Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

China is facing severe aging problems. It is estimated that in 2050, people over 60 in China will cover more than 25 percent population. How to make the elderly people’s life more meaningful and more fruitful becomes an urgent issue. To obtain the goal of setting up a learning society, as well as to loosen the heavy burden aroused by aging problem, community education is applied as an effective way to the elderly people widely to enhance their living standard. A lot of researches have been done on community education and the elderly education respectively abroad. China started to do such topic study later than Western countries but the speed of aging has soared during last 20 years. The blank of study especially the elderly people who live in rural area should aroused the attention of this society.  This field study is to find out the factors that may lead to the elderly people’s subjective factors of participation into community education. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and society support theory, with the help of questionnaire and interview, the author finds out the current situation of the elderly’s participation in community education in Shuyuan Township, and factors that may influence the frequency of participation. The author proposes several suggestions which can be used to improve current situation as policy adviser.

Cette thèse étudie les dynamiques touristiques, contemporaines des réformes, dans les espaces ruraux de la mégalopole du delta du Yangzi. Le processus du tourisme dans les espaces ruraux est étudié au regard des politiques de modernisation rurale (encadrées par l'État central, décentralisées aux échelons locaux, en lien avec des acteurs privés) d'une part, et des mutations des perceptions des citadins de la classe moyenne, bénéficiant de temps libre, de moyens économiques et matériels d'autre part. Les pratiques touristiques ont été envisagées du point de vue de l'expérience des touristes et des motivations de départ. Les campagnes constituent une forme originale de tourisme, dont les aménagements se déclinent selon quatre types : bourg, village, parc à thème et parc naturel. Les lieux touristiques dans les campagnes ont ensuite été analysés selon trois entrées : modernisation rurale, construction identitaire et outil d'aménagement local. Finalement, les espaces ruraux touristiques, circonscrits à des lieux balisés, contribuent aux dynamiques spatiales et économiques de la région du delta du Yangzi, dominée par la métropole de Shanghai. Par ailleurs, le tourisme dans les campagnes participe à la construction de territorialités des provinces et des municipalités. / This thesis examines the tourist dynamic, contemporary of reforms, in rural areas of the megalopolis of the Yangzi Delta. The tourism process in rural areas is studied with regard to rural modernization policies (supervised by the central government, decentralized to local levels, in conjunction with private actors) on the one hand, and urban perceptions mutations of the middle class, enjoying free time, economic resources and the other materials on the other band. Tourist practices have been considered from the perspective of the experience of tourists and starting motivations. The countryside is an original form of tourism; the facilities are divided into four categories: village, town, ù1eme park and natural Park. The tourist places in the countryside were then analyzed according to three inputs: rural modernization, construction of identity and local planning tool. Finally, rural tourism areas, conscripts marked places, contribute firstly to spatial and economic dynamics of the Yangtze Delta region, dominated by the metropolis of Shanghai and the other in territorialities construction of provinces and municipalities.

Chinese compradors, official managers, and overseas Chinese capitalists have received scholarly attention of late with special notice to studying their contributions to China’s industrial modernization. This thesis shifts this emphasis to seeing these three groups of Chinese merchants as types of Chinese capitalist middlemen, whose principal efforts were in the commercial sector during the late Qing and early Republican periods. Specifically, it focuses on their activities within Shanghai’s International Settlements, where the openings for entrepreneurial innovation could be made the most of with little interference from Chinese state officials. The market created by Chinese capitalist middlemen is distinguished from the greater Chinese economy by its concentration in Shanghai’s International Settlements and its being a commercial revolution. Particularly, this thesis links entrepreneurial business history with New Institutional Economics by placing the entrepreneur at the heart of Chinese commercial development beginning in the 1860s. It investigates how the above three types of middlemen’s commercial activities impacted the structural organization of the traditional family firm, reshaping this organization into a modern operation. As the traditional Chinese family firm emerged in a political institutional framework that both favored firms’ risk reduction and official sponsorship, Chinese capitalist middlemen played a part in structurally re-organizing the family firm into the modern firm. Chinese entrepreneurial behavior arose through a social process of bridging, which occurred through Chinese middlemen’s daily interactive commercial activities in Western firms in Shanghai. In the cases of compradors, these acculturated practices were employed in their own family firms and reflected a novel risk-taking pattern wherein they engaged in new fields of enterprise. In the cases of guandu shangban enterprises, official managers evolved these firms to absorb the pricing mechanism and lower transaction costs to benefit customers and the firm’s revenue. In the cases of returned overseas Chinese capitalists, in this thesis Australian ones are examined, they capitalized their department stores’ operations through reinvesting overseas Chinese surplus income that had traditionally been returned as remittances home to China. All of them fashioned a cosmopolitan view of themselves and fostered a moral view that combined Confucian and Christian ethics giving rise to a notion of human capital as a form of commercial welfare. / Graduate

