• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.71-86
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• 2019

Transnational exchange has been an inseparable part of both the ancient and modern Silk Road. This paper shows how Rumi (1207-1273), a famous Persian Sufi poet, travels along the Silk Road in the $21^{st}$ century. With the birth of a Rumi phenomenon in the West, Silk Road artists have rediscovered and adapted him for different purposes. Elif Shafak, the Turkish-British novelist and women's rights activist, espouses feminist beliefs in her bestseller, The Forty Rules of Love (2010). Benefiting from the views of feminist theorists like Woolf, de Beauvoir and Friedan, this paper reveals how Shafak appropriates Rumi for her feminist purposes. Forty Rules of Love's protagonist, Ella Rubinstein is analyzed, compared and contrasted with her former literary counterparts Pinhan and Zeliha, heroines of Shafak's previous novels. By adapting Rumi's definition of equality, Shafak shows how egalitarianism must pervade the relationship between women and men. The adaptation of Rumi's ideas regarding the equality of sexes finds a different dimension when Shafak reveals that all humanity possesses femininity and masculinity at the same time. By means of ideas prevalent in the ancient Silk Road, the five classical elements theory, and the yin and yang principle, Shafak portrays unity within contradictions. It is concluded that although individuals might belong to different typologies of the five symbolic elements of nature, they can at the same time complement one another's inharmonious personalities peacefully. The process of integration of female and male sexes can be expedited by opening up one's heart to a universal love.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.153-186
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• 2020

The family as a social institution has survived most diverse political periods and appears resilient or at least able to reconstitute itself even in the aftermath of destructive events such as wars. Age at first marriage is one possibility to systematize the strategies that families follow in times of internal conflicts (e.g., civil wars), external interventions or peaceful times. The authors found that age at first marriage correlates with socio-political events whereas perceptions of insecurity lead to a decline in marital age. This paper is based on three case studies that the authors have conducted through ethnographic methods among Tajiks in the cities Kulob, Khujand, and Mazar-e Sharif in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Combining Grounded Theory with the genealogical methods from social anthropology in order to generate demographic data, the authors introduce the method of grounded demography as a way to generate demographic data through ethnographic methods. Grounded demography offers a way to produce statistical data grounded in ethnographic research.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.111-140
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• 2020

This paper focuses on the emerging patterns of educational mobility and unskilled labor migration from Uzbekistan to Japan and South Korea. Labor migration and educational mobility are becoming the next "horizon" in the expanded relationship between East and Central Asia, powered by several factors, including the efforts by Japan and South Korea to build "original" people-oriented policy engagements with the region and the demand from Central Asian states, such as Uzbekistan, to provide more labor opportunities to their young and growing populations. This paper presents the initial findings of a pilot survey that explores and occasionally compares the experiences of Uzbek migrants to Japan and South Korea, using datasets of face-to-face interviews related to various aspects of life in Japan and South Korea. The interviews were conducted face to face and online (Telegram, Skype, etc.) with 66 migrants and Japanese language school students (whom this paper treats as labor migrants masquerading as students) in Japan from November 2019 to January 2020 as well as online with 30 laborers and students in South Korea from August to September 2020.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-49
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• 2020

This essay, based on an oral presentation, provides the non-specialist, with an evaluation of the Mongols' influence and China and, to a lesser extent, on Russia and the Middle East. Starting in the 1980s, specialists challenged the conventional wisdom about the Mongol Empire's almost entirely destructive influence on global history. They asserted that Mongols promoted vital economic, social, and cultural exchanges among civilizations. Chinggis Khan, Khubilai Khan, and other rulers supported trade, adopted policies of toleration toward foreign religions, and served as patrons of the arts, architecture, and the theater. Eurasian history starts with the Mongols. Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art confirmed that the Mongol era witnessed extraordinary developments in painting, ceramics, manuscript illustration, and textiles. To be sure, specialists did not ignore the destruction and killings that the Mongols engendered. This reevaluation has prompted both sophisticated analyses of the Mongols' legacy in Eurasian history. The Ming dynasty, the Mongols' successor in China, adopted some of the principles of Mongol military organization and tactics and were exposed to Tibetan Buddhism and Persian astronomy and medicine. The Mongols introduced agricultural techniques, porcelain, and artistic motifs to the Middle East, and supported the writing of histories. They also promoted Sufism in the Islamic world and influenced Russian government, trade, and art, among other impacts. Europeans became aware, via Marco Polo who traveled through the Mongols' domains, of Asian products, as well as technological, scientific, and philosophical innovations in the East and were motivated to find sea routes to South and East Asia.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.55-90
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• 2021

In the last several decades, and especially since the Chinese launching of the Belt and Road (BRI) initiative in 2013, the Chinese presence in Central Asia has intensified. Russia and Chinese leaders deny that there is any conflict of interests between them, while the standard narrative has been that the two states adhere to a functional division of tasks in which China concentrates on economic activity while Russia acts as the security guarantor for the region. This article argues that the professed equanimity between the Russian and Chinese leaderships masks the emergence of widening cracks in their relationship with regard to Central Asia. The convenient narrative of a functional division of tasks between the two states is called into question by China's increasingly active presence in the military and security sector in the region, but China's influence is growing throughout the Central Asian economic, political, and social order. China's movement into Central Asia challenges Russia's claim to act as an equal partner of China, as well as its pretensions to regional hegemony. This development reflects the widening disparity between the two states with respect to their power capabilities but it also exposes the interactions between Russia and China in Central Asia as the most vulnerable aspect of their relationship. In Central Asia, a defensive Russia encounters an ascendant China.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.91-118
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• 2021

