Building a Sense of Home: Qiu Shuyuan and the Eight Scenes of Singapore

The China Studies Centre supports research on China at The University of Sydney by bringing together researchers on China from across faculties and disciplines, enabling international academic collaboration with researchers from China and other countries, and being an informed voice in Australia's public China discourse.

China Studies Centre

Welcome back to the first talk in Chinese Humanities by Professor Lap Lam from  National University of Singapore.

Talks in Chinese Humanities

"Talks in Chinese Humanities" is co-presented by the China Studies Centre, the Discipline of Chinese Studies and the Australian Society for Asian Humanities at the University of Sydney and the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at UNSW.

Talks in Chinese Humanities “Xingzhou,” or “Star Island,” is an imagistic designation for Singapore advocated by Qiu Shuyuan (1874–1941), “Poet Master of the South.” To impart a sense of homeliness and poetic appeal to the island city, Qiu also coined the “Eight Scenes” or “Eight Attractions” of Singapore. This talk centres on Qiu’s endeavour to construct a preliminary Singaporean identity through these naming schemes and poetry writing. The “Eight Scenes” project further promoted classical-style poetry in Singapore and transplanted to it a set of traditional Chinese cultural norms. It also provided an opportunity for Qiu and his fellow immigrant poets to make the previously “unpleasant” foreign land a more delightful and memorable place like home, although nostalgia is equally conspicuous in their works.About the speakerLap Lam acquired his Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia and is now associate professor at the Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore. He is the author of Remaining Sounds of the Vast Ocean: A Study of Qing Loyalist Ci Lyric in the Republican Era (CUHK Press, 2012, in Chinese) and Cultural Transplantation: The Writing of Classical Chinese Poetry in Colonial Singapore (Brill, 2024). He is also a writer of classical-style poetry, serving as chairperson of the General Society for Chinese Classical Poetry (International) and editor-in-chief of the society’s periodical Elegantiae Florilegium of the New Island (Xinzhou yayuan)."Talks in Chinese Humanities" is co-presented by the <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/research/centres/china-studies-centre.html" title="https://www.sydney.edu.au/research/centres/china-studies-centre.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">China Studies Centre</a>, the <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/schools/school-of-languages-and-cultures/chinese-studies.html" title="https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/schools/school-of-languages-and-cultures/chinese-studies.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Discipline of Chinese Studies</a> and the <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/centres-institutes-and-groups/australian-society-for-asian-humanities.html" title="https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/centres-institutes-and-groups/australian-society-for-asian-humanities.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Australian Society for Asian Humanities</a> at the University of Sydney.

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