Ce mémoire traite de l’histoire et de la culture de Shanghai, ainsi que de l’amitié féminine et de l’amour et la sexualité. À l’analyse, le texte littéraire Le Chant des regrets éternels de Wang Anyi. Il se divise en deux chapitres : le premier chapitre déploie l’étude de l’histoire et la culture de Shanghai. « Paris de l’Orient » d’autrefois et centre économique actuel, Shanghai occupe une place spéciale et majeure dans l’histoire de la Chine. À ce titre, l’analyse de l’histoire et de la culture de Shanghai pourrait nous aider à connaître cette ville mythique et la Chine actuelle. Cela nous aidera aussi à revoir la culture de la Chine dans l’histoire du monde et la mondialisation et à réfléchir sur ce point. Le deuxième chapitre s’intéresse au thème de l’amitié féminine, l’amour et la sexualité dans Le Chant des regrets éternels, par l’analyse du récit selon les théories concernées. Comme Louise Bernikow l’a écrit : « L’absence d’intimité féminine en littérature est, en partie, le résultat de la perspective masculine. » (1980 : 5). Donc, de traiter de l’amitié féminine du point de vue de la littérature comparée et de la communication interculturelle est un sujet fort intéressant. Voici certains aspects qui seront abordés ici : l’amitié entre femmes comme forme de résistance au patriarcat; la solidarité et la rivalité féminine; l’élaboration de la subjectivité féminine; les grandeurs et les misères de l’amitié entre femmes; l’amour et la sexualité sous l’éveil de la notion féministe, etc. En conclusion, nous ferons un bilan avec une comparaison d’un point de vue chinois et occidental pour mettre en contraste les cultures québécoise et chinoise en matière de féminisme. / This master’s thesis deals with the history and culture of Shanghai, the female friendship, the love and the sexuality, with the analysis of the literary text: The Song of Eternal Sorrow of Wang Anyi. It is divided into two chapters: the first chapter unfolds the study of the history and culture of Shanghai. “Paris of the Orient” of the past and current economic center, Shanghai occupies a special and major position in the history of China. Thus, the analysis of the history and culture of Shanghai could help us know this mythical city and the current China. It will also help us review and reflect on China’s culture in world history and globalization. The second chapter will focus on the theme of female friendship, love and sexuality in The Song of Eternal Sorrow, by analyzing the story with relevant theories. As Louise Bernikow wrote: “The lack of female intimacy in literature is, in part, the result of the male perspective.” (1980: 5). So to discuss female friendship from the point of view of comparative literature and intercultural communication is a very interesting subject. Here are some aspects of which I will speak here: the friendship between women as a form of resistance to patriarchy; female solidarity and rivalry; the elaboration of feminine subjectivity; the greatness and miseries of friendship between women; love and sexuality under the awakening of the feminist notion, etc. In conclusion, we will review the analysis with a comparison of a Chinese and Western point of view to contrast Quebec and Chinese cultures in terms of feminism.

Mentoring, a kind of traditional mechanism for passing down knowledge and skills, is now becoming an organized field of practice in early childhood education contexts, not only globally but also in China. A variety of mentoring models have been implemented to facilitate the ongoing and continuous professional development of educators, including early childhood teachers. This qualitative case study focused on the impact of group mentoring on the professional development of four teachers in a Shanghai kindergarten. Within the theoretical framework of COP (Community of Practice), it was an investigation of how the group mentoring process, an alternative to traditional models of professional development, had an impact on the teachers in a changing early childhood education context in China. This study featured in-depth individual interviews with the four teachers (two mentors and two mentees), who are in the same mentoring group, and observations of their group mentoring activities. Data was coded and analyzed qualitatively. A few major themes emerged from the study: the teachers’ perceptions of the model, the benefits and challenges it brings, and its influence on their relationships and identity. The study aimed to gain insight into how group mentoring, a potentially optimal model, has exerted an influence on the teachers’ professional development. This study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and areas for future research.

