the leveling system messes with you is when you don't unlock a certain path that you need for a boss. One boss in particular was kicking my ass, as it's the first boss you need to use deflecting, or parrying, to beat (unless you're a Soulslike ace who can play perfectly). I had gone down the axe upgrade path and didn't realize that I was ill-equipped for the fight. While there is a tip message that comes up mentioning deflecting, this was the first time the game even mentioned this capability. After failing to beat this boss for hours, I decided to take a long look at the grid and saw that the deflect ability was a few upgrades into the longsword path. Fortunately, you can respec these points at a shrine for free, which I did, and I defeated the boss after a few more tries. Mind you, I could have beaten the boss the other way -- playing perfectly -- but deflecting and parrying to expose the boss's weakness was far easier. And prior to this, the bosses weren't giving me much trouble, just requiring a few deaths in order to understand their pattern. This upgrade grid is super interesting, but there are far too many abilities and benefits that should be unlocked from the start to help reduce the frustration when playing. Madness is making me mad Another interesting idea in Wuchang is the madness system. This is a play on the Humanity and Kindling found in the original Souls games, with a bit of Insight from Bloodborne -- a sort of passive stat that changes how the game world evolves as you play. As you die or defeat certain enemies, your madness will increase. As your madness increases, you can become more powerful. In that path I mentioned about gaining more healing flasks, there are unlockable traits where, if you have a certain amount of madness, you do more damage or gain some extra ability. Madness is based on your level, so the higher the level you are, the higher the maximum madness increases. If your madness is low, you can even acquire a certain amount of madness to buy an item at a shrine. So what happens when your madness is at max? Well, that's a bad thing for two reasons. The first is that you'll do more damage, but you'll also receive more damage. This is going to be great for the hardcore Soulslike player with perfect dodge and parry timing. I'm sure speedrunners will make use of this trait. However, when you're getting your ass kicked by a boss, the last thing you want is for them to hit you for more damage. 505 Games Arguably the most interesting part of this madness system is that if you die at, or near, max madness, the spot where you died that has some of your leftover red mercury will take the form of an evil doppelganger that you'll have to fight. Defeat it and you'll get an item as well as removing all of your madness. It's an interesting feature, but it's also a pain. To get rid of the madness, you can kill certain humanoid enemies, but sometimes to kill those people, you need to kill non-humanoid enemies, which increases madness. Alternatively, you can find and buy items that will reduce madness at a certain temple, but those aren't widely available. Where madness really causes a problem is with bosses. If you die repeatedly at a boss and your death spot is in the boss arena, the doppelganger won't show up, so you're kind of stuck with max madness unless you decide to go get killed somewhere else, take down the doppelganger and be back to zero madness. Pretty but punishing Wuchang performs as well as any Soulslike game when it comes to the action and graphics. The speed of the gameplay is just a step below Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware's parrying-intensive Soulslike, but also a step above its other popular title, Bloodborne. It's fast-paced, but it's also dynamic. I say it's dynamic because of the Spirit Points system, which is the game's version of mana. Unlike most Soulslike games, you don't have a mana pool to draw from when casting magic or doing special attacks. Instead, you need to acquire Spirit Points, and the easiest way to do this is by dodging. A perfectly timed dodge nets you a point that will let you use one special ability or one basic spell. On the grid, there are spots to unlock more points as well as more ways to get the points from deflecting attacks, doing a certain combo or having a certain amount of madness. 505 Games This system requires players to be more active in fights, so someone can't make a glass cannon magic character right off the bat who fights at a distance, although I'm sure there is a build where that's possible in the late game. You need to really get in there and mix it up with the enemies, which I can appreciate. Then come the visuals, and Wuchang has some great-looking scenes. Bosses in the game are also unique in both their attacks and visuals, something highly prized by Soulslike players. The game's presentation overall is on par with any of the AAA titles out there. The English voice acting is a little weak, but people talk so little in the game that it practically doesn't matter. I played the game on a standard PS5, and there were instances when the PS5 did seem to have some issues with dropped frames. It happened after a certain amount of playing and not due to too much going on-screen. Wuchang is a great effort by Leenzee Games. While the game won't revolutionize the Soulslike genre, it does the next best thing by offering some ideas that they, or maybe another developer, can refine. Maybe it will become a mainstay for the genre in future games. If anything, I believe a Wuchang sequel could be an incredible game if it happens. But right now, the formula just isn't there yet. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers comes out on July 23 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles for $50. It will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day 1.
