This paper aims to transcend the conventional pharmacological paradigm of agarwood intervention in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). From a humanistic and social science perspective, it explores how agarwood, as a culturally significant sensory medium, constructs novel relationships and experiences within specific caregiving contexts. Grounded in sensory anthropology, phenomenology of the body, and medical humanities, and integrating the established neuropharmacological activities of agarwood, this study proposes that the core value of its “aroma-assisted therapy” lies not only in its multi-target molecular effects, but more profoundly in its role as a nonverbal, embodied communication medium. Such a medium can reshape the bodily experience of AD patients and foster emotional connection between caregivers and patients beyond the barriers of language. Through a systematic review of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) cultural implications and modern pharmacological evidence of agarwood, situated within the theoretical frameworks of non-pharmacological interventions and sensory stimulation therapy, this paper argues that the introduction of agarwood aroma can construct a shared sensory environment within care spaces. This, in turn, alleviates behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), improves the quality of interpersonal interaction, and offers new insights for developing culturally rooted, person-centered dementia care models.
Andrew Robinson’s The Indus: Lost Civilizations captures the distinctive features of the Indus Valley civilization. The ancient society achieved sophisticated urban infrastructure and cross-regional trade networks, yet it lacks visible traces of centralized rulership, decipherable written records, and long-term cultural continuity, which sets it apart from dominant civilizational models. Readers’ subtle regret over these historical gaps stems from two ingrained evaluative frameworks. The paper re-examines some tacit judging criteria and challenges the tendency to assess alien civilizations through culturally specific benchmarks. It argues that Chinese area studies must confront endogenous cognitive inertia and suspend preset value judgments to interpret marginalized civilizations on their own empirical terms and strengthen methodological reflexivity.
The Grand Canal was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014, and its international visibility has grown steadily since then. Yet the externally oriented texts produced around it do not always achieve the cross-cultural resonance that heritage promoters expect. Drawing on corpus analyses of media discourse, comparative discourse studies and audience research, this paper identifies three recurring problems in these texts, the homogenisation of cultural symbols, the fragmentation of narrative meaning across digital platforms, and the superficial treatment of heritage signifiers. To address them, the paper proposes a tripartite framework that integrates cultural memory theory, multimodal discourse analysis and narrative immersion research. The historical dimension situates commemorative space in a dual temporality, the spatial dimension organises meaning through an anchor–path–network configuration, and the emotional dimension structures affective engagement across individual, group and humanity levels. The framework is offered both as an analytical tool and as a practical guide for redesigning externally oriented heritage texts.
Creative talent industrial ecological need develop and flourish and need sustainable push under circumstances of economic modernization, and creative talent industrial ecological need support of infrastructure develop, need natural ecological perfect, and need human environment’s sustainably perfect. Infrastructure develop is ideological education and creative talent industrial ecological develop’s basis, and natural environment is ideological education and creative talent industrial ecological develop’s natural guarantee, and social environment is ideological education and creative talent industrial ecological develop’s important guarantee, and industrial ecological ability is ideological education and creative talent industrial ecological develop’s new competence, and industrial ecological vitality is ideological education and creative talent industrial ecological develop’s new drive.
Existing scholarship largely attributes the origin of copper-bodied cloisonné enamel (Jingtai Blue) to the independent development of court crafts, overlooking the pivotal role played by Yunnan’s folk silver-bodied enamel techniques in shaping its technical trajectory. Through documentary research, field investigation of craft practice, and physical analysis, this paper traces the complete migration and evolution of Yunnan silver-bodied cloisonné from the Yuan to the Qing dynasty, a process characterized by “taking root in Yunnan—northbound migration of artisans—technological conversion—court standardization—genealogical bifurcation.” Following its introduction via the Yunnan–Burma route, cloisonné enamel achieved a stable craft form by drawing on Yunnan’s well-developed silverworking tradition. During the Ming dynasty, Yunnan artisans moved to the capital in batches, transferring their native silver-bodied techniques to the central court and executing a material conversion from silver to copper to reduce costs and adapt to a mass market. In the Qing Dynasty, the court established the Falang Zuo (Enamel Workshop), integrating northern and southern techniques, completing institutional construction on the basis of the Yunnan-transmitted technology, formally designated “Jingtai Blue,” and thereby forming a bifurcated craft genealogy alongside the Yunnan branch that sustained its silver-bodied tradition. The paper further discusses, with reference to extant silver-bodied chased incense utensils, the overall impact of the Yunnan silverworking system on central metal crafts. It argues that the migration of Yunnan silver-bodied cloisonné into the central court constitutes a typical case of the interactive dynamic in traditional Chinese craft, described as “local techniques nourish the center, and the center’s standards feedback to the local,” offering a new perspective for understanding the fluid construction of traditional crafts.