Bianshi har under en lång tid tillämpats i Shanghais matematikundervisning. Forskaren GuLingyuan gav denna typ av undervisning en definition med benämningen Bianshi år 1981. Eleverna i Shanghai har visat goda resultat i matematik. Därav är det relevant för lärare att undersöka Bianshi och reflektera över om den kan tillämpas samt bidra till en positiv utveckling av elevernas matematiska kunskaper.  Syftet med litteraturstudien är att lyfta vad Bianshi är och dess påverkan på elevernas lärande i matematik. Detta kommer besvaras genom frågeställningarna: hur beskriver forskningBianshi som grund i undervisningen? Vilka positiva och negativa aspekter med Bianshipresenteras i forskning? Litteraturstudiens vetenskapliga källor inhämtades genom sökningar i databaserna ERIC, Primo och Google Scholar. Sökningarna resulterade i 6 vetenskapliga artiklar, 1 vetenskaplig rapport, 1 konferens publikation och 2 kapitel ur antologier. Litteraturen är internationell och skriven på engelska. Vidare analyserades materialet genom inkluderings- och exkluderings kriterier samt en översiktsmatris.  Resultatet visade att Bianshi är ett sätt att undervisa där man använder olika strategier för att variera lektionsinnehållet. Bianshi-undervisning definieras olika i forskning. Även om denna typ av undervisning benämns olika visar resultatet stora likheter, bland annat att forskare lyfter variation av exempeluppgifter, lösningsstrategier och vikten av att använda förkunskaper som bärande delar i Bianshi. Resultatet visar också att Bianshi främjar elevernas matematiska utveckling och skapar ett meningsfullt samt utforskande klassrum. Ytterligare anses bristen på forskning och kravet på goda kunskaper inom den teoretiska ramen vara ett hinder för tillämpningen av Bianshi.

Supporting huge population, megacities are definitely the hot spots of production, consumption, and waste generation. Without careful investment and planning, megacities will be overwhelmed by burgeoning negative impacts on the environment, natural resources, and human health, as well as a host of social and economic issues. The unprecedented combination of economic and population growth since the Reform and Open Policy has led China into transition from a largely rural society to a predominantly urban one. Chinese cities, without question, have not escaped the danger of the series of problems during the rapid progress of urbanization. Therefore, monitoring the spatial-temporal patterns of urban sprawl and their impact on the environment is of critical importance for urban planning and sustainable development, especially in developing Chinese cities such as Shanghai. To date, few studies have focused on the urban trajectories of Shanghai over the past 30 years from a remote sensing perspective. Most of the studies were concentrated on the technical issues of image processing and classification. Moreover, research on spatial metrics has focused on analyzing remote sensing classification results rather than on the use of interpreting, assessing, and verifying urban simulation results. Furthermore, many researches merely focused on baseline projection and very few studies took into consideration urban growth scenarios so far. As yet there have been no reported scenario simulations of future Shanghai growth with several land-use categories within urban areas. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the integration of remote sensing, spatial metrics, and spatial-temporal models in the monitoring, analysis, and simulation of urban growth in Shanghai, China. The specific objectives are to: 1). monitor urban dynamics over time with multi-sensor remote sensing images; 2). quantify spatial-temporal properties of urban growth and representing the urban morphological structures by means of spatial metrics; and 3). simulate the geographic extent, patterns, and detailed catalogs of urban growth under different scenarios using Markov-Cellular Automata (Markov-CA) model to support decision making for a more sustainable Shanghai. Through this study, the combined approach using remotely sensed data with change detection techniques, spatial metrics, and a scenarios-based simulation model proved to be effective to understand, represent, and predict the spatial-temporal dynamics of urban growth. In detail, the segmented-based hierarchy classification and visual interpretation were effective methods to extract urban and industrial land with high-resolution remotely sensed images. Direct change detection using variables derived from tasseled cap transformation was efficient for monitoring impervious surface sprawl. Spatial metrics is a quick and executable way to assessing the impact of urban sprawl on landscape dynamic. Markov-CA model is a useful tool to simulate the scenarios of future urban developments and therefore provides the policy options for sustainable urban planning. The research results of urban trajectories and impervious surface sprawl showed that Shanghai experienced high-speed urban sprawl and the rate of urban expansion, however, was not homogeneous spatially and temporally. The general annual urban expansion speed was 34.8 km2 per year; nevertheless, it reached 80.2 km2 per year recent six years from 2001 to 2007, while it touched the bottom speed around 14.3 km2 per year during 1979-1989. The expanded area in the Puxi region was 5.23 times of its original area while that of Pudong region was 19.94 times of its original area during 1979-2007. The research results of landscape analysis demonstrated that greenbelt becomes fractured while infrastructural and commercial area is more and more aggregated in the central Shanghai area, and satellite images such as SPOT Pan, XS and Landsat TM with 10-30 meter resolution are sufficient for the landscape dynamic research in central Shanghai area. The results of scenarios-based simulation indicated that built-up areas in Shanghai will increase significantly in 2025 and Shanghai will experience less urban sprawl and retain a better environment in 2025 under service-oriented center (SOC) than under baseline (NS) or manufacturing-dominant center (MDC) scenario. If favorable policy for MDC scenario is adopted, however, there will be a lot of manufacturing industries gathering in Shanghai and more agricultural lands will be encroached. The present research focused on the analysis of physical and morphological aspects of urban growth. Urban land-use dynamics are, however, intrinsically linked with socio-economic, political, or demographic drivers. Trying to fill in the missing link between traditional urban geography and urban remote sensing & urban simulation and to improve understanding of the interactions between human and natural aspects in the urban socio-ecosystem is the major focus in the next phase of the Ph.D. research. Keywords: Urban growth, Spatial-temporal pattern, Remote sensing, Spatial metrics, Scenarios-based simulation, Shanghai / QC 20110224

