07/05/2026
RCCHC "China and the World: Historical Interactions" Talk Series
Tian Han’s Rhapsody of the Ming Tombs Reservoir: Staging Political Economy for Revolutionary China
Date: 26 May 2026 (Tue)
Time: 10:30 - 12:00
Speaker: Dr Harlan D. Chambers
Research Associate
Department of East Asian Studies
University of Göttingen
Venue: DE304, PolyU Campus
Language: English
Event Details: https://polyu.hk/GAtcS
Abstract:
In this talk, I take Tian Han’s 1958 theatrical text, Rhapsody of the Ming Tombs Reservoir (十三陵水库畅想曲), as my point of departure for thinking a contentious historical question: what does it mean to be “human” in socialism? Tian Han’s sprawling stage chronicle presents the fervent labor of completing the Ming Tombs Reservoir at the 1958 outset of the Great Leap Forward, as well as cultural efforts to narrate it. This work thus reflects on the stakes of narrating a superhuman endeavor of collective labor, engaging some of the era’s most debated questions: How should we understand individual feelings, particularly romantic love, in collective life? Does laboring for the collective still require an individual, material incentive?
I will delineate the internationalist parameters of debate bound to Tian’s interventions, particularly those concerning the philosophical problem of a universal humanism and its relation to “material incentive” (物质刺激). These debates within the PRC drew from the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Poland, as well as critiques of Yugoslavian humanism, arguing that socialist political economy must progressively forge a new conception of what it means to be human. In this, cultural politics would play a crucial role. I argue that it was this philosophical problematic, informed by political-economic critique, that informed the proposition for a new cultural politics animating Tian Han’s work, expressed in the popular formulation “the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism.” Seeking to develop this formulation through practice, Tian’s dramatic presentations of voluntary labor, romantic love, and political confrontation wrestled to articulate a new conception of the human for socialism.
Speaker's biography:
Harlan Chambers completed his Ph.D. in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at Columbia University in 2022 and served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Illinois Wesleyan University before joining the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen as a research associate in 2024. As an interdisciplinary scholar of Chinese culture and history, as well as feminist and critical theory, his research interrogates the role of cultural practices in processes of social transformation, integrating archival research with analyses of cultural texts. He is currently completing his first monograph, Time for Revolution: The Play of Temporality in China’s Revolutionary Theater, 1937-1976. In 2026, Dr. Chambers is also conducting research as a recipient of the Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies from the Center for Chinese Studies at Taiwan's National Central Library. In addition to peer-reviewed scholarship in Modern China and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, he has translated or co-translated works by Wang Hui, Li Tuo, Zhang Jishun, and the contemporary artist Cao Fei, for positions: Asia Critique and The South Atlantic Quarterly.