Developing intercultural attitudes is a central goal of higher education, yet traditional instruction often fails to produce sustained attitudinal change. This study examines students’ intercultural attitudes after VR immersive simulations across six dimensions: Openness, Curiosity, Equality, Respect, Empathy, and Tolerance. Using a corpus-driven mixed-methods design, it analyzes 25 reflective journals from 100 university students who completed three VR-based multicultural banquet simulations. Quantitative lexical analysis via AntConc and qualitative thematic analysis reveal a comprehensive transformation: from ethnocentric judgment to cultural relativism, from passive reception to proactive exploration, and from abstract awareness to emotionally grounded empathy. The findings demonstrate VR’s strong pedagogical potential for sustainable intercultural attitude development in higher education.
This study traces the historical trajectory of digital media art from the 1960s to the contemporary era, analyzing the theoretical contributions and seminal works of key figures throughout its evolution. By integrating an examination of the advancements in Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain technologies, alongside the current market imperatives for interdisciplinary talent, personalized content, and industrial integration, this paper advances optimization recommendations from the perspectives of formal education and self-directed learning. The proposed framework offers substantive insights to inform research and practical implementation in the field of digital media art.
The shift toward Large Language Model (LLM)-driven “human-machine synergy” has enhanced translation efficiency but triggered unprecedented ethical dilemmas. This paper systematically examines four major crises in AI (artificial intelligence)-assisted translation: the diffusion of responsibility, privacy vulnerabilities stemming from digital extractivism, cultural flattening driven by algorithmic hegemony, and translators’ cognitive deskilling. To resolve these challenges, we propose reconstructing the ethical framework across four dimensions: implementing explainable AI architectures, establishing granular liability and fair data policies, reaffirming the “Human-in-Command” principle to restore human agency, and fostering a multi-stakeholder governance ecosystem. Ultimately, this study provides actionable pathways for building a trustworthy, culturally responsible translation ecosystem that balances computational efficiency with social accountability.
R. F. Kuang’s 2023 postcolonial fantasy novel Babel reconfigures translation as the very mechanism of magical power, thereby transforming the translator from a passive instrument into a pivotal agent within imperial structures. Drawing on Zhou Lingshun’s “Text-Behavior-Society” trinity framework, this paper traces the protagonist Robin Swift’s evolving identity—from a “language-oriented” scholar to a complicit “society-oriented” participant, and ultimately to an active resister. The analysis demonstrates how Robin’s translational practices are both conditioned by colonial discipline and reciprocally destabilize the prevailing social order. His eventual destruction of Babel not only dismantles the myth of disinterested, apolitical knowledge production but also foregrounds the ethical agency of the translator in confronting systemic colonial violence.
This essay draws upon Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious to analyze the characters, symbols, and cultural context within Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Set against the backdrop of a post-war society in turmoil, the novel portrays the confusion and psychological trauma of its characters as manifestations of the collective unconscious. The protagonists, particularly Jake and his companions, exhibit the “shadow” archetype of the collective unconscious—representing the inner darkness that individuals are unable to confront under societal pressure—when faced with emotional and existential struggles that are beyond communication. Through their relationships with bullfighting, alcohol, travel, and love, Hemingway depicts their escapism and their search for self-identity. Furthermore, the symbol of “sunshine” in the novel can be interpreted as a manifestation of the “light” archetype within the collective unconscious, symbolizing the longing for renewal and self-reconstruction. This paper argues that The Sun Also Rises is not merely a portrayal of the lost generation but also an exploration of profound psychological conflicts and cultural crises, reflecting the post-war society’s resonance with and response to individual psychic trauma.