One of the major consequences of urbanization is the transformation of land surfaces from rural/natural environments to built-up land that supports diverse forms of human activity. These transformations impact the local geology, climate, hydrology, flora and fauna and human-life supporting ecosystem services in the region. Mapping and analysis of land use/land cover change in urban regions and tracking their environmental impact is therefore of vital importance for evaluating policy options for future growth and promoting sustainable urban development. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the extent of urban growth and/or sprawl and its potential environmental impact in the regions surrounding a few selected major cities in North America, Europe and Asia using landscape metrics and other environmental indicators to assess the landscape changes. The urban regions examined are the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada, Stockholm region and County in Sweden and Shanghai in China. The analyses are based on classificatons of optical satellite imagery (Landsat TM/ETM+ or SPOT 1/5) between 1985 and 2010. Maximum likelihood classification (MLC) under urban/rural masks, objectbased image analysis (OBIA) with rule-based classification and support vector machines (SVM) classification methods were used with grey level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) texture features as input to help obtain higher accuracies. Based on the classification results, landscape metrics, selected environmental indicators and indices, and ecosystem service valuation were calculated and used to estimate environmental impact of urban growth. The results show that urban areas in the GTA grew by nearly 40% between 1985 and 2005. Results from the landscape metrics and urban compactness indicators show that low-density built-up areas increased significantly in the GTA between 1985 and 2005, mainly at the expense of agricultural areas. The majority of environmentally significant areas were increasingly surrounded by urban areas between 1985 and 2005, furthering their isolation from other natural areas. Urban areas in the Stockholm region increased by 10% between 1986 and 2006. The landscape metrics indicated that natural areas became more isolated or shrank whereas new small urban patches came into being. The most noticeable changes in terms of environmental impact and urban expansion were in the east and north of the study area. Large forested areas in the northeast dropped the most in terms of environmental impact ranking, while the most improved analysis units were close to the central Stockholm area. The study comparing Shanghai and Stockholm County revealed that urban areas increased ten times as much in Shanghai as they did in Stockholm, at 120% and 12% respectively. The landscape metrics results show that fragmentation in both study regions occurred mainly due to the growth of high density built-up areas in previously more natural environments, while the expansion of low density built-up areas was for the most part in conjunction with pre-existing patches. The growth in urban areas resulted in ecosystem service value losses of approximately 445 million USD in Shanghai, mostly due to the decrease in natural coastal wetlands, while in Stockholm the value of ecosystem services changed very little. This study demonstrates the utility of urban and environmental indicators derived from remote sensing data via GIS techniques in assessing both the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban growth and its environmental impact in different metropolitan regions. High accuracy classifications of optical medium resolution remote sensing data are achieved thanks in part to the incorporation of texture features for both object- and pixel-based classification methods, and to the use of urban/rural masks with the latter. The landscape metrics calculated based on the classifications are useful in quantifying urban growth trends and potential environmental impact as well as facilitating their comparison. The environmental indicator results highlight the challenges in terms of sustainable urban growth unique to each landscape, both spatially and temporally. The next phase of this PhD research will involve finding valid methods of comparing and contrasting urban growth patterns and estimated environmental impact in different regions of the world and further exploration of how to link urbanizing landscapes to changes in ecosystem services via environmental indicators. / <p>QC 20141212</p>

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