The Star
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Malaysian artist breathes new 'blue' life into broken shipwreck porcelain
Bathed in a serene indigo glow, artist-sculptor Alice Chang's Me, Then Blue solo exhibition at Lai Lai Art Gallery and Studio in Kuala Ampang, Selangor feels like being gently immersed in the deep blue sea. Running until July 29, this is Chang's fifth solo show – a tribute to memory, imperfection, and transformation, brought to life through 11 sculptural works and 20 oil paintings. Stepping into the gallery, you'll find her new exhibition deeply anchored in maritime history. Chang's works draw inspiration from the Wanli shipwreck, a 17th-century Portuguese trading vessel that sank off Terengganu's coast in 1625. The ship carried delicate blue-and-white porcelain from Jingdezhen, China's famed porcelain capital. Named after Ming Dynasty's Emperor Wanli (1573–1620), its remnants were first discovered by local fishermen in 1998, with more of the wreck found in 2004. While intact porcelain pieces ended up in museums and private collections, the broken fragments were mostly discarded as 2019, Chang came across a social media post asking if anyone wanted the broken pieces salvaged from the wreck. 'Wave 8' (2024), an installation by Chang, crafted from Wanli shipwreck porcelain fragments and organic cement. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong 'If nobody wanted them, these pieces would simply be discarded, which felt like such a waste. Just because they're broken doesn't mean they've lost their value – they still carry the same story and history as the intact ones," says Chang, 56, who is known for her sculptural works using porcelain shards. 'So I reached out, because I felt I could create something meaningful from these fragments and give them a second life,' she adds. For most people, Chang is best known for her mosaic sculpture The Lady, which is still on display in one of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown tourist areas. With Me, Then Blue, Chang finds a broader 'canvas' to express and expand her artistic vision. Looking below, from above After arranging for the fragments to be transported to her studio at Lai Lai Art Gallery and carefully cleaned, Chang found herself surrounded by nearly 50kg of weathered porcelain shards – each bearing traces of the sea and centuries of history. 'To be honest, I wasn't sure what to do with the pieces at first, so I just sat on them – figuratively, of course – for about five years. Then last year, I realised that the 400th anniversary of the ship's sinking would be in 2025 and thought it would be nice to do a show to commemorate it, so I started working on the sculptures," says Chang. Flashlights are available for visitors to explore the artworks in detail. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong For the sculptures, Chang used eco-friendly organic cement, carefully piecing the fragments together in their original form out of respect for their history. Some of these sculptures are displayed suspended above a mirror, adding another layer of reflection and depth. 'I designed them like this so that when you look at the pieces through the mirror, it's as though you're looking at it from above the sea's surface, down into the depths of the ocean,' she explains. While working on the sculptures, Chang became curious about the motifs she saw on the shards. "Many of them reflected everyday life in ancient China during the Ming Dynasty. There's a lot of flora and fauna too, like peaches and deer. I wanted to put myself in their shoes, but with a contemporary twist, so this led to me creating the oil paintings,' she says. During a recent gallery tour, Chang pointed to a box filled with sand and scattered porcelain shards. Apart from the porcelain works, Chang has also created a new painting series for her new solo exhibition 'Me, Then Blue'. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong 'Even after spending hundreds of years under the sea, the porcelain is still in very good condition, thanks to the quality of the clay used. Jingdezhen is one of the few places you can find large deposits of high-quality Kaolin clay, which is why the city is so well-known for its porcelain," says Chang. 'The blue comes from cobalt. Back then, the people who painted these pieces weren't professionally trained. They just drew from the heart, naturally creating something so beautiful,' she adds, turning a piece around in her hand. A tribute to history Chang emphasises that this is more than just an art exhibition for her. 