This paper discusses the various sources of inspiration that motivated individuals to create liturgical poetry beyond the fixed Orthodox Jewish liturgy. It is neither a historical review nor a comprehensive categorization of the piyyut as such, but rather an exploration into the aesthetic impulses, sensibilities, and communal responsibilities that encouraged those deeply involved in Jewish life as teachers, creative figures or religious leaders to express their devotional feelings through this poetic medium.
Amid the shift in emotion research from a cognition-centered paradigm to an integrative mind-body perspective, body awareness, as a crucial mechanism linking physiological signalsto emotional experience, has gradually emerged as a new pathway for explaining anxiety. Existing studies have primarily explained anxiety from the perspectives of external stressors or cognitive appraisal biases, paying insufficient attention to the somatic basis of emotional experience. Based on this, this paper systematically reviews the multidimensional sources of anxiety, integrates theories of body awareness with models of the emotion regulation process, and constructs a mediating mechanism framework of “body awareness → emotion regulation → anxiety”. The study indicates that body awareness, as a prerequisite variable for emotion recognition, indirectly affects anxiety levels by enhancing individuals’ sensitivity to internal physiological signals, promoting the use of adaptive regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, and reducing the use of maladaptive strategies like expressive suppression. Furthermore, the mechanism is elaborated from three levels: signal identification, strategy selection, and feedback regulation, proposing a “cyclical reinforcement mechanism” that reveals anxiety as the result of the dynamic interaction between somatic perception and emotion regulation. Theoretically, this paper expands the explanatory dimensions of anxiety research. Methodologically, it proposes testable empirical pathways. Practically, it provides a basis for shifting psychological interventions from a “cognition-oriented” to a “mind-body integrated” approach.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is most commonly read as a tale of scientific transgression, yet the creature’s trajectory reveals a profound educational dimension. This paper applies Carl Rogers’ humanistic education theory to reexamine the creature as a learner whose development unfolds in the absence of relational support. Although he acquires language, moral awareness, and reflective capacity, his learning fails to achieve psychological integration. Drawing on Rogers’ three facilitative conditions, this study argues that the creature’s tragedy stems not from cognitive deficiency, but from the sustained absence of empathy, recognition, and unconditional positive regard. Frankenstein thus anticipates a central insight of humanistic education: Knowledge divorced from relational response may deepen alienation rather than foster wholeness.
This study adopts the materiality and mediality of publications as its dual foundations. The findings reveal that the material carriers, technological mediators, and disseminating agents collectively shape the presentational forms of texts. By analyzing typical cases of print classics and digital-native publications, this research clarifies the specific affordances of different dissemination stages in shaping aesthetic experiences. The study provides both theoretical and practical insights for optimizing aesthetic production and dissemination in the publishing industry within new media environments.
Vladimir Nabokov once criticized the “smug philistinism”, or poshlust, that emanated from the art of advertisement. For Nabokov, poshlust is phony depth, cheap imitation, and aesthetic falseness disguised as virtue, beauty, or sophistication that may lead to moral indictment. Such a pretense and brandishing of one’s “higher aesthetic taste” echoes the meticulous descriptions of the elements of consumerism in Lolita. Building on Nabokov’s definition of poshlust as a fusion of the falsely refined and the vulgarly sentimental, this article discovers that Humbert is inherently an “adman”, or a bourgeois philistine whose construction of the “nymphet” is not merely a personal aesthetic imagination and delusion, but a product of a broader cultural aesthetic—one shaped by advertising, popular media, and mass-market taste. This aesthetic imagination of Humbert experiences stages of fetishism, the realization of obsolescence, and ultimately results in Humbert’s disillusionment in finding the irreconcilability between “true art” and the décor of the desire of obsession and possession. Lolita thus parallels Humbert’s advocacy of art’s distance from real life and exposes the tragic consequences of commodifying beauty, reducing identity to style, and mistaking obsession for love.
William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily has long been interpreted as an allegory of the conflict between Southern tradition and modern civilization. This paper attempts to examine Emily Grierson from the dual perspectives of “spatial boundaries” and “cultural reproduction”, exploring how she is constructed by the old Southern order as a “monument” and how she movestoward both cultural and physical death under the penetration of Northern modernity. The study finds that Emily’s house is not merely a physically enclosed entity but constitutes a superimposition of three boundaries: physical, social, and bodily. Her poisoning of the Northern suitor, Homer Barron, is not simply a matter of personal love or hatred, but an extreme response triggered by the complete failure of the “cultural reproduction” mechanism when Southern aristocratic culture encounters Northern capitalist values. Through this interpretation, this paper seeks to reveal Faulkner’s ambivalent attitude toward the fate of the South—mourning the passing of tradition while keenly perceiving its inherent decay and violence.