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China's contribution to the need for the world to collectively address deficits of peace, development, governance, and problems relating to climate, the environment and human health. The rise of China and the BRI do challenge the current 'rules-based global order' and the economic dominance and moral, political, economic, and cultural leadership of the United States and its allies. However, China's goal is not hegemony but a multipolar world in which common values coexist with principles of peaceful coexistence (including non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states). The evolution of the BRI is outlined, and the ways in which it reflects Chinese interests are summarized, including its roles in addressing natural resource dependence and excess capacity, a transition from investment promotion and factor-intensive growth to going out and industrial upgrading, going West, and the effective deployment of China's foreign exchange assets. Although China does therefore potentially gain, the BRI is designed so that partners also gain in a quest for win-win co-operation and mutual benefit. The values that underlie this approach and the call for a community with a shared future are compared with competing western values, whose roots lie in Enlightenment thought and are associated with a record of colonialism and imperialism. In this light, the article concludes with a consideration of the global implications of the BRI, the challenges it confronts and the likelihood that the unipolar moment will give way to a multipolar global development path.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.31-54
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• 2021

Radicalisation has become an important issue for the Kyrgyz Republic with an increasing number of individuals leaving the country for conflict zones. The government of the Kyrgyz Republic adopted a number of policies to prevent radicalisation and violent extremism among youth. One of these measures is piloting a new subject, titled, History of Religious Culture, (История религиозной культуры) in public schools. The analysis in this paper aims to explore the experiences of teachers, who have taught the new class. The article also examines any differences in the level of resilience of pupils in schools, piloting and not piloting the new subject, towards radicalisation and violent extremism. Data used in this article comes from a survey with 760 adolescents across public schools in six regions of the country and key informant interviews with teachers who have taught the new class. Qualitative findings showed a positive experience of teachers who reported expanding their pupils' and their own knowledge of various religions. Quantitative findings indicate that the new class, History of Religious Culture, may have had a positive impact on violence-related beliefs in pilot schools that reported views less supportive of violence. The study concludes that the government's response to radicalisation and violent extremism has expanded beyond a security approach by including education. This, however, poses a risk of securitising education.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.105-130
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• 2022

This paper argues that the war in Syria is partly the result of a global Islamist wave that contributed to fuelling conflict across large regions of Asia and Africa. Of course, the war that has consumed Syria since 2011 most certainly has multiple interrelated causes and driving forces, and any attempt to isolate one or even two or three runs the risk of advancing an overly simplistic interpretation of history. This essay, therefore, does not aim to offer an appraisal of the multiple variables that contributed to the war in Syria. Instead, it zeroes in on how political Islam came to impact Syria and its people. In doing so, it demonstrates how competing varieties of political Islam represented leading causes of conflict. Indeed, different Islamist movements contributed to the outbreak of the war in 2011, fuelled the conflict for years on end, and to this day represent major obstacles to the achievement of sustainable peace. Four broad Islamist currents are especially relevant to the case of Syria: the Muslim Brotherhood; the Shia revivalist movement at the nexus of the alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria; Salafi jihadism and its volatile and fractious underworld of competing armed groups, from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State; and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's market-friendly Islamism, which induced Turkey to intervene in Syria's civil war.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-148
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• 2022

While much has been written about Imperial Japan's encounter with geopolitics and developing ideas about Geography as a political and cultural discipline, little if anything has been written about relational and research Geographies between Japan and Silk Roads both ancient and modern. Memories of the ancient Silk Road were revivified in the late 19^th century in tandem with the Great Game of European nations, as Japan modernized and sought new places and influence globally following the Meiji restoration. Imperial Japan thus sought to conquer and co-opt spaces imagined to be part of or influenced by the ancient Silk Road and any modern manifestation of it. This paper explores a particular process in that co-option and appropriation, research collaboration between institutions of the Empire. In particular it considers the exploration of Mengjiang/Inner Mongolia after its conquest in 1939/1940, by a collaborative team of Korean and Japanese Geographers, led by Professor Tada Fumio. This paper considers the making knowable of spaces imagined to be on the ancient Silk Road in the Imperial period, and the projecting of the imperatives of the Empire back into Silk Road history, at the same time as such territory was being made anew. This paper also casts new light on the relational and collaborative processes of academic exchange, specifically in the field of Geography, between Korean and Japanese academics during the Korean colonial period.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.61-90
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• 2021

Recent excavations in Qinghai Province, China, have disclosed textiles and artworks from Tuyuhun-Tubo (Tibetan) tombs, dated to the 7^th-9^th centuries, that suggest artistic and cultural exchanges along an external southern branch of the main Silk Road, between Gansu and Sichuan Provinces, across the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau toward the Himalayas. Many similar textiles, possibly from this area, have appeared lately on the art market and ended in private collections. Although these textiles, dated to the early Tibetan period, follow a popular prototype established in Central Asia in the 6^th century, the technical features, colors, and other indigenous elements suggest that they were woven in workshops different from those established between Sogdiana and Gansu. The exhibition "Cultural Exchange Along the Silk Road - Masterpieces of the Tubo Period," organized by the Dunhuang Research Academy and the Pritzker Collaborative Art between July and October 2019 in Dunhuang, Gansu, was a groundbreaking event that gathered scholarly attention on early Tibetan material culture, but a relevant publication is still forthcoming. In my previous work, I briefly discussed a group of silk textiles, possibly from Qinghai or Sichuan, that I analyzed in 2014 in the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. In light of the recent material excavated, published online, or displayed in Dunhuang, in this article, I reevaluate the data previously collected, and discuss in detail the technical and iconographic features of one of the fragments held in Hangzhou. Eventually, the piece was recognized as the ending part of a large panel, which is now in the Abegg Stiftung in Riggisberg, Switzerland.