'I wanted to share the story of the Wanli shipwreck because I feel that not many Malaysians know about it. Some 400 years ago, before Malaysia became the Malaysia that we know today, it was part of the Maritime Silk Road, a thriving trading hub within a global network of commerce. This is part of our history," she says. 'Who knows what other shipwrecks still lie on the ocean floor in Malaysian waters, quietly waiting to be discovered." Visitors are free to pick up and examine the loose porcelain pieces that fill the sandbox set in the middle of the exhibition. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong Next to the sandbox filled with porcelain fragments is Chang's copy of The Wanli Shipwreck And Its Ceramic Cargo (2007), a 360-page tome published by marine archaeologist Sten Sjostrand and Sharipah Lok Lok Syed Idrus, assistant curator of Malaysia's Department of Museums, Conservation Division. To date, it's the most comprehensive book on the Wanli shipwreck and its treasures. Though its pages are worn from her frequent use, Chang still encourages visitors to leaf through the book to learn more about the Wanli. 'I hope this exhibition will encourage everyone who visits to look deeper beyond the surface and find beauty in the broken,' she concludes. Me, Then Blue is showing at Lai Lai Art Gallery and Studio in Kuala Ampang, Selangor until July 29. Open: 10am-5pm, closed on Monday and Thursday.
West Australian
20-07-2025
- West Australian
Exhausted by the inexhaustible people of Qianmen Street
'The taste of childhood!' it says on the Beijing shopfront. And admittedly, as I bite into the candied haw, or Tanghulu, I am reminded of the toffee apples I once enjoyed as a child. However this traditional Chinese street food, made from skewering tart hawthorn berries on a bamboo stick before encasing them in sugar syrup, could not be more different. Neither could the bustling Qianmen Street and Dashilan be more different from Perth's Hay Street Mall. Beijing is home to nearly 22 million people. And right now, on a late Friday afternoon in summer, it feels like every one of them has converged on this popular cultural and commercial part of the city's Xicheng and Dongcheng districts. There is an old poem about Qianmen Street which goes: 'The green and the red are setting off each other on both sides of road; it is a busy street with happy and inexhaustible people.' It's these happy and inexhaustible people who still flock here in their thousands every day to enjoy the markets and other shops selling wares ancient and modern. Dongcheng takes in the eastern half of the old imperial city and many of Beijing's most famous landmarks including the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and a section of the Grand Canal. Xicheng district by contrast is home to many of China's most important government institutions, including the headquarters of the Communist Party of China, the National People's Congress, the State Council, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. So you could say there's a lot to see. Unfortunately my two travelling companions and I, who had just shut up shop at the Beijing International Book Fair before deciding we'd treat ourselves to a few hours sightseeing, hadn't fully comprehended the nightmare that is Friday peak hour traffic in Beijing. Therefore, a couple of hours later, we jump out at Qianmen Street and plunge into the vast sea of humanity, content to spend the next hour or so just taking in the sights and sounds here and in nearby Dashilan. The former dates from the Ming Dynasty; the latter, from the Yuan Dynasty, boasts Ming and Qing courtyard houses and hutongs, or narrow laneways. The former is famous, amongst many other things, for its Quanjde Roast Duck and its markets; the latter for Tongrentang (a Chinese medicine company) and such speciality stores as milliner Ma Ju Yuan and shoemaker Neiliansheng. Upon arriving, I also note the Zhengyangmen Archery Tower (1419), which lies at the southern end of Tiananmen Square along Beijing's central axis, and the northern end of Qianmen Street. Along with families, couples and others out for the night, we dart from shops specialising in pickles and books to purveyors of alcoholic beverages and cosmetics, stopping just long enough to grab another snack in the form of a Great Wall yogurt (delicious!) before calling for another taxi back to our hotel. Back in my room, I flop on the bed, utterly exhausted — but happy. + Will Yeoman travelled to Beijing as a guest of the Fableration Foundation. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication.