This study examines the interaction and integration of Han Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage practices at Jizu Mountain, a sacred site that embodies the confluence of two distinct cultural logics. Drawing on comparative analysis of symbolic systems and behavioral patterns, it focuses on the tension and synergy between Tibet’s traditional circumambulation (skor ba) and the Han’s summit ascent as pilgrimage modalities. The research reveals how these practitioners negotiate cultural adaptation: While incorporating the Han-style summit pilgrimage, they preserve Tibetan sacred spatial cosmology through the circular metaphor of the overall journey and localized circumambulation rituals. This hybrid Buddhist practice ultimately shaped a composite religious-cultural terrain unique to Jizu Mountain.
Bobbie Ann Mason is an outstanding contemporary American writer of the New Southern tradition. In 1983, she won the Hemingway Foundation Award for her short story collection Shiloh and Other Stories. The short story “Shiloh” discusses the change in social relationships between men and women. In her work, Mason pays particular attention to how social and environmental changes affect people’s social roles and gender attitudes. This paper explores the crisis of gender displacement in “Shiloh” from the perspective of identity, thereby reflecting on gender relations as a whole.
The Tongzheng Bianlan (A Handbook of Copper Administration) is a significant work among Qing Dynasty documents on Yunnan’s copper administration. It systematically records regulations concerning copper mine locations, transportation, casting, procurement, and other aspects, holding irreplaceable value for research on Qing economic history, fiscal history, and Yunnan local history. However, academic understanding of its textual transmission has long been vague, its relationship with another crucial text, the Yunnan Tongzhi (Records of Yunnan Copper), remains ambiguous, and the two existing modern collated editions contain various degrees of errors. Based on a survey and examination of library holdings domestically and abroad, this paper systematically sorts out the major extant versions of the Tongzheng Bianlan for the first time. These include a Jiaqing-era manuscript held in Taiwan, the Guangxu 13th-year (1887) engraving by Zeng Jifeng held in the Yunnan Provincial Library, and other scattered manuscripts, establishing a genealogy of its textual transmission. Through in-depth textual comparison, this paper proposes that the Tongzheng Bianlan was an “administrative handbook” derived from the Yunnan Tongzhi compiled by Dai Ruizheng. It was streamlined and supplemented with practical regulations by secretarial staff within the Yunnan Provincial Administration Commission, representing two distinct yet related texts with different emphases. Building on this, the paper provides an academic critique of the punctuated edition by Wei Mingkong and Wei Zhengkong (2013) and the annotated edition by Chen Yanli (2017), assessing their achievements and shortcomings in base text selection, textual emendation, and punctuation. Finally, from multidisciplinary perspectives including philology, economic history, and institutional history, the paper argues for the unique historical value of the Tongzheng Bianlan and proposes a comprehensive collation and research plan aimed at producing a more refined and reliable text for the study of Qing copper administration.
Facing the dual challenges of globalization and digitalization, the intangible cultural heritage of Han Opera encounters “cultural discount” and “intergenerational gap” in its cross-cultural communication, while the traditional one-way communication model fails to meet the needs of contemporary audiences. This study aims to explore, within the metaverse framework, how to use Virtual Reality (VR) technology to reconstruct the communication pathways of Han Opera in order to promote its global cultural identity. By employing literature review and questionnaire survey methods, it conducts an in-depth analysis of the current state of audience awareness and experiential needs. The research develops a “VR-empowered strategy model for the cross-cultural dissemination of intangible cultural heritage”, proposing media reconstruction across four key dimensions: immersive storytelling, interactive experiences, cultural translation, and matrix-based dissemination. The strategy advocates for an “authentic core with innovative outward expression”, effectively enabling the transformation of audience engagement from merely “watching for entertainment” to “understanding the deeper significance”. This approach provides both theoretical references and practical guidance for the digital “going global” of intangible cultural heritage.
